#the suit was also fun i did look at 1930s suits a bit more than i usually do but he doesn't get a hat cause i hate drawing hats | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spookybokchoy · 5 months ago

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I got inspired from other ppl doing redesigns of Hazbin characters and wanted to give a go at it. I don't watch the show but I know info about it from the internet because it's kinda hard to avoid it with it being everywhere. Like most ppl I like the fun idea of their designs but there is much left desired when taking account animation and how they stand out from one another in the background. I focused on character design in college so I'm looking at it through a designer's pov. I feel I know enough about the show to give design feedback. Even so you can still disagree with me/challenge me and be valid. Critique is how we grow as artists! We need to know how to give good criticism and how to take it ourselves :) I'll say the strengths and weaknesses of each original design and go over the changes/why

Charlie- Her original design in the show's cute but I thought she was a clown, not a demon at first. Already has a "demon form" with horns+ tail so I added those built in already. Wanted her to feel optimistic but unsure of herself. Lucifer- Original suit tells he's an over the top king, added gold shoulder pads matching the crown piece and exaggerated his shortness so now he has a Napoleon complex and takes pride from being short. Him and Charlie keep the mostly red yellow white color scheme to signify their royalty. Vaggie Vega- Unique hair shape, good for recognition. Changed name to Vega/Vegatha, sounds strong willed, better fitting for her. "X" over hair distracts from her face, put it underneath. I also made her a bit darker in value to subtly show she's a fallen angel Husker- Eyebrow game is strong, got a unique face from your typical toothy big-eyed citizens. Too many symbols that look pretty but don't make sense in his character. He's a sulky hard ass who doesn't want attention but he's got a design that's very eye-catching. I made him look lower class since he used to be an overlord and is fighting a gambling addiction. 180 color change too so you know he's a cat with owl features.

Angel Dust- Iconic floofy hair swoop. Darker suit to bring out face with a heart choker bc he's a feminine fellow after all. On that note, more pink leaning color scheme. Added abdomen for more spider theming. Dr. Pentious- His Victorian steam punk theme is fun & quirky though you can't quite see it in his design. You can't really see it in my design either cuz I was more focused on filtering out all the eyes and extra details. I would want to take this back to the board and do it over. His original top hat face distracts from his actual one so that had to go. 2 front fangs to appear more snakey. Alastor- His design works for the 1930s the decade he passed. I don't get the correlation to radio and voodoo though. The whole discourse with him being creole is messy so I scrapped it and made him a white American broadcaster to not deal with that. I made him blind with supernatural hearing abilities leaning into the sound aspect. It feels chilling knowing he hears your every move, emotion and heartbeat like the warden from Minecraft. Deer and orange fox themed for a dual nature. Vox- This idea of a tech savvy con man is super fun. Made his persona charming and eccentric, being able to appear friendly while being sketchy as f. His body is made of wires too with his teeth resembling the shock waves on his hat. Kept the pinstripes for a wirey feel.

I also did some Helluva Boss redesigns too! I think Helluva designs deliver pretty well (besides Queen Bee) so I more or so redesigned them based off my own head cannons. I used to watch the show but fell off around halfway of S2 bc I wasn't vibing with the direction of the story. Octavia- Young entrepreneur, takes after her father and mother being snobby and looks down at lower classes who she sees as less intelligent than high class. Very creative in problem solving. Millie- I like her og clothes alot. Those overalls are chic. This outfit is what she'd wear out in the field when she's working for IMP or at the farm. She and Loona fight alot about who works harder and Loona having an attitude problem towards everyone. Sallie Mae- Not much change other than white hair and removed eyelashes. I might want to make her shirt dark muted blue instead. I gave her a backstory how she ran away from toxic masculinity parents and eventually gets hired at IMP as a spy.

Loona- Emo to the extremo. She's originally goth but I got emo from her I'm sorry she just doesn't look goth. She's very lax when it comes to her job and slacks off constantly. She still does it well despite not working as hard as Millie, Moxxie or Blitz. She's strict but means well and cares for ppl around her. She also gets adopted at age 14 in my head cannon.

Bee- 180 change completely. She's a thick queen! Made her black coded with more stripes cuz she's a BEE. I don't get why Vivienne didn't give her stripes bc that's a design thing she uses so much and she doesn't use it in a character whose name is BEE? What??? anyway her design is still complex but simplified and uncluttered for animation so the animators can have pleasant dreams. She's the child of Beelzebub and a hell hound. So that's my take on Hazbin/Helluva character design! This was fun re imagining not only the characters but the story itself. I may write a fan fiction but i dunno right now. I respect the original source material which is something I feel everyone needs to acknowledge when they do a redesign of anything. There are things I don't like about the original and that's ok! That's part of why I did the redesigns. That being said I don’t support Vivziepop :)

#character design #digital artist #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #hazbin redesign #charlie morningstar #lucifer morningstar #angel dust #alastor #sir pentious #loona #hazbin hotel husk #helluva fanart #design ideas #helluva millie

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signalwatch · 2 years ago

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Movies 2022 By the Numbers

For the most part, I use this blog to just keep track of the movies I've watched and jot down some thoughts on them. There's no real reason for it, but I do it. The PodCast is a lovely bit of product of this habit, and my desire to spend time chatting with pals.

Since I have the blog, every year for the past few years I've logged how many movies I've watched, and looked at a few stats. I'm not sure it's of any particular interest to anyone but myself, but there you have it.

As always, you're welcome to review the spreadsheet yourself.

So... how many movies did we watch?

Total Number of Movies Watched

This includes movies watched more than once, which is only one movie, I believe. Turning Red. It's fun. Watch it.

This year I watched 190 movies.

For Comparison:

in 2021 I watched 302 movies

in 2020 I watched 269 movies

in 2019 I watched 204 movies

in 2018 I watched 179 movies

A lot of factors went into this. I was watching baseball and futbol and football. I watched a LOT of television (including watching Inhumans TWICE), and it probably means I need to a do a post about all the @#$%ing TV I watched this year. Plus, I was taking a class. Less said about that, the better.

Percentage difference from prior years:

2021: -45.53%

2020: -34.42%

2019: -7.11%

2018: +5.96%

Genre

We continue to tweak genre a bit. This year I actually broke superheroes into DC and Marvel, for example. I continue to include neo-noir and borderline noir as noir.

I also lumped a *lot* stuff into "Holiday" movies. And some Holiday stuff I called "Comedy" if it suited my needs, and at least one movie occurred during the holidays but I counted it as noir, I believe. If this isn't perfect, well, you'll be fine. This isn't for awards or money.

Adventure: 13 - 6.84%

Animated Comedy: 01 - 0.53%

Comedy: 27 - 14.21%

DC Superheroes: 04 - 2.11%

Marvel Superheroes: 13 - 6.84%

Disney: 03 - 1.58%

Documentary: 13 - 6.84%

Holiday: 19 - 10.00%

Horror: 34 - 17.89%

Kids: 01 - 0.53%

Musical: 07 - 3.68%

Mystery: 05 - 2.63%

Noir: 26 - 13.68%

Sci-Fi: 16 - 8.42%

I was honestly surprised at the percentage of Noir films. I figured I was way behind this year. I also will be dialing back how many horror movies I watch, by percentage, next year. That was... a lot.

Total super-stuff was pretty high, especially considering I made my way through 3 or 4 Marvel TV shows and some DC stuff.

By Decade

As I often say - I'm not particularly beholden to watching newer pictures. Lemme just pull something off the shelf from any era. I didn't watch any silent movies this year, I guess, so my 1920's viewing is not particularly great.

1930's: 06 - 3.16%

1940's: 18 - 9.47%

1950's: 15 - 7.89%

1960's: 05 - 2.63%

1970's: 18 - 9.47%

1980's: 33 - 17.37%

1990's: 19 - 10.00%

2000's: 11 - 5.79%

2010's: 12 - 6.32%

2020's: 53 - 27.89%

Watched By Month

I don't know what was going on in May. I guess I went outside or something.

January: 22

February: 12

March: 15

April: 18

May: 09

June: 11

July: 13

August: 13

September: 13

October: 26 - Horror movie season

November: 16

December: 22

Watched By Format

Austin Film Society: 02

Amazon: 66

Apple+: 01

BluRay: 15

Criterion Channel: 10

Disney+: 23

DVD: 03

Hallmark (cable): 05

HBOmax: 27

Hulu: 05

Netflix: 04

Paramount+: 02

Peacock: 03

Roku: 01

Showtime trial: 01

TBS (cable): 01

TCM (cable): 18

Tubi: 02

How Many Movies Did I See For the First Time?

Movies I saw for the first time: 115

That's 60.53% of the movies I saw were "new to me". I think that's a pretty healthy percentage.

Or, another way, I only rewatched movies 39.47% of the time. So I'm trying new things!

How Many "New" Movies Did I Watch?

I'm not going to the theater, so I'm basically calling a movie "new" if it's just been released to Digital, Disc or Streaming.

I watched 41 "new" movies in 2022. That's 21.58% of the total movies watched, or a little better than 1 in 5.

How Many Movies Did I watch for a PodCast?

This year I watched 46 movies for the PodCast.

Of those films, 24 were "new to me", ie: I had never seen them before. That's just over 50%.

We covered 10 "new/ recent" movies on the podcast, or about 22%. Which is way more than I figured. Good on us.

How Many Movies Did We Watch for a Watch Party?

We watched 34 Movies for a Watch Party. That's 17.89% of movies seen this year were in the company of pals.

Of the 34 movies, 16 were "new to me". That's about 46% of the movies watched were something I took a gamble on and hadn't seen before.

https://ift.tt/CWvNuLG

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/0L9vRcj

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natromanxoff · 3 years ago

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Mercury Roadrunner's Interview about Freddie Mercury with Peter Freestone – Part II

Thanks very much to Mercury Roadrunner (Pavel Strashnyy) for letting me share his amazing interviews! Originally shared here.

Check the tag "MR interview with Phoebe" to see the other parts. Here are the 3 main topics of this interview, beginning of each topic is written in bold:

1. Language skills

2. Music videos, Garden Lodge

3. Celebrity friends, leg damage story, Joe Fanelli, relationship between band members, Freddie's last days

PS: So here is our second part and the first topic is about Freddie’s language skills:

Did he actually know only the English language or did he also know the Gujarati language or any other languages?

PF: When his parents were in Garden Lodge or if he called his mother on the telephone, he only spoke English. I suppose, he must have understood Gujarati, because, okay, in the school he was taught English, but before the school, when he was in Zanzibar and he would have been with is parents, so I would have thought they would have been speaking in Gujarati.

He had about twenty words of German after living in Munich for so many years. He couldn’t speak German, but I think he understood the language, if he was paying attention, because most of the people around him were talking English, so he never really had the need to learn German. Although, saying that, one of his partners, Winnie, was German and did not speak a lot of English, but then he had Barbara to do the translating.

PS: The second topic is about a very special song “Mad The Swine”, which was recorded in 1972, but was released only in 1991 as a B side of “Headlong” single. Why, after so many years, Freddie decided to come back to it and release it?

PF: Freddie knew that “Innuendo” was going to be his last complete album and I think that this song had a special place in his heart, there were something about it, and as far as he was concerned, it never got an airing he felt it deserved and the rest of the band was happy to put it on.

PS: I mentioned the “Headlong” song and you can be seen in some archival footage of making of the “Headlong” video, you help to lay the Queen members on the shelves. What are your memories about that day?

PF: I was just there to help them. When they are making a video, they don’t need someone to take care of costumes, because there is a costume person, there is a makeup person, everybody is there to do something. And so I was there for Freddie, looking after him, and it just seemed natural to help out. And the band would feel more comfortable if that was someone that they know who would help to put them on the shelves rather than some technician turning up and trying to do it. And this moment with selves wasn’t’ planned. That wasn’t in the storyboard, it’s just that they saw it, there were four shelves so they just thought “Well, why not? Let’s do something crazy”. And the idea must have come from the band member, because Rudi would have seen all the possibilities when he was checking out where they were going to be doing the filming, and if he had thought of using the shelves, that would be one of the ideas put in the beginning.

PS: There are also some parts where we can see you in “The Great Pretender Extended Version” video - can you remember anything about it?

PF: It was just a big long laugh. There is not one part of the making of the actual scenes that they are not laughing and smiling. Roger, Peter and Freddie – they just clicked, it all worked. Nobody had to be bigger than the next one, nobody had to take the spotlight, and they just were there, having a good time.

PS: What is your personal favourite memory from that day?

PF: Personally, for me it is watching the recording of the six girls –you know, both of the backing group were girls, they were wearing two different outfits – and watching the recordings, when they were recording the one group of three and then the other group of three, the costumes they got in to and what they did – you couldn’t help but feel really-really happy. They were actually standing on the same platform when they were recorded. And then, of course, they used computer graphics to put two different groups on the screen at the same time. Just watching three of them there on the platform, waving their hands goodbye, it brings back the memories of those groups of backing singers in the sixties.

PS: What are your memories of making of the “Breakthru” video?

PF: I remember that it was probably the hottest night of the year, no sleep, because it was just so hot and humid. They had a huge problem with the opening scene, and they shot that last in fact. But they had a huge problem because when the engine went into the tunnel it caused air pressure so that that polystyrene wall burst out a long time before the engine arrived. So they tried it earlier on and that’s when they found that that’s what happened, and then they had to do playing around with it during the day, there was people doing that while the rest of the filming was going on, and then they had to sort of re-do it and it was the last shot. And the engine was actually already in the tunnel before it started getting up a bit of speed. And it wasn’t going as fast as people think it does, so that it looked right. It was a fun day. Only the band and the actual film crew were allowed on the flatbed, where the band were performing, because of the way it was being filmed, you could easily be in shot, so the less people that were there – the better. John was having a ball, I remember him laughing a lot, he was enjoying himself. And there was a normal carriage, like a dining car, but old, 1930-1940s, and that was where we would have food and drink. And it was wonderful. It’s a working old train line, it’s a tourist thing, but it’s great, it’s really-really nice and it’s not that far away from London. And Freddie was enjoying the shooting. I was surprised when I saw what he was doing on that flatbed, he was leaning over the edge as the train was going along, but again, it looks faster than it was. It really was only going at about 25-30 kilometers an hour. But it’s made to look as though they are speeding along.

PS: And what was the very first Queen video you were presented on?

PF: The very first video that I was involved with was “Save Me”, because it was shot during two shows of the “Crazy Tour”, I think it was at “The Rainbow” and it was shot at “Alexandra Palace”. Because it was the mix of the live action, the cartoon girl, the bird – and that was the hardest thing – to get Freddie to almost catch the bird, the pigeon. They had to re-film it for about 15 times. And it was where David Mallet, the director, fell of the stage into the orchestra pit. Everybody panicked for a few minutes, but then he stuck his head up “Oh, I’m alright”. It was about 2-3 meters he felled. And then followed all the post-production with the girl, with the cartoon, and how they blended the live pigeon to become the cartoon one and all that sort of work – all of it was done afterwards and it was done before Christmas 1979.

PS: And what was the very last Queen video you were presented on?

PF: “I’m Going Slightly Mad” video. I remember the penguin on the couch moment. Actually most of all I remember the way Diana was with Freddie, because she just took such a good care of him, she had special thermal underwear made for Freddie, because right from my meeting with Freddie in 1979 I remember the easiest thing for Freddie was to feel cold. And it only got worse the more sick he got. And she had special thermal underwear made for him that went underneath the shirt and the suit. She just was there for him all the time and it was just wonderful to see.

PS: And did Freddie usually have cold hands or he had normal temperature of hands?

PF: He could have normal warm hands, but often they would be cold. So maybe he could have a blood circulation problem.

PS: Can you remember something about the shooting of “I Want It All” video?

PF: I don’t think I was at that one, because that would have been Joe, Joe Fanelli would have been there, because we sort of took in turns – he would go to one, I would not, I’ll do all the stuff at home, then I would go to one and he would stay at home.

PS: And it was also the same for you take the turns in concerts?

PF: No, I was on tours with Freddie from 1979 till 1985 and then Joe took over from the last part of 1985 and 1986.

PS: And why you stopped going on tours and Joe took that part?

PF: Because Garden Lodge had been completed and to keep the insurance cover someone had to be living there, so I got to live there. I moved in six months before Freddie did. And Freddie moved in in the middle-end 1985. Because what we did was – Freddie was at Mary’s home and Terry and I took Oscar and Tiffany away from Stafford Terrace. Because Freddie was supposed to move in and he kept putting it off again and again, he said “I’ll do it tomorrow”, “I’ll do it at the weekend”, there was always a reason, an excuse, so what Terry and I did – we went and kidnapped Oscar and Tiffany and took them to Garden Lodge. And then, when Freddie went home and he was looking for the cats, Terry said: “No, they are not here, they are at your other home” – and Freddie moved within two days.

PS: And what was it like living with Freddie in Garden Lodge? What are your first memories of start of living there?

PF: At that point I was living above the kitchen. Joe and I had rooms that were above the kitchen, just up those stairs. And it just felt strange just to be living in that house. The thing is, I’ve been living with Freddie for years, because whenever we were in hotels it was always a two bedroom suit, so I knew how he was, what he would do, what he needed in the morning, how the moods could change, that was all standard, that was all normal. The difference was being in the luxury of Garden Lodge, knowing that it was a house, not the hotel, and the fact that he had made us promise, both Joe and myself, that we would treat this place as our home. It wasn’t just work and somewhere to stay because of work – it was our home.

Some houses have energy, they have a feeling, and while Freddie was in Garden Lodge it was a really warm, friendly house.

PS: And the atmosphere in the house changed almost at the moment Freddie passed away, right?

PF: Literally. For me, while he was still alive, even in those last minutes, it was still the same house, but literally within minutes, while we were waiting for the doctor, it just became bricks and mortar, it just became somewhere to sleep, somewhere to live.

PS: You mentioned living together with Freddie in hotels, but do you remember living with Freddie in some flats or houses before Garden Lodge?

PF: We were living in his apartment in New York. The way it was set up there were two bedrooms, sitting room, dining room, kitchen, a maid’s room and a sort of TV room.

And later we lived together for six months in Los Angeles. Recording “The Works”. They rented the big house for Freddie. A nice house, big-big house. It belonged to a doctor, who just constantly rented it out to stars, who needed somewhere to stay while they were filming. Elizabeth Taylor apparently stayed there, George Hamilton was there, lots of different film stars used it. It was a big house in nice big gardens, it had a swimming pool, had a tennis court, you know, it all the things you need.

PS: And it was actually two of you living there together?

PF: Yeah, Freddie and me. And Terry was there too, to drive.

PS: And speaking of Freddie’s New York Times, can you actually remember what was his the most favourite part of the city?

PF: Most evenings he would end up down on Christopher street, which is down near Greenwich Village. Because there were bars around there, clubs around there, restaurants around there, everything was there in that area, in the West Village.

PS: Our next topic is about Freddie Mercury and George Michael; we can see them together at “Barcelona” album launch party and Queen 20th anniversary party – do you remember the interaction between them?

PF: They actually met up at Live Aid, after it finished. We had to stay in the bar, because there were absolutely no way any cars were going to get out of the stadium area, because of the traffic and everything. And that was the very first time that they actually met. Freddie admired him, he thought George had a great talent both in writing and in singing, but there was no special friendship, because Freddie didn’t create big friendships with other musicians. He preferred, so to say, normal people. And also he enjoyed actors and actresses, their company, more than other musicians, because the way he felt, most musicians just wanted to talk about music and he had many more interests. So, yes, if Freddie and George were in the same place, then yes, they would meet up and they would chat about what was going on in their lives, but most of it was always about work. Their conversations would always be like “what was the tour like” and they would laugh, because they would make jokes about what they had been doing. Freddie could make a joke out of any situation. He didn’t tell anecdotes as such, but he could see something and he could make a joke out of it.

PS: As you mentioned Freddie having friends among actors and actresses, could you remember some of them?

PF: Anita Dobson, Debby Bishop, Carol Wood, Pam Ferris, Susannah York. One he would like to have met and she lived literally just across the road, but it never came, was Diana Rigg. And he was incredibly happy when I gave him an autograph from Honor Blackman. I met her and I said “Could I have an autograph, please”, she says “yes, of course, who’s it for?” and I said “it’s just for my friend, Freddie”. And he was overjoyed with it and he kept it in his bedside drawer.

PS: And who was his favourite actors?

PF: Franco Nero, James Mason, Laurence Olivier. And he got to meet him, so that was another of Freddie’s absolute joys. Dave Clark took Freddie to dinner at Laurence Olivier’s house. It was when they were working on “The Time” musical.

PS: And it was actually very last Freddie’s live performance, can you remember something special about it?

PF: Yes, April 1988. I just thought how amazing it sounded. We all heard “In my defence” before, but when he did “it’s in every one of us” as a duet with Cliff that was absolutely amazing. We had goose bumps. And then after the performance we went to Cliff Richard’s dressing room, sitting and talking there.

PS: And you said that Freddie didn’t have many friends amongst musicians, but could you remember something special about Freddie and Elton John’s friendship?

PF: They first met back in 74/75, when Queen were managed by John Reid and in those days both of them were constantly touring so they could rarely meet up. But every now and then Queen would have just done the show and Elton would be performing the next day, so he was already in the hotel and we would meet up and go round, sitting in Elton’s room talking. And then for about a couple of years after Freddie’s diagnosis they didn’t see each other, but then Freddie told Elton about his status and for the last year and a half Elton would regularly come to Garden Lodge. And in Freddie’s last two weeks Elton would ring us, say what time he would arrive, so that he wouldn’t be seen arriving, he wouldn’t come through the front door, and we would let him in through the Mews in his mini, so nobody knew he was there. He had to go to Paris to record, so he gave me all of the numbers: hotel number, the studio number, his mobile number, his assistance’s mobile number, all the numbers, just to let him know when it happen, because he knew it was going to happen. And at the very last time he came to Garden Lodge, he drove in one of his Bentleys and parked it right outside the front door and the press were running over to him asking “why are you here?” and Elton just turned around and said “I’ve come to see my friend”. And that was it, he just came in and they sat and talked. And when Elton came, it was really just Freddie and him in the room, just talking.

PS: And what was the story about Freddie getting his leg damaged in Munich?

PF: Freddie, when he had a few drinks, he would pick people up, just lift them off the floor, to show how strong he was. So Freddie had picked someone up and then someone next to him bumped into his knee and the ligaments tore, because instead of the way it was supposed to bend the knee bend the other way. Freddie then dropped the person he was carrying, he was screaming in pain and we had to go and get it set. When Queen filmed “It’s A Hard Life” in the end of the video, you can see him favouring the leg.

PS: And as you mention “It’s A Hard Life” video, Freddie’s friend Barbara Valentin stars in this video and she was a star in films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder – did Freddie ever discuss his films with her?

PF: Yeah, because she had videos of them. Freddie did meet Fassbinder once. They were in the “Deutsche Eiche”, which was Fassbinder’s favourite restaurant, he was always in it in Munich. And Barbara would take Freddie there every now and then. So Barbara introduced them to each other, they talked a bit, but they were there for lunch, it wasn’t a planned meeting or anything like this.

PS: And what film directors Freddie admired?

PF: Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor, the directors of the 40’s-50’s.

PS: What are your memories of Joe Fanelli?

PF: He was American. The first time I met him his relationship with Freddie was just finishing, this was in 1979. But he stayed in London and worked a lot in London. He was working in different restaurants. He was an amazing chef. And they kept in touch over the years and that’s why when Garden Lodge was finished and someone had to be there, that’s when Freddie thought to bring Joe back. And it worked, because Joe used to go to the gym all the time and he was taking care of himself, which he didn’t do so much when he was with Freddie. He was great. He was amazing on the computer. Computers were just starting, but Joe could write programs and things. Freddie’s favourite programme on television was “Countdown”, which is where they pick out seven letters and you have to make the longest word you possibly can out of those seven letters and then there’s also the numbers thing as well – and Joe created that on the computer for Freddie so that he didn’t wait for it just on the TV. He was fun, and he was good; it was good working with him and most of the time we just got on so well. Garden Lodge would not have been the same without him.

PS: And you mentioned Joe programming “Countdown” for Freddie so Freddie could actually play this game on computer?

PF: Well, no, he couldn’t, but he could sit there and Joe would do the computer. The computer was bought by Freddie for Garden Lodge and it was set upstairs on the musician’s gallery in the big sitting room.

PS: How would you describe the relationship between Freddie and other Queen members?

PF: They were all close to each other, but in a different ways.

Freddie was close with John. John was the new boy, he was the last one to join, he was the youngest, and Freddie just felt protective. He wanted to protect him a little bit for the dangers of rock’n’roll. But then John got married, had Veronica, so he had the security of home, and John was not around Freddie as much, but it didn’t stop the friendship because of what happened at the end. John just decided to finish because Freddie wasn’t there anymore.

With Roger it was a different friendship. And a very good friendship, because both of them had similar personality trait, they both enjoyed a good drink; they both enjoyed a good party.

And with Brian, of course, they were friends, but Brian was much more serious and Freddie was much more of a laughing person than Brian. Brian thought about things so much. But Freddie knew that he would never find anyone better than Brian to help him with the music.

PS: We know that Brian and Roger visited Freddie in his last days, but we never heard of John visiting Freddie.

PF: I don’t think John was prepared to see Freddie looking like he did in the last days, but John came and visited Freddie before those last two weeks. I know that he did come to the house, but I don’t think he could accept seeing Freddie the way he was in those last weeks.

PS: Freddie started to get a lot worse in those last two weeks?

PF: For the last two weeks Freddie hardly ate, he hardly drank. He was taking no drugs that were keeping him alive anymore, he was taking painkillers, and that was it.

PS: What was the reason of Freddie’s last visit to Montreux?

PF: He just wanted to get away from London. He wanted to have a little bit of peace and quiet away from all the press. He had that apartment in Montreux, so he went there.

For the last two-three years of his life he would be there every other month for a couple of weeks. There was no feeling of “this is the last time I’m going to Montreux”, that wasn’t part of his mentality, he only decided that this was the last visit when I called him, because I wasn’t with him, Jim, Joe and Terry were with him at that time, I was in Garden Lodge and I rang him and I said: “Look, just so that you are aware when you come home, that there are press outside the house 24 hours a day. In the nighttime it’s down to about four or five and in the daytime it’s up to about twenty”.

And that’s when he decided that when he went into Garden Lodge, coming back from Switzerland, it would be the last time, because he knew that he would never be able to get out again.

PS: And how long was he there for the last time?

PF: For about two weeks.

PS: And how do you remember him when he came back?

PF: He was sort of happy, but he was a bit withdrawn, because he had made the decision that when he came into Garden Lodge, it would be the last time, that he would never leave it again. He already had decided that, so, of course, he was a little bit more thoughtful, more inward thinking rather than being laughing and all that. But still, even in those two last two weeks there were still times when he would laugh, because he never wanted sad people around him.

PS: What are your last memories of Freddie?

PF: Since he got back from Switzerland on the 10th, he basically stopped eating and drinking. He would have a little bit, but that’s it. So, of course, he was tired, he had no energy. Most of the time he had short sleeps, short sleep –wake up, short sleep – wake up.

In those last two weeks, except for his needs, the only other time Freddie left his room, was when Terry carried him downstairs, on the Wednesday, 20th of November, because he just wanted to look around the main room, he just wanted to have a last look at paintings, at the crystal. He just wanted to spend some more time in that huge room where he felt most comfortable.

The last week of Freddie’s life he was actually never alone, because between Joe, Jim and myself, we would spend twelve hours with him and there was always one of us with him. We did the shifts from eight in the evening till eight in the morning. The last time that I was with him was on the Friday night. And on that Friday night I got there just before eight o’clock. And, you have to remember, that at eight o’clock the statement was released to the world that Freddie had AIDS. The thing is, those hours I was with him, he was the most relaxed I had seen him in years, because there was no secret anymore, the whole world knew. And he would just talk about anything, he would be in bed, I would be sitting on the bed next to him and I would be just holding his hand. The television was on, just for some noise, he would talk and he would go to sleep and talk and go to sleep. And we talked about silly little things, nothing really serious, and nothing like “we knew everything was coming to an end”, there was none of that. He could still talk fine, his mind was together, he just was very-very tired.

But, I think, because the statement had been done, I think Freddie felt that it was time for him to go. Because it was coming up for eight o’clock and I think it was Joe coming in at that point, Joe was coming at eight, and I said to Freddie something like “Look, okay, I’m going now, Joe is going to be here, but, of course, I’ll see you, I’ll see you soon”, he said something like “uhum, yeah, yeah”.

And then he just took my hand, looked me straight in the eye and just said “Thank you”.

And I will never know, whether he already decided that we would never meet again and was thanking me for the last twelve years, or if he was just thanking me for the last twelve hours.

But I have a feeling that he already knew that we would not see each other again.

PS: Do you remember when you for the very first time understood that you are not just working with Freddie, but you are becoming friends?

PF: That really started from the very-very beginning, because we didn’t have to always talk to each other to know what he wanted. I understood him. Because of our similar upbringing in boarding school in India I knew why he reacted in some ways, why he did things, I knew it, it was just instinctive and it made everything very-very easy for him and for me. Maybe it became more intense when Freddie started the time out of Britain, because we were going to be together 24 hours a day, so you have to be friends. And for me, it was the easiest thing on earth to be friends with Freddie. I never thought about Freddie, The Superstar. I was thinking about Freddie, my friend.

SPECIAL THANKS TO VALUREX FOR CONTRIBUTION AND ASSISTENCE

#MR interview with Phoebe #queen #queen band #freddie mercury #roger taylor #brian may #john deacon #peter freestone #joe fanelli

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magicalhideoutengineer · 3 years ago

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I know it’s probably silly to say, but I love that the Fantastic Beasts movies are really magical. I love seeing the creatures and this whole new adventure, and seeing what wizarding life is like outside of Hogwarts. I know your character is obviously in a very different arc than some of the other characters. As a viewer, you’re trying to figure out why she’s on Grindelwald’s side and why she firmly believes in his message. How is that to play for you? Because as an actress, you know Vinda is on the wrong side, but she believes she’s on the right side of things.

In a word, she’s fanatical. It’s almost bigger than Grindelwald. She’s a believer, she’s hardcore. It’s almost bigger than a religion to her. It’s interesting to bring it into the 1930s when we started this film franchise in the ‘20s. In the first film, they did New York, and then we went to Paris and London in the second film, and we get a bit of that, as you say, outside of Hogwarts real life, versus obviously the magical wizarding world we’ve seen previously. But also, you do get this sense of the real life of the 1930s, which is so beautiful. It’s one of my favorite eras in terms of decor and interiors and fashion. It’s visually stunning, and to get to do that and also have the fantasy wizarding world where we’ve all got wands, we’re all doing magic, is great. Because it grounds it in something quite real. Sadly, I didn’t get to go to Hogwarts. [Both laugh].

That must be amazing if you grew up being a fan of her costuming and how she was designing things. Were you able to collaborate with her and have a say in the ensembles you were wearing for the film?

Yeah, especially going into a second film. Having had the experience of meeting on the first film I did and working with her, you then come into this, and I had a bit more of a sense of who Rosier was and what might be cool to wear. And there was one thing I thought might be quite cool. I’d seen Dark Shadows, which is a Tim Burton film, and Eva Green looks so good in that movie. And she’s got this blonde peroxide wig, and there’s a scene in there where she’s in a pinstriped suit. And I was like, “That’s so great.” And I said to Colleen, “It’d be really fun to wear a trouser suit.” And she was like, “Yes, it would.” And then she made me one!

That’s incredible!

It was really fun and it was super, super beautiful. It features in a scene that got a lot of air time for me, so I’m really glad we saw that suit. At that period in the ‘30s, a lot of women wore gowns and dresses, and it’s fun with a character like Rosier who is a henchwoman, an evil sidekick, but also dresses amazingly. To be able to give her something quite masculine and tailored and modern, was amazing.

That was one of the things I noticed and loved about your performance in Crimes of Grindelwald, because you conveyed so much with a look, which is a testament to your acting and what you’re capable of. Because you can literally be in the background looking at something and you’re like, “Oh, she’s up to something.”

Thank you. It’s fun being a character on the outside of things. Because you do get to observe as an actor, but also as a character. It’s always about the eyes, but certainly with Rosier, I sort of based her mannerisms on cats and that feeling of watching silently and waiting for the moment to pounce.

#fantastic beasts #secrets of dumbledore #fb3interview #vinda rosier #poppy corby-tuech

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mst3kproject · 3 years ago

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The Monster of Piedras Blancas

At some point I realized that I'd done an awful lot of fishman movies on this blog, so I decided I needed a tag for them. I chose #it's beginning to look a lot like fishmen, after a rather amusing musical version of The Shadow over Innsmouth that you can find on YouTube. Most of them are less fun than said video, and this one very much so. It qualifies itself for MST3King by featuring Forrest Lewis from The Thing that Couldn't Die, Don Sullivan from The Giant Gila Monster, and Jeanne Carmen from Untamed Youth.

Some lonely people feed the birds or stray cats in their neighbourhood. The lighthouse keeper of Piedras Blancas doesn't have any of those, so he feeds the fish monster that lives below the rocks. As long as he does this, it only occasionally kills people when they wander into its territory, but trouble begins when the grocer fails to save enough meat scraps to satisfy it. Soon the hungry beast is lopping heads off right and left and draining the bodies of blood! The local constable thinks he may have a homicidal maniac on his hands, but marine biologist Fred identifies a shed scale at the scene as belonging to a Diplovertebron, a beast thought to be long-extinct.

Diplovertebron is an actual creature with its own Wikipedia article and everything. According to said article, it was a lizardy sort of a thing that lived in what is now the Czech Republic three hundred million years ago, and was around half a meter long. It's a very obscure and not terribly threatening animal, and I have a hard time imagining why the writers chose it, of all extinct creepy-crawlies, to be their monster's ancestor. It doesn't even have a very interesting name. 'Diplovertebron' is quite technical-sounding and has too many syllables to roll nicely off the tongue. Why not pick something that at least sounds scary?

The Monster of Piedras Blancas is a bloated, sedate movie. It knows that movies need breaks between the actiony bits... but its actiony bits have no real action, and the talky scenes it inserts to space them out are deathly dull and contribute almost nothing. There's a bit where two characters discuss a victim's time of death in great detail, taking into account things like a spilled bottle of ink, that would have reduced Joel to tears. It almost becomes a joke when Fred and the Doctor discuss the minutiae of Diplovertebron scales, while the constable sits there growling impatiently at them. When even your characters think the movie is too slow, you have a problem.

Everything that might possibly be exciting takes place off-screen. This is fine and even expected during the 'building suspense' parts – of course we don't see the deaths of the fishermen or the grocer. The bit where we first see the entire monster, when characters open a walk-in fridge and it lumbers out holding a severed head, is honestly pretty well-done. After that, however, we should finally get to see some monster-eating-people scenes... but since this is yet another stupid rubber fishman suit a la the She-Creature, all it's actually capable of is slapping a few guys and then fleeing. It supposedly kills a couple of gun-toting rednecks, but the fight happens elsewhere while the audience watches Fred and the doctor fart around in a cave. We don't see the monster again until it inevitably kidnaps the lighthouse-keeper's cute daughter at the climax.

The severed head is pretty plasticky and looks nothing like the guy it supposedly came from, but an effort was made and I respect that. There are veins sticking out the bottom of it and a really creepy bit where we find it in the monster's lair with crabs crawling over it.

As the movie draws closer to its climax, the men in the town sit down and have a good think about how they're going to defeat it. They know they can't overpower it, and it seems to be reasonably intelligent, so they've decided they're going to have to outwit it. Their big plan for doing so is... throw a net over it.

I expected this to fail spectacularly, but what actually happened was even dumber. I will not spoil the last thirty seconds of this movie for you, because it's funny as hell, but let's just say that fishmen are like pumas – if you ever meet one in real life, you can just push it the hell over.

As you might have guessed, Lucy is only in this movie so that she can be saved from the monster and can kiss Fred as the words the end appear on the screen. The only interesting thing about her is a brief moment of stunning misogyny. She comes running to the doctor to tell him her father has had an accident and needs help – and before going to do so, the doctor makes Lucy take a sedative. Her behaviour was not in any way hysterical or unreasonable. A little reassurance would have done the job just fine!

This scene suggests that the townspeople don't think very highly of Lucy, and there are other bits that tell us she's probably supposed to be at least ten years younger than twenty-nine-year-old actress Jeanne Carmen. On the other hand, they seem to think she's capable enough to look after her injured father alone and with only a locked door to protect her from the marauding monster. Then again, if they didn't, it couldn't carry her off to be menaced. Yet again, a movie's leading lady is a plot device rather than a character. This seems particularly true of fishman movies. Think of the Creature from the Black Lagoon series.

As I mentioned upfront, I have seen a lot of fishman movies. This is the fifteenth since this blog's inception! I thought there were a lot of bigfoot movies around, but if you check the tags you'll see that fishmen outnumber him two to one! This brings up an interesting question – namely, why?

Why fishmen? Sea Monsters have a long and fascinating history that includes not just the classic serpent and kraken but such things as savage merpeople, scaly pig-fish covered with eyes, and according to one sixteenth-century map, very large Yorkshire terriers. Then along came the 1930s and the popularization of the Loch Ness Monster as plesiosaur, opening up the range to prehistoric sea beasties. Why not one of those?

I'm guessing the answer is 'because they're expensive'. Those would require puppets and stop motion and other special effects. A guy in a costume is much cheaper to build and operate.

Okay, but even if you have to restrict yourself to human-shaped monsters, there are plenty of those, too! There's the aforementioned merpeople, but also vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, and their ilk! Dracula and Frankenstein are both in the public domain! And make no mistake, people have made lots of movies about those... but they have also made a whole lot of movies about fishmen! Why fishmen?

The answer, most likely, is that Creature from the Black Lagoon came out in 1954 and it was huge, being one of those movies that requires an entire separate Wikipedia article for its cultural impact! The tidal wave of other fishman movies that followed it are like the glut of monster-on-a-spaceship movies that followed Alien, or the fad for teenage slasher movies in the 1980s, or those cheaply animated direct-to-DVD movies that cluster around every Disney and Dreamworks release. A fishman movie had made money, and now everybody was lining up to milk the scaly, mucus-coated cash cow!

That was a terrible mix of metaphors right there. Yuck.

There's also something uniquely horrifying about one of the genre's major tropes – the fishman's interest in human women. This, too, began with Creature from the Black Lagoon but as we've seen it carried over into other films – Bog and Creatures from the Abyss are notable examples (and then there's The Shape of Water). In The Monster from Piedras Blancas this idea is present in that the monster kidnaps Lucy instead of just killing her like it did every other human it met, but it's not emphasized the way the monster's interest in Kay was in Black Lagoon. Fish are proverbially cold and slimy, and the idea of sexual contact with one is almost reminiscent of necrophilia unless you have some very specific interests (see previous parentheses). The fishman's lack of genitals make it that much more disturbing.

So now that we've sorted that out, my final question about fishman movies is this: could a fishman beat bigfoot in a fight? They're both big, broad-chested creatures that movies like to outfit with claws, teeth, superhuman strength, and bad tempers. I think it would depend on where the battle happened. If they're in the water, then the fishman has a clear advantage – bigfoot can drown. If they're on land, things are a little more even. The fishman's slime would make him difficult to hang onto, but if his gills dry out he'll have a hard time breathing. Bigfoot's fur gives the fishman something to yank, but his large feet make him hard to knock down. It might depend on whether or not the fishman is venomous.

Why hasn't anybody made that movie? Picture it – dozens of fishmen swimming upstream to spawn, and bigfoot dragging them out of the water to eat like bears with salmon! I'd absolutely pay for exorbitantly expensive theatre popcorn if it meant I got to see that on screen!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the monster of piedras blancas #50s #it's beginning to look a lot like fishmen

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blubberingmess · 4 years ago

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[Little guy: Peach] *Bucky's view pt1*

Pairing: Bucky/Chibi!Bucky x male!reader

Continuation for [Little guy: Bubba]

Note: a few changes in Bucky's tactical gear.

[1930s!Bucky]

'Happy 18th birthday!'

Bucky is practically shaking with excitement as he stares down at the cake in front of him, his smile so wide he could almost feel his cheeks rip. But the cake nor the presents he got was not the reason for why he was excited, no, it's so much more than that. He finally turned eighteen which means there's a high chance his soon-to-be chibi would appear, ready to shower him with affection and love just like his soulmate would - or hope they would.

But alas, day became night and there's still no chibi in sight.

"Don't worry, Bucky. She will come out eventually, just you wait." Bucky heard Steve said from beside him, placing a cold and thin yet comforting hand on his shoulder. He can't help but feel envious as he watched his friend pat the small female chibi on his lap, cooing up at him like a love-sick puppy.

"Yeah she will," Bucky puts on a boyish grin and puffs his chest out as he spoke with certainty. "And when she does, she'll the most prettiest chibi in the whole world."

And wait he did; his 20th birthday became 27th. At the same time as Bucky's getting older, the single flame of hope inside of him is getting weaker and weaker as the years gone by. The thought of himself not actually having a soulmate or her dying at such a young age is like a sharp stab in the chest; like of ice-cold water pouring down on that small flame until it was only a mere burn inside his chest, a scar to remind him of the sad, sad reality he's living in.

"Wanna come with us, Jamie-boy? Our last day in Brooklyn. Don'tcha think we deserve a little bit of fun, if y'know what I mean?" One of his so-called friends Karl nudged him on his side playfully, a mischievous grin on his face as he spoke.

Bucky eyes flickered at the small female chibi on the table that belongs to Karl, putting on a fake, tight smile despite him clenching his jaw in irritation for saying such things in front of his chibi.

"Nah, I don't think I can right now. You guys go ahead without me," declined Bucky.

Karl shrugs his shoulders, not really caring if Bucky comes or not. "Suit yourself. Hey fellas! Let's go!" The brunette was shocked and angered as he watched Karl harshly grabs the chibi from the table making it squeak in pain before walking away with his small group of friends, with their own chibis on their shoulders.

Bucky wanted to stop him, he really do, but he doesn't have the right to do such thing no matter how the person deserves a good punching.

Why haven't they said anything about Bucky not having his own chibi by his side? It's because he lied, saying he doesn't like to carry his chibi around and all that. How can he say the truth? Even himself doesn't know the truth! Does he or does he not have a soulmate? He's pushing thirty for Pete's sake!

Bucky's gaze is down as he propped his elbow in the table, sighing to himself before averting his eyes back up. Blue eyes danced around the bar, fiddling with the shot of whiskey in hand. Regardless of knowing how fruitless his searching was everyday, he can't stop no matter how hard he tried to - like it's now in his instinct to look around, to search for the small being that would lead him towards his supposedly other half.

Leaning his head back, he downed the whiskey in hand before slamming it onto the table a bit harder than intended, causing eyes to turn towards him. Bucky doesn't care, there's so much thoughts running around in his head to do so, tossing a few coins on the table before heading out of the bar to find his best and only friend Steve Rogers.

[Winter Soldier!Bucky]

The cold brittle December night and the harsh falling of snow from above barely made the winter soldier flinch as he crouches on top of the rooftop, aiming his sniper rifle at his target. His breathing is steady as well as his heart, like he isn't just about to kill one of the people who crossed Hydra.

He steadied his aim, locking at the target's head.

His index finger pushed the trigger just the slightest in a thrillingly slow--

Squeak!

His eyes narrowed at the sound, leaning his head back to look around his surroundings, ready to pull out his gun from its holster. He found nothing but snow and the fresh corpse of one of the guard at the center, he focuses his attention back on the scope and almost jumps in surprise.

Blocking his scope is a small almost human looking thing, curiously looking through the glass, tapping it a few times before grunting. The winter soldier immediately knew it was a male from the way he looks and sound, watching him waddles a few step back.

The chibi tilts his head to the side and unconsciously, Soldier tilted his head as well before registering what he had done a second later, shaking his head with a scowl. Bucky grabs the chibi with his calloused yet surprisingly gentle hand, and carefully placing him on the black case next to him before focusing back on his mission.

Fuck. The target moved away from the window, but it's nothing the Winter Soldier can't fix. With a small turn of the rifle to the left and a single pull of the trigger with no hint of hesitancy, the target fell down to the marbled floor, immediately causing the guests and securities to panic and run around like some headless chickens - pathetic.

The soldier straightens his back and turn his whole body to face the chibi who just casually continues to stares up at him with curious look on his face, once again, tilting his head to the side. Without a second thought, he lifts the chibi but now with his metal hand instead and started packing the sniper rifle in the case.

"Good job, Soldier. We'll be waiting for you." A familiar voice said from his earpiece before it goes static to silent.

The soldier for once didn't heard what has been said in his ear for all his attention is now on the chibi in his hand, face squished up at his grip but seemingly comfortable as it closes his eyes and sighs in content. The sight made his cold, steady heart skips a beat.

He's not stupid, he knows what chibis are and what their purpose is, and he don't like it. Anger surely bubbles up inside him and he don't know why, looking at the little thing makes him want to punch a nearby wall all while simultaneously wanting to just sit down and bask in the affection the chibi is currently giving him - peppering little kisses on his metal hand, like he's trying to comfort him.

The soldier closed his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh before grabbing the black case from the ground.

Having the chibi around isn't as irritating as he first thought it would.

He was apprehensive at first, the idea of having someone out there waiting for him; a cold-blooded murderer. The asset did not paid attention to the chibi whatsoever for a few days, only sharing his disgusting food with him; stale bread and just as unflavored mash potato, or some MRE food pack. To his surprise and relief, the chibi doesn't complain and would accept the food gratefully.

The winter soldier slowly warms up, letting the little guy in his very, very small, one person 'personal bubble'. He started to actually enjoy the little guy's affectionate actions and kisses, instead of pushing him away every time.

He once left the chibi alone to train one day, which caused to one of the agents almost finding out about while doing a quick survey of his room.

He never left the chibi's side since then.

The soldier isn't that heartless-- well, not much to the chibi-- for he is still... practicing, learning how to be gentle. Who could blame him? he once made the little guy cry, and truth to be told, he did not like it one bit.

He also found out that he likes-- loves peaches after leaving him on a unguarded stall that sells peaches because the mission is too dangerous, only coming back to him snoring on top of one with his tummy all big and full with four peach cores around him - thus the reason why he called him 'Peach'.

He cannot recall how many times he would wake up from a nightmare he couldn't remember at such ungodly hour with Peach crawling up to his rapidly rising and falling chest, patting his cheek and giving him a kiss on the forehead. Remembering all the night when he would just cry, letting out his frustration, anger, and confusion while holding Peach close to his chest.

The little guy don't talk, isn't that helpful, squeaky and loud, everything he hates to a person (except the first one) but he would be lying if he said it didn't provide him immense comfort.

Four years had passed. The winter soldier's chibi was there when it all happened, tucked inside his vest made from kevlar where no one could notice, not even Hydra which was quite shocking. A makeshift pocket the soldier himself sewn after stealing a small sewing kit from one of his previous mission, prickling his flesh fingers a few times. Reason why he started to clipped on his vest a bit loosely than how he normally does to avoid Peach getting squished or suffocate to death.

"You're my mission." Bucky roared as he throw a powerful punch after punch while the blonde kept his hands hanging off to the side, not making a move to fight back.

"You're my mission!" He repeats.

"Then finish it." Bucky immediately stops his fist in mid-punch as Steve continues.

"Cause I'm with you to the end of the line--"

A small squeak-like grunt was suddenly heard, freezing both men. Steve watches as something-- a mop of hair-- pokes out from inside his vest. A disheveled looking Peach looks around his surroundings, sleepy eyes swinging from Bucky to Steve before letting out a yawn.

"You have a... chibi," Steve whispers in shock.

Just then another explosion happened, sending the whole helicarrier to shake as the bottom of the falls, taking Steve down with it. Bucky watching him fell down after he managed to grab hold onto of the remaining part of the helicarrier, a sense of recognition and inner-conflict within the stormy blue eyes is the sight Steve last saw before he blacked out.

That and the particular chibi tucked in his vest. What shocked him the most is the fact that the chibi is a male.

Who would've thought?

Too long, Tumblr can't take it. Next will be the last part :) more shorter.

Excuse my poorly drawn sketch. Anyways, this scene makes me laugh now that I think about it 😂😂😂

Tags for [Little guy]: @fafulous @putinovertime @daybreakmistakes

#bucky #Bucky x reader #bucky x male!reader #bucky x reader fluff #Bucky x male!reader fluff #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x male!reader #bucky barnes x reader fluff #bucky barnes x male!reader fluff #winter soldier fic #avengers x reader #james buchanan barnes #bucky x chubby!reader #bucky x reader smut #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fic #bucky x reader

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demi-shoggoth · 4 years ago

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COVID-19 Reading Log, pt 18

Man, this past month has been a heck of a year, hasn’t it? I’ve still been reading books, but my pace has ebbed and flowed, and I forgot to update this for a while. So here’s my thoughts on ten of the most recent books I’ve read.

91. The League of Regrettable Sidekicks by Jon Morris. I had no idea this book existed until I was doing image searches for this project for the other “League of Regrettable X” books. This one covers the sidekicks, minions and goons of comic history. Unlike the other books by Jon Morris, the spread is more even of Gold/Silver/other ages of comic books. After all, the 70s is when Jaxxon the green rabbit appeared in Star Wars, and the 80s had a shape-shifting penguin named Frobisher in the Doctor Who comics. It also feels like it’s a little looser about what makes a character “regrettable”. Some of the sidekicks in its pages, like Woozy Winks and Volstagg the Voluminous, are legit great characters.

92. Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen. I wanted to like this book; I really did. For one thing, it was recommended to me by @listmaker-lastcity, who I was working with on commissions. For another thing, it was fairly pricy used. Thirdly, to its merit, it is gorgeous. Michael Page, the illustrator, is credited first, and rightly so. But for an “encyclopedia”, it makes up a lot of stuff. It opens with a disclaimer that “the creators of this book have… unlocked their own fantasies”, which means that it invents Arthuriana and Greek myths wholeheartedly. Several of the entries do not exist outside this book, and others are so distorted that their actual folkloric origins have been clouded and obscured by people using this as a source. For material I’m not familiar with the primary sources of, like Gulliver’s Travels, I have no idea if it’s reflecting the source material accurately, or making things up whole cloth. As a fantasy, it’s intermittently fun; some rather nasty misogyny does sneak in and the book is wildly anti-science. As a reference work, it’s useless to the point of actively harmful.

93. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh. I was a huge fan of the “Hyperbole and a Half” blog back in the day, and knowing Allie Brosh’s history of mental health problems, I was worried when she seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Her release of a second book was a pleasant surprise, but also showed that some worry was appropriate. This collection of essays, cartoons and heavily-cartooned essays is sadder than the first collection, as it was written during and after a series of family tragedies. It is still very funny in parts, however, and has an overall message of self-care and love that turned out to be extra relevant in the nightmare year that is 2020. It’s the only book for this project that I read in a single sitting. Highly recommended.

94. Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. This book is half memoir, half biography. The composer Mozart owned a starling during some of his most productive years as a composer, and even wrote an elegy to it when it died. The author used this as a launching point to adopt her own starling, and to examine how this invasive species is seen in American birding culture. The writing is humanistic and charming, and very self-aware (the author worries that her starling is going to die, because that’s what always happens in “this animal changed my life” books). The message is one of respecting all other creatures and of valuing the lives of animals, which is not much of a surprise from the author’s other books (I covered The Urban Bestiary earlier in this project.

95. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. The subtitle says it all; this is a biography of Joseph Lister, focusing on his research into antisepsis and promotion of sterile technique in surgery. It takes ample digressions to talk about other major surgeons of the time, the state of hygiene and disease theory in Victorian England, France and the United States, as well as things like labor conditions and women’s rights. These bits and pieces are woven in successfully, so they feel like appropriate context setting. Fitzharris is empathetic despite the often grisly subject matter, but readers with a sensitive stomach and a low tolerance for gore might want to skip this one.

96. Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! by Bryan Senn. This is a big book, 400 pages in full sized paper. It is an overview of the horror/SF double feature, covering every movie released initially in that format between 1955 and 1974 in the United States. As such, it reviews more than 200 movies, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes, critical opinion and box office, and general coverage of trends and themes in genre cinema at the time. I enjoyed this book greatly, especially since it covered some movies I’d never even heard of. The timing is perfect, too, as I read this book just before @screamscenepodcast covered the first entries in it, Revenge of the Creature/Cult of the Cobra. My one complaint is that the author seems biased against Japanese films. He discredits the special effects and monster suits in kaiju movies compared to even movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches and The Killer Shrews, and complains about acting and scripts in Japanese films much more than he does for other dubbed films. He also consistently refers to Ishiro Honda as “Inoshiro Honda”, which is how his name was misspelled in the 60s. That level of disrespect for some of my favorite genre pictures is a constant low-level irritation in what is otherwise a fine resource.

97. Cursed Objects by J. W. Ocker. This is a fun catalog of objects said to be cursed, including the whys, supposed effects and current locations of these artifacts. The book is sorted into categories, like “cursed objects in museums”, “cursed furniture”, “technological cursed objects”. It takes a skeptical, folkloric look at the topic, being more interested in the stories than in any legit supernatural powers. It even talks about things that “should” be cursed because of their odd appearances or eerie provenances, but aren’t, like the Crystal Skull forgeries. The book is a pleasant and breezy read, and the author has a good sense of humor on the topic. He curses the book itself with an epigram against thieves, and buys a cursed dog statue on eBay that sat on his desk throughout the writing process.

98. Death in the Garden by Michael Brown. This book is wildly misnamed, being light on both the “garden” and the “death”. It’s supposedly a social history of poisonous plants, but is more interested in English herbals specifically. It refers to the authors by name extensively as if we should have all of these memorized, and the only place where the prose has any energy is in the biographical section for these herbalists. There’s very little information about the actual plants and their poisons. I would use the word “doddering” to describe the prose style, which is simultaneously rambling and boring. The photography is pretty, though.

99. Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! 1929-1930 by Robert Ripley. IDW puts out lovely volumes of vintage American comics, and this is no exception. Being a kid into weird facts and trivia, and an adult who is still into them, the Ripley franchise was a major part of my childhood. This is the first modern collection organized chronologically, covering the first two years the strip was in national syndication. The strips cover the typical Ripley mix of sports trivia, weird facts, word riddles and puzzles, misleading statements and the occasional outright lie. The book has a warning about the racial attitudes of the time, which is fair, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. Ripley’s habit of drawing from photographic references means that people in ethnic minorities look like real people. But the language is decidedly “of its time”, with slurs used to identify foreign ethnicities (particularly Asian ones). So be warned.

100. Unlucky Stiffs: New Tales of the Weirdly Departed by Cynthia Ceilan. I’m ordering material to pick up from my local library again, which is great! This book was actually recommended by the library website based on the morbid slant of some of the other books I was putting on hold. Unfortunately, this book sucks. It’s pitched as a “weird deaths” book, something like a more literary version of the Darwin Awards. But the deaths are often not all that bizarre, instead being typically sad accidents or murders. It just comes off as mean spirited and misanthropic. Not recommended.

#reading log #ripley's believe it or not #b movies #comics #medical history

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jeongyunhoed · 4 years ago

Photo

8 Stories, 8 Movies from the Golden Age (1930s to 1960s).

It’s the golden age and 8 men are the most sought-after actors in Hollywood. Ateez, but make them Old Hollywood, basically. Lights, camera, action!

Member: Jongho

Genre: Murder mystery, a little bit of comedy, a little bit of romance

Warnings: Murder (as it is a murder mystery), mentions of it including suicide, death, blackmail

Things to note: Divorce then getting back together, horse racing, set in the 1930s.

Will have OCs

As with the rest of the stories in the AU, there will be other idols mentioned.

A/N: The second story in this entire AU is something I’m super excited about writing, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it! Tag list open as always.

Masterlist

Prominent surgeon Choi Jongho is forced to team up with his murder mystery author ex-wife to investigate a murder at a racetrack.

The Ex-Mrs. Choi

tag list: @minervaaaaaaaa , @closer-stars

Part 1

“Yes, it’s a strange tragedy that took the life of Lee Taeyong today at the Bradford Race Track. Wave and Illusion with Lee Taeyong were neck to neck at the finish. Illusion was already pulling away when suddenly, Taeyong fell off the horse. Doctors immediately rushed to the jockey’s side, but he was already dead. Reports have declared the cause of his death to be heart failure,” the news reporter’s voice from the radio filled the living room of Choi Jongho that night as he sat in his favorite chair by the fire.

That kind of news wasn’t new to him especially as he dealt with bodies almost everyday. Jongho was a surgeon and had his share of examining bodies, much less cutting them open when necessary. He came from a long day made up of one operation after another and all he wanted to do was to sit back on his chair, smoking jacket on, and maybe watch a picture or two before he fell asleep. If he could find his smoking jacket, that is. Jongho sat up when he noticed his butler, Kang Yeosang, appear. “Alright, you can turn it off. Yes?”

“Dr. Jongho, are you in?” He asked.

He raised a brow at the question. “...Yes?”

“I mean,” Yeosang paused. “Physically yes, sir, but socially, are you in?”

“Ah, that’s a good question. If there’s anyone I don’t want to see, tell them I’m not,” He said, sensing the way Yeosang asked him.

“Okay then, I will tell her so at once.”

“Don’t bother, Yeosang!”

A woman’s voice appeared from the hall. It was the voice he hadn’t heard in a while, at least months since the divorce. Jongho stood up when he heard the familiar clinking of heels on the marble floor, seeing the figure of his ex-wife Miyoung become more and more visible. Jongho felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of her. Kim Miyoung, or rather, Choi Miyoung, his ex-wife, looked visibly prettier. If he wasn’t seeing things, he would’ve thought she was glowing even though he figured it was from the months-long trips she would take all over the world. “Hi, Jongho,” She smiled, grabbing him by the hem of his jacket. “Jongho, darling, kiss me” she said, and he found himself obliging for a moment before his mind made any decision.

“Dr. Choi is not in,” Yeosang cut in, looking flustered but defeated.

“Too late for that, Yeosang, it’s okay” Jongho replied, pulling away in an attempt to snap himself out of it.

“Sorry, sir.”

“What brings you here?” He turned back to Miyoung.

“How are you doing? You look tired” She said, patting his cheek gently.

“I don’t need to ask you how you are, given how you look,” Jongho quipped. “I was alright, I thought you were in Beijing. I hope.”

Miyoung beamed. “Oh, I almost forgot, I brought someone with me, bring him inside, Yeosang!” She called out. A moment later, a suited man appeared, looking a little wary. “This is Mr. Park Jisung.”

“How do you do?” Jongho nodded towards him.

“Are you Mr. Choi Jongho?” He asked.

“I am Mr. Choi Jongho.”

“Dr. Choi Jongho?”

“Yes, I’m Dr. Choi Jongho. Aren’t I, Miyoung?”

“Yes, he’s definitely Dr. Choi Jongho.”

Jisung took out a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to the doctor. “Then Dr. Choi Jongho, I hereby serve you a subpoena, to answer a lawsuit for non-payment of alimony made by Choi Miyoung.”

Jongho nodded as he looked over the document. “A subpoena. Hmm, for a minute I was glad to see you there, Miyoungie-”

“Are you going to throw me out again?” Jisung stepped back.

“Yeosang, show Mr. Park Jisung the door,” Jongho exhaled, eyeing Miyoung as Yeosang showed the lawyer out of the apartment.

“Now, Dr. Choi, are you going to pay me my alimony, or aren’t you?” Miyoung smiled.

Jongho looked down at the piece of paper again and then back at her. “That’s a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. In a word? No” He tore up the paper.

“Oh yes you are, the judge said so,” She grinned.

“Miyoungie, I’m not one to bring up mundane details about what was once our idyllic relationship, but as far as I know, you already have two-thirds of the money in this entire capital, and you even took my last name while we’re at it,” Jongho pointed out.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it, it’s a matter of principle, you agreed to pay it and I’m going to make you,” She gently poked his chest. “Even if I have to spend my own money to do it.”

Jongho noticed Yeosang appear again. “Mr. Park Jisung has been shown out, and dinner is ready.”

“Dinner! Oh, that’s so nice of you, Jongho” She removed her coat and placed it on the rack, seeing herself into the dining room.

He sighed, watching her walk to the dining area. “Yeosang, put out an extra plate,” He said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And lock up the rest of the silverware.”

Jongho and Miyoung were sitting in the living room later that night, drinking cups of coffee and tea served by Yeosang by the fireplace. “Oh, dinner was excellent. Yeosang has never disappointed with his cooking,” Miyoung said in between sips.

“Thank you, madam,” He replied, walking off.

“I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed anything more,” Miyoung sat back next to him. “You know I’ve reached a decision over dinner, I’m going to marry you again.”

Jongho nearly spit out his coffee in surprise and he cleared his throat to regain his composure. “That’s the thing I love about you, Miyoungie, you’re so subtle.”

“But I’m doing it for you,” She replied. “You won’t have to pay the alimony if you marry me again,” She batted her eyes at him.

“I think you’re great, I still do, but if we could’ve made a go at it, then I wouldn’t have let you divorce me in the first place,” He pointed out. “But our life together was intolerable.”

“Was it? I thought it was fun,” Miyoung put down her cup.

“Fun? You made a nervous wreck out of me,” Jongho said. “You always had me convinced that my coffee was poisoned, or that my scrambled eggs were always filled with broken glass, and that there are murders all around me!”

“Oh for an intelligent man, Jongho, you’ve got a very narrow mind,” Miyoung nudged him playfully. “I never interfered with your career as a surgeon, and you had no right to interfere with my career as a murder mystery writer.“

“You writing murder mysteries didn’t bother me, it was your insisting on living them that wore me down,” Jongho pointed out. “Do you realize that the last three months we were married, you got me so busy finding clues that I spent more time at the morgue than I did at my office, with more corpses than my patients.”

Miyoung froze in her seat. “Jongho, don’t move,” She whispered.

“I’m not moving.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The wall up there behind you, it’s moving” Miyoung tilted her head towards the back. Jongho looked over.

“Control yourself, Miyoung. Yeosang,” He called out, and the face of the butler appeared behind the hole in the wall, where a projector was also in view.

“Yes?”

“Never mind, Yeosang, no movies for tonight, you can put that back.”

“No movies? Very well, sir,” Disappointment was evident in the butler’s tone and the hole in the wall closed up again.

“What is this?” Miyoung looked confused and turned back to her ex-husband.

“All new, had it installed since you moved out. The wall moves a little for the projector,” Jongho replied, gesturing to the blank space above the mantle.

She looked amused. “What did you do? Turn this place into a neighborhood movie theater?”

“Yeosang and I hate having to stand in line for tickets. This is a lot easier,” Jongho replied, putting his now-empty cup down on the table.

Miyoung nodded and sat back. “Oh, right, Jongho, speaking of murders-”

“We weren’t.”

“Speaking of murders,” She repeated. “It was quite a set up, what happened on the race track this afternoon.”

“You mean Lee Taeyong?”

“Yeah, what a melodrama!” Miyoung looked taken aback.

Jongho sat back as well. “It was an unfortunate accident, Miyoungie, not melodrama.”

Miyoung nudged him. “Not melodrama? You’re crazy. It’s too good to be true,” She sat up, turning to face him. “Wave and Illusion neck to neck at the race track. Illusion is the favorite, twelve points in the lead, millions of won riding on his nose and out from the crowd of attendees is a figure with a gun with a silencer attached to it, the shooter pulls the trigger, the jockey falls-”

“My dear ex-wife,” Jongho cut her off. “Illusion wasn’t twelve points in the lead, and there was no fire, the jockey wasn’t shot and the coroner examining him reported heart failure. I don’t see how-”

“Sir?” Yeosang appeared again.

“Yes?” Jongho sat up, Miyoung looking over at the butler as well.

“Mr. Kim Hongjoong is here to see you,” Yeosang replied.

“Hongjoong? What a coincidence,” Jongho raised a brow. “Send him in.”

Yeosang gestured to the man standing by the open door. “Hello, doc,” The man known as Kim Hongjoong stepped inside, making Jongho and Miyoung stand up to greet him.

“Hello Hongjoong, sorry about what happened this afternoon, my condolences,” Jongho said. “Oh, and this is Mrs. Choi,” He introduced Miyoung to him.

“Nice to meet you,” Hongjoong nodded at her, and she did the same. “I didn’t know you were married, Jongho.”

“I’m not.”

“We’re going to be!” Miyoung was beaming.

“No we aren’t,” Jongho eyed her then turned back to the older. “Sit down, sit down,” He gestured for him to sit on the chair and Hongjoong obliged. “Miyoung, Mr. Kim Hongjoong, is the trainer of Illusion,” He explained to her. “He taught Lee Taeyong everything he knew.”

Miyoung looked impressed. “We were just talking about the murder of the jockey this afternoon.”

Hongjoong raised a brow at her. “What do you know about it?”

“He was murdered, wasn’t he?” She asked.

“Yes, he was,” He revealed. Jongho was in disbelief.

Miyoung playfully smacked Jongho’s arm. “See, Jongho? I told you!”

Jongho looked puzzled. “But the reports said it was heart failure, Hongjoong.”

The trainer shook his head. “Doc, you examined Taeyong a little less than two weeks ago, didn’t you say he was healthy?” He said. Jongho nodded. “Was there anything wrong with his heart?”

“No, there wasn’t,” Jongho shook his head. “That’s why I got so confused- Did you go to the police about this?”

“No, this is my job,” Hongjoong replied.

“Mr. Kim, did Taeyong have any enemies?” Miyoung spoke this time. “An organization of spies? What about the mob? Was Taeyong wanted by the mob? Or a loan shark, if you know what I mean?-”

“Miyoungie, can you keep a lid on it?” Jongho said through gritted teeth. He turned back to Hongjoong. “What makes you sure it was murder? Jockeys have fallen off of horses before.”

“Yeah but, Taeyong was already dead before he fell,” He replied.

“How do you know?”

“The guy didn’t have a broken bone in his body when we got to him. You don’t fall limp and relax like that if you’re conscious,” Hongjoong explained. “And I found this note on his locker too after the race,” He took out a piece of paper from his jacket pocket.

“Oh can I see?” Miyoung asked and took the note. “You do as I’ve told you, keep your mouth shut, no one will take your word against mine,” She read out.

“Who wrote this?” Jongho turned back to him.

“I don’t know, but I plan to find out, I want you to examine Taeyong’s body,” Hongjoong sat up.

“I don’t think that’s necessary, the coroner’s the one doing the autopsy-”

“But I want you to examine him, doc,” Hongjoong insisted.

“Of course he’ll do it, Mr. Kim!” Miyoung was excited.

Jongho sighed. “Here we go again,” He side-eyed his ex-wife. “Alright Hongjoong, I’ll examine the guy if it’ll make it easier for you.”

Hongjoong stood up. “Thanks a lot. You keep the note, I’ll do some digging on my own, I’ll meet you back here later,” He looked at his watch and turned to leave.

“Alright, at around 10:30?” Jongho asked.

“Yeah,” Hongjoong waved at them before seeing himself out.

As soon as the door closed, Miyoung was beaming. “This is exciting! I’ll get my coat,” She said.

“Miyoung,” Jongho rolled his eyes. “Miyoungie, we’re not going to the party. We’re not going anywhere, I’m going to the morgue.”

“What a coincidence! That’s where I’m going too, we can go together,” Miyoung kissed his cheek before walking off. Jongho sighed as he watched her. Maybe he should’ve paid the alimony.

Jongho and Miyoung got down from the car that night as they arrived at the building where the morgue was. He told Yeosang to park the car nearby and quickly caught up to his ex-wife, who was already walking ahead. Miyoung linked her arm with his as they walked together. The person in charge met them at the entrance of the building and showed them inside. “This way, Dr. Choi,” They said, leading them down the halls.

Miyoung tugged on her coat for more warmth as she held onto him while they walked. “This doesn’t look at all like the morgue,” She whispered to him.

“Because we’re not in the morgue yet, it’s behind that door,” He pointed out. “Miyoung, can you please go home?”

“No,” Miyoung nudged him.

“Kim Miyoung, this is not the place for you,” He gave her a look.

“Alright, fine, how about this? If I don’t go in there, will you marry me again?” Miyoung countered him.

“No,” He said as they stopped in front of the door.

“Then in we go! Open the door please,” She said to the person in charge, who nodded. As they opened the door to the facility, the sight of bodies on slabs made her fall over and faint.

Jongho caught her in time before she fell completely. He patted her face gently. “Miyoung? Miyoungie? Oh, can I have some assistance? My assistant has just been indisposed, she needs some air,” He said. “If you see my chauffeur Yeosang, tell him to bring her back.”

The person in charge nodded and helped her get to her feet, fanning her face as they left the facility. Jongho noticed the body of the jockey on the first slab, with the coroner, Moon Taeil, standing by and waiting for him. “Dr. Choi, welcome back,” He said. “Rigor mortis has already set in, but I imagine you can still look into it.”

Jongho nodded and removed his coat, putting on the extra set of scrubs and the gloves. He looked over the jockey’s body for any visible signs of another cause of death. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d die of heart failure unless he had an underlying condition. I examined him less than two weeks ago, he was healthy, no problems whatsoever.”

“I’m just as confused as you are, doc,” Taeil replied. “...Did you find anything?” He noticed Jongho look under the jockey’s neck.

Jongho stopped when he saw bits of a soft, clear, substance on the skin. “Wait a minute, can I have a scalpel?”

“Here,” Taeil handed the instrument over.

“There’s something by his neck,” Jongho gently scraped off the substance, making sure to get every trace of it. He held it up. “What do you think this is?”

“I don’t know, maybe chewing gum?”

“It could be,” Jongho nodded. “Can I have a test tube for this? I want to bring this home so I can examine it further.”

“Yes sir,” Taeil walked off to the supply closet.

“Good evening, Dr. Choi,” Yeosang greeted as Jongho arrived later that night.

“Good evening,” Jongho removed his coat and handed it over to the butler along with his hat and cane. He noticed a small brown box by the table near the coat rack. “What’s that?” He asked.

“It’s a package for Mr. Kim Hongjoong, it was delivered an hour ago,” Yeosang replied.

“Hongjoong? Then why was it brought here?” Jongho looked confused, giving the package a once-over.

“I don’t know sir.”

“Alright, I’ll take it, I’ll let him know,” Jongho took the package and padded towards his room.

“Wait, sir, sir, I have to tell you something-” Yeosang called out when the phone suddenly rang.

Jongho stopped to pick up the phone, reading what was written on the package. “Hello?” He said.

“Hello doc? This is Kim Hongjoong,” He said on the other line.

“Oh! Oh, Hongjoong-”

“Jongho, did a package arrive for me?” Hongjoong sounded rushed.

“Uh yes, yes-”

“Keep it for me. I’ll be there in five minutes, I found something very valuable,” and he hung up.

“Dr. Choi! Dr. Choi! I have to tell you-” Yeosang called out.

Jongho put the phone down, reading the package again. “Later, Yeosang! I’m going to be in my office-”

“Hello honey!” Miyoung’s voice suddenly filled the room, making him stop and freeze. She soon appeared, followed by several lobby boys carrying trunks.

Jongho looked puzzled. “Miyoung? What’s all this luggage doing here?” He watched her tip the lobby boys before they left the apartment, closing the door behind them and catching Yeosang off guard.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you, sir,” Yeosang quipped.

“Miyoung? What is this? What is all this?” Jongho realized that it wasn’t just trunks that were now laid out by the main hall. He noticed some familiar-looking decorations. “What are those doing here?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m moving in,” She said.

“You-” Jongho gaped at her. “Miyoung, this is absurd. Then this means that I’ll have to move out.”

“You won’t do anything of the sort,” Miyoung waved a hand dismissively. “You’re my bread and butter Jongho, by marriage or by alimony, and the only way you’re any good to me is if you’re alive. You’ve now got yourself mixed up in a murder case and against my advice, and it won’t be surprising if you got bumped off unless I’m here with you.”

Jongho glared at her. “Miyoung, you’re a menace to civilization.”

“I’m very serious,” She pointed out. “You’ve now got to be careful more than ever. Don’t eat anything unless you had it tested, don’t open the door, and most importantly? Never go anywhere on your own, not that you’ve got a chance.”

“I can see that, alright,” Jongho said. The phone rang again and he picked it up. “Hello?” He answered.

“Hello, Dr. Choi?” An unfamiliar voice was on the other line.

“Yes?”

“This is Kim Hongjoong, doc.”

Jongho paused. Miyoung eyed him, quietly prodding him to tell her what was going on. “Hongjoong?”

“Did a package arrive for me?”

He was confused. He was still holding the package. “You just-”

“Well?”

“Yes, yes, it came,” Jongho replied.

“Look, I’m in trouble and I need help,” The voice said. “Can you come over to the cigar store between Aurora and Horizon? I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Yeah, sure, Hongjoong,” He said.

“Bring the package along with you.”

“Okay Hongjoong, goodbye Hongjoong,” Jongho hung up, still looking confused.

“So I guess that was Hongjoong,” Miyoung said.

“That’s where you’re wrong, my darling,” Jongho said. “That wasn’t Hongjoong, that was someone pretending to be Hongjoong.”

Miyoung gaped at him. “What did he say?”

“He wanted me to meet him with this package,” Jongho held up the box and Miyoung took it from him.

“Let me see,” She tried to open it but Jongho tried to hold her back. “Let me be, can you please let go? I want to see what’s in it-”

“Miyoungie, you shouldn’t-” He stopped when the package tore open.

She stared at the wad of bills that fell out. “Jongho, it’s money!” She said, bending down to pick up the other bundles of bills.”

“Money?”

“Yes, look,” She showed him the bills.

“Sixty, seventy, eighty,” Jongho paused as he counted everything. “One hundred million won.”

“And you were just going to go ahead and let yourself get bumped off with a fake Kim Hongjoong, it’s a good thing I was here to stop you,” She said.

“Yes, apparently.”

#kdiner #ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez scenarios #jongho #choi jongho #ateez jongho

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oldtvandcomics · 4 years ago

Text

I watched The Green Hornet (2011). Now I really should do a review, right?

Ooooooh, damn it. Ok.

The most noticeable thing about this movie for me has been just HOW MUCH everyone in it is focussed on the way they look, and that not in a good way. The whole thing is just a bunch of people parading around their inflated air-filled personas and hoping that if they only perform hard enough, the others will believe it is them. The problem is that this leaves very little space for genuine interaction, and in the end, the movie itself runs into the same trap as they do: It wants to pretend SO MUCH to be one of the Big Bad Superhero movies, but in the end, it is a nobody.

I must add this disclaimer somewhere: I LOVE the Green Hornet. He is my third-favorite superhero. I desperately wanted to like this movie, I really did.

Objectively measurable things first: The dialogue is bad. Like, AMAZINGLY, PHENOMENALLY BAD. Sometimes you feel as if something that has been just said should be a funny moment. It never is. It just feels awkward. As to the characters, they are unlikable the way heroes only in the 2010's can be: It is a decade where nobody seems to believe any more that people can be genuinely good and heroic, leading to "realistic" re-imaginations that inevitably kill the charm of the original. In the case of Britt and Kato, this has degraded them to simple brutal serial killers who do it because they enjoy their own violence. Britt is the ultimate frat boy who takes shamelessly advantage of Kato's skills while believing to be superior to him, calls him slurs and straight out sexually harasses his female coworker. And... Look, in the Real World, this is probably what Britt Reid would be like. BUT THIS ISN'T THE REAL WORLD!! Britt is supposed to be a hero, that is the sole reason why he exists: Because the people in the 1930's desperately needed someone who is on their side, and they dreamed up superheroes to protect them from real world problems.

[Which I feel is a problem with many modern-day superhero adaptations, btw. They are separated from their original historic context and put 1:1 in the current year. This means that they inevitably stop making sense. Instead of looking why that is, what those nonsensical elements meant in their original context, and adapt THAT, people look at them and go "this is stupid, I am going to make the story about how stupid this is, look, I deconstructed this thing, am I not clever!". And along the process of pointing out how stupid it is, the rest of what made the story good to begin with also vanishes. The end result is that I have the impression that they are calling me a bad person for liking the original in the first place.]

Then there is the aforementioned sincerity problem: There were only one or two scenes where the characters were not lost behind their own smokescreens and I could actually connect to their emotions. And finally, the plot: There wasn't much of one. Britt and Kato only did their gig for fun, and the gang they pissed off as well as the corrupt politician who was supposed to be the final conflict just didn't feel important enough to warrant this level of bloodbath and collateral damages.

And now the treatment of minorities. Oh boy.

Kato naturally is treated like crap, both by Britt and the general story that seems to condemn this, but only towards the viewers. Britt is never forced to recognize all the ways he hurt him, even less does he apologize. And the narrative revolves so much around him that he is able to completely ruin the whole movie by simply being so badly written. Kato himself could have been a good character, but it and his arc just go under, and isn't that typical for Kato.

This movie loves sexist slurs. I was totally shocked to see that apparently, a decade ago it was completely acceptable to use "pussy" and "little bitch" as an insult in a movie, EVEN MORE BY THE MAIN CHARACTER (the person being called these slurs being, obviously, Kato). Casey, a clever and competent secretary with sharp wit and an even sharper tongue in the original, is degraded to "hot blonde girl", has both male leads openly thirst over her IN HER WORKPLACE, and all of her work experience erased by being a new employee. It was terribly uncomfortable to watch.

But hey, at least they sent out a message that they are both not gay? I guess?? Because look, Britt Reid and Kato can be fairly easily read as queer. They live together, have very visibly a close bond and trust each other unconditionally, and also neither of them has a female love interest. That is the original, 1930's-1940's. 2011, we are aware enough of the existence of queer people so that it couldn't be left like this, so obviously the mutual trust and respect needed to go, and those comments about poor Casey served the same purpose. The movie also kind of seems to keep commenting on the nature of their relationship with bits of dialogue that in a different context kind of sound romantic, and are clearly supposed to be jokes and/or funny moments, but absolutely nothing about the dialogue is funny, so it all just feels really uncomfortable.

And finally, the xenophobia. Also, racism, because it is trying to comment on how the original story treats Kato like crap by treating Kato like crap. NOT how you do this, guys. But the point I actually wanted to make in this paragraph was about the villain, who has a Slavic-sounding name. Which, apparently, is difficult to pronounce (it isn't??). Hahaha, look how difficult it is to pronounce! Let's constantly point this out by having the Americans comment on and keep mispronouncing it! Aren't we funny!

Fuck you.

Sorry, at this point, I had to.

Adaptation from the original things:

They gave Kato more screentime, that is good. It also completely went under in the mess that the rest of the movie is. Oh, and they didn’t let him wear his white suit, which, pity, it’s a really nice suit. Britt is an arsehole, and acts like a spoiled child. Points for trying to make him look more like a playboy, because in every other adaptation, he is a completely normal, responsible adult man who is said to be a playboy (vanishing weeks on end while fighting crime does this to your reputation). But like, AT THE BEGINNING. By the end, HE SHOULD BE a normal responsible adult man! Character growth, anyone? No? Not in this movie. Casey as I said before is just there to look sexy. Axford is... Apparently that older journalist guy who kept telling Britt to tune it down? That's Axford?? OK, he is absolutely NOTHING like the Axford I know, who is a bit of a bumbling character obsessed with catching the Green Hornet, but very likeable and a fairy good journalist. Lowry isn't there at all.

Look, what made the Green Hornet as a superhero so exceptional was the truly amazing supporting cast. I fell in love with the people at the Daily Sentinel at least as much as I did with Britt, the way they bicker and poke fun of one another. I couldn't find a single one of these beloved characters in this movie, and the Daily Sentinel itself was more of a background prop than anything else.

Black Beauty... Call me boring, but it really doesn't need this many guns. Why would it need this many guns?? But all in all, it was cool, so no complaints there. They did miss a chance by having Britt live in a GIANT mansion with a garage full of cars instead of an apartment with a secret passage, because who wouldn't want to see an apartment with a secret passage.

And now that I got this off my chest, some of the things that did work:

Kato. Kato, as usual, has got a perfectly good and interesting story going on behind the scenes. He is maybe the only character who doesn't feel fake (I mean, he gets covered up by the layers of bad radiating from everyone else so it hardly shines though), and he also has a completely good storyline that would have worked, had the rest of the movie... I'm repeating myself.

That's... Pretty much it, yes.

I did like the part at the beginning where Britt first met Kato, and there was this ridiculously complicated coffee machine that he built, and Britt was immediately in awe with him, and then Kato showed off all the stuff that he designed and built, and they were both just SO INTO IT. It is one of the few genuine moments in the entire movie.

I also loved the part at the end where Kato was trying to look for a new job, noticed that there is absolutely nothing that he can put on his resume, and for a moment it looked as if he was really considering a career in crime. They could have done more with this idea. I also hoped for a moment that he would actually dress as the Green Hornet for the job, and OMG, my fanfiction is coming true, but no. Pity, because I swear that it is better written than this movie.

(No, seriously. Would anyone like by any chance to read my fanfiction?)

TL;DR: THIS IS A BAD MOVIE. DON'T WATCH IT.

#Green Hornet #the green hornet #The Green Hornet (2011)#bad movies #movie review #superheroes #*sigh*#I was kind of expecting it to be bad #so I'm not surprised just disappointed

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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Ginger Rogers: Curse of the Working Class

A natural-born mimic, ham, tease, hard worker, stoic follower and out-of-reach babe, Ginger Rogers has proven one of the most difficult to define of all the 1930s Hollywood stars. At her best she was a synonym for fun and high spirits while also conveying a dignified and skeptical kind of resistance to other people, and these contradictory impulses made her one of the most special and ambiguous performers of her time. Rogers excelled in her first seven musicals with Fred Astaire and in several of her comedy vehicles and even in some of the programmers she churned out in the early 1930s. She was beloved, and rightly so.

In Stage Door (1937), Rogers gives one of the most distinctive, most suggestive, and most perfectly judged performances of the period, molding every one of her bone-dry, wisecracking line readings (and what lines she has in that movie!) into something pleasurable, something unexpected, even something profound, delivering them all with her guarded, in-transit sort of face.

I’ve seen Stage Door probably more times than I’ve seen any other movie, but I always notice something new in it, some new line, some new angle. As a kid, I didn’t really understand the source of Rogers’s misgivings here, which is the same source that animates her outrageously and inventively bitchy yet somehow tender and worldly fights with Linda (Gail Patrick), her high-falutin’ former roommate. Linda is the mistress of Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou), a powerful Broadway producer. When Powell sees Rogers’s Jean Maitland rehearsing a dance routine, his little weasel eyes light up with lust. He thinks she’s just playing hard to get when she makes her habitual mordant jokes at him, but she is really just trying to delay the inevitable. She wants no part of sleeping with a man for his money not because she thinks it’s morally wrong, per se, but because she’s basically too tired-out to go through those motions.

Jean is so disenchanted that the disenchantment seems to be leading her to some kind of drastic change. She talks herself into going out with Powell but gets out of sleeping with him by getting, or pretending to get, disruptively yet vaguely drunk. Jean gets drunk the way she does everything else, at some very unusual kind of steady and wary behavioral half-mast. She cracks wise as a matter of course, but she sleeps with a doll and she plays a ukulele. These cute details don’t seem to fit her character, but they do express the divided character of the woman who was playing her.

Jean stumbles home from Powell’s penthouse to her new roommate Terry (Katharine Hepburn), a rich girl with airily la-di-da attitudes about life and the theater. Hepburn had not endeared herself to Rogers with her much-repeated remark about Rogers’s partnership with Astaire: “He gives her class and she gives him sex.” The competitive rivalry between Hepburn’s upper-class pretension and Rogers’s low-burning common sense is the heart of their conflict in Stage Door, and this conflict and mutual dislike reads as pure chemistry on screen, just as it did for Rogers with Astaire.

There is such chemistry between Jean and Terry that Stage Door has always been a kind of closeted lesbian classic just waiting to burst into full-on Sapphic love. Terry has no love interest and shows zero interest in acquiring one, while Jean looks more than ready to give up on poor, unreliable young men and rich, sexually demanding older men like Powell. Jean and Terry, in fact, are perfect for each other and wind up with each other, and in the last scene Rogers reaches a kind of epiphany as she reacts to their friend Judy (Lucille Ball) leaving New York to get married. “At least she’ll have a couple of kids to keep her company in her old age, and what’ll we have?” she asks. “Some broken-down memories and an old scrapbook that nobody’ll look at.”

I first saw Stage Door when I was eight years old. Now that I’m well into adulthood, these last few lines that Rogers tosses off with such face-the-facts casualness have the force of revelation, as if she has finally washed up on the shores of some final philosophy. They predict the real lives of both Hepburn and Rogers (though some people still do want to leaf through those particular scrapbooks) and Terry and Jean, and everybody else for whom the easy way and the conventional way of living will never fit or will never be acceptable.

Rogers was capable of that tough-minded and frank and bleak attitude on screen, but in life and in general she was actually, and alarmingly, one of the most clueless of stars, never quite knowing what it was that people liked about her. Starting as early 1938, the year she made Vivacious Lady and Carefree, something peculiar started to happen to Rogers. After years of the most unlikely and enormous success in her Astaire films, where she was up to any dance challenge he gave her and where her timing in both musical and comic and dramatic scenes was magically sharp, her timing started to go horribly awry. Rogers began to be afflicted by self-consciousness, miscalculation, cutesiness, self-infatuated archness and flashes of deep-rooted mean-mindedness. She slipped back into her best controlled star mode in several films after that year, but she started to deteriorate more and more by the mid-1940s, almost as if someone had put a curse on her.

Rogers was born Virginia McMath in Independence, Missouri in 1911. Her formidable mother Lela Rogers was a writer for silent films and a journalist, and she was seemingly joined at the hip to her daughter. It was Rogers who wanted a career as an actress, and Lela resisted this at first, but when Ginger won a Charleston contest Mama Lela knew which way the wind was blowing. She poured all of her own considerable energy and ambition into making Ginger a star and keeping her one (that first name supposedly came about because a cousin couldn’t pronounce the name Virginia).

At the height of her stardom, when Rogers was sent the script of The Hard Way (1943), she wonderingly said, “This is the story of my life,” and turned it down. In that movie, Ida Lupino works like a demon to get her malleable kid sister (Joan Leslie) into show business, and the comparison is not flattering to Lela, who made a fool of herself testifying before HUAC as an expert on Communist infiltration of Hollywood, citing particularly the time when Rogers had to say Dalton Trumbo’s line, “Share and share alike, that’s democracy” in Tender Comrade (1943). Lela herself actually turns up playing Ginger’s mother in Billy Wilder’s The Major and the Minor (1942), and she’s a rather low-key presence, but she talks and moves like a woman who has power and feels no need to make any outward show of it.

In that Wilder movie, Rogers spends most of her time pretending to be a twelve-year old, and this uneasy reversion to little-girlhood was one of her most troubling fallback modes. She had made her first successes on stage with “baby talk monologues” written by Lela, and her early style, as seen in films like Young Man of Manhattan (1930) and Honor Among Lovers (1931), was very much a hold-over from the 1920s, a Betty Boop baby vamp persona that was more suited to cameo roles than to leads (Claudette Colbert, the star of Young Man of Manhattan, gently mocks these baby affectations after meeting Rogers’s character).

She churned out lots of low-budget programmers in 1932, and in 1933 she made ten films. In two of those, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, Rogers nearly steals the show in fairly small parts. As Anytime Annie, a notoriously obliging chorus girl in 42nd Street, Rogers is first seen wearing a monocle and affecting a grand manner accent, and this was the first sign of her aptitude for two-faced disguise. As Manuel Puig once said of Ann-Margret, Rogers is anything but reassuring.

She’s close to surreal in her gold-coin outfit singing “We’re in the Money” with pig Latin verse in Gold Diggers of 1933, looking directly into the camera and not flinching as it travels all the way up to her face. Rogers gobbled up attention like that, and she had what it took, but she needed something or someone to stabilize her. When she strips down to her slip and stockings and gyrates in Professional Sweetheart (1933), an outraged Norman Foster spanks and then punches her, the first in an increasingly ominous series of punishments that would shadow her later career.

In the very horny Pre-Code musical Flying Down to Rio (1933), her first film with Astaire, Rogers is a hot mama, singing and swaying to “Music Makes Me” in a vagina power dress that even Marilyn Monroe might have rejected as too overt. When they dance “The Carioca,” Astaire starts out holding his head slightly away from Rogers, as if she might be diseased, but by the end their electric chemistry has fully kicked in.

Astaire had spent his youth dancing with his sister Adele and didn’t want to get stuck with another steady partner. Rogers had her eye on dramatic parts, announcing to an incredulous press that she wanted to play Joan of Arc. She was an ambitious and competitive person, and she knew that she was not even close to Astaire’s Olympian league as a dancer. But that’s part of the magic of their series of films, in which Rogers improves as a dancer bit by bit until she is fully capable of following his every step.

Astaire objected that no one would believe Rogers as an English girl in The Gay Divorcee (1934), and surely no one could mistake her for English, but this part gave her the reserve that she intriguingly used and toyed with for her best years as a star. Like most first sexual experiences between two people, their first real romantic dance together in that film, “Night and Day,” is both exciting and a little awkward. In their follow-up Roberta (1935), Rogers looks tense during their slow “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” routine, but she comes wonderfully alive when they casually tap to “Hard to Handle,” their first really great dance together.

She was always at her best in the lively comic numbers, where her wacky energy seems to warm Astaire, but she worked hard at the dramatic routines, so that when they do “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” in Follow the Fleet (1936), Rogers has somehow ascended up to Astaire’s level as a dancer. It must have taken nearly super-human will, but she did it, and audiences saw and felt her progress, and they loved it because it meant that anything was possible if you worked hard enough, even dancing like or with Fred Astaire.

Astaire didn’t like her feather dress for the “Cheek to Cheek” dance in Top Hat (1935), and you can see why he didn’t: it’s a little tacky. Costumer Walter Plunkett said Rogers always wanted to “add a crepe paper orchid or a string of beads or some goddamned feathered thing. She just never could resist little improvements.” But her feather dress in Top Hat does move beautifully when she dances, even if we do see some of the feathers floating away from them, as if she’s molting.

A more characteristic and winning image of her comes in the way she hikes up her skirt in the “Pick Yourself Up” number in Swing Time, which has a deeply charming kind of put-on nonchalance, or in the soldier-like way she executes a series of brutally exacting turns at the end of the “Never Gonna Dance” finale toward the end of that movie (while she shot this scene, her feet started to bleed in her shoes). One of the real pleasures of American moviegoing is watching Rogers as Astaire sings a love song to her: she would listen so intently, with barely any change of expression, but with such sensitive receptivity behind her eyes and in the set of her mouth.

People like to wonder if Astaire and Rogers hated each other. Maybe there were moments when they did, but mainly they just resented being tied together as a team, and those misgivings are part of what give their partnership and their best dances such impact, such crackle. Rogers reported in her autobiography that Astaire had taken her out on dates in New York when they were both working in theater, and at the end of one such date he gave her “a kiss that would never have passed the Hays Office Code!” But when they worked together in films, Astaire was married to a woman he adored, and he was a distant taskmaster in the killer rehearsal sessions for their dance routines. His friends, cultivated when he played on stage in London in the 1920s, were the English gentry. Rogers was not his cup of tea, and he made that known to her in subtle ways. She said either, and he said eye-ther, and they wanted to call the whole thing off, but no one else ever did.

In the many years after their partnership ended, they were still stuck with each other, and they both still resented that. Rogers would sometimes make friendly overtures to Astaire, and he would politely but firmly put her off, and this led to hurt feelings for her, so much so that she didn’t even go to his American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony. Film scholar Joseph McBride helped to put together that evening, and when I asked him about it, he remembered Astaire saying, “I suppose we’ll have to have Ginger,” in an irritated voice. When she didn’t come to the ceremony, it seemed like sour grapes on her part, but it had been made clear to Rogers that Astaire only wanted the bare minimum to do with her, and so she withdrew. It would do well to remember, of course, just how obnoxious Rogers could be. If you want to feel the full force of that, just look at any number of the films she made from 1944 to 1964 and you’ll see one garishly misplayed, mistimed performance after another, including the last one she did with Astaire, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), where her dramatic aspirations were mocked and then the mockery was unintentionally confirmed when she did a goggle-eyed recreation of Sarah Bernhardt reciting the Marseillaise.

So what happened to Rogers? Why did she lose all of the qualities that had made her a star right after her stardom was confirmed? Many writers have tried to explain it. Analyzing Astaire and Rogers in The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (1972), Arlene Croce says, “She’s an American classic, just as he is: common clay that we prize above exotic marble. The difference between them is that he knew it and she didn’t. Rogers always wanted to be something more. Probably no other major star has so severely tried the loyalty of her public by constantly changing her appearance and her style.” In his book Romantic Comedy (1987), James Harvey writes, “Can there be any other major star who was so variable, even from film to film, as she was?”

Harvey blames George Stevens, who directed maybe the finest Astaire/Rogers film, Swing Time (1936). He sees a softening of her character in the straight scenes in Swing Time, but the rot really sets in with Vivacious Lady, a romantic comedy that has all the elements for success but perversely ruins them with its taffy-pull pacing, its willful lack of coordination, its leaning on jags and cutesiness and bizarre sequences like the fight scene between Rogers and a rival that devolves into a series of unmoving tableaus broken only by a coy laugh from Rogers, as if Stevens wanted to turn her into Frank McHugh. In the same year, in Carefree with Astaire, Rogers exhibits such unpleasant sadism when her character is under hypnosis that it feels like a revelation of some inner nastiness that had always been prudently hidden from view.

The damage was reversed in Bachelor Mother (1939), a working girl comedy that has no right to be as charming as it is, where Rogers added a kind of moony dreaminess to her repertoire of personas. She then made two films for Stage Door director Gregory La Cava, 5th Avenue Girl (1939) and Primrose Path (1940). In her second La Cava film, Rogers is so deadpan that it reads as a lack of basic vitality, a first in her career; it’s as if La Cava is unearthing the suicidal or even homicidal side of Jean Maitland. “People annoy me,” she says in that movie, and boy does she mean it. In Stage Door, when Powell tells Jean he wants to put her name in big electric lights, she says, “Gotta be big enough to keep people away.” La Cava is the director who understood Rogers the most, discerning something anti-social and solitary behind her sunny audience-pleasing looks and manner. In Primrose Path, he cast her as a teenager who breaks away from her family before she joins their prostitution racket, and her work in that movie is stark, clean, unsentimental.

Rogers won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle (1940), and many have dated her decline from that point, even if she is modestly touching in what is a modest working girl soap opera. She was close to unbearable in Tom, Dick and Harry (1941), where director Garson Kanin seems to dote on every moment of her self-indulgent performance as a dumb and narcissistic telephone operator who must choose between three suitors. Something about playing dumb here makes Rogers’s style seem laborious and throws her timing all out of whack, yet the following year, in Roxie Hart (1942), she certainly gets her laughs with her broad playing of a very dumb murderess who lives for publicity and likes to do the Black Bottom for reporters. In her segment in Tales of Manhattan (1942), you want to say to her, “OK, you can have all that hair on the top of your head or you can have all that hair fanning over your back, but you can’t have both, Ginger.”

Leo McCarey’s Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) did her no favors, but most writers agree that the real coup de grâce in her career was Lady in the Dark (1944), a Technicolor movie of the psychoanalytical stage musical that had starred Gertrude Lawrence. Rogers insisted on playing it, and she was at loggerheads with director Mitchell Leisen and Paramount studio chief Buddy DeSylva, who vengefully cut most of the Kurt Weill songs from the film. All in all, the mercifully little-seen Lady in the Dark looks now almost as if it had been made in a spirit of deliberate sabotage. It is has to be the most nastily misogynist of any major studio production of this time, constantly hammering home the idea that Rogers’s Liza Elliott is an unnatural woman unhealthily attached to her work, and her leading man Ray Milland warrants particular scorn here for the gleefulness he brings to the scenes where he humiliates Rogers’s character. In the one extended musical number Rogers has, “The Saga of Jenny,” she doesn’t seem to have been given any choreography or direction and she can barely move in the outfit Leisen designed for her. “After Lady in the Dark there was nothing left of the Rogers character,” wrote Croce. “She died on the analyst’s couch.”

Rogers’s career proceeded only through sheer determination on her part (and on Lela’s part). She floundered in an updated remake of Grand Hotel (1932) called Week-end at the Waldorf (1945), and the next twenty years of her career were a real trial for her fans from the 1930s. Howard Hawks’s Monkey Business (1952) was supposed to be about scientist Cary Grant reverting to childhood when he drinks an elixir of youth, but Rogers insisted that she “wanted to do the kid thing too,” and so she ripped into scene after scene of coarse-grained youthful impersonation, the wise child of her early ‘30s character bearing rotten and poisonously un-watchable fruit. Cast as a hardened gangster’s moll in Phil Karlson’s Tight Spot (1955), Rogers is so heavy-handed and slow and cutesey with her dialogue that the effect is ghastly. If I were to make a simple diagnosis of her problems in the last half of her film career, I’d say that she caught a bad case of George Stevens-itis and never got over it (she had an affair with the married director during Vivacious Lady, which had Lela up in arms).

When she worked with a fine and sensitive director, as she did with Frank Borzage for Magnificent Doll (1946) and with Edmund Goulding for Teenage Rebel (1956), Rogers was still capable of restrained and acceptable if somewhat colorless work. But hateful things kept happening to her. In something like Storm Warning (1951), where she does battle with the Ku Klux Klan while also doing a transposed version of A Streetcar Named Desire, it seemed as if someone behind the scenes wanted to see Rogers punished. When Steve Cochran attacks her in Storm Warning, the scene is so prolonged that finally it is Rogers being humiliated and hurt, not the character she is playing.

Rogers went through five husbands, including the pacifistic and beautiful Lew Ayres, and most of them lasted for a couple of years, but Lela was her real partner for life. The last husband, William Marshall, got her to play a madam in a dire film shot in Jamaica, variously known as The Confession and Quick, Let’s Get Married (1964), and after that low point she made only Harlow (1965), where she was intriguingly cast as Jean Harlow’s mother, before retaining her star status in long-running stage stints in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway and Mame in London. After that came a little TV and nightclub work, where she ended most of her songs with a corny wink to the audience. A Christian Scientist like her beloved or at least inescapable mother, Rogers refused medical treatment after having a stroke, and she was ill for several years before dying in 1995.

The last forty-five or so years of Rogers’s long career basically ran on fumes of good will from her first twelve years in movies, and particularly those Fred Astaire musicals that she preferred to forget. Like many actors, Rogers had no real center or base that was really her, and this lack of center meant that she was able to in effect be something she wasn’t with Astaire, and transcendently so, but it also meant that bad habits and instincts were ready to rush in and overwhelm her when her guard was down.

“May I rescue you?” Astaire asks her in Top Hat, to which she snaps, “No, I prefer being in distress.” The Astaire/Rogers films are so romantic because part of her resistance is that she is suspicious of romance, and maybe she doesn’t believe in it at all. That lack of belief was what made her so sexy beyond her God-given but worked-on perfect figure (“Women weren’t born with silk stockings on, you know,” she says in Follow the Fleet). Look at how cool and unreachable she is when Fred is singing his heart out to her during “Never Gonna Dance” in Swing Time. She preached that God is Love and soda fountains were forever, but in her best work with Astaire and in Stage Door, she let darker and more movingly yearning things cloud her almost cartoonishly pretty brow, and those things are what should define her and what should be remembered.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #The Chiseler #Ginger Rogers

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anne-white-star · 4 years ago

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Exchange student modern au jon pertwee x reader: Studying abroad

Notes: reader is a student from the netherlands she's 20 years old (jon is 24) and goes to england to studdy. She goes to frensham heights school and meets there jon pertwee as her asigned student for the year. It may not all be acurate but please enjoy reading jon lives in rowledge (this is an au and probably not completly acurate)

Words : 2488

Warnings : bullying, cursing

Y/n was working on her degree in (prefred feeld). Her year of studying concidered also of studying one year abroad, she was extremly exited about it

"Do you have everything dear?"

"I think i do don't worry mom everything will be alright"

"Alright just wanted to make sure, here is your ticket for the train"

"Thanks mom" She hugged her " once i arive i'll call alright

"Alright, take care my dear "

"Take care mom" y/n ran to the train while waving "bye!"

"Bye sweetheart!!"

The wissel went off and a few seconds later the train started to move she kept waving at her mom, once she was out sight y/n sat down it was going to be a long ride.

She had to get from the netherlands to belgium to France and then to London england but she had brought some stuff to sketch a bit the ride was about 7 u 47 min.

Y/n drew the landscape around her sketching with difrent kind of colors

Finaly after almost 8 hours the train had finaly arived, packing everything back up y/n grabed all her things and got out

She had to wait for an other train to frensham cause there was the school she had to go to

Once the train had arived to bring her to frensham y/n sat down again it was going to be about an other 2 hours oh wel she thought its better than biking everywhere.

Late that afternoon y/n finaly arived at frensham heights school the princable greated her " Ah you must be y/n y/l/n" he shook her hand

"Yes thats me" she smiled

"I hope the ride went wel here"

"Oh yes it did everything went alright and the trains were on time"

"Good, you will be staying at a room for one night and tomorow you wil go back home with one of the students he has already been informed of your stay"

"Alright great" she picked up her suit case "please show me the way" about 30 minuts later y/n was seteled in the room, she wasn't going to pack out everything also because of tomorow. She grabed her phone and dialed her mothers number

"Hey mom"

"Hey sweetheart have you arived?"

"Yes i got here about 30 minuts ago and im now in my room where i stay for the night"

"Oh for the night? I thought you would stay there for the whole year"

"I do but they informed me that i would stay with a student for the year"

"Do you know who it is?"

"Not yet they will tell me tomorow"

"Alright wel i don't have to worry about you your 20 years old dear"

"I know mom its fine really, Anyway i should be going i have class at 9 tomorow"

"Alright sweetheart sleep wel"

"Night mom" She hang up And placed the phone on the bedsite table "wel Its time to sleep" she grabed her pyjama out her lugage and put it on, then she went under the blankets and went to sleep

*time skip to 8 o'clock next morning*

Y/n got out of bed and started to dress her self breakfast was waiting then she left her room to eat

"Good morning sir"

"Ah good morning y/n did you sleep wel?"

"Oh yes i did "

"Good im glad to hear that, breakfast is waiting for you it might be difrent from what you normaly eat"

"Oh thats alright im not making a big hassle out of it as long as it is bread its fine"

"Alright then once school starts you will be inform who you wil stay with"

"Thank you, see you later sir"

*skip to 9 o'clock*

Everyone had sit down for class and y/n walked in with the teacher

"Good morning everyone we got a new class mate she is an Exchange student from the netherlands please introduce yourself" the teacher stept aside

"Hi im y/n y/l/n and i hope we will have a Nice year with echoter im really looking forward to it"

"Good miss y/l/n do you know yet who you are going to stay with this year?

"not yet im suposed to get the info today"

"Alright the student you wil be paired with is mr pertwee" the teacher pointed at a guy with big grayish blue eyes dark brown wavy hair and he was wearing a school uniform "you can sit right next to him "

"Alright thank you sir" y/n sat next to mr pertwee

"Hi my name is jon its Nice to meet you y/n "

"Like wise"

"Please grab your english books and turn to page 45"

The day went by fast

"Oh now i don't know who im going to stay with this whole year"

"Y/n You are staying with us"

"Oh... we i guese that we should get my stuff then "

"Good idea, please lead the way" jon grined

"Here is everything"

"Three suitcases and a bag i have seen girls who brought more"

"Oh wel that doesn't really mater i only brought things that i would need, and i got my school uniform today"

"Ah i see, we should go i bet my aunt is waiting for us"

"Alright lets go" They grabed everything and went out

Once they arived home they went up the stairs jon opend the door

"This will be your room for the upcoming year"

"Oh its absolutly wonderfull" she looked around on the otherside of the room stood a desk and a big closet

"The bathroom is down the hall first door on the left, i leave you be so that you can settle your stuff"

"Alright thanks jon i'll be down in an hour"

Finaly an hour later y/n was done with packing out and placing everything in the right place , then there was a knok at the door

"Yes?"

"Hey y/n I just came to tell you that dinner is ready "

"Oh thanks jon im coming with you" she stood up and followed him

Y/n sat next to him at the table "jon i have a question, um where are your parents? "

"They devorced and they don't want anything to do with me anymore so i moved in with my aunt"

"Im so sorry jon i din't know"

"Its fine y/n don't worry" he smiled softly

"Hello everybody!" Came a voice from the front door

"Hi bill, y/n This is bill my cousin"

"Nice to meet you" she shook his hand

"Like whise"

After dinner Everyone went to bed early to get a good night of sleep, the next day was going to be a long day

*time skip to four months later because im to lazy *

"What lessons do we have today ?"

"Um english, biolgy, art , music, history and french

" and Tomorow ?"

Mathematics, science, sport and geography

"Alright noted"

Once they arived at school they went to their class room

"You go in jon i need to check something"

"Alright"

"Well wel wel if it isnt the Exchange student" y/n turned around and looked at a girl and there where two more behind her , y/n knew her of course she had been there already for four months

"what do you want erica" (Im sorry if it is your name you can change it if you want)

"Oh don't try to be all smart and stuff you know what i want and don't think you get a chance with jon, he's one of the best looking boys in the school and he will be mine"

"Honestly i don't mind i only stay at his place, in 6 months i'll be going back home"

"Good because he wil never like a whore like you, now bye" she fliped her long blond hair over her shoulder and walked away while her friends followed while snikering

Y/n signed and looked down "he's just a Friend Anyway" she mumbled while walking back to class

Once she was back in class she sat down next to him "what took you so long" he wispered

"Sorry i could't find my book" it was a lie of course, y/n doesn't want to talk about the struggels she's having with erica, and stuppid enough she's in the same class as her so she always has to look at that dumb face

Y/n Her thought were stoped by what the teacher was saying "as we all know we have a ball at the end of the year and because its you guys last year here you get to decided the theme of the party"

Erica raised her hand "Oh what about a party with lots of alcohol" she grined

"No erica alcohol will not be tolareated" said the teacher

"Whats the fun then if there is no alcohol tsjk" she scold

"Sir what about an all decade event everybody can dress up from the 40s thill now, difrent food will be served and all kinds of music will be played"

"Thats a Nice idea miss y/l/n" People around the room agreed with her idea

"Tsk sounds boring" erica said and her friends agreed

Y/n got angry but calmed her self down "wel if you think its boring please come with a better idea im curious to hear it" she said with a smile, erica went quiet and turned away

"Alright then its setteled this will be the theme of our ball it will be held 6 months from now"

*skip to the end of the day*

*sigh* "im glad this day is over" y/n sat down on the coutch

"Me to" there was a pauze between them "you know y/n Im really proud of you how you handeld yourself in class

"Thanks jon"

"Are you ok?"

"Oh yes i am, im just tired" she stood up

"What Are you going to do? "

"I have to call my mom to sent some of my stuff over for the party"

"Alright im going to make dinner"

Y/n went upstairs and called her mom "hi mom"

"Hi sweetheart Hows everything going ?"

"Everything is fine ..... mom i was wondering if you could sent some stuff over here"

"Sure thing what do you need?"

Could you pack my hair curler some of my make up, my black evening dress with glitters, my 1930s evening coat, the silver high heels i bought with the dress a and the ear rings and necklace i got from grandma ?"

"Sure thing i will sent it in a big box anything ells?"

"Oh yes my trolley i have to take my stuff back home as wel so thats the best idea i guese"

"Alright i noted it i will look everything up And sent it to you"

"Thanks mom love you got to go now"

"Love you to sweetheart speek to you later"

"Bye" she hang up And went back downstairs to eat.

About a month later everything had arived that she would need to dress up

*time skip to 4 months and 20 days later*

The bulying got worse and worse, y/n had been atacked, spit on and called names but never had she imagined that jon would go to the dance with erica.

She had done her hair but stoped with everything els it just wasn't worth it she would rather stay here at home, jon already left a bit sad by the news y/n don't want to atend

*knok knok* the door opend "hey y/n?"

"Oh hi bill"

"Whats wrong"

"Jon has gone out with somone wich i din't expect him to go with"

"Who?"

"That stuppid bitch Erica"

"Really with her? Goodness i expected better from him"

"Me to" she sniffed

"Hey don't give up now there is still a chance come on get dressed chop chop"

"Are you sure I mean..."

"Yes 100% sure you are way more pretty than her come on "

"Alright if you say so.... but how am i going to get there?"

"I have a car"

"Alright give me 30 minuts" y/n started to get dressed put on her necklace, ear rings and shoes she then did her make up, she grabed her long coat and walked out.

She opend the door and heared a car horn

"Hey y/n over here" it was bill he sat in a old black vintage car "here is your ride my lady"

"Why thank you kind sir, lets go" she steped in and sat down

Bill started the car up And drove away

"Thank you so mutch for the help i really need that"

"Its nothig everything for a friend, now come on lets go i also have a date"

Everything was nicely decorated and music was playing, people were dressed up in all Difrent kind of dresses and suits, a table stood against the wall where there wer all Difrent kinds of food it looked all So good

"Look there is jon"

"Alright thanks bill" she hugged him and walked to jon who was dancing with erica, people looked at her as she walked acros the dance floor she tapped his shoulder "hey jon"

He turned around " hey y/n I thought you were going to stay home "

"Bill convinced me to go anyway so here i am" the was caught of guard by a cough from behind her

"Im sorry but jon is my date so shove it you whore"

"Excuse me what did you say?"

"You heared me"

"You know what fuck you its a wonder jon would even want to dance with you, do you even know how miserabel you made me feel this past year, you are also 19 years old you really should be more mature" She was caught of guard when erica shoved her " I get it now you are jelouse of me for staying with jon get a grip, come on jon lets dance" she took his hand and walked to a chair and placed her coat on it, then her beautyfull evening gown got revealed

People stared at her "y/n you look absolutly gorgeous"

"Thank you" she blushed

"May i have this dance "

"Of course jon"

Jon leaded y/n to the dance floor and they both started to do the walz

"Y/n i have to tell you something"

"Tell me jon what is it"

"Well i really enjoyed this year with you staying and i wish you could stay longer, but y/n Im really realy in love with you and i wish i had told you ealyer "

"I love you to jon i really do"

"May i give you a kiss?"

"Sure" she smiled softly at him, He leaned in and gave her a kiss

"Perhaps i can stay a little longer but i need to inform my parents first"

"Thats all fine with me"

"Lets hope they don't mind"

"So do i" he said smiling

And both danced the night away

The end

I hope you enjoyed reading 😊

#doctor who #third doctor #jon pertwee #classic who #3rd doctor #classic doctor who #jon pertwee x reader #Third doctor x reader #tw bullying #bill pertwee

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ziracona · 4 years ago

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so can u tell us a little about ur characterization of Lisa?? What's she like inside and outside of trials? Does she have a lot of lucidity, what were her relationships with others like, would she ever get better, do you think? ( im SAD.) Just. What's she like!! Also, same for Sally? Oh! And I'm rly enjoying two songs by Meg Myers which maybe you'll like? Running up that hill (Cover) and Desire. Maybe check em out? :3 - Sleepy

Sure!

My Lisa is from a bit before the archives for her placed her (early 1970s), because I wrote ILM back when there was no date given for many killers or survivors, so I just hoped they were historically accurate with the things they did mention & went through a fairly exhaustive list of drained swamps in the Southern US & paddleboat makes & placed her according to that data (it’s been a bit so I don’t remember the exact date without looking up my notes) in the 1920s-1930s, I believe? And in her early 20s, since she’s described as a girl & young woman, which DbD usually does only for characters in their early 20s. (Which I’d still assume is her age, bc even though her archives, if you go by them, have her in her teens, they’re not connected to the events of her disappearance/definitely happened before them.)

In trials, Lisa has like 0 lucidity. I talk about this some in chapter notes, so I’ll try to give a quick overview instead but sry if I restart myself. She’s so starved that any time she sees a living being, she is just completely overcome with hunger and can’t do anything but operate on it. Very scary. Feral. Like being attacked by a starving animal. She’s super out of it, and is completely wild and violent and has no control, only the need to eat. Outside of trials, if no one is around, she’s lucid again, but will remember trials and what she did to people, and spends that time in horror and despair. She’s tried to kill herself before, because the last thing she ever wanted was to become the thing she swore vengeance on (the Entity’s a real cruel motherfucker. Did the same to Rin, to Philip, to everyone it could. Likes to really twist decent people into what they would most despair to be), but in the realm, she’s stuck as it. She’s not really aware for trials, but remembers them with decent clarity, and is in constant agony over what she’s done. Unfortunately, suicide does not take in the realm, and every one of her attempts failed, just like her attempts to maim or tie herself up so she wouldn’t be able to hurt people did. She’s horribly alone and despairing, and also in physical agony. She’s at the worst end of what a human can be at as far as emaciation and starvation while still being alive goes, and that’s physically awful. It fucks up your brain chemistry too, and everything is just really fucking miserable all the time. It hurts to move, it hurts to breathe, your breath smells tastes like rotten fruit but in a way that’s so much worth than that can sound. She’s so hungry, her addons are things like dragonfly wings consumed to give her extra stamina. That’s the kind of bare sliver of relief she ever gets. God, poor Lisa’s life is hell. She’s completely heartbroken and isolated and almost dead. As far as relationships go, she didn’t have any for a long time. No one can really interact with her, because she goes feral at the sight of food. She’s kinda utterly alone. But briefly, when Alex, Philip, Vigo, Benedict, and Sally were a group, she kind of got stumbled into, and after a kind of nasty first encounter, was able to regain lucidity around other people, and had a truly sweet and memorable and invaluable bit of time with love and friends and other people. She was kind of in love with Sally, who did her hair for her and was really kind to her, and Sally liked her too. They were close. Lisa was close with all of them. But when things ended the way they did, the Entity took that away. Lisa remembers it, but she could never get them or it back, and was cast aside and left behind until the end of ILM, when she finally got peace and found happiness in finally getting to be at rest in the arms of a friend. Overal, she’s a fairly young and wide-eyed, bright, cautious, fun and sweet girl by nature, now massively traumatized and hopeless and broken, but still with a truly incredible amount of that kind nature retained. She would have really loved reading fantasy novels aloud and exploring the worlds of lore and history, travelling, seeing other cultures and geographic features and animals. Enjoys fashion too, and has a heart for designing and making cool, personal and cultural and symbolic tied designs, and would have been both great at that and loved it if she’d lived long enough. (Shoutout to @artianaiolanthe who inspired the fashion take & it is so suited to her I love it). A little shy, but an extrovert at heart under it, just a nervous one. Loved people. Liked climbing trees and fording brooks and baking bread and throwing rocks and baseballs to knock a target out of a tree and win a prize at little town fairs. Didn’t get the length or quality of life she was owed, and it’s just not fair or okay at all. Liked to watch the stars.

As far as getting better goes, mentally, totally. If they could get her out of the realm or break the Entity’s connection, she’d immediately stop killing. She has never done it of her own free will. She’s a sweet small town kid who was just trying to live her life. As far as physically goes though, Lisa is in one of the worst possible spots. Unlike say Amanda, who was on death’s door but healed by the Entity, or the Legion, who weren’t injured at all, Lisa was on death’s door and like Adiris, did not get healed. Just preserved in that near-death state and forced to work in it. Honestly, it’s possible she could survive long enough to get to a hospital and be saved, but at best, she’d probably live another year. When you starve, your body begins to catabolize/eat your own tissue to save itself, starting with fat, and ending with muscles and organs, which, when it reaches the heart, kills you. Lisa was so close to dead, the organ damage was probably awful, and would leave her with complications that would take her very young. The most likely thing, since she was saved literally seconds before death, would be for her to step outside the realm and immediately die. However, it’s possible she got lucky on body damage and could be saved—kinda up to interpretation—and if say, she was around for Quentin’s Vigil going healing batshit, and got some organs repaired that way, she’d have a real shot. (I also am sad. Lisa was actually the only determinate character in ILM to me/that I wasn’t sure the ending for, and while I am very happy with what ended up being her closure, I also would like to see her live for even more love and peace TuT. Lol, if I ever end up doing my goddamn four fate route fics like I’ve joked now a truly dangerous number of times about doing [>.> me @ me] then maybe she will get a variety of lives in the end). I’m glad you wanted to know! I really like and pity her. This poor kid really did nothing wrong, much like Rin, and just got eternally tortured for asking for help and justice against the monsters who took her life so violently. Fuck Brittany. (Read: the Entity.)

Ahhhh Sally. My sweet, sweet girl. Uhhh, not sure which of the Lisa questions you meant for her too, so I’ll try to speed-answer them all? Sally’s intelligent and understanding and thoughtful, patient, polite, almost elegant despite how impoverished she spent most of her life—she just tries to act like a lady and treat people with as much respect and esteem as she can (unless they suck lol). She’s also very mentally damaged and not there though, and has extremely unstable mood swings, especially into despair. Her relationships with the other killers were limited. She talked to & was on polite terms with any who would talk to her and not be condescending or a dick so openly she’d pick up on it (so like, on cordial terms with Evan, Herman, Caleb if she’d been there that long, but not like, Kenneth or Freddy or someone who wouldn’t bother to put up an act). But mostly, after figuring out she wasn’t really of any use to them, they quit communicating with her. Sally has been extremely isolated since shortly after being taken. She believes that the survivors are innocent and suffering and knows that they don’t deserve the hunt, but has no way to stop the whole system, and has been convinced by the Entity that if she does a good job and earns moris, the ones she strangles to death get to stay dead instead of coming back after death to suffer endlessly again, so she works very dedicatedly and slowly trying to earn kills to save them. It took her physical eyes when it got her and lets her see through it’s powers, and uses that to randomize what survivors look like in her memory so she doesn’t catch wise it’s the same people over and over and she’s not saving them at all. It’s extremely tragic. God it’s one of the most cruel Entity tricks, which is saying a lot. Poor gentle woman is Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill day after day year after year and she doesn’t even know how hopeless and meaningless it all is. : (

When the Vigo-Philip-Alex-Benedict team was going, though, she met and attacked, then was convinced to instead befriend them, and quickly became very attached and well liked by them. Met Lisa while with the group, and became extremely fond of her and loving towards her and was truly, truly happy for a brief period of time. Still remembers her, even as lost as all her memories are. Not her name, but what she looked like to Sally, and how her hair felt, and how nice it was. Sally would have considered everyone in that group a dear friend, and in ILM, Philip most definitely becomes her deepest, closest, and best friend, just like she does to him. She’s a very faithful woman to her soul. Loved her family, loved her husband and mourned him, worked as hard as she could. Cared for her patients, and did her best in that hell until the Entity slowly whittled away at her sanity until it broke her mind and left her convinced the only way to end their pain would be to give them death, and she had to do it to save them. Sally loves little pretty things and neatness and collections. Flowers, bows and ribbons, china and colored glass. She would have treasured gifts like decorative holiday cards and carved animal figures and left them on her mantle or carefully tucked in lovingly organized and decorated books she could open to revisit the memory. Likes dresses and skirts and the way the wind feels. Hopeful and very enduring. Loving. Had a mom heart, and will never really get entirely over the loss of her children, but is strong and kind and will find new love that makes life still worth living in other people. Will remember both kindness and cruelty a long, long time. Loved Quentin from the second he gave her flowers (Dwight: Quentin, why did the entity let you have three moms? Quentin: Because I fucking earned it >:[“ [author’s note: he did. God that poor kid...]). Loved Kate from the day she sat with her in a hospital and held her hand. Is like that. Remembers small kindness and treasures them.

Sally could definitely recover. Not all the way probably, physically or mentally, but by far enough to be complete and happy and realized and who she wants. She never meant to hurt people, so she really just needs some stability, and I think she finds that with her new family. I mean, it is a lot to adjust to. It’s been like nearly 100 years. The Entiry broke her mind, and she’s got some damage that just probably can’t ever be fixed, but a lot can be, with drugs and treatments and therapy and kindness and a good support system, and honestly, the biggest things she needs are people to keep her memories together and herself present, and influences to protect her from being manipulated and controlled now that she’s so suggestible and easy to hurt, and she’s got that. I am 100% certain that while some things—the scatteredness, the ease of slipping into other moods especially deep sadness, the different way of thinking altogether—never leave her, she gets better in the most important ways and is truly happy and quite functional and what she wants to be. While there’s no way (yet anyway lol. Cybernetics that good when?) to give her new eyes since the Entity ripped hers out, and she’s blind now, and can’t be changed, her seeing eye dog does a great job for her, and she’s very happy and adjusts well. She has a lot of friends to be her eyes, and learns to lean into what she can do and has a quite fulfilling and blissful life outside the realm in ILM.

Also: thanks for the recs! I’m going on a run soon, and I’ll add those to my iPod and give ‘em a listen if I can. Hope this answered what you wanted to know! ^u^

#ask #sleepy #in living memory (fic)#in living memory #ilm spoilers #dead by daylight #Lisa Sherwood #Sally Smithson #long post

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enkelimagnus · 4 years ago

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Clary/Others, Clary/Jace, squint and you miss it Clary/Jace/Jonathan and Jace/Jonathan, Rated M, 1483 words

Criminals AU

Jace watched quietly as the blonde girl at the bar knocked back a glass of whiskey that would have made most of the men in the room tumble to the ground. He smirked. None of the big and loud businessmen knew that she could hold her alcohol better than the entire rest of the crowd combined. He saw her zero on their target for the night. --------------- Jonathan and Clary are on the prowl again, to get revenge on someone who has wrong them. Jace helps.

This was inspired by Dom Sherwood's appearance in Penny Dreadful City of Angels, as well as the photos of Luke Baines and Kat McNamara from the 2018 UNICEF Masquerade Ball. This involved murder and sexual content both implied and not. Title from Alice Cooper's I'm Your Gun. This fic is kinda dedicated to @shadowhuntersnonsense because of the... kinda everything? Big thanks to the ever lovely DarayFlair for help betaing this! Read on AO3

As always, it was almost pathetic to watch them believe her show of drunkenness. To watch their eyes get darker as she giggled and put her hands on their chest to steady herself, all 5 feet 5 of slim pale skin and blonde hair.

He saw her zero on their target for the night, a tall guy who could have been very handsome if he had drank less. His face was flushed and puffy. Nevertheless, this was not about attractiveness.

He thumbed over the bulk of the gun at his hip. The weight was almost comforting now. He couldn’t remember the last day he hadn’t worn it.

The girl stood up. She was wobbly on her legs, so much so that she ended up draping herself over the lap of the man she’d been eyeing. Jace smirked as she giggled loudly. Her hair fell over her bare shoulders as she shook her head, trying to express how sorry she was. Words were escaping her. She was rambling, her whispering voice slurred and too loud.

One day, there would be a man who didn’t fall for her little act. That day would probably be the biggest fight he would ever be in.

The man’s face was now pressed against the girl’s cleavage, the bustier neckline of her dress allowing him more than an eyeful. Her green eyes caught Jace’s from the other side of the room. Her grin went from hesitant and embarrassed to predatory.

Jace couldn’t help but smirk back at her.

Jonathan slid past Jace then, nodding at him. His eyes also shone with barely disguised pleasure as the trap closed around their prey. Jace felt a shudder run down his back. They seemed to be in a spectacular mood. If everything went well, tonight would be very enjoyable.

“Ready?” Jonathan asked as he stopped for a second next to Jace.

His hair was blonde too, they’d decided to both go blonde at the same time. It was slicked down and shiny with product. His suit was perfectly fitted to his slim form. The leather of the harness shone, polished and clean, when the lights of the lounge reflected on it and on the metal buckles.

Jace nodded quietly, a move so small Jonathan wouldn’t have seen it had he not been close enough for Jace to feel his breath on his cheek.

“Good,” Jonathan exhaled, before he pushed the door of the VIP room open and disappeared inside.

Jace forced himself not to watch the other man walk away, keeping himself as still and quiet as necessary. The least attention on him, the easier and cleaner this would be.

It was a bit of a useless rule, considering that the Morgensterns liked him in 1930s style suits with matching fedora hats, but… Who was he to disobey orders from them?

“Come on,” the girl’s voice resounded drunkenly in the smoke-filled lounge. “Let’s go to the VIP salon… I have something to show you, to thank you for helping me out…”

She winked at the man, failing to be discreet. He tried to refuse but she was tugging on his tie already, pulling him to her teasingly.

“I’m sure you can spare a moment…” She pouted before licking her lips suggestively. “I really want to say thank you…”

Jace could basically feel the cogs in the man’s head turning, arousal and alcohol completely dampening his sense of self-preservation. It was pathetic, and incredibly entertaining. The other men at the table mocked him, throwing jabs about his manliness out. How stupid of them. Did they know they were dooming their friend?

Finally, with claps and cheers of his friends, the man stood up. The girl's hand grabbed his, pulling him to her. She seemed to be muttering something, and that Jace couldn’t hear. He knew it was probably salacious, about the size of his dick or something.

Her other hand travelled down to his crotch and Jace hummed under his breath. He was right. He knew that little dance well enough. And he knew the way she liked to seduce men. She usually used the same techniques on him, despite him not needing her to do any of that to turn him on.

She pulled the man in Jace’s direction, towards the door to the VIP room. Jace was standing right next to it, slightly to its left. Her eyes were dark with lust and glee when she walked past him. Jace almost bit his lip. The ‘party’ afterwards would be so much fun.

The man she was dragging by the hand barely spared Jace a glance before the door slammed shut behind them. Jace tilted his head to the side, just a little. The tainted glass insert in the door was enough for him to see shapes and bodies. He was always in for a show with these men.

Black dress faded to blonde hair as the girl got on her knees in front of the man and unbuttoned his pants. Jace couldn’t see details but he knew exactly what she was doing. She started bobbing her head and he finally gave in and bit his lip. Watching her like this felt wrong. But then again, her brother was in the room, watching from a dark corner. The baseline for wrong in their little team was quite high.

She blew him for a while. He was lasting much longer than the usual ones, Jace noted. Eventually, he heard the telltale groan that came with an orgasm.

Jace moved seamlessly. He slid through the door that the girl had left unlocked, shutting it behind him.

The man looked at him with wide eyes. Jace flipped on the switch of the room’s main lamp . Golden light exploded in, casting away the shadows. And in the chair in the now lit room, eyes dark and trained on the red-faced man with his pants still down and his cock still out, was Jonathan Morgenstern.

The man’s eyes opened wider even, fear painted on his features.

“Holy fuck,” he muttered despite himself.

The girl laughed. Without her signature red hair, it was less easy to recognize her at first glance, it seemed, especially when inebriated.

Now that she stood next to Jonathan, her identity was obvious to the man she’d just blown.

“How was he, sister?” Jonathan asked as Clary Morgenstern sat on his lap, sighing a little and licking the corners of her mouth, where semen had escaped.

“He was tasty enough, but not as good as our Jace,” she pouted. “Not enough to have it weigh in the balance of his fate.”

Jonathan nodded thoughtfully. “You heard my little sister, Walker. You didn’t please her enough.”

Walker was sweating. He was so afraid he wasn’t even thinking about his pants still being down. Pathetic.

Jonathan continued. “You also didn’t please me at all. My merchandise was once again confiscated by the authorities upon entering the docks. I thought you were handling that for us,” he said. His voice was cold.

Jace hoped to never find himself on the other side of that tone.

“I’m sorry, Mr Morgenstern,” Walker trembled. “It won’t happen again.”

Jonathan smirked at him. “No it won’t. We’re replacing you. We’ll make sure your wife knows you were fucking my sister’s mouth before you died. I think she’ll be very happy.”

The man opened his mouth to beg, but Jace was too fast. He grabbed his gun out of his holster, sliding it out from behind his coat and aimed between Walker’s eyes. He was an excellent shot, and at this distance. The bang resounded in Jace’s ears, followed by the crash of a dead body hitting the ground. It was a familiar sound.

Clary hopped from her brother’s lap, going to snuggle against Jace’s chest.

“You did so good, puppy,” she grinned at him. “We’re gonna have so much fun when we’re home.”

Jace put his gun away.

Jonathan nodded as he stood up from his chair and stretched out his arms slightly. “Let’s go,” he ordered. His tone was far less demanding than it had been with Walker. This softer voice was reserved for Clary and Jace. Jonathan’s hand reached up, resting on the back of Jace’s neck. The firm pressure made Jace’s nerves sing.

Oh yes. They were going to have so much fun when they were home. The three of them walked out, more or less intertwined. They didn’t care if someone was watching them.

They probably knew better than to keep the Morgensterns from walking out of their latest crime scene.

#clace #morgencest #clary/jace/jonathan #clary fray #jace herondale #jonathan morgenstern #jace/jonathan #team evil #shadowhunters #tmi #fic #mine

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serendipitous-posts · 5 years ago

Text

Wayfarer Au - Spinel

The background was more focused on Pink Pearl than Spinel. This was because not much happened; we know Pink Diamond abondende Spinel, and nothing happened in the time of isolation. But I want to fix that so; some information about Spinel in the Wayfarer Au!

Spinel is the only one of her kind, specifically made just for Pink Diamond. She’s quite a bit younger than Pink Pearl and Crystal Pearl, since she was specifically made to replace Pink Pearl.

Her cut is perfect, her cultivation was perfect, and her powers were perfect for a toy

Because, at the end of the day, that’s what Spinel was, a toy. She realises this soon after she arrives on Earth: Pink had never thought of her as a friend, as a living thing. To her, she had been a fun plaything to throw away when she got bored

(She’s a little bitter, sue her)

She and Crystal Gem Pearl never really interacted all that much, despite sharing the same owner for some time, and both acting as a replacement for Pink Pearl, but since Spinel is the only one of her kind, she’s extremely memorable

(Hence why, despite not knowing her personally, being thousands of years and her looking different, in the movie Pearl was able to immediately realise who Spinel was and who she belonged to)

Spinel’s existence was really confusing to the Gem Hierarchy. The Pearls were the lowest of the ranks, as slaves.

But Pearl’s had jobs. They brought you things, took things down for you, stored things. They were, loathe as they were to admit it, useful. Spinel was just a toy really. Did that mean she was lower on the social ladder than the Pearls? After all, Pearls could entertain as well, singing and dancing if you so required.

Spinel, though intelligent, could often be insensitive and sometimes even clumsy. But Spinel was a Diamond’s, and, due to her questionable position on Homeworld’s Social Ladder, nobody really punished her for it

Spinel is very, very clever. She was the one who had the idea for getting the Gem’s memories back in the Movie, and she managed to put together a plan to destroy Earth that came closer than anyone else, including the Diamonds

In this verse, Spinel was made to be the best of the best, and, as such, has an intelligence a lot higher than the average gem. She’s not logically intelligent like Crystal Gem Pearl, she’s spatially intelligent, making her an imaginative gem capable of spatial reasoning, of thinking of things in three dimensions and is very good at drawing conclusions from limited data

Ironically enough, for a gem literally made to be someones friend, Spinel is extremely emotionally stupid. She makes jokes at inopportune times, doesn’t seem to understand when Pink wants to be left alone and comes across as naive and gullible

That last one comes back to bite her, hard

Upon finding out that Pink Diamond tricked her, the stress of it all causes her to poof and reform, into the outfit we see in the movie

Spinel’s faith in Pink Diamond is broken, as she realises that she never had any plans to come back for her, and immediately starts voicing her betrayal and hurt at being betrayed

She wakes up to find that Pink Pearl took her gem and fled to Earth, which she is not happy about

It was originally because she didn’t want to be on the planet that reminded her of Pink; because she was grieving, but it swapped to all consuming rage real quick once she realises what Pink Diamond did to her

Spinel doesn’t have anything against Pink Pearl, but, like in the movie, she’s hurt and so lashes out at her, while also not wanting her to be out of sight

Pink Pearl is also going through some shit right now, just waking up from years of brainwashing. She’s normally a very laid back gem, from what we see of her, and as a Pearl she is taught not to talk back to her superiors. But she would see Spinel as her equal here, and she is not going to let some upstart lecture her when she could of have just left Spinel in the Garden

They argue. A lot. Pink Pearl’s habit of excusing Pink Diamond’s abuse does not mesh well with Spinel’s hatred of her former owner

They wander for a bit, and settle in with some North American tribes, but, after realising Humans aren’t immortal like they are, they start travelling.

Spinel takes the longest to be won around to Earth’s side, due to the bad memories of Pink abandoning her for it, but she loves the children who trip over themselves to play games with her

Spinel and Pink Pearl’s relationship is something I wanna go deeper into in a different post, but they finally start to get along when Pink Pearl finally admits what Pink Diamond did to her

They move a lot, and it is usually Spinel’s fault- her bright pink skin is very hard to hide, and she feels a lot of guilt over that, though Pink assures her that it’s okay, that it’s good that they moved, they would of have had to eventually

Over the centuries, Spinel and Pink Pearl have been poofed many, many times, though they are always super careful to make sure the other isn’t cracked - thankfully humans discover a way to heal cracks in gems, and the outfits change, usually to fit the era they’re in

The 1930′s was great, it was there that they finally figured out how to fuse at will instead of awkwardly stumbling into it every now and then

Currently, Spinel favours wearing hoodies or jumpers, loose and baggy, covering her gem because she’s not going to have that out for all to see and possibly crack. The hoodies hide her face, so bonus

Spinel’s personality was never as bad as it was in the movie; she continues to have extreme mood swings to this day, but since she wasn’t in isolation as long as Canon!Spinel, it didn’t affect her as bad

“As bad”

One day Spinel will probably have to see a therapist after a run in with the earth’s government (awkward) and she will probably be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder or something along those lines

Spine’s personality is extremely bitter most of the time; she is deeply cynical, contrasting Pink Pearl’s optimism, and is a pragmatist and an opportunist. Self deprecating humour is her strong suit, though she does like shitty puns and knock knock jumps

They did run into gem monsters at first, and are always really confused as to what that’s about, but they have no problem bubbling or shattering them when they have to

As they move away from the area the corruption song hit, they see less and less of them, and they kind of sort assumed that they were dinosaurs or something

Spinel and Pearl have found themselves in the middle of wars or revolutions, and, after a while, they start joining in, being extra super careful to make sure nobody realises they’re there and what they are (it doesn’t work)

Spinel’s weapon is still a scythe, but it’s design is different. She named it Peekaboo, which Pink finds hilarious

Spinel is more aggressive than Pink Pearl. She never aims it at Pearl- the closest she gets is the very start of their partnership when they first arrived on Earth.

Instead, it’s more aimed at everyone else. She knows that the humans will all eventually die, and leave her, so she shuts them out- though she absolutely adores kids. She’s the main muscle between her and Pearl, and is by far the better fighter

Due to how weak Pearl’s naturally are, even a well made one like Pink Pearl, she is naturally protective of her other half

Of course, Pink Pearl will cut a bitch if you make her friend/girlfriend/wife cry

Spinel loves, loves, LOVES theatre, it’s something she and Pink bond over a lot. They both loved to visit William Shakespeare when he was around, though Spinel suggested that he could make some of his poems a lot less angsty, please?

When the circus was invented, she was over the moon, and kept dragging Pink off to go and see it (she may or may not have inspired the idea for clowns)

Over the years, Spinel tries branching out, to try and discover what she likes to do outside of making others laugh. It takes a while, and almost drives her to a nervous breakdown because oh stars what if all she can do is make others feel good, what if she can’t break outside her programming what if-

She discovers that she likes photography, and, after cultivating that skill for hundreds of years, she is quite good at it. She likes the idea of having pictures of everywhere they’ve been, and in her spare time creates scrapbooks to gift to Pearl

She has all kinds of nicknames for Pink Pearl; Raspberry, Loveheart, Sweetheart, Doll, Valentine, etc

Pearl admitted to her that she hates her name, of being “a” pearl, so, after going back and forth, they decide that she can be called Peach

(Because I refuse to call her Volleyball in this au)

#steven universe #steven universe au #wayfarer au #spinel #pink pearl #pearl steven universe #spinearl

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