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melisa-may-taylor72 · 5 years ago

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QUEEN BEFORE QUEEN

THE 1960s RECORDINGS

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PART 4:

THE OPPOSITION

JOHN DEACON WAS THE QUIETEST MEMBER OF A MIDLAND-BASED FIVE-PIECE WHOSE GREATEST AMBITION WAS TO PLAY ANOTHER GIG.

Initial research John S. Stuart. Additional research and text: Andy Davis.

John Deacon was the fourth and final member to join Queen. He became part of that regal household 25 years ago this month, enrolling as the band’s permanent bassist in February 1971. His acceptance marked the culmination of a six-year ‘career’ in music, much of which he spent in an amateur, Leicestershire covers band called the Opposition.

From 1965 until 1969, Deacon and his schoolmates ploughed a humble, local furrow in and around their Midlands hometown, reflecting the decade’s mercurial moodswing with a series of names, images and styles of music. The most remarkable fact about the Opposition was just how unremarkable the group actually was.

Collectively, they were an unambitious crew: undertaking precisely no trips down to London to woo A&R men; winning only one notable support slot for the army of chart bands who visited Leicester in the ‘60s (opening for Reperata & the Delrons in Melton Mowbray in 1968); and managing even to miss out on the option of sending a demo tape to any of the nation’s record labels. The band’s saving grace is its solé recorded legacy: a three-track acetate — although even this was done for purely private consumption, and has rarely been aired outside the confines of their inner circle.

It is perhaps indicative of the Opposition’s modest outlook that their most promising bid for stardom, a beat contest, was called off before they had the chance to play in the finals. For John Deacon and friends, it seems, merely being in a band was reward enough.

Considering of all of this, it’s easy to imagine the response to the following story, related in the ‘60s to one of the Opposition’s guitarists, Ronald Chester:...[ ]

...[ ] “There was a teacher who worked at Beauchamp School, which John attended, who told fortunes. They went to see her one Saturday and were told, ‘John Deacon is going to be world famous and very, very rich. Of course, they all fell about laughing. She was determined that this was going to happen. But they all thought it was a joke."

What particularly amused Deacon’s colleagues was the unlikeliness of this scenario, given the plain facts of his demeanour. John was born in Leicester in 1951, the product of affluent, middle-class, middle England. As a youngster, he was known to his friends as ‘Deaks’ and grew up to be quiet and reserved, what Mark Hodkinson referred to in ‘Queen — ‘The Early Years’ as “a ghost of a boy".

“He is basically shy,” confirms Richard Young, the Opposition’s first guitarist/vocalist, and later keyboardist. “I suppose he was quieter than the rest of us — but he was fairly static with Queen if you look at him on stage.”

Ron Chester agrees: “John was quiet by nature. His sister, Julie, was the same. Once he got going, though, he wasn’t any different from anybody else. But on first approach, you really had to coax him out of his shell. We’d have to pick him up. He couldn’t walk down the road to meet us."

CONFIDENT

Despite any lack of personal dynamics, Deacon was a capable teenager: “He was very confident," recalls another of the band’s guitarists, David Williams. “But in a laidback sort of way. He didn’t have a problem with anything. ‘Yeah, I can do that’, he’d say. We used to call him ‘Easy Deacon’, not because of any sexual preferences, but because he’d say something was easy without it sounding big-headed. I remember saying to him once, I’m going to have to knock off the gigs a bit to revise for my ‘A’ levels. What about you?’ ‘No’, he said, ‘I don’t need to. I’ve never failed an exam yet, and I’ve never revised for one’. Ultimately, he was just confident, with a phenomenally logical mind. If he couldn’t remember something, he could work it out. And, of course, he got stunning results.”

John’s earliest interest was electronics, which he studied into adulthood. He also went fishing, trainspotting even, with his father. Then music took over. After dispensing with a ‘Tommy Steele’ toy guitar, John used the proceeds from his paper round to buy his first proper instrument, an acoustic, when he was about twelve. An early musical collaborator was a school mate called Roger Ogden, who like Roger Taylor down in Cornwall, was nicknamed ‘Splodge’. But his best friend was the Opposition’s future drummer, Nigel Bullen.

“I’d first got to know John at Langmore Junior School in Oadby, just outside Leicester, in either 1957 or 1958,’' recalls Nigel. “We were both the quiet ones. We started playing music together at Gartree High School, when we were about thirteen. We were inspired by the Beatles — they made everybody want to be in a group. John was originally going to be the band’s electrician, as he called it. He used to build his own radios, before we had any amps, and he fathomed a way of plugging his guitar into his reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was always the electrical boffin."

The prime mover in the formation of the group was another Oadby boy they met on nearby Uplands Park, Richard Young. “Richard was at boarding school," recalls Nigel Bullen. “He was always the kid with the expensive bike. He played guitar, and what’s more had a proper electric, with an amplifier. He instigated getting the band together. Initially, we rehearsed in my garage, and then anywhere we could. John played rhythm to begin with. He was a chord man, the John Lennon of the group, if you like."

SWITCH

Despite his later switch to the bass, Deacon’s technique on the guitar also developed, as Dave Williams reveals: “Later on, I remember he could play ‘Classical Gas’ on an acoustic, which was a finger-picking execise and no mean feat. It’s a bit like ‘McArthur Park’, a fantastic piece of music, and when I heard it, I thought, ‘Bloody hell. You dark horse!’ Because he never showed off."

The Opposition’s first bassist was another school friend of John’s called Clive Castledine. In fact, the group made its debut at a party at Castledine’s ouse on 25th September, 1965 (their first public performance took place the...[ ]

...[ ] following month at Gartree’s school hall). Clive looked good and appreciated the kudos of being in a group, but he wasn’t up to even the Opposition’s schoolboy standards. “I was the least proficient, to put it mildly,” he admitted to Mark Hodkinson.“His enthusiasm was 100%,” adds Richard Young, “but his actual playing ability was null, so we had a meeting and got rid of him.” Deacon took over, initially playing on his regular guitar, using the bottom strings. “John was good,” Young continues. “It was no problem for him to switch to bass. He hit the right notes at the beginning of the bar, and we were a better band for it. Whereas Clive made us sound woolly, as anyone who just plonked away on any old note would, John was solid.”

DIARY

Young turned out to be the Opposition’s archivist, keeping a diary of each gig played, the equipment used, and the amounts of money earned (as indeed did John Deacon). Richard’s diary documented the day Deacon — now, of course, bassist in one of the world’s most famous groups — first picked up his chosen instrument. “In an entry for 2nd April, 1966,” says Young, “it reads, ‘We threw Clive out on the Saturday afternoon. Had a practice in Deaks’ kitchen, and Deaks went on bass. Played much better.’ John didn’t have a bass, so we went down to Cox’s music shop in King Street in Leicester, and bought him an EKO bass for £60. I paid for it, but I think he paid me back eventually.”

“John’s bass style with the Opposition was the same as with Queen,” reckons Nigel Bullen. “He never used to play with a plectrum, which was unusual, but with his fingers, which meant that his right hand is drooped over the top of the guitar. Also, he plays in an upward fashion, which I’d never seen before, certainly when we were in Leicester. Over the years, I’ve watched many bass players adopt that style. I’d say he has been copied a lot. I’ve mentioned this to him, but he doesn’t agree.”

Clive Castledine wasn’t the last member of the band to be dismissed. “The vocal and lead guitar side of the Opposition was changing all the while,” recalls Nigel. “Myself, John, and Richard Young were always there — as were Dave Williams and Ron Chester later on — but we had a succession of other musicians who I can hardly remember now. There was a guy called Richard Frew in the very early days, and a young lad called Carl, but he didn’t fit in. After we began playing proper gigs, Richard decided he wasn’t happy with his singing and wanted to move onto keyboards, so we brought in Pete Bart (formerly with another local band, the Rapids Rave) as a guitarist and vocalist. He was good, but again, didn’t last long.”

“Bart was a bit of a rocker, while we were all mods,” remarks Dave Williams. “We were impressed by mod bands like the Small Faces and the original Who. Bart seemed to come from a different era altogether.”

“Deaks had the Parka with the fur collar,” remembers Ron Chester. “And short hair, a crew cut. Mirrors on his scooter.” Richard Young agrees: “John was more of a mod than us. But you couldn’t really pigeonhole the band, because our music went right across the board”.

”Buying Deacon his bass was no one-off, and Richard Young is remembered as the group’s benefactor. Being older than the others, he had a steady job working for his father’s electronics company in Leicester, which brought him a regular, and by all accounts, generous wage. He rarely thought twice before splashing out on equipment for the other members.

RECEIPTS

“Richard bought me a P.A.,” recalls David Williams. “But he didn’t ask, he used to think that the group needed it. He’d buy it and then say, ‘You owe me this’. My mum used to get really annoyed. She’d was at that going- through-my-pockets stage, probably looking for contraceptives. She once found a receipt from Moore and Stanworth’s, a local music shop. It was for a Beyer microphone, which cost about £30. I was still at school, getting pocket money, and my mum said, ‘What on earth is this?!’ Receipts on the Sunday dinner table, that sort of thing. It was good, though. The group needed it.”

“I was dead serious about the band,” claims Young, who switched to organ with the arrival of Williams in July 1966. “Perhaps more so than anybody else. I could see it going nowhere if money wasn’t pumped into it.”

“Dick Young was an accomplished organ player,” adds Dave, “and he improved the group quite a lot. He always had plenty of dosh, and a car. But he was totally mad, a crazy bloke. He’d come round with an organ one week, then next week, he’d have a better one. He ended up with a Farfisa, with one keyboard on it, then one with two keyboards — one above the other. Then he had a Hammond, an L 100. which was really heavy. Then he had a ‘B’ series one. The ‘L’ was top-of-the-range and he sawed it in half to make it easier to carry!”

Dave Williams helped to improve the group as well. “He was at school with us,” says Nigel Bullen, “but in another band, who we always looked up to.” That band was the Leeds-based Outer Limits (who went on to issue several singles — without Dave — in the late ‘60s). “I joined the Opposition after they asked me to watch them and tell them what I thought,” recounts Dave. “The Outer Limits were older lads, all mods, but I was after something a bit more easy going, and the Opposition were my own age. They were okay, but I first saw them at John’s house, when they were still practising in bedrooms, and they were absolutely awful. I said, ‘Have you thought of tuning up?’ They said they had. But it sounded like they were playing in different keys — totally horrendous. It was so funny. They were so conscientious, they’d all learned their bits, but hadn't tuned up to each other. That was my first tip.”

“Our first proper gig was supporting a local band, the Rapids Rave, at Enderby Coop Hall,” recalls Nigel Bullen. “They used to play at this village hall every week. and then we ended up doing it every week for quite some time.” Richard’s diary records the Opposition’s debut taking place on 4th December 1965, and that the band’s fee was £2. Thereafter, they began to offer their Services in the local ‘Oadby & Wigston Advertiser’, which led to bookings in youth clubs and village halls in local hot-spots like Kibworth, Houghton-on- the-Hill, Thurlaston and Great Glen.

SCHOOL WORK

By spring 1966, the Opposition were playing every weekend, school work permitting. The peaks and troughs of their career are illustrated by the following memorable gigs: one at St. George’s Ballroom, Hinckley, on 23rd June 1967, when just two people turned up and the band went home after a couple of numbers; and a September appearance in a series of shows at U.S. Airforce Bases in the Midlands, at which they were required to play for four-and-half hours with just two twenty-minute breaks. It was nothing if not diverse.

“It didn’t seem to matter what you played,” says Dave. “People would clap simply because you were making music. They never said, ‘Do you do Motown, or soul stuff?’ ” The band’s repertoire initially consisted of chart sounds and the poppier end of the R&B spectrum. “Although we were inspired by the Beatles, we never did any of their songs,” claims Nigel. “But we covered the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and things like Them’s ‘Gloria’, and the Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’.

They also altered their name slightly to the New Opposition, which they unveiled at the Enderby Coop Hall. “The name-change was decided overnight, when John moved from rhythm to bass guitar,” recounts Richard, whose diary records the date of the transition as 29th April 1966. Interestingly, though, it makes no mention of another local group also called the Opposition, long thought to have been the reason for Deacon’s crew adopting the ‘New’. The change did act as an impetus for further development, however, instigated by Dave Williams, who soon took over as the group’s lead vocalist.

“When I joined they were doing all Beach Boys stuff,” he recalls, “and I think I may have brought in a little credibility. In the Outer Limits, I’d been playing John Mayall, the Yardbirds, that sort of thing, plus that group was into really good soul like the Impressions, and fantastic vocal bands from the States. So I had a broad musical knowledge by then, whereas the Opposition had been a bit poppy.” Appropriately, the words “Tamla” and “Soul” were now added to the Opposition’s ads and calling cards.

Towards the end of 1966, the New Opposition were enhanced further by the arrival of Ron Chester, who’d previously played with Dave Williams in the Outer Limits, as well as in an earlier band, the Deerstalkers. “Ron Chester was a bit eccentric,” claims Richard Young. “He never used to go anywhere without his deerstalker. He was a really good guitarist (“stunning”, adds Dave Williams). We were probably at our best when Ron was in the band.”

On 23rd October 1966, the New Opposition entered the local Midland Beat Contest. They won their heat, landing themselves a place in the semifinals on 29th January 1967. They won this, too, and steeled themselves for the finals, which were due to be held on 3rd March 1967, when they were to be pitched against...[ ]

...[ ] an act called Keny. The stars of the show would have been the nearest the Opposition came to having a rival: an outfit called Legay. (A year later, incidentally, this band issued a now collectable single, “No One” (Fontana TF 904,£80J.) Unfortunately, for all concerned, however, the contest never took place. “That was a fiasco,'' laughs Ron. “Somehow we won those heats, but in fact, I don’t remember seeing anybody else playing. I don’t know whether we won by default or not. After that, they pulled the plug on the competition — probably because they knew we’d be playing again!”.

CASINO

“The heats took place in a club in Leicester called the Casino, which was the place to play,” adds Nigel. “The guy who ran the competition was an agent for the club. His company was called Penguin (or P.S) Promotions and he walked like a penguin too, with his feet sticking out. The final was going to be held in the De Montford Hall, which is still the main venue in Leicester. We thought, ‘Crumbs, this is it, perhaps we might make the big time.’ But the guy did a runner with all the money — people had to pay to come to the heats. So the final was called off.”

David Williams wasn’t too fussed, as he scored another prize that night: “I remember taking a girl back to Dick’s car on the strength of us winning our heat. I said, ‘Can I borrow your keys, Dick? He said, ‘What for? You can’t drive!’ “

Were the New Opposition — or the Opposition, as they dropped the ‘New’ again in early 1967 — left in limbo by the cancellation of the Beat Contest? Having achieved the most public recognition of their talents so far, were they disappointed with the loss of the chance to prove themselves further?

“No. It was almost insignificant,” reckons Ron. “We didn’t really look upon it as a stairway to stardom.” And what would John Deacon have thought? “Nothing really,” suggests Chester. “ ‘It’s cancelled. What are we doing next, then?’ That would have been about the depth of it. We were a village band, all gathering at the church hall to try and improve our abilities. The financial aspect of it wasn’t in the forefront of our minds. We were more concerned with our music, and if we could get a booking doing it as well, to pay off some of the equipment, then that was a real bonus. Three bookings a week was enough for us while we were working or still at school.” Despite any dodgy dealings, history does have the Penguin promoter to thank for the only professionally-taken photograph of the Opposition. (“We didn’t go much on photos in the band,” remembers Dave Williams.) On Tuesday, 31st January 1967, two days after winning the semi-finals, the ‘Leicester Mercury’ dispatched a staff photographer over to Richard Young’s parents’ house in Oadby. Here, the group lined-up in the front room, looking more like refugees from 1964, rather than 1967. The only indications of the actual date are perhaps Ron Chester’s deerstalker hat and the ridiculous length of David Williams’ shirt collars — seven inches, no less, from neck to nipple.

“Dave was very extrovert,” recalls Nigel. “But we all had those silk shirts with the great long collars made by our mums and grandmas for our stage gear.” Dave admits: “Our clothes were all a bit mixed up. We had silk shirts with tweed jackets — which were fashionable for a while — and bell-bottoms. Musically, we were pretty good, better than...[ ]

...[ ] most of the local bands around that time, but we had this squeaky-clean, schoolboy image which let us down. I used to get frustrated when we were billed with other bands, and they’d all play with so many wrong chords but had a better image and still the punters applauded. Were they stupid? We were still at school — we didn’t leave until we were eighteen — and weren’t allowed to grow our hair long”.

“After the mod thing,” he continues, “long hair became really important. Bands were growing their hair right down their backs. I remember getting to one gig with John and Nigel a year or so later, and the other group were already on. And when they saw us they turned round and said, ‘Look! They’ve got no hair!’. We were quite upset about that”.

“We also went through the flower-power look,” Dave adds. “And then we got into those little jumpers without any sleeves that Paul McCartney used to wear, the ones so small that half your stomach showed. And then it was grandad shirts without the collars and flares.” Ron Chester: “The flowery shirts and flared trousers were everywhere. We looked like a right shower of poofters. But so did everybody else. You stood out if you didn’t wear them.”

1967 also heralded the arrival of an additional attraction to the Opposition’s stage show: two go-go dancers. At least, it did if the existing literature on the subject is to be believed. “I vaguely remember it,” admits Richard, “but speaking to Nig, neither of us can recal who those dancers were”.

Dave Williams throws some light on the subject: “They were the jet-set girls of the sixth form, they came from the big houses. They came to a couple of gigs and just started dancing. Somebody who booked us for the following week actually advertised us ‘with go-go girls’. But they were never really part of the show.”

ART

On 16th March, 1968 for a gig at Gartree School, the Opposition changed their name once again. “We called ourselves Art,” reveals Nigel, “because Dave was arty, that is, he was training as an artist. It was as simple as that.” Dave agrees: “It was my idea, because I’d been doing art at school.” Nigel Bullen was aware of another band using that name around the same time (the pre-Spooky Tooth outfit), but assuming them to be American, reckoned they’d be no confusion. As the Leicester-based Art never made it to London, there wasn’t.

Despite wording like “A time to touch and feel, to taste and experience, to hear and understand” appearing on the group’s tickets, Richard maintains that Art was “just the same band” as before. “Nothing changed."

“It was mutton dressed up as lamb, really,” admits Ron Chester. “We thought if we were called something different, people might come because they were curious. But it didn’t make a lot of difference. The audiences were captive at the places we played anyway. There was nowhere else to go on a Friday or Saturday night. Everyone used to roll up to see whoever was on, whether they’d heard of them or not.”

1968 was the year psychedelia caught up with many provincial British bands. The Art were no different, but their acknowledgement of what had been last year’s scene in London was via sight rather than sound. Their light shows seem to have been particularly memorable, as Dave Williams explains: “They were brilliant. We used the projectors from school, filled medicine bottles with water and oil, and projected through them to get this lovely golden, amber backdrop. As the image came out upside down, when we poured in some Fairy Liquid, it dropped straight through in a blob, but came out on the wall like a giant green mushroom cloud. It was amazing, and we had about four of them at the back, projecting over the band.”

John Deacon was party to another of Dave’s exploits. “One day,” recalls Williams, “John and I bought a 100-watt P.A. — which was pretty big for those days — and took it into the lecture theatre full of kids at Beauchamp School (which Deacon had attended since September 1966) for our version of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’. We cranked it up as loud as we could, put the light show on, and let off these smoke bombs, which were DDT pellets we’d got from the chemist. All the kids started choking, and then the headmaster walked in...[ ]

...[ ] with a load of governors. You could see the fury in his face. One of the governors asked what we were doing. ‘It’s a demonstration in sound and light, sir,’ I said. ‘We’re using these ink bottles turned upside down, but we’re a bit worried about these DDT pellets so we might knock the smoke on the head, but we’re still experimenting.’ And he fell for it!”.

INFLUENTIAL

Towards the end of 1968, a crop of new groups began to have a profound effect on the maturing schoolboys: Jethro Tull, the Nice, Taste, and in particular Deep Purple. Ron: “We used to buy Purple records and learn to play them. We’d seen John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the Downliners’ Sect in Leicester, the Nice, King Crimson. These sort of groups. We learned a lot from just watching them. They were influential. There was always a big discussion in the band as to whether we should do a particular song. Once we’d decided that, there’d be another big discussion as to how we should do it. Everybody had their say.”

Hair, too, had finally began to grow: “John grew his quite long,” recalls Ron. “We all had longish hair, but not shoulder length. We couldn’t look too unkempt for the normal side of life, but we didn’t want to be too prissy for the other end of the spectrum. That was when we started playing universities, and we went a bit heavier. The audiences were far more serious minded about music and more enthusiastic. In some of the youth clubs we’d been playing, the audience would be moving around on roller skates, or peeling bananas all over the place, things like that”.

“We felt we were making an impression towards the last year or two of the band,” he continues. But it went no further: “We were at school, some of us had jobs, and there was an element of common sense overriding what we would have liked to have done. None of us wanted to chuck in our apprenticeships or courses. If we’d had a flair for writing our own material, we might have taken off. But we just played what was popular, nothing different from most other groups. That wasn’t a basis on which to launch ourselves. So it never happened."

“We didn’t think that far ahead,” admits Richard Young. “I just thought of playing and getting repeat bookings. John was probably the least ambitious of all of us, to be honest. I think he felt that there was no mileage in what we were doing, although it was good fun. I think he had the impression that this was a hobby, a phase he was going through.”

Sometime in the Sixties, possibly 1969, but maybe earlier, Art recorded an acetate. Whatever the date, the crucial point is that John Deacon was present at the session. “We weren't asked to do it,” recalls Nigel. “We just wanted to make a disc. I think it cost us about five shillings.”

The venue was Beck’s studio, thirty miles south east of Oadby in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. “I’d never been in a studio before and it seemed awesome, really,” recalls Dave Williams. “It was a fairly decent-sized room for acoustics. It was all nicely low-lit, with lots of screens. The guy knew what he was doing.” Richard Young was less impressed, though: I’ve been in studios all my life,” he says. “That was just another session. Nothing about it stood out.”

The “guy” Dave remembered was engineer Derek Tomkins, who informed the group that they could record three tracks in the time allotted. “We’d only gone in there with two, ‘Sunny’ and ‘Vehicle’,” says Nigel, “and we didn’t want to waste the opportunity, so Richard knocked up a little instrumental called Transit 3’ — named after our new van, the third one — right there in the studio. Although we were purely a covers band, everybody had a bash at writing, but we never did anything of our own on stage. The exception was Transit 3’, which was incorporated into the set after this session.”

“ Transit 3’ was about about the only track we ever wrote," reckons Richard Young (“Heart Full Of Soul”, as reported in ‘As It Began’, is in fact a Graham Gouldman nurnber). “I initially had the idea, but I can’t really remember anything about it. It’s very basic. It wouldn’t take a great deal of effort to write something like that.” To the objective observer, “Transit 3”, taped in mono but well recorded, is a fairly uncomplicated, organ-led scale- hopper, reminiscent of Booker T & the MGs.

“Everybody was listening to ‘Green Onions’,” confirms Nigel, “so Booker T would have been an influence there.” But for all that, it’s well- played, with memorable lead and twangy, wah-wah guitar passages courtesy of Dave Williams. And, crucially, John Deacon’s thumping bass is plainly audible throughout. On this evidence, the Opposition were clearly a tight, confident outfit. “Transit 3” could have been incorporated into any swinging ‘60s film soundtrack, and no one would have jumped up shouting, “Amateurs”!.

UNFAMILIAR

The other two tracks, covers of Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny' and the more obscure, soul- tinged ‘Vehicle’ (later a hit for the Ides of March), featured a vocalist, but an unfamiliar one: another of the Opposition’s fleeting frontmen. “We had a singer for a while called Alan Brown,” recalls Nigel. “He came and went fairly quickly. He was good, really good. Too good for us, I think. That wasn’t him saying that. We just knew it.”

On both songs, Brown is in deep, soulful voice, sounding not unlike a cross between Tom Jones and the early Van Morrison — if such an amalgam can be imagined. The Art’s reading of “Vehicle” is edgy and robust, dominated by Richard Young’s distinctive keyboards and Nigel Bullen’s bustling drum work. Dave Williams is again in fine form, delivering more sparkling wah-wah guitar, while on the cassette copy taped from Nigel Bullen’s acetate, at least, John’s bass is very prominent, over-recorded in fact, booming in the mix.

“Sunny” goes one better, breaking into jazzy 3/4 time halfway through, before slotting back into the more traditional 4/4. It’s an imaginative arrangement, with alternate soloing from both Dave and Richard, while the whole track is underpinned by swirls of Hammond organ and John Deacon’s pounding bass.

“We did ‘Sunny’ as part of our stage set,” says Nigel, “but I don’t recall us ever going into the jazzy bit. That’s quite interesting. We might have talked about that before we went into the studio, but I think it was just for this session. Dave had two guitars, a six-string and a twelve-string, or it could even have been twin-necked. I still quite like the wah-wah he played on that track. By this time Richard would have been onto his second or third organ — he was heavily into Hammonds and Leslies."

Operating as they did in a fairly ambition- free zone, and having prepared the listener for a mundane set of recordings with their trademark laid-back approach, Art’s acetate comes as something of a revelation. Let any bunch of today’s schoolboys loose in a studio for an afternoon and defy them to come up with something half as good!

Just two copies of the Art disc are known to have survived. John Deacon’s mother is believed to own one and Nigel Bullen has the other. “I’d forgotten all about this record,” admits Nigel. “We know that one copy was converted to an ashtray!. We stubbed out cigarettes on Richards at rehearsal one night.” Although treated with anything but respect at the time, the importance of the disc is now apparent to Nigel Bullen: “This is probably John Deacon’s first recording, apart from tracks he did in his bedroom on his reel-to-...[ ]

...[ ] reel, which are probably long gone. Although, knowing John, they’re probably not!”

The beginning of the end for Art came in June 1969, when John Deacon left Beauchamp. With a college course lined up in London, his days with the band were obviously numbered. He played his final gig with the group on 29th August at a familiar venue, Great Glen Youth and Sports Centre Club. By October, he’d moved to London to study electronics at Chelsea College of Technology, part of the University of London.

Another blow was dealt in November, when the band's lynchpin, Richard Young, left to join popular local musician Steve Fearn in Fearn’s Brass Foundry.

“They were a Blood, Sweat and Tears-type of group,” recalls Richard, “and paid better money than I’d been used to. I was out five nights a week, on about £3 per night, against an average of about £10 between us.” The previous year, Richard had played session keyboards on the Foundry’s two Decca singles: “Don’t Change It” (F 12721, January 1968, £10) and “Now I Taste The Tears” (F 12835. September 1968, £8).

SAVAGE

Ron Chester departed shortly afterwards, and gave up music: “I left in the early 70s, after John Deacon moved to London. John was replaced by a bass player was called John Savage, who unsettled me. He had different tastes and drove us a bit hard. His approach was totally different from Deaks's, and he was much more interested in the financial side of things. We’d all been mates before, we didn't just knock about for the band. It just wasn’t the same.”

Nigel, Richard and Dave pushed on into 1970 with the new bassist, changing the band’s name again, this time to Silky Way. They returned to Beck’s studio to record a cover of Free’s “Loosen Up” with another vocalist, Bill Gardener, but that was the band’s last effort. Dave left after falling into Nigel’s drumkit, drunk on stage at a private party one Christmas. “I waited for them to pick me up the next day,” he recalls sheepishly, “but they never carne.”

Richard and Nigel moved into a dinner- dance type outfit called the Lady Jane Trio — “Corny, or what!”, laughs Bullen — but Nigel left music altogether soon afterwards to concentrate on his college work. Richard turned professional, moving into cabaret with the Steve Fearn-less Brass Foundry, before forming a trio called Rio, finding regular work on the holiday camp and overseas cruise circuit. In the late ‘70s, he joined a touring version of the Love Affair.

Down in London, John Deacon caught a glimpse of his future world-beating musical partners as early as October 1970, when he saw the newly-formed Queen perform at College of Estate Management in Kensington. “They were all dressed in black, and the lights were very dim too,” he told Jim Jenkins and Jacky Gunn in ‘As It Began’, “All I could really see were four shadowy figures. They didn’t make a lasting impression on me at the time.”

While renting rooms in Queensgate, John formed a loose R&B quartet with a flatmate, guitarist Peter Stoddart, one Don Cater on drums and another guitarist remembered only as Albert. The new band was hardlv a great leap forward from Art: they wrote no originals, and when asked to perform their only gig at Chelsea College on 21st November 1970, supporting Hardin & York and the Idle Race, they hastily billed themselves — in a rare fit of self-publicity for the quiet Oadby boy — as Deacon.

A few months later in early 1971, John was introduced to Brian May and Roger Taylor by a mutual friend, Christine Farnell, at a disco at Maria Assumpta Teacher Training College. They were looking for a bassist. John auditioned at Imperial College shortly afterwards. Roger Taylor recalled Queen’s initial reaction to Deacon in ‘As It Began’: “We thought he was great. We were so used to each other, and so over the top, we thought that because he was quiet he would fit in with us without too much upheaval. He was a great bass player, too — and the fact that he was a wizard with electronics was definitely a deciding factor!”

How did the members of the Art/Opposition back in Leicester, view John’s success with Queen? “It wasn’t sudden”, says Ron Chester. “First we heard he’d got into another group. We couldn’t believe that — were they deaf? There were all these sort of jokes going along. Then we heard he’d got a recording contract and the next thing he had a record out. It was a gradual progression. No one dreamed he would end up the way he did.”

“I don’t think we expected success for any of us" admits Nigel Bullen. “Richard maybe. He was the first one to go professional. But when John left for London to go to college, he left all his kit here. I thought that was the end of it for him. He had absolutely no intention of continuing. His college course was No.1. It was only after he kept seeing adverts for bass players in the ‘Melody Maker’ that he became interested again.”

He also seemed to lose some of that ‘Easy Deacon’ touch which so impressed Dave Williams in the ‘60s. “He’d ring up these bands,” continues Nigel, “but when he found they were a name act, he bottle out. When he went to auditions for anonymous bands, where he would queue up with about thirty other bass players, he had a bit of confidence. He just wanted to play in a decent band. Once I heard what Queen had recorded at De Lane Lea, and John played me the demo of their first album, I thought they were well set.”

CABARET

By early 1973, Dave Williams had forsaken a career in animation to join Highly Likely, a cabaret outfit put together by Mike Hugg and producer Dave Hadfield on the back of their minor hit, “Whatever Happened To You (The Likely Lads Theme)”. While Dave was in the band, they recorded a follow-up single which wasn’t released, before evolving into a glam rock outfit, Razzle, which later become the Ritz, who issued a few singles. “During Queen’s early days, before they’d had any real success, John came to see us once,” recalls Dave, “and said, ‘I wish I was in a band like this which could actually play some gigs’.” Dave concludes: “I remember John coming round once around that time, saying I’ve got a demo’. ‘So have I!’, I said. So we put his on first, and the first track was ‘Keep Yourself Alive’. My mouth dropped wide open and I thought. ‘Bloody hell! What a great track’. I remember saying that the guitarist was as good as Ritchie Blackmore — who was still our hero then — and thinking ‘They’re serious about this. This is the real thing’.”

RECORD COLLECTOR Nº 198 FEBRUARY 1996

⬅PREVIOUS: SMILE

https://melisa-may-taylor72.tumblr.com/post/639672109315014656/queen-before-queen-the-1960s-recordings

➡NEXT: IBEX, WRECKAGE & SOUR MILK SEA

@natromanxoff, @mephisto92, @moviestorian, @x5vale, @39-brian, @onegoldenglance, @crosmopolitan, @an-abyss-called-life, @his-majesty-king-mercury, @i-live-for-queen, @brian-39-may, @toomuchlove-willkillyou, @brimaymay, @sail-away-sweet-sister, @drummerqueenrmt, @old-fashioned-roger-boy, @briianmaay, @inui-mycroft, @deacytits, @iminlovewithrogscar, @drowseoftaylor, @brianmayislongaway, @balticlover, @astrophysicist-guitar-god, @miez-lakatz, @brianmayoucease, @jesus-in-a-life-boat, @aslongasthereismusic, @roger-taylors-car, @silapril, @sherrifanciesfriskyfreddie, @tenderbri, @brianmydear, @thosequeenboys, @millionairewaltz-carpediem, @painandpleasure86, @bribrifrenchfry, @xlucylennonx, @a-night-at-the-abbey-road, @inthedayswhenlandswerefew, @madformeddowstaylor, @queenrogertaylorfan, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @queen-for-life, @rethought, @drivenbybrianmay @mymakeupmaybeflaking, @old-but-still-a-child, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @warriorteam1924, @funnydressesweirdhairanddance, @painkiller80, @thefanhuman13, @yourtieddownmother, @hgmercury39, @brimi-stardust, @thefairyfellermercury, @retroromantics, @sailawaysweetbrimi, @sophiaintheskywithdiamonds, @holybrianmaywritingbear, @lydiannode, @39-yellow-daffodils , @ure-gonna-loveme-when-u-seeme, @kaykaybeachgirl, @foxmonkey, @deakysgurl, @redspecialandclogsandcurls, @briansrainbowsocks-deactivated2, @delilahmay39, @ohmybribri, @bless-the-queen, @everythingaboutfreddie, @doitforthevine67, @recordsoftheseventies, @rhysjoejoshtomfarisblog, @tenementfunsterwithpurpleshoes, @drummah-in-a-rocknroll-band, @beatlegirl1968, @maylorsqueen, @autumnscenemcyt, @gralto, @alittlepeoplemagic, @rainbowsockbrian, @frejudy, @drivenbybri, @yourlocalmusicalprostitute, @saik-ava, @omb-xx, @sassymaylor, @somekindofroger, @starlightmay, @freddiemercuryismylife, @sunshine112, @chrysochromulina, @glitteryloveravenue, @deakyislife51, @0-primejive-0, @just-a-skinny-lad, @bluewillowmom, @sassiesillie, @stesichoreanpalinode, @farrokhbulsaramercury, @tayloredofqueen, @rushingheadlong, @izzy-is-slightly-mad, @scandalacious, @0-my-fairy-queen-0 @39-volunteers-to-space@zodiacaldust, @deakytaylor, @queenband70s, @deakyeveryday, @drivenbybrimay @70smay

#Queen Before Queen #Pre-Queen Series #John Deacon #The Opposition #🎤🎵🎸👑⭐

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Goof Week: House of Mouse: Super Goof or Wish I Could Fly Like Super Goof (Patreon Review for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy gorshers and welcome back to Goof Week, my week long celebration of Goofy’s 89th Birthday. And today I take my once a month trip down to the house of mouse as part of my patron kev’s yearlong celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary. And since I had this theme week in mind I asked him if it’d be okay if he strictly randomized goofy episodes, he said yes and here we are.

Luck was on my side as I got what I remembered was one of my faviorite episodes of the show. But before I can get if it lived up to the hype or not a brief word on Super Goof.

Super Goof is actually from the comics, first debuting in a story where Goofy thought he had super powers and fought the Phantom Blot in a cowboy hat.

This concept was a hit so in 1965 Goofy was made a superhero for real with Super Goof #1. This dosen’t suprise me: this was the height of the silver age: The Lee and Kirby age of Marvel was in full swing and DC was still doing gangbusters. So there was market for a superhero spoof comic starring one of Disney’s best and brightest characters, who was given a bunch of super peanuts called super goobers to give him superman powers. What DOES surprise me is the series lasted 74 issues from 65-84. And what’s more insane and wonderful? It didn’t get canceled because of low sales or anything. That was simply when Gold Key shut down... and Gold Key was FOUNDED three years before it meaning this book lasted the company’s ENTIRE lifespan. I’ll say that again, a book about goofy eating peanuts that started because of a story where goofy thought he was a superhero and fought a cowboy phantom blot, lasted 74 issues and only ended because the publisher shut down. That... is one of the most amazing things I have ever heard in my life. I’m genuinely impressed... this isn’t even a bad concept, I likes it and wish Disney would give it a full series. Farmer could do wonders with it. I’m just amazed that this odball little comic took off like it did. And as one final fun fact much like Superman, Super Goof set off the trend of Disney’s classic characters becoming heroes, with Donald’s own Papernik/Duck Avenger following in his footsteps. I REALLY want a Disney Superhero Verse in animatoin now, I know there was a mini series like that. And I will have to visit these comics at some point I just simply didn’t have room in the week with a movie review tomorrow. .

So with all that out of the way how does Super Goof do on screen and does the episode hold up? Join me under the cut to find out.

As usual for HOM I’ll be doing the shorts and overarching story seperate soooo

How To To Take Care of Your Yard:

Look anyone whose read my stuff or even just my goofy shorts special will know how much I love the How To Shorts and how this series is responsible. This admittedly isn’t one of the BEST of them.. but it’s still fun to watch. Even a forgettable How To Short is still GOOD. It’s abotu Goofy taking care of his yard over the four seasons and has some decent gags but nothing really standout. I Honestly DO wish I had more to say but this one’s just okay and it woudln’t stick out as much if both the wraparound and the other short weren’t so spectacular. Speaking of which.

Locksmiths: This is one of the few shorts I VIVIDLY remembered from childhood and for damn good reason. This is THE best short i’ve seen so far for House of Mouse this year and for good reason. The premise is simple enough: The Golden Trio are locksmiths.. who end up getting locked inside their own office just after Minnie calls with something urgent to tell them.

The results are comic gold, with the standout bits being Goofy’s keys which is just such a wonderful hurricane of puns with some great visual gags to start it off that I can’t help but love it

youtube

There’s TONS of other good stuff too: The boys fishing for the key, Mickey opening a ton of doors in a sequence MST3K would be proud of and the finale with the boys falling out the office. This is a true , hilarious classic and my words can’t really do it justice. Seek this one out on it’s own or in the episode you will not regret it. A true classic for Disney Shorts period.

Super Goof:

So onto the main story. Goofy asks Clarabelle out and she’s not only incredibly receptive but simply asks to check her schedule.. which he interprets as no. I would make a joke here but i’ts clear from previous episodes HOM goofy has Low Self Esteem: he was utterly crushed not having a valentine and by his friends all wishing he could be less Goofy. So him overreacting like this is in character and comes off as endearing: it’s not that he thinks so low of her he’d think sh’ed pull something like this.. it’s that he’s so doubtful of someone liking him for who he is deep down he self sabotages something I can PAINFULLY relate to as that’s one of my biggest personal issues hands down.

So outside presumably on break...

Not THAT kind of break. Though since I bring it up: they both were wrong. They WERE on a break, and it was wrong of tweedle dee and tweedle dum there to keep needling it ESPECIALLY since their the ones who TOLD HIM to hide his sleeping with the waitress and took NO responsibility for that. Rachel treating it like an affair constantly when she’s the one who wanted space and didn’t give him any paramerters for said is fucking terrible. It’s telling that in the reunion trailer everyone but Matthew LeBlanc, who was clearly just having some fun agreed they were. That being said Ross still slept with someone five seconds after being on said break, still listneed to the two of them on hiding it when it was a bad idea, and STILL caused said break by being a clingy asshole to such a degree even his previous history of being cheated on does not justify or excuse how badly he treated Rachel. What i’m saying is they both sucked, and thus deserved each other, and by the end NEITHER was remotely likeable, with both having done terrible things both in said will they or won’t they hellscape and outside it, with Ross dating a student and Rachel dating her assistant.

Anyways after that thing I clearly needed to get off my chest, we get a narration informing us a METEOR IS COMING and it strikes the peanuts Goofy’s depression snacking on, as a result he becomes SUPER GOOF! And after a display of his powers with various disney characters (finding Gepetto and Pinocchio in a whale, saving the dalmations from cruella , lifting the giant from the littlest tailor) and finds he has a narrator. No really Goofy notices and is not happy about it despite all superheros having one. I mean he’s not wrong, look what the X-Men’s did to Cyclops:

But regardless he has him and Goofy flies through the air with the quickest of ease through the house of mouse impressing everyone who has no idea he’s goofy. This gag is a carry over from the comics and a transparent parody of the superman clark kent thing. But it works because Goofy still uses his name in costume, still has his hat and really changes nothing about his appearance. It’s simple but sometimes you just need a very simple gag to work and overxplaning it spoils the whole thing. Trust me I know as a certified experinced fuck up.

So after the first cartoon Super Goofy guest stars, and we get some neat gags with the disney movie characters, though my faviorite is Peter Pan’s reactoin of “He Can fly he can fly he can fly, big deal. Anyone can do that”. It’s both perfectly in character and utterly hilarious.

Goofy however starts to feel disheartneed as everyone compliments him.. and Minnie says he’s better than a regular goofy as do the others minus Mickey because he’s a good egg. And Clarabelle but he misinertperts her like of super goof as her liking him better as that.

So fed up with everyone liking him better, Goofy throws away the peanuts, which he kept in his hat.. though one did fall in his waiter’s uniform. Remember that. The narrator questions if this is really the end and what if there’s peril but Goofy’s stubbornly instiant he won’t do it no matter what.

Cue the what: another MUCH LARGER metor heading straight for Mainstreet

Goofy refuses to summon super goof despite the danger... Mickey has an apt response for him

This is the one scene I don’t really like: Goofy has a righ tto be upset they all prefer someone who just showed up hours ago over him, especially beceause it IS him, to the point Daisy was upset she got a picture of goofy instead of super goofy because J Jonah Jameson’s not going to pay for pictures of his next door neighbor. But Mickey has a right to not want to die horribly in a cataclysm of fire.

So Goofy mopes off like his son to go save the world, fine whatever. Only as is cartoon law, the trash has been picked up meaning he dosen’t have any goobers.. except the CHEKOVS GOOBER. With it he chews it, flies up and has a truly impressive display holding it back while it’s just over clarabelle before dispoising of it. he hits on her in super form but she says she already has date with regular goofy. Goofy’s confidence is restored, he’s probably getting laid tonight and we close on a Mike add for a school for Goofy’s. How much is tution.. asking for a me.

Final Thoughts: This wraparound was great, a few small flaws but it has a great, engaging charcter driven story with some delightfully silly jokes that are right up my ally. It’s easy to see besides my love of superheroes why this one stood out to me: It’s funny, heartwrenching and stars one of my faviorite character.

The shorts are also good, one that’s okay , a bit too long but not bad, and one that’s an utter masterpiece. In fact the only reason the first short feels so long is you really want to get back to the main plot fast, and that’s not a bad problem to have. This was an excellen tepisode and I recommend seeing it out.

Before I get to my whole patreon speil, i’d like to say that House of Mouse STILL is not avaliable on Disney+ for reasons that haven’t been made clear. As such it’s on my Not Streaming List, a list I keep and update reguarly of shows that SHOULD be streaming on a particular service and have no clear reason NOT to be such as musical rights issues like the ones likely keeping shows like Drew Carrey, Northern Exposure and Murphy Brown off streaming. So check that out if your curious, link is on my main page and hit me up if you have any suggestoins for it.

So thank you for reading and if you liked this review give it a like and consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As a patron you’d get access to exclusive reviews, the patreon’s discord and to pick a short each time I do one of these shortstaculars. Donald’s comnig next month and the deadline is in only a few days to join up for said month so the clock is ticking. Even a dollar a month helps me reach my stretch goals so please i fyou can sign up today and if not, I understand and i’ll see you at the next rainbow

#goofy #goofy goof #clarabelle cow #house of mouse #mickey mouse #donald duck #minnie mouse #daisy duck #superheroes #super goof #goof week

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whenrockwasyoung19 · 5 years ago

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It’s Time to Talk about a Bespectacled Elephant in the Room

I’ve been in the Beatles fandom for 8 and a half years. I have had a Beatles blog for the entirety of those 8 and a half years, and I have watched as discourse about these four men evolve. The discourse inside and outside the fandom has become so toxic that I don’t think I can engage with it in the same way that I could before. Let me explain.

When I entered this fandom 8 and a half years ago, it was in 2012, quite an infamous year in tumblr history. That was the pique of “”cringey”” fandom culture. The Beatles fandom was as steeped in fandom culture as any other fandom. I know this because I was part of two of the top of fandoms at the time, Doctor Who and Sherlock. Believe me, I have seen cringe.

The fandom at the time was totally aware of the John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s flaws as individuals, but most fans tended to simply enjoy Beatles fandom as if it were the 60s. Some might call it ignorant bliss. If you asked me at the time, I’d have said it was self-aware ignorant bliss--if that even makes sense. At the time, there wasn’t a person with a Beatles icon who hadn’t heard the line “John Lennon beat his wife.” Everyone knew it, but everyone also knew the real story, and so everyone just made peace with it. As a result, people didn’t think about every bad thing the Beatles ever did on a daily basis. It was more like a once-a-month kind of thing. Otherwise, fandom discourse was quite fun and relaxed. There were no shipping wars, no one fought over who was the best Beatle, everyone gushed over the Beatles wives, and we all just had fun with fics and fan art.

Of course, in this period, people engaged in conversations about one bespectacled Beatles problematic behavior. These conversations usually came from outside of the fandom. It was usually randos coming into the tags or into someone’s ask box and ranting about John Lennon’s violent behavior. Some of it came from within the fandom. Some people really didn’t like John and gave others shit if they listed John as their favorite Beatle. A lot of the discourse boiled down to: ‘hey, I see you like John Lennon. You should know that he beat his wife. And now that you know that, you should feel bad about ever liking him in the first place.’ And the response was often, ‘Actually, John Lennon didn’t beat his wife. They weren’t even married at the time. And also he didn’t beat her, he slapped her once in the face, and then never did it again.’ No one’s minds were changed. The fans had made their peace, and the antis came off as cynical and pretentious.

When Dashcon happened, and Tumblr took a hard look at its cringey fandom culture, the Beatles fandom evolved as well. The fandom became, frankly, less fun. It no longer felt like a group of people who found the Beatles decades after the 60s and were fangirling like it was 1965. There was still some of that left, but a lot of it kind of faded. So, most fandom interactions were reblogging pictures of the Beatles from the 60s and various interview clips and quotes. But the barrage of antis never really went away, and the response didn’t evolve.

Then, the advent of cancel culture came on. I always waited for the Beatles to get, like, officially canceled, but I also felt they were uncancel-able at the same time. Let me explain. I have been a Beatles fan primarily in an online space, rarely engaging with fans in real life. But I have met fans who are life-long Beatles fans, people who are a lot older than us and who’s fandom isn’t tied to the internet. They don’t give a shit about any of our discourse. They may or may not have heard it before, but they seem totally indifferent to all of it. I’m sure most of them have never heard ‘Mclennon’ before. These are the people that flock to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in concert (and pay astronomical prices for it). These are the people who go to record shops and buy vinyl. These are the people I run into at flea markets who buy up all the Beatles merch before I can even arrive (true story). So, the Beatles will never be canceled because there will always be people who love the Beatles and don’t engage with online discourse. Rarely said, but thank god for Gen-X.

As cancel culture took over the internet, fandoms changed. It’s not as noticeable in fandoms without problematic favs. For instance, I’m also steeped in the Tom Holland fandom, and that boy is a little angel who has done no wrong. No one has discourse about the unproblematic boy who plays an equally unproblematic character. But in fandoms with ‘problematic favs’ the mood has shifted. I’m also in the Taron Egerton fandom. Taron Egerton, for those who only follow me for my Beatles stuff, is a genuinely sweet and kind person who has had zero scandals in his six year career. There were some rumblings when he was cast as Elton John, and some people took issue with the fact that he’s a straight man playing a gay man. This discourse seemed to die quickly as a whole lot of straight people played gay people in that same year (Olivia Coleman as queer Queen Anne, Emma Stone as her queer lover, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury). Why jump on this boy who at the time was still technically on the rise. He’s not exactly the same target as someone like Scarlett Johansson who has her pick of roles. Taron doesn’t have quite that some power in Hollywood, and I think most people made peace with the fact that this was a big role for him, and it’s not really fair to take that away from him. So, all in all, the closest thing to a scandal was something that died pretty much on arrival.

That was until this summer when everything changed. When George Floyd was murdered, celebrities flocked to social media to mourn his loss. Taron’s social media account was silent. For weeks, Taron said nothing about Black Lives Matter or Floyd’s death. This caused outrage in the fandom. Many raced to defend him, starting a hashtage #IstandwithTaron. Others sought to tear him down and anyone who supported him. The kind of mania this one incident caused tore through an otherwise peaceful fandom. What I saw was two sides in a total panic. The antis were people who once had faith that Taron was a good person and were now questioning that. Andthe defenders were people who desperately wanted him to be a good person and were afraid that he wasn’t. In essence, both sides could feel Taron about to get canceled. The defenders wanted to stop it, the antis wanted to ride that wave.

What this long drawn out Taron example is meant to convey: is that cancel culture has put fandoms on edge. One’s fav has to be perfect, otherwise it can jeopardize the existence of the entire fandom. I’ll admit, I was afraid that I’d be some kind of pariah for standing by Taron through all of this. My actions were to basically reason with the antis but still defend Taron. I defend him mostly because I felt that his silence was the result of a needed social media absence and that trying to shame him back onto social media was an invasion of privacy. But I was genuinely afraid that he would get canceled, and the fun of the Taron fandom would be lost.

In the Beatles fandom, it often feels like the Beatles, mainly John, have already been canceled. I see this coming from two different sources: antis from outside of the fandom and antis within the fandom. The outside antis are just the same as the ones from 2012. These are people who like to drop in that John Lennon beat his wife, posting this in the tag (which violates an ancient tumblr real by the way--no hate in the tags).

The antis outside the fandom speak to a larger anti-John Lennon sentiment online. I see references to John Lennon ‘beating his wife’ on Tiktok and twitter. The tone of anti-John Lennon posts has shifted. Before, it felt like the antis were being smug but also argumentative. They wanted to have a conversation about this bit of info they read on Reddit with no context. Now, “John Lennon beating his wife” is practically a meme. It’s a running joke online that John Lennon was a wife beater. I can’t look on my instagram explore page because every so often a John Lennon beats his wife meme will pop up amongst the other, normal, memes.

This change in discourse suggests that the internet has just accepted this as fact now. I should note that back in 2012, it seemed as if few people knew this fact. The fandom knew it, and these random antis knew it, but few others did. Now, because of how common these memes are, it seems to be widespread knowledge.

Consequently, the Beatles fandom, who used to ward off attacks from antis, seems to have given in. I recently saw a post from a Beatles blog (had the URL and icon and everything) that confessed they felt guilty for listening to the Beatles, and I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed in the fandom. People tend to put disclaimers in posts about John or even all four that John is an ‘awful man.’ It seems like the self-aware ignorant bliss has completely gone away. Occasionally, I still see posts joyously talking about Mclennon or reblogs of old photos from the 60s. But the culture has shifted.

Online, it no longer feels comfortable to be a Beatles fan. It feels like you have to own up to 8 decades of mistakes by four men you’ve never met. And, I should note, this is kind of how it feels to be a fan of anything right now. Taron is not canceled today, but he could be tomorrow. It’s this pervasive feeling of guilt that the person you’re supporting may or definitely has or is doing something wrong.

I’ll admit this uncomfortable feeling has expanded into other parts of my fandom life. I listen to their music, and I feel elated--the way I always have. Then, I get these intrusive thoughts which sound like all the worst parts of Twitter combined. It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2012, when I knew almost nothing about them, I saw them as four young men who were full of happiness, love for another, and talent. Back then, listening to their music was exciting and joyous. Sometimes, I fear that I can never feel that way again. Next year, when I finally go to Liverpool, will I be filled with excitement or guilt?

I say all this for a few reasons. One, I love John Lennon. I appreciate all the good he did for the world not just as a musician and an artist but also his advocacy and charity work. I love him, and a part of me will always love him, but observing the change in discourse has enlightened me as a historian. Part of my job is to observe people’s legacies, and John’s is perhaps the most interesting legacy I’ve ever observed. When he died, he was hailed as a saint. But tall poppy syndrome set in, and the antis started. This culture grew and grew to the point where it seems to, at least among the younger generation, taken over the sainthood.

But as a historian and a fan, I have never seen the saint or the devil. I’ve only seen the man, the incredibly flawed man. The thing that these antis never understand is that John Lennon was painfully aware of his own flaws to the point where it made him all the more self-destructive. In essence, his past mistakes caused him to make additional mistakes. But John, aware of his own flaws, always tried to change and was often successful. I’ve talked about this before, but John demonstrated that he was capable of being a good person, like properly so, again and again. After he struck Cynthia, he never hit her again. His shortcomings as a father to Julian weren’t repeated with Sean. He worked on his drinking, his drug addiction, and his anger, trying to overcome those demons till the day he died. By all accounts, the John Lennon that died in 1980 is not the John Lennon who struck Cynthia Powell at school. That John Lennon was living a cleaner, healthier life. He was a better father to both his sons by that point, and was trying to repair his relationship with Julian. He was a good husband to Yoko and saw himself living a long and happy life.

John Lennon cannot and should not be boiled down to just his flaws. It’s one thing as a fan to acknowledge that John is a flawed human being (news flash: they all are), but he is also much bigger than that.

So once again, why am I writing this long, rambling post, once again talking about John Lennon’s virtues? Because if I can’t engage with healthy discourse about the Beatles and John Lennon, then I can’t engage with discourse on the topic at all. So, I probably will post less Beatles stuff because I find it hard to go through the tags or even my dash (well, I can’t really go through my dash anymore for other reasons I’m not going to get into right now). If any of my followers have noticed a lot of Taron posts lately, it’s not just because I love Taron, it’s because Taron’s tag is pretty much the only location on tumblr I feel 100% comfortable in. Any foray into John or the Beatles tags becomes uncomfortable and guilt-ridden quickly.

So, I probably will post less about the Beatles until I can find a blog or a tag that doesn’t give me bad vibes. My fandom will likely outgrow tumblr and the internet. I have a ton of Beatles books; maybe I’ll rely on those. I am doing official scholarly research on them now. Maybe that will be my outlet. I’m sorry if I post less about them now, but it’s really for my own well-being.

#John lennon #the beatles

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simtrospective · 5 years ago

Note

congratulations on your follower mile stone! I only recently started following your blog but I love that you share your thought process behind your sims and your posts. I really enjoy reading them! can I hear more about your inspiration to do a historical-vintage blog? what are your favorite time periods to recreate with the sims and why?

Thank you so much @wirefiish!

First, a little tangent: I started playing this series 20 years ago. There have been some gap years since then: my computer couldn’t handle TS3 when it came out so I only notched a few hours of total play time before sticking with TS2; I’d heard bad things about TS4 and myself wasn’t wowed by the base game so I put it aside for a long while. I’ve never had a simblr before this year (I started one in March, almost immediately deleted it, and then resurrected this account in May after someone on reddit asked me for a download + CC list of a sim I’d shared there; I needed somewhere to put all that info and so…). I never had any account for simming no matter which platform was popular: no Livejournal account, nor a Dreamwidth account, nor a GoS account, nor an MTS account, on and on and on. I only ever lurked the community though I felt like I knew everyone in it! But this year, I wanted to keep track of other simmers on tumblr who I liked, and I needed a quarantine distraction from work + panic, and so here I am. Operating this account has been an exercise, too, in managing myself and self-esteem: not letting myself fall into some of my kneejerk behaviors like trying to please others, apologizing (for nothing; for “me”), putting myself down, comparing myself to other people who I imagine are all perfect and talented and objectively better. My inclination, when I write wordy posts or give “too much information” about my sims is to delete and keep it simple, and that certainly gets me more notes, but… this is who I am. Not that it’s that deep! But it’s good to have perspective and behave accordingly: it’s just a blog with pictures of sims. It’s just a game. I felt like writing, it’s my little blog, who cares? I’m not doing it for notes or likes or whatever. What do I have to apologize for? What do I have to fix?

All this to say thank you that you are enjoying reading about my process. I enjoy writing about my process, whether mundane or not. I enjoy treating this blog like a blog when I feel called to do so.

Now, to your questions!

Can I hear more about your inspiration to do a historical-vintage blog?

Sure!

If you’d like to read more about my save and my plans for it, I have a link to that featured in my navigation menu. It is HERE for any and all who are interested and includes references and pictures I’m hoping to use as inspiration for world-building and character creation.

Basically, why I’m doing this is very simple: I like old stuff. I like vintage stuff. I like retro stuff. I love old photographs, old furniture, old music, old clothes, old movies. I love references and inspirations and art. I hate the internet. I hate my sims taking out their phones every two seconds and stuntin’ for the ‘gram and whatever else. I am forced to use too much internet and social media at work but in real life I have this blog and a neglected Pinterest account and a neglected reddit account and that is it and that has always been it, with the tumblr and reddit accounts only begun this calendar year. I’m not a luddite; I mindlessly scroll more than I should and I have favorite Vines (RIP) just like the other girls and how else can I stuff my game with CC if not over WiFi, but really, there’s so much of the *NOW* in TS4 that takes me out of and away from what I love about this series because it’s so invasive. This is where I could go on another tangent about how--through what EA, et al purports is endless gameplay possibilities--TS4 actually gives us less choice when it comes to overall gameplay but that is not the question I’m answering.

Beyond wanting to return my sims to a simpler time in terms of technology and their personal interactions, I’m totally doing it for the aesthetic. If I had my way, if I could choose the world’s aesthetic, the world’s advances in terms of, again, the technology in our pockets, it would span between 1920 and, like, 1995 and how exciting that I actually can build a little world that does just that. I can dress my little dolls exactly how I want and make some of them use the washboard! I can’t curate planet earth but I can make damn sure that all the teenage girls in Brindleton Bay wear circle skirts to the diner.

Also, related to doing whatever I want, I get to have the things I love, the world and gameplay I love but apply more progressive values to it. Yes, all the teenage girls in Brindleton Bay wear circle skirts to the diner but the teenage girl who prefers to wear a mechanic’s jumpsuit isn’t going to be looked at askance or be isolated or teased or made to conform or beat up or, best case scenario, need to shoulder the burden of trailblazer or need to shoulder the burden of being The Girl Who Wears A Mechanic’s Jumpsuit even if everyone thinks it’s cool, she’s just… herself. And yes, the world looks like 1955 but it isn’t 1955, or, it’s a parallel 1955. This girl wears a jumpsuit but her girlfriend wears a circle skirt and none of my sims bat an eye.

I also love, love, love looking at other simmers’ historical stories and gameplay. They’re consistently so clever with both CC and in-game content that it’s impossible not to be inspired, and that got my wheels turning.

And, lastly, I’m a CC addict. Limiting my aesthetic and applying rules to my save goes a long way to cull my collection and to keep me from going on a tear that might make my computer explode. It’s much easier for me to delete a bunch of dresses that aren’t appropriate for the parameters of my game than to delete a bunch of dresses because I “should,” because I have “too much stuff.”

What are your favorite time periods to recreate with the sims and why?

I’m partial to the 1950s because it is the easiest. It seems that so many creators make a lot of content that--even if it’s only described as “vintage”--is from the 50s. I mentioned circle skirts above. How many times have I done a broad search for vintage or retro and got circle skirts back? The 1950s isn’t my favorite time period, though; again, it’s just so easy to recreate. Lately I’ve enjoyed making a range of 70s sims and hope I can find a home for them all. I like, too, trying to fit content that I don’t usually use or which I think I don’t like into my version of a particular decade’s or era’s look because it often changes my opinion of the content (especially non-CC) so that I see it with new eyes/better appreciate it, and this practice helps me to hone my abilities and increase my comfort and familiarity with whatever time period I’m working with.

In real life, although I had a long art deco phase, my absolute favorite design aesthetic is mid-century modern. I’ve always loved it, and that love intensified and deepened a few years ago when I started writing my novel--not to sound like a jerk, but it’s true!--which is set in the mid-to-late 1960s. I started doing research and putting together inspiration boards which included, in part, house plans and interior design and for my tastes, I’m sorry, mcm just cannot be beat. I cannot get enough! TS4’s art style is so complementary to the mcm aesthetic that it’s impossible not to fall in love with how it looks in the game, whether it’s CC or not, so that’s my favorite in-game decorative period.

When it comes to clothing and fashion, I have a little bit that I like from every era, really, but if we’re speaking generally and I’m being forced to choose, I (think I) like best male/masculine looks and styling from the 1950s to about… 1963? 1965?, although I prefer a slimmer cut to the suits and pants; and feminine/female looks and styling from the 1930s and 1970s. I perceive a similar combined sensuality, ease, and sportiness in the 30s and 70s silhouettes as well as the prevailing attitudes and approach to fashion that speaks to me. I just love it--but I need more of it for my sims, so I can’t say it’s necessarily my favorite to try and recreate. Yet, anyway.

Thank you again for this question and thank you to all who read this entire answer!

#sims 4 #ts4 #200+ followers #ask #user: wirefiish

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zerogate · 5 years ago

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The late David Bowie was asked if his inspiration included dreams and he stated it happened frequently: "There's a thing that, just as you go to sleep, if you keep your elbows elevated you will never go below the dream stage. I've used that quite a lot and it keeps me dreaming much longer than if I just relaxed. I keep a tape recorder by the bed, and if anything comes, I just say it into the tape recorder."

Arlo Guthrie, an American folk singer and songwriter, once said that music was like a stream going by. "Songwriting's kinda like catching fish - you just sit there and pull them out as they go by - though I think Bob Dylan's upstream from me somewhere."

"The best songs that are written write themselves," said Michael Jackson. "You don't ask for them; they just drop into your lap... I don't force it. I let nature take its course. I don't sit at the piano and think, 'I'm going to write the greatest song of all time.' It doesn't happen. It has to be given to you. I believe it's already up there before you are born, and then it drops right into your lap."

[...]

Some of the stories about dream music are so bizarre they just couldn't be made up. Consider the story of "Mystery Woman" written by U2's Bono. As Bono tells the story he is about to play a major concert in Wembley Stadium and was not able to sleep the night before. He stayed up most of the night watching the movie Blue Velvet on repeat and became aware of Roy Orbison's song "In Dreams" every time it came up in the movie. Orbison, himself, claimed that when he came up with the song "In Dreams" in 1962, he got the lyrics to the song in a dream. Eventually, Bono fell asleep and woke up with a song in his head. At first, he believed it was another Orbison song but then realized that it was new. He played the new Orbison-sounding song about a "mystery woman" to his band during the concert sound check. When they heard how it happened they told him he had "a bit of voodoo in him." When the concert was over, Bono sat down backstage to finish the song. Suddenly, his bodyguard knocks on the door and says Roy Orbison and his wife were at the concert and would like to meet him. No one knew Orbison would be attending! During the meeting, Orbison synchronistically said he would like to work with U2, and then asked, "you wouldn´t happen have a song for me?" Bono then told him of the Orbison-like song that appeared in his head that morning. Orbison sang the song and it was released after his death. The album, Mystery Girl became a worldwide hit reaching #5 on the US Billboard 200, and #2 on the UK Albums Chart.

[...]

Noel Gallagher of the UK rock band Oasis sold the third best-selling record in the country. Gallagher stated he used lucid dreaming to create songs. "I write a song before I go to bed," Noel told Alternative Press in December 1995. "I won't have any lyrics, just a melody. If I can remember it first thing in the morning, then I know it's good. I've done it with 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and nearly every song on Definitely Maybe. When I woke up, I remembered the songs chord-for-chord - I knew the vowels and syllables I was gonna use."

[...]

The claims for dream music go back for centuries. Mozart claimed to hear his best music when he slept but couldn't remember it when he woke up. The composer Revel stated that the most wonderful music came to him in his dreams. Anton Bruckner spoke of perhaps his most famous piece “Symphony No 7, 1st movement." “This theme wasn't mine at all. One day the (deceased) conductor Kitzler and old friend of mine from Linz appeared to me in a dream and dictated the thing to me. I wrote it down straight away. 'Pay attention,' added Kitzler, ‘this will bring you success.'"

[...]

Probably the most famous song that came in a dream was the song "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney. It has the most cover versions of any song ever written (2200) and, according to record label BMI, was performed over seven million times in the 20th century. McCartney described a song being his head when he woke up one morning. There was a piano in the room and he quickly recorded the melody and lyrics. McCartney stated:

I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!

Once he had the song McCartney was still unsure so he checked around to see if he had just rewritten something he heard but had forgotten.

For about a month I went around to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually, it became like handing something into the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.

[...]

Marcus Eoin from the band Boards of Canada wrote the song "Gyroscope" which came in a dream. He stated, "Yeah for me it would be the track 'Gyroscope'. I dreamed the sound of it, and although I've recreated dreamt songs before, I managed to do that one so quickly that the end-result was 99% like my dream. It spooks me to listen to it now."

[...]

Carole King was a prolific singer-songwriter with over 25 solo albums in 50 years. Her highlight album was the 1971 masterpiece Tapestry, which topped the charts for six weeks and remained on the charts for six years. It outsold The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and included the iconic 1972 Grammy song of the year "You've Got a Friend." Speaking of that song King said, "That song was as close to pure inspiration as I've ever experienced. The song wrote itself. It was written by something outside of myself through me. It happens from time to time in part. That song is one of the examples of that process where it was almost completely written by inspiration and very little if any perspiration."

[...]

On May 6, 1965, in Clearwater, Florida, while on their first U.S. tour, according to a St. Petersburg Times article, about 200 young fans got in an altercation with a line of police officers at the show, and The Stones made it through just four songs as chaos ensued. That night, Keith Richards woke up in his hotel room with the guitar riff and lyrics, "Can't get no satisfaction" in his head. He recorded it on a portable tape deck, went back to sleep, and brought it to the studio that week. The tape contained his guitar riff followed by the sounds of him snoring. Richards stated, "We receive our songs like inspiration, like at a séance. People say they write songs, but in a way, you are more the medium. I feel that all the songs are floating around, and it is just a matter of being like an antenna, of whatever you pick up. So many uncanny things have happened to us. A whole new song appears from nowhere in five minutes, the whole structure and you haven't worked at all."

[...]

Beethoven - "I must accustom myself to think out at once the whole, as soon as it shows itself, with all the voices, in my head." He used sketchbooks to write down his ideas when they flew into his head so as to not forget them. "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." "Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend." "Music is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit." "Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."

-- Grant Cameron, Tuned-In: The Paranormal World of Music

#quotes

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trulymadlysydney · 6 years ago

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Somewhere In Time: Seven

“I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!”

― Oscar Wilde

Previous Chapters HERE

***Please Do Not Repost Without Permission***

1:18pm, June 23rd, 1965

Twelve-year-old Tanya Elliot groans from her spot on the floor as she closes yet another book in disappointment. The book had looked so promising just by the cover, but she’d opened it to find that it only skimmed over the subject of time travel in a satirical way. Not at all what she’d been hoping for.

On top of that, the grown-ups at the check-out counter are being ridiculously loud and distracting.

Tanya doesn’t know why adults talk so loudly with each other, but she’s noticed that all adults do it. Her mother does it on the phone, and her father does it at church on Sundays when he and his friends are talking about what they’ve done all weekend. She doesn’t get it; when adults talk to her, they sound like they’re speaking to a child-- all gentle and frilly. When they talk to each other, it seems they’re trying to out-yell one another.

Crawling on all fours, Tanya makes her way to the end of the aisle to spy on the conversation. (And also, in part, to be petty. She’s trying to read and they’re being awfully inconsiderate.)

There’s Daisy Hartford, the older woman who owns the place. Tanya doesn’t actually know how old Mrs. Hartford is, but she has graying blonde hair that she keeps short and pinned off of her face at all times, and her hands are a bit wrinkled and spotted-- so Tanya assmes she’s a grandmother’s age. Mrs. Hartford is a kind woman, but her patience runs thin and she gets flustered quite easily, so Tanya does her best to stay out of the way.

And then there’s Miss Eileen, Mrs. Hartford’s daughter. Miss Eileen is a woman around the same age as Tanya’s own mother and she works here at the shop as well. Tanya absolutely adores her, and Miss Eileen dotes upon Tanya as if she were her own. She gives excellent advice in a motherly way, but has the best stories in a sisterly way, and Tanya finds herself coming to Miss Eileen for pretty much anything.

But standing at the front of the room with them is a man Tanya has never seen before. He seems to be only a few years older than Mrs. Hartford, with hair that’s turning white along his sideburns and stick out from under his cap. He’s handsome for an older gentleman, and Tanya feels instantly intrigued by him.

“We haven’t seen you in months!” Mrs. Hartford says. “How have you been?”

“I’m doing well,” he says with a nod of his head. Tanya notes the British accent that she hadn’t really been paying attention to before, and it intrigues her even more. “I’ve been terribly busy with the company lately. Steven-- you remember Steven-- took the liberty of hiring several new men without consulting me first, so you can imagine what a nightmare it’s been having to train them.”

Mrs. Hartford shakes her head. “That’s too bad, dear. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, you’re always welcome back here!” Miss Eileen teases. “You know I’m getting ready to take over once mom retires.”

“I heard!” The man smiles. “Congratulations. That is wonderful news.”

Miss Eileen beams. “Thank you!”

Mrs. Hartford, however, doesn’t even seem to be listening. She eyes the man with a suspicious face before speaking. “You look tired, dear. Have you slept?”

His face drops a little, but it’s hardly noticeable because he covers it with a dimpled smile. “Not much. But it’s alright. No rest for the wicked, as they say.”

The man trails off when he notices Miss Eileen looking behind him, and when he turns to follow her gaze, Tanya realizes with horror that all three adults have spotted her.

Miss Eileen giggles at Tanya. “You alright, love? Need help finding anything?”

The man’s face practically goes white when he and Tanya make eye contact, although Tanya has no idea why. She has never seen him before in her life, but he seems to recognize her-- and she isn’t sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

Tanya smiles awkwardly. “I’m fine, sorry. I was just-- reading.” Why do adults always have to make everything so uncomfortable?

Miss Eileen shoots Tanya a wink, and Mrs. Hartford has already resumed conversation with the man-- albeit much, much quieter than before. The man only seems to be halfway listening, still eyeing Tanya as if he’s seeing a ghost, and Tanya quickly turns to crawl back to her hiding spot.

She begins reshelving the previously discarded books, trying her hardest not to eavesdrop on the conversation. Everyone is talking so quietly now, so all Tanya can really make out is the British man saying, “I’m alright, Daisy.” She also hears her name being thrown around a bit and she realizes they’re explaining to the man who she is.

Tanya tries to distract herself by focusing on literally anything else. What is her mother going to make for dinner tonight? It’s Wednesday, which means it’s casserole night. She remembers with dismay that her mother is planning on making her chicken and broccoli casserole, and her stomach turns at the thought. She’s never been a fan of the casserole, and--

“Excuse me?”

Tanya turns slowly to see the British man smiling down at her. He seems less startled than before, and his smile is incredibly friendly. He studies Tanya’s face with a grin, before holding out his hand. “Mr. H,” he says, by way of introducing himself.

Tanya eyes his hand, then looks at his face again. She doesn’t know why, but she knows she can trust this man. So she softens and reaches out to take his hand. Using her best adult voice, she introduces herself. “Tanya Elliot.”

Mr. H’s breath hitches when she says her name, but he covers it quickly by clearing his throat and giving her a nice, firm handshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Elliot. Figured I should introduce myself. I’m known to pop in here every now and then, and I’m told you’re a regular here.”

Tanya smiles proudly, resuming her work of placing the books back on the shelf. “I am! I’m here every day.” Tanya pauses. “Well, except for Saturdays and Sundays when it’s closed. Or when I’m at school. But it’s summer now! So I’ve been here every day.”

Mr. H chuckles softly. “I see. What are you doing putting the books away? Seem a bit young to have a job here.”

That’s another thing that adults do that Tanya doesn’t like. They say things like that jokingly, but they’re never really that funny. Tanya isn’t a child. She sighs. “I’m only twelve, Mr. H. I don’t have a job here.”

He seems taken aback but pleasantly surprised at her sass. He laughs again. “I beg your pardon, miss. Didn’t mean anything by that. I used to work here myself, you know.”

“You did?”

“Yes ma’am. Worked here for nearly ten years. It’s an amazing place to spend your time. Maybe when you’re older you’d like a job here?”

“Maybe,” Tanya replies. “Although I’d love to go to college. I want to be a scientist when I grow up.”

Tanya doesn’t notice the way Mr. H’s shoulders sink when she mentions growing up. “I see. Is that why you’re here in the science section?”

“Yes sir.” Tanya pauses as she places the last book on the shelf. “Well, that and….” She trails off, suddenly feeling incredibly self-conscious. “Nevermind. You’re going to laugh.”

“Who says I will?” Mr. H presses. “No laughing here.”

“All adults laugh when I tell them,” Tanya says sadly. “They all tell me how adorable it is, and how impossible it is.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” The sincerity of his words isn’t lost on Tanya, but the intensity with which he says them goes over her head.

She lets out a long heavy sigh. “Okay. I really want to learn how to travel in time.”

This time, Tanya does notice how tense Mr. H seems, especially when he audibly gulps. She frowns. “You’re trying not to laugh, aren’t you?”

“No!” Mr. H says quickly. “No, Tanya, that isn’t it at all.” He glances over his shoulder back at Mrs. Hartford and Miss Eilleen, before stepping further into the aisle and closer to Tanya. “Can I let you in on a little secret?”

Tanya nods, excited at the prospect of what he’s going to share. Adults never share secrets with her. Not serious ones at least. A smile tugs on Mr. H’s cheeks as he removes his hat and leans down to Tanya’s level. “I knew a time traveler once.”

Tanya’s whole face lights up. “You did?”

“I did!” He nods. “She was a beautiful girl. She looked a bit like you.”

Tanya gasps. “Do you think it was me? Maybe I learned how!”

Mr. H smiles, but there’s a hint of sadness in his voice. “It wasn’t you, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out, too!”

A wave of excitement pulses through Tanya’s veins. She can tell that Mr. H isn’t lying to her just to get her hopes up, and it excites her. “How did you meet her?” Her voice is quiet, matching his, and she realizes just how close she’s leaning towards him.

“She just sort of… fell into my lap I suppose.” Mr. H chuckles. “That’s one way to put it, at least. She stayed with me for some time. She was fascinating.”

“Did she tell you how she did it?”

Mr. H seems lost in his own mind now. “Sort of. It’s been ages, so I’m not sure I remember. But, the ability to travel through time like that is a gift, Tanya. Some people have it. Some people don’t.”

“I bet I do,” Tanya says, and Mr. H smiles down at her.

“Perhaps you do,” he says. “But even if you don’t, I don’t ever want you to give up. Understand? You’ve got to keep trying.”

“Oh sure!” Tanya nods eagerly. “I won’t ever give up on this. Ever. Trust me!”

Mr. H’s eyes land just above Tanya’s head, as if he’s still lost in a memory. He takes a long breath in through his nose. “Tanya? May I ask you a question?”

“Sure!”

“What’s got you so interested in time travel anyway?”

It’s Tanya’s turn to remember something melancholy, and her shoulders visibly slump. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she says.

“Ohhh now, why the long face? It isn’t nothing. Why don’t you tell me what the story is? Maybe I could help!”

“You couldn’t help, I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you if you promise not to laugh.”

“Have I laughed yet?”

“Well, no, but this might sound silly.”

Mr. H grins. “Try me.”

“Well,” Tanya says slowly, “I had a friend who… she said she…. I met her and--”

It’s a difficult story to explain, but Mr. H doesn’t press her. He just watches her with the kindest eyes she’s ever seen, waiting patiently for her to get all of her thoughts out.

Tanya sighs, deciding to just get on with it. “A few years ago I had this friend, see. We were best friends, you know? We were un-separable.” Mr. H smiles the way adults do when Tanya uses an incorrect word, but she pays it no mind. “She sort of just… appeared out of nowhere. I always assumed that her family had just moved here but I never got to meet them. And then one day she told me that she was a time traveler from the early 1900s. It checked out, I suppose. There were a lot of things she didn’t know about the world, and she dressed kind of funny. But I didn’t believe her. She kept… kept telling me that she had to leave eventually. She had to go back to her time, but I still didn’t believe her. She even asked me to come with her, but I thought she was just trying to play a dumb trick on me. And then--”

Tanya trails off, and Mr. H raises his eyebrows at her. “And then?” he prompts.

Tanya shrugs. “And then she was gone.”

Mr. H nods his head. “I see.”

“Mr. H, I would give anything to see my friend again. To tell her how much I miss her. That’s why I’ve been doing this. Because if it is real, that means I can find her and tell her I’m sorry for doubting her. I’ve been so worried that this is all for nothing, but now you’re here, and you’ve told me all about that girl you met, and now… well, now I’m sure it’s real. And I’ve just got to find a way.”

Mr. H seems a bit misty eyed, and he clears his throat after he’s certain Tanya has stopped talking. “Well Tanya,” he says. “I believe if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

Tanya beams at him. “Really?”

Mr. H makes an X over his heart with his finger before holding his hand up, palm out. “Cross my heart.”

“Gosh,” Tanya breathes.

Mr. H straightens up a bit and his voice goes back to normal when he speaks. “I’m rooting for you, Tanya. But remember what I said.”

“Some people can time travel, some people can’t.”

“That’s right.” Mr. H nods his head. “And even if you find you can’t, I don’t ever want you to stop looking, alright? Don’t ever lose that sense of wonder.”

“Oh I won’t!” Tanya begins enthusiastically taking the books she’d just been reading right back off the shelves, preparing to scour every inch of them for information. “Honest!”

“Excellent to hear.”

Mr. H places his cap back on his head and secures it with a little nod in Tanya’s direction. “Well, I’m off. I’ve got to go home and get dinner started. You be good now, alright?”

“Mr. H?” Tanya looks inquisitively up at him. “Will I see you again?”

“I’m not sure, sweets. I’m not sure.”

“Well I’d like to!” Tanya says. “Maybe one day I’ll figure out this time travelling business and I’ll get to come see you from the future!”

Mr. H smiles. “I’d like that very much, Tanya.”

Tanya beams. “Me too!”

With one more nod of his head, Mr. H bids Tanya farewell. He says a few passing words to Mrs. Hartford and Miss Eileen, and when the bell jingles above the front door, he is gone.

Only a few moments pass until someone speaks.

“Tanya, dear?” Mrs. Hartford calls. “Lovey, what did you two talk about?”

Tanya smiles to herself, pausing before answering the older woman. “Oh nothing,” she says. “He just gave me some recommendations.”

----

8:59am, January 5th, 1925

When Roni wakes, she is alone.

She doesn’t remember Harry leaving, and she’s filled with a brief moment of panic until she notices through sleep encrusted eyes a piece of paper on the pillow beside her.

Roni blinks the sleep out of her eyes and sits up on her elbows, grabbing the note and trying to make out the words written in ink. She smiles the moment she registers them.

My sweetest Honey-

To begin with, I apologize for leaving you without giving you a proper goodbye. In my defense, I did try to wake you. However, you refused to awaken to my kisses, and who was I to disturb you? You look so beautiful when you sleep, by the way.

I’m off to my first day of work at your bookstore, and I am not sure what time I’ll be home this evening. There are some things in the kitchen with which you can make yourself some food. Don’t worry about me, (because I know you will)-- I have packed myself a few items for my lunch break.

I cannot wait to see you again this evening. I’ll be thinking of you every hour on the hour. Have a wonderful day.

Yours,

Harry

Roni doesn’t realize how hard she’s smiling until her cheeks begin to ache. She holds the letter in her hands and takes a deep breath before pulling it into her chest. She feels her heart pounding beneath her hands, and she absolutely cannot believe how strong her feelings for this boy are.

She rolls out of bed and slips into a pair of Harry’s boxers before heading into the living room to fix herself some breakfast. By the looks of the sky outside, it is still fairly early. It’s sunnier than it was the past few days, and Roni takes a moment to admire the city below the window.

It’s almost frightening how comfortable Roni has become with this entire situation. How normal it feels for her to see the world around her in this way. It’s only been a few days and yet she feels like she belongs here now. No longer does she get the same shock down her spine when she realizes what decade it is. She finds herself envious of some of the outfits she sees on the other women, and on more than one occasion she’s found herself slipping into the thought of maybe looking for a job.

Sometimes she even goes so far as to imagine a future with Harry, living out the twenties, thirties, forties with him. She crashes down from that thought every single time with a crushing realization that she doesn’t belong here-- but in the few moments she doesn’t remember, it’s heavenly.

The way that Harry has become so essential to her life frightens her as well. It’s insane for her to think that she’s only just met him within the week and now he’s everything to her. It’s terrifying to imagine her world without him in it, and though she knows she still has a few days left in his presence, she already feels an ache in her heart at the thought of leaving him.

That’s when she gets the grand idea to go visit him at work.

The thought of him among all of her favorite books-- helping customers find their way around and watching with eager eyes as Daisy walks him through the store procedures-- is almost too precious for Roni to fathom. She smiles as she opens the cabinets to find something to make herself a quick breakfast that isn’t going to take long to eat. It’s pathetic how she longs for him, even when he’s only going to be away for a few hours.

Roni fixes herself a piece of toast with jam she’d found in his tiny fridge and hurries to get herself ready for the day.

She may not know her way around 1920s New York very well, but she knows her way to the bookshop by heart-- and it only takes her ten minutes to find her way there.

The familiar sound of the bell jingles above Roni’s head as she enters the bookshop. It seems to be slower than usual today, and as Roni glances around she notices that she is the only customer here. Daisy sits behind the front desk, doodling something on a piece of paper while a lively song emanates from the radio. She looks up when she hears the bell, fully prepared to launch right into her customer service spiel, when she registers who it is.

“Roni!” She beams, setting her pen down and walking out from around the counter. She approaches Roni and embraces her warmly, as if she’s known her for ages, and kisses her cheek. “How are you, dear?”

“I’m doing well!” Roni smiles, Daisy’s infectious positivity rubbing off on her. “How are you?”

“Oh I’m just fine! Working with Harry has been a breeze today. I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to train him, but he’s done absolutely everything right. He is quite the fast learner, did you know that?”

Roni grins. “I did, yeah. Is he here?”

As if on cue, Harry calls from the back corner of the room. “Did someone say my name?”

Daisy giggles and calls back. “You’ve got a visitor, Styles!” She smiles at Roni and nods her head in the direction of Harry’s voice, signaling for Roni to go find him.

Roni doesn’t need to be told twice, and considering she knows her way around this store better than she knows anything else, she makes her way over to the section she knows Harry is in.

When he comes into view, Roni can’t help but to giggle. He’s got his famous little cap on, and there’s a stack of books that’s nearly as tall as he is. He’s holding a book with his finger tucked between the pages to mark his spot, and he looks relieved when he realizes it’s Roni walking towards him.

“Veronica!” He says. “What a surprise!”

He doesn’t let go of the book in his hands, but he walks over to her and envelops her in a hug. He kisses her cheek and gives her a soft squeeze. “How’s my girl?”

Roni’s heart flutters at his terms of endearment. “I’m good,” she says softly into his chest. “How’s work?”

Harry pulls away beaming. “It’s wonderful,” he says. “Daisy is a peach. We haven’t had many customers today so I haven’t gotten to do much work, but I suppose that’s alright for a Monday.”

Roni nods towards the small tower of books. “And what’s all this?”

Now, Harry’s cheeks turn the slightest shade of red. “Research.”

Roni quirks her brow. “Research, huh? For what?”

She takes a step forward to examine the spines on the books, and she gasps at the first one she recognizes-- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

“Well,” Harry explains, lowering his voice so that Daisy doesn’t hear. “I know we’ve already determined how to get you back, yeah? And I know that you won’t be able to come back to my timeline… but maybe I’ll be able to come to yours!”

Roni isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or cry at his words, and she opens her mouth to react-- but he doesn’t even give her the chance to get a word out. “And anyway,” he continues, “Violet said that only some people have the gift. You have it, obviously. Who’s to say I don’t have it as well?”

“Harry,” Roni giggles.

“Think about it, if I have the gift, I’ll meet you in the future. I don’t have as much of a connection to this current timeline, so there will be no reason for me to leave you to return to it. It’ll be perfect!”

Roni knows he’s being entirely too optimistic, but the genuine enthusiasm with which he shares his foolproof plan is refreshing. So she giggles, taking his elbows in her hands and pulling him in for another kiss to the cheek. “It’s wonderful,” she says softly, disregarding the slight pang of sadness tugging at her throat.

“What’s wonderful?” Daisy’s voice breaks them from their moment, and both Roni and Harry go red at the interruption.

Daisy stands beside them holding a camera in her hands, and Roni prays that Daisy didn’t hear much of their conversation-- because she’s not sure how she would explain the whole time-traveling business to anyone who isn’t Harry. But luckily, Daisy follows up her question with another question. “The photograph I’m about to take of you two?”

“What?” Harry grows sheepish at the mention of this.

“It’s tradition,” Daisy explains, holding up the camera in her hands as explanation. “It’s your first day. We take photographs of all employees on their first days-- as well as patrons. So Veronica, won’t you be a dear and wiggle in a bit closer to him?”

Daisy raises the camera to her eyes, but Roni stops her almost a bit too urgently. “Wait!” she says.

Daisy lowers the camera, a confused expression on her face. “What’s the matter?”

Roni doesn’t know what she’s expecting to happen, but she does know that in the year she comes from, there aren’t any pictures of her and Harry on the wall. If Daisy takes this picture, it could potentially change everything and shift things to a place that Roni does not want them to go (She isn’t sure that’s the truth, but she doesn’t want to find out the hard way).

“It’s just that--” Roni trails off while Harry and Daisy both eye her expectantly. She lets out a breath and tries again. “Well I… I wasn’t prepared to get my picture taken today. Look at my outfit. I don’t look good enough.”

“Oh nonsense,” Daisy says with a brush of her hand. “Veronica, you are one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, regardless of how much effort you put into getting ready this morning. Tell her, Harry.”

Harry, beginning to catch on, glances nervously between Roni and Daisy. “Well,” he starts slowly, “While you are correct that Veronica is an absolute vision regardless of her attire, I should inform you that… that--” Harry looks back at Roni as if to ask for some guidance. The truth is that neither of them know how to explain this situation, and Harry despairs when he is met with the same panicked expression on Roni’s face.

“Well,” he says again, turning back to Daisy. “You see, if I allow you to take that photograph, I’ll never hear the end of it from this one.”

Roni laughs, instantly falling into stride with Harry’s narrative. “Absolutely right. I’ll let him have it as soon as we’re home.”

Daisy scoffs. “Oh pooh,” she says, but then smiles mischievously at Roni. “Although I do understand, I suppose. Larry tries to take photographs of me all the time and it drives me absolutely mental.”

Roni and Harry giggle awkwardly, happy that Daisy seems to have bought their story, as Roni shuffles out of view of the camera and over to where Daisy stands.

Harry looks out of place without Roni by his side, and he awkwardly shoves a hand into his pocket. “What do you want me to do?” he asks.

“Just smile, dear!” Daisy raises the camera to her eyes as Harry flashes her a dimpled grin.

With the flash of the camera, Roni experiences the strangest feeling she’s ever felt in her life. She’s seen this picture before-- in black and white, with yellowing and folding corners. It hangs on the back wall of the shop, and it has watched over her daily ever since she started working here.

She feels almost faint, and there’s a ringing in her ears after the picture is taken. Harry and Daisy chat idly while Roni remains in a flashback. She tries to remember the date scribbled in messy ink at the bottom of the photograph. Was it 1925? She doesn’t think so, but how would that make sense?

Harry’s giggle brings Roni out of her thoughts, and she turns to rejoin the conversation in time to hear Daisy say “I’ll get this developed as soon as possible, and I’ll let you pick the spot we put it in!”

“That’s terrific!” Harry says, turning to beam at Roni. “Veronica, isn’t that swell?”

“It is swell!” Roni giggles around the word that feels so foreign in her mouth.

Harry shoots Roni a knowing look. His smile says so much without saying anything at all. Roni has changed his life for the better and they both know this. Wordlessly, he reaches for her hand. She interlaces her fingers with his and squeezes.

“He’s been drawn to this section all day,” Daisy explains, gesturing towards the pile of books. “Don’t know why.”

“He’s very interested in science,” Roni says with a giggle. “No one’s ever been able to figure out why. He’s a bit of a weird one.”

“Heyyy,” Harry whines, long and drawn out with a fake hurt face shot in Roni’s direction. He hip checks her lightly, and Daisy doesn’t notice.

Roni stays at the shop for the next hour or so, just talking and laughing with Harry and Daisy until she’s completely lost track of time. Only a few customers enter the shop in the time span that Roni is there, and she watches on with a warm heart as Harry greets them. He’s a natural at this-- because of course he is-- and there are only a few times when he has to ask Daisy for assistance.

What Roni would give to have him as her coworker here in the future.

It’s nearing lunch time when Roni finally decides it’s time for her to head back to the apartment. She heads for the door, the sound of the radio still filling the quiet shop. She’s about to bid farewell to Daisy over the sound of the radio still blasting loudly, when she feels Harry grab her wrist from behind and tug her into a corner.

Roni doesn’t even have time to make a noise before she feels his lips against her own.

She smiles against his mouth and immediately melts into his arms as they wrap around her back.

“Harry,” she giggles breathlessly. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing my honey,” Harry replies, his voice low and a sleepy grin draped lazily across his face. “Is that okay?”

He goes in for another secret kiss and Roni laughs again. It feels so good to kiss him, to be held like this and adored in a way she’d never thought possible. She smiles into the kiss, pulling away just enough to get out the words, “You can kiss me any time you’d like.”

Harry chuckles softly, lips ghosting along her jawline. “I like the sound of that.”

“But do you really want to do it in public?”

“Who’s watching?” Harry says, nodding his head towards the completely empty shop.

“Fair,” Roni says the, enjoying the feeling of Harry’s lips against her skin. “But still, this isn’t like you.”

Harry pulls away, smirking down at her as if he already knows the answer to the question he’s about to ask. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” Roni whispers. She reaches up to tangle her fingers in his curls and tugs his head softly back to hers so that she can kiss him again. “Of course I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” He kisses her cheek, then down along her jawbone before landing in the spot in the direct center of her neck.

“Want to touch you,” he whispers. “Can I?”

“Here?” Roni’s whisper is almost too loud, and Harry lifts his head to glance nervously around them before smiling a lazy smile back at her.

“Yes,” he says.

Roni’s stomach twists at his words-- an all too familiar fire burning in the base of her belly. She wants nothing more than for Harry to touch her right now, but at the same time-- she doesn’t want to cost him his job. “Can you?”

Harry grins. “Come with me.”

He holds on to her hand as he leads her to another far corner of the shop, adjacent to the one he’d been in earlier. He pushes her almost too harshly against the bookcase, and they both pause cautiously at the slight thud of Roni’s back against the solid frame. When Daisy says nothing from her spot at the front desk, Harry launches right back into whatever it is he has planned.

He allows his hands to wander Roni’s body; every curve and edge and angle that he’s fallen so intensely for over the past couple of days. Roni smiles and allows her head to fall back against the bookshelf in pleasure as Harry kisses down her neck and collarbone; although she is acutely aware of just how loud-- or how quiet-- she and Harry are being. When Harry’s hand slips under her skirt and brushes the tender skin of her thigh, she takes her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Tell me if this is too much,” Harry whispers, fingertips ghosting against the fabric of her panties.

Roni’s eyes flutter sleepily as she glances around, making sure she and Harry don’t have any unexpected visitors watching them. “It’s not,” she breathes before kissing his lips deeply and eagerly. “Just be quiet.”

Harry smirks. “You’re one to talk,” he mumbles.

Roni doesn’t even have time to respond to him before he’s slipped his fingers in through the side of her panties and is rubbing them against her clit. She wants to sigh in immediate pleasure but, for fear of being suspicious, she ends up just burying her face in Harry’s neck to keep quiet instead.

“There’s a good girl,” Harry coos quietly, glancing nonchalantly around him. “You’re going to keep quiet, aren’t you?”

“Do I have a choice?” Roni hisses into the skin of his shoulder, and Harry laughs.

The part of Roni’s brain that isn’t currently being consumed by white hot arousal and attraction to Harry is telling her to be more careful. Daisy-- or worse, a customer-- could find them at any moment, and the look on Harry’s face is as nonchalant as possible. He’s so beautiful, damn him, and when his fingers tease at her entrance, Roni is nothing but putty in his hands.

Harry’s fingers find their way up inside of her as he kisses her lips, and she practically goes limp when they caress the spongy spot deep inside of her. He steps closer to keep her body upright as he works his fingers against her, pressing the softest kisses to her lips and her neck.

“Harry?” Daisy suddenly calls from the front of the shop.

Roni tenses up, but Harry doesn’t stop the gentle curling and uncurling of his fingers against the spongy spot inside of her as he calls back. “Yes ma’am?”

“Did you happen to catch the name of the woman who sold us the gardening book earlier? She didn’t fill out the form correctly and I can’t read her writing.”

Harry’s thumb presses against Roni’s clit and she lurches forward, sinking her teeth into his shoulder in an attempt to keep quiet. He keeps his voice as even as possible. “Was that Geraldine?”

“No dear, Geraldine was the one who called about the book club. This was a different woman.”

“Harry--” Roni whispers just on the brink of a moan, and Harry kisses her briskly to quiet the sound.

“Uh,” he says, pulling away but never once relenting his fingers. “Are you talking about Edna?”

“Edna!” Daisy says, snapping her fingers. “That was the one. Edna Wells was it?”

“Wells,” Harry practically chokes out while Roni sucks on his neck. “That was it.”

“Thank you, hon.”

Harry doesn’t answer her. He instead presses kisses in rapid succession down Roni’s neck before his tongue laps softly at her collarbone. Roni’s breath hitches, and she can’t stop the pathetic half-whimpers that drip from her lips. Luckily for her, there is a particularly loud song on the radio that drowns her out.

“Sound so pretty when you’re whining,” Harry mutters, lips caressing the outside of her ear. “Think you can keep quiet when you cum?”

“I--” Roni breathes. “I think so.”

“Do you want to cum?”

Roni jolts again when his thumb hits her clilt from a particularily good angle. God, he remembers everything.

“I do,” Roni whispers. “But you’d better be careful.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Harry says, biting at her earlobe.

Truth be told, they both know they aren’t going to get caught. Still, there is the familiar excitement of the what-if that pushes them further into their actions, and when Roni hooks her leg around the back of Harry’s to pull him impossibly closer to her, he knows he’s done for.

He picks up the pace with his fingers and bites at her neck-- not quite harsh enough to leave a hickey but just enough that the spot will be sore for the next few hours.

Good, Harry thinks. He wants her to think only of him until he gets home.

Harry knows shes cumming moments later when she thrusts against his fingers-- and he does his best to keep her from jolting against the bookcase by holding her upright with his free hand. He messily kisses up and down her neck, careful not to leave a mark but still wanting to make an impact, and when she begins to teeter on a bit noisy-- he kisses her with such fury that he’s not sure he’s ever kissed someone with before. And as she cums on his fingers, it absolutely fascinates him just how beautiful he finds this entire process.

Harry has never considered himself a selfish lover by any means, but this is something he isn’t entirely used to. With Roni, everything feels different. If he could make her cum like this for the rest of her life with absolutely nothing in return, he wouldn’t care at all. He’d be thankful for the opportunity, in fact, and as he feels her walls pulse around his fingers he grows so overwhelmed with how strongly he feels for her that he has to close his eyes to prevent fromtearing up.

When all is said and done, Harry pulls his fingers from between her legs and licks them clean, keeping his eyes trained on her the entire time. He watches as she flutters back to earth, and he keeps his free hand on her body in order to keep her as upright as he possibly can. He offers her a friendly grin.

“Alright, then?”

Roni blinks sleepily back at him, a confused look spreading across her face. “How do you do that?”

Harry chuckles. “Do what?”

“Make me cum like that. Every time. I swear like, you’re not real. How are you so good?”

It’s because I love you, Harry thinks. But he doesn’t dare say it out loud.

Instead, he shrugs. “Magic, I suppose.”

Roni rolls her eyes and pushes his shoulder playfully. “God, you’re an idiot,” she says, shaking her head at him. Despite her words, she’s looking at him like she’s the luckiest woman in the world-- and that alone is enough to send Harry over the moon.

“Right,” he says with a nod of his head. “Well, I don’t want to keep you here any longer than you’ve intended to stay.”

Roni smirks. “No,” she says. “We wouldn’t want that.”

Harry wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and breathes heavily when he speaks; pausing when he notes that he can still smell her juices on his fingers. Christ.

“So I’ll see you at home then?”

Roni licks her lips and nods her head back at him, trying to catch her breath as much as he is.

“Yes,” Roni says slowly, “I’ll see you there, lover boy.”

----

The day feels longer in Harry’s absence, and Roni spends the seemingly endless hours tidying up the apartment. She dusts the windows and sweeps the kitchen floor. She cleans the bedroom, remakes the bed, and lights a vanilla candle just to make the place smell fresh.

Around four o’clock, Roni is hit with the crushing realization that she’s done everything possible. She needs to just face it, the 1920s are fucking boring.

At home, she’d be able to at least turn on the television and lounge comfortably on the couch-- possibly doze off a bit to waste some of the hours. But here, the television won’t even be invented for another two years or so. And besides, she isn’t sleepy enough for a nap.

Harry doesn’t even own a radio, and Roni is positive that if she even tried to work the phonograph she’d break it.

At some point she decides that she has no choice but to snoop around for something interesting to do, although she’d hardly call it snooping considering how tiny the place is. She doesn’t find anything interesting; no skeletons in Harry’s closet, no letters from lovers past, but she does find a one thousand piece puzzle in a dusty box in the coat closet.

And fuck it, she thinks, that’s better than nothing.

So she settles herself on the floor, flat on her tummy, and scatters the puzzle pieces along the carpet, preparing to spend the next few hours bored out of her wits.

That is how Harry finds her, nearly forty-five minutes later. She seems surprisingly into the puzzle when he enters the apartment, and she hardly glances up to offer him a warm smile. “Hi, handsome!” she says.

“Well, hello there!” Harry removes his cap and runs a hand through his tousled curls. “I see you’ve kept yourself entertained.” He stops, sniffing the air a few times before smiling peasantly. “Smells great in here.”

“Thank you! I lit one of your weird sacrificial candles.”

Harry snorts. “Oh, excellent.”

He makes his way further into the room and smiles at the sight of his darling Roni-- sprawled out ungracefully on the floor, hair slung messily over one of her shoulders and a few chunks of the puzzle solved. She’s a vision, as always, and he resists the urge to smother her in kisses.

“How was the rest of work?” Roni asks, trying to fit a particular puzzle piece into another one that doesn’t fit it.

“Oh, it was fine.” Harry sits on the couch. “We got a bit of a strange rush around two, but nothing I couldn’t handle, you know.”

“That’s good! And Daisy was nice to you?”

“Everyone was nice to me. Have you met me? It’s hard not to be.”

Roni rolls her eyes. “Until you say stuff like that.”

Harry chuckles, ignoring her playful jab. “I do have some exciting news though.”

Now Roni does look up at him with wide eyes. “Yeah?

“Yeah.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small wad of cash that makes Roni gasp.

“What is that?!”

Harry smiles. “Daisy informed me that all training is paid. Did you know that?”

“Harry, that’s amazing!” Roni sits up, reaching forward to put her hand on his knee.

He giggles, loving her enthusiasm. “I figured we could get something nice for dinner tomorrow. I was going to go to the market on my way home today, but I wanted to ask you first.”

Roni shakes her head. “You don’t have to ask me for anything, silly, it’s your money!”

“I know that, but--” Harry’s cheeks go the softest shade of pink. “You live here, too, you know? I want you to be happy. I want to make all of my decisions with you.”

Roni doesn’t say anything, but his words do strike a chord in her heart. She scans his face, allowing herself just a brief moment of imagining that she’s going to live here with him for the rest of her life.

God, how she wants that.

It’s as if Harry can read her mind, because he reaches down to take her hand in his and gives it a soft squeeze.

“Anyway,” he says, rising to his feet and swiftly changing the subject. “I’m going to take a shower if you care to join me.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Roni, causing her to giggle.

“I don’t know,” she hums, “You smell kind of bad. Not sure I could stand to be that close to you.”

Harry gasps, taking a pillow from the couch and tossing it at her. “How terribly rude of you. I revoke my invitation.”

He makes his way towards the bathroom with an upturned nose in mock offense, and Roni giggles. She scrambles to her feet and scurries after him. “Wait, no!” she says. “I want to join you!”

“It’s too late!” Harry says, a smile teasing at his lips. “I revoked my invitation, you are no longer invited.”

“What if I get to the shower first?” Roni asks. “Then it’s you who’s invading my shower, isn’t it?”

Harry laughs. “Veronica--”

She doesn’t even wait to hear what he says before she’s off and running towards the bathroom. Harry is right on her heels, of course, pinching her sides and laughing his hearty belly laugh that Roni has fallen so hard for.

Once in the bathroom, they undress one another haphazardly and stumble into the shower together, kissing and giggling as if they’ve been doing this all their lives. It’s casual and playful and comfortable, and Harry feels a pang in his heart when, during a particularly giggly kiss, he remembers that he won’t get to do this with her forever.

Roni continues kissing down his neck as the hot water hits them both, but she seems to notice that Harry’s mind is elsewhere because she stops. “Hey,” she says softly, blinking up at him through the water. She reaches up to cup his cheek, stroking lovingly at his cheekbone with her thumb. “Where’s your head at right now?”

Harry looks down at her and sighs. She looks so beautiful like this, naked and wet and smiling. He wants to remember her this way always, and he takes a mental photograph before he gives her a cheeky grin.

“Just thinking about how awful you smell.”

---

Several hours later, after a long shower and a delicious but very small dinner, Harry finds himself lying on his belly beside Roni, helping her with the puzzle she’d started earlier. They’ve made terrific progress, and although a few hundred pieces still remain scattered on the floor around them, the entire puzzle is starting to come together quite nicely.

It’s a very casual night, and they chat idly as they work. Roni tells a few more stories about her mother, and Harry talks about his life in London. It’s easy, and it’s fun, but Harry’s mind is wandering.

Roni can tell that there’s something on Harry’s mind, but she doesn’t bother bringing it up because she already knows what it is. It’s on her mind, too.

With every passing day, they get closer to her leaving to go back home-- and the uncertainty of whether or not they’ll ever see one another again in this lifetime.

It’s nearing ten when Harry decides he can’t obsess about this any longer. So he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and speaks.

“Veronica?”

“Mm?”

“I have to ask you something.”

The way Harry says it catches Roni’s attention, and she knows this is important. So she looks at him with a grin. “What’s up?”

Harry hesitates, knowing he shouldn’t do what he’s about to do. Roni senses his tension, and something tells her she isn’t going to like the conversation they’re about to have.

“Why don’t you…” Harry trails off in a puff of air, shaking his head and trying again. “I mean, would it be so bad if… if you stayed here with me?”

Roni feels her heart sink as she absorbs what it is he’s saying. Somehow she’d known it was coming, but she was still hoping he wouldn’t go there.

She opens her mouth, then closes it. She gulps, licks her lips, shakes her head, and nervously twists the ring on her finger before finally settling on her reply. “Harry,” she says slowly. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Harry sits up, launching into a spiel that he has clearly given thought to. “Would it be so awful?” He shakes his head. “Darling, I don’t want to wake up in a world that… that you aren’t in yet. I don’t want to live the rest of my life wondering how or—or if I’m ever going to find you again.”

He strokes at her face tenderly, allowing her a moment to think about what he’s saying. His face is so soft that she almost cannot bear to look at it. She closes her eyes, leaning into his soft touch when he speaks again quietly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Harry--” she whispers.

“Stay with me,” he says quietly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Veronica. Stay here. With me. I’ve known you for such a short amount of time and yet I cannot imagine my life without you in it. Not now.”

Roni tries her best to keep her breathing under control as she sits up now as well. “Harry,” she tries again, but her voice is hardly audible over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears. “I wish I could.”

“Why can’t you?! You could live here, in this place. With me. We could save up. Build a life--”

“I have a life,” Roni says through a voice crack. Through her misty eyes, she sees Harry deflating. “In 1999, where I belong. That is my timeline, Harry. We’ve talked about this. I can’t just give that up and stay in a time fifty years before I even exist. I have a life. I have friends, I have a job, I have a family, I have--”

“A boyfriend?” It isn’t a question. Harry suddenly sounds bitter, and it takes Roni by surprise.

Roni shakes her head, immediately hurt. “Don’t do that to me. That’s not fair.”

“Is it not?” Harry asks challengingly.

Roni tries to regain her balance after the sudden 180 of their conversation. She reaches up in a feeble attempt to prevent a tear from rolling down her cheek. “I don’t--”

“I’ll tell you what isn’t fair,” Harry states. He gestures outwardly with his hands. “You. And this whole thing. What was the reason for any of this if it’s only temporary?”

Roni swallows the lump in her throat. “So all of this… is nothing but temporary to you? You think you’re owed this? You can’t just accept it for what it is?”

“Of course it’s not nothing, Veronica. That’s the whole bloody point.”

“So you’re just going to throw a fit until it’s all over because it’s not ‘fair’ then?!”

Harry reaches up to run a hand through his hair, exasperated. “And you? You’re just going to go back to your boyfriend in the future and forget about me? Sweep me under the rug and pretend I never existed?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me, Veronica, I just thought that--” Harry trails off in a scoff. “I don’t know. I just hoped you might see it the way I do.” Harry rises to his feet, and it’s intimidating the way he looms over her. He turns like he’s going to head into the bedroom, and Roni takes that as her cue to stand up as well.

He doesn’t get to walk away like this. Not when he’s already hurt Roni’s feelings so deeply.

It’s useless for her to even try to cover up her tears at this point. “It not that simple, Harry, fuck!”

“It could be though.” He whirls back to face her and he sounds almost pleading as he takes a step in her direction. “Listen, I can’t--”

“You have to.” Roni tries her hardest to make her voice sound firm, but it cracks the minute she opens her mouth. She takes a shaky breath in an attempt to control her emotions and tries again. “Harry, you have to. I’m not staying here.”

“Would it be so bad if you did?”

“Yes! It would be bad! Not because I don’t want to but because this isn’t right. It’s not natural. I mean, shit, you heard Violet! You know I can’t stay here.”

“Because you’re scared of finally feeling something real for once?”

Roni scoffs. “Are you kidding me? Harry, do you hear yourself right now? Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t understand why you won’t at least think about it.”

“And I don’t understand why you’re bringing this up right now! When we only have so many nights left together, this is what you do?”

“That’s the point, Veronica! We do only have so much time left. But we could have more, and I don’t see the harm in--”

“That’s not the point!” Roni’s voice matches his in intensity. “You know that’s not the point! There are so many factors back home resting on me making it back. You think people aren’t going to notice? What do you think my friends are going to do if I never come back?”

“But what about me?” Harry asks defiantly. “What do you think I’m going to do without you?”

Roni is shaking as she speaks. “I didn’t come here for you, Harry. None of this was ever for you, or about you. This was all for my mom. This was for me. You just ended up in the crossfire.”

The intensity of her words hangs thick in the air, and Roni wishes she could take them back as soon as they exit her lips.

Roni and Harry stare one another down, and Roni feels out of breath suddenly-- as if she’s just run a mile. Her bottom lip trembles pathetically.

Harry’s expression is completely unreadable, and the visible rise and fall of his chest intimidates Roni. His nostrils flare, and she watches with bated breath-- waiting for him to say something.

When Harry doesn’t respond, Roni speaks again-- softer this time. “Look, I didn’t mean--”

“I know what you meant.” Harry’s voice is steady and even, and it scares Roni.

Roni wants to take a step forward. She wants to wrap him up in her arms and kiss him. At the same time, she wants him to do something-- anything other than just stare blankly at her. He is cold and unmoving, and Roni doesn’t dare make a sound.

Her nose feels stuffy now, and she sniffs pitifully in an attempt to clear it. “I don’t want to leave you,” she says finally. “But I don’t have a choice.”

Despite his unwavering face of stone, Harry’s eyes seem so on the brink of tears that Roni can’t stop herself from reaching for him. He takes a subtle step back, eyeing her fingers and then allowing himself to look at her face again. “You’re right,” he says, voice weak and wobbly.

“Harry,” she breathes, “Please understand--”

“I do,” he says, nodding. “I do understand.”

There’s a tense and claustrophobic feeling between them that seems to last for decades. Harry’s eyes fall to the floor, and he chews on the inside of his cheek. Roni can’t help it and chokes out a wimpy little sob, reaching up to wipe at the tears now free falling down her face. What she really wants is for Harry to hold her. To kiss her tears away and make her laugh with a stupid joke. She wants to feel alright again.

Finally, when the silence is so thick Roni doesn’t even feel like she’s in the same room anymore, she takes a deep breath. “I’m going to bed,” she says as coolly as she can muster. “And I… want you to join me. I hope you will.”

Roni turns on her heel and wipes at her tear soaked face as she makes her way into the bedroom. She nudges the door behind her but doesn’t close it fully, hoping that Harry will follow her.

Her feet feel cemented to the floor, and before even attempting to move further into the dark room Roni buries her face in her hands-- finally allowing herself to fully cry now.

She knows Harry can hear her, and she doesn’t care. Her heart hurts, and her head hurts, and all she wants right now is to go to sleep cuddled up to the one person who both wants her and doesn’t want anything to do with her. It’s one of the worst feelings Roni’s had since she got here.

She finds herself curled up in bed nearly ten minutes later, with a face that’s sticky from leftover tears and a nose that’s almost completely stopped up. She stares soberly at the window, choking on the overwhelming amount of thoughts swimming around in the fog of her brain.

Harry had been right about one thing: not one bit of this is fair.

Her eyes feel puffy and they beg her to close them, but her thoughts continue to race and keep her frozen, staring at the window and willing all of this to go away. She prays that she’ll wake up back home, in her own bed, with all of this just a distant memory and an alcohol induced bad dream. But the thought of Harry not existing-- the thought of losing this incredible feeling of love in every sense of the word-- breaks her heart even more. She lets out a small, pathetic cry.

Roni is startled when, moments later, she hears the familiar creak of the bedroom door opening. She doesn’t turn to meet his gaze, but his presence in the room both softens her heart and tenses her body. She reaches up to wipe at her still running nose and waits anxiously for him to say something.

“You know,” he says slowly. “I’ve always believed the policy that you should never go to bed angry.”

Roni sniffs again, waiting as she hears his footsteps get closer and closer. The bed creaks beneath his weight as he settles himself down onto it, crawling slowly until he’s nuzzled softly between the wall and Roni.

With uncertain movements, he wraps an arm around her from behind. He’s unsure if she wants anything to do with him, but he visibly relaxes when he feels her take his hand.

Harry kisses the back of her neck and she feels some of her tension melt away instantly. With his lips ghosting just above her skin, he speaks. “I’m so sorry.”

Roni doesn’t speak, she just stares blankly at the wall ahead of her-- thankful to at least have him this close to her. He presses his lips to her skin but doesn’t kiss, he just allows them to rest there for a moment before he speaks again.

“You... are the first happiness I’ve felt in years,” he whispers. “You are, undoubtedly, the best thing that has ever happened to me.” His fingertips trail up her arm with uncertainty. “I’m not ready to let it go just yet. But I know I have no choice.”

Finally, Roni turns slowly onto her back. In the dimly lit room she can hardly make out any of his features, and she reaches an unsteady hand up to stroke tenderly at his face.

“I hate this as much as you do,” she whispers, voice scratchy and thick.

He leans down to kiss her lips gently, just a soft but meaningful peck. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean--”

“Neither did I.” Roni sits up on her elbows. Even through the darkness of the room, she looks earnestly at Harry-- trying to convey even a fraction of what she feels for him. “I’m sorry, too. This is confusing and horrible. We got dealt some of the worst cards anyone could get, and it sucks. It sucks ass.”

Harry snorts at her bluntness, nudging her nose with his own before pecking her lips gently. “It does suck ass,” he says, and Roni laughs at how strange those words sound coming out of his mouth.

Roni’s already swollen eyes grow foggy once again and she wills herself not to cry by closing them. She pushes her forehead against Harry’s and holds his face. “I’m going to miss you every day of my life,” she whispers. “I wish I didn’t have to.”

Harry kisses her once, twice, three times, and she can feel his own eyelashes flutter against her skin. “You don’t have to yet,” he says. “We still have time.”

Roni’s heart thumps in her chest, and there’s a ringing in her ears as the words she’s been dying to say come creeping up her throat. They rest heavily on the tip of her tongue, and she kisses him in an attempt to push them away. But there they are, heavy and demanding to be said.

“Harry?” she says softly.

“Yes, honey?”

She swallows the nausea in her throat.

“I love you.”

Harry doesn’t move, and they both sit with foreheads pressed together as they allow her words to sink in.

After a moment, Roni blinks the fog out of her eyes and speaks again. “You don’t have to say it back,” she says quietly. “I just thought you should know.”

She settles down against the pillows, fully prepared for Harry to not say anything back. She lets out a breath of finality, happy that the words are no longer pressing against her ribcage, and although she can still feel Harry’s eyes practically burning a hole into her face, she keeps her eyes glued shut.

It’s been a long day, she’s been through a lot, and now with Harry beside her and the air between them cleared, she feels she could fall asleep at any moment. She doesn’t regret saying those words to him at all, but they do make her nervous. After all, they’ve known each other such a short while. What if he thinks she’s crazy?

“Veronica?”

Her heart stops when she hears her name. She doesn’t answer him verbally, but she does peek one eye open to inform him that she’s listening.

Roni can just barely make out the soft smile on his face when he replies with a trembling voice. “I love you, too.”

#Harry Styles #Harry #One Direction #Harry Styles fanfiction #Harry fanfiction #One Direction fanfiction #fanfiction #Harry Styles AU #Harry AU #One Direction AU #AU #harry styles fluff #Harry fluff #One Direction fluff #fluff #Harry styles smut #Harry smut #one direction smut #smut

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theparanormalperiodical · 5 years ago

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The True Story Behind The Amityville Horror (1979) And The 9 Other Times Paranormal Evidence Was Used In Court

I can hear the birds singing.

I can see a brilliant blue sky as it bathes my small Kentish town in the year’s first rays of light.

And I can feel the first thawe of February.

F*ck off winter, and hello spring!

As I sit on my bed, looking outside my window at the resurrection of the once-green landscape of my hometown, I am reminded of the true meaning of this season: life.

The mating season begins for most small, furry creatures, daffodils stand proudly as the first flower to mark their territory, and, like, there’s something about Jesus but I don’t think that had that much of an impact on the world, did it?

But I’m not the first person who was eager to turn their back on winter - the season of death - and look forward to a brighter year.

I’m sure the Lutz family, having fled their family home in mid-January, were just as ready to quash their terrifying experiences that were only darkened by the brutal winter months.

“Lutz… I know that name.”

Unless you were only until recently within a cult and decided to turn your back on Almighty Zarp Goddess Of Destruction, you’ll probably have heard that surname before. But who were they?

Well, to jog your memory, they were a small All-American family who lived in a small All-American town known as Amityville.

Yeah, there you go, now you know where I’m heading with this.

(Or you read the title of this post.)

Amityville is a town in New York which set the scene for probably the most famous haunting the world has ever witnessed. And with several families undergoing intense happenings - from murders to manic paranormal activity - this house has earned its place in the history books.

Oh, and on the big screen, too; 16 feature films have retold the story, including one film which featured Mr Pool himself, Ryan Reynolds.

So, as your favourite paranormal blogger, I thought I’d devote an article to the insanity that was Amityville, and dissect how real the reality shown in the films was for the 2 families that once lived at 112 Ocean Drive.

And I’m not stopping there.

What made this haunting so iconic was how it planted its paranormal feet into the legal system as a result of the murder case the hauntings are linked to. But the thing is, Amityville is far from alone when it comes to legal courts having to deal with the supernatural.

There are actually 9 other prominent legal cases from which the courts have had to debate and discuss the paranormal.

And I’m gon’ tell you all about ‘em.

*Bangs gavel*

Before We Get Spooky, Let’s Summarise What The Films Had To Say About This Haunting

(And they’ve got a lot to say.)

Like I said, there are 16 films that claim they document the events witnessed by the Lutz family in their short stay. No, really, they were there for less than 28 days.

From 1979 all the way up to 2017, we have a variety of films that explore what went down in that house, and, given they are horror films, we also get a few laughs along the way.

Like the 1992 classic Amityville: It’s About Time, which sounds like it might star Vin Diesel in a Fast and Furious crossover.

Or maybe how in the same year Amityville: Playhouse and Amityville: Death House hit the theatres.

And even the rendition of the Amityville Horror from which the realtor having shown the new occupants around the house died in the driveway when he attempted to leave the property!

So, to cut out that crap, I’ve decided to just recap what occurs in the 3 most popular movies of this franchise:

The Amityville Horror (1979), The Amityville Horror (2005), and Amityville: Awakening (2017).

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Sharing the same title as the book supposedly based on the real events witnessed by the Lutz family, this film was the first to share the story of the DeFeo family and the following inhabitants of the house. . The film starts by showing us the final moments of the DeFeo family, from which some bloke kills all of ‘em. From there we bear witness to a new family moving into the home.

And things get spooky quickly.

A visit from a priest gives us the first signs of the supernatural as he experiences a variety of attacks from beyond the grave, whether its swarms of flies to a blistered hand when trying to warn Kathy, the mother of the family, about. An angry spirit then tells him to ‘get out’, triggering his complete mental breakdown.

The paranormal forces then encroach on the patriarch of the famalam - George - leaving him to split firewood to keep the constant cold at bay. Unexplained events begin to haunt the entire family:

The young daughter of the family mentions an imaginary friend, and a pig with glowing red eyes is seen by her bedroom window. The doggo then becomes cray-cray about the basement which is later revealed to conceal a small, hidden room that has red walls.

Things then get weirder. George begins to wake up at 3.15am every morning to check on the boathouse, and Kathy has nightmares which reveal details of what down in the first scene of the movie. A quick trip to the archives later, and she deduces that this house is built on a Shinnecock (Native American) burial ground, and that a satan worshipper - John Ketchum - once lived there.

If that wasn’t enough, she discovers the story of the DeFeo family, and notes that Ronald DeFeo - the murderer - looks uncomfortably similar to George.

It all comes to a head when blood oozes down the staircase and Jody (you know, the sweet adorable imaginary friend who is actually a pig) is seen through the window. Oh, and George tries to kill everyone with an axe.

Kathy brings him out of his trance, and they both get the f*ck outta the house.

We are told that they didn’t return for their belongings.

The Amityville Horror (2005)

For this modern retelling of the original film, the scenes are re-arranged, the hauntings are more minimalist, and just a dash of Ryan Reynolds is added.

And is he playing Ryan Reynolds? ‘Course.

But the major difference between the OG and this icon is that the basis for the hauntings is explored in a much more artistic and developed way:

We see the Native Americans that were supposedly tortured and killed by some guy called Ketchum, and we even see Ketchum himself! Well, for a very brief moment; he simply recreates his suicide and spews blood over Ryan Reynolds George.

This possesses him, and causes him to try and kill the rest of his family as they try to escape the house.

Kathy knocks Ryan Reynolds George out and takes him off the property to release him from Ketchum’s control.

Aside from the greater detail regarding Ketchum - that is, we discover that he was in a cult and was a reverend - we also see Jodie for the first time. No, she’s not the demonic pig we see in the first film. She’s a young creepy-ass girl instead.

What a trade!

The film ends just like the OG, with a title card explaining that they pissed off and never returned to the house. But once again, a divergence with the 1970s version is revealed.

No, not the questionable hairstyles and cinematic style that looks like it was filmed with a toaster:

The final scene shows Jodie scream in terror inside the house as the furniture rearranges itself. She is then dragged beneath the floorboards by two hands, and the screen fades to black…

This confirms that this movie - alongside the later renditions of the story - don’t necessarily point to a specific haunting, but rather look at the house as the source of the haunting. In fact, they just skip out the DeFeos altogether!

This is down to the fact that the movies are directly based on the book of the same name which was released in 1977. Based off 45 hours worth of tapes from the Lutz family, this book wasn’t necessarily written with the family, but clearly had enough information to brew this highly controversial book.

The events charted in the book will be discussed later in this post.

Amityville: Awakening (2017)

The latest film in this franchise swaps out one famous face for another - Bella Thorne stars as a teen that moves into the infamous house with her family and brain-dead brother.

But instead of retelling the Lutz’s story yet again, it explores the power of the house as it slowly begins to possess the brother until he begins to carry out the murders that plague the house.

It is even revealed that the mother brought them to the house in the hope that the demonic energy would help the brother. But, with a gaggle of friends who know the story of the house - and even show the main character the 2005 film - they help her defend against the powers of the house.

The film ends with the sister dragging her brother out of the house and beyond the magic circle she drew, ending the power of the house over the brother after he begins murdering various family members.

The final scene notes that the main character is being questioned by the police, bringing us back to the main point of this post:

This haunting set itself apart by roping in the legal courts.

But how true were these films to the real claims made by the family? And what really happened on November 13th 1974?

What Really Happened At 112 Ocean Avenue?

Whenever someone mentions Amityville, someone gets sued.

Some guy writes a book? They get taken to court. Another bloke makes a film? Lawyers get pissy about the new details added in.

But obviously, this all started in 1974, when Ronald DeFeo killed all 6 members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue. The courts definitely got involved then, and they are still are - he is currently serving time having been convicted of second degree murder in 1975.

The DeFeo’s deaths were rather peculiar though, mirroring an almost ritualistic scene; each victim was found lying in their bed, face down. At first he ran out of the house and reported that his family had been shot, only confessing days later that he was the killer.

The family had lived in the house since 1965, and thus spent a decade in what many presume to be a haunted due to the experiences of the Lutzes. Could this have caused the murders?

According to some, the paranormal forces could’ve been at the house before the DeFeos moved in as the insanity defense pedalled by DeFeo’s lawyers claimed that he heard the voices of his family plotting against him.

"Once I started, I just couldn't stop. It went so fast" - Ronald DeFeo

I’m sure this mirrors the beliefs and actions of most murderers, but this sense of being out of control or maybe even not yourself certainly fits the bill of possession that the movies always pin on George Lutz.

The isolation of the George figure we see in the film and the voices heard throughout suggest this, but the DeFeo story is often skipped in the films and the books.

Yet despite DeFeo’s confession, the murders are still bathed in mystery. The police were puzzled by the fact that the corpses showed no sign of struggle, and were confused by the sheer scale and speed that the killings would have required. On top of this, neighbours didn’t hear the shots despite the gun not having a silencer.

Even the motive was uncertain.

Sure, DeFeo did ask about his father’s life insurance very quickly following his death, but many didn’t think that was reason enough to kill one’s entire family.

DeFeo’s story has twisted and turned overtime, but one thing is for sure: no haunting is ever mentioned in this side of the story.

None. Nada. Zilch.

This is why any retelling of Amityville focuses on the murders that took place there, but also tries to trace back the haunting to a satanic cause buried in the history of the house.

To this day the question still stands: what really caused the haunting of Amityville?

The book The Amityville Horror (1977) tries to answer this question, and charts each claim of the Lutz family. And unfortunately, it confirms that the films portray an uncomfortably accurate haunting.

The hauntings noted by the Lutz family are nothing short of incredible - however you interpret my use of that word..

The spooky goings-on reported include:

A priest being told to ‘get out’ and his subsequent telephone call warning the family to stay out of a room being cut short

George would wake up at 3.15am an check the boathouse - this was the estimated time of the murders

Flies would swarm the house despite their arrival in mid-winter

Kathy would have violent and detailed nightmares about the murders

The family members all began to sleep on their stomachs

Missy, the daughter, made an imaginary friend called Jodie, a pig with red glowing eyes

Green slime oozed from walls

Hoof prints similar to that of a pig were spotted in the snow

However, the most intriguing piece of the paranormal discovered at Amityville was that small room with red walls that was found in the basement - a room considered to be the source of the evil in the house. And, just like in the films, the family dog had severe reactions to it such as cowering and refusing to go near it.

It was only when they fled to a relative’s house and saw slime coming up the stairs towards them that they decided that they would not be returning to 112 Ocean Avenue.

Evidently the silver screen tapped into the nature of the hauntings, but the possession of George Lutz? According to the Lutzes, it only went as far as George noticing that he bore a resemblance to Ronald.

What about Reverend Ketchum? And the Native American burial ground?

Doesn’t exist and didn’t happen.

Well, okay, some bloke called Ketchum would have existed - this was a popular name for settlers from England. But there’s no evidence that he spent his spare time in a cult or murdered Native Americans there. And the Shinnecock Native Americans? Sure, they exist, but leaders claimed this was not a burial ground.

In reality, all we have is a chaotic level of activity.

Or do we?

The book has encountered a fair share of controversy, with most major details being overturned.

Hoof prints in the snow? It didn’t snow that day.

The red room? It was a closet, and it wasn't concealed.

The claims by the priest? He never said they were of paranormal origin.

"Nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming by because of the book and the movie." - The couple that lived there after the Lutzes.

The 9 Other Cases Of Evidence Of The Paranormal Being Used In Court

I love me a ghost.

The problem is, there’s a lot of ‘em.

You’d think Amityville was like the only case where the paranormal made their way into court cases, stamping the supernatural into legal files and sending shivers down the jury’s spine…

But unfortunately, that is not true.

It turns out that tales of haunting are actually clogging up legal archives. And no, I don’t mean cases where a woman would sneeze in the 16th century and they would legally have some right to burn her cause clearly she was a witch.

In fact, some of these mysterious mentions have founded laws!

“Alexa, play the Legally Blonde soundtrack.”

#1 - The Greenbrier Ghost

Woman dies. Husband acts suspicious. Husband acts more suspicious. Ghost tells mother the husband did it. Case closed.

No, seriously - that’s what happened.

Elva Zona Heaster was murdered in 1897 at the hands of her husband. Having broken her neck, he claimed complications with pregnancy killed her, and dressed the corpse to prevent people seeing the real cause of her death.

The grandmother was the first to become unsure of his story having washed the scarf that was tied around her daughter’s definitely-not-f*cked-up neck and being unable to wash out a blood stain. She began to pray, and her daughter’s spirit explained to her what occurred.

She even did an Exorcist and twisted her head round to confirm just in case her mam didn’t get the message.

She reported the sighting, and the deputies immediately questioned people of interest. The body was reinvestigated, and the husband arrested.

Boom. Ghosted.

#2 - The Hammersmith Ghost Murder

You’d expect most cases mentioned here to involve someone being murdered and their ghost being the problem, right?

This bad boy bucks the trend.

Its 1803, and we are in fair London town. A ghost is on the loose from, I don’t know, hell, and is wandering the streets. An armed patrol is in the area to protect the citizens when a figure emerges, wearing all white.

“Looks pretty ghosty to me, must shoot ghost” thinks one of the armed patrol guys. They shoot ghost, but ghost is actually a bricklayer.

F*ck.

The British courts thus debate whether attacking or killing someone out of a misunderstanding counts as a crime. It officially becomes a part of UK law that stands to this day that such an act is not worthy of a sentence as if the crime was intentionally committed.

#3 - Stambovsky vs. Ackley

Also known as The Ghostbusters Ruling, this takes us to the other side of the Pond, all the way to New York. Oh, and this time we aren’t in the 19th century, it's 1991, instead.

The story goes a buyer bought a house that was widely believed to be haunted, but they weren't aware of these claims. Thus, they asked for a recission of the contract and claimed that this sale was fraudulent as they concealed the haunting to avoid lowering the sale price.

The courts - after much mocking and deliberation - finally came to the conclusion that legally the house was haunted, and therefore houses that are supposedly haunted must be presented in this way.

#4 - The Devil Made Me Do It Case

This case does what it says on the tin, and is even set to be the basis for the next instalment of The Conjuring franchise.

The trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson has already been covered by this blog (that awesome post about The Conjuring 3), but for those not up-to-date on all the amazing articles I do, I guess I’ll just have to fill you in:

The story goes that whilst clearing out a house they just rented, David Johnson encountered an old man - who we now believe to be a demon - that began to slowly possess him.

David was only 12 years old, so, to protect him, Arne (his father) asked for the demon to possess him instead.

However, it was during an altercation with their landlord, Alan Bono, that the demon reportedly influenced Arne’s actions and assisted in his murder. In fact, it was Lorraine Warren that was the first to go to the police and make the initial claim that it was the demon that caused the murder.

The legal team roped in lawyers who had worked on similar cases abroad, and exorcism specialists were encouraged to speak up and defend Arne.

Their efforts did not prove successful, however, and Arne was handed a sentence of 20 years. He only served 5.

#5 - Booty vs. Barnaby

No, this isn’t the title of the next Cardi B album. Instead, it's another historic tale from my homeland.

Our story starts in 1687, when some bloke called Captain Barnaby is on holibobs in Stromboli. When he’s not busy shooting innocent animals, he’s watching his next door neighbour from London Town getting chased by a phantom into the mouth of an active volcano.

No, I’m serious.

The neighbour’s wife thought the story sounded ridiculous too, which is why she had him arrested for slander. But then 30 of his crew supported his claims, clearing his name, and leaving a rather peculiar tale clogging up our court records.

#6 - The Haunting Of Lowes Cottage, Derbyshire

For some reason, every person buying a house in the ‘90s was using the hottest new way to bag a bargain: just say it's haunted or somethin’!

And that’s exactly what happened in fair Derbyshire. The Smith family were keen to move into their new cosy ‘lil cottage, but the oozing walls, ghostly hands sexually assaulting family members, the pig faced boy and other strange occurrences were a cause for concern.

(Obviously.)

Having withheld payment for the property due to the events noted, they took the sellers to court, saying it should be reduced by £50,000. Even the vicar threw in his two cents, offering up the evidence which sounded a lot like a little house in a place called Amityville.

Ever heard of it?

The case was eventually thrown out of court by the judge.

#7 - Reed vs. King

Before the DeFeos were murdered, and before the Lutzes even made the mistake of telling their furniture movers to head to 112 Ocean Avenue, a court case regarding a haunted house first hit the legal scene.

Our story starts in Grass Valley. A family moved into a new home, but the estranged husband paid a visit one night, and murdered 5 of the family members and injured 2 others.

Many years passed, and the Reed family shacked up here. However, it was only when they were told of the true events that transpired that the new residents became concerned. Sure, no one mentioned a haunting per say, but they claimed that the house “retained an echo”.

Small bloody footprints, blood stains smeared on the walls - no, it's not the bathroom after I’ve emptied my Diva Cup - it’s what Reed began to see throughout the house.

Reed thus decided to sue the sellers of the house, claiming that they tried to conceal the murders to avoid a wowcher.com-esque deal. But, when the case went to court, Reed didn’t mention hide nor hare of potential ghosts - instead, the potential haunting was used against them to prove how ridiculous the claims were.

#8 - The Death Of Estefania Guitterez Lazaro

It’s been discussed, dissected, and even given a Netflix contract - the death of this Madrid teen in 1992 is officially one of the most prominent cases of possession to date.

Despite slipping under the radar, this tale is known not for its rather simple story, but because it was the first modern-day haunting that was verified by police reports.

The story goes that Estefania died following a session using a Ouija board with her friends in school. When interrupted by a teacher for trying to contact the dead, Estefania became possessed. A strange vapour began to enter her mouth and nose, and from there her seizures and hallucinations began.

After her death in hospital, the family claimed there was a variety of paranormal activity occurring throughout the family home. From the picture of Estefania catching fire of its own accord, to unexplained noises and a rather slimy, broken crucifix, the police had seen enough.

A report was filed citing the unexplained events and confirmed it was the paranormal.

#9 - The Exorcism Of Anneliese Michel

This is one of the most tragic tales I’ve ever had to write about.

Anneliese Michel’s story has been detailed on this blog many-a-time, and has received its fair share of attention in popular culture, including in the film The Exorcism Of Anneliese Michel.

But the main reason it’s been recognised as possibly the most famous case of possession is because it brought the paranormal firmly into the legal courts. Due to Michel’s extremely weak state at the time of her death - including weighing only 68 pounds at the time of her death - the priests that carried out the exorcisms were charged with negligent homicide.

However, it's not the fact that they were charged that puts the supernatural spin on this case.

To fight their corner, the priests used tapes that recorded Michel’s exorcism to bolster their claims of her possession and had her body exhumed.

Their mere 6 month stint in jail was down to the jury’s beliefs that they didn’t intend to harm her, nor neglect her. And the suspension of their time behind bars confirms that their case was backed up by their claims.

But let it not be mistaken: the jury weren’t convinced that Michel was in fact possessed - they were convinced that Michel’s belief in her possession could only be alleviated by the priests’ actions.

*Bangs gavel* What’s your verdict?

Is the jury out? Are you pissin’ on my leg and telling me it’s raining?

Or are you still awake at 3am and waiting to see the glowing red eyes of little Missy’s childhood bestie?

If so, why not fill the rest of your evening with the rest of my awesome articles on real paranormal activity just like this... Don’t forget to hit follow, too, to get a new ghost story in your feed everyday!

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ionlyeatcomfortfood · 6 years ago

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The Selection: Sander Side Style- Chapter 3

A/N: Okay, so I know I said the next writing would be the third part of A Boy Worth Fighting For, but I’ve been struggling to write that, but I FINALLY FINISHED CHAPTER THREE FOR THIS BAD BITCH SO I’M POSTING IT! Hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 1965 (oh my gosh I wrote so much)

Pairings: Logince, Moxiety

Warnings: Homophobia, Kicked Out, negative talk towards Roman, sympathetic Remus, cursing.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

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He had done it. Roman had done it. He turned in an application against his mother’s wishes. Holy shit.

He had never done anything like this before. Remus was the bad boy, the one who didn’t follow the rules. Roman was a golden boy. He always did what his parents said, ‘cause parents know best. At least that’s what he thought.

But when his mom exploded, Roman just knew he couldn’t listen to her anymore. If she was going to so vehemently deny who Roman was, even if she didn’t know it, how could Roman listen?

So he had done what he wanted for once. He wanted to be apart of the Selection, so he applied. It had been about a week since he had sent in an application, and tonight was the night they would announce the Selection contestants. Roman was equally parts excited and scared. But he was ready.

Or so he thought.

He had to beg his mom to watch it. Lyssa did not want anything to do with the broadcast, but a glance at Roman’s puppy eyes did the trick. They sat down on the couch to watch the king announce the Selection contestants.

“We have Patton Foster, Four. Delcan Rose, Two.”

Come on, come on.

“Emile Picani, Three. Remy Zephyr, Four.”

Come on. Please.

“Roman Prince, Five.”

The king continued down the list of names, but no one in the Prince household was listening. The television wasn’t turned off, it just sorta became background noise.

“You put in an application. After I specifically told you not to?” Lyssa was silently fuming. Remus and Carlos were waiting behind her, quiet.

“Yes.”

“Why? You’d have to be crazy! Or… no,” Lyssa shook her head. “No, no, no. Y-you can’t be a…”

“A homosexual, Mom? Is that the word you’re looking for? Yes, Mom.” Roman spat the words out. He wouldn’t have been able to get them out of his head otherwise.

Lyssa was quiet for a moment for she said “Get out.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Get out of my house, you monster! Get out!” Lyssa screamed.

Roman knew she was going to react harshly, but he hadn’t been expecting this. He just thought she would give him the silent treatment until it was time for him to go to the palace. He didn’t expect her to kick him out.

“Mom, please-”

“You’re no son of mine! I did not raise my kid to be a homosexual! SO GET OUT!”

Roman turned to his father and brother. His father’s face was impassive, but Remus was actually a little sympathetic. “Dad.”

“You heard your mother,” Carlos’s voice was ice cold. “Out.”

“Rem. Please.”

Remus looked at his parents, fire and ice, and walked over to Roman. Roman sighed.

“I’m not leaving you, Roman.”

“What? Remus, you can’t be thinking about going with this imbecile!” Lyssa said.

“Mom. I can do what I want. Besides, if you must know, I also put my name in the drawing, because I am a raging homosexual.” Remus didn’t even bat an eye when Lyssa went fucking ballistic.

“You as well! What went wrong? What is going on?”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have places to be,” Remus said, dragging Roman out the door. “Oh, and if you did love us, at some point, would please direct any palace officials to the Redwood’s household?”

And with that, Remus slammed the door, leaving a dumbfounded pair left in the Prince household, TV still blaring.

xxxxx

The next couple days were insane for Roman. Their parents had done what Remus had requested and directed palace officials to the Redwood’s house. Remus was an old friend of the eldest Redwood, Maxon, so the Redwoods welcomed them in and congratulated Roman on his success.

Tailors came and measured him for suits, manner coaches talked to him about where he was, manner was (quite adept), and just plain government workers who explained how this would all work a million times over.

They would arrive at the palace, along with thirty-four other guys, in which the prince would pick and choose guys he liked and go on dates with them. At a certain point, the prince picks his Elite, ten guys that have the best shot of being the prince’s spouse (they always used ‘spouse’, not husband). Then from there, the prince chooses who he will marry.

They had also mentioned how his family would get paid every week he was still in the Selection, which he had made a few inquires about.

“So, this family is not my birth family,” Roman said while the tailor maneuvered around him.

The official that was there that day, Ms. Potts, glanced up from the magazine she was reading. “Are you adopted?”

“No. But my parents kicked me out when I was announced a winner, so I was wondering if the money could come to this family?”

“No can do, sir,” Potts said. “Only the families of the contestants can receive the money.”

“What about my brother?” Roman asked.

Potts looked over to where Remus was chasing around the younger kids and sighed. “How old is he?”

“He’s my twin, and we turn 18 in three months.” Roman said as the tailor finished his measurements.

Potts thought for a moment, before saying “We could probably transfer the funds to him. We would just need to get your written consent that you’re okay with that.”

Roman nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, with that out of the way, we should get going. Come along Bartholomew,” Potts said to the tailor. He packed up his supplies and they were off.

“So, is that all the fancy prep you have for today?” Remus asked, the younger Redwood children, Ravyon and Celie, hanging off his legs.

“Yeah. Until tomorrow, that is.”

“So, do you think we could go visit the children?” Remus smiled.

Roman nodded. ‘The children’ Remus were referring to were the kids down in the orphanage. It was the one thing the twins had always done together. They would visit the orphanage and tell stories, play with the kids, and help deal with temper tantrums and nasty diapers. They hadn’t gone in some while, especially since Remus had his accident.

“I’d love to.” Roman said, and with that, the two left the Redwoods with a goodbye and a promise to bring back some bread.

xxxxx

When they entered the orphanage, they were greeted by a flurry of young children crowding them. Every child was shouting, and it was really quite a sight.

“Roman! Do you have another story?”

“Remus! Look what I drew!”

“You’re back!”

“Woah, everybody, take a breather,” Roman said, hugging all the kids that were holding onto him. “I know you guys are excited, but we’re only two people, and there are twenty of you.”

“Twenty-one now,” One of the older kids, Lace, said. “There’s a new kid, but they don’t wanna come out of there room.”

“Oh. Well in that case, I’ll go talk to them, see if I can get them to join us. Remus, would you mind telling these rascals a fairy tale?” Roman asked, already slipping away from the crowd.

“My pleasure. Say, how many of you have heard the story of Cinderella?”

Roman walked down the hallway to see a door closed. He knew from previous visits that the door was usually open because there was no child to occupy it. The new kid must be in there.

Roman knocked on the door and waited till he heard a small little ‘come in’ before entering.

“Hello, little one. What’s your name?” Roman asked the small child curled up on the edge of their bed.

“I’m Mo,” The little one whispered, curling more into themselves.

“Hey, your okay. There’s no reason to be nervous.” Roman crouched next to Mo and smiled. “So, are you a little prince or princess?”

“I’m neither,” Mo said.

“Alright, then you are tiny but mighty royalty!” Roman exclaimed, striking a dramatic pose. Just as he intended, he got a little giggle out of the child.

“Would you like to hear a story, Mo?” Mo nodded. “Alrighty. Have you heard of the Princess and the Dragon?” Mo shook their head. “Well, here it goes.”

Roman recounted the story, waving his hands around, making different voices for all the characters, and just being his normal goofy self. Mo was laughing, gasping, and yelling, and it made Roman’s heart warm. From just one story, he had gotten this shy child to laugh. He was good at this, and it made him proud to be him.

“So, did you like that story?” Roman asked as he wrapped up the tale.

Mo nodded excitedly. “Can you tell me another one?”

Roman glanced at the time. “I’m sorry, but me and my brother have to get going.”

“Oh. Can you come next week?”

“Again, no. I’m going to be at the castle.”

Mo’s eyes widened. “The castle? What for?”

“I’m part of the Selection.”

Mo’s eyes got even wider. “Really?”

“Mhmm.”

“Woah, that’s so cool!”

“I know.”

“Hey!” Mo jumped up from the bed to grab a sheet of paper. “How about when your in the castle, you write me letters!” Mo wrote the address of the orphanage on the sheet of paper and handed it to Roman. “Please?”

“Of course, tiny but mighty royalty!” Roman smiled, giving the kid a quick hug before going to find his brother.

xxxxx

The last few days before he left for the palace rushed by Roman, leaving him breathless. He could barely keep up with everything that was happening. And before he knew it, it was the day he had been waiting for. The day they traveled to the palace.

Ms. Potts was back to escort Roman to the car, since there was already a hoard of press waiting outside to bombard him with questions. He had said all his goodbyes except for one: Remus.

Roman stood before his brother. Remus, despite all his buffoonery, was a good person underneath. He was just a little misguided. He placed a hand on Remus’s shoulder.

“Okay. I had them direct the money the families get weekly to you. But do not blow it on yourself. Give some to the Redwoods, since they’re going to be hosting you for awhile.”

Remus shrugged off Roman’s hand. “I know. I was already planning on it.”

“Remus. Seriously. Be smart about this.”

“Geez, Dad, I already told you I would. Okay? I’m okay now.”

Roman looked at his twin. They were so different, but they were still brothers. And Roman still loved him.

Roman pulled Remus into a hug. “Thank you for leaving with me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“You’d probably be wandering on the streets.” Remus joked. “But in all seriousness, I wouldn’t have stayed with those witches anyway. I would gladly do it again.”

The brothers hugged, then it was time for Roman to be off.

“Farewell, all. I shall see you in another life.”

“You’re leaving for a couple months. We’ll see you soon enough.” Remus said, and it was the last thing Roman heard before he was whisked away.

xxxxx

Roman got situated on the plane, when a voice joined his thoughts.

“Hello! I’m Patton! It’s nice to meet you!” A blonde boy was sitting next to him, freckles adorning his face and a permanent smile on his face.

“I’m Roman Prince. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Prince? Well that’s no fair, you already have an advantage!” Patton joked.

“Well, you must use every advantage you have, my dear Patton.” Roman joked back.

“I can tell we are going to be royal friends.” Patton smiled.

Roman smiled back. Maybe there was more to look forward to than just the prince in the Selection.

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Click here to read the fairy tale Roman told Mo.

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TAGLIST (let me know if you want to be added)

@redistooviolent

@jellopuffs

@loginceismyjam

@a-trans-ghost

@hekking-happy-nonsense

@chaotic-sinnabun

@steampunkicarus

@theoddkidnextdoor

@stop-it-anxiety

#sanders sides #sanders side fic #fanfiction #roman sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #dukedontlook #the selection #logince #moxiety #remus sanders

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mst3kproject · 6 years ago

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Black Dragons

This is a bizarre and thoroughly mismanaged WWII yellow peril movie. It features Bela Lugosi and Joan Barclay, both of whom we’ve seen before in The Corpse Vanishes, and was produced by Sam Katzman, who brought us both The Corpse Vanishes and Teenage Crime Wave (also The Giant Claw). I liked The Corpse Vanishes. It was fun, fast-paced, and in some ways surprisingly feminist. Black Dragons is none of those things.

It’s 1942, and Japan has just bombed Pearl Harbour, forcing Americans to stop ignoring World War II. Stock footage of stuff burning and blowing up is implied to be the work of a bunch of indistinguishable suited men who are sabotaging the allied war effort. They’re standing around one evening congratulating themselves on how evil they are, when a mysterious Monsieur Coulombe arrives and talks privately with one of them, a Dr. Saunders Coulombe hypnotizes or drugs Saunders somehow – and in the days that follow, the conspirators start turning up dead, each with a souvenir from the renaissance faire… oh, excuse me, a Japanese dagger… in one hand. What the hell is going on?

Well, the ending is supposed to be a surprise, but I’m gonna spoil it for you to save you having to watch the stupid movie. All the victims, plus Dr. Saunders, are actually Japanese operatives from the Order of Black Dragons who had plastic surgery to turn them into the doubles of American businessmen! The originals were killed, and the duplicates took their places… and the surgeon? He was a Nazi who did it as a favour from the Fuhrer, but afterwards the Order tried to kill him so that he could never reveal the plan to anyone. He escaped, and went to the States to murder them in revenge for their betrayal!

As ideas for an espionage movie go, this one reaches near golden-age comics levels of absurdity and as such it’s almost kind of brilliant. A movie that used this plot to its full ridiculous potential could be great fun – I especially like that it pits two sets of villains against each other, while the supposed good guys spend most of the film completely clueless. Black Dragons, however, was rushed onto theatre screens within four months of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and it’s an utter mess with no idea what to do with its premise.

For being made in 1942, Black Dragons mostly doesn’t look bad. There are no scenes so dark you can’t see what’s happening, and we get an idea of things like the layout of Dr. Saunders’ house. The characters all kind of look alike but I’ve just had to accept the idea that all white men had the same face until about 1965. The steps of the Japanese Embassy are obviously somebody’s house with a sign on the door, but I can forgive them that, and the voices sound a little brassy and indistinct but no more so than in The Corpse Vanishes. The main technical flaw in the film is that most of it has a constant crackling noise in the background, sounding kind of like heavy rain. This is obviously a problem with the print itself, since it continues as we switch scenes from Washington to Philadelphia, and it is very annoying and confusing.

No, almost all of Black Dragons’ many problems are in the writing. Just based on the premise you can guess that the movie is racist – we’ve got the ‘Japanese dagger’ that doesn’t look even remotely Japanese, and Japanese characters (even some of those who are supposed to look Japanese) played by white guys in costumes and makeup, speaking in fake accents. And as for the racial issues inherent in the plastic surgery plot point... I don’t actually feel qualified to address those.

What is slightly more surprising is that it’s also egregiously sexist. There’s a woman living with Dr. Saunders who’s supposed to be his niece Alice, worried about all the weird things happening around her. She turns out to be a policewoman who’s there to spy on the fake Dr. Saunders, and she gets shouted at for being entirely incompetent when she fails to solve anything (it must be admitted that she didn’t try very hard).

Everything that surrounds this character is just terrible. She’s there to be one (1) pretty girl, like the film is trying to fill some kind of quota. Alice is introduced when the chief of police suggests that detective Dick Martin might get somewhere by questioning her. Martin responds, “let me guess, she’s fifty and flat-footed, and wears glasses.” Oh my god, you poor thing, you might have to talk to an unattractive woman! She flirts with Dr. Coulombe throughout the film, even as he hangs around being ridiculously off-putting and creepy. The revelation that she’s a spy herself explains this, I guess, since she must have been doing it in the hope of learning something from him, but it never avails her anything and is, in the end, useless, much like Alice herself.

The worst moment is when Martin, who has been trying to get her to move out of this dangerous house, walks into the room and out of nowhere says, “Alice, will you marry me?” She stares at him like he’s crazy and asks, “what for?”, and I swear to you he actually replies, “so I can beat you up. It’s the only way I’ll get you out of here.” I had to pause the movie and watch it again because I couldn’t believe I’d just heard that. I have combed the internet for a gif that expresses a sufficient level of what the fuck for this line and I cannot find one. I need Shikha again.

Black Dragons really has no hero. The closest thing on offer is Detective Martin, who is honestly just as useless as Alice. I usually enjoy movies that are just a bunch of bad guys trying to thwart each other, but this is actually Black Dragons’ biggest mistake. If this were supposed to be a suspense film, then we really ought to be focused on Martin (and possibly Alice) trying to solve the mystery. Martin sees the Japanese agents as upstanding citizens in danger, and he is doing his best to help them but has started to suspect that the victims aren’t as innocent as they appear.

That has the potential to be an interesting story with a surprising twist at the end, but Black Dragons is not told from Martin’s point of view. Instead, the audience is privy to at least some of the secrets from the beginning. We already know that the murder victims are the bad guys, because we watched them brag about it to each other. We watch Coulombe killing them (though the way he behaves, it would be obvious he’s the murderer even if we didn’t) and hear him calling them by Japanese-sounding names before they die. By the time we get to what should be the twist, we’ve already figured most of this out (while Martin hasn’t a clue), and the only surprise is that Coulombe’s motivation is personal revenge rather than being a government assassin, as I initially assumed.

A version of the movie that actually tried to keep its secrets secret could also have something I kind of hoped we would see but never did, which is the conspirators interacting with their families. At least some of the men who were replaced ought to have had parents, siblings, wives, or children, unless they were chosen specifically for being orphaned bachelors with no friends – and that doesn’t seem likely when we know Dr. Saunders had a niece he was close to. Watching the people around these men feeling like there’s something different but not sure what it is would have been nice and creepy, but Black Dragons is not that subtle.

It’s all doubly unfortunate because there is some cool stuff in this movie. There’s a bit where rather than killing two of the conspirators himself, Coulombe tricks them into killing each other. That was nicely done. His creative methods of hiding bodies are fun, too. The fact that he ultimately dumps them on the steps of the Japanese embassy with an unconvincing ‘cultural artefact’ in their hands seems like it ought to mean something, like he’s trying to either alert the Americans to the threat or the Japanese to his survival, but nothing is ever really made of this and we never see what the head of the Order of Black Dragons thinks of it at all, as he is seen only in flashback.

The biggest problem with the whole concept behind Black Dragons is the same one as in Hercules Unchained: they needed to make a movie really fast in order to capitalize on something, and just didn’t have time to figure out what they were actually doing. Hercules Unchained was a movie that tried to have two storylines at one, neither connected to each other and one of them only barely connected to its main character. Black Dragons isn’t even sure who its main character is. Dick Martin is the nearest thing to a hero, but an argument could equally be made that this story is about Coulombe as antihero. The result is a film that’s trying to do too much and too little at the same time. And of course, Black Dragons’ intentions are way less honourable than Hercules Unchained’s. Hercules Unchained just wanted to capitalize on a popular film. Black Dragons was capitalizing on a literal act of war!

A version of Black Dragons that tried to do justice to its silly premise would still have been a bad movie. It would still be an old, grainy print with sound issues, and it would still be deeply racist (among many, many other things, there’s a particularly detestable bit where Coulombe insults the Japanese operatives by calling them ‘apes’) and probably still have that stunningly horrible line about how you have to marry a woman before you’re allowed to beat her. But it would have been a much more interesting and entertaining bad movie than it ultimately ended up being.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #black dragons #tw: abuse #40s

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years ago

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Sometime in the first few months of 2000, I dropped Stan Lee a line saying I’d love to do some work for Stan Lee Media, Stan’s well-publicized and multi-staffed dot-com company, if he could ever use me. He replied that, while he’d like to work with me again, I would’ve had to be around L.A. to work for SLM, but that, by coincidence, he really needed a writer to work with him on the SPIDER-MAN comic strip… to plot out and do the first-draft script of the seven-days-a-week King Features strip. I said that sounded fine to me (even though I’d never really been wild about writing Spidey compared to the F.F., Avengers, Conan, etc.). He replied with a chuckle that maybe I should wait till I heard his offer, because the money was so minuscule… just $300 a week. I laughed, and told him that he had no idea how little money it cost me to live on my 40-acre place in the middle of South Carolina. The mortgage and both our vehicles were paid off, so Dann and I had no expenses except what we spent month-to-month. So a deal was quickly struck, and I went to work, with my first strip (a Monday, of course) appearing on July 17, 2000.

As it turned out, although I never got a raise in 18 1/2 years I basically ghost-wrote the strip (though, until recent years, with his often hands-on editing), it was a great gig. I spent maybe two days a month writing four weeks’ worth of strips, and another day 2 or 3 times a year doing outlines for upcoming storylines.

After Stan cut back his activities a few years ago, following installation of his pacemaker, etc., I worked primarily with his longtime assistant, Michael Kelly, with some indirect verbal input from Stan, and in some ways I liked that even better, since Stan and I were only about 80% on the same page as to what made a good comic strip. Despite his well-known (and correct) views on how important the writing was to the success of Marvel Comics from 1961 on, he would often talk about how it was the artwork that sold the strip. I didn’t think that reflected the realities of the situation, particularly after John Romita left the strip a few years after it began, and as the printing of the strips grew smaller and smaller. Stan’s brother Larry Lieber was a good journeyman penciler (and Alex Saviuk considerably better), but the artists didn’t really have the scope, especially in the dailies, to do the kind of artwork that was going to excite readers the way, say, Milt Caniff once had in Terry and the Pirates. The sight of Spidey or Dr. Octopus in a strip might draw people in, but the writing had to bring people back, day after day, since Spidey and Peter and MJ and Doc Ock would always look basically the same, squeezed into small panels–with no “full-page spreads” like in the comicbooks. And yes, I wrote a bit more text and dialogue than he did… but that was partly because, otherwise, I wasn’t sure people could really follow the strip from day to day… or at least, no new readers would be brought in if it was hard to start reading the strip at any given point.

Mostly, though, Stan and I got along fine. For the most part, he liked what I submitted, accepted most (not all) of my ideas for stories… and until a few years ago often “suggested” (or insisted upon) alterations in them. For some years, he would rewrite a panel or balloon here and there, or even more… while other dailies or Sundays would sail through without a single word change.

The major change I tried to effect, after the first “Spider-Man” movie, was to go back to a time when MJ and Peter weren’t married. Stan agreed, and seemed halfway enthusiastic about the change at first, and we did one whole storyline (involving Electro) that way. But then Stan changed his mind, and I saw at once that I wouldn’t be able to change it back. So I wrote a “Dallas”-type scene in which Peter woke up (after going to sleep in Aunt May’s apartment as a single young man) to find himself married (again) to Mary Jane… and that’s the way we kept it from then on. Actually, I was increasingly happy with that, as an alternative to the bouncing around of the comicbooks, in which MJ and Peter totally forgot each other and their marriage, and who-knows-what occurred. Left increasingly to my own devices, and building on MJ’s modeling career in the comicbooks, I gradually took her from working in a computer store to becoming a Broadway star and movie actress, playing a super-heroine called “Marvella” (before the female Captain Marvel was a big deal, or maybe even was around at all)…but I kept her and Peter, somewhat incongruously, in their relatively small Manhattan apartment (except when they were in L.A., of course)… although they occasionally shopped around for something bigger.

In recent years, I had taken increasingly to using guest stars: Wolverine, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Ant-Man, most recently Iron Fist and Luke Cage. We never bothered to try to follow the current Marvel continuity, which Stan didn’t want to do… the more so, I suppose, as from time to time it was given increasingly to violent wrenches and re-starts, such as when MJ and Peter were abruptly uncoupled. If there were eventually several Spider-Man universes in the comics (with different Spider-Men, a Spider-Girl, whatever), well, our comic strip universe was yet another one… just about the only one, in recent years, in which Peter and MJ were a married couple, continuing the original direction of decades of the comicbooks. We were all kind of proud of that.

When the strip died (i.e., was killed), the Mammon Theatre where MJ’s hit play was running was shuttered by damage (in a Spidey-related fight, of course), and “Marvella II” had flopped, so the two of them took off to Australia for a vacation, and I wrote a couple of weeks of a continuity (along with a full outline approved by Michael Kelly) involving the villain the Kangaroo. Then Marvel decided to kill the strip and not print the final couple of weeks, and I declined to rewrite the last published strip or two to turn it into a “goodbye” strip. My feeling was that I had accepted the snuffing of the strip, and didn’t take it personally… it was just a business move (although when I was told the strip was being killed I wasn’t told—perhaps because those who informed me didn’t know–that Marvel was planning to either revive the strip with a new team or to start a new strip that might not be a Spidey strip per se, but more the equivalent of DC’s latter-day successor to its Superman strip, The World’s Greatest Heroes, which had featured the whole panoply of DC heroes). I felt that I had written what I had written for the strip, and they were welcome to do whatever they wanted to with the script (as long as I was paid for what I had done, naturally), but I preferred never to touch it again. When I’m done with something, I’m done with something.

Alex Saviuk, bless him, graciously reworked the final strip to show the two of us in it, and to add a “‘Nuff Said!” headline on the Daily Bugle. He was perhaps a better sport about things than I was… and I admire him for that, since he had spent well over two decades penciling the Sunday Spider-Man and then had only recently been promoted to seven-days-a-week penciler… only to see the strip almost immediately canceled so that he was out of a regular gig. I hope he finds one. He deserves it.

Naturally, I was sorry to see the strip end (the more so because it signaled the finale of the only long-lasting adventure strip launched in the past half century), just at the time when I could finally have begun to receive on-strip credit for the work I did… although of course I did have that for two years on the Conan the Barbarian comic strip at the end of the 1970s. But at least, once Stan wrote vaguely, maybe a decade ago, in his introduction to the hardcover volume Marvel Visionaries: Roy Thomas, that I “help[ed]” him with the Spidey strip, everybody with half a brain knew what I was contributing to the strip anyway. That didn’t bother Stan, and it didn’t bother me. The strip was Stan’s, and I was happy to co-write or write it under his name… although I wouldn’t have been willing to go on writing it anonymously once he had passed on, had that alternative been suggested to me.

Working with Stan and Michael Kelly (as well as with Larry, Alex, and the ever-amiable Joe Sinnott–with Joe spelled occasionally by Jim Amash or Terry Austin) on the Spider-Man strip was an enjoyable experience, and I’m grateful to Stan for offering me that “pittance” back in 2000. The strip became the last of our many collaborations of one sort or other, which began when, in early July of 1965, I inherited a Modeling with Millie story that he had previously talked over (I suppose) with penciler Stan Goldberg.

Best wishes,

Roy Thomas

The LAST SPIDER-MAN Daily newspaper strip! It’s been a fabulous time for me being part of such an iconic character for so long. I’ve drawn Spider-Man in comics and newspapers for 32 years in a row and unless I get another crack at him NEXT year that run will come to an end. But I am digressing a bit; I’m here to talk about the newspaper strip which for me OFFICIALLY started in the spring of 1977 probably around April-May. I say OFFICIALLY because back in 1980 , John Romita, Sr. who was still drawing the entire strip at that time called me and asked if I had the time to ghost lay out some Sunday strips for him since he was incredibly busy with everything else he had on his plate for Marvel. John lived ( and still lives, I believe ) in the town next to mine on Long Island when I was there and I actually met him about 10 years earlier since I was in high school with his sons. ( that’s right, I went to high school with JR, Jr.— he IS four years younger than me to the day and when I was a senior he was a freshman and today looks 20 years younger than me!) I was in a club in school with the older son Victor who over time found out I was interested in drawing comics and came to me one day and said “… my father draws comics — would you like to meet him?” Of course I knew that but I would never impose. We met soon after that. What happened after that is another story!

BACK TO THE STRIP: I did at least 4 Sunday layouts for John on vellum tracing paper and he took it to the next level and beyond yet saving him a ton of time. I was really happy and excited just to be called to assist him , first of all, and then get the privilege and honor of working with one of my comic book artist “heroes”. IDW just recently published that volume of reprints and it was fun to see our collaborations again.

FORWARD to 1997: Ralph Macchio at Marvel calls me up and asks if I would be interested in penciling the Spider-Man Sunday strip since fill-in penciler old time artist Fred Kida wanted to leave. Of course I agreed — i would get to work directly with Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott! I put a package together of my Web Of Spider-Man and Spider-Man Adventures books and sent them to Stan. His assistant Mike Kelly called a few days later and said Stan liked the work but wanted to see how I would handle a “horizontal” strip in a six panel grid format. I admit I was a bit surprised by that request since with my 20 years of experience at that time I figured i showed what I can do in just the comic books. But I went ahead and penciled a six panel episode of an encounter with Spider-Man saving JJonah Jameson from a few muggers with the end panel having an ungrateful JJJ waving his fist at Spidey as he swung away from the scene. I sent that in and a few days days after returning home from running errands I found a message from Stan Lee on my answering machine. “ Hi, Alex… this is Stan Lee. I LOVE your work and I’d love to work with you. It doesn’t pay that much but think of the GLORY!” Actually the page rate was as much as I was making at the time so i couldn’t complain. No raise in 22 years ( but from what I understand things havent changed that much for mainstream freelancers even today. ) I got my first script a few days later and in May 1977 I penciled a Sunday in the middle of a Kingpin storyline which was inked by Joe Sinnott , lettered by Stan Sakai and was published in August 1977. Sundays were always drawn 3 months ahead of publication. What a rush to see those preview Xeroxes and then the colored version in the newspaper( which I had to hunt down ! There were no papers in Florida where I lived carrying the strip but the local Barnes & Noble sold out of town newspapers so I managed to find one that published the Sundays )

FORWARD to Feb 2003: Got a call asking me if I could ink a week of Dailies drawn by Larry Lieber because inker John Tartaglione needed to go to the hospital for a procedure. John ended up being OK after that week but I had a blast inking Larry’s pencils since I really never inked anybody else other my own pencils for my Web Of Spider-Man covers. Sadly that November , I got a call that John Tartaglione has passed away at 82 because he lost the fight with his particular illness. At the same time I was asked if I would be able to take over the inking of the Dailies. Affirmative….

FORWARD to July 2018: Larry Lieber wants to retire at 87 after 25+ years ( maybe 30+? ) and I inherit the penciling duties! Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I thought the Stan Lee would live forever especially since a few years ago when he got his pacemaker he felt he was the next Tony Stark and felt stronger than ever. Unfortunately and sadly as we all know , that didnt happen and Marvel decided the strip shouldn’t go on without STAN LEE at the helm. But I am forever in Stan Lee’s debt for having me join him, Joe Sinnott, Roy Thomas and letterers Stan Sakai, Kenny Lopez, and Janice Chiang for all these years in bringing our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to our readers each and every day for these months and years! It’s been a joy, an honor and privilege which I will never forget!

( I do want to add that since since the Sundays were done so far in advance there are TWO more Sundays that followed March 17 that we did together that are now considered to be officially UNPUBLISHED! )”

-Alex Saviuk

P.S. Putting aside how Roy got his timeline mixed up because the back int ime stuff happened in 2008 not 2002, and just so you heard it louder at the back, Stan Lee and Roy Thomas 100% didn’t care fro OMD and actively sought to keep the marriage in the comics.

#Spider-Man newspaper Strip #Amazing Spider-Man Newspaper Strip #Roy Thomas #Alex Saviuk #Stan Lee #spider-man #peter parker #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker

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