#but like fair play i think we should all have localized versions of this song

[muirneach]

do other countries have their own alternate lyrics to this land is your land or is it just canada that wanted to be different

[deans-queen]

Wildest​ Dreams 🩵

Main Characters: Dean Winchester x Aria ( Original Character )

Additional Characters: Hanna (Aria’s Best Friend)

Plot: Aria is out at a club with her friends and she meets a mysterious handsome stranger (Dean). (Again this story will mostly be in Aria’s P.O.V) (You can even imagine you the reader as Aria if you want)

Warnings: SMUT, p in v (wrap it up kids), mature and sexual language, alcohol. *18+ Readers ONLY please!*

I’m not good at writing smut but I promise I’m working on it !

Inspired by the song: “Wildest Dreams (Taylor's Version)” by Taylor Swift

Blue text: song lyrics

Aria’s P.O.V

It was Saturday night and I'm out with a group of friends. This week had been super stressful and I needed to unwind. So I decided to have a GNO (girls night out). I was wearing short black dress that hit all my curves right with high heeled pumps. My long dark brown hair was in soft curls that looked like waves and my makeup was on point completed with my favorite red lipstick. I looked hot and I felt it too! We went to this local club and we were downing shots like water. My friends and I were having a blast dancing when suddenly my friend Hanna whispered in my ear “Oh my god, this guy is totally checking you out.”

“Really? Who is he?” I said.

“Yes!” She exclaimed, “and I dunno but he’s totally hot!”

I casually looked behind me and I saw him

He smiled & winked at me.

Damn, he is hot!

He's so tall and handsome as hell

He's so bad but he does it so well

He was tall, muscular (not like a body builder but his body was toned) and had short brown hair.

He had a jawline so sharp and perfect that it could cut you in half.

And to top it off….he had the most amazing smile and GORGEOUS emerald green eyes.

This man was certainly a damn dream.

“You should talk to him Aria.” Hanna said as she elbowed me.

“No way! He’s so out of my league.”

“Come on Aria! He’s handsome as hell. How many other chances are you gonna get?”

“Seriously Han, what would I even say to him? I’m too worried about embarrassing myself.”

Hanna looked over my shoulder and casually pointed his way.

“You better think of something because he’s walking this way.”

I turned around and gasped.

Omg….Omg…. I thought

What do I do? What do I say?

What if I say something stupid?

I gathered my thoughts as this handsome stranger walked towards me.

“Hi.” He said with confidence. He reached out his hand to me and I shook it. His hands were a bit rough but strong at the same time.

“Hi.” I said in a nervous voice shaking his hand.

My heart was pounding in my chest hearing its beat in my ears.

“I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful you are.” His eyes were looking me up and down. “And I was wondering if I could buy you a drink?”

I looked back at Hanna and she nodded in approval.

“Sure.” I said coyly, I was trying to play hard to get. Pretending to be unimpressed with his good looks and charm. It was hard to do that.

He lead me to the bar and we ordered our drinks. He ordered another beer and I ordered a cocktail.

“Soooo…” he said while looking at me and taking a sip of his beer.

“I offer to buy you a drink and I didn’t even bother to ask your name.”

I looked at him shyly. “Aria, I’m Aria.”

“That’s a very unique name. I’m Dean, Dean Winchester.” He gave me a sexy smile, I couldn’t help but blush.

It wasn’t fair, I had just met this man not even 5 minutes ago and I’m already attracted to him. I was under his spell, I didn’t wanna get out of it.

I knew how this night was going to end.

I can see the end as it begins

My one condition is

The next thing I knew we were making out in the backseat of his Chevy Impala.

He said “No one has to know what we do…”

His hands were tangled up in my hair, as my arms wrapped around his neck.

But this is getting good now…

The kiss was passionate and hot. His lips made his way down my neck and jawline. While his hands ran down my back to cup my ass. He then proceeded to run a hand along my thigh to push up the bottom of my dress, exposing my bare skin.

“Dean.” I said breathlessly moaning

“Mmmmm you smell so good baby. Like vanilla and coconut.”

“And you smell like whisky and cologne.” I said under my breath.

“That sounds about right.” He said winking at me.

His hands made is way to the back of my dress to unzip it. I pushed it down and removed it from my body. His eyes grew wide as he saw me in my lingerie. I was wearing a black and red lacy bra that had a rose in the middle with a matching thong.

“Your body is so perfect, Aria.” He said as he looked me up and down, biting his lip.

I reached down to tug on his shirt and removed it. My eyes began to wonder at his chest, muscular arms and perfect abs. He also had a very unique tattoo on his chest.

Was this man carved by a Greek god or something?

“Says you.” I said cheekily while kissing him back again.

It was very bold of me to be making out with a stranger in his car, but I couldn’t help myself. I was totally admired of him. He was like a drug you were addicted to. And I needed every dose of him. I didn’t want him to be another one night stand….someone I would never see again.

I tried to make this night last forever

“Dean….please fuck me. I want you so bad.”

He looked at me grinning like a devil and said “Your wish is my command sweetheart.”

He unbuckled the belt on his jeans taking them off quickly and removed his boxers. My eyes grew wide at the sight of his member. He was thick and huge. I laid down on the seat and he crawled on top of me. He wasted no time lining up with my entrance and putting himself inside me. (With protection of course)

"Oh fuck....you feel so good." I said breathlessly.

“Mmmm so you do you baby. Your pussy is so tight for me.” He moaned.

He thrusted in me faster and faster, I sat up a little bit and put his forehead against mine. I wrapped my legs around his waist pushing him more into me. I gripped my hands along his back, digging my nails into his skin. He moaned while I clawed my nails into him leaving scratch marks.

"God baby, i'm so close. Are you close for me?" He said

"Yes, Dean. I wanna come for you!"

"Come in me, I wanna feel your juices around my cock.”

"Ahhhhhhh fuck." I screamed

I exploded inside him, that was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.

We both looked at each other and breathed heavily.

“Dean?” I said while still breathing heavily.

“Yeah baby?” His green eyes looking in mine.

“Please say you’ll remember me after tonight? I don’t want to be just another hook up…”

Say you’ll remember me

Standin’ in a nice dress

Starin’ at the sunset, babe

Red lips and rosy cheeks

Say you’ll see me again even if it’s just in your

Wildest Dreams

“Of course I’ll remember you Aria. I definitely wanna see you again.”

I smiled at him and kissed him again.

All while embracing the best night I’ve had in a long time.

Authors Note:

Hope you enjoyed this story!

Feel free to let me know what you think! 

Like & follow for more !! Xoxo

Check out my other stories! 

Master list 📝

Banner & dividers made by: @saradika-graphics 🫶🏻

[maxsix]

Favourite KPOP Songs of 2023

So I am 3 days late posting this but I wanted to do it to keep up the tradition. It's fun looking back at old lists. My criteria isn't so much based on technical merit but rather the songs that I wanted to listen to over and over again for whatever reason.

Cupid by Fifty Fifty. No doubt, this is social media's song of the year. I have never seen a song that is actually good become so organically viral, only to be reduced to absolutely nothing because of abysmal management. Not even New Jeans was this widespread this year (to me). Cupid was playing at my local supermarket and even people who know nothing about kpop loved this song. It ranks low for me because I'm definitely sick of hearing it by now. Regardless, it is still a very well written pop song.

Ayo by NCT 127. Okay, hear me out: NCT is like durian. You either completely understand why it is called the King of Fruits or you think I should be put in jail for saying that. If you are a brave connoisseur who refuses to be confined by societal pressure, then know what it's like to open your third eye and consume NCT for what they are: completely weird but never boring. It's an experience. If you don't get it, I don't know what to tell you.

Tinnitus by TXT. Temptation is my least favourite TXT album from the last 3 years but I think that is mostly due to how much I hated Sugar Rush Ride. I've been re-listening to a lot of their material again and okay, I'll give this one a pass: it's a mood. Thanks Kang Taehyun. I don't know if it was very intentional but his voice is all I hear on the final version. Man, that dude's voice always gets me somehow, I don't know how he does it.

Rover by Kai. It's not even that good of a song and yet, it was everywhere and I was gaslit into liking it. The viral dance made it the hit it became but to be fair, much of this was really down to his star power and ability to make really good choices that suit his strengths (dance first, vocals second). This is EXO Kai we are talking about after all; when he delivers, he really delivers. New Gen boys can take some notes.

Drama by Aespa. This is like Asian Junk Food. It's objectively so terrible, full of empty calories, no nutritional value but they took the Terrible and sprinkled MSG on it, so now it's TastyTerrible. As someone who wants to learn film editing, the MV is excellent and an example of top tier editing without choppy cuts. I have not noticed editing this neat and time consuming since Seventeen's 'HOT'.

Back To Me by The Rose. A group with solid talent and well written songs. I wish every success for them to be honest. I am posting the live video because they are one of those groups who are better live and won't give you The Fear watching it. I wish I could've seen them because I genuinely just love their voices and sound. They've filled the void left behind by Day 6.

Hard by Shinee. It's just your typical weird and perfect Shinee pop song but with a distinctly 90s flavour in my opinion. They are just all so talented that it's virtually impossible to ignore them. SM production is always so slick but with Shinee it is something to gild the lily rather than hard carry the entire song and group. Onew vocals never takes a day off, he was flawless even in the raw recordings.

Kitsch by IVE. It's just so cute and comforting in the way a harmless little pop song can be. It's like a fresh breeze. There's no pressure to do anything but enjoy it. In the absence of Blackpink, they are definitely my favourite girl group at the moment.

This World by Ateez. I do actually prefer it to Bouncy because it has that dystopian and almost gothic feel to it. I don't think it would've made a good title track because it's not as explosive as Bouncy but it 100% would fit into a movie or montage sequence. It absolutely goes so hard in the car, especially at night.

Flower by Jisoo. I think this was just a very smart choice for her and her team. It did not have anything too complex or overly dramatic. It suits her elegance and brand perfectly. It was also very pleasant and kinda of prettily boring? The dance was very popular and cute without being obnoxious. She is very much a Great Gowns Beautiful Gowns and "Go on girl, give us nothing!" idol but I have a soft spot for her. I can't believe we live in a world where Jisoo has the best Blackpink solo song.

3D (Alternate Version) by Jungkook. I did not like it when it was released (with that awful rap feature) but the purely Jungkook and performance versions of it really improved everything. I am really happy that Golden is as good as it is, because I think most Jungkook stans from 2013 lived in fear he would only release Mid Tier pop songs. I think most features on the album are unnecessary. Jungkook has presence and star power on his own. Everything else diluted what we all came for.

Blue Blood by IVE. It's an unexpectedly more mature sound from them and I loved it. I think the driving backing track makes this one of the best driving songs. It has this dark eloquence to it, which I always vibe with. One of their best B sides for sure.

Off The Record by IVE. This was the best track off their album this year. That title track was heinous. OTR was so calm and comforting and there is something about it that reminded me of Gfriend and OhMyGirl where it's just a good song with any histrionics. I do not think IVE suit that bad girl crush concept at all. They always had this expensive High Teen aura and it really took at hit with Baddie imo.

Ring (Unplugged/Acoustic Version) by TXT. This isn't cheating, they released this one on a July 2023 album. Even if it was cheating, I would've still put it on here. It's well written, well produced, well paced and suits everyone in the group. But personally, I always saw this as a Kang Taehyun song (even though he didn't even write it). His aura is all over it. Controversial opinion but I think this has one of Yeonjun's best rap verses because the slower tempo works so much better for his voice and flow.

Crazy Form by Ateez. Ah the Male version of Junk Food with MSG. I don't think it's anywhere near their best song but it's a good fun time and after the tough year(s) we have all had, it's nice to jam to something silly. It's very SKZ adjacent but in my opinion, with much better production and editing because the team behind Ateez are better at it. I'm also including this because it made me really see Jeong Yunho. If you know you know.

Roll With Me by Hyungwon/Shownu. Technically The H/S version of Wildfire is my favourite from them this year but since it wasn't official, I'll go with my second favourite release. It once again proves that Hyungwon is my favourite man (musically) in Monsta X. I like his style, tastes and instincts. It's true that he is my overall favourite in MX but I'm mature now! It's not just the visuals, I truly put his musical output as the number 1 reason I like him.

Standing Next To You by Jungkook. Listen, listen, listen.....I have been following this dude since 2013. I always KNEW he could give more and be more. Even though SNTY isn't even 100% of what I think he can do, it was enough for me to feel all these 10 years were not wasted lol. This deserved this stop purely for the instrumentation and production value alone. Granted, it is very westernised but good music is good music. This is the only time where a feature (remix) actually added something.

Silver Light by Ateez. The sister to Cyberpunk. It is really like its title: a sparkling God Ray of light that cuts through the darkness. It's mysterious but also so hopeful and comforting. They just scraped in with this at the last minute but it is already one of my absolutely favourite Ateez songs. Instant love from 1st listen. The type of song I wish I was more conscious and present for so I could go back to experience it again for the first time. Park Seonghwa supremacy because this is now a song I associate with him. He's not even my Ateez bias but he is my favourite and the most important Ateez member to me. How that works, I do not know.

My favourite song of 2023:

Chasing That Feeling by TXT. They achieved the trifecta in 2023 for me: favourite song, favourite lyric, favourite choreography. I'm not even going to link to the official MV because the choreography needs to be seen unobstructed and undiluted. This is the type of song that I barely have any critiques on (and if I did, they would all be minor). The type of song that I would put as my bio. The type of song I want my best friend to play at my funeral. This era was also the one that pushed Choi Soobin into my life when he knew damm well that my heart has been closed for business for the last 12 months. The power this song had on me was all consuming and cannot be overstated, ok?

[julialouisdreyfest]

Mido Skip Interview

First off, for the people, in your own words, who are you, what do you play, where are you from, and what is the name of your band?

My name is Ethan! i play guitar and sing, I'm from Fishtail, Montana, and the name of my band is "Mido Skip"

We definitely played a lot of shows together like 5-7 years ago, and it seems like the scene has changed a lot since then (as they do)... is that true? For better or worse? A little of both?

When I entered the punk scene in missoula, to me it seemed like it was dominated by punk rock trios who were all a few years older than me and were inspired by bands like the Lawrence Arms, Hot Water Music, and RVIVR. I had completely missed the scene era, which I think a lot of people were trying their best to not be associated with. I remember everyone was so excited that I had a band and was just playing regular punk rock because I was so young. Now, every band in Missoula is so young and so different. It's inspiring to me to see that kids see it as a viable creative outlet, and I'm so happy to see that opportunities are there for music and art. In 2014, people made fun of me for playing rock and roll because dubstep and hip hop were so ubiquitous and seemed like the obvious path forward. there were less people at shows, everyone was meaner, it was gross and smelled like cigarettes and pbr. It was better.

In general, outside looking in, Missoula always seemed like such a strange scene, since you had a combo of locals that were cool, and then ⅓ college kids that were cool, ⅓ college kids that weren’t cool, and ⅓ college kids that were too cool… which made it seem like it was potentially difficult to get any real leverage, since it was always in flux. is that a fair assessment? Curious to hear how you guys tried to/still try to navigate that, especially as a punk band, and not like a reggae cover band or string band or something.

This is a point I love talking about, because Missoula has such an incredible assortment of what kinds of music people are into. If we were in a bigger city, or just a more crowded area, I would have never played with bands like Tormi or Walking Corpse Syndrome or Baby and Bukowski. but the fact that Missoula is so small and such a tight-knit community means you always have the chance to play with someone radically different, and I love that! It also cracks me up that figureheads in the scene change every 2 semesters.

Apologies if I’m misremembering- Mido Skip is a sort of duel-fronted band, with Ethan and Alasdair doing leads on songs intermittently (There’s a reason you guys are called the Beatles of Missoula) first off- is this true? And if so, did you guys write songs separately, and bring them to the table together? Or write together? Or a little of both?

I am so honored to be called the Beatles of Missoula! Alasdair and I mostly shared vocal duties in go hibiki, along with Emory. So far live, I have been the primary vocalist with a microphone for Byron so he can make fun of me in between songs. I'm certain once we record our new songs that Alasdair will have a myriad of vocal parts, though. The songwriting process for us has most often been me bringing in a barebones version of a new song, and us going through it over and over to fill it out or add stuff in!

I’m being told that we aren’t allowed to call the subgenre of emo “skramz” anymore, and it’s just emo or post-hardcore. Was this all just a big practical joke, and this term was never allowed to be used, or are we sticking by calling it skramz still? If so, would you consider Mido Skip to be a skramz band?

Skramz is tied for my favorite genre with country. The term is cool as all hell, we should continue using it and use it more often. I think it started as a joke, and sort of spiraled out of control ala the term "twinkle daddies". But you know what else started as a joke and spiraled out of control? Me turning Mido Skip into a skramz-country band and I love it.

You guys don’t seem to be active, which makes us all the more honored and stoked that you are coming down for the fest hehe…. Are there plans to maybe start chugging back into things in the future?

We played a show on January 29th, 2020 and I kept saying to everyone I was going to work so incredibly hard on making 2020 the year of Mido Skip and I accidentally invented the novel coronavirus also known as COVID-19. BUT!!!!!!!! We've been writing a bunch and are starting to record the greatest album by any band in Montana very soon. It's going to be even better than Tarkio Live on KBGA.

What’s keeping you busy artistically, these days? Any new Go Hibiki stuff in the pipeline? Is Burial Etchings playing shows?

I'm not sure how much I can say about it, but Alasdair is the most dedicated recording musician I've ever known and he's working on so much cool stuff. And, when Byron isn't busy making a great horror podcast and doing sweet art for t-shirts, he's working on music that always blows my hair back. I have a few solo songs I've been recording, but I've mostly been working to make the new Mido Skip material as close as I can to the vision I see in my head. I think Go Hibiki is dead for good because Sagat tore out his eye, and he got Burial Etchings too.

When’s the last time you watched the King Elephant documentary?

Alasdair and I laughed so hard when we read this question because we both work at the same place and we watched it at work. There's a short scene where I'm fighting sprinklers and I wish it was extended.

Over/Under - yes, we all hate pitchfork, and yes, this is like… “their thing” but dammit! It’s too much fun not to play! I will give you a word/thing/idea, and you just have to say if you think it is underrated or overrated, and feel free to expound on your reasoning as much as you’d like, or not at all!

-Glocca Morra

Split with Summer Vacation: BASED! Just Married: CRINGE!

-Biga Pizza

CRINGE!

-Drop D teles with capos

BASED!

-SpongeBob SquarePants

BASED!

-Tie-Dye

CRINGE!

-The Blair Witch Project

I tried to watch it once but started crying during the previews because there's something wrong with my brain so - CRINGE!

-Rockin’ Rudy’s

CRINGE! 

-Cats (The animal)

BASED!

-Cats (The musical)

BASED, CHAD and JELLICLE!

-Reddit

CRINGE!

-Super Smash Brothers

CRINGE!

-Wikipedia

BEYOND BASED!

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson

pretty good 

You can catch Mido Skip during this year's fest at Nova Center on August 6th at 8:15pm!

[fansofvow]

Interview with Eve Golden Woods!

Many of you know who is Eve is. She's a writer and artist, a part of Dreamfeel studios whose beautiful game If Found won Best LGBTQ Narrative and Best LGBTQ Indie game at the first ever Gayming Awards presented by EA games. I am really excited I had the chance to ask Eve some questions about herself, her time at Lovestruck and her creative process.

Congratulations on the two Gayming Awards (Best LGBTQ Narrative, Best LGBTQ Indie Game) for "If Found" from your game studio, Dreamfeel. What was the inspiration behind making the game?

If Found... was a game that emerged out of a collaboration between Llaura McGee, the founder of Dreamfeel, and artist Liadh Young. Liadh's background is as a comic artist, and so when they started working together Llaura had the idea of showing off Liadh's art by making a diary game, and using an erasing mechanic she had previously developed to let the player move through the diary in a fun way. By the time I came on board at the start of 2019, the game had already been in development for a while, so in some ways my work on that game was similar to the work I did for Voltage, because it was taking existing characters and concepts and writing a lot of scripts for them. Unlike Voltage, though, my work for Dreamfeel was a lot more collaborative and I had a lot more creative input. I really enjoy taking something and helping to make it the best version of itself that it can possibly be, but I was also really happy that I got to reflect a lot of my own experiences in If Found. Llaura and I both grew up on the west coast of Ireland, and although If Found... isn't autobiographical for either of us, it was definitely really meaningful to be able to tell a story that reflected our own experiences of growing up as queer teens in a similar kind of environment. Since the game came out we've had fans reach out to us and tell us that they also connected to the experiences of the main characters, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes me feel like I achieved everything I wanted to.

You are a writer and a visual artist. Does one come easier to you than the other?

I used to think of art and writing as talents, and I always felt like my art was at a very mediocre level (that's probably still true, lol). So when I was younger I focused a lot more on writing. It was only later that I started genuinely trying to improve as an artist, but when I did, I think I had a much healthier mindset, and approached it as a skill I could learn with patience and effort. Because of that, even though I still have a lot more confidence in my writing, I find art more fun and relaxing, and I don't stress about it as much.

Did you always know you would follow a creative path?

Kind of? Both my parents are artists, and I grew up surrounded by artists and writers, so it was something that was always very familiar and accessible to me. On the other hand, I didn't exactly have a clear idea of how to make it into a career, or what kind of work would be involved. But there's never been a point in my life where I wasn't doing something creative, even if it was only writing fanfiction.

What did your path to working professionally as a writer/artist look like?

I did a creative writing masters in college, but after that I spent years teaching English as a second language. That was really fun and I got to live abroad, but it was so busy and tiring that I didn't have time to do any writing outside of the occasional fanfic. I only started to take art seriously again when I became interested in games and comics as ways of telling stories. I did some critical writing, which led me to speak at a few local events and get involved in zine fairs. That was how I met Llaura, the director and lead of the Dreamfeel studio, and it's also what gave me the confidence to start applying for actual writing jobs.

Is there any work of art, visual or written, that you look to for inspiration?

So many! I try to read and watch as widely as I can, although there are touchstones I always return to, like the works of Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett. Right now I feel very passionate about the actual play podcast Friends at the Table, which manages to combine really thoughtful worldbuilding and storytelling with cool, fun characters and great action scenes. I'm also reading a book called The Memory Police by Youko Ogawa, which has extremely beautiful prose.

Do you have a favorite piece of your own art, whether it is something you’ve drawn, a screenshot of something you’ve written or something else?

My favourite piece of art is usually whatever I finished most recently (I think that's true for a lot of people). Especially with visual art, once a bit of time has gone by you look back on it and start to notice all your mistakes, which is very annoying. But actually I do still really like the first piece of Fiona fanart I did last year. I managed to use some effects to give it a kind of nineties anime quality that I find really fun, and I think it conveys an emotion pretty effectively. That's always one of the hardest things to predict with visual art, whether the different parts will come together to create the exact mood you're looking for.

I also really like the compass I did for Bycatch. Krissy (@xekstrin) was the one who suggested filling it with fingernails, which was such a good, gross idea! As soon as I heard that I knew it was perfect and that I had to try and draw it.

Many people who read this blog know you as a writer for Lovestruck. When you look back on your time there, what stands out in your mind?

Lovestruck was very important to me when I first started because it was my first ongoing, regular, paid writing work. It gave me a lot of confidence and helped me to get into the habit of writing consistently and rapidly, which is a really useful skill to have. I know I was right to leave when I did, though, because I am just brimming with energy to work on my own projects, and channeling that power into something that you can't control will always end up disappointing you. Also, I made a ton of incredible friends, through Lovestruck itself but then even more so through VOW (@vowtogether), and that is more than worth all the difficult parts.

Is there any character that you would have liked a crack at writing?

Oh gosh, what a fun question! There are so many, but one I do sometimes think about is Axia, just because I know there are a bunch of fans who want her route, and because I had fun writing her as a villain in Zain's route. I can see in my head the shadow of a storyline that takes place after Zain's route is over, where she's in prison and trying to understand how she lost the battle with Zain and MC. I think there's, like, a gap there, where you could see her downfall forcing her to reconsider her assumptions about power, and that could build into a very interesting redemption story. But maybe it's for the best I never got to do that, because I would have wanted full creative control over it, and also I think the story in my head is very different to the sexy, in control, menacing version of Axia that her fans enjoy.

Do you have any upcoming projects you can talk about?

Most of my current work is under NDA, but I will say that I'm doing something very exciting with other VOW members that we should be able to talk about soon(ish). Maybe I can even give a little teaser... It's not a game, but it is something you can read, and my part involves cakes, swamps, and a museum.

Do you have a favorite quote or song lyric?

It's a big long, but there's a section from The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin that has stayed with me ever since I read it:

"For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."

It's such a profoundly radical way of imagining the world, so different to everything I was raised with, but whenever I think about it I feel like I can see something very beautiful and powerful that I hope to come closer to understanding some day.

And of course, "Solidarity forever, the union makes us strong."

I was a big fan of the show Inside the Actor’s Studio. Host James Lipton asked every single guest the same 10 concluding questions. I’ve picked 3 of them:

-What is your favorite word?

My favourite word: for sound, I like words you can really roll around on your tongue. Chthonic, alabaster, insinuation. For meaning, I think simple words that encapsulate big concepts have a kind of power to them. We use them so often we forget how big they are, how much weight they really have, but they give us the space to imagine new possibilities. Love. Freedom. Revolution.

-What is your least favorite word?

I've heard that "moist" is a lot of people's least favourite word but it doesn't actually bother me. My least favourite word is probably one where I feel like the sound doesn't match the meaning. One of the Irish words for rain is báisteach, which I feel has a much weightier and more onomatopoeic sound than rain. Rain is just very flat and uninteresting.

-What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Oh, so many! I love history, and I think being a historian/archaeologist would be fascinating. Or something that had a physical component to it, like being a potter or a carpenter. I don't think I'd be any good, but I'd love to take the time to learn.

What would be your advice to anyone who wants to pursue a creative career?

All the work you do matters. Even the failed experiments, the things you hate when they're finished. It all helps to make you better. Also, creative career paths are often really unexpected, so chase any opportunity that seems remotely interesting. Don't work for free for anyone who can afford to pay, but work for yourself and put it somewhere. On a blog, twitter, whatever. You'd be amazed how many people get noticed and get offered opportunities because of something they made in their spare time. You'll probably have to work another job for a long time, so don't be hard on yourself if you're too tired to devote much energy to creative work. Try to make art consistently, but don't feel like that has to mean every day. Don't chase after celebrities. Make friends with your peers.

[dinosaurtsukki]

❀ weakness | “it wasn’t like that” “then what was it?” feat. akaashi keiji

⇢ day 9 of angstcember

⇢ synopsis: being with akaashi keiji, the vocalist of your favorite band, was a dream come true for you. however, he soon becomes far too out of reach.

⇢ a/n: i really love thinking of main vocalist!akaashi and i’m so glad i got to incorporate it into an angstcember fic :D

⇢ pairing: akaashi keiji x f!reader

⇢ word count: 2.5k words

ANGSTCEMBER MASTERLIST (feat. haikyuu!! and bungou stray dogs)

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the thing about falling for musicians and band members was that there was always going to be a distance between you two. there was the physical distance between stage and audience, and the fact that no matter how many times you showed up at their gigs and screamed about being their fans, you were never really ‘close’ to them.

needless to say, you didn’t really care about all that when you first watched akaashi keiji, the main vocalist of a student band, sing onstage in the local bar that everyone in university visited on friday nights. he didn’t look that much different from the other band vocalists you’ve seen with his curly, brown hair, white t-shirt and jeans, and dark eyes lined with black that always fluttered shut whenever he sang. no, it was the way he sang that caught your attention. his voice a beautiful tenor that drew out every syllable of the lyrics. it was as if akaashi was the siren and the crowds formed the dangerous waves that pulled you in close. 

the stage lights illuminated the shine of his skin, making him look almost ethereal. the boundary between you and the stage felt even greater even though you were in the very front of the crowd. but when akaashi’s eyes fluttered open to survey the crowd, they landed on yours. 

and somehow, it felt as if the distance between you two had been bridged.

...

ever since that night, you had signed yourself up to be their band’s full-time fan. you followed their social media and marked down your calendar to show up at every single gig. always, always, you made it a point to make your way to the front of the audience whenever they played. even though they were still a local band that was pretty much under the radar, you still knew that meeting them in person would take some time. 

or so you thought.

“hey.”

the all-too familiar voice made you stop in your tracks as you left the bar to hurry back to your dorm. blinking with surprise, you turned around to find akaashi keiji himself leaning against the wall outside the bar with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. you thought you were dreaming, but he was looking right at you.

“you’re the girl who always shows up at our gigs here, right?”

“i... um, yeah!” you nodded, trying to smooth your hair as much as you could as you inched closer to him. “i... really like your music,” you smiled shyly. up close, akaashi keiji looked even more beautiful under the dim lights. the liner around his eyes looked perfectly smudged and you noticed a few piercings in his left ear.

“i’m glad,” akaashi smiled, shuffling his feet. “it’s... comforting, you know? to see a regular fan. most of the time we’re not even sure if people are going to show up.”

“tons of people do,” you said.

“but none quite like you,” akaashi narrowed his eyes at you before his lips turned up in a slight smile. “um, i feel like it would be too presumptuous of me to ask this but, would you like an autograph?”

“y-yes! definitely!” you nodded a bit too excitedly. akaashi chuckled and searched his pockets.

“i think i have a pen here somewhere...”

“oh, hold on...” you searched your purse for anything he could write on, only to come up with a few paper napkins that you always kept with you. “all i have is this, though.”

“well, same here,” akaashi said, lifting the only writing instrument he had on him: an eyeliner pencil. you couldn’t help but stare in wonder as akaashi carefully signed the paper napkin before handing it back to you. 

“figured i should do something nice on behalf of the band for our number one fan before we officially disband,” akaashi smiled.

“d-disband? what? why?” you stammered.

“it’s not official yet, i haven’t told the guys about it,” akaashi rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “but, i’ve been thinking that it’s for the best. sure, being in the band is fun but very few actually make it. konoha-san, bokuto-san, and washio-san, they trust me so they’ll believe whatever i say but i don’t want to lead them on, you know?”

“but you guys are amazing!” you protested. “i mean, sure it’s different from mainstream music and all but the lyrics that you have are straight-up poetry and don’t even get me started on the music...”

“you... think my lyrics are poetry?” akaashi looked at you with wide eyes.

“i mean... of course they are,” you said softly. “but, what i’m saying is i believe in you guys. take it from your number fan, why don’t you?” you pleaded one last time. akaashi looked down at the ground, appearing to mull it over, before smiling and nodding.

“alright then. i’ll give it a few more months.”

“you will?”

“but, if nothing happens by then. i’m afraid we’ll have to say our goodbye’s.”

“that won’t happen,” you shook your head. “i just know it.” you carefully folded the napkin with your precious autograph and placed it inside your wallet. “i’ll be seeing you in more gigs, akaashi keiji.” with a wave, you turned around and walked away.

“wait!” 

you stopped again and turned around. akaashi looked, nervous, for some reason as he stuffed his hands in his pockets again. finally, he asked.

“would you like to grab a coffee sometime?”

...

you never thought you would actually be able to get to know akaashi keiji beyond the version of him he presented onstage. in the mornings, he attended class, writing song lyrics in the margins of his notebook, and worked part-time at the library. he liked drinking his coffee black and adding a few drops of lavender oil in his laundry so he slightly smelled like it. and knowing this bits of information made it even more wonderful to watch akaashi sing onstage.

true to what you said, something did happen within the few months that you convinced him not for them to disband. 

“an invitation to play in the university fair? this is huge!” bokuto, the band’s drummer hooted. you watched with a warm smile on your face as you watched the band members you grew to know and love hug each other. from across the room, akaashi caught your eye before gesturing with his head to head outside.

“what did i tell you?” you grinned smugly when the two of you were alone.

“i know, i know. thank you very much for convincing me to keep the band together,” akaashi smiled at you. 

“you can count always count on me to get your hopes up.”

“you have supported our band since the beginning,” akaashi bit his lip as his eyes flickered to the side. “and, i truly appreciate that but... i was wondering if you could support me a bit more... personally.”

“what? of course i will,” you nodded.

“no, i mean,” akaashi paused, inhaled deeply, before continuing. “y/n... i was wondering if you would like to be my girlfriend.”

be his girlfriend? 

how could you say no? 

“akaashi, of course!” you laughed, flinging your arms around his neck. akaashi’s breath tickled your ear as he pulled you close.

“i’m glad, y/n. i’m so glad,” he smiled, looking down at you. you may have started out watching akaashi from afar, but you had made it closer to him.

...

“there can’t be anything better...” akaashi sang as he played a few chords on the piano, trying out a few different ways to sing the line before settling on a progression that he liked and writing it down. his hair was a mess and he was dressed only in his pajama pants because he headed straight for the stand piano in your bedroom after rolling out of bed. 

“i like the second one more,” you said out loud, watching him from where you lay on the bed.

“really?” akaashi cocked his head, playing the chords and singing it again. “hmm... maybe i could have it for the bridge?” 

“definitely! and you can make konoha insert a cool guitar riff right there,” you added.

“are you sure you don’t want to be credited in the album?” akaashi looked at you with a sideways smile.

“i’m not that ready for fame,” you teased.

“ït’s literally just our second release. it’s not one to hit the charts just yet,” akaashi shook his head.

“you wanna bet?” you smirked. 

“maybe not yet.” akaashi scooted over the piano bench and patted the space next to him. “come, sit here.”

giggling, you left the bed to sit beside him. you loved watching his songwriting process up close, how his thoughts just stringed the perfect words together and coming up with the most amazing melody to compliment it. you loved the sound of his voice, whether it was slightly husky in the morning or as smooth as silk after he drank the tea you’d brew for him, and how his fingers danced over the ivory keys.

“there can’t be anything better than, waking up together when the sunlight hits your face just right...” akaashi sang before pausing. “well, that’s all i got for now.”

“it sounds beautiful,” you sighed.

“that’s because it comes from personal experience,” akaashi smiled, turning to place a kiss on your forehead.

“oh, so am i your muse now?” you teased.

“no,” akaashi scoffed, absentmindedly playing a tune on the piano. “muses are people artists abandon when they’re no longer inspired by them. you,” akaashi grabbed your chin and kissed you on the mouth. “are more than that.”

...

just as you predicted, akaashi’s band grew to success in its own time. the title track of the third album was a hit success, much to akaashi and everyone else in the band’s surprise. they had offers to play on radio shows, to live studio sessions, and then soon, they were able to cut a deal with a record label for their next album. it was the life you knew akaashi had always wanted and you couldn’t be happier for your boyfriend.

you had always known that there was something captivating about akaashi, whether he was on or offstage. he grew to be popular among women and men alike and you just had to be comfortable with it. despite all that, akaashi liked to remind his fans that he already had a girlfriend. he never forgot to dedicate the songs he wrote about you on live or recorded performances and in interviews, he liked to blow a kiss at the camera just for you.

as the band’s number one fan, you still made it a point to attend all of their performances but this time, you weren’t at the very front of the crowd. you were farther now, watching akaashi sing onstage from the VIP section. the view was good but you were much farther now and for some reason, you felt uncomfortable about this.

turns out, it was a prelude to something much worse.

the distance between you and akaashi grew. the band was offered a chance to go on-tour so your boyfriend was constantly caught up in band practices, interviews, and composing new music in the recording studio. your calls with him were always cut short by his manager needing his attention. he even stopped his usual practice of dedicating songs to you.

most nights, you lay in your empty, shared bedroom or absentmindedly played the abandoned piano, wishing you could go back to those days when akaashi was always there when you woke up. 

...

 “y/n... you’re here!” konoha greeted you just outside the recording studio’s door. 

“yeah, i wanted to surprise him,” you chuckled, holding up the box of the birthday cake you had brought. for some reason, konoha’s smile faltered at the sight of the birthday cake. “is... keiji here? did he just leave?” you asked, trying to look over konoha’s shoulder.

“y/n...” konoha paused, evidently struggling with what he was going to say. watching him formed an anxious pit in your stomach. “shit... i-i can’t keep lying to you.”

“konoha... what’s going on?” your hands trembled as they held onto the cake box as the voices from inside the studio grew louder.

“akaashi, you said it would be the last time! we can’t keep covering for you.”

“think about how y/n would feel?”

“let me through! let me through!” you exclaimed, pushing past konoha and into the recording studio room.

nothing could prepare you for what you what you were looking at. now, you understood why those ‘recording studio sessions’ would end up late into the night and why akaashi’s manager, a beautiful young woman who always made you feel less put-together, always looked smug around you. 

“keiji...” your voice shook as you watched your boyfriend shift his gaze guiltily to the floor. “how could you...?”

“it-it wasn’t like that--”

“then what was it?” you practically screamed. 

“look, you don’t know what it’s like dealing with all of this,” akaashi rubbed the back of his head. “all the stress and expectations and having to come up with new material--”

“you could have come to me! i’m right here, i’ve always been right here,” you bit your lip and asked what you were afraid to know. “how long has this been going on?”

akaashi shifted uncomfortably. “...a few months.”

you turned to look at bokuto who had been standing awkwardly in the side of the room since you came in. “how long?”

“longer than that,” bokuto murmured. “sorry we didn’t tell you sooner.”

“i can’t believe you,” you shook your head, slamming the cake down on a nearby table. “happy birthday, by the way.”

“y/n, wait!”

you didn’t give akaashi a chance to explain himself because you’d already seen enough. it was only when you were on a bus on the way home that the sadness started to hit you as sobs escaped from your chest. despite all of this, you missed akaashi terribly. you missed the feeling of his fingers brushing hair from your face in the morning. you missed how he’d wave at you through the glass in the recording studio. you missed hugging him and smelling lavender on his clothes. you missed the soft look in his eyes when he composed a new song dedicated to you.

with the tears running down your face, you searched through your purse for something to wipe your eyes only to come across the edge of the napkin inside your wallet. you pulled it out to find the autograph from akaashi, the very first one he ever gave to anyone, and immediately remembered that night when you two first talked. 

‘to my number one fan: i hope i’ll always get to see your face in the front-row’

the thing about falling for musicians and band members was that there was always going to be a distance between you two. at first, you thought you and akaashi had managed to close that distance, only for you to end up even farther than you ever were. 

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event taglist: @himikadafangirl @swoona-rintarou @l-dokisaki-l @laure-chan @aonenthusiast @ah-kaashi @just-a-gay-bean @linyu-sees-you @alto-march-of-death @newfriendjen @shrimpypenis​ @tenyafacesquish​ @mkkhaikyuu​

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[calliecat93]

Callie’s Disney Princess Retrospective: Beauty and the Beast

(Snow White) (Cinderella) (Sleeping Beauty) (The Little Mermaid)

The Little Mermaid was a huge success for Disney. It was such a big success that it began the Renaissance Era of Disney Animation and returned Disney to the top animation studio. While many people such as John Musker, Ron Clements, and Glen Keane can be credited for the film's success, the biggest player by far was lyricist Howard Ashman. He put his heart and soul into the film, and not just with song lyrics. He wanted the characters to connect to the audience. He wanted to play a part in the story. He wanted this film to be something special, and he succeeded. But he was also frustrated, could be argumentative when others didn't like his vision, and unknown to everyone, he was dying. After winning two Oscars for The Little Mermaid's music, Howard revealed to composer Alan Menken that he had AIDS, and he didn't have much longer to live.

However, Ashman wasn't going down before completing one more film. Though he had been writing music for Aladdin, he ultimately ended up as the lyricist of another film. A film that had been through many different iterations and was handed off to newbie directors. Little did anyone know just how impactful this film would be for Disney, and for the industry as a whole. Well, except for Ashman himself. The film that we are discussing today is the first animated film to ever, ever be nominated for Best Feature. That film is 1991''s Beauty and the Beast.

Overview

Belle is a beautiful young woman, but is seen as an oddity in her village due to her love of books and her utter disinterest in local heartthrob Gaston. When her father, an inventor named Maurice, leaves for a science fair, he ends up taking refuge in an old, abandoned castle. But the castle is actually enchanted and acts as the home to dozens of talking inanimate objects... and a fearsome beast. When Belle goes looking for her father, she offers to take his place as the Beast’s prisoner. But during her time in the castle, Belle discovers that this Beast may not be as much of a monster as he appears, and this may lead to both discovering true love...

Review

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I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is by far one of Disney’s most beloved films. It got praise form both critics and movie-goers when it came out, and it’s only become more beloved in the nearly 20 years since. Belle is praised as a feminist's icon and the film for it’s themes of toxic masculinity, judging a book by it’s cover, and some of the darker aspects of society like those we blindly praise. I... like the film, but I never loved it to the extent as others. Not because it’s bad, that is a ridiculous notion. I just liked other films more and Belle just didn’t interest me as others like Cinderella or Mulan or Ariel. But seeing it again as an adult who has seen the darker aspects of society since I was a kid, it REALLY rings more deeply than it did back then.

One aspect that no one can argue about is the animation. The film is beautiful. It has some of Disney’s best animators at the time such as Glen Keene, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, and so much more. There was so much life put into the film and it is a true visual spectacle.I meant hey managed to take inaminate objects, and bring them to life. Sure they have faces to help humanize them, but to make us believe that these are talking, moving objects that were once human is still a VERY difficult task. But they have so much personality like the suave, passionate candlesick Lumiere or the stuffy, orderly Cogsworth. The backgrounds andf settings are also great fromt he Sleepy Hollow-esque village to the gothic castle of The Beast, to the creedy woods that look even more terrifying when it snows. There’s so much color and lighting that is used so well, especially with the castle eminating so much mystery and intrigue compared tot he plain village that Belle is from.

But the setting we all remember most of all is the ballroom. While Disney has been using CGI some before, such as Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective (yes,t hat WHOLE setting was computer graphics), this is probably the biggest use to date. The ballroom is a gorgeous golden color and looks so big and vast. It takes you’re breath away. There’s a reason why this is the most well-remembered part of the film. The animaiton for this film was very straining, especially due to conditios to accomodate Ashman that we’ll get to later. It was stressful, but they absoluteley put their all into it. When you watcht he ballroom sequence, added to the dance and Angela Lansbury’s lovely vocals, you forget that you’re even watching a movie. It feels like... well, love. It’s by far one of Disney’s best looking features.

As I said in the intro, the film ultimately fell into the laps of two relatively rookie animators; Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. This was after several various attempts to adapt the film, with none successful. Wise and Trousdale’s biggest claim to fame at the time was doing animaiton for EPCOT’s now defunct Cranium Command attraction (look up Who Stole Buzzy, boy is THAT a story) and while they had worked on other features, they had never been in the director seats. To make it more difficult, due to Ashman’s health continuing to gradually decline, Katzenburg decided to move produciton over to New York to spare him from having to travel. Which is a VERY noble effort and it’s sweet that they were willing to do so to keep working with Ashman, but as you can imagine this was quite a strain on the production team and as before, they would sometimes clash with Ashman and his vision. Still, they along with Menken returning as composer and writer Linda Woolverton, they reworked the then-script into something that they were happy with.

The setting is very reminiscent of another Disney work, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. One of two segments from the Package Film Era feature The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. We all know the story of Ichabod and his infamous ride where he encountered the Headless Horseman. Here we have a similar quaint village where people seem rather simple-minded. Like in Sleepy Hollow where everyone took notice tot he rather strange looking Ichabod Crane, we see a similar notice of Belle who is an anomaly to them. Though unlike Ichabod, who had pretty much everyone under his thumb and is kind of a gold diging jerk, Belle is ostracized and is a FAR better person. Gaston bears a striking resemblance to Brom Bones in both looks and social status (tough Brom isn’t as bad in comparison or even compared to Ichabod, though still a Jerk Jock) and the Bimbettes bear a bit of similarity to Katrina. I wouldn’t be surprised if the crew used Sleepy Hollow as inspiration for setting and character design. Only thing missing is the Headless Horseman, which that would have been interesting XD

The film deals with several topics. There’s the standard ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ and ‘true love conquers all’ messages. Both of which are handled very well. But there are also some that IDT Disney had ever really tackled to this point. There’s encouraging women to make their own choices, which Disney HAS tackled but this one does it differently with Belle rejecting the standard good-looking man and falling for the monstrous looking one. In fact there is really a strong theme tearing down toxic masculinity and male entitlement. It says that no, men are not obligated to a woman and that women have the freedom to reject them no matter the societal pressure. Especially if they act as despicable as Gaston. With how much more aware we’ve become of how horrible some men in power can be and how they use that power on vulnerable women, this remains a relevant message to todays audience. It let’s women be empowered, confident, and enjoy things like reading as well as have the hope of finding those who will be accepting. These are all important things, and the film does an excellent job in showing it and what actual love should be like. The Beast especially starts as a jerk, but once he decides to become better and wants to be better for no ulterior reasons, he proves worthy of Belle’s love. That’s how love should be and how a person should change themselves. Again, very well done.

Despite his health and being downcast about not completing Aladdin, Ashman still put his all into the film. As I said, they outright shifted production to another state at a time when social media and things like Skype and Zoom were a distant dream. Still, Ashman along with Menken put their all into the soundtrack, and it paid off big time. This film, along with The Little Mermaid, really set up the precedent for Broadway-style animaed films and considering that they continue to be successful, I’d say that that says a lot. There are a lot of memorable songs int his fimlm, and there’s even some that didn’t make it in. One in particular, Human Again, actualy got animated and added back for the film’s IMAX release and various home media releases (sadly it’s not in the Disney+ version). The score is also very well done, especially at the end. Just listen to the music when the Beast finally turns human again. It added to the outright magical animation will leave you in awe as much as Belle was.

But what about the vocal tracks? Good question. Let’s go over them:

Belle/Belle Reprise: Our first song which as the name suggests, is about our leading lady. It does a lovely job establishing her character as a book-loving, intelligent young woman feeling that there was be more than this life ans village that she remains stuck in. It also establishes the village’s rather simple-mindedness and socital expectatons, finding Belle a beautiful but very strange girl because of her loving reading more than getting married. It also establishes Gaston’s smugness, entitlement, and holding the entire village’s admiration, The music is optimistic, but there’s a lot here that’s gonna take a dark turn a the film goes on. The reprise is short and more somber, but let’s Belle express her unwillignness to marry a man like Gaston, wanting to find love on her own terms. Little does she know what’s awating her right after.

Gaston: No one can have a song named after Gaston like Gaston! Yeah, this inspired plenty of meme’s, didn’t it? Even Disney itself has gotten in on the fun haha! But seriously, this is a fun villain song. I gotta give Gaston this, he’s a smug, horrible person but he shows that he can back up many of his boasts. I don’t doubt that he can eat dozens of eggs a day or is as strong as an ox. The song also further shows the town’s utter blind devotion to this brute, not being concerned about his entitlement to a girl who clearly isnt interest and more because of how handsome and grand he is. Isn’t society fun kids?! But then at the end, after Maurice is kicked out, it takes a darker turn as Gaston makes his plans to essentially blackmail Belle with her father’s safety... and right back to blind praise! I feel zero sympathy for any of the villagers in this film. But yeah, a song with a lot of dark implications, but still a very enjoyable villain song.

Be Our Guest: This is a true show-stopper, and I’m not just saying that. Lumiere wanted to create a show, and BOY did he succeed. The song is the most like a Broadway number in it’s composition and grand feeling. The fact that we have a huge number full fo singing, dancing, stuntwork, etc is being done by a bunch of dishes and pretty freakin’ impressive. Yet the animators gave it all so much life and Jerry Orback sings with so much passion and energy and it is just SO much fun to watch! Especially with poor Cogsworth at first trying to get everyone to calm down, but by the end he gets real into it... well until Lumiere knocks him to the side. The only negative is that for being a song about serving Belle dinner, aside form a bit of The Grey Stuff she didn’t even eat dinner. For shame! So 1 out fo 10 of food servive, but the show was worthy of two thumbs up!

Something More: This was the song that replaced Human Again. It’s a sweet song about Belle and Beast beginning to realize their feelings the more that they spend aroudn each other. Belle sees that Beast may not be very well-mannered or much of a looker, but he does have a good heart and the more they interact, the more it begins to show. Belle’s kindness, intellience, and willingness to look beyond the surface has Beast falling in love with her, yet his fear of being a monster is still holding him back. Still as we see the two do things like have dinner, play in the snow, or even Beast letting Belle read to him, the more we see that spark of love slowly grow, even if they haven’t fully grasped it. It helps advance the romance, and it’s just really sweet.

Beauty and the Beast: The song that won Menken and Ashman another Oscar. It’s not hard to see why either. The song is beautiful. It’s performed by Angela Lansbury, and her gentle vocals accompanies by the gentle orchestra is just lovely. The woman outright did the song in one take. One take. That is insane, yet it happened. And I can see why because the song is just beautiful. It adds to much to the already majestic ballroom scene, being about two unlikely individuals finding love and ultimately making the other a better person. It’s just a work of beauty. There’s also the pop version by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson, which I also really love. It’s more commerical, but still very pretty especially with Celine’s gorgeous singing voice. Both versions are beautiful, and the first thing I think of when I think of this film... and no, not just beause of the name.

The Mob Song: This is exactly as you would expect with a song with that title. It’s dark, angry, and scary. Gaston rallies the troops to kill The Beast, convincing them that he is a danger to them all. They grab their torches, weapons, and there’s just this tense atmosphere throughout. This is the culminaiton of al the socital expectations and blind devotion to a person who doesn’t at all deserve it. It’s also a very accurate protrayal of the mob mentality, where you become a part of this hivemind following the rest of the crowd no matter how wrong it may be and despite your own senebilities. The only ones who don’t fall into it, Belle and Maurice, get tossed into a basement for their trouble. What makes this song sad though? In Disney+’s documentary Howard, produced by Don Hahn who also produced this film, it was explained how in the eyes of several of his colleagues, it seemed like Ashman was venting about the AIDS epidemic. That was a VERY dark time where the gay community was especially under fire, persecuted, hated, and so many other horrible things because the world chose to blame them for it. Ashman was a gay man. He had an ex partner die of AIDS, and had another partner at the time who talked about him in the documentary. Imagine being scapegoated just because of your sexuality, even though you never caused any harm, and society hated on you and others fell into he mob mentality, and they went as far as to either demand you to die or do the job themselves. All because you were different. Really adds a new perspecive to the song, doesn’t it? This can be applied to so many groups too, which makes the song even scarier, but also emphasize even more how dangerous the mob mentality is. Very effective song.

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Sadly, Howard wouldn’t live to see all of his numbers to completion. With his health declining rapidly, Menken and various others went back and forth between Burbank and New York in order to work with him. Ashman worked until he psycially couldn’t anymore. He was even giving notes to performers like Paige O’Hara despite barely being able to talk. He managed to complete his work, at least to my knowledge, before his passing on March 14th, 1991, just a few months before the film’s release. After a screentest, which proved very successful, Don Hahn and some other colleagues went to see Ashman in the hospital to say their goodbyes. Hahn told him of the reception, and jokingly asked who would ahve expected that the film would have turned out so great? Ashman’s response? “I did.” The work he managed to do for Aladdin would be included in the film, which we’ll discuss when we get to that one. The soundtrack won the Oscar which was awarded to Ashman (as well as Menken) posthumously and a dedication to him was including at the end of the film. It’s always sad to see such a talented individual leave us far too soon, but his work truly brought new life to Disney and is beloved even all these years later. That is a legacy that will never fade.

Now we get to characters, and we have quite a good number of them. We have of course the village that Belle is from. On the surface, they seem like pretty plain people, satisfied with their way of life. But this also causes them to at least not think highly of those who break from that way of life. The men work, the women care for the children. If men don’t work, they’re jerk slobs. They all especially fall into blind admiration for the strong, handsome Gaston who is hailed as a local hero. So much so that no one gives ANY of his terrible actions an ounce of consideraiton. Selling Maurcie tot he looney bin? Well he’s alreafy viewed as crazy, so ah well. Belle trying to tell them that The Beast isn’t a monster? While their first imprression of him is defeniteley a bad one, the fact that they listen to Gaston and not the woman who actually interacted with The Beast says a lot about how simple minded they all are. I hope they learned their lesson after all was said and done, but even if not Belle doesn’t have to pay them any mind anyways.

The only person who is accepting of Belle is her father, Maurice. He’s viewed as a crackpot, but Maurice is a good-hearted, smart, and perfectly sensible man. He’s a bit of a goof with how his inventions can go haywire, but otherwise is no diferent from any other person. But like his daughter, his interests have him judged instead of what he’s like as a person. It’s especially sad when he tries to get help to save Belle, and he is merely laughed at and thrown out because of his status. Maurice is a loving father, accepting of Belle and of her interests and choices. She isn’t interested in Gaston? Fine with him. People view her as odd? That’s utterly ridiculous. It’s really nice to have a parent who is supportive and involved int heir kids life, especally compared to Triton last time who may be caring, but is utterly against everything that matters to Ariel. In fact it’s the firs ttime we’ve had this since Snow White and Cinderlla’s parents are dead and their stepmothers are horrible, Aurora grew up away from her otherwise caring parents, and Ariel... it’s complicated. Maurice is a good guy and it is good that Belle has someone who accepts her unconditionaly. She loves him so much that she sacrificed her happiness for him twice to protect him, which really shows how strong their bond is.

That brings us to our villain, Gaston. He is a hunter who is muscular, handsome, and has physical skills that he can back up. However he is also entitled, egotistical, sefish, and just a horrible person. He wants to marry Belle only because of her beauty and instead of trying to get to know her or shifitng atteniton to any of the girls who would gladly grovel before him, he pursues her despite her not liking him. It’s especially bad when he goes to her house, sets up a huge engagement party, and gets into her personal space in his attempts to charm her. She not only rejects him, but promptly humiliates him. Yet instead of thinking that he had tried far too hard and jumped the gun, he blames Belle for daring to reject him. He reflects exactly how society can view someone like him. No one thinks about the woman, they only see a good-looking man get rejected despite us not knowing anything about ther perosn or their relaitonship. Especially if that man is essentially a celebrity, which makes people look past anyhing.

But none of these things are indicitive of an evil perosn. An arrogant jerk yes, but not evil. That all changes when, after Maurice tries to get help, Gaston comes up with a new plan. He decides to have Maurice admitted to an asylum for being crazy, and to use this to force Belle to marry him. This is what shifts Gaston from a jerk to a true villain. This is how far his entitlement and selfishness goes. He is willing to take Belle’s own elderly father and use him and his freedom as blackmail to force her to marry him. Even compared to the four villainesses before him who committed horrible acts such as attempted murder, mental/emotional abuse, and even attempting world domination, this is utterly despicable. Then there's him deciding to kill The Beast. Despite what he says, it's not because of the potential risk to the town, it's solely because he sees that Belle loves him and can't stand it. He outright calls her crazy AND locks her and Maurice up out of pure entitlement and selfishness. He doesn't give a damn about Belle or her though and well-being. Only about his own.

Gaston is entertaining, but very much evil. As I said above he bears a lot of similarity to Brom Bones from Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A muscular jock-like figure often the most beautifiul girl in town. Only while Brom was a jerk, he was arguably less bad than Ichabod Crane depending how you looked at it. Gaston essentially has Brom's muscles an Ichabod's selfishness. He cares only for himself and his own pride. Admittedly he put up a decent fight against The Beast, but that's only because Beast wasn’t fighting back until he saw Belle. When he did, Gaston whimpered and begged like the pathetic man that he is. Then he stabbed him despite being spared out of pure spite. An act that cost him his life. Fun fact, originally he survived the fall and was truly killed via the wolves. They ended up saving that for Scar's death in The Lion King. But yeah, Gaston died in the undignifiedmanner that he deserved. A despicable but memorable villain who was perfect for this film.

Then we have the castle characters. You’d think that it would be difficult to give life to a bunch of furniture and appliances... and it probably was. But this movie makes it look easy. They do give most of them humanoid features, like eyes and a mouth, but not all of them and even then it would be so easy to make it look creepy. But the castle staff is just os much fun and beaming with personality. We’re gonna discuss the main four: Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and Chip.

Lumiere is a candlestick, which matches his passionate characterization. He’s a showman. A romantic. A more daring, out-going character compared to his frequent frenemy Cogsworth. Cogsworth is a clock and I think he’s implied to be the Beast’s butler or some other kind of advisor. He’s stuffy, nervous, and the most lawful of the characters. Though he CAN get into the fun of things with a little provoking as demonstrated in Be Our Guest and the big battle during the climax. Hoenstly, Be Our Guest is a great number to demonstrate the two’s contrasitng perosnalities. Belle has been banned from eating and Cogsworth doens’t want to both break the Beast’s orders nor cause a bunch of noise that would anger him. Lumiere however? He’s dead set on getting Belle to fall for the Beast, so she should be treated as their guest, not a prisoner. Plus he and the other staff are tired after ten years of being stuck as they are and all alone, so cue the extravagant show number. Lumiere is having the time of his life while Cogsworth tries to convince everyone to stop... but by the end gets caught up in it and joins in ont he fun. Too bad that Lumiere knocks him off the center stage at the end haha. But yeah, their constant banter is amusing but they are clealry friends, especially in the fight where Cogsworth saves Lumiere. They’re both also performed wonderfully by their VA’s, Jerry Orbach and David Odgen Stiers, the latter of whom would appear in several more Disney films, including one for this series that we’ll get to fairly soon.

Mrs. Potts is a teapot and her son Chip is a tea cup. I guess that Chip ended up that way to match his mother, which her being a teapot matches her mothelry persona. She’s very kind and consoling towards Belle and seems the most understanding about The Beast and why he acts ike he does. Which since I think that she was essentially the house caretaker, makes sense since she’d have likely been the one looking out for him. Plus she herself is a mother, and since Beast has the emotion coping skills of a child, she’d know how to deal with it. Chip is the token child character, though not a bad one. He’s a nice kid with a huge curiosity. It’s really cute how hen allt he adults are seeing the bloomign romance between Belle and Beast, he’s uttelry confused like any kid would be haha! He takes a liking to Belle quickly, though more like he sees her as if she were an older sister than any kind fo crush or the like. He’s also smart, figuring out how to use Maurice’s inveniton to free Belle and Maurice quickly...and him wanitng to do it again got a good laugh out of me haha! Mrs. Potts is a nurturing mother and her with Chip is so sweet,e specially when they’re truly human again. Plus her advice of how things will turn out alright in the end is advice that I look back on sometimes. it’s really comforitng.

So... as I’ve mentioned in these reviews, a big issue is how underdeveloped that the prince has been. The first two were plot devices only. Phillip and Eric were better int hat they were active int he plot and Eric had some more perosnality and motivation than the other three did. But it just didn’t feel like the male elads were... quite at their full potential yet. They generally didn’t recieve any character development and were mainly there for the sake of being a lov einterest to the heroine. That all changed in this film with our hero, The Beast.

Beast is one of the most well-developed male leads in a Disney Princess film. A few like Aladdin, Naveen, and Eugene rival him for overall best (though tbf the former IS the lead of his movie so that may not count) but Beast helped make the princes more equal to their princess without overshadowing her. Beast is the co-protagonist to Belle and the character that recieves the bulk of the character development. The opening tells us all that we need to know: Beast was once Prince Adam, a spoiled brat. When he turned away an elderly begger, it turned out that she was an Enchantress and she cursed him into his monsturous form. Since he looks like a monster, he subsequently acts like a monster... or more accurately, like the child that he never truly grew out of emotionally. He’s angry, lashes out constantly, and roars at the top of his lungs when at his limit. Like how a child screams and throws a tantrum when things don’t go their way because they lack the social and emotional coping skills to handle their feelings properly. Becoming a beast left Beast isolated and ashamed to face reality, and thus he didn’t learnt he proper coping skills. He accepted that he would forever be a monster, and succumb to acting like one.

That is, until the day that Belle arrived. When she offers herself to free her father, it’s the opportunity that Beast never beleived that he would get. If he can win her love before the rose petals all fall, he’ll be human again. He’ll be free. While he begins still acitng agressive and even bordeirng on emotionally abusive, e isn’t heartless. When Belle is crying about not getting to say goodbye to her father, Beast seems to legit feel bad for hurting her. It doens’t change his behavior, but it’s still a small moment that shows some humanization. It’s important to add moments like this and his despair when using the mirror to hear Belle talk about him. She’s justified in disliking him at that point, but it’s his reactions that matter. It shows his insecurity, his fear, his utter despair that he’ll be cursed for the rest of eternity. He’s already succumbed to acting the part of a monster and is already struggling to act more polite. As amusing as the scene of him yelling at Belle through the door is, it demonstrates just how hard this is for him but if he can’t improve his behavior, then he has no chance. He knows it, and views it as hopeless. It helps humanize The Beast, showing that despite his appearance there IS a human soul in there somewhere. Someone who on some level does want to be better, but he doesn’t know how. If not for these moments, Beast would have been utterly unsympathetic, but they pulled it off.

The turning point comes after Beast rescues Belle from the wolves. Remember, he’d already pretty much given up on winning Belle over and being human again and the confrontation on the third floor certainly didn’t help matters. He could have just let Belle to her own devices... but instead he went to save her. I sincerely do not believe it was because she was a prisoner or because he needed her. He had given up. He had succumbed. But he did it anyways, showing that he isn’t a bad person. It’s something that Belle sees and she gets him back to the castle to treat him. She called him out on his temper, but is sincerely grateful and Beast is stunned by this genuine act of kindness. She didn’t fear him. She wasn’t disgusted by him. She didn’t even leave him to die despite having pretty good reason to leave him and go. Belle still chose to save his life as he did her’s, showing Beast probably the first true act of love that he ever experienced in his life. We know nothing of his family and while I’m sure that staff members like Ms. Potts certainly cared for him, clearly they didn’t do much to quell his spoiled behavior. Belle was kind because she’s a kind person, and Beast finds that he wants to be kind to her in return.

From that point, we see Beast in a new light. He calms down significantly. He’s happier. He carries himself less like a wild animal and more like a person. He’s outright excited when he prepares the library to surprise Belle with. He’s still awkward as shown with his table manners and interacting with birds durign Something There, but he is trying. He’s trying for Belle. He activly enjoys her company. He sees how beautiful she is physically, but that’s not why he likes her. She’s kind, intelligent, independant, and she makes him feel in a way that he never has. He still feels that she can’t love him because of what he is, but the change that she has caused is so evident. He’s fallen in love and the ballroom scene only strengthens that with himt he happiest that he’s been all film. But the crowner that truly demonstrates htis? When Belle expresses missing her father, he lets her use the mirror. Not only does he seem legit concerned when they see Maurice freezing to death but when he sees Belle’s clear distress, he decides to let her go. He’s sad when he does so, knowing that she may very well never return. But Belle’s father needs her. he can’t force her to say and be miserable. He loves her so much that he decided to let her go. But it does mean that he gav up his final chance at being human after feeling more human than he had in ten years, and he is left in despair.

His despair is so strong that when Gaston and the mob arrives, he doesn’t even try to fight back. He just waits and is prepared to let whatever happens to him happen. Fortunately Belle coming back restores his will to live and he fights back. When Gaston grovels for his life, what does Beast do? He grants it, simply growling at him to leave. It is that moment hat shows how much of a better person that Beast is compared to Gaston. He was an angry man bordering on abusive, but he changed. He met someone who wasn’t willing to take his behavior, but was also willing to see the good that was in him. He changed for her, and it made him a kinder, more selfless person. The only thing that remains is his self-loathing, even saying that maybe him dying is for the best after Gaston has stabbed him. Fortunately Belle confesses her love, and it not only saves his life, but breaks the curse just in time. Beast is restored to Adam, having earned the right to having his humanity back. It was a lovely way to cap off his development, and allowed him to earn his happily ever after.

Beast was very much Belle’s equal. Even nowadays they’re both promoted and marketed pretty equally. One’s story would have been incomplete without the other. They gave each other what they each wanted and needed. I’ll go into specifics for Belle when I get to her below, but in the Beast’s case he needed someone kind, but also independent. Someone who wouldn’t tolerate his behavior and push him to change himself, but still kind-hearted enough to see that there is something there and be willing to help. Belle treated him in a way that no one else had. She was defiant, but also caring. She pushed him to rediscover his humanity. She got him to want to be kind. She got him to want to be a better person, and he not only treated her better but he was kinder to his staff as well. He finally grew up from the spoiled brat that he was before. He had found a reason to, and his love was so genuine that he let Belle go to be with her father again. It’s a beautiful story of growth and did enough to make Beast’s issues clear and not excusable, but sympathetic enough that we wanted him to be better and feel happy when he does so. He’s the best developed male lead in a Disney Princess film up to this point and helped pave the way for equally well done male leads. Ones not there just to fill out a plot beat and be the princesses’ reward, but to stand at her side as her equal.

Boy did THAT one get long. there’s other minor characters. Le Fou, The Bimbettes, the psyche ward keeper voiced by the late, great Tony Jay, various other castle characters, etc. all of them are entertaining, I just don’t have much to say about them. So then... we have one more to go.

Belle Analysis

https://youtu.be/M4ne1A1aNrI

Belle is one of the most praised and beloved Disney Princesses of all time. She is smart, playful, independent, and kind-hearted. I feel like she gets overly praised at times, mainly because some like to use her to bash her four predecessors since she didn’t have the goal of falling in love. I won’t repeat what I said about the four, you can read the reviews, but it’s a VERY unfair argument not just to them, but to Belle as well. She’s used as a tool to bash other female characters instead of being loved for herself. Then agains he also gets bashed for the Stolkholm Syndrome argument, which we’ll get to that aspect here soon. But for now, let’s just discuss Belle piece by piece and see where the path leads us.

Belle’s intro establishes everything right off the bat. So much so that the intro sing is literally titled Belle. She’s bookish and cheerful, but it’s clear from her interactions witht he villagers and their own gossip that she’s seen as weird. The only people who seem to like her as she is is the bookshop owner and her own father. The women are jealous of her beauty, the men only see her for her beauty, and both sides are confused at her lack of conformity. Belle lives in a town that clearly has very old-fashioned views regarding gender roles. The men work, the women get married and have babies. They all seem content with this... except for Belle. She enjoys books and adventure, musing about wanting more than the provincial life that she has. She strolls through the village with her nose stuck in a book, but has no trouble navigating at all depsite the distraction. Books provide her a source of adventure and thrill that her limited life does not. She breaks those old-fashioned norms and he village is uttelry baffled at to how she can be this way. But what truly makes her a bafflement to everyone? Her utter rejection of Gaston. While just about every other women swoons at his feet, Belle couldn’t be less impressed if she tried. She’s familiar with how he is and if she had’t recieved his advances before their first scene, she’s probably seen it enough times to know that she doesn’t like him. Him dismisisng her passion for books and insulting her father did him no favors.

On the surface, Belle does’t seem bothered by these things. But when home, she does express some hurt about ti to her father, the one perosn who loves her for her unconditionally. She knows that she doesn’t fit in. She knows that she’s not happy with her life. She wants someone to understand her besides her father. She wants more to life where she can be herself. She wants to find love on her own terms and not have to deal with the advances of men like Gaston. None of this stops her form being able to handle herself, as demonstrated when Gaston goes to her house to force a proposal. She handles kicking him out with utter grace and her “I don’t deserve you” line is icing on the cake. But none of that changes how she feels. If anything, it enforces it. The village is all on Gaston’s side and at that point, her father has left for the science fair. He won’t be there forever, hence why she wants to find someone who will love her for her. To control her own destiny. To those who feel forced into their gender roles or being forced into a relationship that they don’t want whether by an agressive person or by peer pressure, Belle’s struggle is very relatable. Her independant spirit is also admirable as while she is dismayed with where she’s at, she still is able to smile and live her life as she wants. She’ defiant. She makes do with what she has and is able to handle what’s thrown at her with pure wit and ingenuity. Gaston nor anyone else can bring her down... at least, not until her wish for adventure ends up unexpectedly granted.

Before we progress forward, let’s pause to discuss Belle’s VA, Paige O’Hara. When Beauty and the Beast was beginning casting, O’Hara was already a rising Broadway actress and Disney happened to be seeking Broadway talent specifically. After several call-backs, she finally earned the part. She’s credited Howard Ashman as a huge help in guiding her to finding her voice as Belle, and she performs the role beautifully. She captures Belle’s independence yet playfulness very well, as well as her defiance and heartbreak in certain scenes. And her singing? Beautiful. Maybe not on par with Jodi Benson, but you can tell why she was a rising Broadway star. Today, O’Hara works mainly as a painter with Belle very much being one of her main muses. Sadly due to how much her voice has aged, she rarely plays Belle herself anymore, the role nowadays being primarialy done by VA Julie Nathanson. While she also does a lovely job at the part, O’Hara will always be the first to bring the character to life. Fortunteley she still shows a lot of love for the role and has attended multiple events and even got to reprise Belle at least one more time during Ralph Breaks the Internet. She had reprised Belle multiple times between various DTV films, TV appearances, and other events. So even if she is limited nowadays, her large body of work will live on forever.

Back to the film, Belle discovers that her father is in danger and ends up at the castle. We all know what happens at this point. Belle offers to take her dad’s place, Beast agrees, and Maurice is kicked out before Belle can so much as say goodbye. She’s distraught at this, and who can blame her? In a matter of hours, her life as she knew it was ripped away from her. Now instead of her old provincial life, she’s a prisoner in an enchanted castle ruled by an angry beast. Even when given the nicer room, she doesn’t feel that much better. She’s never going to get to see her father again or even know if he’s safely back home. She has no reason to believe that a rescue is coming. Some may say that she should try and get out, but isn’t she allowed this? To be upset and at a loss of what to do? It’s not like she just cries the whole time, she calms down enough to refuse to go to dinner despite the others insisting that she does. Even when Beast yells at her to do so, she refuses. She may be a prisoner, but she’s not going to play the victim. She’s going to be as she normally is; however she wants to be.

Soon, Belle’s able to calm down enough that she decides to go explore the castle. She is ultimateley a curious, adventurous spirit. Regardless of the circumstances, she can’t help but want to learn more about this new, strange place and these new figures that she’s encountered. You can tellt hat she’s warming up reatly during Be Our Guest where despite not actually getitng to eat anything, she is just havng far too much fun to care. It gets her spirits back up and now she can’t resist exploring more. Even if it risks The Beast’s wrath, one her curiosity has peaked, she can’t resist it. It’s a great strength, but also probably her biggest flaw. Despite having been told not to and knowing by now how Beast will react, she slips away from Cogsworth and Lumiere to go explore the West Wing. This ends with her seeing the trashed area, finding the Enchanted Rose, and getting yelled at by an enraged Beast. That is the last push needed to make Belle decide to escape.

So now that we’re at this point, we have to talk about one of the big topics that comes up when discussing this film: Stockholm Syndrome. To put it simply, Stockholm Syndrome is when the victim becomes emotionally attached to their aggressor and doesn’t want to leave them and tries to justify their actions. So when the vicitm is rescued, they may react negativly or even aggressively towards the rescuers in favor of the agressor. it���s a psychological response. This is actually a case where I was able to go to a professional to ask about it,: my own mother. My mom is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and currently works as a therapist. I’m fairly sure that she’s never treated anyone with Stockholm, but it is something that she knows of. I did ask her about if the film did glorify Stockholm Syndrome as some accuse it of. The gist of what she told me is... well, there’s enough in-film that either side can use it to prove their case. After all she DOES develop positive feelings towards Beast while a prisoner, so one can take the context and use it as an example, and same for the side who don’t agree. Ultimately Belle is a ficitonal character. We can’t sit her down and give her a psychoanalysis because she’s not real, and most of us doing these analysis’ aren’t therapists, psyologists, or mental health experts anyways. I’ll leave some sources below if you’d like further reading on the topic, but doing research isn’t the same as being a professional trained to go over these kinds of things. My mom said at most, Beast can be viewed as emotionally abusive, though it is because of his own trauma and he did ultimately improve to be a better person.

I fully agree that yes, if someone wants to make the arguent that the film promotes Stockholm Syndrome, they can. It’s their opinion, this came out in a diferent time than now where we take things like emotional abuse in cinema far more seriously, and in the end it’s a piece of fiction and people are free to view it however they wish. But the same also applies to me and in my opinion, no. Belle does NOT suffer from Stockholm Syndrome nor does the film glorify it. Now I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. This is strictly my opinion going off my understanding of it. I may be wrong and if that’s the case, I apologize. But from what I know and understand, the case in the film is not a straight forward situation like the various case studies in the real world. Plus I think we see enough of Belle being defiant and not feeling positivly towards Beast to see that she certainly hasn’t developed any psychological attachment towards him to cope with her situation. We’ll be seeing her feelings towards him change, but I’ll explain why I don’t feel that it counts down below. But again, I’m not an expert. This is just my understanding of it.

So... why the long tangent there? Well we’re now at the wolf attack scene. The turning point in the relationship. Belle’s effort to escape ends with her cornered by a pack of vicious wolves. Fortunateley, The Beast rescues her and drives the wolves away... but he is inured in the process and passes out. As I said in Beast’s character breakdown, he didn’t have to do it at that point since he’d given up, but he did so anyways. It showed that he isn’t a bad person. Something that Belle also saw. The Beast had been aggressive and rude to her throughout, and she had every good reason to continue on her way now that the path was clear. But Belle didn’t. She got Beast onto her horse and took him back to the castle, the closest shelter, to treat his wounds. Is this because she feels compelled to do so after forming a psychological dependency or attachment to him? No. We see as she treats his wounds that she still isn’t going to tolerate his temper and rudeness towards her. She stands up for herself and talks back at him until he calms down. She very much retains her independence. So then... why did she save him? Because Belle is a good-hearted person who just saw this seemingly hateful beast save her life when he didn’t have to. She isn’t the kind of person to leave an injured person to die. She did it out of kindness and gratitude as we see when she genuinely thanks Beast for saving her life. She’s seen a new side to him now, and it’s made her reconsider her earlier stance. Thus Belle remains at the castle.

The characteristics of Stockholm Syndrome include positive feelings towards the captor and belief of goodness in the captor, no real effort in escaping, learned helplessness, and feelings of pity to the captor. You can read the list and learn more here, and the link will also be with the sources. So you’re probably looking at that and going ‘...uuuggghhhh’ at the movie right now. Which fair enough. However let’s also look at where we are now. This is the part of the film where Beast makes an honest effort to improve himself. He’s nicer, trying to be more polite, and treats Belle as a person. She’s really not a prisoner anymore at this point and while mybe theposisbility of being human again is motivating Beast, for the most part I think it’s because he genuinely grows to like Belle. As for Belle, I think that she likes the castle. It’s enchanted and full of intrigue and mystery, just like in her books. It’s the escape form that provincial life in the village that she’s been longing for. It’s a temptation that she just can’t resist. The staff all like her and treat her kindly and no one tries to force her to be something that she isn’t. Beast especially loves Belle’s love of books, even giving her the huge library to repay her earlier kindness. Belle is able to be who she is and be around those who are accepting of her. Even fi for the staff it’s for ulterior motives, IDT that they’re faking liking having her around and Beast certainly isn’t. This isn’t really a straight-forward captive or abuse situaiton that Stockholm Syndrome would apply to in my opinion, especially since Belle never once succumbs to the Beast’s terms. She only respects and acts friendly with him when he does so towards her, and they are both clearly benefiting positivly from it. We know that Beast has no malicious intenitons regarding Belle and it’s Lumiere and co. insisting on the relaitonship happening moreso, and that’s because they want their humanity back so it adds a bit of complexity. It’s just not a straight forward case where we can easily apply Stockholm Syndrome to and get an accurate reading, at least in my opinion. She certainly is FAR from helpless.

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So then let’s discuss Belle’s feelings for The Beast. We know how much Belle’s influence changed The Beast. But what about Belle? She really doens’t change during the movie, nor did she realy need to. She’s already confident about herself, likes herself, and she knows what she wants with her life. Sure her curiosity can get her into trouble, but otherwise she didn’t realy need a character arc like Beast did. What Belle needed was acceptance. To find someone who would like her for who she is and not see her as weird for it. Beast doesn’t at all view her that way. He enjoys being around her because she’s smart and independant and even gets her to read to him. It’s that kind of acceptance that Belle hasn’t recieved from anyone outside her father. The more that she sees Beast try to be better, the more that she sees how sweet and endeairng that he really is and she’s more than happy to help him. I think that seeing this kinder side bloom and that acceptance and even enjoyment of her is what makes Belle fall in love with him. It’s what helps make the ballroom scene so magical. Two people considered outsiders coming together and dancing the night way happily together. It’s beautiful, magical, and the perfect culminaiton in everything prior. They brought out the best in each other. Made each other happier in a way that no one else had ever done. They’re better now because of the other, and it’s just lovely to see.

But of course, we know what comes next. While happy with Beast and being at the castle, Belle still misses her father. When she sees him in the snow and horirbly sick, she’s distressed. Seing this, Beast allows he to go. Honestly I think that Belle could have left whenever she wanted at that point and Beast wouldn’thave fought it, but she was staying willingly at that point because she was happy. But her father needed her now. If she truly had Stockholm Syndorme, I don’t think that she would have done so. But she doesn’t really give it any kind of thought here. While sad to leave The Beast, she has alreayd mad eup her mind when told that she could go. She leaves to save her father, The Beast giving her the mirror and unbeknownst to her Chip tagging along. Belle fortunateley gets Maurice home safely... and just in time for Gaston to initiate his plan to have Maurice locked away. Belle is of course shocked and outraged and in a panic, uses the mirror to confirm The Beast’s existence. Despite her insistence that he isn’t a bad person, it’s too late. Gaston realizes that she’s in love with the ‘monster’ and we get the iconic line: “He’s no monster Gaston, you are.” Beast treated her like a person and improved himself from his more toxic behavior. Gaston treated her like the prey that he seeks during his hunts, refusing to let up until he’s won. Beast had even kept his word about letting Maurcie go and returned him to the village safely, and of course let Belle go to help him and even seemed to feel guilty for what he had done previously. Gaston though? He shows no guilt over trying to use Maurice to blackmail Belle. He continues his horrible behavior not only by forming the mob, but locking Belle and Maurice in their own cellar for simply speaking against it. Belle didn’t call Gaston a monster because she’s been conditioned or due to a coping reflex. It’s because Gaston is a genuinely despicable person while Beast grew to become a good person. She saw this and stood her ground as she always has, but this time at the point where she won’t tolerate it anymore. Which if it was your parent being shipped off to the insane asylum by some jerk just because they want to marry you, woudln’t you call them a monster in comparison?

So we reach the climax. Belle and Maurice arrive after Chip frees them with Belle rushing to get to Beast. She makes it and seeing her reignites Beast’s will to live... but he’s stabbed by Gaston. Belle saves Beast from falling over the roof, but there’s nothing that she can do to stop him from dying. She’s devestated, blaming herself for it. Beast’s final words to her are that at least he got to see Belle one last time, and if she hadn’t figured it out before, I think that this was when Belle realized that Beast loved her... and that she loved him. We knew that Beast certianly loved her but we needed it confirmed from Belle as the curse was still intact. As Beast lay motionless, Belle cries and at last confesses that yes, she does love him... just as the last rose petal falls. With that confession, the curse breaks and Beast is ressurected/becomes human again. Belle is shocked as she sees not The Beast standing before her, but Prince Adam. You can tell how confused she is. is this reallyt he same person that she loved? Adam confirms it and Belle looks into his eyes... and that’s all it takes for her to finally smile. yes, it is the same man that she had fallen in love with. They kiss,a nd the curse is truly broken. Everyone becomes human again,t he castle is restored to it’s original state, and Belle and Adam dance happily, free to live happily ever after.

Belle is a role model character. She’s there for girls to look up to, and I think that the amount of fans that she has proves that she succeeded. She encourages girls to be themselves. To be independant and not bend to social norms or pressure. To find love for themselves and not succumb tot he pressure of unwanted admirers or the pressure to marry them. Something that happens far too much in reality. She doesn’t change, but there was no reason for her to. As I said, Belle’s not one of my favorites. Not because I dislike her by any means. if anythign I like her much more now as an adult now that I have a stronger understanding of the film. I just have princesses that I like more, and that’s really it. I also don’t like how some insist that she’s the best Dsney Princess compared to her predecessors because as I hope I made clear in those reviews, the previous four pricnesses are NOT badly done. If anything, I think it’s more anti-femenist to use a woman to bash other women without just cause. Saying that belle is better because she didn’t fall in love witht he guy at first sight or didn’t sell her soul for a guy without caring to analyze those characters isn’t empowering, it’s saying that if you don’t act a certain way as a woman, you’re anti-feminist. Which is a terrible stance. No woman is the same and women shouldn’t be used against women in this kind of way. Regardless, that’s an issue with certain ‘critics’, not Belle herself. She’s a great character and someone that I can admire. Maybe not as much as others, but I can certainly see why she’s left such an impact on so many and not even just little girls. To many people of all kinds. Who could be upset about that?

Final Thoughts

Beauty and the Beast is a lovely film. Is it my favorite? No. I didn’t watch it all that much as a kid. As an adult I have a greater appreciation for it. It’s beautfully animated, it’s themes are well-protrayed and still relevant, the characters are memorable and fun, and it’s music is phenomenal. I can absoluteley see why this as the first animated film to ever be niminated for Best Picture. It’s a tragedy that it lost, but it still proved that animation very much had staying power as Walt proved all those years ago. And of course the film is the final testament of Howard Ashman. He may not have been part of the Disney Renaissance for long, but his contributions single-handedly changed the company and their films for the better. Even today this style of musical films is very much going strong even over 30 years since it began with The Little Mermaid. We lost Ashman far too soon, and who knows what amaizng things he could have one if he were still alive. We can never know the what ifs, but we can always appreciate what came during his lifetime. He, Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale, Alan Menken, Don Hahn, various animators, and so many more did so much to bring this film to life, and it will forever stand as a true Disney Masterpiece.

The film was a giant success, and Disney wasn’t slowing down one bit. The very next year, another animated feature would come out. A film about a dashing street rat who found a magic lamp and unleashed a magical genie who would make all his dreams come true. But wait you may ask, isn’t this a Disney Princess retrospective? Yep. So why am I talking about a dashing hero? Well there is a princess in it, but she occupies a bit of a unique place in the line-up. She is the first and so far only Princess to not be the main charater in her film. But she still left a huge impact and i included in the main lineup so we are NOT leaving her out. So next time, come along as we enter a whole new world to discuss 1992’s Aladdin, and in particular Princess Jasmine.

Image Source: Animation Screencaps

Further Reading on Stockholm Syndrome: Healthline, Medical News Today, GoodTherapy, WebMD,

[angstymarshmallow]

My Two First Loves - How Will it All End? - Part 1 Mason Jennings.

This isn’t necessarily a complaint. I’m genuinely curious as to how long this book will be, especially considering we’re 60+ chapters in. Is this going to end when MC graduates? Will it end when she finally choses between three people? I assume it’s the latter.

But here’s some of my thoughts of what I do know while we’re all waiting. The more I wrote about this series, the more I had to say and if I’ve caught your attention so far, indulge me with another few minutes of your time. 

Originally when I read the synopsis of the first chapter, I remembered thinking to myself ‘this looks like angstville and I am soooo ready’. I love angstville, hell I vacation there and if you’ve ever read any of my stories or have been in the choices fandom for a while; you may have stumbled across my blog. You’d notice I’m a complete sucker for this type of pain genre. And in terms of angst, the first few chapters didn’t disappoint. The writing, while it never always felt natural – this kind of style sometimes gave me a familiar heavy feeling in the chest I’ve come to associate as a local in angstville.

From the very beginning, the reader is under the impression that MC has a crush on Mason. It’s a crush that’s spun years and the book keeps up this narrative throughout the entire story. (I’m sure there are people who headcanon this differently, but I’m strictly speaking about the intention of the book and for plot-related reasons, I understand why this makes sense). Then we meet Noah cue bad to the bone song, a secondary character MC starts developing feelings for; soon after MC finds out Mason is dating her best friend Ava. The book basically revolves around these four people - MC, Mason Noah and Ava. It’s not a fair representation all around, but I will say this book does a fairly good job of portraying the woes of being a teenager. To MC and everything she goes through feeling larger than life. To Mason struggling to push himself out of his father’s shadow. To Noah proving he’s a good soul that was dealt a bad hand from the deck of cards we call life. To Ava who was trying desperately to be what she thought she had to be and hiding who she truly was.

First and foremost, I wanted to breakdown a list of all my thoughts, and coordinate them accordingly. I’ll be going through the pros and cons in a series of posts, a lot of which deals with identity and character development. Bare with me if you have the patience, I also wanted to make a TLDR version of everything for people who just want to get to the point.

In any case I wanted to cover the main characters and how they’ve changed over the course of the book through these specific topics.

Mason Jennings Character Development Noah Harris Character Development Ava Lawrence Poor Character Development MC’s Development and Family Dynamic

Since Mason is the first topic I’ve written down, let’s start there.

Mason Jennings: The Childhood Crush

Mason and Parents mostly Mr. Jennings

Mason and MC

Mason and Ava

Mason and Noah

Future Mason: Where Does this Leave Us?

The story does a good job of giving you background information about Mason Jennings almost from the very beginning. Although some of his deeper and more meaningful moments with MC are buried in diamonds scenes - you get a pretty good sense of his character.  Mason is popular, friendly, albeit the rich kid with undertones of short sightedness as well as father-son issues that hugely impact his character over the course of this book. Because of his upbringing, Mason sees himself as the ‘good guy’ and while we can certainly see moments of this in the story, we also see moments where he’s been insensitive and selfish. Ultimately, Mason’s short sightedness is his Achilles heel.

Growing up with a lot handed to you on a silver platter makes it a little difficult for Mason to be open minded. Like most of the students of (whatever the name of their high school is), he’s quick to write Noah off as a bad influence on MC. Granted, he knows more about Noah than MC at the start, his unwillingness to change his perspective is a hindrance to his growth. It is unclear if Mason was always well off - considering his exchange with MC about his house and the jacuzzi (if memory serves me correctly), however what the reader does know; in comparison to Noah Mason’s parents haven’t struggled to make ends meet. In public, it looks as if they are a happy family but behind closed doors, it doesn’t take much to assume Mason’s life in reality is far from perfect.

Regardless, this cookie-cutter presentation makes it hard for the reader to sympathize with him, especially when comparing him to Noah.

Mason’s Parents

It starts with his upbringing. A lot of his life, Mason was groomed to be like his father; he’s supposed to follow in his footsteps by scoring a football scholarship. He’s supposed to have a full ride into the air force academy. He’s supposed to breeze through school, listen to his parents and survive high school. Though his cookie-cutter life starts falling apart during dinner with his parents and MC. His parents make a lot of comparisons about MC and Ava, when they bring up his new relationship ( much to MC’s discomfort and Mason’s). Because of Ava’s accomplishments they think she’s a perfect match for Mason and uses this to discredit and sort of look down upon his friendship with MC. They think Ava is the best and most optimal choice because they’ve always given him the best and expect the same in return. It’s implied during as this happens that their relationship isn’t perfect, Mason’s uncomfortableness isn’t just on behalf of MC, he’s embarrassed despite a part of him thinking he owes them for everything they’ve ever done.

Another and more obvious example stem from the all-important football game everyone was looking forward to. Scouts are visiting and their school wants to showcase the best of the best. This spurs even more competition between Noah and Mason; not only for MC’s affection but to gain the scouts favour. Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Jennings influence as the principal allows him to pull the strings and guarantee approval for Mason over Noah.

Immediately after Noah confronts him about the entire scenario; Mason is quick to defend himself and his dad; saying it was his talent they cared about and not his father’s connections. Mason spends so much time thinking the best of his father that he doesn’t consider any alternative. Despite it being obvious to the reader that there is more going on here than just Mason’s ability to play football; he doesn’t entertain the thought. And from his perspective why should he? We’ve already established his parents try their absolute best to give him the best chance possible, which doesn’t necessarily mean playing by the same rules as everyone else.

It’s these kinds of examples that shows Mason’s short sightedness. This makes him a lot less likable. His unwillingness to see other people’s perspectives outside of his own makes him fall a little short. He’s so averse to the idea that his father could be the reason why because it would undermine his own confidence in himself and ultimately change the way he sees his father.

Recognizing how important character growth is in young adult stories; this reoccurring issue has started to change. With the help of Noah and MC’s influence, Mason is finally staring to realize his father isn’t infallible after all. They get into a full blown argument over spending time with MC where they don’t see eye to eye, and haven’t for a long time. Ultimately, Mason starts questioning his own future. Does he genuinely want to go to air force academy? Or was that just an idea planted in his head from the very beginning? Is that his dream or his dad’s?

In a more recent chapter; it’s again implied how strained Mason’s relationship with not just his father but Mrs. Jennings as well. He makes a comparison between how his family celebrate the holidays different from the Price family. MC’s family has movie night and this time they’re watching Die Hard because Noah hasn’t seen it before and technically it is a Christmas movie. While this is the first time it’s specifically mentioned to the reader, we get the sense that movie night is a common occurrence around the holidays. Mason mentions how much this means to him; especially when his own parents do not celebrate the same way and he’s always invited over. It’s a special moment that feels a little less special when he sees Noah standing at the front door of their house.

Truth be told, I don’t think Mason has any idea what he really wants, since realizing air force academy isn’t as much his dream as it was his father’s. It is another part of his personality that spills over in other parts of his life. He didn’t know what his own feelings for Ava was, and how deep his feelings for MC truly is. This leads me to point number 2 -

Mason and MC

Whether you’re a fan of their friendship/relationship, the book gives you ample background information to outright say Mason is MC’s childhood crush and it’s the same the other way around.

If you’ve played some of the diamonds scenes like I have, their relationship seems a lot more natural than meets the eye. Although without these scenes, their dynamic feels a little more forced and a lot less like MC has any control over her decisions when it comes to him. I wished some of the diamond content was given for free because they show a lot of good Mason and MC moments. Their inside jokes, the little moments of childhood joy they experienced together like tarot readings with MC’s mother, and reminiscing over other old memories. You could argue its platonic, the small touching gestures; even their concern over each other’s behalf – it’s been this way since they’ve been kids. They’ve always been there for each other – no matter what. It’s that kind of friendship which allows them to be comfortable around each other. And it is that comfortableness that could lead to intimacy. It doesn’t take a lot for a reader to think then; they’ve been in love with each other since childhood.

MC’s influence on Mason has changed his behaviour. From the way he perceives Noah, to his relationship with his father – if it wasn’t for her, I daresay some of his growth would never have happened.

The more softer side MC sees when it comes to Noah, the more she implores that on MC. Noah can’t be all bad. That slowly becomes been her mantra and while Mason doesn’t agree outright; his opinion of him does change.

The trouble is, Mason has a secret about Noah that not even MC knows. He uses it as a reminder in justifying every harsh thing he’s ever said about him. Every harsh thing other people say about him in general. In Mason’s mind – Noah is fooling MC the way he fooled him last year when Noah tried robbing his house with his brother Elijah. Again, this is only half the story and it isn’t until later chapters that the reader starts getting the full picture.

Putting that aside for now and to paint an even clearer picture; during the scene where three of our major players were stuck in the gymnasium together; they’re in a situation where they’re forced to talk when they otherwise wouldn’t. As the reader you’re able to discern from their dialogue to their non-verbal cues; this dynamic is changing and for the first time - they were talking, laughing and being simply friends  which before now was unthinkable to Mason.

He did the unthinkable with his father in a much similar manner. Before MC started questioning her own perceptions of what it meant to be a good person and sharing pieces of this would Mason, he would never think to go against his father. At least, not publicly. I think it’s natural for teenagers to disagree and sometimes go against with their parents to some degree, but from MC’s perspective Mason never really did.  It wasn’t until MC and Mason were caught being out very late; Mr. Jennings for the second time tells his son MC is not a good influence on him. This is the nicest way I can put it, but with his growing animosity towards MC, this places a strain on their relationship that is too much for Mason to ignore.

This is a turning point in which Mason starts coming to his own conclusions about his dad. They aren’t in a good place; if Mr. Jennings can’t accept MC in his life, if he can’t accept the decision Mason makes – he’s going to lose him. This short sightedness is starting peel away with more and more layers of Mason realizing nothing is black and white, least of all people.

Even if you aren’t convinced of MC’s feelings about Mason, from Mason perspective he’s absolutely head over heels for her. And it is the same feelings which allows MC to influence him, to change him more than he probably realizes.

Mason and Ava

Oh, boy. This was a recipe for disaster, maybe from the very beginning.

When Mason tells MC they’ve started dating over the course of the summer; I’m sure there must have been some meaningful moments to convince themselves they were right for each other and it wasn’t solely because of MC. In part though, I think some of this had to do with MC, probably more than they both realized. Maybe there was an energy about each other that they’ve only felt when they’ve both been around MC. Maybe they were projecting those feelings onto each other because neither of them wanted to threaten their friendship with her. Regardless, by the time MC knew about it - things have started to become more than a little awkward. Ava was being a little heavy on PDA as if to convince them both that this is what she wants; while trying simultaneously telling MC to back off. Mason was being a little awkward in the sense of still being physically and emotionally connected with MC in ways which confused him. And MC was well, confused (and pinning for Mason secretly during their entire relationship).

From Mason’s perspective, I imagine he’s trying to figure out why it doesn’t feel right between them; why Ava is being more possessive than usual and why his feelings for MC are still there. Maybe in his mind, dating Ava meant getting over whatever feelings he might have had. And to his credit; he tried letting MC know over the summer - as if to ask, is this okay because some part of him must realize this could spell trouble for once the school year started. And MC’s answer was very much yes, even though inner MC’s dialogue never sold anyone on this idea.

In a nutshell, Ava and Mason weren’t a good fit because 1 - Ava was at the time trying to figure out her sexuality and 2 - Mason was trying to develop the same feelings he had for MC, onto her. Who is to say if Mason truly had deep feelings for Ava in the first place? 

A part of dating is figuring things out, especially at such a young age - you won’t have all the answer. As the reader, it never felt clear why Ava and Mason were dating other than being a plot device for MC’s repressed feelings.

As a reader, I do recognize  towards the end things were very bitter between Mason and Ava. After the whole kissing-MC-by-accident fiasco, the energy between them became more strained than ever. This is what I meant by Mason’s short sightedness; he couldn’t see why Ava was so hurt. He couldn’t see how Ava deserved better because from his perspective, he tried everything he could include distancing himself from MC (with mistakes along the way), only to hurt Ava and himself in the end. He doesn’t see himself as the bad guy in this scenario, but his actions had disastrous consequences. Was he the best boyfriend he could be to Ava? Absolutely not. He couldn’t be the person Ava needed him to be, he couldn’t even see how hard it was for her to be what she thought he needed for her to be. What she thought she needed to be to everyone else. Mason was consumed with his own well-being, his own feelings for someone else while juggling what could have been with her. Was he the worst boyfriend? No, he was figuring things out - sorting out his feelings like every other teenager. It was wrong for him to continue dating someone, when he had strong feelings for someone else. It was wrong for him to accidentally but quite publicly admit he had feelings for MC while the kiss was still fresh in everyone’s mind. But most importantly, it was wrong for him not to communicate his feelings with the person who he was with because that’s the number one thing everyone should do in their relationship. But it’s also human nature to not know what you want. 

Mason and Noah

During the most recent chapters, Noah’s and Mason’s relationship has become more and more complicated. I actually think this is one of the best relationships in this book. It shows the reader how difficult it is to define their relationship. Something on the surface that seems pretty straight-forward, when in reality it wasn’t.

Take for instance the beginning; it’s very clear they were painting Mason and Noah as total opposites. Mason is the ‘golden boy’ and Noah is ‘the bad boy’ and for MC to ‘choose one’ meant abandoning the other. Mason’s feelings for MC hindered his relationship with Noah, but before her - his father did that all on his own.

Mason and Noah were I daresay friends and even both admitted as much before it all went terribly wrong. They met and stuck together during football, hung out outside of school but Mr. Jennings influence on his son put a dent in their friendship even before things came to a head. During that night -you know the one I briefly mentioned earlier? Yeah, when Noah and Elijah trying to steal from Mason’s house it ruined whatever budding friendship there was between them. Since I’m talking about Mason’s perspective – despite his father’s hindrance, Mason allows his goading for him to make up his mind about Noah. Noah wasn’t his friend, he was just trying to get close to him to steal his stuff. This makes it difficult for Mason to see him as anything else other than a bad person.

In addition this, when you add MC into the mix – it just makes everything worse. Not only is Noah a bad influence – now he’s trying to take MC down with him. To Mason it makes him super protective of her; he has to protect her from how bad he is and even after her insistence – he still has to prove to her that Noah is bad news.

Even now, Mason is still struggling with the idea of Noah being a good person, but at least he is beginning to move past his short sightedness. He’s allowing doubt in his head, because as soon as he stopped placing his father on a pedestal he was able to realize nothing is black and white. People aren’t black and white. Nothing depicts this more than his relationship with Noah.

Future Mason TLDR

Mason Jennings has already started walking along a path of self-improvement. We see bits of this in the latest chapters that we haven’t seen at the start. From sticking up to his father and calling his ideas wrong, to (start) making amends with Noah and MC - he will undoubtedly continue to grow. This isn’t to excuse his past behaviour; (he still hasn’t apologized to Ava when he very much should and I’m still waiting on that ), but its addressing the very real notion that people change. People are always changing. High school is a lot of where that starts, at least it was for me - and at least for  all these characters in My Two First Loves. High school is where we start answering that question who am I and its a journey that continues after which really shapes who we are. Personally, I really can’t see future Mason making the same mistakes as past Mason and if I’m wrong - well pixelberry played me.

[getallemeralds]

explorers of arvus: heading back / 3.11.21

zoom and enhonse

LAST TIME ON ARVUS taure passed out and we are now down a healer! also we met a disciple of halvkar, and surprisingly did not murder her. this is fine. we have instantly gotten distracted by our various carts. cats. our various cats

DID ANY OF US CATCH TAURE, SHE FELL OVER sieron tried to catch her and smacked charlie+thorne in the face (he rolled a nat1, f) BUT the catboy is to the rescue bc silje is the designated Not Incompetent of the group today

CONSULT THE CHILD hewwo yrel yrel: her mind is being consumed by the serpent of nightmares. :D charlie: HELLO?????//

so, dendar(?) the night serpent is imprisoned beneath arvus! she was formed from the nightmares of the first sentient being, and sometimes she eats people's nightmares. if she's exceptionally hungry, she'll force nightmares onto people for her to feed off their fear. yrel thinks taure will Probably wake up. there's a thing on arvus mentioned by the locals called a "sleeping sickness" where people will fall asleep for a few days, sometimes longer, but will wake up. its magical in cause, the people afflicted by it have horrific nightmares, and its just kinda. a thing. wowza

(i have gone back to spelling yrel's name as yrel bc i think it looks nice)

OH HEY SOMEONE POSTED A THEORY ON ONE OF MY STICKMOLUS ANIMATIONS man i should get back to stickmolus sometime. once dsmp releases its awful grip on me.

i keep getting distracted by seeing myself in the camera preview. i have a tooth gap! what the fuck its cute?? K I KNOW WE'RE SUPER BLURRY IN FRONT RN BUT PLEASE HELP ME STAY FOCUSED I SWEAR -leo

we're gonna build a sled! to put taure on. thorne: i have a good strength score. ....i say, out loud charlie: i am four feet tall. [cue argument between thorne & sieron about them both being horcs but sieron has a +0 bc strength is his dump stat] OH, OKAY, THORNE ROLLED A NAT20 TO CARRY TAURE. NICE

[discussion about what to tell everyone at camp vengenace] thorne: the last thing we need to do is a witch hunt charlie: --and we already hunted the witch! the witch has been hunted.

time to discuss strategy! we need to figure out how to head back to camp vengeance, eg if we want to follow the path we already took or if we wanna do some trailblazing. looks like we're gonna try and take the most direct path! which means we'll prolly risk tangoing with some undead but im willing to risk it TINY HUT STAIRCASE sorry i just remember it now and then

nyx: [meowing at his cats] thorne: uh... why is silje meowing? jorb: silje's food bowl is empty jorb: you look at silje's food bowl and there's a divot in the middle and the food is all on the sides emotionally, we must bully the catboy silje saw something interesting and started meowing

thorne: ill take first watch silje: ill also take first watch. charlie: [quietly] gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy (but, like, extended for 15 seconds)

silje: [takes watch] [rolls a nat1 and gets distracted by looking at his crush]

THORNE HAS LOCATED A DOG the dog does not give a shit about the tiny hut. THE DOG HAS PEED ON THE TINY HUT goodbye dog

EVERYONE IS ROLLING AT LEAST 1 NAT1 thorne: wow! that sure is a dog. thorne has drawn the worst possible dog. thorne has erased the worst possible dog. we dont speak of the worst possible dog its the dog version of honse. DONSE

sieron is now on watch! MAN we are havin trouble rolling today. at least kali's here to make sure sieron doesnt stare at a rock for 50000 years sieron sees a mouse! bottom text

charlie is now on watch! kali is havin a big ol thonk. nothing meaningful has come of this

i am perceiving some deer. sieron is not perceiving some deer. silje is perceiving some deer, but better the deer are fucked up and undead! silje has gone from "we should hunt these deer for food" to "we should hunt these deer for sport"

charlie: i do not feel like being jumped by five thousand skeletons

charlie takes first watch with sieron! WHY ARE OUR ROLLS SO TERRIBLE taure is super cursed right now. that's not very pog charlie: this place sucks. thorne: to be fair, we havent-- charlie: YOU'RE ASLEEP, SHUT UP

oh hey coolname galvanic finally partied. nice.

thorne is at watch! solar: hey, is leomund's tiny hut an orb? there's a critter digging around! AH, THE CRITTER IS UNDEAD. this could be a problem

solar: hey michael, how much does the horrific sin against god dog i drew look like this creature michael: [dice roll noises] about 50%.

michael: if anyone likes, they can make a nature check-- solar: ME MEMEMEMEME ME ME ME

its a bulette! aka a land shark. problem: they are not normally undead. this one is undead.

jorb: imagine if you could tame one of those and use it as a mount. leo: IT WOULD JUST DIG UNDERGROUND AND LEAVE YOU THERE

we are just calling it a weird dog

we're going to mail a letter to the heart of arvus. HEY, CHECK OUT THIS WEIRD DOG,

JORB FOUND ART OF A BABY BULETTE. WEIRD PUPPY!

solar: hey guys, check out this sick art of a bulette i found

silje kept a lookout for the weird dog but its just fucked off. goodbye, weird dog give it up for day 3!

man there's been like, three incinerations today in blaseball. what's up with that. I SWEAR IM MOSTLY PAYING ATTENTION its just been an eventful day in blaseball. also im wearing my garages bomber rn. jaylen is home wooOOOO the wind smells stinky. this is fine.

we're actively avoiding whatever combat michael keeps nudging at us bc we're carrying around an unconscious person and i SWEAR hes gonna throw something directly at us once he's done with our shenanigans

UHH MICHAEL ASKING FOR PASSIVE PERCEPTION LOL

huh. this place used to be inhabited? we're in the woods rn but there's some like, stone ruins? like, VERY ruins. like, not really any structures standing, but enough evidence to show there Were things. WE FOUND A STATUE charlie: i want to smash my face against the lore.

used to be a circle of standing stones, but most of em fell over or got overgrown. inside of the circle has been cleared, although v roughly-- ground's torn up statue is of fjolnir! warrior holding up a spear and shield. AH, THERE ARE CORPSES, a human got REAL fucked up here. one of the corpses is straight up impaled on fjolnir's spear. n ... not pog.

i am trying so, so hard to pay attention. but i also kinda wanna take a nap.

charlie: [stares at statue] [rolls a 4] i wonder if he had a dick.

okay so something rolled in, tore up the overgrowth inside the circle, and murdered a couple dudes. and was also super tall and human-adjacent. hrm.

oh my god why are we rolling so shit today. time to stealth away and hope we dont get casually dismembered

k: jorb's hair is so long... leo: K, PLEASE,

time for a break! i am very tired but im gonan see if i can push through a little further. nyx is petting his cat why do orangatangs look like that

first watch is thorne and sieron! have they even, like, talked thorne unhabby ): thorne's worried we were tresspassing when checking out the statue, meanwhile im thinking about that one time when sieron got bit by a groundhog

(oh my god this is from late 2018)

leomund's tiny hut, aka the anti-sea bear circle we are getting SO much mileage out of the tiny hut. SILJE HUMS A SONG WITH KALI cute........... FINALLY I HAVE ROLLED ABOVE A 14 wait no i rolled a 16 twice. anyway we are not dead

nearly at camp vengenace! boy howdy i hope camp vengeance didnt get burned down. AH FUCK TAURE IS UNCONSCIOUS SO WE CANT CAST FOR DETECT POISON kaepora nearly made us all shit ourselves but its okay he just saw some bison and thought it was cool Michael Is Consulting Several Tables

WHY DOES JORB'S CAMERA ZOOM LIKE THAT why am i hungry. i have so many questions

HEY, TALL GUY [smacks sieron]

camp vengeance looks better! like, nobody's Obviously Sick anymore, the medical tents arent overfilled, we did it! we saved the dayyyyyy time to report to ryder! taure's getting dropped off at the medical tent

man remember when charlie didnt wear pants

oh man, with taure unconscious charlie is now taking point with social interaction. wild. jk im making jorb do it bc im tired HAHA NAT 20 PERSUASION BC OF ME HELPIN SIERON man ryder is such a cock. he was totally ready to keep throwing troops at heaven's brazier to die until we managed to persuade him out of it. jorb: did we tell ryder about the vision? michael: you kinda just took a look at him and went STINKY BOY!

okay yeah anything that dies on arvus will just pop back up as undead. man, arvus sucks.

ryder: alright, dismissed. charlie: seeya, soldier boy! :D hahahahaha im gonna eat his knees.

SILJE NEEDS ENRICHMENT IN HIS ENCLOSURE

charlie: ive decided he sucks. silje: we've already arrived to that, you're late!

LMAO WE WALKED IN ON INGRID AND HER CRUSH they fuckin. nice. you go, you funky lesbian

jorb: we've got the tiny hut, we could go anywhere leo: we could go to SPACE! nyx: we could not go to space. leo: WITH A TINY HUT STAIRCASE, WE CAN,

we are 320 miles away from the spaceship that exists on arvus. nice.

michael: justin sees you-- roll a strength saving throw. leo: i cant wait to die! [rolls a 3] I AM CRUSHED BY MY DOG michael: he rolled a nat20.

BOSS ENCOUNTER: CHARLIE'S DOG (the small circle next to him is one of the medical tents.)

THORNE IS PACT OF THE GUN solar: PARRY THIS, YOU FUCKING CASUAL

sieron, to ingrid: seems like youve been doing well charlie: i punch sieron. sieron: sieron: the camp, of course.

man we have no idea if the heart of arvus is actually related to the prophecy or not. theres a Lot of stuff lining up, but not enough, and its hard to say how much of it couldve been literal?

solar & michael: [discussing exposition] me: [cracking up bc penn sent me a funny dsmp joke]

prophecies are weird.

charlie is just s she is just sitting here SILJE PLAYED CARDS REALLY GOOD AT ME nyx rolled a nat20 and took all my money

oh cool we can talk to yrel telepathically! time to hoist yrel. THIS IS SO SCUFFED thorne mentioned yrel and now we're trying to explain to ingrid that we have a magic talking snake charlie: I WANT TO GO HOME. thorne: we cant go, we have a GOD-KING to kill! "i think theyre insane, theyre talking to a snake" "ingrid, druids exist" "oh. im gonna go back to getting railed by my 7 foot tall girlfriend"

[bluewatsons]

Claudia Roth Pierpont, A Raised Voice: How Nina Simone turned the movement into music, The New Yorker (August 4, 2014)

Simone with James Baldwin in the early sixties. Her intelligence and restless force attracted African-American culture’s finest minds. Photograph courtesy New York Public Library

“My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd. “And one of the women’s hair,” she instructed, brushing her hand lightly across her own woolly Afro, “is like mine.” Every performance of “Four Women” caught on film (as here) or disk is different. Sometimes Simone coolly chants the first three women’s parts—the effect is of resigned weariness—and at other times, as on this particular night, she gives each woman an individual, sharply dramatized voice. All four have names. Aunt Sarah is old, and her strong back has allowed her only “to take the pain inflicted again and again.” Sephronia’s yellow skin and long hair are the result of her rich white father having raped her mother—“Between two worlds I do belong”—and Sweet Thing, a prostitute, has tan skin and a smiling bravado that seduced at least some of the eager Dutch listeners into the mistake of smiling, too. And then Simone hit them with the last and most resolutely up to date of the women, improbably named Peaches. “My skin is brown,” she growled ferociously, “my manner is tough. I’ll kill the first mother I see. ’Cause my life has been rough.” (One has to wonder what the Dutch made of killing that “mother.”) If Simone’s song suggests a history of black women in America, it is also a history of long-suppressed and finally uncontainable anger.

A lot of black women have been openly angry these days over a new movie about Simone’s life, and it hasn’t even been released. The issue is color, and what it meant to Simone to be not only categorically African-American but specifically African in her features and her very dark skin. Is it possible to separate Simone’s physical characteristics, and what they cost her in this country, from the woman she became? Can she be played by an actress with less distinctively African features, or a lighter skin tone? Should she be played by such an actress? The casting of Zoe Saldana, a movie star of Dominican descent and a light-skinned beauty along European lines, has caused these questions—rarely phrased as questions—to dog the production of “Nina,” from the moment Saldana’s casting was announced to the completed film’s début, at Cannes, in May, at a screening confined to possible distributors. No reviewers have seen it. The film’s director, Cynthia Mort, has been stalwart in her defense of Saldana’s rightness for the role, citing not only the obvious relevance of acting skills but Simone’s inclusion of a range of colors among her own “Four Women”—which is a fair point. None of the women in Simone’s most personal and searing song escape the damage and degradation accorded to their race.

Ironically, “Four Women” was charged with being insulting to black women and was banned on a couple of radio stations in New York and Philadelphia soon after the recording was released, in 1966. The ban was lifted, however, when it produced more outrage than the song. Simone’s husband, Andrew Stroud, who was also her manager, worried about the dangers that the controversy might have for her career, although this was hardly a new problem. Simone had been singing out loud and clear about civil rights since 1963—well after the heroic stand of figures like Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis, Jr., but still at a time when many black performers felt trapped between the rules of commercial success and the increasing pressure for racial confrontation. At Motown, in the early sixties, the wildly popular performers of a stream of crossover hits became models of black achievement but had virtually no contact with the movement at all.

Simone herself had been hesitant at first. Known for her sophisticated pianism, her imperious attitude, and her velvety rendition of “I Loves You, Porgy” (which, like Billie Holiday before her, she sang without the demeaningly ungrammatical “s” on “loves”), she had arrived in New York in late 1958, establishing her reputation not in Harlem but in the clubs of hip and relatively interracial Greenwich Village. Her repertoire of jazz and folk and show tunes, often played with a classical touch, made her impossible to classify. In these early years, she performed African songs but also Hebrew songs, and wove a Bach fugue through a rapid-fire version of “Love Me or Leave Me.” She tossed off the thirties bauble “My Baby Just Cares for Me” with airy insouciance, and wrung the heart out of the lullaby “Brown Baby”—newly written by Oscar Brown, Jr., about a family’s hopes for a child born into a better racial order—erupting in a hair-raising wail on the word “freedom,” as though registering all the pain over all the years during which it was denied. For a while, “Brown Baby” was as close to a protest song as Simone got. She believed it was enough.

And then her friend Lorraine Hansberry set her straight. It speaks to Simone’s intelligence and restless force that, in her twenties, she attracted some of African-American culture’s finest minds. Both Langston Hughes and James Baldwin elected themselves mentors: Simone, appearing on the scene just as Holiday died, seemed to evoke their most exuberant hopes and most protective instincts. But Hansberry offered her a special bond. A young woman also dealing with a startling early success—Hansberry was twenty-eight when “A Raisin in the Sun” won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, in 1959—she had a strongly cultivated black pride and a pedagogical bent. “We never talked about men or clothes,” Simone wrote in her memoir, decades later. “It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution—real girls’ talk.” A milestone in Simone’s career was a solo concert at Carnegie Hall—a happy chance to show off her pianism—on April 12, 1963, which happened also to be the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested with other protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, and locked up in the local jail. The discrepancy between the events was pointed out by Hansberry, who telephoned Simone after the concert, although not to offer praise.

Two months later, Simone played a benefit for the N.A.A.C.P. In early August, she sang “Brown Baby” before a crowd gathered in the football stadium of a black college outside Birmingham—the first integrated concert ever given in the area—while guards with guns and dogs prowled the field. But Hansberry only started a process that events in America quickly accelerated. Simone watched the March on Washington, later that August, on television, while she was preparing for a club date. She was still rehearsing when, on September 15th, news came of the bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young African-American girls who had just got out of Bible class. Simone’s first impulsive act, she recalled, was to try to make a zip gun with tools from her garage. “I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone,” she wrote. “I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.”

This urge to violence was not a wholly aberrant impulse but something that had been brewing on a national scale, however tamped down by cooler heads and political pragmatists. At the Washington march, John Lewis, then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was forced to cut the word “revolution” from his speech and to omit the threat that, absent immediate progress, the marchers would go through the South “the way Sherman did” and “burn Jim Crow to the ground.” James Baldwin, in a televised discussion after the bombing, noted that, throughout American history, “the only time that nonviolence has been admired is when the Negroes practice it.” But the center held. Simone’s husband, a smart businessman, told her to forget the gun and put her rage into her music.

It took her an hour to write “Mississippi Goddam.” A freewheeling cri de coeur based on the place names of oppression, the song has a jaunty tune that makes an ironic contrast with words—“Alabama’s got me so upset, Tennessee made me lose my rest”—that arose from injustices so familiar they hardly needed to be stated: “And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam!” Still, Simone spelled them out. She mocked stereotypical insults (“Too damn lazy!”), government promises (“Desegregation / Mass participation”), and, above all, the continuing admonition of public leaders to “Go slow,” a line that prompted her backup musicians to call out repeatedly, as punctuation, “Too slow!” It wasn’t “We Shall Overcome” or “Blowin’ in the Wind”: Simone had little feeling for the Biblically inflected uplift that defined the anthems of the era. It’s a song about a movement nearly out of patience by a woman who never had very much to begin with, and who had little hope for the American future: “Oh but this whole country is full of lies,” she sang. “You’re all gonna die and die like flies.”

She introduced the song in a set at the Village Gate a few days later. And she sang it at a very different concert at Carnegie Hall, in March, 1964—brazenly flinging “You’re all gonna die” at a mostly white audience—along with other protest songs she had taken a hand in writing, including the defiantly jazzy ditty “Old Jim Crow.” She also performed a quietly haunting song titled “Images,” about a black woman’s inability to see her own beauty (“She thinks her brown body has no glory”)—a wistful predecessor to “Four Women” that she had composed to words by the Harlem Renaissance poet Waring Cuney. At the time, Simone herself was still wearing her hair in a harshly straightened fifties-style bob—sometimes the small personal freedoms are harder to speak up for than the larger political ones—and, clearly, it wasn’t time yet for such specifically female injuries to take their place in the racial picture. “Mississippi Goddam” was the song of the moment: bold and urgent and easy to sing, it was adopted by embattled protesters in the cursed state itself just months after Simone’s concert, during what they called the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer, and what President Johnson called “the summer of our discontent.”

There was no looking back by the time she performed the song outside Montgomery, Alabama, in March, 1965, when some three thousand marchers were making their way along the fifty-four-mile route from Selma; two weeks earlier, protesters making the same attempt had been driven back by state troopers with clubs, whips, and tear gas. The triumphant concert, on the fourth night of the march, was organized by the indefatigable Belafonte, at the request of King, and took place on a makeshift stage built atop stacks of empty coffins lent by local funeral homes, and in front of an audience that had swelled with twenty-five thousand additional people, drawn either by the cause or by a lineup of stars that ranged from Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis to Joan Baez. Simone, accompanied only by her longtime guitarist, Al Schackman, drew cheers on the interpolated line “Selma made me lose my rest.” In the course of events that night, she was introduced to King, and Schackman remembered that she stuck her hand out and warned him, “I’m not nonviolent!” It was only when King replied, gently, “Not to worry, sister,” that she calmed down.

Simone’s explosiveness was well known. In concert, she was quick to call out anyone she noticed talking, to stop and glare or hurl a few insults or even leave the stage. Yet her performances, richly improvised, were also confidingly intimate—she needed the connection with her audience—and often riveting. Even in her best years, Simone never put many records on the charts, but people flocked to her shows. In 1966, the critic for the Philadelphia Tribune, an African-American newspaper, explained that to hear Simone sing “is to be brought into abrasive contact with the black heart and to feel the power and beauty which for centuries have beat there.” She was proclaimed the voice of the movement not by Martin Luther King but by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, whose Black Power philosophy answered to her own experience and inclinations. As the sixties progressed, the feelings she displayed—pain, lacerating anger, the desire to burn down whole cities in revenge—made her seem at times emotionally disturbed and at other times simply the most honest black woman in America.

She recalled that racial anger first arose in her when she was eleven. Born Eunice Waymon, in 1933, she was the sixth of eight children of John and Kate Waymon, who were descendants of slaves and pillars of the small black community of Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother was a Methodist preacher, a severely religious woman who made extra money by cleaning house for a white Tryon family; her father, who had started off as an entertainer, worked at whatever the circumstances required. Even during the Depression, the Waymons made a good home. Simone’s earliest memories were of her mother singing hymns, and both the house and the church were so filled with music that no one noticed little Eunice climbing up to the organ bench until, at the age of two and a half, she played “God Be with You Till We Meet Again,” straight through.

Yet as rare as the little girl’s musical gifts is the way that, in that time and place, those gifts were encouraged. She began playing for her mother’s sermons before her feet could reach the pedals, and was soon accompanying the church choir and Sunday services. She especially enjoyed playing for visiting revivalists, because of the raptures she discovered that she could loose in an audience with music. At the other end of the spectrum, she was five years old when the woman for whom her mother cleaned house offered to pay for lessons with a local piano teacher, Muriel Mazzanovich. The British-born Miz Mazzy, as Eunice called her—and also, later on, “my white momma”—inspired her love of Bach and her plans to become a great and famous classical pianist. Giving a recital in the local library, at eleven, Eunice saw her parents being removed from their front-row seats to make room for a white couple. She had been schooled by Miz Mazzy in proper deportment, but she nevertheless stood up and announced that if people wanted to hear her play they’d better let her parents sit back down in the front row. There were some laughs, but her parents were returned to their seats. The next day, she remembered, she felt “as if I had been flayed, and every slight, real or imagined, cut me raw. But, the skin grew back a little tougher, a little less innocent, and a little more black.”

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Her skin was very black, and she was made fully aware of that, along with the fact that her nose was too large. The aesthetics of race—and the loathing and self-loathing inflicted on those who vary from accepted standards of beauty—is one of the most pervasive aspects of racism, yet it is not often discussed. The standards have been enforced by blacks as well as by whites. Even Harry Belafonte wrote, in his memoir, about his mother’s well-intentioned counsel to “marry a woman with good hair,” and he added, in unnecessary clarification, “Good hair meant straight hair.” (Reader, he married her.) But Nina Simone, strong and fierce and proud Nina Simone? “I can’t be white and I’m the kind of colored girl who looks like everything white people despise or have been taught to despise,” she wrote in a note to herself, not during her adolescence but in the years when she was already a successful performer. “If I were a boy, it wouldn’t matter so much, but I’m a girl and in front of the public all the time wide open for them to jeer and approve of or disapprove of.”

Countering the charge of physical inferiority, in her youth, was the talent that her mother assured her was God-given. Music was her salvation, her identity. Thanks to a fund established by a pair of generous white patrons in Tryon, she was sent to board at a private high school—she practiced piano five hours a day, and graduated valedictorian—and then to a summer program at Juilliard, all with the unwavering aim of getting into the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia, where admission was terrifically competitive but tuition was free. Her destiny seemed so assured that her parents moved to Philadelphia before she took the Curtis exam. The fact that she was rejected, and believed that this was because of her race, was a source of unending bitterness. It was also a turning point. In the summer of 1954, in need of money, Eunice Waymon took a job playing cocktail piano in an Atlantic City dive—the owner demanded that she also sing—and, hoping to keep the news of this unholy employment from her mother, turned herself into Nina Simone, feeling every right to the anger that Nina Simone displayed forever after.

At times, it seemed that she could outdistance her feelings. In 1961, after a brief marriage to a white hanger-on at the Atlantic City club, she married Stroud, a tough police detective on the Harlem beat whom she initially sized up as “a light-skinned man,” “well built,” and “very sure of himself.” The following year, she gave birth to a daughter, Lisa Celeste, and Stroud left his job to manage Simone’s career; they lived in a large house in the leafy Westchester suburb of Mount Vernon, complete with a gardener and a maid. Although she complained of working too hard and touring too much—of being desperately exhausted—her life was not the stuff of the blues. And then, before a concert in early 1967, Stroud found her in her dressing room putting makeup in her hair. She didn’t know who he was; she didn’t quite know who she was. She later remembered that she had been trying to get her hair to match her skin: “I had visions of laser beams and heaven, with skin—always skin—involved in there somewhere.”

The full medical facts of Simone’s mental illness became public only after her death, in 2003, thanks to two British fan-club founders and friends of Simone’s, Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan, whose account of the singer’s career was aptly titled, after one of Simone’s songs, “Nina Simone: Break Down & Let It All Out” (2004). Subsequent biographies—the warmly overdramatizing “Nina Simone,” by David Brun-Lambert (2009), and the coolly meticulous “Princess Noire,” by Nadine Cohodas (2010)—have filled in terrible details of depression and violence and long-sought but uncertain diagnoses: “bipolar disorder” appears to be the best contemporary explanation. Excerpts from Simone’s diaries and letters of the nineteen-sixties, published by Joe Hagan (who got them from Andrew Stroud) in The Believer, in 2010, added the news that Simone’s personal hell was compounded by regular beatings from Stroud. The marriage dissolved in 1970, but it was many more years before she received any helpful medication.

All the more remarkable, then, the strength that Simone projected through the sixties. As the decade wore on, she began to favor bright African gowns and toweringly braided African hair styles; she became the High Priestess of Soul, and though the title was no more than a record company’s P.R. gambit—Aretha Franklin was soon crowned the Queen of Soul—she bore it with conviction. It would be wrong, however, to give the impression that her songs were mostly about civil rights. Stroud, with his eye on the bottom line, was always there to keep her from going too far in that direction. In concert, she even pulled back on “Mississippi Goddam,” singing “We’re all gonna die, and die like flies” in place of the gleefully threatening “You’re all gonna die . . .” Although she did record the classic anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” in 1965, and she could give the most unexpected songs an edge of racial protest (listen to her harrowing version of the Brecht-Weill “Pirate Jenny”), she had a vast and often surprising musical appetite. By the late sixties, she was so afraid of falling behind the times that she expanded her repertory to include Bob Dylan, Leonard Bernstein, and, covering all bases, the Bee Gees. One of her biggest hits of the era was the joyously innocuous “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life,” from the musical “Hair”—which, in her hands, became a classic freedom song.

But womanly strength was in everything she sang: in the cavernous depths of her voice—some people think Simone sounds like a man—in her intensity, her drama, her determination. It’s there in the crazy love song “I Put a Spell on You,” in which she recasts the crippling needs of love (“Because you’re mine!”) into an undeniable command. It’s there in the ten-minute gospel tour de force “Sinnerman,” when she cries out “Power!” like a Southern preacher and her musicians shout back “Power to the Lord!,” and especially when she takes the disapproving voice of the Lord upon herself: “Where were you, when you oughta been praying?” If you’d never before thought of the Lord as a black woman, you did now.

The civil-rights songs were nevertheless what she called “the important ones.” And the movement is where she gained her strength. It’s also where her private anger took on public dimensions, in the years when patience gave way entirely and the anger in many black communities could no longer be tamped down. Onstage in Detroit, on August 13, 1967—two weeks after a five-day riot had left forty-three people dead, hundreds injured, and the city in ruins—Simone, singing “Just in Time,” added a message to the crowd: “Detroit, you did it. . . . I love you, Detroit—you did it!” She was met with roars of approval, which one Detroit critic said he presumed had come from “the arsonists, looters and snipers in the audience.” Another critic, however, wrote that her show let white people know what they had to learn, and learn fast. Was she the voice of national tragedy or of the next American revolution?

And then King was shot, on April 4, 1968. Sections of Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, and more than a hundred smaller cities went berserk. Despite her rhetoric, Simone was profoundly shaken, and her views of what might be accomplished in this country only grew more bleak. At an outdoor concert in Harlem, the following summer—it’s available on YouTube—she went for broke.

Majestically bedecked à l’africaine, she opened with “Four Women,” singing now before a crowd where an Afro was the norm. After several other stirring, politically focussed songs—“Revolution,” “Backlash Blues”—she closed with something so new that she had not had time to learn it, a poem by David Nelson, who was then part of a group called the Last Poets and is now among the revered begetters of rap. She read the words from a sheet of paper, moving across the stage and repeatedly exhorting the crowd to answer the question “Are you ready, black people? . . . Are you ready to do what is necessary?” The crowd responded to this rather vague injunction with a mild cheer, prompted by the bongos behind her and the demand in her voice. And then: “Are you ready to kill, if necessary?” Now a bigger, if somewhat incongruous, cheer rose from the smiling crowd filled with little kids dancing to the rhythm on a sunny afternoon. It had been five years since the Harlem riot of 1964, the granddaddy of sixties riots; New York had largely escaped the ruinations of both 1967 and 1968. “Are you ready to smash white things, to burn buildings, are you ready?” she cried. “Are you ready to build black things?”

Despite her best efforts, Simone failed to incite a riot in Harlem that day in 1969. The crowd received the poem as it had received her songs: with noisy affirmation, but merely as part of a performance. People applauded and went on their way. There are many possible reasons: no brutal incident of the kind that frequently set off riots, massive weariness, the knowledge of people elsewhere trapped in riot-devastated cities, maybe even hope. Simone had her unlikeliest hit that year with a simple hymn of promise, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” based on the title of a play that had been put together from Lorraine Hansberry’s uncollected writings. Hansberry, who died in 1965, had used the phrase in a speech to a group of prize-winning black students, and Simone asked a fellow-musician, Weldon Irvine, to come up with lyrics that “will make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever.” Indeed, it is a children’s song (or it was, until Aretha took it over). Simone’s most moving performance may have been on “Sesame Street,” where she sat on the set’s tenement steps wearing an African gown and lip-synched her recording to four enchanting if slightly mystified black children, who raised their arms in victory toward the end.

It was not a victory she could believe in or a mood she could sustain. By the end of the sixties, both Simone’s career and her marriage were in serious trouble. Pop-rock did not really suit her, and the jazz and folk markets had radically shrunk; the concert stage still assured her income and her stature. And if the collapse of her marriage was in some ways a liberation she was also now without the person who had managed her finances and her schedule, and who had kept her calm before she went onstage (by forbidding her alcohol, among other means), and got her offstage quickly when the calm failed. She was left to govern herself in a world that suddenly had no rules and, just as frightening, was emptied of its larger, steadying purpose. “Andy was gone and the movement had walked out on me too,” she wrote, “leaving me like a seduced schoolgirl, lost.”

Looking back on the historic protests and legislative victories of the sixties, one may find it easy to assume a course of inevitable if often halting racial progress, yet this was anything but apparent as the decade closed. When, in 1970, James Baldwin set out to write about “the life and death of what we call the Civil Rights movement,” its failure seemed to him beyond contention. As for the black leaders who had “walked out” on Simone, they were in cemeteries (Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, King, Fred Hampton), in jail (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale), or in Africa (Stokely Carmichael), or else had “run for cover,” as she put it, “in community or academic programmes.” White liberals had diverted their efforts to Vietnam; this was now the war being fought on televisions in living rooms every night. According to Simone, “The days when revolution really had seemed possible were gone forever.”

She left the country in 1974. Travelling to Liberia with her twelve-year-old daughter, she stayed for two years, during which she performed hardly at all. She left Liberia for Switzerland in order to put her daughter in school there. Eventually, she moved to France, alone. It seems to have been only the recurrent need for money that spurred her to perform again in the United States, although she took great pride in an honorary doctorate that she received from Amherst, in 1977, and insisted ever after on being called “Doctor Nina Simone.” Meanwhile, her concerts tended increasingly toward disaster. As she now sang in “Mississippi Goddam,” “the whole damn world’s made me lose my rest.”

The remainder of her life, some twenty-five years, is a tale of escalating misery. At the worst, she was found wandering naked in a hotel corridor brandishing a knife; she set her house in France on fire, and once, also in France, she shot a teen-age boy (in the leg, but that may have been poor aim) in a neighbor’s back yard for making too much noise—and for answering her complaints with what she understood as racial insults. Yet the ups of her life could be almost as vertiginous as the downs. In 1987, just a year after she was sent to a hospital in a straitjacket, her charmingly upbeat 1959 recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was chosen by Chanel for its international television ad campaign. Rereleased, the record went gold in France and platinum in England. In 1991, she sold out the Olympia, in Paris, for almost a week.

She toured widely during her final years. In Seattle, in the summer of 2001, she worked a tirade against George W. Bush into “Mississippi Goddam,” and encouraged the audience to “go and do something about that man.” She was already suffering from breast cancer, but it wasn’t the worst illness she had known. She was seen as a relic of the civil-rights era, and on occasion she even led the audience in a wistful sing-along of “We Shall Overcome,” although she did not believe her country had overcome nearly enough. Once she became too sick to perform, she did not return to what she called “the United Snakes of America.” She died in France, in April, 2003; her ashes were scattered in several African countries. The most indelible image of her near the end is as a stooped old lady reacting to the enthusiastic cheers that greeted her with a raised, closed-fisted Black Power salute.

Thirty-four years after Simone released “Young, Gifted and Black,” Jay Z reused the title for a song that describes the fate of many of those gifted children—“Hear all the screams from the ghetto all the teens ducking metal”—in twenty-first-century America. The rap connection with Simone is hardly surprising, since rap is where black anger now openly resides. Simone disliked the rap she knew, however, in part for displacing so much anger onto women—or, as she put it, for “letting people believe that women are second class, and calling them bitches and stuff like that.” Back in 1996, Lauryn Hill rapped an anything-you-can-do retort to a male counterpart, “So while you imitatin’ Al Capone / I be Nina Simone / And defecatin’ on your microphone,” but no one has really taken up the challenge of Simone’s example. There was a minor uproar last year over Kanye West’s sampling of phrases from Simone’s recording of “Strange Fruit” (with her voice speeded up to an unrecognizable tinniness) in “Blood on the Leaves,” in which Simone’s evocation of lynched black bodies is juxtaposed with West’s personal concerns about “second string bitches,” cocaine, and the cost of paying off a baby mama versus a new Mercedes. Some people have seen a social statement here, but one can’t help recalling Simone’s broader reaction to rap: “Hell, Martin and Malcolm would turn in their graves if they heard some of this crazy shit.”

As for jazz, Simone was largely excluded from the history books for decades. Will Friedwald’s seminal “Jazz Singing,” of 1990, mentioned her only in passing, as “off-putting and uncommunicative” and as the center of a cult “that only her faithful understand.” But Simone’s eclecticism has slowly widened the very definition of jazz singing. And, ever since Presidential candidate Obama listed her version of “Sinnerman” as one of his ten favorite songs of all time, in 2008, the cult has gone mainstream. There’s now a burgeoning field of what may be called Simone studies—Ruth Feldstein’s “How It Feels to Be Free” and Richard Elliott’s “Nina Simone” offer two highly intelligent examples—and Friedwald’s even more authoritative volume of 2010, “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” includes a lengthy entry on Simone that pronounces her “more important than anyone” in her influence on twenty-first-century jazz singing.

Last year, two Broadway shows depicted Simone as an inspiration for a couple of unexpected figures: in “A Night with Janis Joplin,” she helped to provide her white soul sister with the gift of fire, and, even stranger, in the crude but enthusiastic “Soul Doctor”—which reopens Off Broadway this winter—she was the force behind the “rock-and-roll rabbi” Shlomo Carlebach. Nutty as it seemed onstage, Simone’s acquaintance with the rabbi appears to have some basis in fact, and helps to explain the Hebrew songs she performed at the Village Gate (where he also performed) in the early sixties. While it may be a show-biz exaggeration to suggest that the rabbi and the jazz singer had an affair—the show featured an Act I curtain clinch that, on the night I saw it, had its largely Orthodox audience literally gasping—the point was the universality of Simone’s message about persecution, the search for justice, and the power of music.

Back in 1979, at a concert in Philadelphia, Simone followed a performance of “Four Women” by scolding the black women in the audience about their changes in style: “You used to be talking about being natural and wearing natural hair styles. Now you’re straightening your hair, rouging your cheeks and dressing out of Vogue.” In 2009, the comedian Chris Rock made a documentary titled “Good Hair” because, he explained, his young daughter had come to him with the question “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” For an African-American child, nothing had changed since Harry Belafonte’s mother’s advice, more than half a century earlier. (According to one contented businessman in Rock’s film, African-Americans—twelve per cent of the population—buy eighty per cent of the hair products in this country.) As for skin tone, the cosmetic companies have been expanding their range ever since Iman established a line of darker foundations, in 1994, although in March, 2014, a former beauty director of Essence, Aretha Busby, complained to the Times,“The companies tend to stop at Kerry Washington. I’d love to see brands go two or three shades darker.”

The question of skin tone and hair and their meaning for African-American women exploded on the Internet with the announcement of the casting of Saldana in the Hollywood bio-pic about Simone. When the idea for such a film was initially floated, in the early nineties, Simone herself gave the nod to being played by Whoopi Goldberg. When, in 2010, the present film was announced in the Hollywood Reporter, Mary J. Blige—the reigning Queen of Hip-Hop Soul—was announced for the lead. Once Blige was replaced with Saldana, however, a woman whose skin tone is more than two or three shades lighter than Simone’s, the cries for boycotting the film on the basis of misrepresentation—on the basis of insult—were instantaneous. Why not cast Viola Davis? Or Jennifer Hudson? Production photographs showing Saldana on the set with an artificially broadened nose, an Afro wig, and—inevitably, but most unfortunately—dark makeup that is all too easily confoundable with blackface rendered any hope of calm discussion futile. It’s been suggested that the filmmakers might as well have cast Tyler Perry in full “Madea” drag.

Simone’s daughter has come out against the film because its story focusses on an invented love affair as much as for the casting of Saldana, although she is quick to point out how much her mother’s appearance shaped her life. (Lisa once told an interviewer that her mother would sometimes “traumatize” her because she is light-skinned—“and I’d remind her that she had chosen my father, I didn’t.”) The fight over the film ultimately extended to a lawsuit filed by the director, Cynthia Mort, against the British production company, Ealing Studios Enterprises, on the very eve of the screening at Cannes. Since then, though, the suit has been dismissed, so “Nina” may yet show up in a theatre near you. And Saldana may give a compelling performance—may well prove that she can play not only women who are sci-fi blue (as in “Avatar”) or green (as in “Guardians of the Galaxy”) but real-life black. Still, there is no escaping the fact that her casting represents exactly the sort of prejudice that Simone was always up against. “I was never on the cover of Ebony or Jet,” Simone told an interviewer, in 1980. “They want white-looking women like Diana Ross—light and bright.” Or, as Marc Lamont Hill writes in Ebony today, “There is no greater evidence of how tragic things are for dark-skinned women in Hollywood than the fact that they can’t even get hired to play dark-skinned women.” Well beyond Hollywood, these outworn habits of taste reverberate down the generations, infecting all of us.

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Simone’s favorite performer in her later years was Michael Jackson. She brought cassettes of his albums with her everywhere, and recalled having met him on a plane when he was a little boy, and telling him, “Don’t let them change you. You’re black and you’re beautiful.” She anguished over his evident failure to believe what she’d said: the facial surgeries, the mysterious lightening of his skin, the fatality of believing, instead, what the culture had told him, and wanting to be white. Simone appeared onstage with him just once, amid a huge cast of performers gathered for Nelson Mandela’s eightieth birthday, in Johannesburg, in the summer of 1998. She was sixty-five years old, and photographs of the event show her standing between Mandela and Jackson, overweight yet glamorously done up, her hair piled in braids and her strapless white blouse a contrast to the African costumes of the chorus all around. But she was also very frail. In one photograph, Jackson—in his glittering trademark military-style jacket, hat, and shades—holds her left hand in both his hands, in a gesture of affection. But in another shot he has put one steadying arm around her, and she is grasping his hand for support. Few people seem aware of what is happening. The stage remains a swirl of laughter and song, a joyous African celebration. And at its center the two Americans stand with hands clasped tight—one hand notably dark, the other notably fair—as though trying to help each other along a hard and endless road.

[joealwyndaily]

 Joe Alwyn — Red Magazine (Jan 2020) interview 

You’d think that a back-to-back Hollywood movie career and a megastar girlfriend might have changed Joe Alwyn, but he’s quick to assure Nathalie Whittle that his feet remain firmly on the ground. 

“So you didn’t see the part where the aliens attack?” asks Joe Alwyn, a playful smirk on his face. He’s referring to his latest film, Harriet, which I had a sneak preview of the previous day, although the fire evacuation (false alarm) meant I missed the ending. The biographical drama tells the story of Harriet Tubman (played by Cynthia Erivo), the historic abolitionist who escaped slavery and led hundreds of others to freedom. Alwyn plays her insufferably cruel and capricious slave master Gideon Brodess. He is, of course, joking about the aliens. At least, I hope he is. Today, we’re tucked away in the corner of a dimly lit bar at London’s Covent Garden Hotel. It’s the sort of drizzly afternoon that might dampen the moods of most, but not Alwyn. He appears cheery and at ease, sporting country casuals: a grey mohair jumper, blue jeans, and brown boots along with an unkempt beard; perhaps an attempt to disguise the boyish good looks he’s become known for. He stops to interrupt me only once with a look of alarm: he’s forgotten to offer me something to eat or drink. I can have anything I want, he assures me.

At 28, Alwyn has had the sort of career trajectory that most aspiring actors wistfully dream about for years, even decades. His education included a degree in English literature and drama at the University of Bristol, followed by a BA in acting at London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. But within two weeks of his graduate showcase, Alwyn received a life-changing phone call. He refers to it as the thing “I owe everything to.”

“I’d just signed with an agent and I was kind of pinching myself, you know, how surreal is that?” he says. “She sent me a portion of the script for a film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, that Ang Lee was directing. I’d grown up watching his films — Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi — so I couldn’t believe I was even going to do a tape for someone like that. I got my dad to film me in a scene in my bedroom and some mates to film me during a lunch break. The next thing I know, Ang wants to meet me in New York.” Cue a series of auditions and screen tests that led to Alwyn bagging the title role in his first big-budget Hollywood film. He was just 24. “It was so much so fast that I didn’t really compute what was going on,” he concedes. “Before that I was just a poor student who barely understood how people got auditions, let alone landed jobs.” Did he have any jobs before that? I ask. “I did have this one job in London,” he says wryly. “Do you know that frozen yogurt place, Snog?” I’m struggling to picture Alwyn serving up frozen delights. He’s laughing now. Was it a good gig? “Exceptional!” More laughter follows. “I mean, I was paid some money! Then I worked in a menswear shop. I did what I could to make some extra cash.”

A far cry from a frozen-yogurt counter, doors started opening to bigger and better opportunities as soon as Billy Lynn hit cinemas. The next script Alwyn read was Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (released in 2019), in which he secured a small but riotous role as young baron Samuel Masham alongside acting greats Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. “Putting on giant wigs and running around in make-up and chasing Emma Stone through the forest — what more could you want?” he laughs. The film earned widespread critical acclaim, receiving seven BAFTAs and a record 10 British Independent Film awards. 

Having further honed his craft in subsequent films Mary Queen of Scots and gay-conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, Alwyn is about to enter into unknown territory. This Christmas, he’ll play Bob Cratchit in his first-ever TV drama, BBC One’s A Christmas Carol; a “darker, twisted, less glossy” version of the Charles Dickens classic. He’s “feeling good about it,” but I’m curious as to how he’s approached this change of scenery. Was he not nervous? “Oh, very. I tried to watch other people. It’s the second time I’ve worked with Guy Pearce [who plays Scrooge] and I asked him a lot of stuff, which probably annoyed him. I watched the way he works and the questions he asked on set when he was approaching a scene.”

Two people who will definitely be watching Alwyn’s TV debut are his mother, a psychotherapist, and his father, a documentary-maker. “They’d better be watching!” he laughs. Born in London’s Tufnell Park, Alwyn recalls being given stacks of videos every birthday and “watching them to death, until the tapes burned up.” One of his favourites was The Mask of Zorro. In fact, he was so obsessed with it that he and his best friend took up fencing lessons at a local community centre in Crouch End, where, by chance, he was spotted by a local casting agent for the hit British romcom Love Actually. She asked him to audition for the role of Sam; he breaks into a wide smile when I ask what he remembers of it. “I didn’t know much about what the film was; I was most excited about the fact I got the day off school! But I remember being in a room with Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant reading scenes, many of which didn’t make it into the film. And I left the audition thinking, ‘I really recognize that guy from somewhere’.”

Alwyn didn’t get the part. Instead, he forgot about acting for a while, with the exception of summer holidays, where his parents would send him and his older brother off to “some drama camp as a way of preoccupying us.” He explains that when he later realized he wanted to act on a serious level, he kept it a secret. Was it because he was worried how his parents would react to a somewhat precarious career choice? “Well, it meant putting myself out there in a performative way, and that wasn’t necessarily something I did or was used to doing. It felt like it should be quite a ‘look at me’ job, and that wasn’t really how I felt growing up. I wasn’t a painfully introverted kid, but I wasn’t a particularly extroverted one, either. So maybe I was self-conscious about the idea of saying to people, ‘Look, I can do this’.”

He credits drama school with giving him “permission” to go for it. “Plus my parents were great about it. They’re both freelance themselves, so while they recognize the perils, they also couldn’t say to me, ‘We can follow what we want, but you can’t’. There wasn’t a boundary, which helped a lot.”

I wonder if it’s been difficult acclimatizing to the level of fame that’s come as result of his roles. “There have definitely been changes that have taken some getting used to, whether it’s sitting down and doing an interview or someone recognizing you,” he says. “There are things that have changed in my life, but I still very much feel like the same person. It probably helps that I’ve been hanging out with the same friends literally every day since I was 12 years old. Maybe it’s when those things change that people change, I don’t know.”

It’s fair to say that the level of interest in Alwyn has, in part, been heightened by the fact that, in his spare time he plays the role of Mr. Taylor Swift. The pair reportedly met in late 2016 and became in item shortly afterwards. I’ve been warned ahead of our meeting that Alwyn “doesn’t talk about that”, and he’s keen to justify his stance in person. “I feel like my private life is private and everyone is entitled to that.” he says. “I’ve read stories recently about people like Ben Stokes and Gareth Thomas, which are a gross invasion of their privacy and of their lives. It’s disgusting. That’s not journalism, that’s just invasive.”

It must be tough, I suggest, being in a relationship that is surrounded by so much scrutiny. “I just don’t read the headlines,” he says. “I really don’t, because I can guarantee 99% of them are made up. So I ignore it.” Recent rumours suggest the pair are engaged, and are owed in part to one of Swift’s latest songs, Lover (’My hearts been borrowed and yours has been blue. All’s well that ends well to end up with you’), as well as a piece of string tied around Swift’s finger in a Vogue cover shoot. According to die-hard fans, this means something. But to Alwyn, it’s clear it means nothing at all. Is he never tempted to respond to the mistruths, to shut them down? “No, because it’s just pointless,” he sighs. “It won’t change anything. I just don’t pay any attention. I have my life and it’s kind of separate to all that stuff.”

I’m curious as to how much time he gets to simply enjoy the success he’s experiencing. “There’s lots of time not working, I wish there was less in a way!” he laughs. “I go to the pub, play football, go to gigs, watch TV (he’s just finished season three of True Detective), pretty normal things. There’s no ‘secret life’. But ultimately, I worry about finding the next job; that’s the truth. In the midst of everything, there’s always that feeling of ‘I’m never going to work again’. It’s a cliche, but you can’t just sit there waiting for the phone to ring. You have to try and take control. You’re at the mercy of the things you seek out — the directors and the connections — so I try to be on top of that as I can and read what I’m sent and be discerning. I try to pick wisely and follow up on people and leads that I’m interested in.”

Is there an end point he wants to get to, where he’ll feel like he’s made it? “Things have certainly shifted in my twenties,” he says. “Success to me now is doing things that make me happy and that make me feel fulfilled, doing what I want to do and being on the right track. Not in terms of being on a results-based track, but just doing something I love.” He pauses and smiles. “That sounds a bit sentimental, doesn’t it?” 

[chuckepisodes]

Chuck vs. The Sizzling Shrimp Part 2

"Hey, sis. Good morning." Ellie just looked ahead, not acknowledging Chuck, glaring. " Or not. Could you pass the berry loops?" " Are you sure you don't want any sizzling shrimp? " Ellie asked getting up off her chair. "Right." Chuck said feeling guilty. " You know, 'cause we have a whole lot of that left over." " 'Cause I got back late last night." " This is the point I'm trying to make. " Ellie said as she was walking out of the kitchen as Chuck followed her. "And you're making it very well, I want you to know that." "You know, it's one thing to let several pounds of shrimp go to waste, it's for you and Y/N to stand me up, but for the two of you to leave me with Morgan?" "And we-we-we both feel terrible about that, believe me, we do. You know how much we adore sizzling shrimp. And you. More specifically you. It's just... Sarah wasn't feeling well, and... " "Oh, well, what is it? I'm a doctor. " "I believe, uh, she had a spastic colon. " Chuck couldn't believe he said that but it was the first thing that popped into his brain. "Yuck." " I know. A girl like that with a colon that spastic... " "Well, you know what tomorrow is. " She said staring at him. "Absolutely, yes. It's our, our very own October version of mother's day, and I wouldn't miss it for the world, I swear. Y/N won't either." "I should hope not. But then again, I never figured that you would pass on sizzling shrimp, either." Ellie told him as she walked out the door to head to work. After she left Chuck just stood there not believing what he said. "Spastic colon what the f..."

Chuck was at work busy on the computer when you came in to see him on your break. Chuck looked up and saw you come over and he smiled. "Hey Chuck! What's up?" "Oh just checking out something real quick on the computer. Nothing big. What about you?" "Oh you mean my glamourous life of cooking hot dogs? Fabulous." you said sarcastically with a smile on your face. Chuck laughed. "Thank God for Sarah now there though because I would probably have to shoot myself." "Oh! Speaking of Sarah. If Ellie asks. she has a spastic colon." "What?" "Had to cover about why we didn't show up last night and it was the first thing that came to mind." "Right... Okay then. But spastic colon? Really?" "Yeah I'm not proud about it." You shook your head and laughed. All of a sudden Casey came walking over to you two and you and Chuck walked with him. "So we went over the department of defense files on Mei-Ling again .Sorry, no flashes. " Chuck said. "Well, she's here for a reason. Maybe you'll flash on something tonight. " "Tonight?" you asked. " Yeah, we're running a surveillance op on her. We're gonna tail her, see if you two flash on anyone she's talking to. Might tell us why she's here." Casey explained. "Our first stakeout. Okay. Okay, yeah. What do we need to bring? Sweater? Light jacket?" Chuck asked. " No, you just bring that computer in your heads." "Okay, you know what? We have a lot more to offer this team, other than the intersect. For instance, what are we doing for tunes tonight? Y/NN and I can make a stakeout mix." "Oooh! Yes! I already have songs in mind." you said excited and you went to high five Chuck. Big Mike then came walking up. "John I need all the green shirts in my office, on the double." "Mmm...Have fun. " Chuck said teasingly. Casey punched him in the stomach first before leaving. "That's really not... Fair." Chuck said in pain. "Ohh Chuck." you said coming to stand closer to him.

It was night time now and you and Chuck were in the back of a van with Sarah and Casey sitting up front, keeping an eye on the restaurant for any activity. "Hey, we have a bogey at 6:00 here." Casey said as he saw a man approaching the van. " Uh, excuse me. Someone send in an order for sizzling shrimp?" It was a delivery guy from the restaurant. "A Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael? " "Yeah. Yeah, that's us. That's us." Chuck said appearing in between Sarah and Casey." I'll take that. Thank you very much. You go ahead and keep the change." " Thank you... " "Have a good night. " Sarah smiled as Casey just glared at the two of you. "What? It's for Morgan. I called it in." " The idea behind a stakeout is to remain inconspicuous, you moron." "Uh, hello? That's why I used an alias." "Yeah... why did you use our married couple one?" you asked. "Oh well I-I- I felt like it?" You just smirked at him as he was blushing. Sarah then saw a limo pulling up along the side and a group of men coming out. "Hey, I think we have some company." Sarah said. "Who's that?" Chuck asked. " Old ironside is Ben Lo Pan. He's the local big shot businessman. Owns, like, half of Chinatown." "And there's Mei-Ling. We're on." Sarah said as Mei-Ling got on her motorcycle. " Hey, hey, hey, she's gonna get ahead of us." you said. "No, we're good. Always leave a 30-yard cushion from your target on the tail. She's following Ben Lo Pan's limo." Sarah said. "Oh, a tail on a tail. Does that mean, like, a 60-yard cushion or would you say the regular tail rules apply in this situa..." Chuck was starting to ask till Casey put his hand over Chuck's face and pushed him back.

You followed them all the way to this building. Mei-Ling got off her bike and pulled out a gun. "Glocks on a crotch rocket. My kind of gal." Casey said. As you and Chuck stared at her you both began to flash as you looked at her gun. "Those aren't glocks. They're Chinese army-issue pistols. " you said. "She's not here on a spy mission. She's here to assassinate the guy in the wheelchair." Chuck added. "You sure? " Casey asked. "Yeah, we're pretty sure. You know, locked away in the brain here. I mean, we're not bragging. The intersect's doing all the heavy lifting." Chuck said for both of you. "Okay, we can't wait for the cops. By the time they get here, Mei-Ling or Ben Lo Pan may be dead or both." Sarah said. " Mei-Ling could be a small part of a larger operation. We need her alive. We want to find out what she knows. We catch her, the Chinese spy has a lot we'd love to hear." "All right, Chuck and Y/N, pull the car around front." "What? Around the front? Then what do we do?" " Stay in the car. " Sarah said. "Our four favorite words." you said looking at Chuck.

You and Chuck were now chilling in the van at the front, not knowing what to do.

"Well...we may as well eat some shrimp here." Chuck said. "Yeah. I am getting pretty hungry now. But wasn't it for Morgan?" "Yeah but there will still be a box for him so he'll be good." "Okay then." As you were eating Chuck began to play with his shrimp and you couldn't help but laugh. The man was a major goofball but that was one of things you loved about him. "I'm gonna get ya. I'm gonna get ya. Oh, don't eat me! Boy, you're dead. Come on." "You are such a nerd." "Yeah but you love me." You looked down and blushed. Oh you really did love him. You just wished you could gather the courage to tell him so. "Hey...you got that mix CD?" you asked. "Of course! We worked way too hard on it to forget it." Chuck reached at the back and grabbed the CD out of his bag and popped it in. Private Eyes by Hall and Oates came on and you both began to jam and sing along. "I love this song so much!!" you said. "Good choice Y/NN!" "Of course it is! It is THE stakeout song." "Stakeouts are kinda fun!"

After a while you and Chuck can hear some commotion coming from the building and gunshots. "Gunshots. Gunshots. Listen to Sarah and Casey; stay in the car." Chuck said. " Hey, the wheelchair guy." you pointed out and Chuck looked over. "We should help him out." you said. "Hey, let me help you get out of here. " you shouted while getting out of the van. "Wait Y/N!" Chuck shouted following after you. "Yeah, help me! Help me! A lady's trying to kill me. My car, this way." you grabbed on to the man's wheel chair and pushed him down as Chuck ran next to you. "I think I'm fine now. " the man said as you got him to his car. "Here, here you go." All of a sudden a few men came out dragging out another man tied up and gagged. "Why is he tied up?" you asked. " Throw him in the trunk!" The man shouted. " What? The trunk? That's not very... Nice." Chuck said as they tossed the man in, closing the trunk. All of a sudden Mei-Ling came out shooting at the men. You and Chuck ducked and shouted as the car took off and she continued to shoot. She then turned to the both of you, guns pointed. "Where are they taking him?" she shouted. " I don't know! I don't know!" Chuck yelled as you both continued to duck and he kept his arm around you. " You two work for him? " "What? No, no, no, wait-- hold on a second. I was just trying to help an old guy in a wheelchair, who puts people in trunks." you said as you and Chuck slowly got up. You kept a grip on Chuck's arm. "You idiot. That old man is triad. Chinese mafia. That was my brother he threw in the trunk" "Your brother? You were trying to... Rescue him." you said feeling bad. "Until you got in the way." "Federal agent! Drop your gun! " Sarah yelled running towards you along with Casey. Mei-Ling ran away. "No, no, no! No, no, no, s-sar-Sarah..." you yelled trying to stop her. "Y/N ,Chuck, are you okay?" she asked. " Yeah." you said. " Are you hurt?" " No. " "What the Hell just happened?" Casey asked. " She was just trying to rescue her brother." Chuck said. " I guess we were wrong." you said sadly. "We blew it." Chuck said as you looked at him and then laid your head on his shoulder. Both of you feeling awful.

[a-silent-symphony]

Metal behemoths Nightwish: “David Attenborough wrote to personally decline appearing on our album”

The arena-filling group's golden-lunged singer Floor Jansen talks album nine, Swedish lockdown and why the world's greatest conservationist turned them down

With the exception of maybe Rammstein – and we’re only quantifying this statement because they own flamethrowers and we do not – no band in European metal can rival Nightwish for their popularity in mainland Europe.

Formed in Kitee, Finland in 1996 by top hat-wearing keyboard player Tuomas Holopainen, the band welcomed Dutch-born singer Floor Jansen in 2012, by which point they were seven records into their career. The addition has seen the symphonic metal band become bigger, grander, more expressive and increasingly ambitious. She’s such a force that she’s become a Dutch TV personality, appearing on the musical talent showcase Best Zangers.

Their recent ninth record, the infuriatingly stylised ‘Human. :II: Nature.’, is their first double-release, the second half featuring lush orchestral music over the band’s core metal. Listen to album highlights ‘Harvest’, ‘How’s The Heart?’ and ‘Noises’ – rarely has a modern metal band’s music been infused with such power and glory. Tellingly, despite being released within the very centre of storm COVID-19, the record entered the charts of Finland, Spain, Switzerland and Germany at Number One.

With that in mind, we decided to check in with one of Europe’s favourite heavy metal bands. Your guide for the duration will be Floor Jansen and her massive lungs. She will roar and you will quiver…

Hello Floor. Can I tell you what I really like about the new Nightwish album? There’s so much misery and ugliness everywhere right now, and yet your record is so ornate, grandiose and – dare I say it – hopeful…

“We were definitely going for that. There are so many different instruments on the record and so many different parts. Nightwish is quite complex music, really, and so it was important for us to have real emotion in the songs; something that cut through everything. The dynamics were really important to us. The songs needed space. Sometimes what you don’t put into a song is as important as what you do. There are nine songs on this record and eight orchestral suites. Without dynamics it would have been a very relentless listen.”

Can we go way back? I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that your voice is properly, brilliantly amazing. When did you realise you could sing like that?

“I guess when I was a teenager. There was a school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and I auditioned. I didn’t get a very important part in it. You know how it is – the popular kids get all the best parts and that wasn’t me. But even just being stuck in the background, I absolutely loved it. I didn’t know I was any good, though. I was pretty badly teased at school, so my confidence was quite low.”

Do you want us to fuck someone up? Why were you teased?

“I was taller than everyone else and my dialect was different. I was just… different.”

Do you think that experience has had any lasting impact on you?

“I do… but, to be honest, only really positively. I can’t say I look back fondly at those years and certainly not at the people who were doing that, but I do think I stand on more stable legs in adulthood because of it. I don’t want my daughter [three-year-old Freja] to have to go through that, though.”

Do you ever have the classic revenge scenario where you’re standing onstage in front of thousands and thousands of people screaming your name and think, ‘Well, I won, didn’t I?’

“All the time. Especially now I’m on this Dutch TV show that has really increased my popularity in the Netherlands. I sometimes wonder if those people would even remember me and I don’t spend that much time thinking about them. You have to live for yourself – I’m almost 40, y’know!”

Tell me more about the TV show. I love the name! Beste Zangers!

“It translates as Best Singers! It’s not a contest or anything like that. It’s a collection of singers of different styles and backgrounds who sing each other’s music to one another, or collaborate on cover versions of songs that have inspired us. It’s a really nice show, and all about a love of music. It’s prime-time Saturday night television and it’s completely changed my life! It’s really benefited Nightwish too. We were already doing well in Holland and playing arenas, butt it’s definitely increased our profile, which is brilliant for me after 24 of nobody in my home country paying me any attention!”

The new Nightwish record was released on April 10, making you one of a tiny number of bands who can attest to the realities of releasing an album at the epicentre of a global pandemic. How has that been?

“We were one of the very first bands who had to cancel a tour. We were actually supposed to start in China. I should be there right now. Very early on we realised that the tour wasn’t going to happen, even though the illness was at that point contained in one continent. Then the global fuck-up that resulted in an illness becoming a pandemic happened. I still can’t believe that it has happened, really. It feels so incredibly unnecessary…”

I’m detecting you have an opinion about how this has all played out? You live in Sweden, right?

“I do. I emigrated five years ago, from Holland.”

Sweden’s approach to handling the virus has been very liberal – there’s been no mass lockdown, as there has been in elsewhere in the world. Do you think they took the right approach?”

“Partly. At the same time, I’m not a scientist, so what do I know? It’s all about following the science.”

I’d like to remind you that there’s a species of beetle named after you. Last year scientist Andreas Weigel named the newly discovered insect Tmesisternus floorjansenae. It’s fair to say you have more scientific credibility than almost any other heavy metal singer…

“Okay – well, in lots of ways the Swedish approach makes sense to me. Sweden is a big country with not that many people. It makes sense to me that the approach would be different to in the UK or back in Holland. Then again, a big city is a big city, whether it’s in Sweden or anywhere, and if people from the cities start moving away then I think we have to be careful. During Easter there were people everywhere near where I live, on the Gothenburg side of the country, next to the sea. Sweden is a big enough country that there’s enough space for people not to be locked down – but you head to a touristy place anyway? That I don’t get. It’s stupid.”

Speaking of space – you’re married to Hannes Van Dahl, the drummer in military history obsessed, Swedish metal titans Sabaton. Onstage he plays his drums sat inside the cockpit of a tank. I presume you have badass military stuff lying all around your house?

“Oh, everywhere. All over the house.”

Really?

“No!”

I heard that you have horses, though. It doesn’t seem fair to me that you’re allowed to have horses, but your husband can’t have a battleship in the garden…

“Oh, he doesn’t mind. Horses are nicer than war. I have two – Lily, named so after my mum, and Auri, named after my bandmates’ Tuomas [Holopainen] and Troy [Donockley]’s side project – and also a character from The Kingkiller Chronicle series of fantasy novels by Patrick Rothfuss.”

I think it’s fair to say that you’re not the only member of Nightwish that bloody loves nature. The band just teamed up with the conservation charity the World Land Trust. Tell me about that…

“They’re a great organisation. The video for the last song on the album, ‘Ad Astra’, was filmed in conjunction with them. They work to preserve our planet by buying up areas of land and preserving them. I think it’s hypocritical that we’re telling Brazil that they need to save their rainforest when European’s have absolutely decimated their own. But at the same time, we really do need to save the rainforest or we’re facing a climate crisis. The World Land Trust works with governments to find alternative financial outlets for local people to stop logging and deforestation. You can’t just say to people, ‘Stop doing this’. You need to consider the human impact, then the environmental one. We found out about them via David Attenborough being a patron…”

Please tell me he’s a fan…

“We tried to get him to speak on the album. We wrote him a letter and he wrote one back, declining, but it was very impressive that a man of his stature would write personally to us and explain that he just didn’t have the time right now.”

You can’t like all animals, Floor. There must be one you’d like to see eradicated from the face of the earth…

“No! I love all of them. I love cats. I love dogs. I love birds in all their splendour!”

C’mon…

“Okay, okay… I don’t really like snails. We grow vegetables and they eat my crops. They’re disgusting. I don’t wish them death, though! I just wish they’d go somewhere else!”

[ayakashiramblings]

Dawn and Twilight’s Social Media Accounts

Kuya

@NevermoreButSnore.

1230 followers.

Yes, I copied Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, I’m not sorry about the rhyme. Or calling him out. 

Not that he really cares.

Insists that he is a headcanon creator on Twitter 

Everyone who follows him knows that he is lying. 

If we really had to classify him as a writer, it would one who posts those way-too-accurate posts about writers complaining about writing. 

Like the notebook hoarding one. Not that anyone here in the fandom is guilty of that, haha... haha... ha.

Ironically is one of the more popular ones out of the whole group. 

His flat responses and laziness are way too prominent to NOT be noticed. 

If you actually tentatively sneak into his DMs though, for writing tips, he will patiently listen and... rather bluntly advise you. 

It’s still advice though and is always the type to check out and reblog any short fanfics.

It just has to be weird, sporadic hours because he is the type to fall asleep with the phone on his face. 

Koga Kitamikado

1230 followers.

@CapitalKayKay

Listen, there is a reason why a lot of successful businesses chose Instagram as their social media so Koga is no exception. 

What makes his account stand out, as you can see from his rather cheeky username, is that he is willing to be an open book. 

So he isn’t constantly shoving down any products he is sponsoring or whatever piece he is endorsing. 

It’s more of genuinely wanting to hang out and explore what the world has to offer. 

Whenever he posts a picture of the gang together, he’s the one tagging all of them, even the ones with hard usernames.

And there’s always a nice comment thanking whoever hosted the fun time or being appreciative of the area and the locals.

It helps that he has a sense of humour so the memes are always just the right amount of teasing but nothing too bad that will deter potential clients.

Because of his down-to-earth nature, he reels everyone in.

Uses the space to invite everyone following him on any celebration/casual outing.

The thing is... he has a lot of followers.

So... good luck.

Aoi

1150 followers.

@DeredArtTooTsun

Look, even he knows he is a Tsundere. It’s a small victory getting him to acknowledge that, let alone use it to brand himself here.

But god, he’s the man I’m most jealous of on Tumblr.

PERFECT BULLET JOURNALS AND SKETCHES.

Got the spreads that literally define ‘aesthetic’, a perfect lineup of art materials even with pencils that have their numbers faded, and somehow, the emotions can pass through the paper and screen.

Even does tutorials on perspectives, positions with cute annotations. Just don’t praise them for being adorable though and focus on improving your skills, dummy.

Ironically though, it’s his mindless vents that get the most number of notes.

It helps that the pics include him, a very cute... I mean... manly boy screaming at very, very hot men.

A bit baffled but whatever it takes to get commissions. 

That’s right, he takes them. At least there is a back-up option should the restaurant ever go out of business. 

Spoiler Alert: Still doesn’t get paid as much. People, have you seen the number of talented artists here? Aoi might be in the rankings but it’s still hard attracting business.

Support your fandom artists, everyone!

Ginnojo

1000 followers. Just nice.

Ginnojoz

Poor grandpa didn’t intend to put that extra ‘z’ letter, it was a typo because scales don’t get along with haptic touch. 

And unfortunately, doesn’t understand how to change it. 

Once, he was huge on Vine before it died. The end of an era that he has to witness again. RIP.

Gin-Gin, it is RIGHT. THERE.

Expect to find his super short self-defence videos and Book Club Readings on YouTube.

Girls actually appreciate his instructions and attempts to provide help even if they are alone. 

He did try to respond to the nice ones and actually succeeds. 

It’s always easier getting to know the language of women when you don’t really see/touch them.

A deep baritone is perfect for some sexy excerpt of a historical novel... 

Until he corrects the setting.

In fact, he sometimes rage-quits and rewrites it. 

Unlike Kuya, him doing those established ideas actually catches on. 

Yura and Gaku

1500 followers.

MelodyandTheBeat. 

... Tik-tokers. Tik-Tok people? 

WTH do you call them?

As you can see, they are the most popular since it’s combined stardom.

Look, their covers and music mixes are beautiful.

They always have their own version that somehow combines traditional Japanese music... with k-pop.

And of course, food porn. 

Just be grateful there isn’t that awful squelching sound you hear when you consume jelly or the breaking of chilli seeds. 

Listen, I usually separate them because it’s never nice to be grouped as having the same activity as your twin. 

But in this case, being both equally beautiful AND talented sells their uploads. 

Even the cringy ones made because Yura is such a Luddite. 

Like just turning his head and being amazed his hair can turn so many colours, being impressed with each tilt until he gets to a black shade. 

Suddenly hurls the phone away. Gee, wonder why? Guess black isn’t the new... black for him?

Gaku sometimes even introduces new filters he created based on Yura’s random requests that strangely get circulated on the site. 

Oji

550 followers all know Oji-Sanz

Unlike Ginnojo, he deliberately adds the ‘z’ letter to sound cool.

You wanna know what’s worse? 

He actually uses Facebook. 

Aoi decides to give up on him. Nobody blames the poor student.

It’s apparently some old form of social media? Never used it, no sirree. 

Always changing his relationship status but at the end of the day, he’s single and ready... 

To post about all the lovely ladies destined to enter his restaurant. 

He thinks it’s great publicity. 

It really isn’t but one good thing about Oji is he includes EVERYONE.

This man respects his customers and always helps advertise their wares, especially if their connections lead to more resources. 

And less grocery shopping on his part.

Does post the recipes he and Aoi created but will never use because the Milk Hall had a certain style to follow.

Officially makes Aoi his son... on Facebook at least. 

Aoi now tolerates the account. 

Barely. 

Toichiro Yuri

WhatheMeSay has 1231 followers! 

In your face @CapitalKayKay and @NevermorebutSnore!!

You know, I’m so glad that there aren’t any users with those names because I’d be so scared of accidentally tagging them.

Also, geddit? Because... What the fox say? 

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding... yeah, I’ll stop.

Pinterest Guy. And actually does spend on his ‘hobby’ to show off to everyone.

It does boost you and your father’s sales so there is nothing to complain about. 

His boards are always alliterated just to sound super catchy and it works so long as he gets the right emoji. 

Kabuki plays better be promoted or else.

Filled with candid pictures of his victims all taken at different angles you didn’t know were possible and in varying degrees of hilariously misunderstood positions.

He even supplies a donation link, heavily leveraged by his followers, since there are incentives tied to it like early access.

A bit suspicious the photos look like cropped out parts from Koga’s posts and some of the text resembles Kuya’s... er... wisdom?

He takes an unholy amount of selfies when he thinks no one is looking and so they are always surprised upon finding them on the Selfie Board. 

There is a locked board that no one can access, even his followers who are his comrades in real life. 

It’s actually just one picture in there. 

It’s you smiling and giggling at a joke of his. Not even you know it’s been taken. Guess he is as soft as his fur, eh? He better come out soon or else.

Kuro

Kuroruohtumbling

Ginnojo is unfortunately just old enough to have grown up with Scooby-Doo to understand the reference.

Snapchat, like a snapping snake! Hiss!

Unironically loves the puppy face.

Ok, but the glimpses of his stunts help show snippets of the circus life. 

He and his whole troupe family will even don costumes best suited for certain filters.

Sometimes ropes in Ginnojo... and by sometimes, I mean enough for everyone to start wondering if the stoic man is part of the act. 

To be fair, he randomly hugs people and ranks them here.

You, of course, were number 1. 

Now, if only he didn’t use the bloody song to announce it but you forgive him.

Maybe even risks revealing his ayakashi form before deleting the message to you.

Loves making international fans and learning various languages through each post, sort of like flashcards but animated and more fun!

And with 1200 followers, he might become a polyglot like Koga.

Shizuki 

Everyone bans him from creating one. 

Because they know the power of his roasts is too great. 

Little do they know he goes undercover. 

Underground.

And under their noses.

That’s right. His rant town on... MySpace. 

Unapologetically uses a good chunk of his salary from serving the House of Yuri just to get nifty themes that help with the whole burning process. 

Look, there’s a reason he and Oji are friends. 

This is why. 

Their taste in women seems fine but we really have got to do something about their affinity towards DEAD PLACES.

To be fair, he made the whole thing drunk but that doesn’t mean he should maintain it SOBER.

He just feels that it is a waste of space if he doesn’t utilize it. 

And it also becomes kind of cathartic. From the intrusive hugs to his master and Sir Gaku irking each other to no end, he needs it. 

Zero followers... but only because it’s super private. 

It becomes 1 the moment you jokingly create an account. 

[mysideblogofsurveys]

Survey 7.

1. if you have any pets, were they adopted from the humane society? I don’t have my cat anymore (I had to give him to my parents when I moved in with my husband because he is allergic) but I had adopted him from the humane society. 2. what kind of cheese is your favorite, or no cheese at all? Honestly, all of the cheese.  I love it all haha 3. do you like home design, like picking out paint colors and furniture? Not really, I’m horrible at it. 4. have you seen any of the old james bond movies? No, just the new ones 5. do you chew gum on a regular basis? No, I actually don’t even remember the last time I had any.

6. do you think mitchell musso is hot, like all the magazines say? I didn’t know who that was so I looked it up and nope.  I don’t find him attractive at all.

7. list all of your features that you have ever got compliments on: How small I am (I’m like 5′0), I don’t look like I”m 32 so I get treated like I”m a lot younger, my eyes

8. do you play ps, ps2, or ps3? I haven’t in a while (been too busy playing my Nintendo Switch) but I have quite a few games for it.  My husband plays it more than I do. 9. have you ever been in a hot air balloon? and if not, would you ever want to go in one? I think it’d be kinda cool but getting my courage together to go on it is another thing lol 10. do your parents buy you something on a daily basis? No, I buy everything myself. 11. what type of computer do you have? Well, my laptop is from like 2015, its an HP. I bought it to help me study for my Licensing exams for my career (not college related)  My desktop is from 2012 that my Husband helped me build.  It was like $1000 but had all the best equipment at the time and still works great today. Expensive but so worth it. 12. do you like old, black and white movies? The only black and white show I’ve watched were old cartoons or 3 Stooges 13. is anyone else in the room with you right now? Not exactly?  We have an open floor plan so my husband is technically in the dining room (I’m in the living room) but I can see him if I move my head slightly, he’s just around the corner. 14. do you watch john and kate plus 8? No but I’ve seen one or two episodes. 15. do you whiten your teeth with crest white strips? No 16. do you listen to local bands? No, well we went to a Fair in January, not too far away from us that had local kids playing and they weren’t too bad (obviously haven’t heard them since then).  I hung out with a lot of guys that were in bands when I was in highschool though.

17. do you collect anything? Video games, I guess.  I prefer to buy the physical versions for several reasons 18. have you seen the movie, thirteen? I don’t think so. 19. do you watch vh1? I Haven’t in a long time but I did when I lived with my parents 20. have you ever said “fergalicious”, but changed it to your name instead of fergie’s? What?  No.  I only liked one song from her 21. do you have a pool in your back yard? No, but I did growing up (my parents asked if we wanted a trampoline or a pool and we wanted a pool) 22. do you watch youtube videos often? No, well not really. I don’t like follow any YouTubers except Tim Pool (Liberal) and Steven Crowder (Conservative).  Mostly because I believe they try to sift through the shit the news/media either doesn’t focus on or skips completely and try to get the truth.  I like listening to both Liberals and Conservatives then form my own opinion. 23. do you wear mascara? Yeah but the only make up I wear is eyeliner and mascara.

24. do your parents fight?  do they even talk at all? I’m sure they have like arguments but I’ve never seen them have huge ones.

25. have you ever watched a movie that’s in a completely different language, so you had to read sub-titles? All the time! I’m actually binge-watching “Dark” on Netflix (its a German time travel show.  Its SO GOOD but also fucked up.  It has English voice-overs but it just doesn’t feel right.  Sounds much better in the native German).  I also watch a lot of anime in Japanese (with subtitles).  I’m trying to learn both languages. 26. do people with yellow teeth disgust you? Thats kinda mean 27. do you drink alcohol on new year’s eve? Yes 28. do you wear rings? Only my engagement and wedding ring 29. are you hungry right now? Yeah, a little 30. would you like to have a universal remote, like in the movie, Click? I don’t thinks so, only because going back to fix something would change the future and as I’ve seen from “Dark” (mentioned above), time traveling is nothing I want to deal with lol

31. have you ever tried smoking a cigarette? Yeah.  I socially smoked (had one when I drank) when I was younger but haven’t had one in over 10 years. I never bought any or got addicted, just had one when everyone else went out for a smoke (if that makes sense) 32. do you get any magazines in the mail? Yeah, I get Game Informer because I’m a member of GameStop’s membership.  I get all of my video games there.

33. don’t you just wanna stab someone with a fire poker? No, wtf! 34. do you wear baseball caps? No, I’m not a hat person except when we go to the beach.  Then I wear a floppy one to shield me from the sun

35. what was the last memory you thought about that instantly brought a smile to your face? I’m not sure 36. has anyone inflicted physical pain on you today? No but myself is beating me up from the inside (I started my period last night so I’m all cramp-y :/ ) 37. are there any restaurants in walking distance to your house? Yeah, I suppose.  Its like a 15 min walk though. 38. what was the last store that you went into when you were at the mall? I haven’t been to the mall in months but it was probably GameStop. 39. do you currently have any coupons for stores right now, which stores specifically? I don’t have coupons but I have a bunch of gift cards.  To Kohls, Panera Bread, BoneFish restaurant and some others I can’t think of right now

40. what was the last picture you uploaded to your facebook? Its been a long time, I don’t post anything to FaceBook anymore (I don’t trust it.  If it wasn’t for keeping up with family on it, I would delete it. 41. when was the last time that you were so tired that everything was funny to you? A long time, I normally fall asleep before I get to the giggly stage. 42. what’s something that you do that you know hurts people close to you? Probably not call them as much as I should.  I suck at keeping in contact with those further away. 43. what was the last board game that you played? It was probably some form of Dungeons and Dragons, we’re super nerdy lol 44. the next time you will be going on vacation, where will you be heading too? Well, we were supposed to go to Germany in September for Okoberfest but since that is cancelled, we probably won’t be going (International flights are still undecided on.  But honestly, it’ll probably all get canceled.)  Aside from that, I’m still flying to my hometown in early Sept for my cousin’s wedding (and hopefully the Renaissance Festival with my sibling-in-laws but I’m not sure if that will be canceled either.) 45. do you get bloated at all after you eat? It depends on what I eat, so sometimes. 46. have you read the book lovely bones? No, I tend to read Sci-Fi/Fantasy books.  I briefly looked up what that book is about and definitely not something I would read. 47. are you mad that this survey is over now? No, I’ll probably do another one lol

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

Adventures in Liveblogging: Shye Watches “Phantom” Youtube Stream

So I watching this and was jotting down thoughts as I went along. And now if you click that read more you are going to be subjected to all of them because I am feeling a lot right now.

To be honest, I’ve only ever seen one stage production of Phantom before now, a local production in my hometown and it was very clearly based on the movie more than the original script. So a lot of my reacting is to the differences. And also just being emotional

I am in unquestioning awe of ballet dancers. Like generally but also these ones

I love the Hannibal costumes 100x more in the stage production than the movie

Blech. I hate this version of the managers. They creep.

I actually feel for Carlotta. Why did they make her so awful instead of tragic?

“That this was never meant to be…”

Oh these lyric changes change things

I’m going to need Raoul to only sing, because his speaking voice is a bit annoying

That was not the key I was expecting. How is that going to counter Raoul’s when it sounds similar? I mean I like it but…

Digging the sparkly cloak, but not the hat. The hat is a little Inspector Gadget

Okay. Music of the Night as a plea (and straight hypnotism?) instead of seduction…I am feeling a lot of confusing feelings

Being covered with his cloak when she passes out? Now that is some Good Shit

Awkward, loud, key-mashing goes unnoticed but she’s woken by the quiet music box?

I like this little teasing/playful reaching for the mask. It’s a fun bit of levity

Oh this is scary-dangerous-Phantom not dramatic-temper-tantrum-Phantom. Like this Phantom might actually hurt her not just smash furniture

I like this Bouquet better, less of lech

Being in the office and their stressed attitudes make more sense than shouting around the foyer, but Firman in particular is…bad? Too much? I don’t know but I don’t love it

Same size note, many more words. Which means he used PTO on Firman’s for effect only. We love a dramatic bitch

I want’ Carlotta’s dress in this scene. Also she looks done with the managers’ shit and for that we stan (am I using that right?)

I didn’t think the Il Mutto costume could get worse but yikes!

Aw…we didn’t interrupt the production. Where is the petty drama?

Even more blatant disregard of instructions, what morons.

That pageboy costume. Hello my name is Gay

Oh good, we are in fact being MORE of a Petty Dramatic Bitch. Love it. Is the malicious chuckle necessary? No. But are we doing it anyway? Hell yes.

See this Bouquet didn’t even do anything to deserve to die. He was just minding his own business.

“He’ll kill me” not you. Interesting…

This Raoul is much more expressive. His confusion, fear, love are more obvious

The Desperation. The Longing. The LOVE. My heart can’t take it.

Pretty sure this song in my formative years is why I have unrealistic expectations for romance. Also, the spin-lift while kissing. Which this one pairs with a delighted laugh. I can’t.

Oof, the heartbreak turned to rage.

Pre-finale chandelier dramatics. Taunting. Excite

Is it weird that an ominous organ cord is comforting?

That is a Walmart Halloween skeleton costume Firman (or are you Andre? I don’t know I haven’t bothered to care which is which)

Ah the gaudy glory of a Masquerade! I love these costumes. And Christine’s boots. I could gush about nothing but the wardrobe for days but I’ll try to refrain a little.

I feel like y’all should have discussed this before the middle of a party

Is someone in the crowd dressed as the music box monkey?

Eh…that Death costume is a bit…much

Oh, the stage version skips the insults. I might work with that…

Notes gets a reprise?!

All of Carlotta’s looks are incredible. And also Christine’s dress right now. But I really want to talk about Carlotta who is a plus-size woman whose appearance is not a joke and who looks drop dead gorgeous every time she’s on stage. It’s amazing

Ah, here’s the insults I was expecting.

Oh this song is a goldmine I wasn’t expecting the order though I have many emotions and many more ideas

Raoul, cupcake, don’t threaten the madman. You can’t compete.

Ooh a piano plays itself. Clever.

I definitely can’t do this song justice. It scares me that I have to try. God is it daunting.

Okay, what the fuck is that hat?

I wish I could hear Raoul, but the other two overpower him

Taunting and tricks over direct confrontation. That’s an interesting approach

You’ve built your own tomb you idiots. He clearly has secret ways around and you’ve trapped yourself in the theatre

Okay, I don’t like this set of costumes. Except, once again, Carlotta’s. She looks fantastic

The clarity of this Christine’s voice makes me realize how many lines I miss with Emmy Rossum. But I kind of love that. Adds to the hazy memory premise of it

I like that this is more clearly seduction within planned choreography and Christine is uncertain if it’s in character or not. Sadly the costuming kind of looks like seducing a Nazgûl though.

Meg is far more emotional and is taking Piangi’s death very poorly

Oh, we’re actually harming Christine. That makes Raoul’s pleas more logical. Even if I was team Phantom (which I’m not) I wouldn’t be anymore

I mean you were literally just choking her out, so…

That is a fair reaction to seeing your love kiss a murdering psychopath, especially while strung up with a noose. They don’t try too hard to stay pretty with their faces. A+

He’s letting you go. Don’t try to fight him, just leave Raoul

Oh this is much more of a meltdown.

Okay this hurts. This tearful, regretful goodbye. No don’t look back. I can’t…

That is a real good outfit, Meg. We are back to Hello my name is Gay.

Nothing but the mask left behind…

I get that it’s not plausible in a live theatre setting but I miss the chandelier drop. That is my only true complaint and it’s a small thing.

This was a delight and I am FLOATING

Who is the woman in the gorgeous purple dress during curtain call?

Oh I love the smile of pride on Hadley Fraser’s face, especially as he introduces Sierra Boggess. Curtain calls make me feel a special kind of way

Andrew Lloyd Weber looks like he’s been crying and I want to give him a hug

Bless them. Bless this cast and company and orchestra and creative team. Bless them all.

Oh. Oh god. I’m not crying, you’re crying. Shut up. It’s beautiful.