#Betty White Children names and other details

[frogmanfae]

Newsies as shit that happened at band camp part 4 (its a hefty one today y'all)

Crutchie: *shows Finch a video*

Finch: I don't get it..?

Crutchie: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T GET IT??? It's a weiner dog doing a flip!!

Albert: Did you just spit on me?

Race: No my nail broke and I accidentally threw it at you (/srs)

Davey: I painted my nails and watched Euphoria

Race: Of course you did

Davey: I got through the entirety of season 1

Race: You should be ashamed of yourself

Davey: Why?? It's about lesbians!

Race: exactly! I don't like gay people

Buttons: Preach!! Kill the gays!

Finch: How long have you been straight?

Albert, who had his heart broken by a guy three months ago and has been saying it turned him straight but he keeps "relapsing" into queerness every time he sees a pretty boy: ...Two minutes

Crutchie: Come on heterosexual you can do it

Katherine: *sobbing/laughing* I can't do it!! This is a man's job!! (/j)

Finch: What are you doing?

Race: He's pumpin

Albert: I bought this water balloon pump for $10 and it's already halfway empty because I just keep pumping them with air until they explode

Davey: Fabio (Les, who previously had hair longer than Sarah's) cut his hair

Jack: WHAT??? NOOO!!!

Romeo: Jamaica they're trapped down in

Romeo: Jamaica they can't even

Romeo: Japarty

Elmer: What are you doing??

Romeo: That's my favorite episode of Total Drama

Spot: He looks like Topher

Race: He looks like Geoff

Romeo: I know he's a registered felon crazy man but I'd still smash

Jack: *randomly* happy happy birthday from Applebee's to you we wish it was our birthday so we could party too, hey-

Race: Trumpets are just anorexic bugles

Albert: Literally what??

Jack: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Davey: My mom told me she wants me to have kids with you

Katherine: SHE SAID WHAT

Davey: yeah so she knows I'm gay but she still wants me to have biological children and she said you would be a, quote, "perfect choice"

Katherine: why?? Should I be flattered??

Davey: no idea, she just kinda said it

Spot: Ahhh I already have drum shit on me and it's only 8:30

Spot: My hips are so fuckin bruised

Davey: Does your harness need adjusted? It shouldn't be sitting on your hips-

Spot: My body is structured different than yours, genius

Race: It's not a four year difference it's a three year difference

Albert: Oh wow so much better

Sarah: One time I took it and it said I was a child of Apollo and the other two times I was a Hunter of Artemis. So basically the Percy Jackson official godly parent quiz called me an official faggot like four times

Spot: I don't know his real name but I call him critter because he's annoying as fuck

Jack: Clap! If you care!

The band: *silence*

Denton: If you're losing your trombone it's not here

Albert: *sobbing* I'm losing MY MIND!!!

Jack: I have backne and I can feel the sweat dripping down

Crutchie: That is incredibly too much detail for me

Denton: If you're going to make a mistake, make the 76 Trombone mistake

Medda: Don't breathe! DON'T BREATHE!!!

Elmer: You can't go naked!!

Albert: It's fine I have a wife beater-

Race: You have a WHAT

Albert: Have you not been up at the field this week? Your shoes are still white

Finch: These ones are new

Albert: Oh so you're a cheater

Finch: You gotta even out the redness

Race: My gluteus maximus is wet!!!

Specs: I lost sense of smell in my right eye

Denton: Woah Betty...!

Crutchie: I get to leave early to go to therapy

Finch: Which kind?

Crutchie: Physical. The worst kind.

Davey, Jack, Finch, and Spot: *an entire conversation made up entirety of various incorrect pronunciations of Duquesne (doo-kane)*

Albert: *google searching where gay marriage is legal* GRAND THEFT AUTO THE BALLAD OF GAY TONY???

Race: Oh my god Davey's mom! *joking lustfully*

Denton: Who is that? Jack?

Jack: Me!

Denton: Okay do you have some screws loose or...?

Medda: On his instrument or like in general?

Denton: We have one shared pencil in this band where is it??

Blink: I'm that guy

Tommy Boy: Hey guess what

Blink: Yeah?

Tommy Boy: Shut the fuck up.

Denton: Out in trumpet land- or I guess brass land

Romeo: Nuh uh we know who your favorite is now. There's no saving yourself.

Denton: Okay so it's Tuesday-

Albert and Race: IT'S CHEWSDAY

Jack: CHEWSDAY

Crutchie: *snorts* is it really chewsday?

Sarah: It's chewsday innit?

Denton: ... I don't get it is this something I should know or-?

Jack: No we're just making fun of British people

Denton: Oh! Okay that's... Fine, I guess? Anyway-

Medda: Okay I wanna hear everyone who plays at 17 so that's... Bari sax, trumpet trombone and tuba

Specs: Wait but we play at 17

Medda: Yes flutes play but I don't want to hear you

Albert: *flipping his drum stick* One *flip* two *flip* three *flip* four! *flip* five!! *flip*

Spot: *hits the stick away*

Denton: You start to sound like a saggy diaper. Nobody wants to be the saggy diaper of the band

Jack: Oh my god does that say Scope??

Crutchie: Scope???

Buttons: ... Who's Scope?

Jack: They graduated last year

Davey: Gone, but not forgotten

Davey, about Jojo: That kid wears a propeller hat in my brain

Denton: Okay lets go marching cadence

Davey: ugh...

Denton: Old fashioned roll off

Davey: Ugh...

Denton: Into the fight song

Davey: UGHH

Davey: *sitting on top of the drum cabinet*

Jack: Wha- how- why??

Davey: Do you see any other seats?

Jack: *gestures to a ledge on the floor*

Davey: No

Jack: *points at a chair 2 feet away*

Davey: Dude, I'm gay

Jack: Just because you're day doesn't mean your not-

Davey: Day? I'm day?

Jack: Wow I can't believe you would make fun of my speech impediment, I thought you were gay. Turns out you're not even slay.

Race: I did better this time! We got together around the same time as my last relationship, end of February and I didn't do anything until June- July! I should get a medal!

Buttons: *randomly approaches Elmer* do you want some week old Cheetos?

Elmer: no- actually I have to think about that... No...

Spot: *squeaking his drum harness* me and your mom last ni-

Jack: I need him to come back and just squirt directly into my mouth

Davey: *blinks aggressively*

Elmer: What did he say?

Davey: What?

Elmer: You just got like transported into another dimension

Davey: Oh my contacts shifted out of place

Elmer: Oh and you saw the future?

Davey: my legs hurt. We don't move for this one do you think I can lay down and play?

Denton: okay musicians just relax for this run, you can sit and play while the fronts figure things out

Davey: ooh I'm gonna lay down and play!

Spot: you're an idiot

Davey: shut up help me lay down!

Spot: *helps Davey lay down with his drums on looking at him like he's stupid the whole time*

Davey: oh yeah. This is it.

[ignitingwriting]

Igniting Writing ‘Return’ Contest 2022, Submission by Annabel

Photographic Memory "We take photos as a return ticket to moments otherwise gone." Katie Thurmes I traced the letters of my grandmother's neat, cursive handwriting on the back of the camera box. "She wanted me to have this?" I asked, putting the old camera back inside carefully.

"Yes, she specified the camera was for you and now you're old enough to have it," my mother smiled. "I can show you the previous films from the camera if you want?"

I nodded, eager to learn more about my grandmother. My mother fetched another box. I undid the ribbon and opened the box, unfolding the letter inside.

'To Sierra, if you're reading this; happy 16th birthday! Hopefully, I'm there with you today, celebrating all day. Love Grandma.'

I smiled. I couldn't remember what my grandmother was like - she had dementia since I was young - but this letter provided me with some comfort that she knew me once, even if not now.

"I'll go and make some lunch and leave you to look through the photos."

There were lots of smaller boxes inside the large box, each dated with the ages Grandma was when the photos were taken. I started with the earliest: ages 16-20. The first photo was of my grandmother and her friends enjoying their ice creams at a parlour. I squinted to get a better look - suddenly the scene came to life in front of my very eyes.

"Betty, what flavour did you want?" one of the girls asked my grandmother, twiddling her pigtails.

"Aww, come on Peggy, you know she wants cherry and I'll have pineapple; it's the same as always," another girl shouted, rolling her eyes.

Peggy returned with the ice creams. "Here you go, cherry for Betty, pineapple for Linda and vanilla for me!"

They began to eat their ice creams, my grandmother licking hers daintily. The others finished way before her and kept trying to hurry her up, laughing while they began to discuss boys they liked.

"We know Peggy likes John and I like Peter, but who do you like, Betty?" Linda teased. My grandmother shook her head.

"Come on, Betty, you know who we like." Peggy poked her jokingly.

"Ok, ok, I like Joe," Grandma giggled, blushing. Joe was my grandfather's name, but I never knew they had met in their teens. I never liked to ask my mother about them in case I upset her.

The image stopped moving. Watching my grandmother and her friends when they were my age was truly amazing; I felt closer to her than ever before, she was just like how I imagined her. Cherry ice cream was my favourite too - perhaps we were more similar than I thought.

So much of my grandmother's life was documented on these films, all her special moments in early adulthood. Her wedding was beautiful; gentle piano music accompanied my grandparents' first dance under a canopy of white roses. My grandmother wore a flowing white dress with poofy sleeves. It seemed like the perfect day for her and my grandfather, even though they were so young. I wished I could ask her whether it was everything she imagined it to be, as to me it seemed magical.

Even though the photos were in black and white, each moment appeared in vivid colour. I decided to open the next box, ages 21-27. This box was filled with photos of my mother's older sisters, Tiffany and Melissa, in their infancies. I could see the adoring look in my grandmother's eyes as she cared for them, fussing over every small detail.

28-37 contained my mother and her twin brother Christopher's early childhood and Tiffany and Melissa's first days of secondary school. It was fascinating to watch my mother and her siblings grow up, learning more about their personalities as children. My favourite was them all at the beach.

"Who's coming in the sea, then?"

Melissa jumped to her feet. "Me!" She was always the sporty one; now she runs marathons in her spare time.

"I'm reading," Tiffany moaned; no surprises there, her entire house is like a library.

My mother and Christopher were building a sandcastle together in their matching stripey swimsuits, but they stopped and ran down to the sea together, soaking my grandmother and Melissa from head to toe with their vigorous splashing. They all looked so happy playing in the water.

It had been a long time since they were all together; Melissa hadn't visited since Grandma's memory started to decline rapidly. She claimed she didn't want her memories of Grandma tarnished by her fading memory.

The 38-50 box had all four of the children's 16th and 18th birthday parties. They all had personalised cakes with their name and age in their favourite colours. Birthdays were the most special event of the year to my grandma, so the parties were very extravagant. It wasn't the same anymore; Grandma couldn't even remember my name, let alone my birthday.

The final box was labelled 51-. She never finished it before she started to decline. There were several photos of my cousins as babies in my grandmother's arms. The rest of the photos were of me as a baby with Grandma. They showed us until my third birthday party then abruptly stopped.

The final photo was of the letter on the front of the box, a farewell to the collection of photos as she slowly lost her memories of all these events. I smiled sadly; knowing of the wonderful times she had experienced made it sadder that she couldn't remember those happy moments.

My mother returned to the room. "Sierra, ham or cheese sandwich?"

"Mum, can we take the photos to Grandma and see if it helps her remember them?"

She sighed. "Sierra, we can go after lunch and you can try, but I don't think it'll help. She calls you Kelly because she can't remember who you are - she thinks you're me. But we can try, sweetheart."

It wasn't long before we were knocking on the door to Grandma's room at her home.

"Hey Grandma, I’ve got something to show you," I smiled, sitting down next to her on the bed. My mum stood in the doorway, watching fondly as I opened the first box. "Look Grandma, this is you, Peggy and Linda eating ice cream; you had cherry as it's your favourite."

My mum came and sat down next to me. "And this is you and Dad getting married and here's us all at the beach - you and your four children," she explained calmly. "These are of our birthday parties at 16 and 18."

I squeezed her hand and continued. "This is you with me as a baby, Grandma. Remember? I’m your granddaughter."

Grandma smiled as we showed her the photos. "Sierra, Kelly," she murmured, gesturing to the old camera in my pocket.

Although that was the last time my grandmother truly returned to us before she died, she gave me and my mother a special moment to return to whenever we miss her, forever concealed in a photo.

[anonymous-dentist]

Truth in the Tales: The Town That Went Mad (Parts 1 & 2), Witches, and Jamestown

So, this one’s topical! Definitely not for any political reasons at all (no, not at all), but because we just got a non-canonical sequel! 

Hi, I’m A.D., I’m a history student, and this week’s Truths are about two European (specifically English) settlements in the New World that went fucking insane. The lessons won’t be completely comprehensive, but I encourage those interested to go on their own dive, and I’m always willing to explain more in detail if asked.

Once again, I’m using the Tales from the SMP carrd to get these episodes. The carrd is credited to @discduo on Tumblr, but if that’s not right, I’ll figure out who it actually is and link accordingly. With all the credits and citations I’m fixin’ to use, it’ll be a wonder if this makes it into the tags at all...

(Painting: Examination of a Witch by T. H. Matteson.)

The episode stars Karl Jacobs, BadBoyHalo, Corpse Husband, Dream, GeorgeNotFound, LazarBeam, Ponk, Quackity, and Tubbo. The episode takes place hundreds of years in the past and follows the village of "Not A Very Good Town" as its inhabitants (all except Karl) roleplay the game Town of Salem (also known as Mafia). The stream was comprised of two rounds, one practice round and one canon round.

Part One: The Salem Witch Trials

(Note: Most of this section comes from my own memory. I was a weird child.)

The Town That Went Mad is, as the episode description says, based off of the game Town of Salem. 

(Image courtesy Steam.)

Town of Salem is (again, as the episode description says) basically the card game mafia. There’s a group of people, and they have to find the witches/the mafia and vote them out before the mafia kills them all. 

Now, there wasn’t a mafia in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, in the final decades of the 17th century. What there were a lot of were what we call WASPs these days. That is to say, White Anglo Saxon Protestants. More specifically, these people were Puritans. And the Puritans were bad news. Imagine the most hardcore Christians possible, then make them more hardcore. They didn’t have funerals for their deceased until the mid-18th century because they believed funerals to be unholy. They were heavy believers in the patriarchy. A woman’s place, to a Puritan, was in the home having children and taking care of children. But not too many children, for having too many children would be a sign of dealing with the devil. And not too few children, either, for having too few children would be a sign of dealing with the devil. 

The Puritans left England for the New World because of religious persecution. That is because they were so unpopular in England that they got chased out of the country. I am saying this because it is true, not as any part of a political statement. The English fucking hated these guys. 

So the Puritans (among other New World settlers) ended up in what is now the northeastern section of the United States. Namely: Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Maine. Rhode Island and Connecticut are outliers and should not be considered for the sake of this post, and nobody gave a fuck about Vermont even back then. 

(Map: Salem’s location in Massachusetts.)

Cut to the year 1692. Fresh out of a British war with France in 1689 and a smallpox epidemic, the settlers of Salem Village were on edge. Add to that general Puritan paranoia (you didn’t know who would end up being an agent of the devil) and the villagers’ hatred of outsiders, and maybe some poisonous fungus, and you have the set up for one hell of a year. 

In the January of 1692, two young girls- Elizabeth “Betty” Parris and Abigail Williams- began having fits. Imagine a stereotypical demonic possession: coughing, twitching, spasming, uncontrollable screaming. Soon, more and more young girls began showing the same signs of “bewitchment”, including one Anne Putnam, Jr., which will come back up in a moment. In February, an arrest warrant was put out for local minister Samuel Parris’s Caribbean slave Tituba as well as two other women: a homeless beggar named Sarah Good and an elderly woman named Sarah Osborn. See, the women were witches. That was the only reasonable explanation. 

From there, things only got worse. 

During their trial, Good and Osborn pleaded not guilty. Tituba, likely trying to get off with a lighter sentence, claimed that there were other witches besides her in Salem. And that’s where the fun part began.

(Engraving: Unattributed.)

Beginning in the May of 1692, the Salem Witch Trials proper began. Over the course of the next year, 19 people were hanged upon suspicion of being a witch, 5 people died in prison, and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed under heavy stones until he was dead. Not all of the convicted were women, but the men who were suspected-slash-convicted-slash-killed were all related to the women accused. Interestingly enough, many of the accused were enemies of the Putnam family, with Putnam family members and supporters accusing even upstanding members of the village of witchcraft so long as the accused were people the Putnams were not in favor of. 

I could go into long and heavy detail about just how this all went down, but, frankly, it’s a lot of legal bullshit nobody would be interested in. Needless to say, it didn’t reflect well upon the colony of Massachusetts that a single village had managed to spark a hysterical sweep of witch mania across the entire New World. 

The Witch Trials ended in the May of 1693 when Governor William Phips stepped in and shut the whole thing down. 

To this day, a witch hunt is used to describe a collection of pointless and generally-evidenceless accusation. Former President Tr*mp used the phrase a lot, though he used it incorrectly. 

Part Two: Jamestown

There was originally only going to be one part to this post, the Witch Trials, but since Karl gave us a non-canon sequel to the episode, I think it’s only fair that I get to talk about something else neat from this time period as well. 

So let me tell you all about the English colony that nearly ate itself to death.

(Note: Most of this section comes from my memory. Again, I was a weird child.)

(Map: Jamestown in relation to other English colonies.)

Jamestown is probably one of the more famous colonies from the time period. It was founded in 1606 by the Virginia Company and, despite going through many hardships, became the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Prior to Jamestown was the failure colony of Roanoke, famous for its bullshit “disappearing colony” story. You all might remember Jamestown best for one of its leaders, a mister John Smith, who was absolutely nothing like how the Disney movie Pocahontas portrays him. 

(Engraving: Jamestown: Massacre, 1622.' / 'The Massacre At Jamestown, Virginia, 1622.)

But this isn’t about John Smith. No. Because he actually went back to England in the winter of 1609, leaving the colony to fend for itself in the harshest winter its settlers had ever seen. 

The winter of 1609-1610 is now known as “The Starving Times”, and for good reason! Things were fucked! There was famine. There was snow. There was sickness. Jamestown depended on outside trading for food for the most part, but their main trading partner, the local Powhatan tribe, refused to trade after food supplies began running low on their end after a 7 year famine. On top of that, the settlers were too afraid to leave their homes for fear of getting killed by the Powhatans , and for good reason. See, tensions had only been growing between the settlers and the tribe. It had gotten to the point by winter 1609 that the settlers, after trying to basically steal the last of the Powhatans’ food stores during a famine, had pissed the Powhatans off for the last time. They were killing any and all Englishmen found outside of the settlement, even, so nobody could go hunting. But that isn’t important. What is important is the fun bit that’s about to happen, and one of my favorite topics to talk about: cannibalism. 

It starts like this: 

You don’t have any food. The ground is cold and dead, and you can’t grow food. You can’t leave your homes to hunt for food. Because of the lack of nutrients, sickness begins sweeping across your village like crazy. Typhoid, mostly, but also colonial favorite dysentery. People start dying. Houses were torn down to be used as firewood.

Settlers, starving, began eating shoe leather and butchering horses. They ate dogs, cats, vermin, anything they could get their hands on. Insects, or whatever insects were hanging around in subzero temperatures in Virginia. Snakes. Rats. 

But then they ran out of even that. 

One man, George Percy, wrote what came next. 

“[Settlers] Licked upp the Bloode which ha[d] fallen from their weake fellowes.”

Settlers dug the dead out of their graves, according to Percy, and there is forensic evidence of at least one person- a 14 year old girl- having been butchered and cannibalized, though it’s assumed that she was already deceased at the time. 

(Photo courtesy the National Post.)

The winter was long and tortuous, and it nearly wiped Jamestown off of the map. If it had, then the United States of America might not even be a country, or it wouldn’t be as Anglicized as it is.

But, well, it didn’t disappear. Ships came in 1610 with supplies for settlers, and what came after was a relatively good time for English colonization. Unfortunately, that had horrible consequences for the local Native Americans. And from there, it’s all history. 

Part Three: Conclusions?

Now, I originally wanted to do this post on torture devices because I know a lot about those, but I decided against it. 

But back to Tales. 

The Town That Went Mad is, again, purely Town of Salem. The way that the trials are carried out played out surprisingly close to the way that the original witch trials went. The accused were accused by their own friends and neighbors, people they had previously loved and cared about, and they were shown little to no mercy. 

The episode itself has uh. Nothing at all to do with Jamestown. I just think Jamestown’s Starving Times are neat. I could talk all day about cannibalism, and I will when we get to the Wild West episode (if anybody has seen the Donner Party episode of Puppet History, you know what I’m talking about.)

Anyway. 

Next ‘Week’: The Beach Episode and Actual Goddamn Motherfucking Piracy

[terraxcloud]

Possibilities that Terra was supposed to have a cat in FF6

I’ve had a belief for a long time that Terra was originally supposed to have had a cat in FF6. Just like the main character being cut and appearing in FF7, this cat has also likely gotten the same fate as Cloud.

There are quite a lot of details that support this, so for this post I’ll just list them:

I’m almost certain Rinoa was designed to be an “opposite version” of Terra (just like Squall [Griever is a lion] is to Cloud [Fenrir is a wolf]). She has a dog named “Angelo”, which means the dog is “good” spirited. Terra in this case would have had a “bad” spirited cat in FF6.

Terra’s habit of hugging moogles in later games is a bit strange...when did that start? Dissidia? Probably way earlier. She hugs them like they were cats, and it was easy (for me at least) to see those similarities. Also, Terra’s “concept” art w/ any moogles came after FF6 (like this one). Mog’s Amano art does not include Terra (well, except whatever this is), although one appears to have...Cloud!? Main character of FF6? Too little info, but for reference here’s Nomura’s drawing.

Serah Farron is another character designed after Terra, but more as a similar than an opposite. She has cat-shaped earrings, and at the beginning of FF13-2, she has a cat, her weapon is a moogle transmogrified into a bow, she’s a grade-school teacher (her connection to children)...yeah, definitely designed after Terra.

The Choco-mog summon in FF7 is likely a symbol of Terra riding magitek armor (it’s kinda designed after a chocobo). If that’s the case, the inclusion of Cait Sith sitting on top of a moogle is supposed to symbolize Terra’s cat. Thing is, he’s a robot, so he can’t actually BE her cat. He is kinda of a “bad-spirited” character though, and their tenacity in having this weird character in FF7 is a reason by itself that there’s something behind it. 

The Avalanche crew in FF7R (Biggs, Wedge, & Jessie) were given traits similar to Terra’s interests. Biggs is the orphanage, Jessie is the “princess” (or the temporary replacement for Terra), and Wedge has...CATS. A couple pictures of black cats appear by the “missing book ‘II’” book racks, which are Dissidia hints. The sheer amount of cats in FF7R is clue enough that something’s up, including the white cats of Betty (Advent Children’s “Moogle Girl”).

In Tifa’s part of Traces of Two Pasts (translated), she’s given a cat named “Maru”. The interesting part is the line given in the translated version - “Note: Some people have mentioned that Maru, transliterated to English, sounds like the word “mal” in French, which means bad/evil.” That is the opposite of Rinoa’s dog “Angelo”.

There are are multiple characters that are given “Moogle Girl” hair bangs. These characters have traits that are from Terra (usually cut from FF6 like “dancing”, flutes(?) and her childhood). The three related to cats are Lilisette, who chases after the “mythological” Cait Sith, the “cat-girl” Y’shtola, and...Sherlotta.

Sherlotta is the one who I believe IS Terra’s cat, or at least, possessed Terra’s cat. Her personality is based on the cat’s, and she’s definitely very bad-spirited.

Do you remember the moments in FF7R where Cloud follows a cat? Sherlotta’s cat does the same thing in her game when the villain shatters her crystal. There is a possibility that FF7R is literally referencing this cat.

Sherlotta (Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time) was given a story very, very similar to Terra’s, which makes it easy to tie the two characters together. An old guy named Larkeicus (designed after Hojo, who’s designed after Kefka) uses/enslaves Sherlotta for her power to make crystals. 

She has a deep bonding moment with some baby she found in the forest, basically becoming a “mother” character (actually, on the level of Jenova, Terra, and Aerith). At the end she talks to Larkeicus about “her purpose of living” just like Terra did to Kefka at the end of FF6.

When Terra travels with Vaan in Dissidia 012, she asks Vaan to kill her so she wouldn’t let others suffer because of her.

Sherlotta tells her own child to do the same to her real body, verifying the possibility that Terra would have done the same in FF6, because Sherlotta’s backstory is clearly ripped from Terra.

Terra’s cat would have been “bad spirited”, and that’s literally Sherlotta’s character when she faces strangers. She asks a child (in front of his mom) to kill her to prove she’s immortal. As if that’s the only thing! She lives with dead people, wants people to believe she’s a witch, and is clearly violent.

Her entire character in World of Final Fantasy is literally violence. This behavior is so a part of her character that it is noteworthy by itself.

DFFOO toned down her demonic behavior, but in the 2nd anniversary splash screen, she’s right beside Terra.

Note that Cloud’s Buster Sword is right in front of Terra. Serah’s also beside them. This image definitely says a lot.

Putting this information all together, Terra likely had a cat when she was a child (since Tifa was given one at that age) and it probably is Sherlotta’s cat, since it looks similar to Cait Sith. The main character of FF6 would have interacted with this cat. The cat would have been mean-spirited to everyone she was unfamiliar with. Terra would have gotten her hugging obsession from this cat.

Truth be told, there must be something important related to cats if they’re used in such a cryptic way as the pic below. It could be that Cloud’s “remembrance” of Terra is tied to her cat, and we can know this thanks to how Traces of Two Pasts shows Cloud’s relation to Tifa’s cat.

Picture of a black cat, picture of the Sector 6 reactor, and the missing book ‘II’ bookrack. This is from Aerith’s house, and it’s below a picture of a dancing couple. 

The other cat picture is in Jessie’s house where Cloud reads her note (the cat Cloud follows appears right before this moment). That cat may be a direct reference to the cut main character of FF6′s actions around Terra’s cut cat, and also a reference to Sherlotta.

When it comes to moogles though...I believe they are more of her “identity” than anything. Cloud was given the same “identity” with chocobos for some reason (they specifically wanted him to have a chocobo haircut).

Translated version of Traces of Two Pasts - Tifa.

[corkcitylibraries]

Betty Friedan and Second Wave Feminism in the USA and Ireland

by Deirdre Swain

The Cork City Reference Library holds a large collection of books about feminism, particularly Irish feminism. BorrowBox also possesses a range of eBooks on feminism that were published in the last 7 years. In this article, I will discuss Betty Friedan, a well-known American feminist who was born in February 1921, and the second-wave feminist movement in Ireland. I will then introduce a reading list of books on feminism which are available on BorrowBox. I will also provide a reading list of books on feminism which will be available in the Reference Library once it re-opens to the public.

Betty Friedan and Second Wave Feminism in the USA

The recent TV drama, Mrs. America depicts the struggle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA in the 1970s. The popularity of this TV series demonstrates a renewed interest in the women’s liberation movement and certain prominent and influential American feminists, namely Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug.

February 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Betty Friedan, one of these second wave feminists and author of the seminal feminist text, The Feminine Mystique. She was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein to a Jewish family in Peoria, Illinois on 4 February 1921. Her mother, Miriam Horwitz, was an unhappy housewife whose parents, Hungarian Jewish immigrants, did not allow her to go to university. Miriam encouraged Betty to do the opposite, and she strongly supported her daughter’s education. Betty went to university in Smith College, graduating in 1942. She then studied Psychology in the University of California, Berkeley, for a year. Thereafter, she worked as a journalist in New York, writing about the Jim Crow laws and anti-Semitism. Later, she worked as a women’s magazine writer. In 1949, she married Carl Friedman (later Friedan), and they had 3 children. They got divorced in 1969.

In 1957, Betty attended the 15th anniversary of her graduation from Smith College. At this reunion, she conducted a survey on her former fellow students (females) to explore the direction of their lives since graduation. She was perturbed by the amount of discontent among them. This revelation about the lives of her peers led to the writing of her book, The Feminine Mystique. This publication recounts the dilemma of suburban housewives, who are expected to spend all of their time on domestic duties and the rearing of children. They are overshadowed constantly by the thought, “Is this it?” They feel guilty for not being satisfied with their role, but they cannot deny the fact that they are unfulfilled. The “feminine mystique” of the book’s title is the societal assumption that household duties and motherhood alone will give women a sense of achievement. Friedan coined the phrase “the problem with no name” to describe women’s unhappiness with and inability to live up to this feminine mystique. She contended that women could have a successful career as well as a family.

The book sold three million copies and resonated with many suburban women because it showed them that they were not alone in their feelings of dissatisfaction. It was also strongly criticised for its homophobic language and for excluding Black and working class women. It spoke from a standpoint where every American housewife was white and middle class. Her solution to the problem of “the feminine mystique” (delegating housework) were also criticised for being inadequate and for failing to tackle the problem fully.

Friedan was aware of some of the shortcomings of The Feminine Mystique, and she wrote a second book to tackle some of the problems not resolved in the first one, including the double enslavement of working women who still had to do all the housework. The title of this book is The Second Stage. She also wrote numerous other books, including It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement, which was published in 1976 and Beyond Gender: the New Politics of Family and Work, which was published in 1998.

Betty Friedan was a women’s activist and fought for reproductive rights, equal pay, equal representation and equality in hiring. She co-founded the National Organisation for Women (NOW) in 1966. In 1969, she launched the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL Pro-Choice America). She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) with Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and several other women in 1971. The NWPC is a US organisation which supports and trains women who seek elected and appointed offices in all levels of government. Betty was quick-tempered, and she tended to lash out at people, including other feminists such as Gloria Steinem, even though they had similar aspirations for women. She was also quite disparaging in her treatment of lesbian women, referring to them as “the lavender menace”.

Later in her life, Friedan became a Zionist and fought to expose Anti-Semitism in the women’s movement. She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award in 1989 and was awarded honorary degrees by the State University of New York and Columbia University. She died on her birthday, 4 February, in Washington DC in 2006, aged 85.

What advances for women were taking place in Ireland during the time of Betty Friedan’s activism in the United States?

The Irish Women’s Liberation Movement

In the summer of 1970, five women met in Bewley’s café in Dublin and decided that it was time for some drastic changes in Irish women’s lives; time to fight for equal rights. That day, these women held what was to be the first meeting of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) group, the first radical women’s liberation group in Ireland. Although the group lasted little more than seven months, its legacy changed women’s lives significantly and positively. As proof of the success of the IWLM, the two injustices that this group fought hardest against – the marriage bar, which was abolished in 1973, and the illegality of contraception – are unimaginable in today’s world.

Margaret Gaj owned the restaurant, Gaj’s, on Baggot Street, where the IWLM would meet every Monday night. Margaret Gaj was passionate about women’s rights. Her circle of friends included Sinn Féin official Máirín de Búrca, journalist Mary Maher, who was interested in socialist issues, Máirín Johnston, who was a member of the Communist Party and who was also active in the Labour Party and Dr. Moira Woods, who was in an organisation called Irish Voice on Vietnam, which protested against the war in Vietnam. These five women started the IWLM group that day in the summer of 1970 in Bewley’s café, but around a dozen women were actively involved in the founding of this women’s organisation, the majority of them journalists. Nell McCafferty and Mary Kenny, both journalists, were two prominent founders of the IWLM.

Chains or Change was the title of the IWLM charter. It was put together in the form of a booklet which detailed the goals and ideals that the IWLM strove for. There were 6 demands: equal pay; an end to the marriage bar that kept women from working after they got married; equal rights in law; justice for widows, deserted wives and “unmarried mothers”; equal education opportunities; and the legalisation of contraception. Neither abortion nor divorce were mentioned at all in Chains or Change. When the most basic civil rights for women were being fought for, abortion and divorce did not even arise because they were not considered to be a priority. The booklet was a milestone in the history of women’s rights in Ireland, because it was the first time that anyone had published a comprehensive list of the injustices that church, state and social code perpetuated against women.

Nell McCafferty

Nell McCafferty was born in Derry. She got her degree from Queen’s University in Belfast and trained as a teacher, but she could not get a job in Derry, because the Protestant schools knew she was Catholic, and the Catholic schools did not think she was a real Catholic but, rather, a communist. She moved to Dublin to work as a journalist for the Irish Times. Nell writes in her autobiography of an incident from when she first moved to Dublin; she wanted to buy a record player on hire purchase but was told that no woman could sign an agreement without the co-signature of a male guarantor. A male stranger signed for her because she did not know any men in Dublin. This man was unemployed, and her own earnings amounted to five times more than his welfare entitlements.

Nell was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM). In the IWLM, Nell was someone who could be depended upon to put forward forceful arguments that were backed up by accurate facts, and she could convey them both in writing and in person.          

Nell’s journalism was objective, and she used it to bear witness to the struggles of the oppressed. She did not even have to give her opinion; her writing style and her description of what she observed in society were enough to expose hypocrisy and injustice without her having to comment on the issues herself. As well as being a feminist activist, Nell was also a civil rights activist on issues in Northern Ireland. When she started to work at the Irish Times, she joined the “women’s page” staff. Initially, she was fearful that this would involve writing about fashion, cooking and babies, but it actually enabled her to write on issues regarding women’s liberation and women’s rights.                    

The Contraceptive Train

In May 1971, the IWLM founders organised what became known as the “contraceptive train”, which was a protest against the fact that contraceptives were illegal in the Republic of Ireland. Nell McCafferty said that she had got the idea for the contraceptive train when she was in Northern Ireland at a civil rights march. The march went from North to South, and at the border, a student activist called Cyril Tallman held up a copy of Edna O’Brien’s novel Country Girls in one hand and a Durex condom in the other, saying that both were banned in the South. Nell was initially indignant about the condom, but the following year when the IWLM was talking about contraceptives, Nell got the idea of reversing the journey from Dublin to the North.

There was a ban on contraception in the Republic of Ireland, which was enshrined in the 1935 Criminal Law Act. This made the importation, distribution and sale of contraceptive devices a criminal offence. Advertising contraceptives was also illegal. The contraceptive pill was available in Ireland only on prescription, as a “menstrual cycle regulator”.

There were 47 founders and members of the IWLM on the contraceptive train on 22 May 1971, just enough to fill two carriages. However, when Nell McCafferty asked for a packet of contraceptive pills in a Belfast pharmacy, she was asked for a prescription, and the same happened when she asked for a coil, loop and Dutch cap. It turned out that the only contraceptives that were available in Belfast without prescription were condoms and spermicidal jelly. Nell was not happy with the prospect of taking a stand at Dublin customs with just condoms and spermicidal jelly, so it was decided that packets of aspirins would be bought, since they were similar enough in appearance to contraceptive pills that it was hoped they would pass for same! When the women arrived at customs in Dublin, the customs officers told them they were breaking the law, but let them through, because arresting them was not an option for them. The contraceptive train accomplished what it set out to do; the state refused to lift the ban on contraceptives, but it also failed to enforce it. The IWLM exposed this hypocrisy and proved that women would be free to import contraceptives from the North into the Republic from then on without any interference from law enforcement officials. Nell McCafferty made a statement at the train station, and two of the women went on the Late Late Show on TV to talk about the experience.

Mary Robinson failed in March and May of 1971 to get the Senate to add her Contraceptive Bill to its order paper. Despite Mary Robinson’s and the IWLM’s efforts to legalise contraceptives, it was not until 1979 that the government passed the Family Planning Act. This Act allowed solely married couples to get access to contraceptive devices other than the pill with a prescription. Family Planning clinics were already selling condoms, but the government was turning a blind eye to this because they were accepting “donations” in exchange for the condoms. In 1990, the Irish Family Planning Association was fined £500 for selling condoms in the Virgin Megastore in Dublin. Finally, in 1992, the government extended legislation to allow supermarkets and retail stores to sell condoms. The contraceptive train literally set the wheels in motion regarding the legalisation of contraceptives, but it took a long time before the law was changed for the benefit of women.

References

-Code, L., ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. London: Routledge.

-Parry, M. (2010). ‘Betty Friedan: Feminist Icon and Founder of the National Organization for Women’, American Journal of Public Health, 100 (9), pp. 1584-1585.

-Shteir, R. (2021). ‘Why We Can’t Stop Talking about Betty Friedan’, New York Times, 3 February. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/us/betty-friedan-feminism-legacy.html (Accessed: 9 February 2021).

McCafferty, N. (2004). Nell: a Disorderly Woman. Dublin: Penguin Ireland.

Stopper, A. (2006). Mondays at Gaj’s: The Story of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Dublin: The Liffey Press.

Reading list of books on feminism

Available on BorrowBox:

-Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published in 2017): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCU_469861&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Feminist Fight Club, by Jessica Bennett (published in 2016): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=PRU_398091&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (And Other Lies), by Scarlett Curtis (published in 2018): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=PRU_574840&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-Give Birth Like a Feminist, by Milli Hill (published in 2019): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCU_655895&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

-We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published in 2014): https://fe.bolindadigital.com/wldcs_bol_fo/b2i/productDetail.html?productId=HCP_402800&fromPage=1&b2bSite=4813

Available in the Reference Library, Grand Parade

-Code, L., ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. London: Routledge.

-McCafferty, N. (1984). The best of Nell: a selection of writings over fourteen years. Dublin: Attic Press.

- Stopper, A. (2006). Mondays at Gaj’s: The Story of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. Dublin: The Liffey Press.

-Pierse, Mary S. (ed.) (2010). Irish Feminisms, 1810-1930. Abingdon: Edition Synapse/Routledge (5 volumes).

-Owens, R. (2005). A social history of women in Ireland, 1870-1970. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.

-Connolly, L. and O’Toole, T. (2005). Documenting Irish Feminisms: the Second Wave. Dublin: The Woodfield Press.

-Connolly, L. (2002). The Irish women’s movement: from revolution to devolution. Dublin: Lilliput Press.

-Rose, C. (1975). The female experience: the story of the woman movement in Ireland. Galway: Arlen House.

[mst3kproject]

Magic Christmas Tree

I thought I’d try something different this year and find a bad Hannukah movie, but everybody I asked had the same recommendation: Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.  I know for a fact that is a prohibitively awful film, because I know people who’ve watched parts of it (I have not to date met anyone who could sit through the whole thing), but it just doesn’t feel like an MST3K feature to me.  Anyway, I have standards.  My conclusion is that people need to make more Hannukah movies… and until that happens, I’m watching Magic Christmas Tree, which comes specially recommended by RiffTrax.

This is the only Christmas movie I’ve ever seen which starts with cheerful holiday music over footage of… Hallowe’en decorations. Obnoxious bully Mark and his two pushover friends decide to go investigate a supposedly-haunted house. Naturally the old lady who lives there is a witch, and in exchange for Mark rescuing her cat, she gives him a seed for a magical tree that will grant him three wishes.  Two months later, with the tree fully grown, his first wish is to have magical powers for one hour – he uses them to torment unfortunate people who were already having to work on Christmas Eve.  His second wish is to kidnap Santa Claus and extort unlimited presents from him, but that attracts the attention of the spirit of Greed, who intends to keep Mark as a slave forever!  Good thing he’s still got that third wish.

God, I hate this movie.  I’d say it’s the worst Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, but Elves exists, so instead I have to say it’s the worst Christmas movie that didn’t have any Nazis in it.  It reminds me more than anything else of Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, in that it’s an absolute mess that seems to have been put together by people who have no idea what they’re doing.  It spends most of its time on boring, annoying irrelevant bullshit, and then when it gets to the plot, that’s boring and annoying, too!

Magic Christmas Tree is only an hour long, but that’s twice as long as it needed to be.  A plot summary makes it sound like most of the film will be dealing with Mark’s three wishes and how he uses them, but it’s half-over before we even get to that point.  The time leading up to it is spent watching Mark follow the witch’s complicated instructions on how to grow and activate the tree, and his parents dealing with this unwanted thing appearing in the middle of their back yard.  All of this is presented in excruciating detail.  We watch Mark dig the entire hole to plant the seed in.  We see his Dad struggle with the lawnmower at unbelievable length, while the Mom yacks about nothing on the phone with her friend Betty.  The Dad tries to cut the tree down with no success.  Mark has to say a set of magic words over and over and over.

It goes on so long, it passes the are you fucking kidding me? point and wanders into territory where you wonder if there’s something wrong with the disk and you’re playing the scene over and over.  It actually starts to feel like it’s on purpose – especially when the slowness is repeatedly emphasized by shots of Mark’s pet tortoise, Ichabod, who seems to be eating his patch of clover far faster than anybody else is accomplishing anything.  You’ll swear the movie is making fun of you.

The sound that accompanies all this is sometimes very peculiar.  The old lady has exactly the voice you’d expect from a witch in a cheap kid’s movie, but Mark’s Mom sounds like she’s being dubbed by a twelve-year-old boy, possibly the same one who provided the voice for Mark himself.  The tree speaks (oh, yes, it does) in the voice of a smarmy stereotypical gay man.  Santa Claus sounds like he’s half-senile and wondering what’s for lunch.

The lawnmower makes some very strange noises indeed. I guess they’re meant to be cartoonish and funny.  They’re definitely the former but they’re never the latter, possibly because they never sound remotely like a lawnmower.  When Mark’s Dad is trying to get it started it sounds like the ghost of a consumptive horse, and three hours later when it actually gets going, it makes noises like a traffic jam in Whoville.

Besides sounding weird, the actors are just plain bad.  The guy playing Santa Claus is half-asleep.  We’re told that the tree’s magic means he’s trapped in the chair he’s sitting in, and I honestly do believe that actor could not have gotten up if he tried, no wishes necessary.  The woman playing Mark’s Mom looks like she’s high as a kite and only barely keeping her grip on reality.  Maybe that’s why they had to dub her.  Mark’s Dad recites his lines like a guy on a game show reading his own life story off a teleprompter, and does his yard chores in a way that’s probably supposed to be pantomimey but is the opposite of entertaining.  The Dad gets an inordinate amount of screen time, which I can only chalk up to the fact that he’s played by director Dick Parish.

The worst of the lot are, of course, the kids, who are predictably terrible 60’s child actors.  They yell all their lines, with the volume and exaggerated emphasis you expect from a school play.  It wears thin very, very quickly.  The kid playing Mark is the worst of the lot, although I might just think that because he’s the one we spend the most time with.  He’s a huge part of why this movie makes me so mad.

I think the best way to describe Mark as a character is to say that the first time I watched this movie I assumed his name was ‘Billy’, despite the fact that everybody kept calling him ‘Mark’. He just seems like the type of nasty little brat who’d be named ‘Billy’ in a bad 60’s Christmas movie.  We meet him having lunch with his two friends by the playground, and learn that he’s a greedy little shit when he drives a hard bargain in a sandwich trade.  Greedy-little-shit-itude continues to be his primary character trait and is, of course, the core of the movie’s lesson.  His attempt to monopolize Santa Claus makes him such a greedy little shit that Greed himself takes an interest in him.

Greed is a huge hairy man who takes delight in kidnapping little boys.  I think he’s supposed to look like a fairy tale giant.  Watching him manhandle a child is an intensely uncomfortable experience.

I guess ‘don’t be greedy’ is a standard message for a children’s movie, and it seems like a particularly appropriate one for Christmas, which presents children with a great opportunity for avarice. What seems a little odd is that Mark never actually suffers any consequences for his selfishness, only the vague threat of them. There was a perfect opportunity for some of this when Mark kidnaps Santa Claus.  Santa, after all, brings toys to good girls and boys… surely by this point, after his brief reign of terror with his magical powers, Mark has been naughty enough to deserve only coal.  Apparently that’s not how it works, though.  Mark just wanders off into the woods in search of small animals to shoot with his new rifle, runs into the giant, and immediately repents even though Greed is offering him all the toys and candy he wants.

What supposedly prompts Mark to become a better person is seeing how the world has responded to Santa Claus going missing.  Curiously, there is very little emphasis on the children who are sad because they didn’t get any presents.  Maybe somebody thought that would have made them seem greedy? Instead, the vision Greed presents to Mark is of the United States military mobilizing to locate Santa and bring him home, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians-style!  So… I guess Mark becomes a better person because he’s afraid of what’s going to happen if the army finds Santa trapped in a chair in his house?  I guess that is pretty terrifying.

Another thing that blunts the lesson is the fact that Mark is given his three wishes as a reward for a good deed.  He got the witch’s cat down from the tree, so she offers him the magical seed and doesn’t let him refuse.  What then was he supposed to use his three wishes for, if not to get stuff for himself? Was this intentionally a poisoned gift, because you shouldn’t accept things from witches?  The witch insists that there are good witches as well as wicked ones, but she’s not exactly an unbiased source.  The movie never tries to blame her, though.  The situation is presented as Mark’s fault, and Mark’s alone.

Finally, at the end Mark wakes up and finds that of course the whole thing was a dream – there was no witch, no magic tree, and no Santa Claus.  This is less annoying than it could have been because at least it’s not a surprise. Mark did hit his head when he fell out of the tree the cat was in, and the movie changed from black and white to colour.  We’ve seen this before in The Wizard of Oz and we can guess where it’s going. The audience might assume that Mark will wake up and immediately take the opportunity to be generous instead of greedy, perhaps by giving his friend something to make up for the lunch trade. Instead, the woman who owns the cat (who is not actually a witch, but looks even more like one in this part of the film than she does wearing the Hallowe’en witch costume in Mark’s dream) offers him milk and cookies, and he delightedly accepts.  This just gives the impression that he’s learned nothing.

Is there anything in this movie I didn’t hate?  Well… among Mark’s school friends is a token black kid, who is not differentiated in any way from his peers.  He talks like them, he dresses like them, and the writers did not use either his lunch or his Hallowe’en plans as a way to demarcate a class difference between him and the others.  So yeah, the movie sucks, but the writers tried really hard not to be racist.

Happy fucking holidays.  I want to say hooray for surviving 2020, but we’ve still got a week to go.  That’s plenty of time for oh, I don’t know, an alien invasion, or a giant meteor, or the Yellowstone supervolcano, or zombies, or whatever.  At this point, if most of us aren’t dead by this time next year, I’ll count that as a win.

[thejonzone]

Riverdale is the Best Show You’ve Written Off

About once a month, a tweet will go around, reading something like “I can’t believe Netflix cancelled [SHOW X], but Riverdale is still on?!? *eye roll emoji, angry cussing emoji*.” It can be difficult to read tweets like these, because I like Riverdale. But I understand why it has struggled to keep an audience-- there is a perception that the show has gone completely off the rails, a chaos of hot actors in their mid-20s playing glamorous high school sociopaths, with the show choosing excess over narrative cohesion. That perception is pretty accurate. It’s an easy show to write off and easy to make fun of, especially because, as a CW show, it’s ostensibly geared to teens. So it brings me no pleasure to say that Riverdale, currently in its 5th season, has reached a renaissance, and its episodes so far this season represent its high-water mark. 

To appreciate how stunning and exciting Riverdale’s new direction is, it’s important to understand how we got here.

In the first season, a murder in the titular town revealed an underbelly of thugs, power brokers, and shady backroom rulers, all vying for control with gothic morbidity. What followed after that season though, was something else entirely. 

Riverdale, ramping up during Seasons 2 through 4, became a beautiful mess. I think it’s important to state that no other show on television is even attempting to do what Riverdale did/is doing. The show is, at any one point, 5-7 wholly different shows. There is a season’s worth of plot per episode. It’s storytelling mania and in-real-time dementia. I don’t remember what happened at the end of last episode because SO much happened. And besides, coherence is overrated! Give me hot actors, give me drug-addicted mobsters, give me creepy principals! On Riverdale, the parents are both former teen heartthrobs and serial killers, children operate underground speakeasies, and for some reason not one therapist has realized they could make a fortune helping our cast work through the intense psychological terror and emotional abuse they receive every episode.

This show is beyond pastiche, hyper-loaded with reference. My roommate and I had a joke that the show’s third season could be mapped to a quadrant of influences: Twin Peaks, True Detective, The Sopranos, and Gossip Girl. At any point Riverdale was acknowledging and playing into the influence of one of these shows. Season Four doubled down on the show’s horror anthology tendency. No one wants you to miss the references being made. You know that menacing boarding school Jughead attends in Season Four? You’d be right If it reminded you of Donna Tartt’s A Secret History. After all, consider Jughead’s classmate, whose name is Donna Sweet. Maybe you picked up on the violence simmering underneath the surface of Jughead’s other classmate, Bret Easton-Elli--  I mean, Bret Weston-Wallis.

Every week, the show seems primed for failure, attempting to juggle more storylines than possible or even necessary. The show is like a house of cards that has already fallen, and yet the writers are somehow still haphazardly adding more cards to the top. “Be reasonable!” I would plead. To no avail. And that’s the thrill of it. The plotlines are secondary to the spectacle. The show is a celebration and parody of violent legacy dramas, camp, teen horror, canonical literature, and anything else it can stuff under the hood, as much an ode to other pieces of media as it is an original work itself. 

But now, something completely different is happening. The beginning of Season Five brought an end to the seasons-long saga the show felt trapped in. Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead graduated high school, and the show flashed forward seven years. What might be considered a hokey technique was one of the best decisions the writers ever did. Because now we have a blank slate for our main cast. The writers effectively cut the fat from three seasons of violent, ridiculous maximalism. And it’s psychically refreshing.

At the heart of any good sitcom, we just want to see our main characters hanging out together. Change is part of life, but it shouldn’t be in television. Which is why this new season is so exciting-- Riverdale is now in the process of bringing its four main characters back from their adult lives and re-engaging them in the deadly politics of their hometown. Pop Tate, the owner-manager of Pop’s, Riverdale’s diner, is retiring, and Archie gets the gang back in town to celebrate the man who helped make the diner such a great hang-out spot. In the words of Jughead, “You gave us a home, Pop.” Like so mant other sitcoms before it, Riverdale used Pop’s to establish its characters and their relationships to each other.

I grew up on Seinfeld so I’ve always been attracted to the idea of the diner. The pandemic has made me yearn even harder for the sitcom diner, that idealistic place where all my friends are, where people enter with problems to be solved, drama to be explained, good news to be celebrated. Riverdale’s acknowledgment of Pop and his diner as the show’s connective tissue is a grounding and human choice. It works fantastically to set up this upcoming season, where our gang must confront the newest nefarious plot for control over the soul of Riverdale.

No doubt the show will continue its pattern of naming and spoofing genre. Veronica, in her adult life, had an Uncut Gems-style few scenes where she works as a charismatic (of course) diamond merchant. She married a possessive, boring guy who’s only characteristic seems to be that his voice is *exactly* like Veronica’s megalomaniac dad, Hiram. Something something Freud, something something daddy sexy. And credit where credit is due, Mark Consuelos is really hot.

Jughead is a writer now, in the most white guy college freshman fantasy of being a writer possible. He attended the Iowa Writers Workshop as an undergrad, something that is definitely not possible. He’s written a hit book but now suffers from *gasp* writer’s block?? He’s a cool guy writer who, in his opening montage, gets recognized by, hit on, and then has sex with a college-aged fan. Back in Riverdale, Jug writes a speech for Pop’s retirement and sends it to his agent. His agent is smitten with the work, calling it “tragic americana” and proclaiming that Jughead’s next book will be titled “Elegy for a Small Town”. This is almost certainly a reference to J.D. Vance’s bad book, and I’m sure the show will be bringing in more elements of “tragic” “americana” as the season unfolds. 

Betty is FBI in training, because as the show has loved to tell us, Betty has “the serial killer gene”, but is using it for good. For the record, her dad was a serial killer, and her brother was a serial killer. And it’s not like her mom or sister can cast the first stone. Betty’s endured enough trauma to fill 100 lives with unending pain and I’m sure the show will have no trouble heaping more on top. Already in the new season we’ve seen flashbacks to some point during the time jump when Betty was taken hostage, in what’s clearly a homage to The Silence of the Lambs. 

And then there’s Archie. I don’t know if anyone knows what to do with the guy. Played by K.J. Apa, who is both really good-looking with his shirt off and a god-awful actor, Archie has been in the army. The show is using him to shill for the military-industrial complex. 

I’ve long joked that the Riverdale writers have no idea what they’re doing. But through a global pandemic affecting TV production and *the* major narrative complication in any high school-set show (graduation), the Riverdale writers have seamlessly transitioned the show to a new stasis. Past seasons are informing this one, but we aren’t bogged down by the details in this new season. The bigger joke, of course, is that the writers have known exactly what they’ve been doing this whole time, and I’m just an idiot. Well I mean, of course I’m an idiot. I use television to regulate my emotions and simulate a static friend group that doesn’t leave or change. And Riverdale is perfect for that. If a renaissance is a rebirth, well then my friends, cut the umbilical cord and save the placenta to put in pills, because Riverdale is cranking out episodes that are better than ever.

[ohvalleyofplentyyy]

Merlin’s Blood - Chapter 3

masterlist

ch.1   ch.2

Chapter 3: A Memory

Okay so I can either let the Bard drown and the Witcher die from water in his lungs… or save them.

Gross.

“Help! Oh please have mercy on me gods above! I’ll be good I promise, I’ll, I’ll pick up trash with I see it, I’ll pay for beer next time Geralt and I are at a pub! I’ll change my underwear daily—“

“Okay please stop I don’t need to know any more details about that!”

“AHH!”

Jaskier’s grip slipped as your voice surprised him but he clung onto the log for dear life again. He looked relieved to see you but then his face dropped. “Y/N you need to get out of here! I mean, putting me on the bank would be helpful but I don’t know when Geralt will wake up and… I don’t want him to do something he’ll regret.”

You moved your hand across the top of the water, dipping only your index and middle finger into the liquid. His shirt detached from whatever it was caught on and he started flowing downstream on the log. You then waved your arm and the current turned him to the bank. He climbed up onto the shore, panting from all the swimming.

“Alright,” you turned to leave but stopped and let out a big breath, “hold on, one more thing.”

You walked off the water and over to Geralt, Jaskier started crawling faster over, as if trying to block your path.

“Relax, I’m not going to kill him.”

Even though I should, but mom would never forgive me.

“Darling! What on Earth are you doing to the curtains?!” Your mother came rushing into the library, catching 9 year old you staring in terror and embarrassment at the satin curtains that were now on fire. “Mommy! I didn’t mean to! Rhean was teasing me about my lineage and I—“

Rhean was your older brother, well, adoptive older brother. His family and the kingdom he was from perished in a horrible war with the neighboring kingdom. The king was your father’s best friend and they had both made a vow that if something happened to the other, they would take in their children as their own.

You were only two when this happened and since you were the only child your parents ever had (i.e no boys) your father decided that it would be easier to just pass the throne to him.

Your mother had fought for you but in the end, to quote your dad, ‘it might be easier to just have a human rule a human kingdom instead of… whatever she is.’

Yeah, ouch.

Rhean, once he was old enough to understand that he would become king, made it his destiny to torture you with the fact that you had been passed up to rule and he was going to be in charge. You didn’t know why he punished you, maybe because of the fact that he had no family?

Honestly, it didn’t matter cause in the end, he died.

Your mother wrapped her arms around you and moved her right hand down in a straight line, ceasing the fire that raged in the room full of books. “It’s alright darling, look everything is back to normal.” You sniffled, “I’m not normal.”

She smiled sweetly at you but with a bit of sadness behind it. But you didn’t notice, you were 9 and the most important thing to you in that moment was what would happen to the now ruined curtains.

“It’s good to not be normal, being normal would be boring, you’d be like everyone else.” The queen picked you up and carried you up to your room, leaving a few maids to deal with the curtains.

Once in your room, your mother and you sat on the bed, looking out of the window watching the stars twinkle in the edge of evening. “Mommy, what’s Rhean always teasing me about? I’ve looked through almost all the books we have here but I can’t find any answers. What’s the matter with my lineage?” She took your hands in hers, “There’s nothing wrong with our bloodline, it’s just different from others and that makes them scared.”

You climbed farther up on the bed and wrapped your arms around your tiny kid legs, “How does Rhean know more about it than me?” “Your father thought that it would be better if the,” she swallowed, “future king knew about our… abilities.”

You scoffed, “He’s not the rightful heir, but he’s been chosen to precede father, how is that fair.”

She continued, “Y/N I need you to know that you are very powerful. Forget anything that Rhean says, just believe in yourself and be careful who you tell things to, the important things.”

She climbed up next to you snuggling down into the comforter. “The important things?” You questioned. “People can be cruel, you have a magic that some could only wish to imagine. Don’t tell anyone what you can do, unless you’re sure.”

“Okay Mommy.”

You moved both your hands each one starting from the top to the bottom, creating a circle. Then you moved both hands up, index fingers pointing at Geralt. Immediately he started coughing up water.

“Alright, since I just saved the man who wants to kill me, I’m going to leave and try to get a head start.” You turned to leave when the white-haired man rasped, “Wait.”

“Why should I?” You exclaimed, whipping around to see the two companions propped up against a tree. “Because I want to know if you know this name.” You crossed your arms, “Okay, shoot.”

“Nheanr.”

You searched your mind, eyebrows scrunched together.

Nheanr?

Doesn’t ring a bell. Hm.

“Nope, sorry. Can I go now?” The Witcher stood up on jelly legs, grumbling incoherent words to himself. Quickly, you moved into a defensive stance not knowing if he was tricking you or not. Moving your hands out to the water, you made an icicle form and come float at your side, pointed and ready to strike.

“I’ve decided not to kill you.”

You made a sarcastic grin at him, “Gee thanks, what a relief.” Jaskier now staggered up and walked between you. “Alright, so Geralt has said he means no harm, can you lower the ice dagger please?” You shot him a look, “You really think I’m going to believe him?”

The tall man leaned against the tree, “Why would someone be trying to kill you?” He said. You scoffed and rolled your eyes, “Hmm, I wonder why someone who wants to kill a person powerful enough to wipe out an entire order of mages and start a dictatorship over the entire continent.” The musician scrunched his face, “she’s got a point there.”

“Well whoever they are, they seem pretty determined to take your bloodline out.” You sighed, slightly lowering the icicle, causing Jaskier to let out a small breathe of relief.

“I just don’t know who has the records to know who’s a descendant and who isn’t, the books of my family tree were burned so long ago to keep us safe.” “Well, apparently some knowledge of your abilities didn’t go up in flames.”

You laughed and sunk into your left hip, dropping the hold on your dagger and propping your hand on your right hip. “You think?”

Time is of the essence, I need to go.

“I guess thanks for deciding to not kill me but I gotta go—“ “Wait!” Before you could teleport to anywhere but there, the bard shouted out. You looked at him, hand in position to leave, “What?” He shrugged his shoulders and walked over to Geralt, suspiciously mouthing something to him with his back turned you determined from the change in the Witcher’s face. He, with all his strength it looked like, wrapping an arm around the grumbling man and pulling him over to you.

“Why don’t we accompany you?”

You can never get things done simply can you Y/N?

You chuckled and started walking away, “Sorry boys I don’t feel like babysitting while on the run for my life.”

At your statement, the Witcher seemed to gain a bit of confidence and snapped back, “What do you mean babysit?” The two travel companions started following you into the forest, decidedly leaving the flooded river behind. You sighed and slowed your pace to walk between them.

“Didn’t I just save your life back there?” “Actually—“ “And didn’t I get your precious bard out of danger in that town— “Hey I was helping you—“ “Didn’t I have to take over the reins of, what’s his name, Roach?” At that statement, Geralt cackled surprisingly. “You never mentioned that Jaskier.” The musician now was a lovely shade of pink.

“Speaking of, where is your horse?” “Traded him for extra money I’ll get him later.” You raised an eyebrow at the odd statement but let it go, seeing as it wasn’t the strangest thing about this whole ordeal.

“Alright so where are we going, any plan?” Jaskier asked.

You bit the inside of your lip, debating if you could tell them your emergency idea you were thinking about the moment you watched that arrow embed itself in Branson. “Yeah, sort of.”

“Go on then, what’s the first step on this journey?”

“I’m going to find Merlin’s Tomb.”

masterlist

join my taglist! (it’s a google form)

tags: @ayamenimthiriel @peeyewpeeyew @emmalbg @holyhumorliteraturelight @crazzyter @romyr4  @emilyhuynhhh @HolyChic @katiejmac @amandayonah @romancebibilophilia @jessevans @petalduck @themoonsfate @clumsypinktiger @youtubequeens @homeybadger @juggy-buggy-betty-wetty @michaelfuckinglandgon @goatboats @beaglesaremajestic

crossed out tags didn’t work.

[ithinkthingsaboutstuff]

The Grace of motherhood (TUA)

I wanted to do a character deep dive of my new favourite robot Mother

Grace Hargreeves, i just love that a small character like this got so much detail and crafting put into them when it was not necessarily needed.

were to start, lets start with how she looks,

the style of her look and how the change in her wardrobe showed her development. I will be looking at this in the timeline of the show not necessarily ep by ep.

The style and what it says about her.

very 1950′s no surprise but lets look at it deeper, when grace is created (by Hargreeves) she is shown wearing (i can’t find a pic of it anywhere) in the opening of  1x09 ‘Changes’

in something not dissimilar to this

the look is a long skit (dark brown) and a shirt with long sleeves (white with dark striped) and hair up in a very tight bun, like so

now theses are NOT graces clothes this is the uniform that the other nanny's where wearing as well. so this means grace did not chose to look like this, also in this scene we see her look over to Hargreeves and Pogo for approval she smile’s at a job well done and they nod to her. (i will come back to this)

so when Grace is first introduced (shows timeline not ep order) 

she is Hargreeves perfect uniform robot nanny that dose what she’s told with a smile.

the next time we see her in ‘I heard a rumour ’ (again show’s timeline) she’s wearing this

this Scene is also when Vanya is getting Rumoured, so Grace gives Vanya her Favourite food (grilled cheese) and her “medicine”.

in this short moment and change of wardrobe we can concluded that

1-  she now cares about what the kids want to a point , because there is no way Hargreeves told her to bring Vanya’s Favourite food, (even if he did tell her to bring food) 

2- she was more control over her self with being able to pick her own clothes, they have colour (not a lot or bright but more than before) and her hair is a little lower but still heavy made up. 

3- the kids (Vanya specially) trust her enough to take something from her and believe her without questions or a fight (Vanya takes her medicine quietly, because Vanya can still toss Grace out the room at this point)  

so grace is gaining a little more self identity but still very much live under Hargreeves thumb, because she dose not question or bring up what she was told to do and is still doing what she dose for Hargreeves and what he wants (get rid of Vanya’s powers)

Now here’s where it gets interesting her next bunch of appearances go roughly in this order, (I am guessing the order but from what I've talked about the first two do seem to line up this way, but the last two are certain and canon)

This dress is a step away from what we’ve see up until this point, it’s still a darker colour (silver,even if glittery) like a metallic and the ribbons and other fetchers are very streamline, makes it look almost robotic (see what i did there)  she is also wearing shorter selves and a wider skirt the look she favours  

so this looks like her first step towards what she wants to look like, also note that 

1-she also talking to Vanya directly this time, Hargreeves is not even in the room, so she doesn't have to say anything to Vanya if she didn’t want to

2-Vanya went to Grace’s ‘room’ or area to show her the violin

3- Grace encourages her ‘that wonderful Vanya’ or something to that effect 

4- and the line that kills me every time i hear it “i’m going to be extraordinary” is Vanya speaking to Grace 

(BTW this is a part of a wonderful gif set by  tuagifs link on gif)

Classic grace or most common outfit she has,

the look itself is light and colourful but still has black spots (apt metaphor if ever i’d seen one) now I’m sure this one comes second here because this is when grace starts to have more, awareness of Hargreeves BS towards the children and her feeling about it 

1- “the kids wanted to say good night” she is now going out of her way to do what the kids want even if it means interrupting Hargreeves

2- she dose not know how to handle his response or lack there of, 

3- leaves with the kids as apposed to staying with Hargreeves and she dose not turn back to him when she leaves

this is were the shift starts in Grace’s personality, she is no longer looking for Hargreeves approval and has shifted her focus to the kids  

The day five goes missing, this how see looks when he runs out the door (damn,buffering much)

she say nothing in this scene, but if we are looking just at the outfit here, it’s the most bright and colourful in the show and she wears it later. so i will talk more about them, note that the hair is still in the middle length and made up to perfection and she is behind Hargreaves (a few feet at that).    

Grace doing her rounds, here is when she is fully there mother, putting out fires everywhere for her kids (literal in Klaus case). her clothes are more simple but not as conforming as they once were, so they are for mobility and movement and not a uniform (ironic since the kids are putting on there’s)

now she is with her kids 100% here and the scene ends with her being proud of Diego and Hargreeves walking in unapproving, we did not see the conversation  that follows but we do see adult Diego’s reaction to it,

mournful maybe, but he did say she was treated worst then anyone, so this may have been an off screen example of that. who knows?

ok time skip to the present

I will skip the Luther surgery, for the sake of time, and lack of pic, but i will note that this is when grace official didn’t have any of her children with her anymore.

at the funeral  

not much to say about this one, sorry.

but i will say that, when she is looking at the painting this dress is similar colour to the one in the painting, since Grace is projecting herself onto this painting in that ‘she’s lonely’ also now that Hargreeves is gone and he took her mind with him, she is at her darkest.

also note that 

1-Hargreeves messed with her mind he didn’t just get Pogo to turn her on then off again 

2-Hargreeves set her up to take the blame for his death, thus being the murder mystery to get them all working together Pogo was talking about.

3- that was when Hargreeves saw Grace as reaching her usefulness, the kids where grown, he was going to kill himself and Pogo never needed her. so the only thing left for her was to reunite the kids to save the world, by making her his murderer 

We go back to classic look Grace until after her death 

after she’s is back, in 1x06 ‘the day that wasn’t’

she is moving around and back in classic Grace clothes but this time she has her hair down and she is moving freely, Diego talks to her about what she remembers and  Pogo appears out of a bookcase to instruct her not to say anything, now what dose Grace do she  takes Diego out of the grounds to tell Diego the truth,

this was it 

true independence her first real act of which we saw anyway. Hargreeves is dead and Mama’s going to do what ever the fuck she want’s

now this didn’t happen in the main plot line but this independence remained not in obvious way but still there.

this is show though her hair being down and her clothes being lighter and her make up being lighter neural colouring as well 

compare the pair

before 

after 

1- same outfit, years apart

2-  what she doing is the same serving food who she is with is different

3-  why she’s there is different to she is doing what Hargreeves told her to do vs getting Diego food because she wants to cheer him up

4- she is close to Diego puts her hand on his shoulder vs being a few steps away from Hargreeves 

this right here in two frames you can see a whole characters transformation form one mans automaton to a loving mother,done without even a complete change of wardrobe 

damn.

and that’s one aspect of Grace 

we also know she 

1- named the kid’s

2-she took care of all there injuries(so she was most likely the one who wired Klaus mouth shut)

3- did not even try to stop Diego from turning her off in fact she was encouraging him with is specking, mush mind or not that was her priority 

4- put smiley faces on her food, Hargreeves would not have told her to do this

Now this all leads me to my final point about Grace and honestly what i find the most interesting about her. Her whole housewife identity, more specificity when it comes to motherhood. what do i mean, 

we have all hear this narrative before of a women trapped in a marriage with a man she doesn't love, stuck in a house to do nothing but cook, clean and care for the kids.

this story is one that has been explored in shows like Mad Men (i have not seen a lot of mad men just a disclaimer)

Betty Draper for example

these character’s usually look at how the superficial can shape and destroy a life. and how in order to find anything real you have to broaden your horizon’s by going out into the world and opening your mind and therefor being more than a mother and a housewife, and you’ll be free of your superficial life. (and yes i know it dose not go this way for Betty but this was the overall idea of the arc)

this is a strong narrative don't get me wrong and it should be shown

but what i find interesting but Grace is that, yes she is basically trapped in just about every single way but her freedom dose not come from the outside world rather it comes form her.

she becomes a mother.

that’s where her freedom comes form.

every step she makes towards person-hood is form her decision to be a mother. she care’s for these children because that’s what she was made to do and she owns that, to the point that as i have already said she turns against her creators wishes in ‘the day that wasn’t’.

she gets her strength for being a mother it’s her identity and she love’s it because she is no longer a thing, a robot or vacuum cleaner you can throw in a closet 

she’s someone’s mother.

but when her kid’s are gone she dose get lonely she said so herself in so many words (about painting)

but she’s there for them and they love her and that’s the one thing that Hargreeves never expected, when he set up his little plan to get them back together and take Grace down as his murderer. he never thought for a moment that the Kid’s would try and protect Grace (see my post about Diego’s Day) and that lead to his plan failing (also he’s an ass-hole)

so by embracing motherhood Grace able to turn her prison into her freedom and her programming into her life and she did it all without taking a step outside.

so when Grace answer Diego’s question of why she did what she did all theses years with

“because being your mother is the greatest gift of my life”

she meant it, boy oh boy did she mean it

[jennymayg13]

The War On Christmas - The Try Guys

So after listening to the latest Tripod episode, I decided to write out the plot summary of their Christmas film from whatever sense I could make out of it.

Cast:

Red Santa - The Rock

Blue Santa - Vin Diesel

Jingle - Jonathan Van Ness

Young Jingle - Lachlan Watson

Gay - Billy Porter

Ruby the Reindeer - Cardy B

Grandparents - John Lithgow, Glenn Close, Alan Alda, Betty White

Sleigh - Sean Bean

Silver - Joan Cusack

Aunt - Scarlett Johanson

Jeffrey - Paul Rudd

Salvation Army Man -  Bernard Cribbins

Whole Santa and Narrator - Jerry Seinfeld

Long ago Santa was forgotten. The pagan spirit was fleeting and belief in Santa was fading away, with his holiday season being replaced by newer religions and beliefs. He could feel it in his heart, that the people had forgotten him and he slowly fell to the ground and lay on his side and closed his eyes. That night the snow built up around Santa and soon he was half-buried in the icy cold snow.

Several years later Christmas had taken hold of the world, what started off as a simple day had exploded into an entire season that invaded the months outside of December. The Bells family were preparing for their Eight Christmasses. Silver, Sleigh, and their child Jingle were to visit each individual grandparent as they were all divorced, their Aunt and Uncle who was in the army, cousin Jeffrey who had just started University, the Salvation Army guy who otherwise spends Christmas alone, and their little family Christmas where the kids would jump on the beds and be excited about presents. Jingle was searching the house for hidden presents when they came upon an old book that told the legend of Santa, and how when he disappeared Christmas became very chaotic. Jingle thought this was very sad and wished for Santa to come back. Little did Jingle know that at that moment, their belief and wish breathed life back into Santa.

He emerged from his resting place half blue from where he had frozen in the snow and half red where he had been preserved by the magic of Christmas. He looked upon the world and what it had become and was so distraught that he split into two Santas, Blue and Red. Blue was disgusted how Christmas had invaded the days of Hanukkah and how disappointed his mother would be, and Red was horrified by the commercialism that had taken over the holiday. Instead of the magical benevolent spirit that Jingle thought they were wishing back to life, they had created two creatures whose sole purpose was to eradicate what Christmas had become, by eradicating all humans. The Santas decided they would destroy all the humans and over the next few years waged a war on Christmas. Jewish Blue Santa and Zombie Red Santa build the cult of the guild of mall Santas who develop their own belief that Christians are ruining Hanukkah and vow to kill them all. They sacrifice themselves as Zombie Santa zombifies them and gives them the ability to turn more people into Zombies.

Jingle’s family didn’t take much notice of what was happening around them and instead prepared for their eight Christmases once again. They would be visiting each grandparent who had now all remarried, their aunt who lost her husband in the war, cousin Jeffrey who had just returned from his PhD programme, the Salvation Army man who still didn’t have any other friends or family, as well as their small family Christmas, even though the children were now all grown adults. Unbeknownst to them, their family had been protected as Jingle had been the one to awaken the Santas, and the book that Jingle still had was protecting their family from the Zombies. The Santas caught on to this and decided to take Jingle and their family out personally. When Jingle and their family went to their first Christmas at Silver’s mother’s house things were pretty normal for the most part with political discussions and arguments over life choices. They soon realised the time and had to leave to go to their next Christmas at Silver’s father’s house. Just after leaving Blue Santa found the house, poured buckets of paint over everyone and electrocuted all who were still inside ‘home alone style’. At the next house, Silver’s father was already drunk and immediately started asking Jingle when they would be settling down and starting a family. Silver’s father had owned a bookstore in town that had recently been shut down due to the building of a new bookstore across from their house and he wasn’t happy about it. Jingle and their parents left to make it to their next Christmas at Sleigh’s father’s house. As the left Silver’s father noticed that the bulldozers were working outside and making too much noise so in his drunken state decided to go out and shout at them. As he did, the bulldozer turned towards him and drove over him and into the house crushing all who remained. Red Santa got out of the bulldozer and searched, but they had missed Jingle again.

At the next Christmas number 3 with Sleigh’s father, they immediately get into an argument over allowing Jingle to be non-binary and the family decide to leave. After they leave, he hallucinates a world where he didn’t exist and everyone was much happier than when he did exist and he goes insane thinking about it and then fades away and Blue Santa looks on with glee. When they make it to Christmas number 4, Sleigh’s mother has prepared a large Christmas feast which they all eat happily and then leave for their next visit. After they leave, Sleigh’s mother is clearing the leftover food away when she finds a small present left on the table, she unwraps it and finds a small bottle of brandy. She takes a swig and immediately drops down dead. Poison wrapped with a red bow.

When they get to their aunt’s house she had invited a number of the other widowed military spouses to join them. They are all singing around the fire for a short while before they decide they need to get to their cousin Jeffrey's. After they leave Blue Santa enters the home and shoots them all. Deciding to take a more direct approach this time, but he had missed Jingle once again. Jeffrey was already talking about the PhD he had just finished a few moments into their arrival. After an hour of Jeffrey telling the family of his study on Christmas’s origins and how he theorised that it would need Santa’s own magic to rejoin the two, they decided to leave, not buying into the myth of the two Santas. Red Santa came down Jeffrey’s chimney and into his home. Rather than be afraid, Jeffrey was so excited that he began to interview Red Santa. Red Santa became so annoyed by him that he threw him into the unlit fireplace and he was fired up and out of the chimney As Silver, Sleigh, and Jingle reached their street they came across the Salvation Army man still ringing his bell in the street, although something seemed a little off with him. As they drew closer they noticed that he had gone very pale and had an awful smell about him. He turned to face them started to moan and had a glazed look in his eyes. Sleigh remarked that he thought he had hit the Christmas Whiskey a bit too hard this year and was best to leave him to it. When they returned home they went to open their presents around the tree, saving the last bit of Christmas for themselves. At that moment there was a large explosion in the distance and all in one moment Jingle was enveloped in white light and burning heat. When the light was gone, everything around them was destroyed and burning from a nuclear explosion. Jingle had no idea how they were still alive. The Santas appeared before Jingle, shocked that they were still alive. Jingle vowed to stop the Santas if it was the last thing they ever did. Years passed as the Santas ruled the broken world, with Jingle unaging, researching how to defeat them.

Now as the last living beings on earth must try to stop the Santas. Gay the last elf, Ruby the Reindeer with red laser eyes, and Jingle, the bisexual, non-binary, last human. The human population had all been zombified and the only way to revive them is to rejoin the two Santas. Jingle was in love with both Ruby and Gay, but would not let this distract from their mission. Along their journey, the Santas tried to thwart them by triggering a virgin pregnancy in Jingle, but they didn’t let this stop them. When they finally reached the two Santas Jingle gave birth to a baby who they named Jesus. Jesus was born with some of the Christmas magic and combined the two Santa’s back together. Jingle, Gay and Ruby then lived happily as a polyamorous couple, knowing that they saved the world and raised the baby together.

As people heard and told the story of how Jesus saved Christmas the story became warped until someone wrote the version they had heard in a book. By the time this was written the details had changed somewhat. Gay was now Joseph, Jingle was now Mary, and Ruby was a donkey who carried them. The legend of Santa became an entirely separate story, but they both still ruminated around this one day. December 25th.

[freecherryblossomsuit]

Betty White Profile Hot Picture Bio Age Weight Address Sizes

You Can Search All About Betty White Dead Shocking News And Other Information, Betty White Children names and other details, Betty White Age Profile and other data, Betty White Movies List Best Ever, Betty White Books List, Betty White Net Worth Detail and Sources, Betty White Tv Shows Best Ever, Betty White 2017 Shocking News, Betty White 2018 Shocking News On FASHIONSTYLE360.

Betty White…

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Thirty-Eight: As Above, So Below”

Day At Least Seven Solitary Coif: struggling

Alice’s thigh: stunning

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: FP’s jellybean tattoo: incredibly, tenderly sad

Certified pedigree: “I’m glad the Farm opened you up to the possibility of us”: either Alice thought about this to herself, or she (absolutely) asked the rest of her cult what they thought. what they THOUGHT about her sleeping with FP again. “What d’you think, girls?” Alice wine clubbed FP Jones’s dick!

who has more game, FP or Jughead? FP a) is a grown man, b) is oftentimes gainfully employed (I’ve forgotten if he’s employed right now), c) is strong enough to carry a high school boy out of the woods, d) was VERY smooth with his seemingly instinctual “Then don’t. Tell him,” e) did that thing where he took the gum out of his mouth when Alice came to his trailer, and f) looked pretty good in his crisp Pop’s uniform when he was employed at Pop’s. however FP also a) tends to drink when not employed and b) is fucking obsessed with Toledo, a town I will burn to the ground if I ever set foot in it. meanwhile, Jughead a) climbed up a fucking ladder to Betty’s bedroom, b) ABSOLUTELY KILLED IT when he and Betty almost fucked each other in the kitchen, c) KILLED IT AND BURIED IT in the moments before fucking her on the couch when he was all, “Or you could stay,” and fucking touched her dress like she was an angel of the Lord and he was just a humble shepherd boy whose eyes were not worthy to gaze upon her countenance, d) only strategically removes his hat, and e) rides a motorcycle. the hat is not a con, necessarily, and being a writer in high school is a cross some of us simply have to bear, but he is like, kind of a pain sometimes and a little squirrelly, but w/r/t the love of his life, he has tailored himself to her every need almost perfectly

OH AND I FORGOT WHEN HE KISSED HER SCABBY BLOOD KNUCKLES! OH SHIT!

Veronica has the most game on the entire show

I like when they have Jughead use words like “modicum”

“Ben’s death haunts me, Jug. He didn’t scream. Why not, I wonder?”: writing credits this episode go to Daphne de Maurier

YYEEEAAAAAHHH THE BLUE & GOLD CRIME BOARD BABY

I would almost expect something more from the warden’s tie, except that I know plain clothing is, in and of itself, a warning sign

anything that gets Veronica in her reading glasses is okay by me, and this includes Pop’s hemorrhaging money

Jughead can wear just a T-shirt sans jacket or flannel any old time he wants, I’m just putting that vibe out there

“Of course we’re calling it a speakeasy.”

Jug’s suspender game is strong, so really Betty should know she has nothing to worry about

his stupid dumb round face looking at her when she pulls him aside is pretty. remember when he kissed her hands? fucking Jughead sometimes, dude

“Evelyn...creeps me out.”

I like Betty’s overalls and Evelyn’s romper thing

what I expected when Kevin dialed the phone was for the whole booth to sink into the basement like a surprise elevator

Kander and Ebb wrote the music to, among much else, Cabaret and Chicago, those being some of their most gay

I LOVE VERONICA’S WHITE SHIRT. IT’S JUST A FUCKING PLAIN WHITE SHIRT, SHE IS SO BEAUTIFUL

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: is there some heat between Veronica and Reggie? am I crazy?

the foursome of Reg, Ronnie, Josie, and Kev is basically just as strong as the cour four strictly in terms of hair

I don’t know that I like Penny’s sleeveless Ghoulies vest more than her leather Serpents jacket but I do know I like it at least the same amount (oodles)

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Day One Lifted Bag Off Head Hair: GREAT

OH MY GOD, JOAQUIN!!!! WHEN WILL JOAQUIN REST. DOES EVERY TERRIBLE THING HAVE TO HAPPEN TO JOAQUIN BEFORE IT HAPPENS TO SOMEONE ELSE. IS JOAQUIN IN THE FARM

does Archie have a scar on his head? is it KJ’s? have I lost track of something?

Gay?!: BABY TEETH is an absolute twink and he was tapped to save his life

I’m suspicious of Peter because his name is, simply, “Peter”

Gay.: Cheryl and Toni are just like lounging in a single chair together and that’s the bisexual agenda

Veronica was rich: Veronica’s heavy card stock IS very nice

Ethel’s cute yellow cardigan is back, which matches her thermos and lunchbox

I enjoyed when Betty sits down and you think she’s going to apologize for being there at Ben’s death but instead she just fucking grills Ethel some more

“...G&G.”

OOOOOOHHHHHHH JUGHEAD’S TURNING IT ON WITH THAT PRINCESS SHIT

Please protect Betty: Betty’s entire expression at being told she’s “not worthy,” God bless her

The female gaze: I don’t know why Reggie’s shirt is off. probably Reggie doesn’t even know

Reggie’s panicked JJ face is one of the top five panicked faces of all time. he’s tied at least with the girl in Jurassic Park when she sees the raptor shadow and her hand holding that green Jell-O starts shaking

Minetta doesn’t even pretend he’s looking for something other than whatever was in those boxes. cold, Minetta

REGGIE’S SALUTE

Reg simply being aware that Minetta and the Ghoulies work for Hiram almost brings me to tears. not only is he a walking sculpture with a pair of lips that would make Sarah Steller throw herself off the Hoover Dam, but he is also a genius

VERONICA IS SO BEAUTIFUL. “Not until I’m properly armed.” just look at her!

Ethel didn’t even come to the first meeting of the Farm Club? cold, Ethel

Evelyn offering Betty a pizza slice comes off as her genuinely wanting Betty to have a piece of pizza if she wants, which is the first non-creepy thing she’s done (Jughead would take the pizza)

she of course follows this up with “that darn medication”

Archie looks like a corpse in the blue light

tell me “wakey, wakey” is a Kill Bill reference. TELL ME IT IS

the guy they have fighting Archie looks just enough like Khabib Nurmagomedov that I was like, is this an unconscious wish on someone’s part to do a rematch of red-haired McGregor vs. Khabib except it’s on Riverdale so it’s in something called “the Pit” which is a drained swimming pool and they’re in juvie? (it’d have to be a fantasy in that Conor McGregor would get his ass beaten by Khabib Nurmagomedov in any rematch in any universe, in the universe)

dude does his best but, as Sweet Pea and Vintage Reggie can tell you, you cannot let Archie land a) a right hook or b) an uppercut or he will end this fight

who’re the rando white women watching? their fucking wives? goddammit, white women

I think Baby Teeth could take Reggie jawline-to-jawline

Veronica’s kittenish heels sinking into the dirt as opposed to her striding effortlessly as Moses parting the Red Sea

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: “THAT VIPER BITCH”

Antoinette Topaz is fluent in many languages, including Veronica’s

God bless jingle-jangle: the fucking cat burglar sequence set to “Jingle Jangle” just about fucking did it

Ethel’s candle game is reaching midnight mass-levels of mastery

so did Betty and Jughead get their ad hoc sex den (good band name) out of the bunker before Ethel got there? or was it there the whole time but for Ben and Ethel?

I feel I want to write down that Ben abandoned Ethel to ascend prematurely with Dilton otherwise I’ll forget and will be tricked by something later on

POLLY’S KNITTED HALTER

closed captioning capitalized the Shady Man, the second strangest Riverdale skull

Alice really just did Betty like that! maybe Betty DOES need to live in a bunker

50 Shades of Betty: “The wig. The webcaming.”

I love how Betty always gets very sarcastically OH, OKAY THEN when she decides to start laying out some truths

Alice stands up and her dress has some sort of insane asymmetrical hemline and she’s also got an ankle bracelet!!!!!!

Dilton Doiley Ethel Muggs is a canonically great dancer the DM: Ethel’s little crush on Jughead circa his birthday party has not abated. even when he was being insane about the Serpents I bet she entertained sweet fantasies of buying a pleather jacket off ModCloth and Jughead “inducting” her. so she found herself a coterie of pliable boys who were also gangly and weird and obsessed with details and pacts and she became their princess. so THERE. you fucking bet she’s gonna get a kiss out of Jughead before she fucking poisons herself

Ethel’s dungeon master voice is giving me a sort of ASMR vibe

I don’t want to veer too wildly but she is wearing a crown, her character has “a crown”

dog, was she about to kill Jughead right then and there? Ethel goes hard. Ethel might go harder than Jughead

“You’re asking me to play Russian roulette!” “I’m asking you to play Gryphons and Gargoyles.” THIS BITCH (in context it’s very smooth and bitchy)

GOD BUT JUGHEAD DID DRINK IT. VERY WELL KNOWINGLY, HE DID IT

Jughead eats: Salud is just the sort of thing I’d expect Jug to say before maybe drinking cyanide (or skol, if he had been watching Ingmar Bergman)

I don’t know if I could drink that much Kool-Aid that fast. Kool-Aid and Sunny D always made my teeth feel filmy. I could definitely down that much Capri Sun, if it were in a pouch the size of my shin

anyway Ethel’s sick move telling Jughead he has to kiss her first got an emotional reaction from me at almost the level of when Cheryl came down to Jason’s wake in that white dress

Jughead and Ethel are almost of a height, which is weirdly lovely

These students are legally children: maybe Ethel put the poison in after Jughead had chosen. I maybe doubt she would’ve just fucking assassinated Jughead

Jughead was reading next to her when she woke up, which is just a specific kind of daydream you have, sometimes

Sixth period is Intro to Film: HEISENBURG

Toni’s pictures are certainly shot with a mind to lighting, depth

is blue light the light of evil? Hiram’s study, the warden’s office?

Archie > Dawson: of course Archie imagines talking to his father and of course he imagines his father telling him to “take one.” I love Self-Sacrificial Lamb Archie (or just momentarily self-sacrificing). better than Fascist Archie!

well, Betty’s room has blue light too. fucking forget it then

although she is SURROUNDED BY EVIL at all times

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: “I trust them more than I trust you” is season one-level Alice-shade

Cheryl’s sheaths: I like very much Cheryl’s bosomy sequin thing and Toni’s back jewelry

I also like the RROTC boys in their like WWII uniforms, which may be anachronistic but still hard vintage, and the cigar girls

Jughead doubts it: there’s so much going on when Betty goes all melty and wipes some of the Fresh-Aid off Jug’s lips and Jug, who is not smiling, looks at Sweet Pea helping Veronica

Best costume bit: Veronica is in magenta, because I deserve it

I can’t wholly endorse Reggie’s non-black plaid trousers paired with a solid black blazer but I CAN endorse Reggie as a whole

Cheryl’s Hiram’s pins: I think Hiram has a fucking octopus pin! I think it is!!!!!!!!

the wallpaper behind Hiram downstairs is...interesting. it’s like a cutout from that Disney cartoon for “Winter Wonderland”

we stay on Veronica’s face for sort of an extra beat, so I can confirm a) she’s still beautiful and b) she has a sparkly thing in her hair

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie’s got that thing going on where you gem up the part in your hair

God I love a good Riverdale music/mayhem montage. like what were they playing when Jughead ran the gauntlet? fuck sometimes this stuff is just still so good (“Mess Around” when Reggie lunged for Jughead also counts, though not performed live somewhere else in Riverdale at the same moment)

“Anything Goes” is in fact not Kander and Ebb but Cole Porter

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: I love a good bead of bloody spit dangling from someone’s mouth during a slow-mo fight sequence

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: “THAT KID…..IS A STAR.”

that fucking rum, can you believe it? the fucking shade of it all

Fifth period is AP English: OH MY GOD. THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. OH MY GOD, THE FUCKING HAMMER. THE COUNT OF MONTE MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN YES GOD HOLY BITCH

“Damn good coffee”: the goddamn shot of FP and Alice standing together flanked by the flames of their righteous destruction of the G&G manual

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica is pretty fucking brave to still be living in Hiram Lodge’s HOUSE. and of course that’s what her dressing gown looks like

oh my god, Joaquin is still alive? Joaquin’s STILL HERE?

ARCHIE’S GONNA BREAK OUT OF PRISON AND I MUST CLEANSE MYSELF OF SIN TO BE WORTHY OF ITS GLORY (I trust Riverdale a lot more again at the moment)

so wait, Jughead put the cot BACK? are these two different bunkers? is it the same effing bunker???

“It’s over”: you fucking fool

yes, it’s the same goddamn bunker. the candles are still there! I guess I thought the wicked juju from Ethel’s ~SUICIDE ATTEMPT~ would deter the two of them from FUCKING IN THE EXACT SAME BUNKER but Betty and Jughead literally do not give a single damn where they do it

Jug’s headphones!!!!!!!!!

Cheryl’s expression at reading the G&G manual is appropriately be-Blossomed

The Blossom spawn: she still has a photo of Jason in her locker and I think a sticker that says “Literally no one cares”

What damn high school in America: those manuals have a QR code on the back, so you can play on your phone! GIVE ME THE APP, RAS

who unsheathed Ethel? LORD, WHO LET HER LOOSE?

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

NEXT WEEK: Camila Mendes wears glasses the entire time

[douxreviews]

The OA - Season 1 Review

By Billie Doux

(The first part of this review is spoiler-free. I'll discuss the ending underneath the adorable spoiler kitten.)

The OA is an eight-episode series currently available on Netflix that was created by Brit Marling, who plays the lead, and Zal Batmanglij. It tells the story of a young blind woman named Prairie Johnson, missing for seven years, who returns home unexpectedly.

Prairie, no longer blind and inexplicably referring to herself as "The OA," won't tell the FBI or her parents (the wonderful former Borg queen Alice Krige and equally wonderful Walking Dead alum Scott Wilson) what happened to her during the seven years she was missing, although there are physical indications that she was imprisoned and abused. Instead, she begins telling her story to five random people in an abandoned house at midnight. The story, and it's a wild one, is told in chapters on successive nights throughout the succeeding episodes, and it has a dramatic effect on the lives of the five listeners, all of whom are from the local high school.

The ending of this series, or possibly first season since there are rumors that there may be a second, is controversial and is generating a lot of discussion. For me, The OA isn't so much about the ending, although I'm one of the viewers who found it quite powerful. It's my opinion that The OA is about the strength and transformative power of storytelling. We've all read books that have changed our lives and made us see the world in a new way. That's what this story did for the OA's five acolytes, four of whom are high school students: Steve, a violent outcast who deals drugs; druggie Jesse; brilliant and disadvantaged Alfonso; Buck the youngest who is trans and struggling to make his parents understand him; and Betty Broderick-Allen, a teacher.

I'm not sure if I can wholeheartedly recommend The OA. Some are finding it utterly fascinating and well worth watching (like me. I thought it was), while others are pissed about the ending and think it was a huge waste of their time. Caveat emptor?

And now, some spoilers. If you're planning to watch The OA, go no further until after you do!

What was real?

It appears that Prairie Johnson was kidnapped and imprisoned for seven years. She was blind when she was kidnapped, and regained her sight before she returned. Her five acolytes indeed used "the movements" she taught them to distract the school shooter long enough to keep him from killing the children in the cafeteria. Were the five actually sending the OA through an interdimensional portal so that she could rescue Homer and the others, or was that all in her head?

Honestly, I was about to give up on this series while watching the first episode, until I got to the end when the "I was born in Russia in 1987" thing started, oddly coinciding with the title sequence. Who puts the title sequence at the end? It was like saying, the story actually begins here. Of course, her childhood in Russia and the way she came back from the dead was very secret princess. It was so unbelievable that this was the point where I started wondering if OA was making the whole thing up. Or if maybe she believed it, but was stark raving mad.

There are so many hints and parallels throughout that make it seem possible that OA is either lying about her past and her seven years of imprisonment, or that she is mentally ill and honestly believes things that are not true. Her parents kept her medicated for nearly her entire childhood because of her unbelievable stories. There were multiple references to her head injuries. After her return home, the doctors in St. Louis said she should be committed. In the final episode, she is again being medicated and has an ankle monitor. There are also many indications that OA is psychic, which could be true even if she fabricated the whole thing.

After I finished the series, I rewatched the pilot, searching for clues. The first thing she asked when she woke after jumping off the bridge was, "Did I flatline?" She said that she was trying to get back to where she'd been held captive, even though she knew that they were gone. She also said, "We all died more times than I can count." The first thing she did when she arrived in her childhood home was attempt to find Homer Roberts on her computer, and later, she did. Although why couldn't Steve and Alfonso find evidence of her story online, too?

Did Hap exist, or was his search for proof of life after death a way that the OA used to humanize her captor? During the series, we often see things from Hap's viewpoint, even to his trips to find other NDE survivors and that strange murder of his friend at a morgue. (What the hell really happened in that morgue? What was that other guy doing?) The OA told her five acolytes that her father was a miner, and Hap's house was situated at an abandoned mine. When the OA was little and her name was Nina Azarova, her father forced her into freezing water in order to cure her fear of her nightmares of drowning in an aquarium, and note the similarity to Hap repeatedly drowning his captive subjects. Plus, the series began when the OA jumped off a bridge, and the kids on the school bus in Russia went over a bridge. Note also the use of glass or plastic during the OA's seven years of imprisonment and in the final shooting scene.

The neighborhood that the OA and her acolytes lived in was outright creepy. It looked like a typical suburb on the surface, but it consisted of jarring and oddly naked tract houses and there were often strange objects in the street. And I dare say most suburban neighborhoods don't have a half-built abandoned house sitting in the middle of an empty street? There was also the weirdness of the OA's instructions to her acolytes to leave their doors open while they were at her storytelling seances, something I found uncomfortable in present-day America; was that because the FBI instructed the Johnsons that "doors should remain open at all times"?

Steve, the OA's first follower and the character who changed the most, was introduced with a jarring, explicit sex scene right in front of a picture window showing that strange neighborhood. A drug-dealing bully with rage issues, Steve was the one who chose the other acolytes — except for teacher Betty Broderick-Allen, who basically chose herself. Grief-stricken by the recent death of her twin brother, Betty at first appeared to be a closed-minded teacher parroting the views of a rigid educational system uninterested in connecting with children who are different. Phyllis Smith is wonderful as Betty, and I thought her developing relationship with Steve, and in particular, the night she gave away her inheritance to save him from the goons from Asheville, was one of the high points of the series. I also really loved the scene where the OA impersonated Steve's stepmother and talked Betty out of expelling Steve, especially the bizarre little detail of one of the OA's fake press-on nails popping off while they were talking. Note that the OA guessed correctly that Betty had just lost a sibling, another bit that made me think she was psychic.

So let's talk about the ending.

The scene where Alfonso found the books under the OA's bed was very Usual Suspects, but it was also ambiguous. Yes, the OA could have used those books to create the details in her story, but she also could have been reading about subjects that had a relationship to her life, couldn't she? Why did Alfonso look in the mirror and see himself as Homer? And here's the big one for me. What was FBI agent Elias doing in the Johnson home alone at night, and why was he so weird and unconventional in the first place?

After I finished all eight episodes, I checked out a lot of articles and reviews on the internet. What seems to upset critics the most is the insertion of a school shooting into the narrative, supposedly out of nowhere. (That, and the admittedly silly interpretive dance "movements" that were intended to open the interdimensional portal.)

Honestly, I don't think the school shooting came out of nowhere. The focus of the entire series was saving the lives of children, and the five acolytes were all from the high school. The OA's story began with the Russian children dying on the bus, and then focused on five youths trapped under glass and killed and revived repeatedly in Hap's basement. Plus, it seemed to me that Steve fit the profile of a possible school shooter, and even though he momentarily reacted to the OA with anger in the pencil-stabbing scene, he was the one who changed the most, and for the better, over the course of the story.

We're now hearing that there may be a second season in the works. I cannot imagine what a second season could be about. Almost anything they do to answer questions about what happened in the first season might ruin the whole thing. Then again, what if the OA really did go through a portal in the end? What if Homer, Rachel, Scott and Renata do exist and are still imprisoned, waiting for her to rescue them?

A few bits:

-- OA may have meant "original angel." I thought that it could have been an interpretation of the word "away."

-- I didn't notice it the first time through, but there is a lot of purple, the color of royalty (secret princess), magic and spirituality.

-- There's Braille, too. There are actually strips on Braille on Khatun's face during the afterlife scenes. Also, the OA kept touching her white bedspread that had knobby protrusions like Braille.

-- How on earth did the OA and Homer write the symbols representing the movements on their skin? They couldn't touch each other; could anyone physically do that? Was that the reason the OA was told to make her arms longer during that scene with the bill and the trench?

-- Why were there potted plants in Hap's underground prison?

-- Why did the OA's mother Nancy freak out in the restaurant?

-- Loved the tiny blue quail eggs in milk for breakfast, and the bit in the afterlife about swallowing a bird.

So what is this show? Is it pretentious arty crap, or is it a powerful story about storytelling, mysticism and life after death? Lines are open. What did you guys think?

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

[olivia-crains]

Sharp Objects

Episodes: Vanish, Dirt, Fix, Ripe

Content below may be triggering for some, please read with discretion.

Examining tiny hairs became my daily hobby. I would always attempt to remove the tiny white bulb from each eyebrow or eyelash I pulled.

I had two groups of friends in middle school, one set who did nothing but make fun of me and really appealed to my critic voice, and the other group who were kind and loving and adored me. I am sure you can guess which group I hung out with more often. Christ, you’d think I would have learned by now. These girls would write notes to me in class threatening to kill my cat, they would go into gruesome detail about how they would do it and where they would bury him. My boy was only about a year old and he was my world, this ‘friend’ befriended me because I was the new kid at this school and had a photo of my cat in the front pocket of my binder. She used the very thing I loved so much to hurt me. This would grow to be a frequent occurrence with all the toxic individuals who have entered my life. The picking began that year, while taking our end of grade tests, the note passing session fell around the same time as well. I hate seeming like I was an easy target and like a pitiful little baby, I had no problem sticking up for myself and becoming defensive, but it is as if they and everyone else knew I would take their insults and words to heart and lash out at myself in the process, it is as if no one took me seriously. My vulnerability has always been used against me though it is my favorite attribute that I embody. So, following the threatening cat letter, I told my Mom and she in turn told my teacher, though I told her not to. The girls were obviously scolded and were told to apologize to me and they did and I forgave them and all was dandy! Me teacher took a liking to me after that happened, she stopped me in the hallway and said to me one afternoon “You know that saying, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me? Well, words are worse.” I have never forgotten that, and thinking back on that now, I would much rather someone shatter my skull than harm my heart with words; the most powerful weapon of all.

My palm is still pulsating from my grip on my favorite pair of scissors. I used to use them to cut out photos of the cast of LOST and carefully pin them on my wall, they are children’s scissors, a rather hideous blue color, I once was detained at the Colorado airport for having them in my backpack. These scissors have traveled with me for well over a decade now, always handy, for whatever need may arise.

Is there anything more vulnerable and heartbreaking than hearing an adult refer to their Mom as ‘Mama’? It is the southern staple, it is what I call my own Mama, a spark of my inner child latching on to this tiny, yet, oh so powerful word.

Everything is a sharp object, a person who self harms spends time scanning rooms. When you vow to not keep the ‘normal’ tools in your home, you sometimes have to get creative when you are desperate. Using the end of a tube of lotion, safety pins, knives, caps from various household items (toothpaste, prescription bottles, etc), the blades of your blender screaming your name, end of a lightbulb, end of an iPhone charger, etc. Anything can work as long as you press hard enough. The thoughts and perceptions are the ammunition; the cutting itself is the therapy.

I chipped my front tooth on a glass bottle a few months ago, it is sharp and jagged, but barely noticeable. As an anxious habit, I tend to rub my thumb nail against the sharp part of the tooth and drag my thumb up and down repeatedly throughout the day, my cuticles are worn and bruised, my nail has white lines, jagged and uneven all over. I wish I picked up skills as quickly as I pick up gross habits. I always must be doing something, whether it is biting my nails, digging my car key into my stomach while socializing, cutting words like ‘fat’ and ‘never’ on the inside of my thighs, purging until my throat is stinging and raw, picking and picking, punishing me for being me.

I am always particularly drawn to destructive characters, not their behaviors or habits, but their strength. It takes a brave person to keep living when everything inside of them is frothing with hate. The damage is outside of ourselves, though we take it out on ourselves, no matter the issue, no matter the severity, we take it out on ourselves. Amy Adams perfectly conveys what it is like to have destructive thoughts and painful memories rumbling inside of your skull at all times, instead of taking it out on other people, which tends to be the more common practice, she takes it out on herself. Why is it that I can care for such characters so deeply but cannot care about myself? I think it is because my issues are weak comparatively, that is what the message on the jumbotron flashing across my insides reads.

I recently turned in my apartment key to my former leasing agent, my first thought when I left the building was about that key; a sense of mourning trailing behind me. It is dull and smells of nickel, but I have always preferred it due to its specific ridges. I trace my finger across the grooves, it is ritualistic in nature, that’s always how it begins, I feel the object, allow guilt over past issues/what people think of me take hold of me, and carve. It is an instant euphoria, it’s hard to describe it, it feels like my guilt or my self-loathing is silenced for the night. My thoughts quiet, bleeding through, I always promise this will be the last time, only issue is my guilt and self-loathing are like rabbits; rapidly procreating.

Camille hides her indulgences like a child, her stunted adolescence is showcased through the candy bars and tiny alcohol bottles she continues to sneak into her Mother’s home. Addicts and individuals who partake in harmful activities tend to minimize everything and/or make excuses for themselves. Camille buys small bottles of vodka instead of a full handle. Camille softens experiences, her rape, cutting, alcoholism, she is never the victim, ever, she thinks she deserves all of this. Placing the sewing needles against the pad of a finger, no blood, no incision, just a press. It isn’t real if the dose of the destruction is untraceable.

Camille is so real, so dark, familiar. Unlovable. The only way to stop ones destructive habit(s) is to graduate to a new one. For Camille, that is alcohol. There is almost a self destructive meter that each person has. For me, alcoholism and sex addiction are the 10s, I made a promise to myself years ago that I will never get there, ever. I tend to teeter on the line at a 5/6. 1-Pulling (trichotillomania) 2- weak cuts, no depth 3-anorexia 4-heavier cutting 5-bulimia 6-bulimia and cutting. I know this makes no sense and seems appalling, but these are examples of my own personal excuses. “Well, ill never make it to a ten, well I never use razors, well ill never be a sex addict because no one will have sex with me, etc.” I am trying my hardest to level down, the only issue is there is so much darkness I have yet to punish myself for, so many memories living at the forefront, things I will never forget. Our ability to remember everything is our everlasting curse, no prince will ever break it, in a way, our worst memories are what keep our destruction alive. A buffet for the critic living inside of us.

Adora’s words slither. Whispers coated with poison, suffocating all those around her, yet her love and approval feel like antidotes. Camille will never fully heal.

Amma wraps her lollipop around Camille’s waves in her hair, the ultimate childish act. Teens are just so freaking scary, that scene is just deeply troubling and it is tough to see a grown woman sucked into a gaslighting reality. Its all about power dynamics in that toxic town. Camille seems fearful, her tone shifts to defensive, but it never works, not even on her sister who is more than a decade younger than her, people can just sense that she is an adult child. The empath. The watcher. The ultimate reactor.

Camille is timid, but she asserts such dominance when her secret is threatened to be exposed.

There is an acid stain on my porcelain tub, it sits two inches from the drain and features a light orange tint, I remember that specific night that stain was born. Its the spot I always aim for when purging; a home, a landing strip for my innards, you’re not alone here; no one is alone here. I shave sitting down in the shower because I am a weak individual who just prefers to sit or lay at all times, I notice the stain, I stick only one finger in my throat to gag, but stop myself from taking it further than that, it isn’t good, but I have to do something. Usually I will stare in the general direction of the stain and blindly shave while staring at it, my eyes shift to the drain and memories shoot out and I wish to turn the small top off of the drain and cut myself again, I ignore that and continue to shave, if only I had shorter legs.

I bet you’re sensitive, writers are sensitive. You can make people understand.

Camille is a person of senses, she is so easily triggered by her environment. She feeds off of energies; clocking everyone.

There is a moment in Vanish where Camille is driving in Wind Gap, she sees one of the town’s many murals and says quietly, but with a shake of comfort, “Hi Betty.” She later greets the mural outside of the tire store and says with a sarcastic (she finds the funny and its one of so many things I so deeply love about her, her wit is incredibly strong) tone, “What do ya know, Joe?” I have this ritual to ease my anxiety that I have been doing since I was a teenager, whenever I am feeling overwhelmed or like I wish to purge or cut, I say hello to every object in the room I am in. Hello sink, hello rug, hello shampoo, hello conditioner. I have never really given much thought to this little coping mechanism of mine, but Camille saying hello to these little pieces of her town, it made me feel less like a freak.

The yellow innards of the lemons printed on my sheets stared back at me. A perfect set of sheets for the summer, lemons have always made me happy, I tend to give fruits and other inanimate objects personalities, and lemons are just so very kind and nurturing. Mother fruit. As a child, I would constantly take the lemons from my parent’s waters at restaurants and suck on them until my tongue was numb. The blood is traceable, not much, a familiar yet distant sight to behold. The warmth of the blood slowly dripping down my inner thigh landing on one of the many lemons printed on my sheets; silencing its kindness.

There is always a sting of pain hidden beneath the shadow of empathy in the eyes of the damaged. Weighted looks, like magnets, that draw you in.

In the words of the masterful Gillian Flynn,

Camille is a ballerina with a steel spine.

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

The Bestiary Revamped: Vampire Squid (HALLOWEEN SPECIAL)

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(I intended to post this yesterday but stuff came up. Anyway.)

Ahem.

Cue the spooky music.

*threatening organ music plays at unbearable volumes*

That’s right, dear readers, the Spooky Gourd Day has finally, finally come, and with it the nigh-endless Halloween shitposting that permeates this website every October like the smell of pumpkin pie did my house just a few hours ago, immediately before I ate most of it. (I still have like half of it left, but it’s cold now so it doesn’t have that mouthwatering smell unless I reheat it. And I was too busy watching old Betty Boop Halloween cartoons to reheat it. Anyway, I’m getting off track.)

Frankly, the obsession of internet culture with this innocuous holiday has always fascinated me. What it is about a day when you get to dress up all funky-like, go from house to house acting like an idiot, horf down all the candy you can get away with and watch scary movies all night that is so attractive to them youngsters? I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

However, it is a day of great significance to this blog, since this is the day when we celebrate the utter freakiest of the freakiest that can be pulled up from the stygian waves of the planet’s oceans. This is the third Halloween of the Terrible Tentacle Theatre, and for this notable occasion, I have decided to give one of my earliest poster children a much-needed revisit.

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was still called Hectocotylus and my content mainly consisted of spicing up Wikipedia and Cracked articles with swearing for the sick enjoyment of some 30 followers, the article in question was my first big hit among the people of the Digital Blue Hills of Hell. In the days when most of my articles didn’t go above 20 notes, this beast gathered up 300 notes by using its nebulous tendrils to reach into the deepest corners of the ole ‘web. Not only was this creature my first big hit in my career as a marine biology blogger with tone moderation issues, it would also fit in great as the main monster in a theoretical Universal Horror/Syfy teamup, which would be the Halloweeniest shit ever.

Ladies, gentlemen and other fellows, the vampire squid.

Before you even see this thing in full detail you can already gather that I didn’t choose it for this year’s Halloween special for nothing. Everything from the ghoulish dark red color scheme to the bat-like webbing between eldritch tentacles screams “cheesy Hammer Horror movies written by good ol’ Howard Philips”. And it will become even more evident when you see it in its full, glowy, betentacled glory.

This is how it looks like when you stare down a squishy, floppy incarnation of doom. This thing looked so freaky that the dude who discovered it, a certain German biologist called Karl Chun, decided to name it Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s Latin for “vampire squid from Hell”. Yep, that’s right. Remember the part where science is hard fact unaffected by emotion? Well you can throw that right out the window, because this fucker freaked its discoverer out so hard that he named it the vampire squid from Hell.

“The shit I’ve seen, kiddo. You wouldn’t believe.”

Even descriptions of this guy sound like they escaped straight from a 19th century gothic horror novel. For example, in 1925 the Arcturus expedition caught one near the Galapagos Islands and described it as “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” Even in the years of the Roaring Twenties, merely seeing the vampire squid was enough to bring out anyone’s inner Poe or Bram Stoker, apparently, which isn’t very surprising considering that it looks like Béla Lugosi had an illicit affair with one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.

You’re welcome for that mental image.

While calling it a vampire is more than appropriate, the names “squid” or “octopus” are much less fitting. While intially appearing to be something of an octopus, it’s actually not one of them; and it isn’t a squid either, which left the confused scientists to place it within its own little private taxon, the order Vampyromorphida. If you know a little bit of Latin, that means “vampire-shaped”, which would imply that this is the general shape for vampires. So next time you read Twilight, imagine Edward as a vampire squid flopping around on the ground the entire time and I guarantee you’ll have a blast reading through several hundred pages of sweaty bloodsucker romance.

Unlike Edward however, the vampire squid doesn’t actually feed on blood. Dashing from shadow to shadow in the cover of a snappy opera cape and hunting for innocent young maidens in the night is the kind of energy expenditure that this malevolent mollusk cannot afford. Mainly because it lives (you guessed it) in the darkest, deepest excesses of the oceans, where the eternal darkness creates an all-year-round Halloween mood. In these waters, even beginners have a hard time finding the tiniest scraps of food, and have to resort to drastic measures to get by. But the vampire squid looks at those beginners and goes “yall are scrubs git gud lmao”. Compared to the vampire squid’s lifestyle, virtually any other denizen of the deep sea lives right in the middle of a goddamn cornucopia.

See, the vampire squid doesn’t just live in the deep ocean. It specifically prefers places called Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ), which sounds more like the hardest Sonic level ever than any serious place which can support life. OMZs are vast sheet-like expanses of water in the deep sea which barely contain any breathable oxygen. Some of these zones can contain as little as 5% of the oxygen that saturates air, and barely anything survives here.

And guess what? The vampire squid lives here. Not only lives, but thrives.

This is the game the vampire squid plays, every day of its life. On hard difficulty.

Obviously, living in a dead wasteland of suffocating water has required the squid to adopt some nifty tools of survival. Do not do so would be like entering the final dungeon of a video game with early game gear.

First off is a pair of sensory filaments, which the vampire squid extends through the water much like a spider does its web. They are super long and flexible, and probably the source of so many dick jokes that the squid will choke a bitch if anyone tells one more.

“No, I’ve never heard that one ever. Ha ha ha. Real fuckin’ original.”

Next up is a pair of membranous wings, used by the squid to travel through the aether of space to “fly” through the water, it’s cape-like arm web billowing behind it. The vampire parallels are getting more and more accurate.

Interestingly this wing isn’t the same in adults and juveniles. At one point in their devlopment they start growing a second pair of fins which eventually fully substitutes the first pair, which then atrophies back into the flesh. Thus if you’re lucky enough to catch a vampire squid, it’s not impossible that it will have four fins. The biologists who first found these four-finned squid nearly went insane trying to describe it (and several other developmental stages) as separate species. It was such a mess it took years to sort out, and nowadays the vampire squid is the sole surviving species of its order. He’s standing in the darkness. Alone.

WAKE ME UP INSIDE

The fins and the filaments aren’t just decorative elements the squid picked out at Hot Topic, either. Used in tandem, they’re a fearsomely effective netting tool and the way this crafty cephalopod earns its daily bread. You think spiders are cool with their webs? Nah, Spiders ain’t shit. They’re lazy idiots and their web does all the work for them. the vampire squid’s filaments is where it’s REALLY at.

See, the vampire squid’s main diet is thankfully not blood but something called “marine snow”. This is basically the shower of discarded tissue, shit and corpses that rains down upon the lower layers of the deep ocean from the upper layers all year round. Having this fall from the sky for “White Christmas” would probably be quite traumatizing.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BALLS OF FECES SHALALALALALALALALAAAAARGH

The vampire squid, however, has had its resolve steeled by years of isolation in the darkness of the deep ocean, and is willing to chug down anything to survive. Bear Grylls is a picky gourmet chef compared to this guy.

That said, it needs to eat something that’s actually of some nutritional worth. It could spend its life scarfing down every chunk of marine snow it comes across, but that would be a waste of muscle movements since most of it does exactly nil to fill up its stomach. That’s where the filaments/fins combo come in, turning the vampire squid into an angry little tripwire trap ready to snap at any moment.

Note the filament. That’s not a parasite, that’s legit a part of the animal. Nobody knows where it evolved from, it’s not a modified arm or tentacle and it’s a fucking enigma.

Mystery tentacles: the quintessential Terrible Tentacle Theatre experience.

Extending its filaments (one at a time) into the mucky waters around, it waits more still then I do when I go to the kitchen for a glass of water during the night and I hear a sudden noise. The filaments come with a plethora of sensitive nerve endings, ensuring that anything bigger than a flea’s asscheeks landing on them will elicit an immediate response from the squid. And if said asscheeks touch the filaments, responds the squid it does. Specifically, it exhibits a surprising burst of speed (considering it just drifts around all day and it is effectively the consistency of Jell-O), pulled entirely by its fins to perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle, whipping around in a loose loop and catching its own filament. Millions of dogs around the world enviously sigh in unison.

After this, the squid pulls off its prey from the filament using its arms, which generate a solid slime-like material. The collected chunks of edible whatnot are rolled into a ball of slime, and horfed down by the squid at once. You probably cannot tell but there’s a Michelin star underneath its mantle. “Slimeball à la Vampire Squid” is one gourmet-ass dish.

Molto bene!

Of course, all this fine dining makes the vampire squid itself tasty as all hell. You are what you eat, afterall. But in the deep sea, you do NOT want to be tasty, because everyone is hungry on top of being the most light-deficient gourmet motherfuckers on the planet. So naturally, our subject needs some sort of way to evade the raving food critics hunting him in the deep. And he has this way in the form of a very unlikely tool: bioluminescence.

“But Admin”, I hear you say, “didn’t you just get done telling us last week that glowing in the deep sea will attract everything around you?” That I did, young padawan, and it still stands. However, just like last week’s subject, the vampire squid uses its built-in glowsticks with a very express purpose and doesn’t just flash into the sunset willy-nilly. The glowy parts of this beast have very well-defined places and usages, exquisitely located and timed, just like a laugh track in a sitcom. Underneath its dark-red skin the vampire squid carries clusters of glowing photophores mainly on the tip of its arms as well as in two fake eye-spots on the top of its mantle, ready to flare up in a blue burst of light on demand. The fake eyes even come with their own built-in eyelids, opening and closing as Dracula Jr. sees fit.

Imagine you’re a predator and you see this glowing collection of random bullshit. Now figure out where to bite. Good fucking luck.

These lights are used with great care and consideration in order to troll the fuck out of anybody who is foolish enough to make an attempt on the vampire squid’s life. Upon attack, the squid whips its arms around with the lights on full luminosity, creating a confusing dance of light spots in the otherwise total darkness and messing up the predator’s perception. The false eyes only make things worse, finally creating the illusion that the vampire squid possesses unlimited godlike control over space and time, which may damn well be true.

Question: What way is this vampire squid going? Hint: It’s not facing toward you.

The appearance of the squid as a godlike psychic is surprisingly in line with the whole vampire angle, since Dracula has reknownedly had the ability to charm and hypnotize people. The effect is further accentuated by the squid’s eyes, proportionally the largest of any animal ever discovered. With a diameter a whopping one sixth of the animal’s whole body, this thing's oculars are like if you were walking around with eyes the size of your head. Each.

And for added effect, they glow and change color depending on which angle you’re looking at them from.

DISCO CTHULHU

And finally, if a spooky vampire-looking-ass dark red glowing octopus-squid-thing with hypnotic powers isn’t Halloweeny enough for you, the vampire squid has a final trick up its sleeve that catapults it right into the realm of body horror. This is suspected to be a defensive tactic but who the fuck knows, really. Deep sea creatures are enigmatic as shit, and they guard their secrets jealously.

Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and say it outright. Basically the final defensive measure of the vampire squid is turning itself inside out.

Yep.

Of all the stupid shit that Mother Nature could have come up with, she went and decided “alright, it just up and turns itself inside the fuck out. What are you gonna do about it?”

This behavior is known to science as “pineappling” or even more Halloweeny-ly “pumpkin posture” (no, seriously) and it involves the squid taking the webbing between its arms and turning it upside to shield its head and body from harm. Now folded comfortably into a spiky little footbal, the vampire squid knows itself free from harm. The webbings are thin enough for it to see through, but also don’t let its lights to shine around, so doing this effectively means the vampire squid switches into stealth mode. Plus it looks stylishly similar to Dracula popping the collar on his cape.

The vampire squid is every Monster Mash horror cliché come to life and smushed into a vaguely cephalopod shaped package for best user experience. When the stars are right and Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn emerge from the sunken city of R’lyeh to bring the world to ruin once more, these guys will be the first living things they encounter. And then they’ll fuck off back to their stupid city, mumbling things like “what the hell man, that’s plagiarism” and “that’s way too extra, even for us”. The apocalypse is postponed once again, thanks to the vampire squid’s vailant efforts of looking weird as fuck.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I was a day late due to the length of this article, but I hope you don’t mind. Until next Tuesday’s article, have a wonderful time with the aftermath of the day of cheesy horror and confectioneries.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life

Tree of Life Web Project

Animal Diversity Web

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

Ellis, Richard. “Introducing Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the vampire squid from Hell”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. 

Seibel, Brad. “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Deep-sea Vampire squid”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. Retrieved 3 July 2011. 

Hoving, H. J. T.; Robison, B. H. (2012). “Vampire squid: Detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 

[papermoonloveslucy]

ALL STAR PARTY FOR LUCILLE BALL

December 9, 1984

Directed by Dick McDonough ~ Written by Paul Keyes

Lucille Ball (Honoree), Monty Hall (Host), Nelson Riddle and His Orchestra

Monty Hall was the honorary chairman of Variety Clubs International.  

Featuring Lucy's family: Gary Morton, Lucie Arnaz, and Desi Arnaz Jr..

Lucy's former (and future) guest-stars: Sid Caesar, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, John Ritter, as well as uncredited appearances by Barbara Eden, Eva Gabor, Bernie Kopell, Rich Little, Cesar Romero, Art Linkletter, Kirk Douglas, Bea Arthur, Ken Lane (Dean Martin's pianist), and Ricardo Montalban

Presenters and entertainers also include: Joan Collins, Cary Grant, Shelley Long, Carl Reiner, and Vicky McLure

Former Variety Clubs honorees in attendance: James Stewart, Burt Reynolds, and Frank Sinatra 

Also present at the party (all uncredited): Loni Anderson, Lloyd Bridges, James Caan, Sammy Cahn, Ted Danson, Barbara and Marvin Davis (Childhood Diabetes Foundation), Altovise Davis, Charles Durning, Farrah Fawcett, George Hamilton, Barbara Harris (Mrs. Cary Grant), Lisa Hartman, Ted Lange, Vicki Lawrence, Carol Lawrence, Michele Lee, Olympian Carl Lewis, Hal Linden, Karl Malden, Roddy McDowell, Gloria Hatrick McLean (Mrs. Jimmy Stewart), Donna Mills, Stefanie Powers, Barbara Sinatra, Joan Van Ark, Dick Van Patten, Dionne Warwick, Dennis Weaver, Raquel Welch, and Betty White.

Taped at Warner Brothers Studios on November 18, 1984 and aired on CBS on December 9, 1984. Due to the December air date, the room is decorated in poinsettias. Lucy makes her entrance holding a dozen long-stem roses. At Lucy's center table is her husband Gary Morton, Frank and Barbara Sinatra, Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, Jimmy and Gloria Stewart, Cary Grant and Barbara Harris.

Variety, the Children's Charity is an organization founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1927, when a group of eleven men involved in show business set up a social club which they named the Variety Club. On Christmas Eve 1928, a baby was left on the steps of the Sheridan Square Film Theatre. When efforts to trace the mother failed, the Variety Club named the child Catherine Variety Sheridan, after the club and the theatre on whose steps she was found, and undertook to fund the child's living expenses and education. Later the club decided to raise funds for other disadvantaged children. The discovery of the baby inspired the film Variety Girl (1947).

The program was the second highest rated show of the night with a 21.7 share, second only to its lead-in “Murder She Wrote” with a 22.3 share.  

Monty Hall says that this is the 9th annual Variety Club All-Star Party. Two years later, Lucille Ball hosted the 1986 event honoring Clint Eastwood. In 1982 she participated in the All-Star Party for Carol Burnett.

In an interview to promote the program, Lucy said that Lucie Arnaz wrote the lyrics to the “I Love Lucy” tribute song that she and Desi Jr. sang. But on the show, Burt Reynolds claims the special lyrics were by Sammy Cahn.  

Also in the interview, Lucy says she'd never do another series again. Two years later she changed her mind and agreed to do “Life With Lucy” for Aaron Spelling and ABC. She also says she'd like to do a drama about seniors being driven from their homes. It is likely that by November 1984 Lucy was already in talks to do her final film, TV's Stone Pillow, which would begin filming in April 1985 and air in November of that same year.

To kick off the event, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra plays “Hey Look Me Over” as Lucy's entrance music. Lucille Ball introduced the song in the 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat by Cy Coleman.

Joan Collins (TV's “Dynasty”) details Lucy's background and rise to fame; 76 films and over 500 television programs. She reminds Lucy that she auditioned for the role of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. In 1987 Collins was honored with her own All-Star Party.

Joan: “Not even Clark Gable could look into that face and say 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn’”.

Frank Sinatra sings “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” to Lucy, a 1973 song written and recorded by Stevie Wonder.

Sinatra says to Lucy “You're the best thing to happen to Adam's rib.” This causes a quizzical look to come over Lucy's face. Later in life, Sinatra was known for his occasional odd references and non-sequitur. He had been honored by Variety Clubs the previous year, 1983.

Cary Grant reads a letter from President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was honored with an All-Star Party the following year, 1985. When first addressing Ball, Grant says “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” imitating his falsely attributed quote “Judy, Judy, Judy.” Grant would also read a congratulatory telegram from President Reagan in 1986, when Clint Eastwood was honored.

Carl Reiner introduces and interviews Sid Caesar as (all the way from Germany) Professor Ludwig Von Blearyeyes, the world's most renowned viewer of Lucille Ball's television shows. The Professor describes his second favorite episode of “I Love Lucy” which is a crazy mash-up of parts of several episodes, including “Lucy Goes To The Hospital” (ILL S2;E16), “The Audition” (ILL S1;E16), and “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25). The Professor then recounts the same episode in Italian, proving that Lucy is known all over the world. The description of the Professor's favorite episode sounds like the plot to King Kong.

John Ritter is introduced as a 'member of Lucy's mutual admiration society,' a fellow comedic actor on TV. Lucille Ball had hosted a two-part retrospective of Ritter's show “Three's Company” in 1982. Ritter would be Ball's first celebrity guest-star on “Life With Lucy” in 1986.

Ritter introduces Olympian Carl Lewis and Vicki McClure, a young woman from Los Angeles chosen to sing at the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics. McClure reprises the song she sang at the ceremonies, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand).” The song by Ashford and Simpson was the debut solo single of Motown singer Diana Ross, released in April 1970. McClure, a checkout girl at the Hughes Market in Canoga Park, was at first just the rehearsal stand-in for Ross but she was chosen for the real thing because as an unknown, she reflected the youthful image that organizers hoped to project for the games.

Shelley Long (TV's “Cheers”) admits that she never worked with Lucy, but admires her as a role model working mother. 

Long 'passes the baton' to Dean Martin, while the Nelson Riddle Orchestra plays his signature song “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime,” a song written in 1947 by Sam Coslow. Martin sang it  in “Lucy Dates Dean Martin” (TLS S4;E21), as well as on "Lucy Gets Lucky," their 1975 special. Martin (with Ken Lane at the piano) sings “When You're Smiling” by Larry Shay, Mark Fisher and Joe Goodwin. He changes the lyrics to suit the occasion:

“When you're Lucy,  When you're Lucy, You're never off TV. When you're Lucy, That's all you see, You're own life constantly. On Channel 7, 5, 4, 9, 8 or 10, Wherever you turn, That's our Lucy again. When you're Lucy, When you're Lucy, You're never off of TV.”

Jimmy Stewart says that Lucy and Gary are celebrating their wedding anniversary. Stewart introduces Gary Morton, who presents Lucy with an Olympic-style medal for being a “gold medal wife.”

Sammy Davis Jr.'s first remarks incorporate references to the 1961 musical Stop the World – I Want To Get Off by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. Davis starred in the 1978 Broadway revival of the show as well as the TV special “Sammy Stops the World” that same year. He then gives a heartfelt and emotion tribute to Lucy's world-wide and timeless appeal.  

Sammy: “Lucille Desiree Ball, daughter of Desiree and Henry Ball, who stopped the world and said 'I wanna get on' in Jamestown, New York. On an August the sixth, this world of ours took little note then, but will long, long remember.  Be proud, Lucy, of your legacy.  Very proud.  Be aware, as you sit here among your grateful friends, the sun never sets on Lucille Ball. All over this worried world tonight. Nations of untold millions are watching reruns they also watched the first time around. In Iran and Iraq on this very night, the fighting stops long enough for frightened people to laugh again as you hide the frozen meat in the furnace. In Finland after a long hard day at the factory, husbands and father are just settling down to watch the American girl they love the most get half bombed on her first TV commercial. And in Lebanon, ravished Lebanon, worried parents of many fates share a common experience, with innocent war-torn children, who tune in to forget the debris long enough to feed their hungry souls with laughter as you parade down the Champs Elysee in an outfit that drove the Paris designers to double aperitifs. Across the world in Singapore, Japan, whole families gather for a 'Lucy break' as laughter erases their problems watching you rehearse your trip to the hospital for television's first birth. And in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, San Salvador, Venezuela, and other sunshine countries, laughter crosses friendly and unfriendly borders as you try to keep up with the chocolates on the assembly line. Yes, my dear friend, Lucy, you are the one they love most.”

The specific “I Love Lucy” episodes Davis is referring to (in order) are “The Freezer (ILL S1;E29); “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” (ILL S1;E30); “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” (ILL S5;E20); “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16); and “Job Switching” (ILL S2;E1).  Lucy later said that Davis wrote the above speech himself.

Monty Hall returns to tell Lucy that Variety Clubs International has added new facilities in children's hospitals dedicated to John Wayne (in Miami), Elizabeth Taylor (in New York City), Jimmy Stewart (in Minnesota), Ingrid Bergman (in Des Moines), Jack Lemmon (in Buffalo), Burt Reynolds (in Atlanta), Carol Burnett (in Los Angeles), and Frank Sinatra (in Seattle).  

Burt Reynolds recounts his first meeting Lucy, through an introduction by Lucie Arnaz. Lucie and Reynolds dated for a year and a half. Nelson Riddle and the Orchestra play the “I Love Lucy” theme by Eliot Daniel. Lucie and Desi Jr. then sing the song to their mother with special lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Ball struggles to hold back the tears. Lucie Arnaz is noticeably pregnant. She would give birth to her daughter, Katherine Luckinbill, on January 11, 1985.

To the strains of the title song from Mame, Lucy joins Monty Hall at the front of the room where he  informs her of the naming of a research library in her honor at the Barbara Davis Juvenile Diabetes Hospital in Denver, Colorado.

Lucille Ball thanks everyone for the tribute. She asks Mike Frankovich of Variety Clubs to stand and take a bow.

Lucy: “To everyone who said such wonderful things about me tonight, I just wish you were all under oath.”

At the very end, the entire crowd sings “Happy Anniversary” (to the tune of “Happy Birthday”) to Lucy and Gary, who were married on November 19, 1961.

Oops! Over the entrance music, Lucille Ball can be heard to greet Dionne Warwick saying “Hi Diane.” Did she think Warwick was Diahann Carroll?  When Lucy sees Eva, she just repeats over and over “A Gabor!  A Gabor!  A Gabor!” perhaps unsure if it is Eva or Zsa Zsa. Bear in mind that Ball did not know the guest list ahead of time. While the announcer reads off the guests stars for the opening credits, Lucy can be heard to say “I hope I remember the names.”

When Gary Morton puts the Olympic medal around Lucy's neck, she says “Turn it around!” Lucy wanted the front of the medal facing the camera. She then jokes that she is “always directing.”  

This Date in Lucy History –  December 9

"Don Juan and the Starlets" (ILL S4;E18) filmed on December 9, 1955

"Lucy and the Military Academy" (TLS S2;E10) aired December 9, 1963

"Guess Who Owes Lucy $23.50" (HL S1;E11) aired December 9, 1968