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queerwelsh · 4 months ago

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E. Prosser Rhys won the Crown in Pontypool National Eisteddfod with 'Atgof' in 1924.

Influential in his life as a poet, editor, journalist and publisher, Prosser Rhys is remembered today for winning the Crown in the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1924. As influential as his winning poem, ‘Atgof’ was, and continues to be, Prosser even more profoundly affected Welsh-language writing in his life than is remembered today.

Edward Prosser Rees was born on the 4th of March 1901 in Trefenter, Mynydd Bach in Ceredigion, and christened on the 9th of March at Capel Bethel. His father was a blacksmith, David Rees, and his mother was Elizabeth Rees. Prosser came from a family of blacksmiths, and they later moved to Morfa Du in Trefenter (after Prosser had moved away, in March 1918). Previously, they had lived in Llainffwlbert until 1900, where they had their previous six children.

Prosser Rhys attended Cofadail Primary School in Trefenter then Ardwyn Grammar School in Aberystwyth in 1914. Other writers, academics and politicians were educated here, who were known as 'Old Ardwynians'. His early academic success was then marred by ill health - he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis at a young age, in 1915, which affected him for the rest of his life, but immediately kept him home for the next 3 years of his life.

Still, his name started appearing in Welsh writing as early as 1916, with the poem ‘Y Fam a’i Baban’ (The Mam and her Baby) in Baner ac Amserau Cymru, where he was published as E. Prosser Rees (under the pseudonym/ffugenw Eiddwenfab) from Trefenter, Llangwyryfon, Ceredigion. In 1917, he wrote eloquent letters to ‘Y Darian,’ a radical Welsh-language paper, where he first wrote briefly about joining a patriotic union, and the Eisteddfod. The latter was fitting as he next appeared in Y Darian in 1918 for his early Eisteddfod wins, then in local Eisteddfodau, listed within the winners from Ceredigion. He then appeared several times in Y Darian as a part of ‘Aelwyd y Beirdd,’ where he’s described as a young poet with great potential, at only 17, the brother of Reverend Wyre Rees.

Clearly, Prosser wrote, competed and performed his poetry quite a lot as a teenager. One of his early poems appears in ‘Cymru,’ a monthly Welsh-language journal founded by O.M. Edwards in 1891. It was in 1919 that ‘Canu’r Merched’ by E. Prosser Rhys appeared in the journal ‘Cymru’. This is the earliest (that I found) of his poetry appearing published under this name. Note that there are occasionally mentions of ‘Prosser Rees,’ his birth name, as well. As Prosser Rees, he also published a poem in 1917 in The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard in sympathy to Mr and Mrs Thomas Evans of Penbont, who lost their son, David Morgan, in France during the First World War.

Prosser worked as a clerk at Western Ocean Colliery in Nant-y-Moel, Ogmore Valley, before his community saw him coming back from the ‘sowth’ (south) as a journalist. He was at Nantymoel, apparently living with one of his brothers, John, who was a coal miner. He was still receiving treatment for tuberculosis and apparently then returned to this family in their new home in Morfa-Du. He then worked at the Liberal newspapers of the Welsh Gazette in Aberystwyth and Herald Cymraeg in Caernarfon in 1919 (where he worked with Morris T. Williams). He moved back to Aberystwyth in 1921 and became the editor of Baner ac Amserau Cymru in 1923, when they moved their offices from Denbigh to Aberystwyth.

In 1923, Prosser's poetry was first published in a book - Gwaed Ifanc with another poet J.T. Jones (John Tudor Jones). As the title suggests, they were proud of being the ‘new blood’ of Welsh poetry and writing, with Prosser then being 22 and J.T. Jones being 19 years old. There was certainly some backlash to that and the book was met with some controversy, also for their poetry being more sexual than older poets of the time. There was already a tradition of the new kind of Welsh writing, started by T H Parry-Williams’ win in the Eisteddfod in 1915 with ‘Y Ddinas,’ and Rhys was aware of these new ideas of challenging Welsh writing, the Eisteddfod and therefore Welsh-language society, which he was inspired by and sought to be a part of - and succeeded. This was an attempt to challenge the writing of older poets, as well as bring attention to the newer crop of younger writers, the men who’d survived the First World War and demanded attention.

He of course especially challenged the status quo of the Eisteddfod when he won the Crown in 1924 in the Pontypool National Eisteddfod with his poem ‘Atgof’ (Memory - or also sometimes translated as Reminiscence). This long ‘pryddest’ poem, follows a ‘llanc synhwyrus’/‘sensible lad’s journey into exploring his sexuality, from seeing ‘Sex’ ruin his parents’ relationship, to exploring his sexuality with women, and then with a man as well (who was likely Morris T. Williams), while struggling against the morals and virtues of Welsh society and religion. The judges of the Eisteddfod were at odds, one finding it to be immoral and the others praising it.

Of course, when Prosser won, the reactions were scandalized and ‘Atgof’ became quite controversial, for its explicit discussions of sex and of course the same-sex part of the poem. It has since been called ‘homoerotic’ by many writers, while today may be seen more as a bisexual poem, or queer one. Mihangel Morgan, writing in Queer Wales, finds this to be a negative depiction of homosexuality and downplays the significance of ‘Atgof’ as a gay poem.

A’n cael ein hunain yn cofleidio ‘dynn;

A Rhyw yn ein gorthrymu; a’i fwynhau; A phallu’n sydyn fel ar lan y llyn…

And finding ourselves in a tight embrace With Sex overwhelming us; and enjoying it;

And suddenly stopping as above the lake…

These lines describe the same-sex interaction and indeed it doesn’t take up a large amount of the poem, but Mihangel Morgan’s disappointment seems to come from the poem not being homosexual enough. And indeed it isn’t, but reads as a bisexual poem that takes us through Rhys’s whole journey of realising and battling with his sexuality at this age. It still resonates with much of the LGBTQ+ community, especially when realising how explicit it was for 1924 (or it wouldn't have been so controversial), 40 years before the decriminalization of homosexuality, and its win in the Eisteddfod was well, well ahead of its time.

On the other hand, later on in Prosser’s life, it was suggested that he was so shocked by sodomy in the writing of someone else to not publish them. There is the possibility of Prosser’s viewpoints and own sexuality changing in his life, though this is merely speculation that Prosser was ‘shocked’ by writing of homosexuality. There are many possibilities here when it comes to Prosser’s own feelings and sexuality, but it is certain that they have had a great influence on LGBTQ+ writing and the community in Wales and particularly in Welsh.

‘Atgof’ and Prosser were also mentioned in US Time Magazine in 1924, adding to evidence of the influence and legacy of this poem. Internationally, we see links in the poems to the sexology and psychiatry of the time - the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones (and possibly abusive husband of the composer Morfydd Llwyn Owen) mentioned the poem in a letter to Sigmund Freud, though it’s unclear that either actually read the poem.

Caradog Pritchard wrote in his autobiography that as a friend of Prosser’s and Morris T. Williams’ that he believed the man Prosser wrote about was Morris Williams, and this has been accepted as likely the truth since then (though there were always rumours about this). Morris T. Williams was close to Prosser, when they were roommates in Twthil near Caernarfon, while working at 'Herald Cymraeg,' and they exchanged letters after which show their close relationship - this was before Morris married Kate Roberts and they together bought Gwasg Gee. All three remained close, being friends and remaining in the same social circles as poets, as well as in Welsh publishing. More recently, it has been theorized that Kate Roberts also was queer, based on her own personal writing, as well as her short stories which are about romantic relationships between women (such as 'Christmas' and 'The Treasure'). Morris T. Williams died in 1946, a year after Prosser Rhys, after a long struggle with alcoholism.

‘Atgof’ was published as a booklet, with a translation ‘Memory’ by Hywel Davies also published as a booklet. The poem reads less explicitly than the Welsh version, though it was praised at the time. It can be read here - though a modern English translation is definitely needed. 'Atgof' can also be read here.

In 1928, Prosser married Mary Prudence Hughes in Aberystwyth, which was when both he and she took the surname ‘Rhys’. They had one daughter, Eiddwen Rhys. He founded Gwasg Aberystwyth also in 1928 and began publishing books, with Gwasg Aberystwyth growing significantly in years to come.

As editor of Baner ac Amserau Cymru, Prosser encouraged more poets to write and publish their work. Rhys founded Y Clwb Llyfrau Cymraeg/The Welsh Books Club in 1937. This was a subscription of Welsh books, where readers would receive 4 books a year for half a crown, and which published 45 volumes up until 1945. As successful as it was under Prosser, after his death, it was decided that there were not enough Welsh-language writers to continue it.

(Executive committee of 'Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru,' 1927- Lewis Valentine, Ambrose Bebb, D. J. Williams, Mai Roberts, Saunders Lewis, Kate Roberts, H. R. Jones, Prosser Rhys.) Prosser Rhys was a founding member of Plaid Cymru, founded in 1925. He was also the editor of ‘Y Ddraig Goch’ with Saunders Lewis and Iorwerth C. Peate, which Prosser also helped to form with H. R. Jones, though he was initially opposed to the idea due to lack of funds. However, Prosser became vocally opposed to Saunders Lewis’ right wing views. He wrote in Y Faner that many of Plaid Cymru’s members had come from the Labour party or Liberal party, or were radicals who came from no political party, where none were supportive of the views appearing in the Daily Mail, implying that Saunders Lewis’ views were too close to the matter, but that most Plaid Cymru supporters were personally too loyal to voice their concerns over this. The expulsion of Prosser from the party was discussed and suggested but Saunders Lewis opposed this.

Following his many successes, Prosser and his family moved to 33 North Parade, Aberystwyth, where he lived until his death.

After his health had deteriorated again from 1942, Prosser died in 1945 - at the age of 43, and less than a month before his 44th birthday. He is buried at Llanbadarn Fawr Cemetery, with his grave quoting T. Gwynn Jones: “Gwyrodd êfo î’r drugaredd fawr, Ni wyr namyn Duw ddirgelwch ei wên.” Here Mary Prudence Rhys, his wife, is also buried, who died in 1991, at the age of 87. They are also buried with William Dewi Morris Jones, who died in 1983, aged 56. Rhys’s death was certainly a loss to Welsh publishing and writing.

Gwasg Aberystwyth was bought by J. D. Lewis & Sons from Llandysul after Prosser’s death, the founder of Gwasg Gomer, who continued the Welsh Books Club and took over publishing of the club’s books until 1952. This, however, did follow a legal disagreement between Mary Prudence Rhys and Morris T. Williams, who was supposed to get the first offer and chance at refusal for Gwasg Aberystwyth, according to legal documents that Prosser and Morrisagreed upon, which Morris Williams did not feel like he had gotten.

Cerddi Prosser Rhys was published in 1950 by Gwasg Gee, Morris’s first collection entirely of his own poems - published 5 years after his death. Edited by J.M. Edwards, a fellow poet who competed in Eisteddfodau and was from a similar area to Rhys, Edwards also writes the introduction of the poetry collection. He notes that he decided that 4 years after Prosser’s death was enough time to finally publish a whole collection of Prosser’s best poems (the introduction was written in July, 1949, with the book published in February, 1950.) He writes that his previous poetry collection, in ‘Gwaed Ifanc’, was ‘a volume that attracted a lot of attention and also brought a new, daring note to the world of Welsh poetry of the period, something that was urgently needed.’ His memories of Prosser while growing up show he was a well-known poet even in his youth, who Edwards and others in his own school had heard of before meeting, who was known for competing and finding success in many local Eisteddfodau around Wales.

Of his poetry found in Cerddi Prosser Rhys, Edwards notes that ‘Y Gof’ (The Memory) is a tribute to his parents and his early life in rural Wales. His two sonnets he most praises are ‘Y Pechadur’ (The Sinner) and ‘Duw Mudan’ (Mute God). Of ‘Atgof,’ Edwards significantly notes that it was "a bold poem that created a lot of excitement and was praised by some but damned by others. The saddest feature of the whole event was that it reflects an attitude of thought in Wales which is too ready to judge the values of the world of the arts by the wrong standards." The introduction finishes by repeating what many others have said about the premature loss of Prosser to the world of Welsh writing and publishing. Edwards also hoped that there would also be a collection of Prosser’s prose, which unfortunately has not yet come to be.

‘Mab ei Fam’ (His Mother's Son) is to "M.T.W," likely Morris T. Williams - similarly to Strancio, which was translated by Mihangel Morgan as ‘Fooling About,’ which is to: ‘I gyfaill annwyl a fu’n cyd-letya â mi’ (To a dear friend who lodged with me)

Do, bûm yn flin. Ond weithian gwybydd di Fod Fflam yn llosgi ynof, ac aml dro Yn llamu ar draws fy nghorff materol i, A’m hysu hyd fy nghyrru i maes o’m co’,

A strancio a wnaf eto rhag fy ffawd Nes torro’r Fflam ei ffordd o’i charchar cnawd.

Yes, I was angry. But sometimes you must know That a Flame burned within me, and often Sprang from my material body Plaguing me until it drove me mad And I would taunt my fate Until the Flame broke free of its prison of flesh.

-Mostly translated by Mihangel Morgan.

As with ‘Atgof,’ Mihanel Morgan downplays Strancio by stating it to be cryptic and guarded - while I'd argue that the confession of his feelings towards a man in the 1920s is explicit for its time, especially following on from the Victorian poetry that was popular before the ‘New blood’. While Mihangel Morgan says it is ‘assumed’ to be about Morris T. Williams, the dedication at the start of the poem is clear enough, at least historically, to Morris T. Williams, especially when a previous poem also is dedicated to him.

It wasn’t until 1980 that Prosser Rhys was celebrated with a book about his life, by Rhisiart Hincks. T. Robin Chapman wrote in Y Traethodydd in 2006 that Hincks probably knew of the nature of Rhys’s relationship with Morris T. Williams yet it was omitted, from the only whole biography of Prosser Rhys. This is a sign of the times in which it was written and published but shows the need now to write biographies of Rhys that include what was previously excluded, his queer identity. Hincks mentions how Williams quickly became Prosser's best friend ('ei gyfaill pennaf') when they met in Caernarfon, that they moved together to 15 Eleanor Street and that it was Prosser who introduced Williams to literature. ‘Cyfeillgarwch clos’. He also mentions that such closeness led to spats, once when they fought all night, which does show the intensity of their relationship. Perhaps, this subtext Hincks hoped to be understood by the audience of the time. Of ‘Atgof,’ Hincks notes that Prosser had previously expressed that there was a lack of sex in Welsh in recent poetry, which he blamed on the chapel. This biography remains the most detailed on Prosser’s life.

A monument on Mynydd Bach, overlooking Llyn Eiddwen near to Trefenter, where Prosser was born and lived in his childhood, was unveiled in 1992, during the National Eisteddfod in Aberystwyth. Including Rhys, the monument, ‘Cofeb i Feirdd y Mynydd Bach’ celebrates 4 poets from the local area. J.M. Edwards from Llanrhystud also won the Crown in the National Eisteddfod, in 1937, 1941 and in 1944, and wrote the introduction to Cerddi Prosser Rhys. All 4 of the poets named on the plaque of the monument were successful in the Eisteddfod. B. T. Hopkins (Benjamin Thomas Hopkins) was a successful poet from Ceredigion, who lived and farmed on Mynydd Bach. T Hughes Jones (Thomas Hughes Jones) was a Welsh poet and writer from Ceredigion who won a medal in the National Eisteddfod of 1940 for a short story, ‘Sgweier Hafila,’ which was partly judged by Kate Roberts.

Interest in Prosser, his life and career, has been renewed by research into Welsh LGBTQ+ history and writing. Notably, in 1998, a historical docudrama called ‘Atgof’ aired on S4C, directed by Ceri Sherlock, which depicted Prosser writing the poem and his relationship with Morris T. Williams, which was represented as a sexual and romantic one. There was controversy around the film, similarly to 'Atgof' the poem, with some questioning how they depicted the relationship (with some speculated, fictional details) and some also questioning whether it should be depicted or speculated about at all. Despite the discourse, Prosser Rhys had already become an inspiration to the Welsh LGBTQ+ community.

In 2019, the show ‘Corn Gwlad’ was performed at the National Eisteddfod in Llanrwst, created by Seiriol Davies, which celebrated Prosser’s win at the Eisteddfod and depicted his feelings towards Morris T. Williams. It was then a work-in-progress show, with comedy and music, and part of the ‘Mas ar y Maes’ programme of events at the National Eisteddfod, which are especially for the LGBTQ+ community, or which may be relevant to the LGBTQ+ community. Prosser was also featured in ‘Mas ar y Maes’ events with ‘Cariad yw Cariad,’ and is of course heavily featured in the 2024 National Eisteddfod in Pontypridd, on the centenary of Prosser Rhys winning the Crown with 'Atgof.' 'Atgof' was also the theme of the poems submitted to the 'Coron' - which was won by Gwynfor Dafydd.

The lasting legacy of Prosser Rhys is to be a significant voice of this community from 20th century Wales, and an icon especially for Welsh language LGBTQ+ people, queer men and bisexual people. This is what has significantly brought Prosser Rhys back into the public eye in the 1990s, with the film Atgof, and in the 2010s with LGBTQ+ History Month, and in the 2020s around the 100th anniversary of his Eisteddfod Crown winning with ‘Atgof’. Prosser also had a significant impact in Welsh publishing, Welsh society, in his article writings, in politics. Prosser Rhys was a fascinating, complicated person, a passionate advocate for Welsh poetry, writing and publishing and is a hero of the communities to which he belonged, including the local community in Ceredigion and West Wales.

#edward prosser rhys #prosser rhys #e. prosser rhys #eisteddfod #national eisteddfod #lgbtqia #queer history #welsh history #history #wales #bisexual history #gay history #queer welsh history #this is a very long blog - this can't really be called a blog #Welsh version incoming soonish #posting this in the middle of the night bc I go to the Eisteddfod tomorrow

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cassandralie · 1 year ago

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Muriel, the Dimmest Little Morningstar

Maybe the question isn't "was Crowley Lucifer?" but who else was also Lucifer? After all, there was more than one Morningstar

or, as Crowley put it more casually,

he doesn't remember them, of course, probably due to Book of Life fuckery, just like he doesn't remember Fufur and Saraquel, who were also probably in the Morningstar Legion (that or the rebels called themselves Morningstars).

Which is why he also doesn't remember Muriel and Muriel also doesn't remember him. Both of them had their memories altered by the Book of Life*

*Sub Theory: the Book of Life erases who you were, makes it so you never existed... but you don't disappear or die. You become someone new. Hopefully this theory doesn't implode later--yeah, that's right, I made that sub joke instead of the other kind involving um...sandwiches.

But, just like Pepperidge Farms, the Metatron remembers.

he didn't say the "dumb" one, or the "stupid" one. Maybe to be polite. But "dim" isn't very polite either. It's just slightly less on the nose than the "not very bright one", aka the Dimmest Morningstar

But what happened to Muriel and their original memories? The same thing that was going to happen to Gabriel, obviously!

Muriel is basically a junior reporting angel. Sorry, scrivener. A no one and they know it.

Ranked so low they didn't know there was a rank under (which there probably wasn't until the Metatron wanted to punish Gabriel)

whatever Muriel did Before the Fall, whatever their name used to be, the Metatron didn't get rid of them because:

that's right, Neil Gaiman the Metatron will need Muriel for his evil plans, probably involving thee Second Coming and another apocalypse.

maybe to keep them out of the way, or maybe because they have power he's waiting for the right moment to unlock.

But he does make sure it's still locked.

Other people have explained that the book is about pieceing together fragments of the past* Maybe Muriel will remember who they are? Remember who Crowley is? Remember what really happened to cause the War in Heaven, the Fall, all that?

Maybe they will remember just in time to stop the Second Coming and the Second Armageddon--with help from our divorced dads, of course.

(*also a missing uncle - Crowley? A fellow Morningstar.

*also an estranged father with a belief in a higher power - Aziraphale? the Metatron?

*and also an exploded Grandmother - God? Muriel's previous identity?)

For further evidence, please note the star and crown on their helmet and recall "everything is meant" TM

This looks like a former Prince of Heaven, Morningstar Legion to me

And that is my theory :)

(if anyone said this first, sorry! All credit to you!)

Now, I'm no published author and barely anyone reads my fics (but the ones who do are Real Ones-- I love ya'll), so I have zero street cred here, and am probably so off the mark my dart hit the wall instead of the dart board, but I wanted to share my thoughts anyway and see what everyone thinks. Please let me know!

(Bonus Crack Theory: Muriel's original name was Lucy/Luci/Luciel. Combine with Fufur, that would make a Lucifer with bad demon spelling Lucyfur.)

#gos2 spoilers #gos2spoilers #gos3 speculation #good omens meta #muriel theory #the Metatron #Crowley #Aziraphale #not coffee theory or crowley is lucifer theory but a third even weirder theory #cassandratruths

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rotzaprachim · 1 year ago

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Works written decades ago, often by female Jewish immigrants, were dismissed as insignificant or unmarketable. But in the past several years, translators devoted to the literature are making it available to a wider readership. -

By Joseph Berger

Feb. 6, 2022

In “Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love,” a sendup of the socialists, anarchists and intellectuals who populated New York’s Lower East Side in the early 20th century, Miriam Karpilove writes from the perspective of a sardonic young woman frustrated by the men’s advocacy of unrestrained sexuality and their lack of concern about the consequences for her.

When one young radical tells the narrator that the role of a woman in his life is to “help me achieve happiness,” she observes in an aside to the reader: “I did not feel like helping him achieve happiness. I felt that I’d feel a lot better if he were on the other side of the door.”

In a review for Tablet magazine, Dara Horn compared the book to “Sex and the City,” “Friends” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Though it was published by Syracuse University Press in English in 2020, Karpilove, who immigrated to New York from Minsk in 1905, wrote it about a century ago, and it was published serially in a Yiddish newspaper starting in 1916.

Jessica Kirzane, an assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago who translated the novel, said that her students are drawn to its contemporary echoes of men using their power for sexual advantage. “The students are often surprised that this is someone whose experiences are so relatable even though the writing was so long ago,” she said in an interview.

Yiddish novels written by women have remained largely unknown because they were never translated into English or never published as books. Unlike works translated from the language by such male writers as Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade, Yiddish fiction by women was long dismissed by publishers as insignificant or unmarketable to a wider audience.

But in the past several years, there has been a surge of translations of female writers by Yiddish scholars devoted to keeping the literature alive.

Madeleine Cohen, the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., said that counting translations published or under contract, there will have been eight Yiddish titles by women — including novels and story collections — translated into English over seven years, more than the number of translations in the previous two decades.

Yiddish professors like Kirzane and Anita Norich, who translated “A Jewish Refugee in New York,” by Kadya Molodovsky, have discovered works by scrolling through microfilms of long-extinct Yiddish newspapers and periodicals that serialized the novels. They have combed through yellowed card catalogs at archives like the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, searching for the names of women known for their poetry and diaries to see if they also wrote novels.

“This literature has been hiding in plain sight, but we all assumed it wasn’t there,” said Norich, a professor emeritus of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. “Novels were written by men while women wrote poetry or memoirs and diaries but didn’t have access to the broad worldview that men did. If you’ve always heard that women didn’t write novels in Yiddish, why go looking for it?”

But look for it Norich did. It has been painstaking, often tedious work but exciting as well, allowing Norich to feel, she said, “like a combination of sleuth, explorer, archaeologist and obsessive.”

“A Jewish Refugee in New York,” serialized in a Yiddish newspaper in 1941, centers on a 20-year-old from Nazi-occupied Poland, who escapes to America to live with her aunt and cousins on the Lower East Side. Instead of offering sympathy, the relatives mock her clothing and English malapropisms, pay scant attention to her fears about her European relatives’ fate and try to sabotage her budding romances.

Until Norich’s translation was published by Indiana University Press in 2019, there had been only one book of Yiddish fiction by an American woman — Blume Lempel — translated into English, Norich said. (Two non-American writers had been translated: Esther Singer Kreitman, the sister of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who settled in Britain, and Chava Rosenfarb, a Canadian who translated herself.)

The new translations are stirring a smidgen of optimism among Yiddish scholars and experts for a language whose extinction has long been fretted over but has never come to pass. Yiddish is the lingua franca of many Hasidic communities, but their adherents rarely read secular works. And it has faded away in everyday conversation among the descendants of the hundreds of thousands of East European immigrants who brought the language to the United States in the late 19th century.

The new translations are being read by people interested in everyday life in East European shtetls and immigrant ghettos in the United States as told from a woman’s perspective. They are also being read by students at the nation’s two dozen campuses with Yiddish programs. “Students were often surprised by how unsentimental these female novelists are, how wide-ranging are their themes, and how frank they are about female desire,” Norich said.

With a grant from the Yiddish Book Center, a 42-year-old nonprofit that seeks to revitalize Yiddish literature and culture, Norich is now translating a second novel: “Two Feelings,” by Celia Dropkin (1887-1956), a Russian immigrant who was admired for her erotically charged poems but never known as a novelist.

“Two Feelings” had been serialized in The Yiddish Forward in 1934 and then forgotten. It tells the story of a married woman who struggles to reconcile her feelings for, as Norich put it, a “husband she loves because he is a good man, and a lover she loves because he is a good lover though not a good man.”

One recent volume, “Oedipus in Brooklyn,” is a collection of stories by Blume Lempel (1907-99), the daughter of a Ukrainian kosher butcher. After spending a decade in Paris, she, her husband and their two children immigrated to New York in 1939, where she began writing for Yiddish newspapers.

In an introduction, her translators, Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, describe Lempel as “drawn to subjects seldom explored by other Yiddish writers in her time: abortion, prostitution, women’s erotic imaginings, incest.” Her sentences, they add, “often evoke an unsettling blend of splendor and menace.”

In promotional copy for the book, Cynthia Ozick called it “a splendid surprise” and asked: “Why should Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade monopolize this rich literary lode?”

The recent books have mostly been published by academic presses in small runs, many of them financed by fellowships and stipends from the Yiddish Book Center. Despite the books’ contemporary themes, said Cohen, the center’s academic director, it has been an uphill battle to persuade mainstream trade publishers to acquire titles by women writers who are generally unknown and previously untranslated.

The scholars work independently, though they occasionally meet at conferences and panel discussions. Their life stories offer a window into the evolution of Yiddish.

Kirzane learned the language not in her childhood home but at the University of Virginia and in a doctoral program at Columbia University. Norich, the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors from Poland, was born after the war in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria and was raised in the Bronx, continuing to speak Yiddish with her parents and brother.

When her daughter Sara was born, she made an effort to speak only Yiddish to her but gave up when Sara was 5. “You need a community to have a language grow,” she said.

These translators believe that the newly translated novels by women will enrich the teaching of Yiddish. Yiddish is, after all, called the mamaloshen — mother’s tongue — and a woman’s perspective, they said, has long been missing.

#yiddish #literature #women's literature #jewish culture #articles

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emailsfromanactor · 10 months ago

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I went looking for more Hamlet photos and found this one of William Redfield and Marlon Brando at an airport! It's from August 5, 1953, so I thought it might be related to their Arms and the Man tour, but I did a bit of digging and found another photo of Brando with a more detailed caption:

No passport, no voyage. Actor Marlon Brando sits dejectedly on luggage belonging to his friend, actor William Redfield, after he was refused an emergency passport by the State Department. Brando was supposed to sail for Europe aboard the Ile De France, but he lost his fifth passport when it was stolen along with his luggage from Redfield's car. The French line politely told the actor they just couldn't take him along under the circumstanes.

A bit more digging and... huh:

Brando and his then regular lover, fellow actor William Redfield, had been thrown off the Ile De France in New York harbour because, for the fifth time, Brando had lost his passport.

Emphasis mine. I did not expect this. Even more digging below!

Okay, maybe based on this picture, I should have expected it? Find someone who looks at you the way William Redfield looks at Marlon Brando:

(The only source I can find for that one is Pinterest, sigh.)

Oh, uh. This is blunt:

During the previous month, Marlon had been seeing a handsome young actor, William Redfield, who had become an almost constant companion. Marlon was hanging out more with this Manhattan-born stage actor than he was with Wally Cox. Marlon chose the lesser role of Sergius, the aristocratic Bulgarian major with Bryonic pretensions. The more important role, that of the pragmatic, anti-romantic Bluntschli, he graciously conceded to Redfield. Among Marlon’s friends, Redfield was the only one lucratively employed at the time. But he gave up a profitable job on TV to follow Marlon to New England. As one of the original members of Actors Studio, Redfield had befriended Marlon. “Befriended isn’t really the word,” [Carlo] Fiore said. “I think he worshipped him. That summer the two men got to know each other on intimate terms.” “I’d known Redfield for several months before finding out he had a gay streak in him,” Fiore said. “Of course, I think most actors have a gay streak in them, even the straight ones. One night on the road I walked into Marlon’s bedroom and found them going at it. Redfield was on top. Seeing me, Marlon shouted, ‘Get the fuck out of my room. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ Redfield was so intent on riding it to the finish line that he didn’t even seem to notice my intrusion.” “Redfield and Marlon were virtually inseparable that summer,” Fiore said, “although both of them got some female ass on the side. But always together. They even fucked chicks together like Marlon and I had done in that long ago summer. Redfield followed Marlon around like he was a lovesick puppy. I think he really fell in love with Marlon. I warned him to keep the relationship physical—not emotional—but the fool wouldn’t listen to me. Like a bitchy queen, he accused me of wanting Marlon for myself. He claimed I was jealous. I was jealous of their friendship, as I wanted to spend time with Marlon, but only as a friend, not as a fuck buddy. Redfield didn’t believe me. Since he wanted to fuck Marlon, he just assumed that I did too.”

That's from Brando Unzipped by Darwin Porter. Carlo Fiore wrote his own book called Bud: The Brando I Knew: The Untold Story of Brando's Private Life. I don't know how reliable either writer is, but the relationship seems not unlikely!

Also from Brando Unzipped:

After The Saboteur: Code Named Morituri was released in 1965, Redfield wrote a famous book on acting, Letters from an Actor, eventually published in 1966. The New York Times ran an excerpt of the book. In it, Redfield claimed that Marlon had "dishonored himself" by appearing in so many trashy movies. The actor built a case that Marlon should give up films and return to the stage, where, as Redfield generously suggested, "he could be our finest Hamlet." Although it was not a vicious critique of Marlon, Redfield's New York Times article produced an avalanche of protests from Marlon fans who defended their star. One reader asked, "If Marlon Brando has William Redfield for a friend, he need look no further for an Iago." An infuriated Marlon told Fiore, "Billy has betrayed me. The Brutus to my Caesar. I can't believe that I ever trusted him." Even though he'd never speak to Redfield again, Marlon did delight in the success Redfield eventually had while co-starring with Marlon's own friend, Jack Nicholson. The two actors appeared together in the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, released in 1976. When Redfield died of leukemia the following year, Marlon uttered the following pronouncement: "Even though I banished him as a friend, his death causes me great pain," Marlon said. "Like so many other friends in life, he tried to cash in on his association with me, and that is wrong. He should have stood on his own accomplishments, and be judged as a man that way. Regrettably for him, his epitaph and his only claim to fame will be one achievement: FRIEND OF MARLON BRANDO. Those words should go on his tombstone."

Yikes. ...and coincidentally, the first description of Carlo Fiore that pops up on Google is "an actor who now is remembered only for his friendship with Marlon Brando."

Well. Learn something new every day!

#william redfield #marlon brando #emails from an actor

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veevz-drawz · 2 months ago

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DoaHD | Entry 4: I Felt a Spark

A/N: Hi again, I've been gone for like… Almost two months now? Sorry about that lol, a lot has happened. I got a boyfriend! And turns out when you're in a relationship you don't have a lot of free time to do what you want… So I broke up with him! (jkjk I just wasn't as into him as I thought)

Anyways I started pharmacy school so updates will probably halt for the time being :/. I plan to slowly write portions of the next chapter (which will be 100% more interesting than this one I swear) throughout the semester, but I'm probably not going to publish it until the end of my first clinical rotation in the winter, so I apologize in advance for the wait.

Taglist: @minecraftninjerkid @ryctone @shipperlewaterkitty | Google Form to be added to taglist

Previous | Masterlist | Next

She didn’t come up with anything.

Strawberry Tea Cookie stared at her sketchbook in silent disappointment, the pages looking more like the aftermath of the Dark Flour War than the meticulous planning of a seasoned fashion designer. The rising sun’s cold rays swam across the pages, searching for any sort of golden lining in this mess, yet all it did was confirm that her glory days were long gone.

Crumbs, she’s hopeless.

The designer sighed and slammed her book shut, tucking it out of sight between two couch cushions. She reached for her cup in order to take another sip of tea, her frustration growing upon realizing her cup was empty. Tiredness dissolved each speck of flour in her dough, arms weighed down by thick molasses as she tried picking up the teapot, which was, disappointingly enough, also empty.

Strawberry Tea Cookie turned to watch the sun slowly climb its way up the sky, displacing the inky blue she got accustomed to with shades of periwinkle and orange, stinging her already hardened eyes. She let her head fall within the comforting darkness of her arms, hoping to get some rest before they land in the Crème Republic.

“Ohhhh, I’m so nervous,” a cookie whispered to her friend. “What if I don’t get an apprenticeship?”

Hundreds of cookies crowd around the small bulletin board that stood in the center of the academy’s lounge. On it was a long piece of paper printed with students’ names and their mentor for upcoming term.

Amongst the anxious chatter were loud cheers as students found they had a match, or quiet sobs from those who didn’t quite make it on the list. Yet all decrescendoed into curious whispers when a certain freshly baked designer, glazed in shades of scarlet, stepped into the atrium.

“Did you hear..?”

—Pierce the fabric, loop the thread.

The sea of students parted for her, stepping into line with every click of her tempered chocolate heels to form a straight path towards the bulletin board.

“What!? There’s no way!”

—Pierce the fabric, loop the thread.

She stopped in front of the board, quietly scanning through the long list of names. Despite her aloof demeanor, the uncertainty within kept rising like bread dough as the alphabetical list trickled closer and closer to where her name would be.

All these apprehensive whispers… That can’t be a good thing.

Sangria Cookie…

Sapodilla Cookie…

Sour Cherry Cookie…

Star Apple Cookie…

“Well, it’s a given…”

—Pierce the fabric, loop the thread.

Strawberry Tea Cookie…

She perked up at the sight of her name, eyes immediately darting across the dotted line to see…

…Blueberry Raisin Cookie.

A small smile cinched up her lips, that overwhelming nervousness washed away by excitement and pride. All those years working her dough off at this school— the countless all nighters, the constant stream of harsh critiques, the seemingly endless assignments— finally paid off.

“Wow Strawberry Tea Cookie, congrats…” her classmate whistled, standing beside her. “Bet you’re excited to get to work with Professor Blueberry Raisin Cookie…”

To apprentice under the Hollyberry Kingdom’s most renowned fashion designer—who hailed from the very family that first established oat couture—was an opportunity that not even the most esteemed alumni of the Royal Berry Institute of Design could imagine receiving.

And it had just been bestowed upon her.

“Yeah…” Strawberry Tea Cookie’s smile grew wider. “I am.”

Her classmate chuckled, which caught the young designer’s attention. She turned and shot them a quizzical expression.

“Sorry, sorry.” They looked away bashfully. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen you smile like that.”

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime, it’s only natural that I would smile.” Strawberry Tea Cookie replied matter-of-fact-ly, still confused on what was so funny.

“No, no, I’m just saying…” They laughed. “Ah, nevermind…”

A gentle shake of her shoulder pulled Strawberry Tea Cookie from her dream—back into the world where she was sore and barely cognizant of her own existence.

“My lady, we’re almost at the Créme Republic,” Strawberry Butler Cookie whispered. “Everybody’s gone outside.”

The designer groaned, tiredly lifting herself from the table and standing up. She stumbled on her first few steps, dragging herself across the cabinet like one of those jellywalker creatures.

“Lady Strawberry Tea Cookie, did you stay up all night?” Strawberry Butler Cookie inquired worriedly, though his tone also held a dash of annoyance. “You know very well that’s not healthy for you!”

“I…” The former heiress sighed as she grasped the doorknob. Of all the things that have changed in her life recently, her butler nagging about her less-than-consistent sleep schedule had remained… well, consistent. “...Thought I could create something meaningful.”

She opened the door and stepped outside.

A gust of strong, cold wind practically slapped Strawberry Tea Cookie awake before subsiding into a light breeze. Crisp, fresh air reinvigorated her very dough like she had been sprinkled with more life powder. As she made her way across the airship’s deck, the gales combed free the sticky knots tangled within her hair, alleviating that gross feeling.

Strawberry Tea Cookie leaned against the metal guard rail, scarlet eyes widening in awe as she took in the sight before her.

Amidst the azure blue sky decorated with cotton candy clouds shone a brilliant city piped in white. Grand mansions bordered the Republic’s edge, away from the main landmass through long, jutted platforms that made the city look like it was built on a shattered plate; each shard was held up by pillars rising from the sparkling sea. Lining the pristinely polished roads were blocks of small, condensed homes with roofs the color of the vibrant sky. Square bushes edged the vast maze of waterways, like the border of royal frosting the Great Witches pipe on a freshly baked cookie before filling them in.

Strawberry Tea Cookie’s eyes followed the canals deeper towards the city center, trailing up a tall waterfall before meeting its source.

“Wow…” The designer breathed, her voice so quiet that no other cookie could hear, only manifesting as a puff of condensed air lost to the sky.

At the heart of the Republic stood a giant, colorless murex shell that floated above all else—unfeeling and apathetic—immune to crumble like a timeless icon. Much like a roll of fruit leather pulled from the center, the shell was voluminously layered at the top, showing off its immaculately creased grooves that tightly cinched to an eventual fine point at the bottom.

Imposing spikes of all shapes and sizes decorated the shell’s head like a monarch’s crown, reaching for any fragment of light to capture and reflect back as a beautiful halo of white. Arched windows carved around the shell’s spire poured out fresh water, collecting in streams around the structure’s many grooves before gradually falling down to the city below.

To Strawberry Tea Cookie, it was like a unique hybrid between a polonaise skirt and a mermaid tail dress, two styles from vastly different eras and with even more conflicting construction methods. It would be a challenge to combine the two together. However, it was similar enough to Chocolate Bonbon Cookie’s everyday dress, perhaps she could reference its pattern and then add an additional layer for that polonaise look.

She’ll definitely need to visit that place the moment her schedule clears up. Not only is it important to see one’s source material up close, but a true artist must understand its purpose so as to not misappropriate its symbolism.

“You seem to have an idea, my lady.” The designer was snapped from her thoughts by Strawberry Butler Cookie’s comment. She turned to face him, his expression glimmering with wise joy.

Strawberry Tea Cookie glanced back to the brilliant view of the Créme Republic. Her breath hitched, stuck in her inhale as she truly took in the sight before her. A long lost excitement bloomed within as the ship descended, and the designer couldn’t help but let that exhilaratingly nervous anticipation spread up her lips in the form of a wide, genuine smile.

For the first time in forever—as cliché as it sounded—she truly realized how vibrant and beautiful everything was.

“Yeah,” she finally let go of her held breath, turning to face Strawberry Butler Cookie. “I think I finally do.”

He only chuckled in response.

Strawberry Tea Cookie and her butler were the last to leave the airship and join the others on the airfield. As they approached Hollyberry Cookie and Wildberry Cookie, the figure they were talking to turned his attention to the pair.

“Ah, you must be the guest Hollyberry Cookie was talking about~,” the stranger, with a voice full of smooth—oddly practiced—cadence, said. “Miss Strawberry Tea Cookie, yes?”

“Lady Strawberry Tea Cookie,” she corrected before dipping into a curtsy. “This is my butler, Strawberry Butler Cookie.” He nodded at the cue of his name.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you both, Lady Strawberry Tea Cookie and Strawberry Butler Cookie.” The cookie before her gave a courteous bow. “My name is Clotted Cream Cookie, consul of this fair city.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Consul—” Strawberry Tea Cookie cut off when a strong arm looped around her neck, yanking the rest of her words out with a strangled high pitch.

“Strawberry Tea Cookie, you’re being far too modest!” Hollyberry Cookie pulled the designer closer with so much strength that the latter was lurched forward, almost losing her balance. “Consul, this fine lass here is the future leader of House Strawberry, one of the most renowned designers in the Hollyberry Kingdom, and my granddaughter’s personal stylist~.”

Strawberry Tea Cookie felt the jam within her crystalize at those claims—the majority of which were now false.

The Consul’s eyes perked up, seemingly impressed by her obsolete feats. “My, I’m honored to be in the presence of such an esteemed guest, then~.”

“You’re too kind, Consul.” Strawberry Tea Cookie let out a strained laugh while releasing herself from the former queen’s grip, wanting to do nothing but escape this situation.

Make a good impression.

She froze in her place, those subconscious words pulling and posing her to face Clotted Cream Cookie once again. “...I should be the one honored to be in your presence.” She pitched her words higher at the end, hoping to sound more sweet but instead coming off as if she were choking on durian fumes.

An awkward silence ensued, with Strawberry Tea Cookie unable to think of what to say next.

“Well, tonight we are celebrating the reconstruction of the Crème Republic,” the Consul mentioned with a polite, charming smile. “You and Strawberry Butler Cookie are more than welcome to attend.”

Would she have enough time to go? Getting settled into her new home will most likely take the entire day.

But she remembered the way her mother became the definitive head of House Strawberry. Through courting the eldest son of the Oolong Dynasty and conducting complex business negotiations, she was able to establish a strong tea trade agreement that worked in House Strawberry’s favor. These imported teas, combined with the refreshing selection of fruits found deep within the Cranberry Forest, quickly became a household staple throughout the kingdom. The economic prosperity that followed immediately convinced Goji Berry Cookie to select Strawberry Mousse Cookie as their next leader.

If Strawberry Tea Cookie could continue expanding House Strawberry’s trading network, it would surely increase her chances of taking back her heirship. As far as she knew, all her cousin did was paint and nothing else. He was not exposed to the business side of House Strawberry like she was, and perhaps she could use that to her advantage to expand her feats beyond fashion.

“We’ll be sure to attend,” Strawberry Tea Cookie gave another curtsy. As she dipped, the tiredness that was temporarily lifted instantly came crashing down. While she absolutely despised entertaining strangers, it was something she must do in order to prove herself. “Thank you so much for extending this invitation.”

“It’s only natural to invite friends of Hollyberry Cookie and Wildberry Cookie,” Clotted Cream Cookie chimed. “I’ll be looking forward to your appearance this evening~.”

“My lady, the carriage is ready to take us to our accommodations.” Strawberry Butler Cookie announced.

“Why don’t we come along and help you unpack?” Hollyberry Cookie offered, her retainer nodding in agreement. “You have at least twelve full juice barrels worth of stuff, it’s going to take you until the next morning to go through everything, haha!”

Strawberry Tea Cookie glanced at the wagon with all her packed belongings, which seemed even more comically small compared to the carriage from the day before.

“If you two wouldn’t mind,” Strawberry Tea Cookie turned back to answer them. “The help would be greatly appreciated.” Especially from two of the strongest cookies in the Hollyberry Kingdom.

“We would be more than happy to help,” Wildberry Cookie assured. “And I could give you all a tour of the Crème Republic afterwards.”

“Thank you, but we would like to decline,” Strawberry Butler Cookie cut in, interjecting before the designer could agree to Wildberry Cookie’s offer. “My lady had quite a… restless night, it would be best if she didn’t over exert herself before tonight’s party.” He shot her a finalizing glare, which Strawberry Tea Cookie matched with an annoyed one.

However another pulse of exhaustion struck her right after, and she found her initial irritation immediately transformed into gratitude for her butler’s intervention.

Perhaps she overdid it a little… But does she even have the luxury to take a break?

“Clotted Cream Cookie, why don’t you join us?” Hollyberry Cookie, who was in the process of boarding the wagon, asked. “The more hands, the merrier!”

“Thank you, but I’ll have to decline,” the Consul smiled as he took a step back. “I’m afraid there are other items that I must attend to before tonight’s celebration.”

“To the sharpest piping tip as usual, Consul,” the former queen teased. “Very well, that leaves more fun for us~!”

Strawberry Tea Cookie couldn’t help but feel amused at the fact that Hollyberry Cookie seemed more excited to go than she was. But perhaps it was another opportunity to spend time with cookies she deemed close.

The wagon, pulled by two cream coated cookie horses, slowly made its way down the azure streets of the Republic, gently rocking against the many bleached shells unevenly mixed into the pavement. Despite the wall of buildings blocking out most of the sun’s rays, a few slivers of brilliant light managed to weave its way through the thin alleyways, accentuating the road’s pearlescent shine that glimmered with prosperity and new beginnings.

As her friends chatted amongst themselves, Strawberry Tea Cookie settled into the ride by watching the cookies going about their daily lives. She observed as they greeted each other in passing, darting in and out of the many luxuriously decorated storefronts the street had to offer. Some stayed to chat, their conversations lost to the whims of the wind that lightly blew on hanged laundry and ruffled the newspapers cookies were reading. Others were more in a hurry, barreling past those who walked with leisure towards an unknown destination, their ambitious worry uncaring as the neatness of their clothes waned.

Each cookie here seemed to radiate an aura of nobility, both in the way they dressed and acted. Their clothes were timelessly dandy and darling, much unlike the more loose-fitting garments the Old Vanilla Kingdom was known for. Waffle cloaks and cotton robes were replaced with more form-fitting suits, its colors paled to the simple warmth of the past. Despite its origin, they were a perfect blend between the clothing upper and lower class cookies wore back in the Hollyberry Kingdom—which could serve to benefit Strawberry Tea Cookie when developing her new collection.

But for now, she should focus on studying Republic attire. She already pinpointed a few boutiques to visit once she had settled down, and tonight’s celebration should give her a better understanding of how cookies here dressed.

The wagon stopped in front of a house that was sandwiched between two storefronts. It was a double layered, rectangular building coated in white buttercream stucco; thick, flat white piping bordered the leveled roof and where the two layered floors met. The upper layer had a set of rectangular, blue double doors that opened to a balcony full of bougainvillea jelly cube flowers. Its vines crept down to the lower layer, surrounding the front door and the triple paned window adjacent to it, both of which were also framed in blue. Underneath the window was a stubby planter the same width as the sill, holding an assortment of lush green shrubbery.

This seemed to have been a shop converted into a residence.

Strawberry Tea Cookie was the first to hop off the wagon followed by Hollyberry Cookie and Wildberry Cookie, Strawberry Butler Cookie stayed behind to unload everything with the—albeit unwelcomed—help of the coachcookie.

“The owner said that the key should be here somewhere…” The designer mumbled as she sorted through the multitude of rocks found at the base of the planter. But with a bit of digging, she managed to find a bronze key taped to the underside of a medium-sized rock chocolate. She immediately dashed to unlock the door, just in time for Strawberry Butler Cookie to carry in the first bundle of luggage.

Upon entering the foyer, which was connected to another room, the four cookies were greeted with walls frosted in buttercream white and floors made of geometrically arranged brown sugar cubes. There was a set of stairs going to the second floor, and a corridor that led to the living room.

The living room was illuminated by a wide, arched window that opened into a quaint courtyard shared by other buildings. There was a tall lamp in the corner where two long, beige sofas met; marshmallow pillows dyed in various shades of red decorated each couch, matching the carpet’s color underneath. At the center was a short, ovalish coffee table with a few magazines neatly arranged across. There was a bathroom adjacent to the corridor’s entrance, right under the stairs.

The kitchen, only separated by a single counter from the living room, had wooden counters lacquered with melted sugar spanning the entire perimeter of the area; white cabinets connected the counters to the floor. In the middle of the kitchen was an island counter surrounded by four cracker stools. Above it was a crate-esque structure where various kitchenware hung from. There was another window above the sink that looked out to the courtyard, along with a door in the corner to exit.

“This isn’t as fancy as the kitchen back home,” Strawberry Butler Cookie commented as he inspected the stove and fridge. “But it’ll do,” he quickly glanced at the pots and pans provided, grimacing at their battered forms. “Good thing I brought my own supplies…”

Another small corridor, which doubled as a sort of pantry, connected the kitchen back to the seemingly empty room next to the foyer. Said room, as Strawberry Tea Cookie stepped into it, was completely flooded with natural light due to the curved windows that almost touched the ceiling. Maroon curtains, tied at the ends in a pretty bow, partitioned off each window panel. At one corner was a sugar lacquered desk and chair, and in the center was a long wooden table with a basket on it.

The basket had an assortment of dried fruit and chocolates, along with a note from the owner of the residence that read: “I cleared this room so you could have some space to work on your designs. I hope this and the new decor make you feel more at home!”

Strawberry Tea Cookie smiled, her host was so much nicer compared to her previous landlord, who kept raising the rent every month until her and Mont Blanc Cookie decided staying in that dingy shoebox wasn’t worth the coins.

Stepping up to the second floor led to a guarded landing made of hardwood, which curved in an L shape along the stairs. It had three rooms; a storage closet was at the backmost of the house, followed by two bedrooms.

The bedroom next to the storage closet had a curtained window overlooking the courtyard. It was quaint; unremarkable with only a simple twin bed, desk, and dresser. Strawberry Butler Cookie took that room.

Next to that room was what many would consider the master bedroom, given how it was the largest and in possession of the balcony. The room was furnished with a queen sized bed decorated in red pillows and blankets, it also had a small vanity that doubled as a desk, along with a walk-in closet. Given how her butler claimed the previous room, Strawberry Tea Cookie was left with this room—not that she was complaining.

“We should start unpacking,” Wildberry Cookie mentioned, watching the location of the sun from the balcony. “The celebration will start in a few hours.”

“I agree,” Strawberry Butler Cookie turned to exit the bedroom. “At the very least we should get the big ticket items set up, like my lady’s sewing machine.”

“Then let’s get to it!” Hollyberry Cookie exulted, raising her fist. “With the four of us, we’ll get everything settled in no time!”

#cookie run kingdom #cookie run oc #strawberry tea cookie #cookie run #oc #oc x canon #diary of a hollyberry designer #fanfic #strawberry tea and clotted cream finally meet omg

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asordinaryppl · 28 days ago

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A3! Main Story: Part 4 - Act 16: Crossing Paths - Episode 14: The Silent Picture Book Author

momo has entered the chat momo: WE HAVE FOUR MEMBERS!! Kar: grats Iv: finally shiki: congrats momo: u guys should come watch once we have a date for the performance! Kar: lol Iv: i’ll think bout it shiki: i’ll come if i’m free

Homare’s mother: You don’t often visit on such short notice.

Homare’s mother: Also, your uncle sent some of your favorite wine. Would you like to have some with dinner?

Homare: Yes.

Homare’s mother: Your grandmother will also be back later tonight.

Homare: By the by, there is something I am curious about. This picture book…

Homare’s mother: Oh my…

Homare: I saw it at a café, and decided to buy one of the same at a bookstore.

Homare: The book gently discusses the topic of animals being confronted with life and death. The author is “Faraway Alice”...

Homare: The name may differ, but is this not Father’s work?

Homare’s mother: Good eye.

Homare: Why did Father use a pen name for this book alone, despite usually using his real name?

Homare’s mother: Because he drew this right during the year you were born. It’s his first and last book as “Faraway Alice”.

Homare’s mother: Your father may have published many picture books, but the name Arisugawa often attracted attention.

Homare’s mother: He wrote this one because he wanted to challenge his own abilities without being carried by his family name.

Homare’s mother: He was so thorough that even the editor had to go through me. No one other than me knows that this book was written by your father.

Homare’s mother: In the end, even though the picture book was well-received and everyone awaited his next release, he chose to go back to publishing under the name Arisugawa.

Homare’s mother: Fufu, that takes me back.

Homare: Father is so stoic and quiet, he did not strike me as the type to take on such challenges…

Homare’s mother: I know, right? I believe that your birth was a catalyst for his change of heart.

Homare’s mother: But I didn’t think you’d find out after all this time.

Homare: When I first saw it, the art style seemed familiar, but it was the writing that truly convinced me this is Father’s work.

Homare: I’d been reading my father’s works since I was a child, so of course I knew.

Homare’s mother: Right, I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that.

Homare: Truth be told, I am supposed to do a dramatic reading of a picture book for children. Would it be alright if I used this book?

Homare’s mother: But of course.

Homare’s mother: However, this work has short sentences and many stops for introspection, so it’s more suited for adults than children.

Homare’s mother: If this dramatic reading is aimed towards children, I believe you should make it somewhat easier to understand.

Homare: Somewhat easier to understand, you say…

Homare’s mother: You should create a reading drama based on this picture book.

Homare: But I have never written such a thing before…

Homare’s mother: You’re good at creating sentences and you understand your father’s works well, don’t you? I’m certain you’ll be fine.

Homare’s mother: Moreover, your father often wondered what kind of writing you would come up with to accompany his drawings.

Homare’s mother: I think you two collaborating in this way would make him happy.

Homare: …

Homare: (So this was Father’s challenge…)

previous episode | masterpost | next episode

#a3!#translation #a3! translation #homare arisugawa

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sillycoffeewizard · 1 year ago

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Hi everyone, and this is my post with theories and headcanons about John Titor because I love her so much and she is my daughter!! <3

❗The theories and headcanons were created with the help of my wife, who I told everything I know about this character so far (my knowledge may be incomplete). These are just our thoughts and guesses. We may be wrong on some points, sorry!!! But we have been doing a little research with John Titor's story and her voice lines in the game, and today I want to share it

John Titor's diary

In her diary entries, John Titor notes the weather on a particular day. e.g.: June 16, rain; January 29, snow, and so on. perhaps this helps her remember events better

She describes war and chaos in the world. There could be several possibilities here:

She has experienced violence in the past (abuse, abusive behavior, etc.), which traumatized her, and the war is a veiled description of her experience. This is how she conveys her feelings and perception of the world around her;

There was a war at the time (the diary does not give the year), she was a victim of warfare and violence (she was taken prisoner, sent to a concentration camp and had horrible things done to her). She kept a diary at the time or wrote about past events;

You probably know the story of John Titor, who called himself a time traveler. On a forum dedicated to creepypasta he wrote "predictions of the future", detailing events that he said might happen. Maybe John Titor (the character) was fascinated by this story and just made it all up, based on what the real John Titor predicted, because her personality was built on this mysterious person. Or...John Titor (the character) calls herself a time traveler for a reason. Maybe she really is one, and in diary she describes an event from her time (war, cancellation of the Olympics, chaos in the world) while predicting the future. These are the two reasons she has that name in the game

Fan fact: her badge looks a lot like the symbol of the existing "John Titor Foundation" that published a book about the "time traveler" that included his forum entries

1. Reverse: 1999 wiki, 2. Wikipedia

John Titor's voice lines

I was using other people's translation of her hexadecimal code phrases into words. I'm also making assumptions based on the theories i've previously described

Under "to the future" she says "crazy like me.". According to previous assumptions about her diary entries, it can be said that she is traumatized by her experiences of violence or war. she may have depression and PTSD, and this phrase is her idea of the future, which is typical of people with mental disorders;

Under "hobby" she says "Corvette 1966 black". According to Google, that's the make of the car. Why is she talking about it? Let's look at "bond: night", her phrase is "wanna go on a drive". I think these phrases are related. Maybe she doesn't sleep at night (she has bruises under her eyes) and it's at night that she can spend time doing her hobby: she's literally driving a car. Or it's in her imagination and she's just reflecting in this time;

In the "hat and hair" column she says "hey don't touch me". She may have experienced violence, it could have been bullying by someone or it could have happened during the war she wrote about in the diary. In any case, she is not tactile at all as a result of the traumatic events, she hates to be touched and doesn't let anyone touch her. You can also see that her hair is cut unevenly, which could also be due to the traumatic events;

Under "clothing and torso" she says "a soldier's physique". This description could mean that she witnessed or participated in warfare and/or, again, experienced violence. Either way, she notes her resilience. She was able to endure and survive horrific events as if she were a soldier. Or is this another reference to "time traveler" John Titor, who called himself a soldier

Why does John Titor only interact with everyone using hex code?

Given the theory that she is indeed a time traveler, we can make the assumption that code is the "language of the future," a way of interacting between people whose lives are entirely built on and dependent on technology;

Perhaps because of the traumatic events I wrote about earlier, John Titor no longer wants to associate herself with people in any way, to be like them, to speak human language. She decided to completely restructure her personality and become something like a mechanical machine

That's it for now! I hope this post is enjoyed by the likes of theory and headcanon fans in this fandom, I really tried hard to make it as good as possible. Again, I don't consider everything described above to be canon, it's just speculation and conjecture. I wanted to share my thoughts, and I'm proud of it because I love John Titor!! Also my knowledge may be incomplete and my views may differ. I welcome constructive criticism and reasoning <3

#fandom #characters #theory #theory about character #headcanon #research #reverse 1999 #r1999 #john titor #reverse 1999 john titor #r1999 john titor

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sysakiddo · 1 year ago

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5 times Lewis confronted Sebastian about his writing and one time he did not have to

“You're not even listening to me.” Lewis, for lack of a better word, whines. He has a deep crease between his eyebrows. Sebastian wants to tell him the wrinkle will stay there, just to see him panic. Though he manages to hide it, Lewis is really vain sometimes.

“I'm kind of busy at the moment.” No apology. “You were saying?”

The room is too hot and sticky for Sebastian to play mind games with Lewis. He wants to be alone and count down the minutes to when he can take a cold bath.

Suddenly, Lewis moves quickly, soundlessly. He likes to remind Sebastian he is a cheetah, with or without a car.

Sebastian does not manage to hide the tab he had opened. As a rule, these days, he is not fast enough.

“Seriously, Seb? The Times crossword is more important than what I'm telling you?”

“I would never dream of saying you're not the most important thing in the world.” the blond huffs, feeling mean now.

He is very obviously fishing for a reaction and Lewis knows it. From previous experiences, he also knows the fight would not bring him any gratification. He smiles tightly instead, sitting down on the couch.

Sebastian glares at him, hating how Lewis looks like he belongs there. Like there is no place where he belongs more than on the couch in Seb's driver's room.

“I finally read your book. The one about the spies, Burning Snow?” he clarifies as if Sebastian doesn't know the plot and names of his own books.

And look, Sebastian is still mad at whoever leaked his identity to the press. It is more than a month since the whole world discovered that he, Sebastian Vettel, four times world champion, is also an acclaimed author. He published all of his books under a pseudonym, which worked pretty well. Until now.

The people in the paddock took it in stride. Out of them, who looked like they could write a book that became a bestseller long before his identity had been revealed? The bee rescuer is the only one fit for the job.

Valterri was the first to go through the bulk of his publications, three novels and one book for kids.

Your writing is pretty good. Maybe you should try and publish it someday :)

The text from Valterri after he finished made him huff, but deep down, something in his chest had eased.

Lewis, however, was weirdly evasive on the topic. He was apprehensive about reading any of Seb's work and only got to it when Valterri left all of the books on his desk, with a post-it note on the top.

READ IT!!!

Immediately after finishing the first chapter of the first novel, he regretted not starting earlier. Uncovering the similarities between the side characters and the people in the paddock was a lot of fun. It felt like an intimate look into the story that Seb's readers wouldn't normally get. One of the characters, the one who actually holds the key to the climax of the story and is far more important than the reader would have thought at first, is based on him, he thinks. Lewis only puts it together at the end. It's the way the character's dialogues are written that gives it away. He thinks it fascinating to find out how Sebastian privately perceives him. He describes him with great detail, things that Lewis wouldn't think to notice about him even. The thought of being so closely watched makes the top of his ears heat up.

Now, Sebastian is watching him, unimpressed. “You can read?”

Lewis keeps ignoring him - it works most of the time. “My favourite was Thomas, naturally.”

The top of Seb's cheeks turns bright red. “N-narcissist.” He tries to keep his composure, shaking his head a little. The stutter exposes him and Lewis smirks like he has just won. And his trophy is sitting on a stool in front of him.

“Well, I gotta run now. I'll come back with a review of book number two!”

Seb is too overwhelmed to react before Lewis slips out of the door. He sighs, returning to his crossword.

The next time Seb sees Lewis, he curses the way his heart flutters in his chest when he sees his smile.

“I tried the recipe, you know,” Lewis lets his hand linger on Seb's forearm as he stops him in his stride. They are both rushing to get to the debrief on time. Lewis does not care.

At Seb's quizzical face, he puckers his lips a little in annoyance. “The one from Freedom to Pheasants; what Matilda used to offer her cousins when they came over. I, of course, used soya yoghurt and I still had a little bit of the honey you gave me-” Seb opens his mouth to interrupt him but does not succeed. “I used almond butter and cherries instead of raspberries and let it freeze for a few hours. Why didn't you tell me sooner? It is delicious.”

“We really have to go, guys.” the intern standing beside them looks like he regretted taking this job and would rather jump off the cliff than listen about frozen yoghurt treats for another minute.

“Did you like it? The book, I mean.” Seb asked, feeling like a kid asking for compliments on his drawing. He regrets it almost immediately. Lewis flashes him a big smile, open and sincere, the sight only a few people are graced with.

“Yeah, man. The dialogues were spectacular.”

When Seb opens the freezer in his motorhome a few hours later, he is taken aback by a small white box with a sharpie-drawn smiley on top. When he opens it, five perfectly symmetrical yoghurt bites punch the air out of his lungs, like he missed a stair. With shaky hands, he fishes out one and takes a bite. The aftertaste of honey in his mouth makes his eyes water.

“Seb! Seb! Sebastian!” the whispering grows louder with each call of his name and Sebastian feels himself getting pulled out of the slumber. He groans loud enough for the woman sitting next to him, someone from McLaren's marketing team, to glare at him.

“What?” he snaps at Lewis, the other man taken aback. He doesn't expect to see the dark circles under Seb's eyes, his ashen skin looking almost white.

He gulps, worry bubbling in his chest. “Care to join me for dinner?”

The German sighs, hunching in his chair even more. He jerks his shoulders, which Lewis takes as an affirmative response.

A few hours later, every corner of Lewis' apartment is filled with quiet music. Seb is watching his every move from the bar stool in his kitchen. Lewis feels weirdly exposed like that, chopping onions for their dinner, even though it isn't the first time he has made dinner for Sebastian. Not by a long shot.

“Daniel must have been thrilled,” he cuts the silence abruptly. Seb doesn't understand and makes a go-ahead gesture with his hand. “When he found out you based the main character on him, I mean.”

“Oh,” Sebastian smiles bashfully. “You've read This room can not be eaten?”

Lewis nods. The book for kids took him the shortest to read, naturally. To his bewilderment, he enjoyed it a lot. After he had finished, he immediately bought a copy for every kid in his family.

“I don't think Daniel had realised Rick is based on him, actually.” Seb chuckles, his eyes lighting up in joy.

Sebastian starfishes on the couch after they finish eating. Lewis pours them a second glass of wine and sits down next to him. Carefully, carefully.

The German looks better after eating, though he still very clearly lacks energy. Lewis turns on the television, mainly as the white noise.

He falls asleep in no time, and Lewis stands up to put the fluffiest blanket on him. He makes sure both his shoulders are covered, hesitating a bit before brushing the stray strands of hair out of his forehead.

When he sits down, Sebastian whines softly and puts his cold feet under Lewis' thighs.

Lewis lets himself hope.

The next time they see each other, Lewis is a few drinks in, talking a little louder than he usually would. Seb finds him laughing in a circle of a few of their friends. He is like a magnet, though he never fully realised how much power he holds in a crowd of people.

“Birthday boy!” Seb beams at Charles, hugging him firmly. He already congratulated him this morning with a gift and a proper speech. Now, it's time to clink his glass with him, which, he personally thinks, is too old to do properly.

Either way, he lets himself get lost in the conversation. Charles, Lewis and Daniel make it easy for the debate to flow without his input.

“Oh, Seb, I almost forgot! Arthur told me to tell you he loved When I Was Older! He wanted to know if it would be okay to ask you some questions later.”

The attention shifts to Seb after Charles' words. Stupidly, he can feel his cheeks flush. “Eh, thank you. I appreciate that. Sure, send him my way when you see him.”

“He kept talking about the plot twist for days. I still haven't finished the first one - I'm sorry, I'm such a slow reader - but yeah, Arthur thinks the sequel is even better.”

Lewis snorts. Charles whips his head towards him, surprised. The same goes for Sebastian. Sure, the reviews for the second book in the spies series were mixed. But he thought the bad reviews were biased - the book came out at the same time his alias got revealed.

“You did not like it?” Charles asks naively. He hasn't been sober for hours now.

The Brit looks affronted by the idea of liking the book. “I hated it.” he spits and, yeah. Sebastian is shocked at just how much those words hurt. He has no resources to hide it, so instead, he bares his teeth in a leering smile.

To his great surprise, Daniel joins in. “Well, of course, what Thomas did was questionable, but that made the plot twist even better.”

Lewis is not buying what Daniel is selling. “Nah, it was stupid and made no sense, man. Why would Thomas betray his lover if-” If he is based on me. He almost blurted it out, thankfully cutting himself off before he could do something he would regret.

Still, Sebastian averts his gaze, bashful. The tension in the air is tangible and Charles, not wired to understand bad vibes, as he calls it, asks him another question.

“Are you working on something now?”

Seb looks at Lewis when he lies through his teeth. “No. I think I'm quite done.”

That's the reason why, three weeks after the party, when Lewis sees a post on his insta feed with Seb's picture and BOOK ALERT in big red letters, he clicks on it. He is doubtful at first, but then it turns out that, yes, Sebastian really published a new book during the winter break. It is a poetry experiment, explains Seb himself in the interview Lewis reads through.

Unexplainably, his hands shake as he tries to google a page where he can buy the poetry collection. When he finally finds it, he curses. Seb wrote a poetry book in fucking German.

He has no shame and immediately calls him to ask about the translation.

“No, I do not think it will get translated.” Seb is wary. “Why?”

“I would like to read it, that's all.”

Seb snorts, can't help himself. Why would you want to read it if you hate my writing so much.

“Well,” he says instead. “I've told you a long time ago German could be useful.”

Lewis pays big bucks to the publishing house to make the translation happen in the shortest time possible. He makes sure Sebastian has no idea he is the one who pushes for the English translation and pays off everyone, so it stays that way.

Out of all places, they are in the aeroplane when it all falls apart.

Sebastian is returning from the bathroom when he notices what Lewis is holding.

“Jesus, don't read that around me.”

“Why?” Lewis asks. “You don't have to be weird about it. It's great.” Lewis wouldn't say he is a poetry guy by any means. But there is something about Sebastian's words that curl off pages, sticking like caramel and breezing through his chest like a breath of fresh air. Sebastian's poetry is shockingly emotional, exposing his feelings with a sort of bravery Lewis has never felt. Most of them are reflections, sweet or poignant. Lewis can clearly see the inspiration from the Swiss nature, and the relationship with his family. It's beautiful.

Yet the ones that cut through his heart like a burning knife are the heartbreaking stanzas of unrequited love. And even though Seb states that not all poems are inspired by a personal experience in the prologue, Lewis knows poems like these cannot be fabricated. The one he's stuck on at the moment, Absolution, makes Lewis a bit dizzy.

In the seat across from him, Sebastian shrugs. “If you say so.”

“I mean, these love poems, man. They must have broken your heart. How come you've never told me?”

The pronouns sit awkwardly on his tongue, and he watches Seb squirm a bit.

“It did not feel like there was something to talk about. It would - I don't think it could ever work between-” he pauses, hauling a slow breath through his nose. He rubs his eyes with his right hand like always when he is agitated. He also forgets to use the eyedrops for his dry eyes; Lewis usually has to remind him. “Between him and me, I guess. I could never be the one for him.” He trips over his words.

Lewis blinks, feeling all turned out. He tries to process the words that feel too much like a confession to him.

“I doubt that, Seb.” He says earnestly. “I doubt anyone would find you anything but-” Perfect.

Sebastian interrupts him, a painful grimace on his face. “Just - just stop.” Suddenly, he looks exhausted and resigned all at once. “You must know, Lewis.”

Seb is not looking at him and misses the look of utter shock on his face. “Me?” Lewis feels like there is cotton in the back of his mouth. “But- But I-”

“You what?” snaps Sebastian, his face closed off now. He managed to build his walls high enough that it took more than a little love confession to make them crumble.

Lewis' head spins. There is just no way, no way that Sebastian could wax poetic about him. It's hard to breathe, and his face turns splotchy red.

“But you've never told me. Or reacted when I tried -”

“Oh, trust me, Lewis, I would have noticed if you had tried.”

“Sebastian.” he says, his voice breaking with the possibilities flashing through his mind. Sebastian is brave and he can be, too. “I have loved you for years.”

Now it's Seb's turn to look shocked. “But- You always-” he stutters, unable to finish.

“Come here,” Lewis beacons him over and Seb sits down next to him without hesitation. Lewis leans in and caresses Seb's cheek with his right hand. “You are very silly,” he presses their lips together and the feeling of Seb relaxing completely under him makes Lewis' fingers tingly.

“Hurry up!” Sebastian is wearing an atrocious old flannel shirt. Lewis swears he has put it in the 'donate' cabinet twice already, yet it always finds its way back.

He walks to the table where Seb sits, a big red box in front of him. “Open it,” he instructs and Lewis opens the lid.

“I wanted you to be the first to hold it.”

Lewis takes out the brand-new book in awe. When he opens it, the pages smell so good he closes his eyes for a second. He flips the pages until he finds what he is looking for. The dedication says:

Love, I've seen it all. I've seen the sunrises in Africa, the sunsets in Asia. The sun shining on the Mediterranean, the snow melting in the Alps. I've seen fireworks meant just for me, the beauty of the never-ending road. Seeing you smile beats them all.

For Lewis.

#sebastian vettel #lewis hamilton #sewis #f1 fic #f1 rpf #the monaco photo made me crazy #i am manifesting seb as a writer #my ficlets #monaco gp 2023

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hebuiltfive · 1 year ago

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Tabloid Trash!

The Forgotten Fifth: Who is John Glenn Tracy?

In another attempt to use the Tracy name as clickbait, a celebrity editor at the Daily Celebs! tabloid magazine speaks to an old friend of John's about who the often forgotten fifth brother truly is. John isn't impressed, but he's more concerned about how the tabloid found out about another, smaller detail.

AO3 link here (I coded this so it should look like a news article. Hopefully it works and isn't glitchy!)

Previous TT works: Aliens!

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by Madeleine Buchanan, Celebrity Editor

Like the Kardashians of old, the Tracys are the world’s most intriguing family. Whether we’re wondering what they’re wearing to their latest red carpet appearance, or whether we’re glued to our screens as we watch them head off on their next daring rescue with their philanthropic organisation, International Rescue, the Tracy family are firmly in our minds almost twenty-four seven.

The family (and their extended close circle) are never not working. This year alone has seen Virgil Tracy attend almost fifteen art gallery openings, Gordon Tracy visiting almost seven marine conservation centres, Scott Tracy organising no less than ten charity functions on behalf of the family’s two organisations and Alan Tracy beginning his college degree adventure. Add in all the work the family does under International Rescue and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room left in the schedules for down-time.

Yet they somehow manage it.

Oft-forgotten brother, John Tracy, made the news this week with the publication of his new book, Times Trails Tells. It is his fifth book in as many years (find our review of the scientific breakthrough here).

Die-hard Tracy fans might recognise the name, but normies are probably wondering who John Tracy is and why his name isn’t as known as the rest of his brothers.

In fact, Daily Celebs! recently conducted a poll on the general public’s knowledge of the Tracy family as a whole. From hobbies to skills, names to numbers, our reporters asked one hundred people on Hollywood Boulevard what they knew about the elusively in-demand family. You can see a more detailed report on that here, but staggeringly, it showed that almost sixty per cent of those interviewed got one of the more simpler of questions completely wrong.

How many sons did Jeff Tracy have?

The answer, of course, is five (bonus points for those readers who can name them in order), but sixty people interviews claimed it was four.

So, why is this the case? Who is the elusive fifth brother that everyone seems to forget?

If we start at the beginning, we can paint a better picture of who this man is. Born John Glenn Tracy, he is the third son of Jefferson Tracy and his late with Lucille. Like his brothers both before and after him, John was born in Kansas and spent most, if not all, of his childhood in the state. He excelled at school and, for a while at least, was surprisingly popular with his peers. Rumours of troubles with bullies begin in the years after his eldest brother left to attend a separate High School in the area, though these reports could not be confirmed at the time of writing.

John graduated from Harvard University and has since gone on to receive multiple degrees in various subjects including, but not limited to, Advanced Telecommunications and Astronomy. Most of his published works are continuations of his previous research studies.

When it comes to International Rescue, John is one of the team’s most valuable members. Known to the world as The Guy In The Sky, John is the Tracy who filters, listens and responds to all the incoming emergency calls. If you’ve asked International Rescue for help, you were most likely talking to John Tracy.

Yet he’s the brother who is most often forgotten about. Is is because he spends so much time up in space? A former peer from John’s college days suggests that it might be.

“John was always such a party-pooper at college. He was never interested in doing anything fun. He always had his nose stuck in a book. No matter how hard we tried, the guy was never interested in any of the parties or any of the girls. Total waste of space, if you ask me. What is college if not an excuse to get absolutely wrecked? Basically, what I’m trying to say is, it’s no surprise to me that John’s the guy who’s based in space. Honestly? Best place for the loser.”

Clarence Hickory, a computer programmer for the Hickory Foundation, agreed to speak with Daily Celebs! about his former friendship with John Tracy. (At the time of writing, Tracy Industries have yet to respond to a request for a comment.)

“We met on orientation day. It was a chilly fall day. I remember it well. John stuck out like a sore thumb. You could tell he hated it. Everyone crowded round him when they saw his dad and his brother at his side. Everyone wanted a piece of him.”

Was Clarence one of these people?

“God, no! I knew to let the guy have some space. If I’m being honest, my father saw John’s as a kind of rival at the time. Both the Hickory Foundation and Tracy Industries were thinking of branching out into the same sector. Neither did in the end. My father ended up becoming good friends with Jeff Tracy.”

And you became friends with John?

“Wouldn’t exactly call us friends. We were more… colleagues. We shared a dorm along with a couple of other guys, but we didn’t get along. John didn’t fit the vibe of ‘typical college student’. He wasn’t popular with many students.”

He didn’t have friends?

“He did, just not many and our friendship circles certainly didn’t cross.”

But you studied in the same classes?

“Yeah. For Advanced Telecommunications. Bullshit lectures, let me tell you that, but it did give me a job, so I can’t complain.”

Your father gave you a position in his company, you mean?

“I like to think of my appointment as a reward for all my hard-work, rather than it being complete nepotism, Maddy.”

So, back to John. Have you seen much of him since leaving Harvard?

“I see him occasionally at conventions and conferences. He’s never interested in the talking or the mingling. I think I’ve spoken more with his brothers than John himself. I don’t think he’s changed all that much since college. In these situations, though, I can hardly blame him. I remember how terrified he looked on that orientation day, when the crowds swarmed him just because of his family name. I can’t imagine those events are much different. No wonder he doesn’t do them often.”

Our readers are going to want to know your opinion on why you think John Tracy isn’t often seen around, why he could be considered the forgotten fifth Tracy brother, but I think you’ve practically answered that.

“John is a recluse. I don’t know if he does it on purpose or whether it truly is just him, you know? But he’s definitely not an outgoing person. Never has been. Probably never will be.”

Were you surprised by the revelation of his involvement with International Rescue?

“One thing to know about the Tracys is they are probably some of the most sickeningly do-gooders the world has ever seen. Do you know how much is costs to be in their shadow as a business? A lot, okay? Did it surprise me? A little, maybe. We all had our suspicions around who IR were. Everyone did. All of us thought it was the Tracys. It doesn’t surprise me that John was involved in that, no. Not even as the comms guy.”

You described him as a recluse.

“John is a recluse, yes. He’s also a bloody enigma. There’s a reason no-one knows a lot about him, Maddy. He likes it that way. Hell, I bet half the people in his life don’t have the full story, with the exception of his brothers probably. Maybe. Who knows!”

But why would a recluse, as you put it, be the one who answers the calls?

“I think the better question isn’t why put the recluse on the calls, but rather about the work that they do. International Rescue are, annoyingly, a phenomenal organisation who do incredibly heroic and important work. Listen, I can sit here and talk to you about John all day. I’ve probably got plenty of anecdotes that could earn me a fortune, but I’m not going to share them. John and I… we didn’t get on but he’s a good man. If he doesn’t want the world to know more about him, I say respect that, Maddy, and leave him be.”

John attended three bookstores and his old university on a short tour for the launching of his new book. So far this year, that has been the entirety of his public engagements. Suspicious or, as Clarence suggested, private?

The Enigmatic Tracy will be in attendance at this year’s annual Tracy Christmas Ball, hosted by Tracy Industries LTD. Find out more here and check out previous year’s red carpet appearances here.

————————————————

John reclined back in his seat and switched the projector off. The glasses he’d been using to deflect some of the harshness of the screen were yanked off his face, and fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose as he repressed a sigh.

Time and time and time again did glossy magazine reporters (if they could even be called such a title) tried to ‘unpick’ him. Like this, most of the time it was nonsense news, though John was surprised they’d managed to track down someone who would actually speak to them about him. Normally it was all words and suspicions with no credible source to back it up. In fact, John would have been impressed if he wasn’t so exhausted by it all.

An enigma. The Enigmatic Tracy. Was that to be his new title? He’d lost count of all the others he’d been given over the years, not to mention the ones his brothers had been assigned.

He hadn’t meant to read the article. Most of the time, John actually prided himself on being able to skim past tabloid news stories about him or his family. Nothing good ever came from taking a read. In his opinion, one article like this was usually the equivalent to searching one’s name and then doom-scrolling through the feeds for hours on end, but he was in need of a break from all those numbers, and the words seemed unusually inviting to him.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been down here since breakfast, Johnny.”

Scott’s voice echoed from the glass doorway behind him. His usually immaculately styled hair was floppy and damp, suggesting he’d just come from a quick dip in the pool. John’s eyes skimmed the patio to find Gordon and Virgil still in the water, evidence enough to conclude his assumption had been correct.

He took out his ear-pods, still blasting his choice of music for concentration, and laid them on the table beside his empty mug. The sorry sight of the ceramic had him craving more coffee.

Whether it was brotherly intuition or the gleam in John’s eye, Scott took a few strides forward to confiscate the mug before the idea of a refill properly went through his mind.

“Absolutely not! You’re going to crash hard if you have any more of this.” His eldest brother chastised, breathing in once and then grimacing. “Jesus, John, how many cups have you had? You smell worse than Virgil’s studio after a long night of ‘creative pursuits’.”

Very much not impressed by the comparison — excuse him, he was not as bad as Virgil, thank you very much — John swatted Scott’s arm before trying, and failing, to reach for the mug.

“Scott…”

“No more coffee. It’s—”

“Unimportant.” John finished for him, disallowing his brother to finish that train of thought.

“I wouldn’t call twenty mugs of coffee—”

“It wasn’t twenty—”

“— unimportant, Johnny.”

“The tabloids know I’ll be at the Annual Tracy Christmas Ball this year.”

John’s bombshell had Scott take a pause.

“They… shouldn’t know. The guest list hasn’t been released yet. It’s only… what? October?” His blue eyes cast an unweary glance toward the holo-projector and then toward John. “How do you know the tabloids know?”

There was another brief pause before both brothers were scrambling for the holo-projector. The sight would have been amusing if Virgil or Gordon were paying attention to the riot that was happening indoors. Thankfully for the two battling it out for temporary custodianship of the projector, neither seemed to notice.

Scott won with ease and flicked the screen back on to reveal the article John had foolishly not completely disregarded before switching the projector off.

“John…”

“It wasn’t a bad one, Scott, I swear.”

“What have we said about reading these things? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be running the numbers for whatever it was Brains wanted you to check for him? Not exactly a productive use of your time, Johnny.”

“One, stop with the Johnny, Scooter. Two, I needed a break. Yes, even geniuses like us need breaks. And three… Are we going to pretend EOS didn’t catch you reading up on some article concerning your alleged morning Get Ready routine?”

Scott lifted a finger. “Hey, that was important! They got the hair preparation steps all wrong! I don’t want the world to think I use some crappy conditioner!”

John tried to stifle his laugh. “Yes, because correcting them was the most productive use of your time.”

His eldest brother ignored him. He sighed, scanning the article quickly and then shook his head. “I’ll check with Saf tomorrow morning, see if they know who leaked something. Of course, the journo could just be… postulating.”

He couldn’t help the raised brow. “Postulating?”

Scott nodded. “Mm-hm. Postulating.”

“That’s a big word for you, Scooter.”

The comment earned John a gentle whack of his arm, but it was worth it.

“If I can’t call you Johnny, you can’t call me Scooter.”

“I thought you liked Scooter.”

Again, Scott ignored him. “Are you going to come out and join us for a while?” He asked as he returned the projector to the table. When John reached for the mug, he held it out of reach. “No. More. Coffee.”

“If I come out and risk burning to a crisp in this stifling hot sun, will you let me have another cup?”

“It’s late October, John. It’s not stifling hot anymore.”

“Will you?”

“Absolutely not.” Scott began to trail off outside, with the cup still in his grasp, calling back to his brother as he left. “There is this thing called sunscreen, Johnny. If you’re so worried, use it.”

#fic: tabloid trash #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #five fics #john tracy #scott tracy

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from-a-legends-pov · 7 months ago

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Star Wars Legends Highlight of the Week: Honor Among Thieves by James S. A. Corey

This is a new feature where a fan will share one thing they love from Star Wars Legends – a book, a comic, an author, a character, an event, or anything else they want to highlight – and tell us more about it.

If you, too, love Legends, follow @from-a-legends-pov and check out our upcoming Star Wars Legends fanfiction event, From a Legends Point of View, HERE. Signups open April 28 - please encourage your favorite Star Wars writers to participate!

Today’s highlight is Honor Among Thieves by James S. A. Corey (actually the pen name of writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, whom you may recognize as the writers of The Expanse), a 2014 Legends novel, and we’re talking with Dessi (@otterandterrier).

Tell us about your Legends highlight. What is it? What’s it about?

Honor Among Thieves is the second novel in the Empire and Rebellion duology (the first one being Razor’s Edge, a previous Legends highlight), and one of the last books published in the Legends universe by Del Rey. This book is Han’s story, and is told entirely from his POV.

The story is set about a year after Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and our heroes start off scattering through the galaxy in their respective missions. Han and Chewie are sent to the Core to retrieve Scarlet Hark, a high-level spy who is after a thief in possession of secret, deadly information stolen from under the Empire’s (and her) nose – and that the Empire is willing to do anything to get back. Han doesn’t want to get involved, as this is way above his paycheck. But then he realizes that Leia is at a gathering on Kiamurr, the very same planet their thief is headed to, which means the Empire will be hot on his heels. That makes up his mind about helping Scarlet get there first!

The plot is quite the wild goose chase, and you have to suspend your sense of disbelief many times and forget specialized bits of lore in order to buy it. Even so, it’s really fun and gripping, and I appreciate the way that the main conflict is used to give us excellent insight into our favourite smuggler’s mind.

What makes this a Legends highlight for you? What do you love about it?

This is one of my favourite Legends books, because I love Han Solo. I love the intensely caring, occasionally dorky, bad at flirting, barely concealing a soft interior Han Solo that somehow we were fortunate enough to get in the Original Trilogy and, somehow, so many people missed. And that’s the Han Solo we get here! I love getting to see the narrative peeling off his self-admitted layers, contemplating his involvement with the rebellion, his new relationships, and the man he could have been had circumstances not put him on the path of an old Jedi and an idealistic farmboy, by setting up a contrast with an old acquaintance that shows up. We also get to see how competent and clever he really is, something that is often neglected.

Favorite moment or scene?

There’s this scene where the group is walking through a jungle, and a character is about to shoot at a large mud creature that scared her—but Han stops her. He explains that the creature is harmless, then he pats its snout and tells it to look out for humans. Leia calls him an animal lover, to which Han replies: “If everyone got to kill anything that looked big and scary, Chewie would never be able to leave the ship.” I love this little moment because it shows that soft, caring, yet practical side of Han that not many people get to see, and it’s also a nice moment of connection between Han and Leia. Han’s concern over creatures that are “just trying to make it through another day” also gets called back towards the end, rounding off Han’s overall spot-on characterization—although that’s all I can say without spoiling the book.

Anything else you’d like to share about it?

A few other reasons I love this book:

It develops Han and Leia’s early relationship: as a shipper, the UST and the moments of deeper understanding between them here make me squeal. We see Leia through Han’s eyes and beyond his façade, and how he goes from “I can’t stand her” to “I will kill anyone who tries to hurt her.”

Scarlet Hark FTW: This OC is a bit of a perfect male fantasy, but I like her a lot. Intelligent, badass, take-no-shit female character? Yes please! I particularly love that she and Leia get along so well and it’s never a competition between them. She’s a really interesting character to explore, and I’d love to see the OT gang teaming up with her again.

Han and Luke’s relationship isn’t forgotten: I really appreciate that the authors gave this friendship the importance it deserves, with Han thinking several times that he’s sticking with the Rebellion mainly to look after Luke (which is a better motivation than him staying because he wants to sleep with Leia).

To learn more…

If you’d like to read more about Honor Among Thieves, you can check out its page on Wookieepedia or find the novel at your favorite library or used bookstore (like Razor’s Edge, it seems to be out of print for new copies, sadly).

And be sure to check out @from-a-legends-pov and our From a Legends Point of View fanfiction event; as another reminder, signups open April 28, 2024!

#star wars legends #star wars extended universe #star wars eu #sw legends #from a legends pov #legends highlight of the week #honor among thieves #james sa corey #han solo #leia organa #scarlet hark #han x leia #luke skywalker #otterandterrier #long post

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isfjmel-phleg · 6 months ago

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May 2024 Books

The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker (reread)

I always enjoy this one. It has a lot of Oz-like charm.

The Master Key by L. Frank Baum (reread)

I was going to try to say some clever things about the ending of this book, but I'm tired, so the short version is that the protagonist is given a series of eletrically powered gifts from the Demon of Electricity (more like a genie, don't let the name fool you), only to get into various misadventures of the type common to turn-of-the-century boys' stories (with a lot of era-typical attitudes toward non-American or -European peoples and cultures that did not age well) and finally give back the gifts and insist that mankind isn't ready for such power and "it's no fun being a century ahead." I wasn't the biggest fan of the protagonist (rather a jerk), and the story was less interesting to me than the historical context and what it demonstrated of perspectives toward technology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Baum has some interesting concepts in this one, but there's a reason that it hasn't really stood the test of time.

Heart of the Curiosity by H. L. Burke (reread)

I did not care for this one. I do not recommend it.

Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones (reread)

I love this book so much, and I needed to revisit it. I love the characters. I love the twists and turns even though I know they're already coming. *SPOILERS* This time I was struck particularly by Torquil and Hathaway's reconciliation--Torquil has been avoiding his brother after a disagreement, expecting animosity, but then when they finally reunite, Hathaway is just so happy to see his brother and invites him to visit anytime and it's like the grievances never happened, and in a family as dysfunctional as theirs, this is a huge step in the right direction and a very beautiful moment.

Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones

Collection of short stories and a novella. Inventive in the Jones style, but I didn't get attached enough to any of the stories to have any likelihood of picking this one up again.

Pauline by Margaret Storey (reread)

I've been revisiting some books in light of the CEN discussion in the recent paper. This one doesn't really deal with CEN, but it does portray psychological/emotional abuse quite vividly (the antagonist at times reminded me painfully of the professor who tortured me in the Nightmare Class) and point out how damaging it is. There's a memorable scene in which a trusted adult whom Pauline turns to for help mentions to someone that Pauline has been mistreated by a family. "Is he beating her?" the other person asks. The reply: "Not physically." The acknowledgement that psychological/emotional abuse is just as hurtful and damaging in its own way as the physical kind is quite a statement for a book published in the 1960s.

Last month I reread a book also published in that decade that openly acknowledged the problems with CEN and how it's a cycle that runs in families, and I'm starting to think that that era was a point when some people were starting to more clearly see the negative effects that the likely prevalence of CEN in previous generations especially in particular classes (e.g. upper-class Victorian/Edwardian upbringings) had had. I don't know what to do with this theory, but I will continue to mull it over.

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr (reread)

This book isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I do love it a lot and I'll probably be yelling about its adaptations at some point.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (reread)

Listen, I love Murderbot but 90% of the time I have no idea what's going on in these books since sci-fi jargon is mostly beyond me. But I was given my own copy of this book a while back and reread it, more slowly so I could wrap my mind around it better, and definitely got more out of it.

System Collapse by Martha Wells

I had to take this one slowly, but it was worth it. I love the direction that it took, with Murderbot getting involved in producing a film designed to emotionally appeal to people who are in danger of choosing an option that will result in their being enslaved--Murderbot needs the chance to work on processing its trauma, as reluctant as it is to deal with emotion, and working on the film is a big step toward catharsis.

Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin (reread)

This one does have its charm, although I've always found it short on plot and character development (Wiggin has a habit of telling things that should have been shown, beyond the typical style of that era), but this time I had some issues with authorial favoritism toward certain characters, which you've probably already heard the rant about.

#random personal stuff #it's been a difficult month for reading #not a lot of time #I have quite a few unread books on my shelf but for whatever reason I am utterly disinclined to pick them up #and I gravitated more toward the familiar this month

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turtleations · 6 months ago

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Interview with SEIJI KIMURA (Ex-Zeppet Store vocals and guitar, currently active with solo-unit hurdy gurdy)

Published in the hide BIBLE (by Akemi Oshima) 2008

Note: Just like with INA's interview, I am keeping the honorifics on all names as Kimura used them (i.e. hide is referred to as hide-san throughout the interview).

Note 2: As with the two previous long interviews, this is very, very close to an actual translation. Many of the things I give you here are Kimura’s exact words, just moved from first to third person. The prompts and questions of the interviewer are actual translations.

Note 3: On the name "Seiji Kumura": Usually, when written in roman letters, I found the name transcribed as "Seizi Kimura". I am using "Seiji" because this is was the book uses. I also have it in the title in the order given name - family name, even though on all other interviews I keep the Japanese order of names, because, again, this is what the book does.

Note 4: The desciption in the title is from 2008. Zeppet Store did in fact reunite in 2011.

Kimura-san, after hide-san passed away, you were asked to speak in various places, weren’t you?

Immediately after hide-san’s death, Kimura wasn’t in a situation to talk about anything. He was doing a live radio-broadcast at the time, and about three days after the funeral, there was a broadcast from a satellite studio in Sendai. Numerous listeners gathered there at that time because everyone wanted to hear about hide-san, and it was very hard to speak in all that.

This is going back in time, but when how did you first meet hide-san?

A year earlier, the indies label UNDER FLOWER RECORDS had made 1000 copies of Zeppet’s album “Snap, Slide, Sandpit”, but since they did no lives and were overall unknown, those didn’t sell well. Among the acquaintances of their drummer Yanagida was a stylist who knew hide-san. According to tales from the office, that person passed the CD to a bunch of people, and one copy ended up at HEADWAX.

The CD just happened to end up in hide-san’s office?

Yes. Hide-san was living in LA at the time, but it seems that after he returned to Japan, he took a selection of the CDs scattered around the office home to listen to them. One of them was Zeppet’s, but since it was all sung in English, he didn’t think it was from a Japanese band at first. When he learned that it was from a band near Shimokita, he said “We have to do something with this” and contacted them. At the time, HEADWAX was associated with a band called DEEP, and it was at their one-man live that Zeppet Store met him for the first time. They knew they were to meet him that day, but the band members still questioned it, wondering if this was for real, when the elevator doors opened and hide-san was standing there.

Was he there by coincidence?

No, it was like he had been waiting for them. He was sitting there on his own, going, “Yo!” and they were very surprised.

While you knew X JAPAN, there was no similarity between their music and yours, was there?

None whatsoever. Zeppet Store couldn’t believe it when they heard that hide-san had taken an interest in them. Since their musical activities and their field were so different, it seemed very strange. Until they met him for real, they were sceptic and took that talk with a grain of salt when someone told them about it. It was only when they were drinking with hide-san after the live and he kept talking about their songs and their lyrics that they were thought, “Hey, this guy was really listening to us!”

What image did you have of hide-san after meeting him in person?

Before, Kimura did not know him at all. Even X JAPAN he only knew as far as “Kurenai” and such. They were on TV often, but the only impression he had of hide-san was that he had an existence completely separated from his own. When he heard about hide-san’s interest in them, he borrowed his solo CD from a co-worker, listening to his music properly for the first time.

Did you think it would be rude not to?

Yes, but frankly, in the beginning, he didn’t quite get it. It was completely divorced from X JAPAN, and while Kimura thought that hide-san was the kind of person to be doing appropriately interesting stuff, it was so different from what Kimura listened to that he didn’t know what to make of it.

What impression did you have when you met hide-san for the first time?

It was at the afterparty of a DEEP-live, when hide-san went directly to the members of Zeppet without even talking to those of DEEP, to chat with them on his own. They were drinking and Kimura was lacking confidence in it all, but seeing the earnest look in hide’s eyes, he ended up thinking, “This is a grown man I can trust completely.” It made him happy that hide-san cared about and spoke passionately with them, and he gave the impression of really loving music. At that time, they didn’t talk about business at all, and with hide-san endlessly asking about their lyrics and melodies, the impression changed to that of one single-minded about music. Until then, Kimura had thought him just a scary young man.

After that, did you sign up with hide-san’s label at once?

That fateful album came out in ‘94, they met in ‘95, but with hide-san living in LA, they couldn’t often talk directly. So, they started talking business with the representatives of HEADWAX. They talked about recording a demo tape with all their new songs of that time, but when that tape was done,　it was deemed so good that all those recordings ended up as the final version. Since the songs were all in English, the idea quickly changed to releasing it in the US, and they eventually did so with the album “716”. They met hide-san again when they went to LA.

For the second time?

The second time, yes.

Had it been hide-san’s idea to do a proper recording on the demo tape?

Yes. Since Zeppet were amateurs, they didn’t really understand the meaning of demo tapes. Since they were now in a studio much more splendid than what they had worked in before, they reworked their lyrics, fixed the arrangements, and recorded it all giving their best.

And suddenly, you debuted in the US.

Yes. Because they released the demo tape like it was a competition, three companies put their hands up for it. They picked the one with the most favorable conditions. Since they would come out specifically in the US, it was decided that they should do some promotion, and while they only gave three concerts, they stayed over there for about a month.

That’s amazing! (laughs)

It was mostly sightseeing. In LA they did serious promotion: Went on the radio, gave interviews, appeared on TV, had a live at the “Viper Room” run by Johnny Depp, and more. They were put in charge of an event by an organization like the Japanese JASRAC [Japanese Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers]. Because there are a lot of Japanese people in San Francisco, they interviewed with the local newspaper and gave a concert, but next they went to Seattle and there was nothing (laughing). So they went to have fun at the club night after night.

What was meeting hide-san for the second time like?

Kimura’s got an entire mountain of memories of that second time in LA. One time, hide-san took them to a Japanese restaurant he often went to, and as they went back to the hotel in two cars, music by Zeppet was played on the radio of the car hide-san was in. The car suddenly stopped, and hide-san said, “It’s on!” while crying.

Crying?

Yes. They were drunk, but all the band members and hide-san sat in the car, motionless, for four minutes, and hide-san was crying. And then he fell asleep, with an extremely happy expression on his face. They delivered him home like this.

Did you talk a lot when you were in LA?

They did. Hide-san came to see them live in LA, and after the concert was over, he said, “If you ever win an award, you can say, “Thank you, hide”. That’s enough.” At just that time, hide-san was starting zilch, and Kimura thinks that releasing an album in the US had been his dream as well. It seemed like the fact that he got this small indies band in his employment to debut there first made him very proud and happy.

You said you had three lives; did hide-san come to see all of them?

No, just the one in LA. It seems like he wanted to come to the others, but his own schedule made that impossible. Since there had been no opportunity for him to see them in Japan, LA was the first time he got to watch them perform. Anyway, in Japan, they were a band with roughly fifteen people in the audience. Fifteen was the biggest crowd they had ever assembled. At their worst, it was three.

And then you suddenly gave concerts in the US.

It was like a dream. Until then, they had only had stages of around 20 minutes. Now there were 40 minutes, and that they came out for encores also started in LA.

Did hide-san say anything about his thoughts on your live?

There was only one negative thing Kimura got: That he did not convey enough strong emotions with his eyes. “You have to put a bit more power into your eyes,” he was told. “Don’t make eyes like Mogutan,” hide said and called him Mogutan [Character from “Manga Hajimete Monagatari”, an educational program for children that ran from 1978 until 1984] for a while. Aside from that, he didn’t say anything. He liked Zeppet as it was and didn’t feel the need to interfere with Kimura’s handling of it. He said he was not a producer, just a collector who liked Zeppet, so as long as he could get their work out into the world, he was satisfied. Hide-san didn’t say anything about their musicianship or their visuals. In fact, it was a bit anti-climatic.

Weren’t there any songs he didn’t like?

There weren’t. Their first two albums – the one that got them to meet hide-san and the one after that – were in English, but their debut was made in Japanese. Since he had been singing exclusively in English until then, Kimura was very anxious about that and wondered what hide-san thought about it, but hide-san only said, “It made me cry.” Afterwards, Kimura was called alone to the Sendai concert of the PSYENCE-tour to perform there on his own. He took the Shinkansen to Sendai and performed their single “Koe” before the encore. Since he came alone and didn’t bring anything, hide-san said, “Use my guitar”, and let him borrow it.

Your impressions of that time

It had been just before hide debut, and Kimura realized what it meant to give music his own color. hide-san’s thought process was unpredictable. Kimura thinks his way of thinking must have changed somewhere along the way to keep up with hide-san’s. When they they had someone from the audience come up on stage and dance during the song called “Beauty & Stupid”, Kimura asked hide-san, “Please let me dance as well” and was allowed on stage. Since he didn’t have a personality like that, something must have changed. The tour was stimulating like that. While he was dancing in female clothes wearing a wig, it was pointed out during the MC that “Kimura, who was singing yesterday, is dancing over there.” Later, during the afterparty, DIE-san sang and played “Koe” on the keyboard and the members of hide-san’s band were crying. Inada-san (INA) was wailing. At that moment, Kimura thought, “I’m lucky to debut among people like these.” In the end, Kimura couldn’t keep going with them due to some sudden developments, but it was fun, that year, shocking as it had been.

Zeppet’s activities then?

They also went on tour. When they did their tour starting with their second single, they were also in a place where hide-san was scheduled to be. They saw his live in Sapporo.

Did your impression regarding hide-san change?

Kimura thought that if you know him better, hide-san is a pretty kind person. Even if he raged when drunk, he would always say, “I’m sorry” the next day. While irrational things made him angry, he was never angry at the members of Zeppet. No matter how drunk he was, he always supported them. He took them to a lot of bars, and later they heard from the staff that he paid for everything with his own money. He was like the embodiment of kindness. To Kimura, he was a music-loving, mischievous older brother.

You were taught many things.

Drinking until morning was one of them, that was something Kimura did not know before being dragged around. He liked alcohol, but wasn’t tough enough to keep going all night. He was taught to go through two or three places and finish it off by eating ramen. Then, when moving on, the walked with a skip to their steps (laughing).

What do you mean?

It was a silly thing, but he liked silly things, and he enjoyed being in that circle. It seemed unbelievable to him, a plain guy who had just debuted, should be friends with these flashy people and be on good terms with them.

Were you ever given advice?

Hide-san never told them to do things in a specific way, but at the time of their major debut, he said, “If you’re active in Japan, wouldn’t it be better to do so in Japanese?” Also, they were often told that bands that do not have a concert at the end of the year are not bands at all.

At the end of the ear? On New Year’s Eve?

They were told to “do that, no matter what.”

What were things you consulted with him about?

When it came to writing lyrics, they consulted hide-san on how to put them down in Japanese. Kimura asked, for example, if it was okay to write the song in Japanese and have only the hook in English. hide told him to just write it the way he likes it and see what happens. They were talking about their second single, “TO BE FREE”, and Kimura was told that it wouldn’t be any problem at all. Then, Inada-san taught them various recording techniques. Like how to make the core sound of the guitar stronger. When hide-san was drunk, he talked a lot, but those were just trivial stories. There was talk about music for about the first 30 minutes, after that it’s all silly but fun stories. He did get passionate talking to guitarist Gomi about effectors, though. Gomi-kun was using a guitar called “Jaguar” at the time, and hide-san ordered a guitar with the exact same shape from Fernandez, which had been, again, extremely cool. The song he used it for, saying he was influenced by Zeppet in this, was “Flame”. That hide-san had been so open about having being influenced by them made them extremely happy. At the time of recording “Flame”, hide-san said, “Please lend me your drums”, and so Zeppet Store’s Yanagida beat the drums for that song on the album. There had been plans for a Zeppet Store concert around that time, but then Yanagida went to LA, and Kimura gave a concert on his own for maybe the second time in his life. Now he does that all the time, though (laughing). Then, however, he was like, “Curse you!” towards Yanagida.

He just had to go to LA on his own. (laughs)

The finished song was amazing again. It had a melody Kimura had not heard before, and it was interesting that hide-san said, “I was influenced by Zeppet and this is the result.” Also, Zeppet had a song called “Flake”, and it made Kimura happy that even the title was similar to one of theirs.

Did you watch an X JAPAN live at that time?

They bothered them at the 1996 end-of-year concert. Hide-san wore a green costume and gave off the kind of fashionable, cool air that had led to PSYENCE. After that, they went to the afterparty, and there was a year-end party from the office as well, it was magnificent. The following year, Zeppet, as per hide-san’s advice, also gave an end-of-year concert.

Did you also hang out with hide-san in Japan?

Yes. At that time, hide often went to a bar called “Rally” in Nishiabazu, and since he also took Kimura along, Kimura also ended up going there on his own.

Huh? Until then, you weren’t the type for that, were you?

Not at all. That, too, is clearly hide-san’s influence. One day, Kimura was drinking on his own when hide-san happened to come into the bar. Except, he was walking on crutches. Kimura had heard rumors that hide had broken his foot in Atami, but the people from the office didn’t tell them anything so they wouldn’t worry. Due to his injury, hide-san was not allowed to drink alcohol. It was not often that you saw him not drinking in a place like that, but having a strong sense of service towards those around him, he still stayed with Kimura for two hours and kept him company without drinking. During this time, he was regaling Kimura with wild, hilarious stories from the past until Kimura was rolling with laughter. “I want to meet Kimura’s girlfriend. Let’s call her, so you can introduce us!” So Kimura called his girlfriend of the time and the three of them kept drinking together. When hide-san got drunk, he would always talk about how useless he was. He liked to make fun of himself. It surprised Kimura how a rockstar like hide-san would look down on himself like that. The truth is, Kimura took after that trait and starts by talking shit about himself when drunk.

Hide-san could tell funny stories, couldn’t he?

No matter what kind of story, if hide-san was telling it, you ended up roaring with laughter. He had mastered the art of conversation. In any case, it was extremely funny. The next time they were drinking together, Kimura passed hide-san a cassette with hurdy gurdy [Kimura’s solo unit] music and asked him to listen to it. Then, it was used, without anyone telling him, in LEMONed’s catalogue video (laughing). About forty seconds of it, and the sound was bad, because it was from a cassette. Just letting it flow at its own convenience. Kimura was happy.

Was it rare for people to drink with hide-san?

It was more like a general trend, they were never alone at the time. The moment hide-san aimed for the counter, Kimura was at his side. Since they couldn’t really talk among all those people, those moments were his chance. They requested their favorite music and talked about bands like KISS, POLICE, or QUEEN. It was a wonderful time.

Kimura-san, what did hide-san mean to you?

Even though the things they did and their music were different, he is somehow still a mark Kimura is aiming for. He would probably get angry if he said that, though. As a human being, Kimura loved him, as a man he respected him, and even now he has yet to meet another person with this passion towards the music they are doing. When Kimura lost his way in regard to music during some part of his life, it was hide-san who helped him find it again. If he hadn’t met hide-san, he would probably be doing some other work now. If you think about it like that, hide-san was his benefactor. Although Kimura can’t surpass him, a small ambition to try still exists somewhere.

What did hide-san do as your benefactor?

Kimura loved music and had always wanted to do it, but he didn’t think he could make a living out of it. When he met hide-san, he was twenty-eight years old and pretty late to making his debut as a newbie. As he reached that age, he had given up on a lot of things in his life. He was facing the decision of whether to continue making music while working part-time, or find full employment and become a self-sufficient member of society. It was a time of great worries. Then he met hide-san and his way of thinking changed: He decided that he could trust this person and that he would follow him as far as possible. At that time, Kimura was jobbing at a pachinko parlor, and if he did not become a full employee, he would have to give that up. If he did become one, he could make it to manager. Also, it came with a nice salary – more than double than what he would make as an office worker. Since he was living at the pachinko mansion, quitting that job would also mean giving up his room. His life would change drastically, he’d have to move out, and while he wondered if he could really do this, he was also aware that a chance like the one hide-san offered him would not come again, and so he decided to follow him.

That decision required courage.

So it did. If Kimura remembers it now, he wonders how that was even something to think twice about, but back then, he agonized about it a lot.

He was someone who changed your life, wasn’t he?

If Kimura hadn’t met hide-san, he wouldn’t be the person he is today. He wouldn’t have stood in the Ajinomoto-Stadium. He would probably have continued to do music but would have performed in front of an audience of maybe fifteen to twenty people. Through meeting hide-san and being recognized by him, Kimura became an adult. Hide-san was his patron.

What would you want to tell young fans about hide-san?

They can learn about his music from CDs and DVDs, but the plain, unadorned part of hide-san is not talked about much, so Kimura would like to tell them about him as just a guy. He was made of kindness, extremely thoughtful. Even though he was the main act, he never lost sight of those around him. He showed great consideration for the staff and even gave attention to people like Kimura, who had a completely different view on things. “Kimura-san looks bored, so let’s entertain him” he’d say to the staff. Kimura thinks he was massively tolerant of other people’s faults. He could be troublesome when drunk, but everyone understood that that was just the flipside of all the affection, and no one around Kimura ever said a single bad word about him. Of the people who had even a little bit to do with hide-san, no one really said anything bad. Kimura got the strong impression that he was someone who was loved by those around him no matter what. There is no one else like that. The impression he left was that of a person who wasn’t perfect, but good.

That no one got angry with him even when he was acting irrationally is amazing. Simply put, it speaks of virtue.

Really. When Zeppet was DJing at the LEMONed Club Event, hide-san unexpectedly came to visit. Since there would have been an uproar if he had been discovered, they went drinking together in the back, and because Zeppet Store’s second single had just come out, talk inevitably turned to the band. At this point, hide-san asked a staff member, “Are you promoting it properly?”, showing a glimpse of being the head of their company in a business context. When the staff member said, “I have no idea,” he lost it. So he hit the wall hard enough for it to break and for blood to flow.

……

Of course he couldn’t hit his own staff member at his own event. Instead, he raged wihtou involving other people and chased a taxi, that’s all. Hide-san liked chasing taxis, it seems. He liked running, too.

Did you see him run a lot?

He did. Running, rolling… He never failed to do something funny. On hide-san’s birthday, Sugizo-san and J-san of Luna Sea came by. J-san had brought a 1-sho [1,8 litres] bottle of Japanese sake that hide-san liked, putting it on the table with a “Happy Birthday!” And hide-san just said, “I appreciate it, J, but I quit drinking Japanese sake. When I drink it, I flip out.” That got him the admiration of his close friends. Hide-san introduced Kimura to Sugizo-kun and J-kun and really, a lot of other people. Even though hide-san is already gone, Kimura still meets people through him. While it’s not just people hide-san introduced him to directly, he became friends with kyo-chan through hide-san, who came to stay the night at Kimura’s just the other day.

He had a gift for connecting people with each other, didn’t he?

At the time of Kimura’s debut, most of his fans knew him through hide-san, and even now, it’s thanks to hide that he can connect with his fans. Kimura Seiji is someone living his life in hide-san’s protection and is thus inseparable from him. Even now, the memorial portrait of hide-san in the room where Kimura makes his music is properly decorated. For a while, it was right in the center, but he eventually moved it back some because it was awkward like that. Even now there are probably people who mistake hide-san for LEMONed’s producer. But that is far from the truth. Hide-san always said that he was just a simple collector who wanted to release the things that were good. He approached it with the basic mindset that good things didn’t need to be tampered with, Kimura and the others had complete freedom. They only got four singles and one album delivered through hide-san. For the last single, they had to overcome the fact that their guitarist Gomi-kun, whom hide-san had loved, had quit, but they still got extremely high praise for it. Hide-san called them specifically to tell them that he had cried about a hundred times. It’s because of memories like this that Kimura is still taking singing seriously. Because even until today, there’s been no one else to say such things to him.

Hide-san was also gifted at giving praise.

Hide-san’s praise really became Kimura’s stepping stone. That he could just go for it, thinking, “Next, I’ll write another good song” was also hide-san’s power. That single became the last song of his that hide-san listened to. Even though that is what it is, Kimura wanted him to listen to many more songs.

Is there anything you would like to say to hide-san today?

Even now, Kimura still asks hide-san how to deal with it when he has a problem. But now, he has to find the answer himself. He received that strength, and now, by asking, he feels that he is growing up a little. To speak plainly, hide-san’s meaning to him exceeds family. He is so important that inside Kimura, he has the status of a god, even if it seems strange to say it like that. Kimura is truly grateful that he got to meet hide-san, because of that one CD that happened to end up in his hands.

#hide #hide bible #interview #summary #translation #zeppet store #seizi kimura #seiji kimura #using both because japanese names #this was both very hard and very easy #there's a lot of affection in it and it contains so much stuff I did not know before #it's also the last long interview from this book for now #there are several more shorts coming #then I'll put this book aside for a while for another project #I'll come back to it for the rest though

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writers-in-moominvalley · 1 year ago

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Moominpappa's Memoirs vs Adventures of Moominpappa part 1

In which I compare the episode to its source material.

Warning: this essay is a 13.3k word long deranged rambling written by someone who is obsessed with Moominpappa's Memoirs and its characters. Continue at your own discretion.

Background and clarification

The Exploits of Moominpappa was a book written and illustrated by Tove Jansson and originally published in Swedish in 1950. It is the 4th story in the Moomin book series and follows Moominpappa, Moomintroll's father, as he writes his Memoir which has been mentioned in the past 2 books and reads it to the child main characters. The Memoir itself recounts his life story from childhood, his adventures with the other children's parents and up to his rescue and first meeting of his wife, Moominmamma.

Later in 1968, Tove made a revised version titled "Moominpappa's Memoirs" which followed the same outline but with changed scenes and extended sequences, adding much more compelling characterization and character-driven moments to move the story along.

Moominpappa's Memoirs was then adapted in May to August of 1991 for the hit Moomin adaptation series, Moomin (1990), as a series of 3 episodes interspersed between other episodes under the encompassing title "Adventures of Moominpappa".

Despite what Wikipedia tells you, it is not in fact an adaptation of the original The Exploits of Moominpappa (although the title might mislead you to believe that) as much of the content in this trilogy adaptation takes from Moominpappa's Memoirs, such as the frozen sea scene or the Joxter's introduction. However, much of its content has been cut, spliced or changed altogether to fit the 60 minute runtime allowed for these three 20 minute episodes.

What this post aims to be is a critical look at these episodes as pieces of television entertainment and as adaptations of the book, starting with the first part.

For clarity, I did not grow up on this show and this show's writing has never been perfect to begin with, even when we take adaptation out of the equation. I don't dislike the show as a whole by any means, but I can tell very clearly that it has managed to dodge criticism for so long (well, at least for fans who aren't personally connected to the previous incarnations of the franchise and therefore their major criticism would've been "this isn't like the thing that came before!") because of the sheer Vibes that the show exudes and its weirdness in its substance was only seen as amusing rather than a problem or as the same thing as the weirdness that's inherent to the whole franchise (which is a subject I may touch upon in a later date.)

The long and short of it is; it's not perfect in either avenue of how you view these episodes. However, I do not fault anyone for liking any of them and much of this is my own opinion and simply observations on how well it's handled as an adaptation. I'm doing this out of a love and passion for this franchise and this isn't a niche that's been covered before as far as I'm aware (also, Tumblr user @helshdy has requested me to do this and that's my excuse for getting me going on this)

And for clarity, the adaptation has changed the names of the characters in the English dub for some strange reason, and here's the list (book names - show names):

Hodgkins - Samuel Fredriksson (fun fact, it seems to my knowledge that the English translation of the book is the only one that doesn't use a variation of the original Fredriksson. The reason is totally unknown to me. Also, he never had a first name in any previous material he appears in, so I don't know where in Moominland they came up with adding Samuel there)

The Muddler - Fuddler (Fuddler is actually the name of his child who is not Sniff in the comics)

The Mymble - Mumaline (is that how it's supposed to be spelled?)

The Mymble's Daughter - Mumaline's Daughter

The Fuzzy - Muddle (yes, without the r)

Edward - Eduardo

For the sake of simplicity I'll be using the book names, except I'll be abbreviating the Mymble's Daughter to MD and refer to the King/Autocrat as King Jones like in The Exploits of Moominpappa (because I am majorly upset at Tove removed his name in Memoirs). And I'll be referring to young Moominpappa as Moomin while his son will be referred to as Moomintroll.

In this post, I'll only be covering the first episode and do the other 2 episodes in seperate posts, as well as an extra post evaluating this trilogy as a whole and diagnosing what it did to the story to end up the way it did.

So with all that out of the way, let's begin with the

Recap

The episode starts with Moominmamma preparing something in the kitchen and going upstairs, Moominpappa is sick in bed and Moominmamma gives him a warm glass of milk and onion juice. Moominpappa muses about how if he was gone then Moomintroll and Moominmamma wouldn't know about his childhood, Moominmamma asks about the memoir he's been writing throughout the show and he says it only starts from after he saved Moominmamma. Moominmamma is confused but flattered that the memoirs start with the beginning of their relationship, even if she thinks they usually start at the beginning of one's life. Moominpappa says rather vaguely that he has his reasons for not starting from the beginning (we'll get to this in the review portion).

We then get treated to Little My gathering Sniff and Snufkin to meet up with Moominpappa and using lies to make sure they don't skip out on listening to Moominpappa telling everyone about his Epic Backstory, and then when after the misunderstanding is cleared up, Moominpappa lays the foundation of what he's going to tell them, mostly about the people who "kinda looked and sounded like them".

Finally, Moominpappa recounts the dreary August where he was found in a shopping bag at the doorstep of an old orphanage run by a principal who was very reminiscent of Mrs. Fillyjonk. We see a montage of how his childhood went; he gets marked in marker with the number 13, he wets the bed and gets washed in the sink, he fails to bow down with his tail in a 45 degree angle, all the while he questions everything and his principal complains about him being more troublesome than the rest.

Then, one late winter, he decides to head to the forbidden seaside on a whim and skates on the ice. He admires himself in the lake reflection and describes himself fondly, his only complaint being his legs being "too short for perfection", although he hopes they might grow longer if he skates and walks more. He continues on skating and breaks the ice, causing him to fall into the water and narrowly escaping with his life. This, Moominpappa considers, is his first adventure, and the thrill is much too enticing to let it be his last. That night, he decides to escape the orphanage through the window while everyone is asleep, all the while a voice over narrates the letter he left for his principal about his departure and that she needn't fret.

With a side bag worn, he's off to the races in his grand escape! But in his way is an increasingly terrifying unknown forest which he imagines is out to get him as he runs with all the speed his small legs could carry him, afterwards, in the windy night, he cries himself to sleep in a hollow log.

He wakes up to a bright and beautiful morning where he meets with a brook and spots a strange spinning wheel turning in it, he muses about it and then a man in a purple onesie appears in front of him explaining that it's an experiment for his ship that'll launch that day. The two become fast friends and Moomin learns that the man's name is Samuel Fredriksson (but we'll call him Hodgkins) and he takes him to the boat.

Hodgkins calls for his nephew, Fuddler (Muddler), as he seems nowhere to be seen, but then he pops out of his giant coffee tin with a can of red paint and apologises. Hodgkins introduces him to Moomin and tells him to hurry up with the painting, to which Muddler ensures that he'll do it as fast as possible.

Hodgkins and Moomin enter the pilot-house where we are introduced to Joxter sleeping on the couch. Hodgkins gets upset and asks if he read the "No Admittance" sign on the door (there's literally no sign, visually?) and says it means he shouldn't go in, Joxter lifts up his hat and proclaims that he doesn't understand signs (cue audience cheering).

The 3 of them step on the deck and Moomin asks what the ship's name is, Hodgkins says that of the names he's thought of, he named it the Ocean Orchestra (the Oshun Oxtra) since it sounded poetic. Moomin asks how they'll set sail and Muddler realises they haven't thought about that, Hodgkins reassures everyone and says that they'll employ the help of Eduardo (Edward) the Booble. Hodgkins explains who and what Edward is and Moomin asks if he's dangerous, Hodgkins says he's not really but if you're not careful he can step on you, but don't worry! He always pays for the funeral!

Hodgkins proceeds to yell out into the distance calling for Edward and asks him to bathe in the river instead of sea since it's so nice that day. Edward then rises up from out of the forest in slow motion all Kaiju-style and Hodgkins and Moomin run back to the boat, Edward does a 6/10 belly flop into the river causing the water levels to rise. Moomin and Hodgkins make it to the pilot-house where Joxter is sleeping again, Hodgkins takes the wheel and yells out vaguely nautical sentences to nobody in particular and the boat finally takes off. But oh no! Edward is blocking the way! Moomin is worried they might crash into him, but also asks what's behind Edward, Hodgkins does this monologue about the sea and it being adventurous and Moomin is very dreamy about finally getting adventures at last. Hodgkins gets out of the pilot-house to yell at Edward to get out of the way, and yelling about how he's been preparing for this for years finally convinces the Booble to get out of the way.

Just as Hodgkins was saying this would be classified as a historical moment, Muddler yells out from his floating tin and Joxter suddenly wakes up, commenting on how it sounds like he might be in trouble. The crew runs to the back of the boat to see what's up, Hodgkins seems annoyed as if this is Muddler's personal doing but Joxter reassures Muddler that they'll get him out of there, Muddler gets upset about the crew being mean and leaving him behind but then Hodgkins through him a lasso which knocks him over.

Muddler ties the rope to the key-type can opener and they sail past Edward, which causes a bit of a turbulence and flooding but ultimately they cheer in victory of a successful maiden voyage.

Then it's sunset, the crew stop at some cliffs and find the Groke chasing an unknown person through them. Moomin asks about what happens if the Groke touches them and Hodgkins explains that the Groke doesn't really do anything and that she's lonely, but if she gets too close the person would freeze. Joxter also concurs that it's too late for them to do anything. Moomin isn't deterred by this and rushes to rescue the mysterious person being chased by the Groke by swimming down to the cliff with Muddler's tin as a catcher, all the while he and Hodgkins argue about this decision. As it turns out the mysterious person was his Orphanage Principal (although Moomin doesn't realise that until later) and she jumps into the tin, after which they swim back to safety with the Groke looking on and the crew cheering.

We then get Moominpappa in the present talking about how this is the third adventure he's ever had and the first of many rescues. Moomintroll gets really excited and inspired to become an adventurer like his father and Little My asks who Moominpappa saved and what happens next. Moominpappa tries being cheeky by saving the continuation for another time but Snorkmaiden insists on telling them who it was at least. He finally tells them that it was the principal of the orphanage, as she was looking for him after he made his escape.

We then cut back to his story after Moomin got the tin on deck. Moomin expresses displeasure at his rescue being that of his Orphanage Principal and says he wouldn't have saved her had he known it was her, Hodgkins assures him that what he did was brave. The Principal then becomes a demanding presence, making Moomin and Hodgkins instinctively straighten their posture and asking Moomin who everyone is, then declaring that she'll take them under her wing and teach them how to behave.

Joxter excuses himself to go below deck and Muddler follows him after, Hodgkins and Moomin also run elsewhere while she's distracted and she continues yelling demands at them.

We're back once more to Moominpappa and the family, Snorkmaiden and Moomintroll amusedly comment on the unfortunate situation, Moominpappa laments that he might've saved her anyway if he had known and that you can't just win, can you? Moominmamma expresses terrible pity for Moominpappa's childhood but he reassures her that it wasn't that bad. He then continues saying that the next part of his story is really exciting but they must wait until he recovers from his illness. The narrator then tells us to tune in for the next part where we find out what happens to the Orphanage Principal after… (*checks episode list*) 3 other unrelated episodes.

The end.

Episode review

While it is a very watchable and enjoyable episode of a kid's show there are a lot of glaring issues with pacing and writing efficiency.

The introduction does a good job at introducing our original main cast but I am very baffled at the convoluted way they decided to reconcile the memoir Moominpappa has been writing throughout the series and the backstory he's telling the kids in these series of episodes by having the show's memoir be about everything that came after his meeting with Moominmamma, in fact Moominmamma herself questions the issue because even if it's not really a full autobiography the starting place lacks a lot of important context that lead up to it, and the writers had the gall to make Moominpappa handwave this question with a vague answer that doesn't excuse anything.

A much more efficient writer would've just had him ask Moominmamma to bring his yet unfinished memoir to read to the kids after his musing and used the time from this conversation for something else but whatever that's not the biggest issue.

The biggest issue I have with the episode's writing efficiency is the very unnecessary break near the end of the episode where the kids ask who the person Moominpappa saved was, because we quite literally see the Principal hopping into the tin? She quite literally comes from the shadows and we see her very clearly which renders the subsequent scene utterly pointless? In an in-universe perspective, yeah sure it makes sense for the kids to impatiently ask who it was but we get the confirmation right after! This is a show made for an audience who can see the flashback taking place and doing something like this is redundant and it's wasted time that could've been used to, I don't know, flesh out the story's characters more? Add a bit more substance to everything between the action?

Speaking of that, there is a noticeable amount of emphasis on the action with little to do with characterization here (which is an issue throughout the trilogy but we'll get to it when we get to it). There are about 3 whole action scenes in this episode: the ice break, the escape and the launching ceremony, the latter two of which kind of overstay their welcome a few moments too long (especially the ceremony).

The ice break was fine, it accomplished itself as the Call To Adventure in Moomin's Hero's Journey and that's all it really needed to be, it's a fun and intense enough scene with good character animation on top of that.

The escape from the orphanage was a bit too unnecessarily intense to the point where it didn't well fit with the tone of the rest of the story and could've used some better editing, especially with the parts surrounding the bit where he cries inside the hollow log; it would've been preferable if we actually saw him crawl inside it and then crawl out of it in the morning, I think it would've improved the flow of the scene.

It was an odd choice to give Edward a full Kaiju moment with the slow motion and everything and even have him block the path just to extend the scene after they got Muddler tagged along, and having the boat be flooded and everything, all it really does accomplish is adding a bit more to Hodgkins' character with his dialog which is kind of meh? And it's not at all characterization that gets used later on in the episode or the whole trilogy so what the scene accomplishes is coolness for the sake of cool at best (which only applies to the first half of the scene honestly) and runtime filler at worst.

You could argue that the emphasis on action is a product of Moominpappa's way of telling his story in-universe, and I would say I completely understand that reasoning, but there's not much in the way of acknowledging that this style of storytelling is Moominpappa's doing and is an extension of the story's nature as an in-universe story, and the episode fails to properly establish that Moominpappa is prone to embellishments or wanting to make himself seem cooler than he is (this issue is somewhat rectified in the beginning of part 2 but this is what I'm talking about when it comes to efficient storytelling). So in the end it makes it feel like this is the writers simply doing their job rather than putting their writing through the filter of Moominpappa's character, which leads me to the point of characterization.

The characterization is… okay and it does a half-decent job, but it's definitely very boring in the way that it makes Moomin too similar to Moomintroll and it makes Hodgkins a little too indistinct on whether he's nice or not. Joxter and Muddler could've used some work but they aren't majorly important characters in this first part and it does establish their characters and quirks pretty fine for the little screen time they have. Edward is… a sea monster with no thoughts behind those eyes and listens to Hodgkins like a dog it seems, he's more like a plot device than anything.

Funnily enough it's the Principal who has the best characterization out of everyone, definitely not likeable by any means, but it's that obvious unlikeability and consistent, obvious character motivation that makes her the most well-established character at least in this episode. I just… really wish she wasn't treated so cruelly by the other characters honestly, like I get it, she's annoying and authoritative and didn't treat Moomin well but nobody is holding back any punches with her, who is, mind you, the only major female character in the story so far. To make Moomin say despairingly how he wouldn't have saved her if he knew it was her? To have the kids talk about it like it was a hilarious misfortune to save her life from the Groke? It's a bit… mean-spirited, far more than usual for this show.

But I'll talk about the characters more during the adaptation section of this post.

Overall I'll say that the episode is decent but doesn't have truly interesting characters that would've really elevated the episode for me.

Adaptation review

Okay so this is where my teeth are going to show because it is very, very much NOT a good adaptation.

Part 1 is an adaptation of the prologue, chapter 1, chapter 2 and the first third of chapter 3. The thing is that it skips over the whole preface Moominpappa wrote but that's whatever, all the preface accomplishes is some humorous establishment that Moominpappa is most certainly not a reliable narrator and that he hopes to be viewed as important by those who read it, it's difficult and not necessary to adapt in animated form with the format they decided to use. The rest, however? They've skipped over quite a bit and made a complete overhaul to the characterization and tone of these chapters. Which is understandable for a 20 minute episode and admittedly even just one chapter is very long even without the tangents Moominpappa goes into, buuut…

PROLOGUE (AND PREFACE)

The way the episode's version of the prologue handled Moominpappa's character is already a big indicator of this. In the book, Moominpappa feels the absolute indignance of being sick for the first time in his life and getting a very, very bad experience with the cold on top of that. The cold made him miserable and annoyed, he refused to consume anything medicinal from Moominmamma, he couldn't sleep, he had a great amount of tissues under his hammock, he had an unbearably sore throat that rendered his speech unintelligible when he asked Sniff to get the meerschaum tram for him. His family and adoptive children felt pity and tried to accommodate him as they could until he fell asleep, terribly vexed by all this.

Moominpappa awoke with a throat that felt a little better and spoke to Moominmamma about the significance of the aforementioned tram to which she doesn't really understand, which upsets Moominpappa immensely and he is resentful that she and their son wouldn't know about the great history he went through had he died from the cold. Moominmamma suggests after some deliberation, as she always had, that perhaps he should finally take the time to write and read his memoirs using an old notebook she found while cleaning the attic, Moominpappa gradually agrees to this and declares that he won't read a word of it to the others until he gets a whole chapter ready, though, she'll be the only test audience for the chapter until he moves onto reading to the children.

One thing to keep in mind for book Moominpappa (and by extension, his younger self) is that he is very… egotistical, which is a facet of his character I would love to go into excruciating detail about once I finish this series of essays but let's just say he's egotistical and over-dramatic and just LOVES writing about himself in the most melodramatic and egomaniacal way and the adaptation tries very, very hard to either downplay it or remove it entirely even though it is an essential part of his character that separates him from the likes of Moomintroll.

Moominpappa's vexation with his illness is one example, it's his first experience with the common cold and this is the situation we get introduced with to establish him and his surrounding characters; this Moominpappa is one that is stubborn, melodramatic and miserable over the helpless and undignified position he's suddenly placed in. This whole sequence wasn't a part of The Exploits of Moominpappa, either, it is added here with the purpose of showing us the kind of person we're reading this perspective from and the context he wrote this story in. It establishes his dynamic with the characters that surround him and even establishes those characters themselves in the most essential way there can be.

The scene in the episode does not establish any of Moominpappa's melodramatic and sour attitude from being undignified, it doesn't even establish him as being prone to being a generally unreliable narrator like in the preface, or that he really likes to talk about himself (he doesn't take the time to talk at length about himself in a self-aggrandizing way or even anything seemingly superfluous AT ALL within the story even though that is the whole premise of why he's writing his damned Memoirs and is one of the foundations of his character that affects his interactions with the other characters within the book). It establishes the audience characters very well, even more so than the book did, but it doesn't establish Moominpappa himself very well, and he's meant to be the point-of-view character and the most important one in this series of episodes.

It's almost fascinating how they dared to tone down such a straightforward character like Moominpappa even when they didn't seem to have an issue with the aforementioned aspects of Moominpappa in other episodes.

Moominpappa's Memoirs is, in essence, a parody of how self-important men write about themselves and the people around them in their own memoirs, this parody circles all the way back to sincerity by showing us genuine vulnerability, emotion and the outside process and reaction to Moominpappa's story. By not establishing just how self-important but also sincere Moominpappa is you're missing out on half of what the book is set out to do.

CHAPTER 1

The chapter 1-3 sections of the episode is what you get when you skim over the personal expression in narration to get to the barebones plot, and even the barebones plot gets smushed in the middle to save time. The adaptation as a whole really would have benefitted from the advantage given by the inclusion of the narration gimmick and let Moominpappa tell the audience about his thoughts and how he felt in the situations we're presented with. Show don't tell may be a rule of thumb in visual media but the book and story's whole personality hinges on expositing Moominpappa's thoughts on most, if not every matter he tells us about and even talking directly to his audience, to remove that would be to remove what made the book unique from the others in the series with its first person perspective. This is a story relaid to us by a character, it should've been treated as such. But as we're going to see, the adaptation does not concern itself with the emotional narrative of the book.

Chapter 1 gets into the nitty gritty of his life in the Orphanage, or in actuality, the Moomin Foundling Home.

Right off the bat there's a minor issue here that could be used as an example of how the adaptation prioritised the overall "Adventure" over the purpose of each detail and how it contributes to the themes of the story.

In the episode, the Orphanage is a diverse one that is run by a Fillyjonk. In the book, the Foundling Home is one made to house specifically Moomin-children and is run by a Hemulen.

Now, from a character design perspective I can kinda get it, I would've liked to see how creative they could've gotten with designing the 12 other Moomins but alright, fine. But from a thematic perspective it cements Moomin (number 13) as a strange individual even within his own species rather than being inherently strange for being the only Moomin. Moominpappa goes on and on about how special he is juxtaposed to a regular Moomin, how talented he is, how imaginative and curious he is compared to his vapid peers who just obey the Principal and don't talk to him. He's special because he specifically was born special, not because he was born a Moomin, and that is a difference that is greatly cemented within the book that it's practically part of his personal definition of himself, and that difference gets lost in translation when you make him the only Moomin in that orphanage.

The Principal being a Hemulen was also a pretty important point in the book. In the book series as a whole Hemulens generally represented authority or even just a parody of Adults, they're the antithesis of Moominpappa's imaginative spirit and he dunks on them in many ways throughout the whole book.

Hemulens are antagonists who want to take away some aspect of his life that he cherishes, people don't like to talk about Hemulens, Hemulens have no taste in fashion, Hemulens love duty and unfulfilling routines, Hemulens love sticking their noses in business that doesn't pertain to them, Hemulens are annoying and bossy, Hemulen orphans are seldom found and therefore a foundling home for them would've been useless, everyone born 20 minutes after Moomin would've been in a Hemulic Voluntary Brass Band (so be very careful of when your children will be born and plan/calculate accordingly!)

Hemulens have always been the subject of judgement and misfortune throughout the book series despite not doing anything morally reprehensible and still nowhere is the judgement more intense than in a book where an in-universe character gets to tell his story.

The Principal being a Fillyjonk in this adaptation does little more than to tie Mrs. Fillyjonk in all of this somehow (although I will admit her design is very pretty *cough*) and make all the criticism into mean-spirited bullying that's almost unfairly concentrated on her. I am aware that Moominpappa implied he switched the species of at least one Fillyjonk to a Hemulen character in his preface;

“In consideration of the feelings of many persons still alive, I have sometimes exchanged Fillyjonks for Hemulens or Gaffsies for hedgehogs, and so forth, but the talented reader will have no difficulties in understanding what was actually what.”

Alas, it's not a particularly convincing argument in favour of changing her species, especially given the context of the book.

The 90s series very notably tends to disregard the social commentary posited by the source material and in effect it either perpetuates the things the source material critiques/avoids (the sexism) or nullifies the original message by either not following through on the message of the story or contradicting it entirely (most of the adaptation episodes, really). There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of why the story is written that way, or they do in fact understand but deliberately try to circumvent addressing the themes of the story in the name of making them uncontroversial and removing them from modernity. But in doing so they don't replace it with anything that's of substance, they don't let the characters be themselves with their original warts and oddities either.

For the sake of brevity I'll save most of the minutiae of Moomin's characterization within the memoir for a later post, but I'll summarise that in the book he is characterised as a pitiable egomaniac after an early childhood of asking questions about the fundamentals of reality and being met with hostility or avoidance by everyone around him:

“So passed my early childhood in quiet and constant wonderment. I was permanently astonished, always repeating my questions of "What, when?" and "Who, how?" The Hemulen and her obedient foundlings avoided me as best they could; the word "why" seemed to make them uneasy.”

(...)

“But by and by a change came: I started to muse about the shape of my nose. I put my trivial surroundings aside and mused more and more about myself, and I found this to be a bewitching occupation. I stopped asking and longed instead to speak of my thoughts and feelings. Alas, there was no one besides myself who found me interesting.”

Much of the first half of the chapter is exercising what these 2 paragraphs summarise. The Principal seems more preoccupied with order and cleanliness than actually raising these children, she says dreams are trash right to Moomin's face.

However, the origin of why Moomin describes himself as talented rather than strange or some other word is because of her and her interest in astrology.

“However, the Hemulen who had built the Foundling Home was interested in astrology (somewhat), and wisely enough she observed the dominant stars at the time of my coming into the world. They indicated the birth of a very unusual and talented Moomin, and the Hemulen accordingly worried about the trouble awaiting her (...)”

Assuming that the Principal told him of this when he had the capacity for memory formed (or that any of this is true), she is the cause of why Moomin seems to act the way he did (presumptuous genetic disposition and inherent neurodivergency aside)

Moominpappa has latched onto this adjective ("talented") as if it were a lifesaver. He defines himself so immensely from this one word that it makes a hypothetical visit to a therapist a rather concerning prospect. But, again, I won't go too far into detail about it.

And here we come to face the original Call To Adventure. The early spring (yes, spring, not late winter like in the episode) in which he almost fell into the frozen sea. This is the one scene I wanted to talk about greatly, since it is the perfect microcosm of the difference between 90s Moomin and Book Moomin.

Moominpappa talks about this visit as a mere, vague whim. It was the first time he saw such a bright and full reflection of himself. Before, he had only looked at himself in the hall mirror back in the Foundling Home, and he'd look into his own eyes and wail sad phrases describing his misery until he felt better, but now… now there's a whole new light to see himself in, and he sees himself as a creature to compliment.

Here's the major difference between the source material and adaptation;

You may recall that in the episode his only complaint were his legs and he hopes to himself optimistically that they'd grow longer if he worked towards it. In the book, on the other hand…

“The paws were really my only disappointment: they had a look of helplessness and childishness that bewildered me.

"However," I thought, "perhaps it will pass with time. Doubtless my strength is in my head. Whatever I do, I will never bore people. I'll never give them time to look as far down as my paws." ”

He was offended by the mark of helplessness and indignity, just like in the prologue. He thinks about compensating, to make himself so grand and exciting that people won't have the time to notice his faults.

He won't give them the time. Not that they wouldn't dare, not that they'd never notice and not even that they'd ignore those faults, he'd be the one with agency to strip them of that possibility. And I believe that's very telling.

He lays down to get a better look at himself and sees not his reflection but the deep, dark vastness of the sea. He was initially giddy but soon falls into terror as he contemplates the depth of the waters he's sitting over until he feels upset. He stands back up and stomps on the ice to see if it would hold, he goes further out and stomps on the ice again, it breaks.

One of the major compromises of the adaptation that does an injustice to the book is that we don't get to take a proper look at his thought process. What was a brief and imaginative introspection in his supposed final moments (that really ought to cause some alarm about his priorities) that ends anticlimactically turns into an action scene.

“Perhaps one of the threatening shadows would devour me! It was not impossible that he would take one of my ears along to his children and tell them, "Now, eat up before it goes cold! This is genuine Moomin and not to be had every day!" Or I would float ashore with a tragical clump of seaweed behind one ear, and the Hemulen would weep regretfully and tell everyone she knew, "Oh, he was such a singular Moomin! What a pity I didn't understand it in time . . ."

I was just starting on my funeral when I felt something very cautiously nipping my tail.”

Moominpappa calls these thoughts "enticing dreams", which- erm, okay sir (the full implications of this is another pin I'll address in a future post). But anyway this establishes very clearly what Moomin's first thoughts will be when faced with certain situations, and that is the prospect of being given attention and acknowledgement, to be considered special and worth people's time. That even in the face of potential death he finds some way for his death to Mean Something for him and those who stumble upon him.

He also wants his Principal to be Wrong about him and realise that, and this will come into play in chapter 3.

The adaptation really fails to establish his priorities and desires, it even contradicts them outright later in the episode, but we'll get to that.

After crawling back on shore Moomin comes to the epiphany of wanting to experience the real world and taking his fate into his own paws, he can't possibly stay in the same living situation after such a matter.

He was cold all day after the incident but nobody asked why, which cemented his decision as nobody seemed to care about his well being in the slightest. He tore his bed sheets to use as a rope and his peers looked on without a word, which hurt his feelings, and finally in the evening he wrote his farewell letter and made his escape.

The escape itself had a lot of emphasis on how terrified he was, the bushes and stones turned into formless monsters because of his terror and imagination but it wasn't quite as sensational or emphasised as the episode portrays it. Moominpappa just describes how… scared and in need of comfort he felt, that even the Principal would've given him some comfort, but he just couldn't retreat after such an imposing letter announcing his leave.

Then we get our first intermission with Moominpappa in the process of writing these events, I will say that I won't be describing these mid-chapter intermissions in this essay unless they mention anything particularly important to the plot as they aren't necessary for this analysis.

And then sunrise came and it was the most glorious relief, it was his own private morning, he claims. And he tore the tail tag that marked him as number 13 and celebrated.

… Ah right I forgot to mention it was a tail tag and not a number written in black marker on his back, which is just… an extremely silly creative decision which strips away the symbolic victory he had in his escape, it didn't even stay on his back consistently even before the escape. It would've been really neat symbolism if he washed it off himself in the river the morning after his escape, a sort of renewal and cleansing of himself rather than the break from chains, but I suppose that's just plain missed opportunity. It's also a bit odd to not have him celebrate the escape, like, at all? Why is there no catharsis and victory after this big plot point?

After this, he celebrates, eats the pumpkin mash he took from the orphanage, celebrates some more until the sun set, then when he gets tired and ready to go sleep he decides that becoming a famous adventurer (yet another pin of discussion about Moominpappa's egotism) is what he'll do with his life and goes to sleep.

After waking up and admiring the great green world he finds himself in, Moomin comes across a Hedgehog lady (supposedly originally a Gaffsie as the preface implies?) who is cleaning a bowl made out of a walnut shell. The Hedgehog actually does a cameo in the episode but I understand why her character was removed from the story. Their conversation about who owns the forest and what Hemulens are isn't particularly important aside from establishing Moomin's naivety and lack of experience both with the world and interactions with other people, and that perhaps it wasn't only the Foundling Home who finds Moomin a bit of an unpleasant child to have to interact with.

(Side note: I say child but it's difficult to gauge how old he is, I'm assuming he's a teenager at this point because he distinguishes between "childhood" and "youth" and had to actively escape the foundling home, whereas such institutes tend to let their children go on their 18th birthday)

Continuing this removed section of the chapter is Moomin's imaginary house-building and showing it to the Hedgehog. This is an instance of Moominpappa's extended tangents throughout the book, here he goes into very, very vivid detail about drawing a Moominhouse (as he calls it) in the dirt and he's so proud of "building one" that he goes to show it off to the one person he's met this far only to realise he didn't actually build it, he receives a very cold and disgruntled reaction from the Hedgehog and they both walk away, she to her dishes and he to the brook. Then he goes on yet another tangent trying to reason that actually, building the house would've been a bad decision for Many Reasons, therefore he walks away from the interaction with his dignity intact.

I personally really enjoyed this section with the Hedgehog because it establishes how inexperienced Moomin is and just how stunted in his social capabilities it has made him. It gives us a lot of characterization and that Moominpappa is Totally Normal about houses, just… super, normal about them, guys. It sets a clear precedent on how his interactions with regular people would go, and clearly demonstrates how his childhood friendship has affected him. However I'm not quite so angry about the removal of it in the adaptation, as it doesn't really progress the plot or give us pertinent information that is essential to understanding the setting or characters, the Hedgehog doesn't even make a comeback for the rest of the book, her character is very much confined to this specific scene and doesn't quite elevate the story by that much besides the characterization and rather humorous scene it helps to provide. Very ironically, Moominpappa calls this sequence the first "real Event" in his life and "of the greatest importance" to his development. (I swear I love the way he talks about this so much in the narration.)

And here comes the real important first event of his life; his discovery of the water-wheel and first meeting with Hodgkins.

The way this interaction goes is a bit different than in the episode, Moomin only inspects and doesn't talk aloud about the water-wheel and Hodgkins' voice explaining what it and its purpose is comes out of blueberry bushes until he reveals himself. (the experiment was for counting the revolutions rather than the episode's explanation of it being him figuring out the propeller[?? Why change it to that??])

Moomin looks up at him and asks to whom he has the honour of speaking to, the stranger replies with a very brief "Hodgkins. And who are you?", Moomin then proceeds to introduce himself as a Moomin and a refugee born under special stars and Hodgkins asks "What stars?".

Moomin becomes very eager to answer this "first intelligent question put to him" (excuse to talk about himself at length) and proceeds to sit beside Hodgkins and backstory dump with some obvious embellishments and more importantly without interruption. Moomin loves that Hodgkins is clearly invested and after graciously finishing his backstory Hodgkins could only sit there in thoughts and say;

"Strange. Rather strange."

Moomin agrees, Hodgkins then makes a comment about Hemulens being unpleasant and gives Moomin half a ham sandwich. The two of them sit together until sunset, Moominpappa talks about the way Hodgkins talks, then goes on a tangent about how to make a water-wheel before finally describing how the two of them slept in Moomin's imaginary house built on the meadow, finally ending the chapter with this:

“The only thing of importance was that I had found my first friend and consequently begun my life in earnest.”

…

(*Clears throat to perform an impression of a voice over for an animal documentary*) And here we observe the lost, orphan Moomin imprinting on the first creature to show him patience and decency. How disastrous it'll be for his mental health and future interpersonal interactions, we'll just have to wait and see.

Okay but in all seriousness this interaction is very much the most important post-foundling home event as it changes the whole course of his life and maybe possibly his entire brain wiring. Hodgkins here is the first person to let Moomin talk about himself and offer kindness and patience with him. Hodgkins is the first person Moominpappa mentions in his special thanks for the preface, Hodgkins is the only person he'll show any semblance of sympathy towards, the only person that could convince him to take responsibility for anything, Hodgkins' absence is what causes Moomin to spiral into a depression, Hodgkins is the only person besides any kingly figure that he admires and is the golden standard everyone fails to live up to.

Hodgkins is IMPORTANT. He is the most important and awesome figure in Moomin's life until he meets Moominmamma at the very end. Hodgkins is by no means written as flawless (probably because Tove didn't want to get too into the exaggerations Moominpappa would've actually made and it wouldn't be as interesting or entertaining) but I cannot overstate just how much he means to Moominpappa.

This is Moomin finally Meeting The Mentor before he Crosses The Threshold in his Hero's Journey, and that Mentor will be the cause of his Abyss/Death & Rebirth. Hodgkins is the creator of the literal vehicle on which the middle part of the story takes place in, the creator of the other vehicle the first climax of the story takes place in, and he, quite possibly, has the most agency in the story, either as much or more so than Moomin depending on how you look at it.

You can remove the other characters but Hodgkins is the only character besides Moominpappa, Moominmamma and the Principal that you cannot remove in an essential retelling of the story (which is why the stage play in the Golden Tail episode of Moominvalley 2019 bothered me immensely but I digress.)

The way the adaptation portrays this relationship as a casual acquaintance to sort of friendship with no emotional or interpersonal ramifications for Moomin's character is an insult to the very foundation of the book's emotional story-telling, but then again, as I've mentioned in the beginning and demonstrated in this whole analysis of the chapter: the adaptation does not concern itself with the emotional narrative. Just the barebones plot.

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2 is where we meet our companion characters, the Muddler and the Joxter, meet our antagonistic Chekhov's Gun, Edward the Booble, and finally Cross our Threshold.

This section won't be as in depth as chapter 1 because its focus is mostly on other characters rather than Moominpappa's feelings or establishing themes and it's not their turn to be the subject of my derangement because, as Moomintroll stresses in the intermission for chapter 3, this is Moominpappa's story (although they might have their turn in the future), and also the episode pretty much reconfigures the entire chapter to be as simple as possible for the sake of time so there isn't much to compare the book's version of events to.

What the chapter aims to do is establish the dynamics between the characters, do a little bit of act 1 setup and get the plot really going. Some may not notice this at first, but Moomin is very much not a part of any of these dynamics besides a continuation of the one he has with Hodgkins. In fact, one could argue that his lack of dynamic with the other characters right from the introductions is a dynamic in itself, as it highlights Moomin's pattern of not giving or receiving substantial acknowledgment by or for everyone but Hodgkins. However, this isn't to diminish these new introductions and dynamic establishments, as it contributes to highlighting Moomin's Issue as well as giving us characters that would be much needed to progress the plot, expand on the themes and give us new avenues to be entertained.

How the adaptation fails at this is due to both time constraints and a disinterest in the emotional and interpersonal narrative of the book, focusing instead on the action and adventure elements.

The chapter starts with Moomin waking up to Hodgkins using a fishing net on the brook. Moomin asks if there's any fish in that brook and Hodgkins, in very brief, disjointed terms, explains that there aren't any fish in the brook, but since the net is a birthday gift from his nephew, he couldn't let it go to waste lest he feels sad at its uselessness. Moominpappa then gives us a second-hand explanation on who Hodgkins' nephew is: he is a chap by the name of the Muddler who had his parents disappear during spring cleaning, lives in an old blue coffee tin and is a collector who is particularly fond of buttons. Moominpappa then explains that Hodgkins' speech pattern does not allow for even this brief of an explanation to be given at once, though he fails to mention the singular exception to this which we'll find out very soon.

After all this Hodgkins wiggles one of his ears at…

Okay let me digress a bit because I didn't know where else to put it, but Moominpappa's Memoirs places a lot of strange emphasis on ears and I can't for the life of me figure out how much importance to give this and whether or not this is some thematic symbolism, or even what it could mean thematically if it were the case. The first thing Moomin compliments about himself in the frozen sea scene is his ears, the morbid near-death imagination puts emphasis on his ears in both scenarios, Moomin does a lot of ear things, Hodgkins' defining physical trait is his ears to the point where we are quite literally introduced to him via his ears and they are one of his main modes of expression/communication, Muddler flapped his ears in his helplessness and Edward was concerned about children crawling up his ear and Snufkin covered his ears in shame and Moominpappa covers his ears with his hat, and he wiggles his ears in satisfaction at the end. There's just so much… ear stuff, so much more than any of the other books, and I have no idea what to make of it.

Now with that digression aside, Hodgkins wiggles one of his ears at Moomin and then goes into the woods, Moomin follows him. And then we arrive at the Muddler's coffee tin, Hodgkins blows a whistle (I swear to you guys that Muddler is actually dog-coded believe me I've had too much time for this thought to sizzle) and Muddler pops out of the tin bright as day and energetic as a kid on Christmas. Muddler talks very erratically without much room for reply but is stopped by Hodgkins who replies to 2 of his sentences; nevermind tidying the tin, and this new person is a Moomin (but with bare minimum words, of course). Muddler welcomes Moomin and retrieves a box of miscellaneous items tied with string.

Hodgkins asks Muddler if he can paint, Muddler confirms and then proceeds to ask what kind of paint job he needs and if it has to do with the surprise Hodgkins has apparently been keeping from him until this day. Hodgkins says it's a secret which causes Muddler to get over-excited and break his box's string which spills all the (somewhat strange and alarming selection of) items, Hodgkins calmly helps him pick it all up and re-ties it with a rope from his own pocket, all the while Muddler explains that he lost a splendid piece of string and needlessly apologises. The three of them walk on until they arrive at a hazel thicket, Hodgkins gives the two of them a serious look and Muddler asks if the surprise is behind the thicket, Hodgkins nods and they crawl through the bushes.

What I really like about this sequence is that it characterises Hodgkins and Muddler very thoroughly and establishes that they already have much of a close history far before Moomin entered the picture. Hodgkins is generally a very good dude who is gentle about his nephew's feelings and Muddler is a very eccentric and excitable but polite person, the two of them seem to have a very close relationship with one another and we don't even have much backstory besides Muddler's orphanhood and independent living condition.

Strangely enough Moominpappa doesn't take an aside to express his thoughts on Muddler and the most Muddler ever says to him is "Hello! Welcome! Certainly!". These two are devoid of interaction and it almost definitely feels deliberate on the author's part, especially compared to Muddler and Hodgkins.

Our trio crawl out of the bushes into a clearing and it turns out the surprise is a boat, nay, a ship. Moominpappa describes the ship as so:

“It was squat and strong, like Hodgkins himself; it looked just as secure and trustworthy. I knew nothing about ships, but I experienced at once a strong feeling of the concept of a ship, so to speak.”

(Really helpful at visualising the ship, Pappa, I almost can't tell how much you take a liking to Hodgkins himself)

He then describes how excited he got about it but then he imagines Hodgkins' process for building this boat, how he must've come here every morning to work on the ship on his own every morning for who knows how long and not have anybody know about it, which made him feel sad. Moomin asks what the ship's name is and Hodgkins proceeds to call it the Ocean Orchestra, named after his long-lost brother's poetry anthology and he says that the name should be painted in ultramarine blue.

… I really really dislike how they changed this in the adaptation by making it Hodgkins' own original name because it really takes out the sentimentality of the name. It's such a simple change too, he could've just said "Her name's the Ocean Orchestra, named after the book my poet brother wrote" in the adaptation but it didn't and it frustrates me because it takes out so much of Hodgkins' character in one fell swoop and makes him seem a bit pretentious especially given how he treats Joxter and Muddler within the episode.

That aside, Muddler gets immediately excited and basically asks if he can paint the ship in red, Hodgkins nods and tells him to be careful with the waterline. After Muddler leaves for his tin Moomin tells Hodgkins that he's quite the carpenter, to which Hodgkins replies with an unprompted ramble about the construction of the ship which Moominpappa (disappointingly) doesn't relay to us at all. Hodgkins even takes out a pen and paper to describe the paddle wheels, Moomin wasn't quite able to understand any of it besides Hodgkins seeming troubled about the paddle-wheel, and Moominpappa admits he couldn't be of much help as his talents do not extend to the field of engineering.

This is the exception to Hodgkins' speech pattern that I mentioned earlier.

You must understand that Hodgkins is very, very, very fixated on engineering, like he gets so excited about it, I can't stress it enough.

Anyway, Moomin's attention gets drawn to the little house in the middle of the boat and asks Hodgkins if he lives in that little thing he describes as a "Moomin sunmer-house", Hodgkins corrects him by calling it the pilot-house in a disapproving tone (please, he's even fastidious about his creations, it's great). Moominpappa starts critiquing the boat's aesthetic (he's very normal about house-building, remember) and Moomin enters the pilot-house to see someone sleeping on the floor with a hat covering his face.

Moomin asks Hodgkins if it's someone he knows, "The Joxter," says Hodgkins after checking the interior. Moominpappa proceeds to describe the Joxter in a way that can be summed up as: "doesn't take care of himself". Muddler announces breakfast, Joxter wakes up and stretches and Muddler proceeds to scold Joxter a bit about not following the No Admittance sign on the door, Joxter concedes that the sign is exactly why he came inside.

We are then treated to a description of the Joxter's behaviour, which boils down to him being a very anti-authoritarian punk but otherwise pretty much your average overfed housecat. Afterwards, our now 4 main characters head to Muddler's tin to eat cold tin lids of omelette served on a checkerboard.

Now… the Joxter is pretty weird as a character within the narrative. He doesn't accomplish much in the ways of contributing to the larger plot besides knocking the idea of fixing the Ghost problem into Moomin's head way later which could have easily been done by someone else, he is a very useless character narratively and mostly serves to add to the book's humour and dialog. What the Joxter contributes to the theme and emotional arc, however, is being an ideological opposite to Moomin. Where Moomin is an ambitious monarchist with a goal in life, Joxter is a lazy anarchist who only lives for life's sake, and that serves as an interesting foil to highlight Moomin's character despite the lack of interactions they have otherwise. Another weird thing about Joxter is despite his unimportance to the plot, he is much more discussed in Moominpappa's narration of the story than Muddler, usually to muse about his own philosophy and need to be a part of great opportunities as opposed to Joxter's laid back attitude towards the majority of matters.

What we learn about Joxter's relationships to the other two in this scene is that Hodgkins doesn't seem to particularly mind Joxter's presence and Muddler doesn't approve of his rule-breaking, further characterising Hodgkins as still a pretty patient cool dude and Muddler as a goody-two-shoes.

The crew eat their breakfast and Hodgkins, after a while of silent chewing, notifies Muddler that there's something hard in his mouth, to this, Muddler freaks out and tells him to spit it out. Hodgkins spits out a few cogwheels and Muddler apologises for the mishap, Hodgkins simply frowns and stares at his dish and Muddler proceeds to cry.

Interestingly, the Joxter is quick to plead for forgiveness on Muddler's behalf. Hodgkins says there's no need and draws up an inspired diagram on how Muddler's cogwheels would fix his aforementioned propeller and paddle-wheel issue (Moominpappa even redraws this for the audience for some reason which brings up the question if every other illustration is also Moominpappa's artistry in-universe but it's not important) and after they finished the meal Muddler gets so inspired by the fact he somewhat helped Hodgkins with something that he starts painting the ship with all his might. Once he was done, he painted a lot of things other than the boat red as collateral, including himself (though he didn't forget to paint the name in ultramarine, of course).

Hodgkins inspects the paint job, which unfortunately did not heed his previous warning about the waterline and the name was misspelt as "the Oshun Oxtra", Muddler eagerly awaits his assessment and begs him to say something about it, Hodgkins takes a moment to think and says "Take it easy, it'll do". Muddler is relieved at this positive-adjacent review and goes to paint his own tin with the leftover paint.

In the evening Hodgkins fishes out a binnacle and aneroid barometer out of the brook using his birthday net and Moominpappa comments on how strange of a find it was before we get to our second intermission with Moominpappa and his beta audience.

The characterization of Hodgkins and Muddler's relationship here is really astounding, here we can understand that Hodgkins seems to care deeply about Muddler's feelings and stops himself from saying anything hurtful towards his nephew. Hodgkins here is characterised as very tender-hearted and prefers to spare others' (or at least his nephew's) feelings when he can and is incredibly patient, which is compatible with Muddler's extremely polite and emotionally intense nature as he's prone to crying when he thinks he's slighted Hodgkins in some way. This stands in stark contrast to Moomin's relationship with his Principal, as she was depicted as very critical and impatient with Moomin while Moomin is seemingly unempathetic about making her upset and continued with his irritating behaviour in spite of it.

Hodgkins' patience and consideration is exactly what made Moomin gravitate towards him in the first place, and I find it very ironic that the adaptation has Hodgkins assuming that Muddler flaked out of painting the boat and the first thing we see him tell Muddler is introducing Moomin and then to hurry up with painting because of the new kid he met and invited to this important launching ceremony a mere minute ago.

After the intermission Moominpappa describes his first bit of wood carving and his creation of a scaled onion-shaped ornament that would adorn the roof of the pilot-house; he was proud of it, but Hodgkins had other concerns at the time. Hodgkins is unusually talkative as he is extremely worried about the boat being stuck and unable to be launched, Joxter sees this, gets a bit didactic about the unending cycle of work and recounts a story of his cousin who studied trigonometry and got eaten by the Groke. Moominpappa describes that he's quite reminiscent of Snufkin and how he never cared to worry about worthy matters, he also backhandedly says that the only thing Joxter would be remembered by is his inclusion in Moominpappa's memoirs (we get quite a few of these odd insults at Joxter and Muddler from Pappa's narration, unfortunately).

Joxter asks when they'll start launching, Moomin asks if he's coming along, Joxter answers "of course" in an astonished tone. Muddler comes in saying he's been asking the same thing as he can't live in his tin anymore and continues to explain that the red paint he used on the tin never dried and thus got into everything including his food and bed, which is driving him insane. Hodgkins tells Muddler to go and pack and Muddler rushes off while musing about the future, and we get this rather blunt line from Moominpappa's narration:

“In my opinion, our crew wasn't too reliable.”

After some attempts to get the boat unstuck with no success, Hodgkins sat down and buried his face in his paws to ponder a solution. Moomin thinks Hodgkins is grieving and (this is literally the only instance of Moomin doing this in the book) tries to comfort him, Hodgkins corrects him and starts thinking out loud, coming to the conclusion that, rather than bring the boat to the water, he needs to bring the water TO the boat; he needs Edward the Booble to sit in the river and raise the water levels.

Moomin asks if this Edward creature's butt is really that big, Hodgkins says it's bigger, then he asks if Moomin has a calendar. Hodgkins didn't really need it as he seemingly memorised Edward's schedule and finds that his bathing day is today, perfect. He tells Moomin to follow him. Moomin asks if Boobles are savages and Hodgkins explains that they are but they don't step on people on purpose, they cry about it for a week and even pay for the funeral. Moomin mumbles about how that stuff isn't really helpful once you're stepped on, feeling a bit brave, and they arrive at Edward's leg which Moomin mistakes for a tower. Hodgkins, after correcting Moomin, tells him to keep quiet and proceeds to shout at Edward asking where he plans to bathe that day.

Edward answers (oh yeah Edward actually talks in the book, I'll get to that) that he'll bathe in the sea like always, and calls Hodgkins a sand-flea (Edward insults the other characters by calling them small things very often). Hodgkins tells him to try the river as it has a sandy bottom, Edward calls out his bullcrap but Hodgkins insists, Edward grumbles and relents but threatens to not pay for their funeral if this is a trick, as Edward has very sensitive feet and behind. Hodgkins whispers at Moomin to run and they rush back to the boat as Edward sits down and roars in pain. They make it to the boat and it was flooded in foam, but then it finally floated and Hodgkins lead the way through the woods and over the sandbanks using the boat's wheels; the launching of the Oshun Oxtra was a success! Except for one small thing…

A red tin floated over the river, which reminded everyone that OH CRAP THEY FORGOT THE MUDDLER! And the Muddler was in danger of almost strangling himself in his scarf as he flapped about helplessly, covered in red paint. Moomin and Joxter hoist the tin up on deck, Hodgkins asks his nephew how he feels and Muddler basically tells Hodgkins how everything's become a mess, even his mind, though Muddler then proceeds to happily reorganise his buttons. The boat continues paddling down the river and Moomin sits beside Hodgkins and asks if he thinks Edward is angry with them, and the chapter ends with one of his usual short answers:

“"Very," replied Hodgkins.”

I said in the beginning of this section that Edward is a Chekhov's Gun, and by that I mean that he's established in "act 1" of the book and will then be used to resolve an issue in "act 3", albeit not intentionally by the characters. Here we have the set up, and it very clearly illustrates just how massive Edward is which will come into play, we get the reminder which we'll get to in the part 2 analysis, and then we finally get the payoff in part 3.

What I will say about the reminder is that the adaptation fails to give it to us because it decided that Edward's personality is completely unneeded for the story, so his sense of vengeance which lead up to the reminder step is left out and it makes the (anti)climax in part 3 feel out of left-field. Edward in the book is not only a plot device but also the angry comic relief, he is his own character who has a history with Hodgkins (at least) and clearly a less than good one at that. Edward's personality is what drove Edward's actions and role in the story later on and that makes him an interesting character, but then again, the adaptation doesn't care for that.

He is the first character we see Hodgkins being unkind to in this book, using him as a means to an end and disregarding the consequences that come from it. What's different with Edward for Hodgkins to do this to him? To be so uncaring about his sensitive bottom? Well, Edward is the solution to his boat problem.

Hodgkins will go to any length for his precious inanimate daughter to the point of looking past other people if it means fixing a problem or focusing on his creation, you think I'm exaggerating but this is actually another set up which leads to a big point in the plot. Hodgkins is a good, kind fellow but he is still humanly selfish and fixated engineering, in fact this is hinted at in the way he treated Moomin when the boat is in conversation, correcting Moomin about the pilot-house in a disapproving tone and cutting him off when brainstorming a way to fix the boat being stuck, or even forgetting that his nephew wasn't on the boat.

THIS. WILL BE. IMPORTANT. FOR LATER.

This is also an important turning point in Muddler's character as we don't see him being as hyperactive and excitable as he is in this chapter for the rest of the book, him describing himself as going crazy from the red paint probably has something to do with it. Although he doesn't go actually insane, or at the very least doesn't act like it, it's still noteworthy how his overexcited demeanour shifts into something a little more reserved later on, especially considering how Moominpappa describes Muddler as having his fur tainted pink for the rest of the time he knew him. Or it could just be that he's going to be stuck in an unfamiliar environment for the rest of the story.

It's a miracle he hasn't died from lead poisoning due to the red paint, though.

CHAPTER 3 (⅓)

Chapter 3 is where we finally get our Road of Trials after Crossing the Threshold. There's no turning back to the familiar world for Moomin and there will be many problems that will await him down the river. In this chapter our crew will be meeting with allies and enemies who will be the dominoes that lead them to their… admittedly unplanned destination. However for this part of the analysis we'll just be meeting with our first nuisance; not the Principal, but her aunt. Let me explain:

Moominpappa starts the chapter describing how the boat continued along the river and generally describing the situation with everyone, mainly that he and Hodgkins were the only responsible members of the crew while Joxter and Muddler minded their own businesses. They left the tin on the deck and they never succeeded in cleaning Muddler of the red paint. Moomin would spend most of his time sitting in the pilot house, checking the barometer and thinking to himself. Namely, Moominpappa describes, he most enjoyed thinking about how impressed the Principal would be with him:

“I especially liked to think about the Hemulen. How impressed she would have been to see me an adventurous part-owner of a river-boat. As a matter of fact, it would have served her right!”

(This is what we call foreshadowing, my friends [you are my friend if you've made it this far in the essay, no takesies backsies])

One evening, they come by a bay, which gives Joxter a foreboding feeling that Hodgkins heeds as warning right away, ordering Muddler to let go of the anchor. Muddler, in his excitement, throws their kettle of Irish stew instead of the anchor by accident, Muddler apologises and hopes to make up for it by finding some jelly, after which Moominpappa makes an unnecessary jab at his whole species saying that mistakes like this are common with them.

Joxter stands over the railing on look-out, Moomin asks him about the foreboding and Joxter tells him to hush because he hears something. Moomin himself doesn't hear anything and promptly dismisses him, and tells him to come inside. Muddler announces that he's found the jelly but right then all of them hear the sound of wailing, which scares Muddler into dropping his food. Joxter identifies it as the Groke's hunting song.

Moomin asks if the Groke can swim and Hodgkins says that nobody knows, and then Moominpappa describes the thoughts that came from her sound.

The crew notice someone running around on the bank of the river bay, and Hodgkins glumly assumes that person will get eaten alive by the Groke. Moomin heroically declares that he'll save them (Moomin/pappa uses "gender-neutral he" here but I'll just use they/them), to which Hodgkins says he won't have the time, but Moomin's already on the rail having made his decision.

“"An unknown adventurer doesn't ask for wreaths on his grave. But I'd appreciate a granite monument with two weeping Hemulens!"”

Moomin dives into the river, bonks his head on the kettle Muddler dropped and scoops out the stew continuing to swim towards the soon-to-be victim.

“"Courage!" I cried. "The Moomins are coming! There's something rotten in a country that allows its Grokes to eat anybody they like!"”

(The Groke is a metaphor for the police? /joke)

The Groke's singing ceased and now Moomin can only hear the panting of the mystery person. Moomin yells at them to hop into the kettle and they do, making the kettle sink down to its handles from their weight. Moomin swims back with the person while the Groke howled disappointedly (Moominpappa describes this in a very long and self-congratulatory way). They get the person on deck and Hodgkins lights a lamp to see who it is.

I think it was a clever creative decision in how the way they changed Muddler's rescue in the adaptation ties into how they changed this scene, by making the tin tied to the boat via rope and thus making it readily available for Moomin to use as a container to save this person. I dunno, I think it's one of the few decisions I actually agreed with in this adaptation.

This, Moominpappa describes, is one of the worst moments of his youth, as he had saved his Principal. Out of instinct and fright he raises his tail at 45°, but then he snaps out of it and acts all nonchalant and cocky, saying he'd never believe it. The Hemulen asks "Believe what?", Moomin answers that he'd rescued her- he means that he'd saved her life- he means… Did she get his farewell letter?

The Principal seems strangely confused, she says she'd never seen him before and got no such letter and speculates that he must've forgotten to do the proper procedures for sending mail, but then graciously compliments him on his swimming.

Joxter asks if Moomin and the Principal knew each other and as it turns out… uhm... She's actually the Principal's aunt. The Hemulen Aunt, Moominpappa calls her. Quite embarrassing.

She then asks Hodgkins to bring a rag for her to clean the floor for them, Hodgkins gives her Joxter's pyjamas in a rush. As she's cleaning, she explains that she's mad and tidying up is the one thing that helps her with that feeling. A silence falls as the crew watch her, Joxter finally exasperatedly mumbles about his aforementioned foreboding, then the Hemulen Aunt snaps at him and tells him how bad it is for someone as small as him to smoke, and that the crew are lucky that she's on board now and they're going to keep things in order. Hodgkins excuses himself and locks himself in the pilot-house.

Moominpappa describes how the barometer fell 40 notches from fright and didn't rise back up until the incident with the niblings. We are then treated to an intermission with Moominpappa and his audience.

And that's where we're going to end the description of the book for this post.

Now, the way the episode adapted this irks me.

In the book, the Principal and the Foundling Home is one of the few things we don't get any closure on, and likely intentionally so. One of the first things Moomin really wanted to get out of this is to prove his previous guardian wrong, or at least how she should've seen his supposed specialness in a good light, to realise even if too late that he was singular and good and worthy of praise. Here he almost seems afraid of what he thought was her, he toned down his righteousness just to basically ask if she came for him, only to be embarrassed (although he doesn't describe his embarrassment here). He instinctively fixed his posture for her and even in trying to seem nonchalant he LOWERED himself for her, he wanted to know if, at minimum, she was worried and came looking for him. But it's not her, it's her aunt. A person he's never met before and already presented herself a roadblock to the personal freedom he and the crew were supposed to have on this boat.

His old life never gets closure, he never finds out what his principal felt or what she did when she found the letter. That prospect of closure gets shot down by this new character and we are to never hear of it again.

This isn't to say I'm opposed to the idea of the person he rescued actually being the Principal herself, I find it a really interesting venture, actually. Can you imagine if we've had Moomin's ego and desires established in the episode and the dire devastation she'd bring upon him by not realising her wrongness but instead chastising him for taking his life into his own hands (as he sees it)? The bitterness and grief and probably depression/guilt he'd feel from this? It would've been such a great avenue for his character to be explored in this nightmare scenario and the adaptation just throws it away by making him just… disinterested in her and saying that he wouldn't have saved her if he knew. It's such a blow to his potential to be an interesting character.

We don't get any ounce of her being her own person like we do with the Hemulen Aunt, either. The Hemulen Aunt in her introduction already seems bossy and talks to people derogatorily but she isn't above complimenting Moomin or actively trying to stay calm in the face of her humiliating circumstances because she's polite and trying to make the most of the situation, she sees this group of irresponsible men and she wants to help them, even if her demeanour seems rash. In the adaptation the Principal had supposedly gone to search for Moomin but she doesn't show an ounce of relief or personal concern for his safety with these strangers, there is no dimension to her, there is no shred of politeness or decency or trait that doesn't pertain to being annoyed at Moomin for everything he does here. This is the most mean-spirited the show has ever gotten and it comes from not only how the Principal acts but how the other characters treat her as well. There's such a lack of sympathy from both ends.

Final Thoughts

Moominpappa's Memoirs is a character-driven story yet the adaptation fails to frame it as such. Where the book gave us an emphasis on characterization and feelings for this part of the story, the episode takes its time with the overextended action scenes and unnecessary interruption near the end. Moomin isn't given a drive or personality in the adaptation aside from a back-seat desire for adventure that came out of a near-death experience, Moominpappa's narration is underutilised and isn't given its characteristic pzazz, Hodgkins is too talkative but somehow much more vague of a character than in the book (and what little we can understand of him is entirely inaccurate to the book), and Muddler, Joxter, and Edward the Booble fall by the wayside because of the writing's priorities.

As someone who is deeply passionate for the book (if you can't tell already), it's really upsetting to see such a fun story with dramatic elements be so poorly representative of its characters and lacking in thematic writing or exploration.

With all that said, I thank you for reading this egregiously long essay and hope to write the next 2 parts a little more quickly now that I've set up the foundations of this book. I also hope you find this a useful essay for both writing and your understanding of the characters, the Oshun Oxtra has been a painfully misrepresented group of characters for the whole fandom and there just isn't a lot of in-depth analysis of the book that fully captures the entirety of what it depicts in these characters. I'll see you next time.

- Yours truly.

#moominvalley #moomin #moomins #lightbulb moment #moominpappa #moominmamma #moomintroll #muddler #hodgkins #joxter #moomin muddler #moomin hodgkins #moomin joxter #the muddler #the joxter #edward the booble #snufkin #moomin sniff #moominpappa's memoirs #adventures of moominpappa #moomin analysis #sorry this was a day later than I promised 😔😔😔 BUT ATLEAST I DID IT. DEAR GROKE I DID IT!!!!!!#PLEASE READ I BEG OF YOU IDC IF YOU PUT THIS THROUGH A TEXT TO SPEECH TO LISTEN TO IN THE BACKGROUND JUST GIVE ME VALIDATION #I DIDN'T PUT MY WHOLE LIFE INTO THIS JUST TO GET IGNORED I AM HOLDING YOU BY THE SHIRT RIGHT NOW #(for legal reasons this is an exaggeration and a purely comedic expression of myself)#also I couldn't be bothered to put pictures or accentuate the text with bold and italics in this one so I'm sorry if it looks boring

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