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derangedsilence · 5 years

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Ruki Mukami

Permissions

Please feel free to check any of the Sakamaki Bros.’ permission lists. It’s pretty repetitively the same.

Singleship per verse, please feel free to participate in the plots as appropriate, etc.

Biography / Stats

FULL NAME. Ruki Mukami ALIAS. Smart Guy/Bastard/Asshole (Ayato) AGE. Appears 18-19 || Actually significantly older BIRTHDAY. April 24 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Male, he/him ORIENTATION. Heterosexual SPECIES. Vampire, former human OCCUPATION. High school student of the night school known as Ryoutei Academy. 3rd year in HDB, 1st year of the college branch if assuming time has passed. RESIDENCE. Mukami residence, Japan

HAIR. Black EYES. Blue-grey BUILD. Fit/Slim HEIGHT. 5'11'' (180cm) TATTOOS. None PIERCINGS. Three black piercings on his right ear. ADDITIONAL MARKINGS. Two large scars on his back. OTHER. Right-handed

ZODIAC. Taurus ALIGNMENT. Lawful neutral POSITIVE TRAITS. Well-read, intelligent, leader-type NEGATIVE TRAITS. Sadistic, controlling, cold

BIRTH PLACE. Japan? NATIONALITY. Japanese? PARENTS. Human father (deceased), human mother (deceased). Karlheinz (adoptive father). SIBLINGS. (Adoptive) Kou, Yuma, Azusa. EXTENDED FAMILY. None, technically. EDUCATION. High school (likely several times over) NOTABLE SKILLS. Strategy, cooking (especially soup), reading, horse-riding, puzzles LANGUAGES. Japanese, English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (Dano-Norwegian and New Norwegian), Icelandic, and Faroese FAVORITE FOOD. Soup

"IMPURE” VAMPIRE. Inhuman strength, increased speed, vision, hearing, and smell. Fast healing, but not as fast as a pureblood. TELEPORTATION. Can teleport instantaneously. SWORDSMANSHIP. When it comes to fencing, B OTHER. Excellent strategic / tactical skill. Due to being a former human, can handle sunlight better than a pureblood. WEAKNESSES. Unlike purebloods, regular vampires do not possess their own magic. Purebloods can “borrow” that for them using their own abilities, but it’s not quite the same. DISLIKES. Disobedience, strong-flavored food and drink, being unable to become “Adam” for Karlheinz

Appearance

[*Credit: Appearance section pulled directly from the Dialovers Wiki.]

Ruki is a handsome young man with short ruffled hair colored with black hair on top and white on the tips. He has blue-grey eyes and also three black piercings on his right ear. Ruki has two large scars on his back from when he was a child. He wears black web chokers on his neck. He is often seen carrying a book in his right hand. He usually wears a grey jacket with a long sleeve black shirt underneath and wears it with black pants and a brown belt. He sometimes wears a long-sleeved maroon shirt with a black butterfly print on the bottom left side and wears it with black pants and a black belt. He wears the black web chokers with both outfits.

His school uniform consists of the black school jacket with a white dress shirt that is slightly unbuttoned revealing a long-sleeved maroon shirt underneath and a long black tie over it. He wears it with the black plaid uniform pants and brown shoes

In the sixth game LOST EDEN, Ruki’s school uniform consists of the dark red school blazer with a white dress shirt and he wears a long-sleeved maroon shirt underneath. He wears black pants and white shoes.

Personality

A kind but strict older brother towards the other Mukamis, Ruki is a distant, tightly controlled vampire whose calm veneer houses an intensely dominant nature with a capacity for cruelty. He’s goal-oriented and prefers embracing his “nobility” by sticking to proper manners and a unique interpretation of noblesse oblige.

Originally a cruel, spoiled rich kid, circumstances eventually led him to experience being on the opposite end. He is very devoted to his brothers and a talented strategist who can use his brothers’ combined strengths and talents to effectively defeat a First Blood.

History

CHILDHOOD. Early in life, Ruki was a spoiled, obnoxious rich kid who treated servants with extreme prejudice and cruelty. Ruki’s father, a kind man by comparison, went bankrupt. His father hung himself. His mother ran off with a secret lover, leaving only a letter saying she loved Ruki behind. Ruki attempted to stop the servants from ransacking their house in the chaos, but was beaten by the people he’d beaten so often before. He waited in that house hoping his mother would return, but she never did. Eventually he had to go out and live on the streets, facing ridicule and poor treatment.

Eventually he was brought to an orphanage. A spoiled ex-noble, he was treated poorly by both the orphans and adults. Azusa, a fellow orphan, took an immediate shine to him due to how beaten and battered Ruki always was. Hoping to get the same treatment, Azusa followed him around. Their relationship was strained - Ruki did not appreciate Azusa or even like him - eventually he started to see Azusa as a younger brother and care for him. Later still, they would meet Kou and Yuma and band together as a makeshift set of brothers.

Together, they sought to escape the hellish orphanage. They were punished severely - all but Ruki were shot, while Ruki was taken to the basement and branded as livestock. This is when Karlheinz appeared and offered the promise of turning them into vampires so that they could serve him. In turn, they would be able to take revenge on the world that hurt and deprived them so.

They agreed.

Karlheinz chose Ruki as the head of their group and ensured he was well-educated and capable of leading. He taught them about the plan for Adam and Eve.

CURRENT. The Mukamis have made themselves known to Eve and must make the choice to continue to attempt to become Adam themselves, assist in one of the Sakamakis becoming “Adam” for their “Eve”, or steal her away for themselves and truly betray Karlheinz.

Verses

Brief summaries of the verses for Ruki along with potential links for those less familiar with Diabolik Lovers but still want to interact with him. For the sake of keeping things clean, encouraging community-wide and cooperative storytelling in roleplay, and not letting things get too crazy, verses will be limited. More may be made over time as needed.

Summaries:

VERSE - MORE BLOOD RIVALS

*This verse will be typically be the default, 'main verse'. In this, it is assumed that Yui Komori is staying at the Sakamaki household with some version of the first game having taken place. The second game is included with the idea that Yui stayed with the Sakamakis. Whether Ruki or one of his brothers winds up obtaining Eve, Ruki’s life continues.

Verse Details | Tag: #V; RUKI; MORE BLOOD RIVALS

VERSE - MORE BLOOD

A verse where More Blood has certainly occured and Yui did not (at least initially) stay with the Sakamakis and instead is currently living with the Mukamis or was, until recently, still living with the Mukamis. Rivalry abounds and attempts to procure Yui are likely.

Verse Details | Tag: #V; RUKI; MORE BLOOD

VERSE - MISC.

Posts that could take place in the Sakamaki or Mukami verses but involve duplicates (whether Yui or others) in the same scene in a manner that would be hard to pass off as typical flow for those verses. Also includes nearly ANY time fellow characters are staying at the mansion, otherwise we’d end up with verses of 20+ additional characters hanging out in the Sakamaki villa.

Verse Details | Tag:#V; RUKI; MISC

SITUATIONAL VERSE TAGS

#V; RUKI; UNIVERSAL

Posts that can easily be assumed to have occured in either verse, typically answering asks, etc. that aren’t directly related to events unique to their timelines.

#V; RUKI; WHAT IFS & #V; RUKI; ONESHOTS

Likely reserved for one-off threads exploring a “what if”, a romantic meme that would otherwise be inappropriate, etc. If a meme doesn’t quite fit with one of the existing timelines, it’ll get one of these.

Trivia

Calls Yui “livestock”

As a rival of Ayato’s, he likes to taunt and provoke the redhead

Knows how to flambe

Is probably that guy who has read way more classical literature than you and likes to drop that fact when the opportunity arises

Is often reading

Tags

THREAD / WRITING TAG: #echoes in the halls; ruki

HEADCANONS: #hc; dialovers; ruki

IMAGES: #itt // ruki mukami

MUSIC: #music; dialovers; ruki

#blog; stuff #blog; muses

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longforgottenunofficial · 7 years

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Ravens and One-Eyed Cats, Oh My!

The unseen Ghost Host acts as a sort of ambassador, a go-between, someone equally able to speak to us in the mortal realm as well as to his fellow spirits (presumably). Other than a few directives from the Cast Member Butlers and Maids, telling us to get to the center of the stretching gallery, the GH is our only narrator and guide. He never really tells us what his motivation is in taking us on this little tour. Right up until the end of the ride, you don't know if he's good or evil. We're so used to this arrangement by now that we forget that doing it this way was a choice. As it turns out, it was a choice made only a few months before the Haunted Mansion opened. Some of the rejected alternatives would have made for a very different ride experience if they had been implemented. One of these is fairly well known and has left traces behind in the ride. There is another one, far less well-known, which has left nothing behind. One thing they have in common is that both of them add an additional character who interacts with both the Ghost Host and with you, the rider. Very different chemistry. This was not a trivial decision, as we'll see. The Raven Died in the wool Mansionites know a lot about this character, so if you're one of those, and you're impatient, you might scroll down to the Cat section, which includes stuff you've never seen, I promise. Riders can hardly help noticing that there is a raven which accompanies them throughout the ride, starting with the Conservatory scene and ending at the entrance to the crypt at the end of the graveyard scene. There are five all together, but they are all supposed to be the same character. All it does is caw at us. Especially at DL, particular attention is drawn to it as we descend into the graveyard. Despite having our focus obviously directed at it at that point, we're gettin' bird noises and that's it.

Originally, the WDW raven sat on the branch right above you too, as you tilted back, but due to "guest abuse" it was moved back and put on a branch well off to the side. Ketchup packets, I imagine. Caw-caw. At least the bird sounds real. According to Stacia Martin (The Sounds of Disneyland [Disney, 2005] 31), he was voiced by "Candy" Candido, best known as the go-to guy for basso profundo in cases where even Thurl Ravenscroft couldn't get low enough. (Candy must have had freakin' bridge cables for vocal cords.) What is less well-known is that Candy was extraordinarily versatile and could do very high voices as well. The same source says that Candy did the raven in Sleeping Beauty and simply hauled out his raven cry again ten years later for the Mansion. Be that as it may, originally there were going to be several more ravens, including one in the stretching room and one in the foyer. (You can read about the latter one HERE). This was still going to be the case going into the spring of 1969. The raven was going to talk to you, along with the unseen Ghost Host. The 1968 show script which provided the basis for the "Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion" album preserves a lot of the raven's dialogue. The bird criticizes the stretchroom advice given by the GH ("He chose the coward's way! Caw-caw"). I guess the GH is a little miffed, because shortly afterwards he responds by warning you that the raven is a possessed creature, and its "restless spirit" may be looking for an opportunity to "better itself." This bickering leaves you wondering which (if either) of these voices from regions beyond should be trusted. But the raven is also the one who warns you about the ghostly hitchhikers at the end, so by that point you have probably come to trust the little guy. He even calls you "my friends," so you see? He cares. I guess there was no caws for concern. (Oh shut up; it's my blog.) The eerie raven first appears in a Ken Anderson concept sketch. Marc Davis liked it and kept it, and it seems that there was never a time when it wasn't going to be part of the show.

Is the talking raven taken from the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem? If we're speaking of an indirect influence, the answer is an easy yes. Poe is indeed responsible for adding the raven to the short list of recognized Halloween critters (bats, spiders, black cats, owls). But even in a direct sense, the answer is yes. In an early script, the raven warns us about itself (huh?) and the hitchhikers, with "nevermore's" and "evermore's" sprinkled everywhere. The lines were recorded at one point by the incomparable Eleanor Audley (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent, Madame Leota). Warning! If you're an admirer of Ms. Audley's work (yes, yes, I see those hands), this excerpt is painful to listen to. But we historians cannot afford the luxury of pity. Beware of Eleanor's Raven, Forevermore [Audio Link]

Oh geesh, that was bad. Anyway, it proves that X. Atencio was directly influenced by "The Raven" when he tried to script the character. One problem with the raven—besides being annoying—was that it was too small to command your attention in some of the larger scenes. Maybe a bigger animal would work. Let's see...no, you can't have an elephant in a haunted house. How about a black cat? More specifically, how about an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired black cat? The One-Eyed Black Cat "The Black Cat" is one of Poe's better known tales, often anthologized, and read in many a high school English class. If you've forgotten how it goes, here's a severely abbreviated summary: The narrator had a beloved black cat for a pet, but one day in a fit of alcoholic rage he gouges out its eye with a knife. Later on, guilt at the sight of the one-eyed black cat turns to resentment and he kills the animal. Later he finds (or is found by) another one-eyed black cat and takes it as a pet. In yet another one of his fits of rage he murders his wife and walls her up in the cellar. When the police investigate, however, the narrator is betrayed by the howling of the cat inside the wall, where it had been walled up with the corpse. A much creepier Poe animal than the raven, certainly. Most Mansion fans know about the existence of the one-eyed black cat only from a couple of Paul Frees outtakes, in which he tries out his note-perfect Bela Legosi and Peter Lorre voices while using a revised HM script. Dude, when Count Dracula sees fit to warn you about a kitty, it must be one bad motorscooter. Ghost Host Bela warns you about a nasty cat [Audio Link]

Ghost Host Peter warns you about it too [Audio Link]

As you can gather from those, X's cat was much scarier and more demonic than his raven. None of the cat's dialogue has survived, but X did a series of concept sketches. The notion that the cat would be co-narrator may even predate the notion of putting the earlier raven character into that specific role. It looks as if the black cat might first manifest itself at first as nothing more than an eye:

Apparently, the eye would morph into a shiny point of laser-like light, and a cat face would appear with only one eye. The first eye you saw turns out to be the missing one. From the looks of it, this loud and angry feline is looking for more than just a Little Friskies num-num.

The morphing continues, and the face rots into a more human form. Not surprisingly, this does nothing to improve its mood.

Good Lord. And how was this thing going to be presented? A projection? That isn't clear. It's possible that the "cat" was going to just pop out unexpectedly along the way in its various stages of demonic materialization. The face above looks a lot like a blast-up head in another X concept sketch. A quick look at some actual blast-up heads (inset) confirms that this is what the artwork is about.

So maybe our creepy "cat" was going to jump out and surprise us here and there throughout the ride. Good Lord. When neither the demonic one-eyed black cat nor the "nevermore"-squawking raven ended up being used, the HM lost its only clear Edgar Allan Poe allusions (although you could make a case for a Tell-Tale Heart allusion in the bride's beating heart). It would have been nice if someone had told the composer of this WDW pre-opening publicity poster that the Haunted Mansion could no longer be accurately described as "Edgar Allan Poe-styled."

The black cat was a short-lived idea, with good reason. By having the Ghost Host warn you about a clearly malicious and dangerous creature like this one, he cast himself into the role of protector. He was there to help you. Similarly, in the 1968 script, the GH graciously informs you at the outset that you will not be harmed. That's very decent of him. Too decent. Who wants Santa Claus for a Ghost Host? A haunted house is an allegory of life itself. You enter here and you exit there, and in between is a dark twisted corridor filled with frightening sights. You may get advice along the way, but you never have quite enough evidence to be sure that those voices have your best interest at heart. Do you really want to go into that haunted house that the neighbor kid put up in his garage for Halloween—the one who's a minor league juvenile delinquent the rest of the year? Enter if you dare. The Haunted Mansion is no different than any thirteen-year-old's spook house, and it's no different from life. Once you're in, you don't know if the Host is benign or malicious, so you have no choice but to go ahead, even with insufficient data. When you're stuck in a haunted house, the secret is to not panic and to keep your wits about you and to just keep going. If you do that, you're likely to make it. Kinda like life. So the trouble with the villainous black cat is that it made the Ghost Host much too unambiguously a good guy. It's important that he make you a little nervous, a little unsure. What was the trouble with the raven, then, aside from being a tad too small? With the cat, we had a bad guy co-narrator and a good guy main narrator. With the talking raven, we had a morally ambiguous co-narrator along with a morally ambiguous Ghost Host. At first, you don't really know if either of them can be trusted. But in that case, why do you need two narrators? The real problem with the raven was that it was redundant. Turn off its dialogue and give its few substantive comments to the GH, and ta da, nothing is changed. Just make sure the GH never really tells you what he's up to. .

Originally Posted: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Original Link: [x]

#long forgotten #haunted mansion

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longforgottenunofficial · 7 years

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Mansions Known and Unknown

[New artwork added Nov 1, 2012. Major additions were added (as additions are wont to do) Jan 28 and June 2, 2014, in pink. Yet a further addition arrived in May 2017, in red.] Who doesn't want to draw a haunted house, especially if you're a good artist and you can? Perhaps half a dozen different artists took a whack at conceptualizing the Disneyland haunted house between 1951 and 1961. That may or may not be a record, but it's really not surprising. As many of you know, even in his earliest ruminations Walt wanted to include a haunted house in any future amusement park he might produce. This was back when "Disneyland" as we know it was not so much as a twinkle in his eye. Some of these images are well known, some less so, and some not well known at all. I thought it would be a nifty idea to gather all of them together into a single location, which I don't think anyone has done before. It all starts with Harper Goff's 1951 sketch. I'd classify this one as "pretty well known." There's no attempt here to figure out how the thing would actually work as an attraction. This is just concept work.

At first the haunted house was going to be on Main Street, an "old-dark-house-at-the-end-of-the-street" kind of thing. This 1953 sketch by Dale Henessy is not as well known as Goff's.

It's because of this Henessey sketch that I am now convinced that Herb Ryman,under the personal direction of Walt, put a haunted house in this famous sketch:

Many of you know the story. One of the potential financial backers for the Disneyland project (ABC network) wanted to see something concrete before committing themselves, so Walt and Herb did this sketch in a hurry-up marathon session over a weekend in 1953, and it did the trick. Anyway, reader refurbmike pointed out in a comment that it may well contain a haunted house, and sure enough, in exactly the same spot as in Henessey's sketch, you find this:

Since Ryman's sketch actually precedes Henessey's, we can be pretty confident that this doesindeed represent a haunted house, since Henessey evidently interpreted it that way. And...here's something new as of May 2017. This is from a copy of the above sketch that Herb Ryman himself supposedly reworked further by tinting it and thickening some lines, in order to achieve greater clarity and emphasis. It sold at auction in 2017 for more than $700,000. Here's the Haunted House part (courtesy of Jeff Baham).

Moving on, at least one artwork in this discussion can be debunked. The following drawing by Roy Rulin has been identified in a Disney publication as a concept sketch for a Disneyland haunted house. In reality, it's a concept sketch for a 1956 Hardy Boys television episode, "The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure." Compare the photo below from the show's opening sequence. (Special thanks to readers Chris Merritt and Jeremy Fulton for clearing up the old mystery. A couple of modern-day Hardy Boys, I guess.)

The first artist to come up with a design with serious legs (although that sounds like something Rolly Crump would do) was Sam McKim, about 1957. Not only did he sketch a haunted house, he did preliminary architectural design on it as an attraction, and he was confident enough about it to put it on one of his classic, cartoon-y, souvenir park maps, as if it was a done deal. We're not on Main Street any more. This one is in the back corner of the proposed New Orleans Square, almost in Adventureland. In fact, it's right about where the Indy Jones ride is today.

In May of 2014 a very rough early sketch was published for the first time:

Joe "Datameister" Cardello, a future Disney Imagineer, has taken a special interest in this disused Sam McKim design and produced a highly-ambitious and very impressive three-dimensional computer-graphic recreation. You can see the whole set of images HERE.

That takes us to 1957, but in 1957 Ken Anderson was given the haunted house assignment, and the next chapter is very well known indeed. Ken did a sketch based closely on the Shipley-Lydecker house in Baltimore, and it proved to be the defining look of the building to come.

Two or three artists used Ken's sketch as a springboard for further work, narrowing down the architectural details and conceptualizing the landscape setting. Most famously, of course, Sam McKim did a paint-over of Anderson's sketch, producing what is perhaps THE most iconic rendering of the HM of all time. The whole painting seems to swirl with movement. Yeah, I know I've posted this before, but I never tire of looking at it.

I suppose McKim could take some solace in that fact that at least Ken kept his black cat weather vane. This Anderson sketch dates from September 17, 1957. The painting may be his as well. They show the kind of setting Ken explicitly had in mind.

With this 1961 sketch (actually, a "working elevation" drawing) by Marvin Davis we are getting close to the finished version, but it still retains a number of features from the Anderson version that will be altered within the coming year. For example, we still have the square Shipley-Lydecker cupola, and we still have McKim's black cat up on top, soon to be replaced with a schooner (sorry, Sam). We finally have the neat and clean look that Walt demanded, anyway.

In fact, if you compare the Marvin Davis drawing to blueprints of what is actually there, you will notice quite a number of substantial differences, so in my view we are still en route from Ken's first sketch to the final building, although obviously we are getting close.

A similar story about the architectural development of the WDW Mansion could be told too, but naturally it wouldn't have the depth of history or the sheer variety of artistic concepts that the original DL version had.

One alternate worth mentioning is Disney legend Herb Ryman's concept of the WDW HM as an ordinary looking, pre-revolutionary, New England manor house. It's handsome, yes, but . . . a little dull.

(Major revisions to this post in light of subsequent comments are highlighted in orange.)

Due to the nature of tumblr posts, I have not been able to change the color of the text. The highlighted areas have been bolded.

Originally Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Original Link: [x]

#long forgotten #haunted mansion #hm architechture

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longforgottenunofficial · 7 years

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The Mansion Gets Organized

[Several major updates! May 14, 2014] A couple of posts ago I mentioned the well-known fact that the organ in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion's ballroom is the same one used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You can get that bit of trivia at any ol' blog; Long-Forgotten readers demand more. More ye shall have, and yet with no more calories than with those regular Haunted Mansion blogs. It's amazing. Harper Goff was a Disney genius of the first water. It was he who designed the Nautilus and all of the sets for the classic 20K film. One prop that gave him some trouble, however, was Captain Nemo's pipe organ. The normal procedure was to go to the usual prop houses and arrange for an organ transplant to the 20K sets. But he couldn't find anything suitable, so in desperation he began scouring the classified ads in the local papers. He lucked out. Some guy not too far away had an organ console in his garage that he was willing to unload for cheap. When Goff saw the instrument he was delighted, because not only was it a handsome piece, but it had all the stop tabs and keys intact (a rare thing with old junked organs). The owner was pretty tickled as well: that idiot from Disney paid him a cool $50 for an old organ console that didn't even work. Decked out with a nice set of fake pipes (reportedly, plaster covered with gold leaf), the prop served its purpose, and when the 20K sets were put on display in a Disneyland Exhibit, the organ was a crowd pleaser, judging by the number of photographs around.

In May of 2014 reader Jonas Clark alerted us to several new details in the story of the 20K organ. It turns out that they did quite a bit more than just sticking a mirror and some pipes on the console. It was a Robert Morton electric theater organ, and like all such electric organs it did not have old-fashioned pull stops but color-coded tabs.

A typical Robert Morton console

Apparently, the organ was already dolled up and on the 20K set before someone noticed that the tabs were anachronistic. In this rare, early production photo of the set you can see the tabs still there:

They pulled them out and covered the ugly holes with a wooden insert covered with dummy pull knobs. The fix-it may already have been underway when the above photo was taken, as it appears that there are already knobs on the two wings. Speaking of those wings, they project a little too far out for an authentic Robert Morton2 manual organ and may themselves have been add-ons, including, one supposes, the ornate corbels beneath them.

In short, Goff's lucky find was modified much more than we have usually assumed before it was ready for the Nautilus.

On, now, to the Mansion.

Three years after all this Ken Anderson was given the assignment of designing a Haunted House for Disneyland. His plans always seem to have included a ballroom with an organ in it, played by an unseen organist, and viewed from a balcony.

For the organ itself, he was happy with an old-fashioned pump organ, a popular fixture in wealthy Victorian houses.

The Imagineers responsible for creating the actual Haunted Mansion gave numerous interviews over the years in a myriad of publications, especially Rolly Crump, X Atencio, and Marc Davis. It is curious that in the published comments, rarely do they mention Ken Anderson and his pioneering labors in 1957 and 1958 on what would eventually be the Haunted Mansion (X does mention him at least once). I have to think this is a fluke rather than a snub, perhaps the result of the questions asked and the material discarded in the editing process. Whatever the reason, it took a long time for Anderson's contributions to be fully appreciated. (There's a string of posts devoted to Anderson coming up, starting HERE.) I'm pointing it out now because you will never find a clearer example of how later Imagineers made direct use of Anderson's ideas than this organ gag. Although the sketch above doesn't show it, Anderson eventually conceived of a number of other instruments in use along with the organ, floating around the room. That gag was used too, but it was transferred to the Séance circle. Meanwhile, Anderson's pump organ with its ghostly musician leaving his footprints on the pedals was taken over wholesale by Claude Coats and by X Atencio, along with an ensemble of other musicians.

Marc Davis also played around with the idea:

D23/Disney

That Davis sketch was not published until May of 2014. In putting a set of pipes on top, Davis was simply depicting a different style of pump organ, like this 1895 model:

Davis's sketch is a good illustration of the evolution of an idea. Notice how Marc borrows Anderson's original concept and borrows too the shadow organist innovation from Coats and/or Atencio, and then as his original contribution changes the organ style to one with the pipes prominently attached atop, taking the gag one step closer to what we see in the eventual ride.

Meanwhile meanwhile, another Imagineer had ideas of his own. Walt Disney personally recruited Rolly Crump to work on the Haunted House in 1959 because he recognized in Rolly a wild and original imagination with a penchant for the weird and fantastic. That quaint old pump organ didn't really suit Rolly, who felt that it was important to present guests with things they had never seen before. Rolly's organ console was, you might say, a little unorthodox.

No matter how much the other Imagineers might balk at Rolly's ideas as "too weird," Rolly held a trump card: Walt loved his stuff. When Rolly built a small model of this organ, that was the one Walt used to demonstrate the Pepper's Ghost effect for viewers of the television program celebrating Disneyland's tenth anniversary in 1965.

Walt decided to put Rolly's surrealistic material into a "Museum of the Weird," separate from the Haunted Mansion proper. But what about the ballroom organ? What's it going to be guys, this crazy thing or the more staid Anderson-Coats-Atencio pump organ? Or are there going to be twopipe organs in the attraction? Walt's death in 1966 left questions like that without a supreme arbiter, but in this case, the question answered itself in that same year when the old 20,000 Leagues exhibit permanently shut down and work began on an all-new Tomorrowland. Somebody realized that the Nemo organ was now available, and it was probably an easy decision to save a few dollars and some time by grabbing it for the Mansion. So much for the pump organ. When Marc Davis sketched this concept for the organist, he seems to have had the Nemo organ in mind, judging by the fan-shaped organ pipes.

This is even more obvious in Collin Campbell's painting, based on Davis's sketch:

But the Nemo pipes were made of plaster, and the big "N" medallion wasn't something you could just snap off. Besides, if they just plopped the same organ into the HM ballroom that had been on display in Tomorrowland for over ten years, plenty of guests would likely recognize it for the salvage job that it was. The solution, of course, was to design a new set of pipes, and ta da, it was Rolly Crump's old design that came to the rescue. That pipe set remains the single largest survivor from Crump's disused "Museum" designs to make it into the finished HM.

The rest is details. What happened to the other musicians? Marc Davis liked the idea of a ghostly musical ensemble, but he conceived of it as having its own tableau rather than as an adjunct to the ballroom organist.

When this tableau was nixed, there went what once was going to be the organist's companions, and he became a solo artist. Another Davis idea did survive, though: the banshees floating out of the organ pipes. Very cool. The cloudy spirits were solidified into skull-like heads, and the practical effect was simply a ferris-wheel device, reflected spookily in the glass. This device may possibly have been inspired by the bats flying around in the forest scene in Snow White's Adventures, over in Fantasyland (although it's not certain that the bats are original). If correct, this would not be the first nor the last borrowing from the park's original scary dark ride.

The end result is one of the Mansion's most memorable characters. In glorious 3D for ya, once again.

Only the DL organ is "real." The WDW and Tokyo organ consoles are simply plywood mockups, modeled on the original. Between the 20,000 Leagues movie and the DL Haunted Mansion, that original instrument may be the most frequently viewed pipe organ console of all time.

I wonder what that guy did with his fifty bucks?

Originally Posted: Saturday, June 19, 2010 Original Link: [x]

#long forgotten #haunted mansion #pipe organ #organ ghost

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