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scotianostra · 8 months

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Happy Birthday Scottish actor Ewen Bremner, born January 23rd 1972 in Edinburgh.

Bremner has worked with many of the most respected directors in world cinema, including Danny Boyle, Mike Leigh, Ridley Scott, Joon-Ho Bong, Werner Herzog and Woody Allen. Hen has established himself by creating unique characters in critically acclaimed films, as well as going toe to toe with many of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Ewen had worked widely in theatre, television, and film for years before being cast in his breakout role in Trainspotting, by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle. He was the first to be cast in the role of Mark Renton in Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre production but lost out to Ewan McGregor in the film version, instead he was handed the role of Spud Murphy and earned screen immortality with his character's infamous "speed fuelled" job interview scene.

Prior to Trainspotting, Bremner gave a striking performance in Mike Leigh's Naked, fellow Scot Susan Vidler played his girlfriend Maggie in this excellent film.

In 1999, Bremner received critical acclaim for his portrayal of a schizophrenic man living with his dysfunctional family in Harmony Korine's Julien, Donkey-Boy. Filmed strictly in accordance with the ultra-realist tenants of Lars Von Trier's Dogma 95 movement and starring opposite Werner Herzog, Bremner played Julien its eponymous hero, requiring him to assume an American accent. He then worked with director Michael Bay in his high-profile 2001 war film Pearl Harbor, proving his versatility once again by portraying the role of a wholeheartedly patriotic American soldier fighting in WWII. The following year, he stepped back into fatigues for a supporting role in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, while rounding out the next several years with roles in high-profile Hollywood releases such as The Rundown, Disney's Around the World in 80 Days), AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Woody Allen's Match Point, the comedy Death at a Funeral directed by Frank Oz, and Fool's Gold starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson.

This past few of years proved to be a busy when Bremner was invited to join the DC Universe in the Zack Snyder-produced feature Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, co-starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Ewen also reprised his unforgettable role as Spud in the highly-anticipated sequel to Danny Boyle's cult classic, T2: Trainspotting

Bremner appeared in the TNT Drama Series Will with Shekhar Kapur. The series told the story of the lost years of young William Shakespeare after his arrival to London in 1589 but only lasted one season. Other notable film credits include Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Perfect Sense starring again alongside Ewan McGregor, Great Expectations, Jack the Giant Slayer, and Snowpiercer starring alongside Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton. Further credits include Exodus: Gods and Kings, Wide Open Spaces, Mojo, Mediator, Faintheart, Hallam Foe, Sixteen Years of Alcohol, and Snatch.

In television, Ewen has worked on many acclaimed productions including David Hare's Worriker trilogy starring Bill Nighy for BBC, Jimmy McGovern's Moving On and also his Australian mini-series Banished, Strike Back for Sky TV, Dominic Savage's Dive, the Dylan Thomas biopic, A Poet In New York and the adaptation of Day of the Triffids for the BBC. Other noteworthy series appearances include portraying legendary surrealist Salvador Dali in the U.K. television drama Surrealissimo: The Trial of Salvador Dali, and a guest spot on the successful NBC series, My Name is Earl, not to forget an early appearance in Taggart way back in 1990.

Latley Ewen has been one of a number of Scottish actors who are backing a campaign to reopen the Film House cinema in Edinburgh, he has a couple of projects on the go just now, Bluefish, which takes us around the globe to tell stories of people trying to break out of their bubbles of isolation, which I take to mean the Covid pandemic, he also has a film on the go called Roo, but there is nothing to report on that just now.

#scotland #scottish #history #happy birthday #actor #television #cinema #trainspotting

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libras-interactives · 8 months

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Because i didn't find anything related to voices, i wanted to ask what the casts voices sound like?

Is this a way of trying to figure out where flynn comes from...nooooo

hmmm i dont know if im the best at describing voices but I tried! This got away from me so I put a cut ^^;

Marius - He has a very charming and silky sort of voice, that's pleasant to listen to. My man could do ASMR and audiobooks. It's even pleasanter when he speaks his native tongue, in English sometimes he has to halt around unfamiliar words... or he just barrels forward and says it wrong. Oh well.

Jack - Deeper than most people would expect (or maybe they'd expect that?) Compared to the others, he speaks slowly, and with his low drawl. He trails off sometimes and mutters when annoyed or unsure. He doesn't enunciate very well and fumbles nervously with big words, so he tries to avoid them.

Eveline - Soft enough that you may have to lean in to hear better, enunciates well around English words and has a sort of breathy way of speaking. She speaks faster in French. In English she has to maintain an image. It takes a lot to get her to raise her voice, and it's often frantic, and her accent slips out more. Her singing voice is the polar opposite, loud and operatic. She's a soprano.

Lottie - Higher pitched than Eveline, though she likes to go up and down to emphasize points or be silly. She has traces of a New Jersey accent and generally speaks lots of slang. Her singing voice is bombastic and theatric; she's not afraid of making weird faces or exaggerating her voice to put more 'oomf' into the performance. She's a mezzo-soprano.

Máire - She has a deep, smooth voice with a thick, lilting Irish accent that she refuses to modify. She speaks slower than most, but she'll absolutely raise her voice and snap at someone annoying her. She's an alto. When Máire starts speaking lowly and that accent gets thicker ... You Are In Trouble.

Malwina - A higher-pitched voice, which isn't too surprising, with a Polish accent that she's been trying to curb. It's tough when she's excited or upset, though. Some English words give her a lot of trouble, so she talks slower around them. Her singing voice is a soprano, and is very pleasant and airy. Her voice cracks when she's upset.

Slyvester - His tone is fairly normal (not too deep or too high) and he has a strong New Yorker accent, but notably not a posh one. It's like he's trying hard to not sound lower-class, but doesn't have the proper vocabulary or tone of the upper-crust. His Italian has a strong American accent when he speaks it, and he can't quite get the cadence right, but it's comprehensible. Because of his wife and her family, sometimes he uses the Italian word for something.

Little Lottie - She speaks quietly and haltingly. The pitch isn't too different from a typical little girl, maybe a bit flat, and it's hard to find any kind of accent in it. She stumbles over words when she's excited and pronounces them wrong.

Flynn - He speaks with a crisp, upper-crust sort of accent that doesn't have too many airs. Flynn enunciates himself clearly, and when he starts talking slower, that's when you need to listen. His tone is on the lower register, moreso when he's upset. In the courtroom he intones and adjusts and enunciates just so in order to get his point across. He really has a talent for it. When truly angry, bits of an accent will slip out, though it's hard to place it in the moment. Those who've heard him swear in a different tongue don't live to tell about it.

Cora - A crisp, learned mid-Atlantic accent that's as inoffensive as possible. She's always spoken quickly and enunciates each word as she rambles. It's kind of impressive.

Roxie has a nasally, high-pitched voice with such over-the-top slang and weird enunciation, no one really believes it's her real voice. She alternates between speaking rapidly or dragging out every word, mostly to annoy. When speaking to strangers, Ezra's voice is noticeably lower than when he's with friends. He has a slight Southern drawl to it and speaks on the slower side. Krooks has a mishmash of Gerglish/Engman (?) and it's a mess to listen to regardless which language you speak. He can speak English or German fully, but most of the time (esp when drunk or tired) he just mixes them together chaotically.

Paulie speaks very differently from Polly; the former is smooth and deep and charming, the latter is more giggly, higher-pitched and leans more into a Chicago accent. Singing as Polly is more comfortable and fun than singing as Paulie. Italian Mary/Mariana has been trying to rid herself of her Italian accent, but it keeps slipping in when she's upset, and there's no faking she's from Brooklyn. Louisa Faye has a well-polished Southern accent, allowing her to sound dainty and distinguished rather than low-class. You'd never guess she's from deep rural Alabama. Gertrude/Gigi has been steadily chipping away her German accent, and speaks fairly "neutrally" on purpose. Ruthie has a distinct Yiddish accent to her speech, and completely changes to something "neutral" when with customers. When she's drunk ask her to imitate someone, and she can do it near perfectly, it's great. Drives Mariana insane.

#hint hint. certain combinations will have MC listen to flynn being that mad :^)#in the current chapter #hoohoohoo #the last paragraph is the La Lune ladies btw!! They'll be a little more relevant in Ch3 #also this got away from me I hope this is what you asked ....#libra says #if:devil's moon

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anddreadful · 1 year

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full thoughts on frank wildhorn’s dracula having re-watched it in its entirety for the first time in many years:

- I watched a recent upload of an (american) community theater production, specifically because a) its sound quality was surprisingly good and b) my recent interest is because a local theater is putting it on, so given the opportunity, I wanted to see whatever version of the show is currently available for north american licensing

- the production was charming but the community theater (technically dinner theater! I went on a google hunt to find the theater and it’s only two hours from me lmao) was community-ing so I can’t really write home about the acting. or the singing although mina had a nice voice

- the one place I will dunk on the production is how hilariously chaste mina and dracula were. the biting scene was notably stiff and un-suggestive of sex despite taking place on a bed. maybe one of the actors wasn’t comfortable with doing anything more, but they had only one kiss, and it was so late in the show and such a teeny little dry peck on the lips that I hollered. at that point just don’t do it and pretend theirs is an ~intellectual connection or something

- dracula did do a creepy hair-petting thing to both renfield and Mina that I was a big fan of

- “if loving you keeps me alive, then how can leaving me be right?” is such a funny lyric. dirtbag manipulative boyfriend dracula

- I knew not all the songs were on the studio cast recording, but I had forgotten HOW MANY songs aren’t on it. where is How Do You Choose? If I Could Fly? It’s Over????? I had fully forgotten there was a life after life reprise. I was obsessed with the studio cast recording in high school and I know all those songs by heart (except for a perfect life because I think it’s bad) and now i’m like. why was I gatekept from so many of the songs!! why is there no professional english recording of Its Over!! answer me frank!!!!!

- this is not a new thought per se but a) I so love that all the suitors are present and themselves b) this show squanders them. jack has no personality whatsoever (I would trade TWO mina ballads for a jack song please I beg), arthur gets needlessly dunked on, and quincey is delightful and incredible and also narratively extraneous given that he doesn’t kill dracula or die at the end

- on that note, though, I cannot believe they included quincey being the first person to promise mina to kill her if the time comes in a book-accurate version of that scene. even the 1992 version doesn’t do that!!!! and this is basically just an adaptation of that movie!!!!! is this the ONLY dracula adaptation to include that detail? it’s a top five book moment for me so I very literally love to see it

- I understand that we had to beef up van helsing as a character SOMEHOW but was a dead wife song really the best we could come up with

- there are too many sad slow songs in this show for what it’s trying to accomplish! some of them immediately on top of each other! and some of the songs distinctly go on for just one too many verses 😭

- does the mina/ dracula romance make any sense? no. does the show make any effort whatsoever to make it? no. am I into it anyway? yeah. fuck it. I have terrible taste and so i think dracula as a disembodied voice like HI? HELLO? DON’T IGNORE ME? and mina being like “unfortunately, i’m into it” rocks

- “She Devil, Nosferatu” and “the lady in white” from that other dracula concept album are both so superior to “undead one, surrender” I almost feel bad for Frank and co there, but “the master’s song”, “life after life”, and “deep in the darkest night” still fucking slap

- the train hypnotism scene was soooo good except for the part where mina did dracula’s accent. not sure if that’s standard but I wish we hadn’t done that

- i’m not THAT well versed in musical theater as an art form and also all art is derivative etc but i do know that wildhorn has been historically criticized for derivativeness and…… yeah! you can tell where he mimics sondheim, and it doesn’t work because you can’t casually mimic sondheim and get out alive. i can’t think of the moment but there was some bit of music I could have sworn was out of Phantom, and it’s obviously a big general inspiration. not to be Boss Baby Guy but I see a lot of Les Mis DNA in it too (what is It’s Over if not The Confrontation in a goth hat)

- the dialogue between songs is serviceable at absolute best, and it’s a shame that it’s so consistently sacrificed at the altar of moving the plot the fuck along. for the most part, only mina and dracula meaningfully connect via song, so it would be nice to use the dialogue to flesh out relationships more often. lucy and mina being besties is a highlight!!!

- ultimately i had a blast but it must needs be said: the show is not good. the best possible execution of “literally just the novel dracula but dracula and mina are having a secret tragic love affair” is probably what we get in the 1992 dracula movie, and if there’s a way to translate that to stage well, it’s not this shallow, silly speedrun. but again. this trash is my trash. the painted cardboard castle of bad dracula adaptations is where i live.

- I actually think it would be really interesting to be involved in a production only because to make these characters function in terms of acting, I think you’d have to invent and extrapolate a lot in terms of motivation and characterization to supplement the text. which would be fun for me, a person who thinks about versions of dracula characters all the time already

#dracula the musical #dracula adaptation #frank wildhorn #sorry that I cannot figure out how to add a cut on mobile #I am one dracula years old #anyway thank god they cut that song about victorian technology christ

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icannotreadcursive · 1 year

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie

2023, Dir. Aaron Hovarth

Overall Quality

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️5/5

Entertainment Value

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5

Story

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5

Visuals and Craft

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5

Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie good? Depends on your expectations and what metric you're measuring by.

Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie fun? Yes.

This movie is not trying to be Oscar bait. This movie is a 92-minute love letter to the Mario game franchise in the form of a brightly colored romp through the Mushroom Kingdom and neighboring localities. It's for kids. It's for grownups who love these games without being snobs about it.

The story isn't very deep, but it doesn't need to be. The animation is excellent. The acting is solid—Jack Black as Bowser is, of course, a stand out triumph, but the whole cast really does well. Yes, even Chris Pratt. Pratt's lack of Italian accent is appropriate for the story they've chosen to tell—here, Mario is Italian-American, hailing from Brooklyn, which works narratively—and his performance suits the tone of the film.

There are some issues with the writing, most notably surrounding Princess Peach. While I do appreciate that they show her as an active leader of her kingdom rather than a damsel, there are a few moments that still fall into casually misogynistic writing tropes, such as when several of the male characters are bickering over whether or not Peach would date someone, her response is just a playfully exasperated “Guys!” The scene would have come across better if she'd more decisively shut that down or told them off for talking about her like a prize to be won. Peach also has one line early in the film in which she uses the word “psycho” in a derisive and ableist way—the writers could and should have phrased the intended thought differently. For the most part, the attempt at girl-powering Peach is pretty good, it just doesn't land in some spots.

It's not a bad movie. It's a good time. It's chock full of easter eggs in such a way that there are more treats for you the more Mario/Nintendo/video game history and lore you know, but without detracting from the enjoyment of those who are younger or more casually interested. It's worth a watch.

#eiiri reviews movies #super mario bros movie

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philipcharmont · 2 years

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𝚃𝙰𝚂𝙺 𝟸𝟻; 𝙽𝙴𝚇𝚃 𝙶𝙴𝙽.

SETH CHARMONT.

the middle child of the charmont three, seth is a lover as well as a heartbreaker. notorious for having many lovers the boy can’t help but fall in love with every person he sees. however, he falls out of it just as easily if his attention isn’t kept. being the youngest brother mean seth has no worries. why would he ? he’s seen the worry lines that cover liam’s face. he loves running into danger head first without a plan mostly because he believes the skills he’s been given will always win. spoiler alert buddy !

INSPIRED BY : romeo montague ( romeo + juliet ) , jack dawson ( titanic ) , cinderella’s prince ( into the woods ) , jeremiah fisher ( the summer i turned pretty ) , siren ( castle swimmer )

𝙶𝙴𝙽𝙴𝚁𝙰𝙻

BIRTH NAME. seviathan whitelaw harrison friedrich charmont NICKNAMES. seth DATE OF BIRTH. february 4. AGE. twenty-two GENDER. cis male. PRONOUNS. he/him POWERS. n/a . SEXUALITY. bisexual. PLACE OF BIRTH. ylisse, france. CURRENT RESIDENCE. elias, california. OCCUPATION. crowned prince of ylisse.

𝙰𝙿𝙿𝙴𝙰𝚁𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴

HEIGHT. 6′5" BUILD. muscular HAIR COLOUR/STYLE. brown // ( X ) EYE COLOUR. brown PIERCINGS. his right ear TATTOOS. none ... yet NOTABLE MARKINGS. a scar on his elbow and a slit in his eyebrow GLASSES/CONTACTS ? neither. FACECLAIM. jacob elordi. VOICECLAIM. jacob elordi american accent. ( X )

𝙷𝙴𝙰𝙻𝚃𝙷

PHYSICAL AILMENTS. being pretty it’s true. ALLERGIES. none. SLEEPING HABITS. could sleep forever if allowed. BODY TEMPERATURE. he’s a furnace DOMINANT HAND. right. DRUGS / SMOKE / ALCOHOL ? no / no / an occasional glass of wine

𝙿𝙴𝚁𝚂𝙾𝙽𝙰𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚈

POSITIVE TRAITS. romantic, charming, engaging, whimsical NEGATIVE TRAITS. reckless, impatient, dramatic, promiscuous USUAL MOOD. flirty. LIKES. hand written notes, love letters, roses, swords, horseback riding through the forest, falling in love, attention of any kind, annoying liam, gossiping with rose, having tea with his mother, theo DISLIKES. royal duties that don’t involve parties, being told what to do, being in the middle of liam and rosalie’s fights, people not returning his affection BAD HABITS. he’s a whore your honor

𝚁𝙴𝙻𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂𝙷𝙸𝙿𝚂

MOTHER. aurora capulet-charmont FATHER. philip charmont. SIBLINGS. liam & rosalie charmont. CHILDREN. this is a great question who’s to say at this point. BIRTH ORDER. middle child of three // eldest twin by a minute. SIGNIFICANT OTHER. theo pendragon ... almost official if her brothers allow it CLOSEST FRIENDS. elwood gray, cesar reyes and you !

𝚃𝙴𝚂𝚃𝚂

ZODIAC SIGN. aquarius MBTI. infp. TEMPERAMENT. sanguine-choleric. HOGWARTS HOUSE. gryffindor. MORAL ALIGNMENT. chaotic good.

𝚂𝙺𝙸𝙻𝙻𝚂 & 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚃𝚂

LANGUAGES SPOKEN. english, spanish & french DRIVE ? yes. JUMP START A CAR ? yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE ? yes. RIDE A BICYCLE ? yes. SWIM ? yes. PLAY AN INSTRUMENT ? yes, many. PLAY CHESS ? yes. BRAID HAIR ? yes. TIE A TIE ? yes. PICK A LOCK ? no. SEW ? yes.

COMPASSION. 9/10.

EMPATHY. 8/10.

CREATIVITY. 10/10.

MENTAL FLEXIBILITY. 6/10.

PASSION. 10/10.

LUCK. 10/10.

MOTIVATION. 7/10.

EDUCATION. 10/10.

INTELLIGENCE. 8/10.

CHARISMA. 10/10.

REFLEXES. 10/10.

WILLPOWER. 4/10.

STAMINA. 10/10.

PHYSICAL STRENGTH. 10/10.

BATTLE SKILL. 10/10.

INITIATIVE. 6/10.

RESTRAINT. 5/10.

STRATEGY. 7/10.

TEAM WORK. 8/10.

( PINTEREST, HIS TAG, PLAYLIST. )

#watask #* .・ under love's heavy burden do I sink » seth.#my dramatic boy

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watching-pictures-move · 2 years

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Movie Review | Panic in the Streets (Kazan, 1950)

There's a scene here where the police are questioning a restaurant owner, and he takes a minute to converse with his wife about whether or not he should divulge that he in fact knew the recently deceased man they were looking for and knew his associates as well. He ultimately decides against it, but there's a tortured quality to this conversation, as the man seems torn apart by the decision. And there's another scene where the main character commiserates to his wife, and while supportive and kind, she urges him to stop feeling sorry for himself. Now anybody who knows anything about director Elia Kazan knows that the biggest stain on his legacy is his decision to name names to the House Committee of Un-American Activities. This was made two years before that happened, so it isn't exactly an apologia (you'd have to turn to On the Waterfront if you're looking for that), but it might explain a little of what was going on inside his head at the time. That being said, I don't want to misrepresent this as useful only for armchair psychology, as I found those scenes quite involving on a dramatic level.

I watched this as part of the Criterion Channel's November Noir series, but it's really more of a hybrid between film noir and a more procedural epidemic thriller. The movie cuts back and forth between an officer in the US Public Health Service and a police captain as they investigate the murder of a man who carried the pneumonic plague, and the lowlifes who murdered him as they try to evade the police. The noir feel is mostly present in scenes with the latter, providing a false sense of insularity and underlining their obliviousness as they fail to realize the true motivations behind the manhunt. This movie is notable for being largely shot on location in New Orleans, likely in places the tourism board isn't too thrilled about, and the open-air quality nicely accents the runaway nature of the disease, the fact that it can't be easily contained. This is shot by Joseph MacDonald, who also shot Call Northside 777, another movie that heavily features location footage albeit to differing effect. I enjoyed that movie as well, for its straight-shooting dramatic quality and the involving relationship between James Stewart and his wife Helen Walker. Also, if you wanted to, you could read a metaphoric quality into the premise in the context of Kazan's life, but I think it plays out in too literal-minded (not in a bad way) a fashion to support such a reading.

The main character is played by Richard Widmark. I haven't seen nearly enough of his movies, but the role I associate him most strongly with is the principled lowlife he plays in Pickup on South Street. So there's a disreputable quality that he has in my eyes, so I was surprised at how compelling I found him essentially as a decent family man who cares and wants to do his job well. It helps that he has a warm presence like Barbara Bel Geddes as his wife to play off of (and between you and me, were I Widmark's character, I would find more time to spend with Bel Geddes instead of at work). But I do think essentially guileless characters like this can be tricky to make dramatically engaging, and I think the movie pulls it off. I also liked the dynamic between him and the police captain played by Paul Douglas, who plays his character with a mix of skeptical, reluctant professionalism. You do get the sense he's trying to do the right thing, even if he takes some convincing. (Of course, the level of cooperation he provides is maybe not as much as Widmark would like, but in light of how things, ahem, have been the last two years, it's pretty damn good.) And you get some classic scumbags in Jack Palance and Zero Mostel, the latter with a pitch perfect pathetic combover, and a gorgeously shot climax in a warehouse, and this is a pretty darn engaging movie.

#film #movie review #panic in the streets

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the-arctic-commune · 2 years

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Oh PLEASE go on with Techno and accents and portrayal?

LMAO this came in within SECONDS congrats.

I don't really have a ton of citations for you. I think this shifted a lot as the dream-team-centric part of the fandom incorporated and learned about Techno as a person and not just Dream's rival, and if I'm being honest I don't have Thoughts so much as I remember having Thoughts in like mid-2021. General attitudes towards Techno shifted wildly from his “monotone,” “emotionless” reputation in early 2021, and the things I remember thinking about kinda stopped applying. I don’t remember what posts bothered me or why I wanted to bring it up.

But. People talk a lot about Techno's speech patterns, and it's true that in an industry that encourages getting as close to newscaster-neutral as possible, his voice can stand out a bit.

In early days when Dream and Techno were very much set up as rivals and people were trying to justify who would/wouldn't win in certain scenarios, it was actually pretty common to claim that Dream has more mechanical and tactical knowledge than Techno. Techno was cast as the brute-force fighter in these essays - comparatively unknowledgable but mechanically gifted. This is a really bad analysis - Techno’s knowledge of the things he cared about was encyclopedic, and his and Dream’s strengths are a lot more similar than they are different.

Where this intersects with voice is that in a US speaker’s perception, Dream has a pretty standard urban American accent, and Techno, as has been noted by fanfic writers everywhere, does not.

The most notable aspect that gets commented on is "g-dropping," the change of the "-ing" sound to "-in." People who don't do anything else to indicate peoples' speech patterns in writing will make sure they write down that Techno's sayin' something, not just saying it.

(This is called an "eye dialect," the use of a nonstandard spelling to emphasize a pronunciation.)

But that's far from the only thing that marks out Techno's accent. If you've watched his introductions to people (i.e. SMPEarth), you might notice that it's not uncommon for people to assume he's from the South, especially Texas, and to be surprised he's from California. The most commonly-known "California accents" are all very urban- and middle-class-centric, while features of Techno's accent (he can sometimes sort of "break" dipthongs and slur or drop syllables, and most especially the g-dropping) are more associated with rural accents in the US, and especially the rural South. And I don’t think that’s entirely dissociated from the way that so many people were so quick to assume, all evidence to the contrary, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Obviously we don't know a whole lot about Techno's background, so I have no particular thoughts on how he ended up with the accent he did (though it sounds to me like it shares some features with the poorly-described "inland rural California English"). The only thing I can say is how it's perceived, which is as containing a lot of features that US speakers are going to mark as rural and working-class.

(A really fascinating part of this is his seeming inability to really code-switch at all; his Sir Billiam voice contains just as much g-dropping as his normal speech, whereas most people attempting to sound like a rich person would focus on speaking "correctly" and get all those nasals in the right spots. My own g-dropping is markedly more noticeable when I’m with my family than when I’m [location redacted]. But this is more sidetracking linguistics than... ok ok uh back to the point.)

Well... I guess like I said I don’t have much of a point any more, and I probably should have written this post a year back when I did. I certainly don’t have anything quite as obvious and pointed as Xeph’s discussion of how stereotypes about Northern England get applied to certain people (esp. Philza, Jack).

I just have, like, people talk a lot about Techno’s voice, and other blogs brought up a lot of really good points about how perceptions of his speech likely intersect with his ADHD and how neurodivergence can effect speaking patterns (speaking of which, a lot of neurodivergent people can struggle with code-switching! hmm). But I think an aspect that got missed sometimes is the way that those perceptions can also overlap with accent.

And also sometimes I see people pointing out Techno’s speech in a way they don’t for any of the other Dream SMP members. If there's one feature that you consider notable enough to mark while keeping everything else textbook, I think it's worth taking a minute to ask yourself why the feature stands out, and what connotations highlighting it might have. It’s not always a bad thing to do so! It’s just worth taking a second look.

#technoblade #dream smp #words #long post

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1ddotdhq · 4 years

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🏴‍☠️Sat 31 Oct ‘20🎃

Harry is sending out 150 Golden postcards (they appear to be numbered out of a batch of 150) from the Golden website! They all have the Amalfi Coast on the front, “You’re so Golden” written on them, and are signed, “ <3 HARRY”. Look, I thought that LOUIS had trouble with hearts, but Harry’s are, uh, somehow worse. It’s been gleefully pointed out that fans have been selling postcards for Harry’s singles for the last few months, and that Harry once again seems to be looking to us for promo ideas! Hey, if it works, it works, and if Harry wants to send me a postcard I’d LOVE it hahaha. Niall is taking a page out of Liam’s book and is rehearsing his show - which is in ONE WEEK (!) - and his band members continue to post pictures of their rehearsals. Love that! But lest you think it's a slow news day aside from Liam NO-- Zayn posted his annual halloween look!! A zelfie!!! Less elaborate than past years, maybe he's not getting enough sleep for some reason, but amazing (amazayn) nonetheless: he's angled downwards, pulling a funny face, with his freshly buzzed hair, earrings, and a Slytherin tie over a white shirt captioned, “Happy Halloween from Slytherin”. Liam’s chat when the picture dropped: “Zayn have you SLITHERED IN HERE???” Hope he enjoyed Tom and Liam's show...

And on to the main event: Liam has DONE IT AGAIN!! Despite some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff with the event time (it started one hour and ten minutes later than planned), once Liam got started, nobody could drag him down! Lola Young, Carly Gibert, and Tom Felton were all charming openers, and, because of their very different styles, they all brought something new to the table. Then Liam, broadcasting from the London Dungeons (a spooky tourist attraction), started the show trapped in a cage (so HE’S the cage dancer this time!). The songs he chose from his own discography were ghoulish and grim and surrounding the topic of, uh, life and death. It did seem to be intentional, though, as this all led up to a moment when a masked guard led Liam out of the concert and into a bloody tribunal, where they accused him of “crimes against fashion” and “being a bad bandmate”. They had fans on zoom playing the prosecutor and defense. He was acquitted of the first crime after a fierce defense from a fan, but after a long list of joking accusations of him being mean to the other boys (it felt uncomfortably like a normal day on twitter, but Liam says no fighting about it!), the prosecutor convicted him (was I outraged?? YES! I WAS!), and the sentence was DEATH. Liam then did a bit of a costume change: he went from Jack Sparrow to ZOMBIE PIRATE, ie added some uncomfortable contacts ("guys I can't see anything").Then he came back to finish his set with Billie Eilish and 5SOS covers, and SEVERAL One Direction songs: Live While We're Young, Drag Me Down, One Thing, What A Feeling (can you believe this is only the SECOND TIME a member of 1D has performed it live? AMAZING!), and a cool personalized version of Midnight Memories (“the opening number has now become the closing number”).

And then the Afterparty!! Liam, as promised, involved MUA Abby Roberts in picking his Halloween makeup looks, the winner being a fantastically scary writing of “Liam Payne” on a fan’s face that was made to look like mottled scar tissue - UGH what an INCREDIBLE look! He also pulled up his “accusers” on zoom, told fans that it was all in good fun and to not send any hate, and admitted that he also felt bad for pantsing Harry. But, he insisted, it’s not his fault! Louis dared him to do it! And, as everyone knows, no one in that band was allowed to back down from a dare. Abby Roberts admitted to being a 1D fan - she even visited some popups! - and videographer Conor also spilled that he first met Liam at a 1D meet and greet. Liam thought this was the best thing, and reminisced about being at the very dungeon he was in ten years prior for Halloween with the (then brand new and still on the X Factor) band. A crew member then managed to scare up (heh) a picture, which was sweet and nostalgic, which was true of a lot of the show! Personally, this has been my favorite LP Show, and Liam has really raised the bar for what online shows can and should be.

Of course, like with all good parties, there was an AFTER afterparty, where he spilled some more tea! He streamed live on Tik Tok - is it time for me to concede and get a Tik Tok??? Sigh, the things I do for these boys. In his after afterparty, he answered some more questions about himself and the boys. He said he was glad to have done a show on the anniversary of the last One Direction show (sad), that he wrote several songs with Louis that have not been released, notable HideAway and even sung a bit of it: “Something in the way she moves...we just have to hide away”. He also said that he saw Harry last year at the Jingle Ball and that he had a slight American accent (“he said ‘AHND’ that way”), that his phone bill would be huge if he called Louis right now (hmmmmm), and that even if he DID call to prank him, Louis would just swear anyways, which was not what they were going for. Awwww, friendship!

#liam payne #harry styles #louis tomlinson #niall horan #zayn #guys we ROCKED OUT to this show at my place #my cat was very scared haha #also WHO WAS I for Halloween?? I WAS THE INTERN OF COURSE!#Full Costume #and im in love with liam but thats old news we knew that #what i do have to say is that i would not have wanted to be tapped by the people running the show to participate in the tribunal #that would have NOT been fun for me #also theres a rumor that i believe that Harry wrote Ariana Grandes song Obvious #and when i listen to it there is a sort of SV6 vibe that i really enjoy!#anyways!#song of the day!#Fast Car by Tracy Chapman but make it the passenger cover

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introvertguide · 3 years

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); AFI #38

The next Huston and Bogart collaboration that we reviewed was the infamous tale of greed and betrayal, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). It was a film that was two decades in the making due to a world war, varying contractual obligations, and poor conditions due to location filming. It is debated that this was Bogart's best performance since it was a step away from the roles that had made him famous, but it did not earn him an Oscar nomination. The film did get four nominations and ended up winning Best Writing and Best Directing for John Huston as well as Best Supporting Actor for Walter Huston, John's dad. This was the only time that a father-son combo won Oscars for a film together. There are a lot of interesting firsts involved with this film, but I want to spoil it first for anyone who hasn't seen it. By the way...

SPOILER WARNING!!! THIS IS AN ANALYSIS, SO I AM GOING TO SPOIL EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MOVIE AND THEN EVERYTHING ABOUT THE PRODUCTION!!! IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FILM COLD AND GET THE FULL EXPERIENCE, WATCH IT FIRST BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

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In 1925, in the Mexican town of Tampico, Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is wandering around and begging for change. He keeps asking the same man in white (John Huston) for money until the man tells him no more handouts. Dobbs continues to beg and runs into another vagrant named Bob Curtin (Tim Holt). The two seem to have an understanding, but money is tight and they separate to look for job leads. Dobbs finds a man in an alley named Pat McCormick (Barton MacLane) and the latter asks the former if he wants a job. Dobbs agrees and goes to a raft and finds Curtin will also be working on this job. They are working as roughnecks to help construct oil rigs for $8 a day. When the project is completed and they return to Tampico, McCormick skips out without paying the men.

The two vagrants encounter an old man named Howard (Walter Huston) in a flophouse. The loquacious and penniless ex-miner talks to them about gold prospecting and the perils of striking it rich. Dobbs and Curtin run into McCormick at a cantina, and after a bar fight, collect their back wages. When Dobbs hits a small jackpot in the lottery, he, Curtin and Howard have enough money to buy the supplies they need to go prospecting in the interior.

Departing Tampico by train, the three help to repulse a bandit attack led by "Gold Hat" (Alfonso Bedoya). North of Durango, the trio head into the remote Sierra Madre mountains. Howard proves to be the hardiest and most knowledgeable of the three. After several days of arduous travel, Howard spots gold that the others had passed by.

The men toil under harsh conditions and amass a fortune in placer gold. But as the gold piles up, Dobbs becomes increasingly distrustful of the other two. The men agree to divide the gold dust immediately and hide their shares. At one point, Curtin sees a Gila monster crawl under a rock and it turns out that this was where Dobbs had hid his share. Curtin warns Dobbs, but Dobbs just assumes that Curtin is trying to steal another share of the gold. It is apparent that Dobbs is being driven insane by the greed for gold, just as Howard had predicted.

Curtin, while on a resupply trip to Durango, is spotted making purchases by a Texan named Cody (Bruce Bennett). Cody secretly follows Curtain back to the encampment. When he confronts the three men, they lie about what they are doing there, but he is not fooled. He boldly proposes to join their outfit and share in any future takings. Howard, Curtin and Dobbs talk it over and vote to kill him. As they announce their verdict, pistols in hand, Gold Hat and his bandits arrive. They claim to be Federales. After a tense parley, a gunfight ensues, and Cody is killed. A genuine troop of Federales suddenly appears and pursues Gold Hat and his gang. The three prospectors examine Cody's personal effects. A letter from a loving wife reveals that he was trying to provide for his family.

Howard is called away to assist local villagers with a seriously ill little boy. When the boy recovers, the next day, the villagers insist that Howard return with them to be honored. Howard leaves his goods with Dobbs and Curtin and says he will meet them later. Dobbs and Curtin constantly argue, until one night Dobbs shoots Curtin and takes all the gold. However, Curtin is not dead; he manages to crawl away and hide during the night.

Finding Curtin gone, Dobbs flees, but is ambushed at a waterhole by Gold Hat and his men. They first toy with him, then kill him (it is implied that Dobbs is beheaded with a machete). The bandits mistake the bags of gold dust for sand and dump the treasure, taking only the burros and supplies. The gold is scattered by the strong wind. Meanwhile, Curtin is discovered by indios and taken to Howard's village, where he recovers.

Gold Hat's gang tries to sell the stolen burros in town, but a child recognizes the brands on them (and Dobbs' clothes, which the bandits are wearing) and reports them to the authorities. The bandits are captured and summarily executed by the Federales.

Howard and Curtin return to Durango in a dust storm and reclaim their pack animals, only to find the empty bags. At first shaken by the loss, first Howard, then Curtin, grasp the immense irony of their circumstances, and they burst into laughter. Howard decides to return to the village to accept an offer of a permanent home and a position of honor, while Curtin sells their recovered property to return to the United States, where he will seek out Cody's widow. As Curtin leaves, the camera pans down to a cactus as he rides past. Lying next to it is a bag of gold, still full.

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This film was a major change of pace for Bogart, making it very difficult to advertise. An actor who is generally the hero turns out to be a villain that shoots his partner and then is unceremoniously beheaded by a bandit is not what audiences expected or even wanted. Using Bogart's star power and reputation for being a good guy romantic lead to attract audiences and then doing his character dirty like he was done is the 40s version of clickbait. And yet the film was moderately successful with audiences and earned four Academy Award nominations. Where this trick to the audience is apparent is the lack of even a nomination for Bogart despite it being one of his finest acting roles.

I watched the movie a couple of times over the last few days and that included commentary from the guy who wrote the biography of Bogart, a Mr. Eric Lax. It was extremely informative and was actually very different from the IMDB trivia page. I am going to trust the official biographer on this one, so some of the following information that is presented as fact is second hand from the movie commentary.

There were two father-son teams on the set of this particular film. The first is was of course the director, John Huston, and his father who played the part of Howard, Walter Huston. The other was actually the other nice guy, Curtin, who was played by Tim Holt, and the old man who warned the two that Pat McCormick was lying to them, played by Jack Holt. John Huston was actually in the film playing the American in the white suit, which made this film the only one with two father-son duos with speaking roles in a single film.

The Huston family has a couple of other notable film accomplishments. John Huston directed his father to an Academy Award and also directed his daughter, Angelica Huston, to a Best Supporting Actress award in Prizzi's Honor (1985). On both occasions, the elder Huston in the film died very soon after working with their child. Walter died a year after his role in Sierra Madre and John died less then two years after Prizzi's Honor. I felt a little sad about that at first, but then it is nice that a parent can work with their child doing what they do best at the end of their life.

Apparently the filming was very difficult and took its toll on the actors and crew. There was a joke about the old man, Howard, being a tough old goat, and that comes from the local crew outpacing the location scouts when Huston first went down to Mexico to look for places to film. The filming took place during the rainy season so there were many delays. The irony was that there was lots of gusting wind except on the day that they needed it and there was lots of rain and flooding except on the day when Dobbs finds the little collection of water.

A rather silly note (or at least I thought so) was that one of the big pushes to get the film done was that Humphrey Bogart wanted to participate in a boat race. He had his boat, the Santana, that he had been practicing with around Catalina when pre-production was halted due to John Huston joining the military during WW2. Bogart wanted to take part in the Honolulu Yacht Race in which he had participated in the past. Bogart's wife, Lauren Bacall, said that the yacht was the only thing that she ever felt jealous of. The constant complaining by Bogart about the time caused one of the only fights he had with John Huston. The director purportedly grabbed Bogart by the nose and twisted until Bogart shut up. It was not brought up again and Bogart missed his race.

One actor that made a surprising cameo in the film was the little boy that sold Dobbs the winning lottery ticket. The part was played by a very young Robert Blake (freaking Beretta) who was a child film star. He had played the role of Mickey in Our Gang short films for almost a decade by the time he was in Sierra Madre. I was surprised to also find out that Blake had almost 80 acting credits before his small part in this film. By the way, he does not have a Mexican accent. Sadly, I think that Blake is now most famous for being accused of hiring somebody to kill his wife. Not a great legacy.

My family commented on the look of Bogart and how weirdly greasy his hair looked. His hair looked pretty weird throughout the film, as a matter of fact. According to Eric Lax, Bogart was taking hormone shots in an attempt to get Bacall pregnant and had lost a lot of his hair. All of those funny looking haircuts were toupees. The one used when Dobbs got a haircut was most notable, especially since you can since Bogart's actual hair at the back.

A final fun fact was the death of Dobbs being a strangely cut machete strike that was hidden by the backside of a donkey was not the original depiction. There was an actual fake head rolling down to the water that was cut out of the film. Bogart famously kept the head and was very disappointed when the scene was cut out of the film. That would have been pretty gory for the time, but Huston knew it would not get past the sensors and he wanted the film to get distributed. Oh well.

So does the film belong on the AFI 100? Of course. For similar reasons as The Maltese Falcon. This was one of the best works produced by one of the best director/writer and lead actor combos of all time. It is an amazing story that doesn't end how one would expect from a movie of the time. It is classic and innovative at the same time. Would I recommend it? Absolutely. It is a fine film that tells the story of what greed can do to an otherwise good person. It is also very clean to the point that I would recommend it to any age group.

#the treasure of the sierra madre #humphrey bogart #john huston #academy award winning #black and white #introvert #introverts #40s movies

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scotianostra · 2 years

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Happy Birthday Scottish actor Ewen Bremner, born January 23rd 1972 in Edinburgh.

Prior to Trainspotting, Bremner gave a striking performance in Mike Leigh's Naked, fellow Scot Susan Vidler played his girlfriend Maggie in this excellent film.

More recently Ewen has been in the, in my opinion, very funny series Our Flag Means Death, the film Canyon Del Muerto about the worlds first female archaeologist and the highly rated Freedom's Path, set in the US Civil War, it is due out soon.

#scotland #scottish #actor #trainspotting #happy birhtday

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jckelly · 3 years

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a completely unnecessary bonus intro to jack just bc new fc and what about it

Is that JACK KELLY? Wow, they do look a lot like FIONN WHITEHEAD. I hear HE is a TWENTY year old SOPHOMORE who are studying AEROSPACE ENGINEERING at Luxor University. Word is they are an ARISTOCRAT student who is FOR The Unhinged. You should watch out because they can be PHILOPHOBIC and INSINCERE, but on the bright side they can also be WITTY and IMAGINATIVE. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself.

basics

Full Name: Jackson Noel Kelly

Nicknames: Jack - he won’t answer to Jackson.

Date of Birth: December 25, 2001 (current age 20)

Zodiac: Capricorn sun, Leo rising, Sagittarius moon, Sagittarius mercury, Scorpio venus, Leo mars

Birthplace: Sheffield, United Kingdom

Nationality: British (by birth), American (acquired after adoption)

Languages: English

Sexuality: Heterosexual, but open to trying new things

Gender & Pronouns: Male, he/him

Course: Aerospace Engineering (sophomore)

appearance

Faceclaim: Fionn Whitehead

Height: 5′8

Eye Colour: Hazel

Hair Colour: Brown, usually worn messy so it looks like he just rolled out of bed.

Piercings: One hoop in his left ear

Other Notable Features: Freckles (lots), Libra constellation tattoo on his shoulder. he speaks with a Northern English accent although it’s slowly fading the more years he spends in the US.

Style: Look, Jack’s not trying to reinvent the wheel. He just wants to be cross between a member of a bad 90s Britpop band and something out of grunge tumblr circa 2014. Expect ripped jeans, long sleeve tees, ratty sweaters and hoodies with holes in, a lot of dark colours, and the choice of his only two footwear options: doc martens or converse, both equally beaten up.

personality

MBTI: ENTP

Positive Traits: Witty, imaginative, perseverent

Negative Traits: Philophobic, insincere, callous

Religious Beliefs: Atheist

Description: Jack is an actor. One who is very, very good at portraying one specific character, but he’s been doing it for so long that he can’t quite tell where the character ends and where he begins.

The character in this instance is the Jack Kelly most people at Luxor know and despise. Jack has created a narrative for himself where he’s the bad guy, and he finds increasingly more excessive ways to display this narrative. Jack is fuelled in this by his own entertainment. What does he gain from each interaction? He has no interest in being liked, no interest in genuine social connections, all he’s doing when he socialises is scouting out ways to entertain himself, whether it’s through casual sex or more often through manipulation, making people think he’s their friend so he can use it against them, through teasing people, low blows, hitting them right where they’re the weakest. Because he’s good at delivering verbal punches and making them sound amusing, he’s witty, and he doesn’t give enough of a fuck about his own safety to mind any consequences.

Partially, this character is in place for Jack’s own self preservation. Part of him believes, deep down, that if he keeps pushing people away and never lets anyone in and covers himself with a thick layer of sarcasm and bullying, he’ll never be hurt again. And then maybe a little bit of him wants other people to be hurting as much as he is inside. Because truthfully, underneath it all, Jack is wracked with guilt and constantly blaming himself for so much of his mother’s problems that he can’t quite keep it all inside and needs to throw it onto the world around him. He doesn’t allow himself to have connections, because he doesn’t think he is deserving of them. He has never quite felt understood by another person, and he never thinks he will.

biography

Jack was born in Sheffield, the second son to a single mother. He has an older half brother, Finn - they don’t share a father. His early childhood was pretty much defined by his mother’s immaturity and various addictions - she was a teenager when she gave birth to Finn and him, and an alcoholic, although by the time Jack was ten she had graduated to heroin. As a result, he was shuffled back and forth between the care system and family home, and pretty much the only consistent “adult” figure in his life was his brother, who was only three years older than him and ill qualified to take up the father role in Jack’s life.

At ten years old, Jack was permanently removed from his mother’s care after an incident with her latest boyfriend caused social services to be called for the last time. His brother was sent to live with his birth father, but since Jack’s birth father was not known, he ended up in the first of a series of foster homes. Unfortunately, since he has a misguided amount of adoration and idolisation for his mother, none of these lasted long as Jack began to raise hell and act out in an attempt to force them to send him back to his mother.

After being passed back and forth for three years, he found himself fostered by his now adopted parents, Claire and George. Much to Jack’s dismay, no amount of acting out could get rid of them, and before he knew it Jack was being formally adopted, much to his displeasure. Still, at first things began to be looking up for him. His adopted parents encouraged him to have more contact with his brother, he was doing well at school, and although he didn’t stop harassing other students, he seemed happy for once.

This didn’t last for long. When Jack was coming up to his fifteenth birthday, when walking back to the train station with his brother he ended up getting into an altercation and smashed a bottle over another boy’s head, permanently scarring him. Finn ended up taking the blame, as it had been dark and they were of a similar enough build that nobody could say for sure which one of them had done it - but having just turned eighteen, that meant he was charged as an adult and sentenced to two years in prison. Jack’s adopted parents freaked, thinking Finn was a terrible influence on Jack, and as a result just a few months later he was moved across the world to New York, his adopted mother’s birthplace, to “start over.” The combination of stress, guilt, and the idea of being so far away from his mother and brother ultimately ended in Jack attempting suicide. Which pretty much led to his adopted mother becoming even more protective and caring for him, much to his upset.

Cut to a few months later, and Jack started at Luxor, quickly beginning his now well known tactic of harassing everyone and happily manipulating. If anything, it’s only become worse over the years, as he hones his ability to hurt people in ever more creative ways. He pretty much made it through high school as the reigning terror lord, without any challenges.

In his senior year of high school, Jack’s birth mother died, throwing him into a loop. He held complex feelings about her, but he truly adored her, and her death left him messed up and questioning a lot of his emotions. Then, at the Luxor graduation after his freshman year of college, it was revealed that Jack had allowed his brother to take the blame and thus the prison sentence for the assault Jack had committed. The secret reveal occurred just as Jack thought he was finally moving forward, and to be honest, he’s been kind of on a downward spiral since - although since he tends to take any negative feelings out on other people, it doesn’t exactly bode well for Luxor...

current connections

Familial: Elli, adopted sister

Friends: Kai, Luca, Rhia, Lav, Lennon

Exes: Noor, Nova, Juliet

connections i’d LOVE

- Chaotic Bro: the friend Jack indulges in some absolute petty chaos with. Graffiti, pranking other students, you name it - together they cause havoc and that’s exactly the way Jack loves it.

- Hookups & FWBs: Because we all know Jack’s a man whore, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t come back to the same people all the time. This can be as messy as you want - are there feelings involved? Do they know he’s just treating it as a hookup? Or are they both fully aware?

- Exes: Again, your boi gets around. A lot. I’m open for more angsty connections where Jack screwed them over - or vice versa - or more friendly connections where they’re willing to talk and maybe even hook up now and then even though the relationship didn’t work out.

#assault tw #drugs tw #death tw #abuse tw #suicide tw #depression tw #self harm tw #violence tw

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breakingsomething · 4 years

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Dawn Station - Pilot

Basic summary: Video game developer Jack Mcloughlin is finally releasing a new game after a ten year hiatus.

Content warnings: Murder, dismemberment, body horror

It comes as a shock to everyone, including you, when Jack Mcloughlin announces the release of a new game at the start of the second week of October.

There are several reasons why this is such a big deal. One: Jack Mcloughlin has been making games since he was twenty seven, and has released only five of them in the thirty years he's been doing it. Two: Jack Mcloughlin is world renowned for his fantastic horror games, all done in wildly different styles, but still notably his own. Three: Jack Mcloughlin has not, up til now, so much as mentioned working on a new game. The only social media site he's fully active on is Twitter - which you check regularly for any updates - and before the release of his last game, Ehrmann Lab, he had left a series of cryptic clues for two months leading up to the announcement. Those had been probably the most fun two months you'd ever had in your life, and even helped you make new friends. But this time around, there is no warning. The trailer is dropped at Purina Expo, one of the biggest American gaming conventions of the year. You were incredibly lucky to be able to snag tickets. Usually, this convention is where the hottest games that would be coming out the following year would be announced, trailers would be played, and developers would discuss - so everyone there on October 10th is shocked to not only be the first to see the trailer, but to hear from the man himself. Jack Mcloughlin takes the stage, gleefully announcing the release of Dawn Station on October 31st this year.

Now, the release of a new game from Septic Games - Mcloughlin's own software company, which he founded after his second game's release - is a big enough deal. But this… this is something else. Mcloughlin explains it before the reveal of the trailer, and you listen with great excitement.

"Dawn Station," says the man, practically bouncing across the stage with glee and shouting into his mic with a hoarse Irish accent. "is a feat of modern gaming. Now, I understand that when you play games, it can get boring to replay them later on after you've finished, because - well, you know how it goes! You know all the twists and turns, all the jumpscares, all the fights, all the spooks. But what if I told you that there was a way you could play where things were different each time?"

Behind the man, on a large screen, an image comes up. This is the first promo image for the new game to be shown to the people. The image is of a tilted hallway in what looks like a complex, broken down space station, overgrown with unusual plants that glow and spark. In the centre of the image is an astronaut. His helmet is on the floor, blood soaked. His face is half in shadow. All that can be seen is curly olive hair and neon green eyes - two on his face, and one embedded in his neck. The suit itself is torn, ripped open with a mouth and a dripping tongue where the being's stomach should be. A torch is on the ground behind him, attempting to cast light on the room. The words "Dawn Station" come up in solid, bright green font next to the being's face.

"This is Dawn Station!" cries the developer, over the many excited murmurs of the crowd. "The first ever virtual reality game with a fully developed artificial intelligence antagonist! An antagonist who learns from the players movements and choices, who grows and changes based off of what you do. You control the game, now more than ever! He's clever, he's learning, he knows where you are, and his objective is to kill the player - introducing... Alien X, otherwise known as… the Anti!"

Everyone cheers. Mcloughlin steps aside, a beam splitting his pale face, and allows the room to darken, and the trailer to play.

You're in awe. The trailer shows that you play as a character named Drew Oliver, an astronaut in their mid twenties who's aboard the Dawn Space Station, which has fallen to the planet you seemed to have been monitoring - the Othohiri 5RM. The game seems to revolve around attempting to explore the little bits of the planet that you can while repairing the ship and dealing with your descent into madness, all the while being chased down by the Alien X, a shapeshifting monstrosity who's eager to end your life before you can finish your goals. After watching it… well, everyone is absolutely blown away, especially you. This is unlike anything Mcloughlin had ever produced, especially to this scale. It's no wonder he hadn't produced a game in ten years if this was what he had been working on. You're practically vibrating with excitement at the breathtakingly beautiful scenery and realistic yet perfectly stylistic graphics, and the 8D sound design that seems to echo from all around you. It's incredible. The second you get back to your hotel room that night, you're one of the first to preorder the game.

Your week at the convention ends, and you go back home, counting down the days to the game's release. However, even more exciting things are happening. On Twitter, a few of your favourite youtubers are acting rather cryptic. KrisDoesGAMEZ and rrroadblock, two streamers you like, retweet Mcloughlin's announcement tweet with eye emojis and promises of the game being good. DUSSST, visualthursday and BroAverage make their own posts about it. PeachCheerio and TheSkinnerr upload short update videos promising exciting things to come.

On October 15th, it happens - ten youtubers each upload an early access demo of Dawn Station, having been chosen and given the code to play it by Mcloughlin himself. You don't watch the videos because you want to play the game yourself with no spoilers, but from what you've seen, it's fucking amazing. Critics are already calling it the game of the decade. The internet is thriving, and a few people have already cosplayed Drew, the main character. Your best friend uploads a joking cosplay of the Anti and walks around town with it on. He gets over a thousand likes and teases you about being too good for you now that he's internet famous. You're living for all of this.

On October 16th, youtuber PeachCheerio is murdered in his own home.

Everyone is shocked, rightfully. Here is a man who had streamed just the day before, chatting with his members and looking at Dawn Station memes on Twitch. Today, he was discovered by his girlfriend in his own home. Leaked police reports tell you that the man, whose real name was Ronald Murphy, had been messily dismembered, his organs removed, half of them missing. You're in shock. He was one of your favourite streamers, and maybe it's silly to mourn someone you've never met, but you're deeply, deeply saddened by the news.

However, it doesn't stop there. The very next day, youtuber DUSSST - or Louise Greendale - is found the same way Ronald had been. Louise's girlfriend apparently called the police in hysterics before panic tweeting about the incident. The posts were taken down an hour later. The screenshots of what she'd said trend of Twitter and Tumblr anyway.

This is when the conspiracy theories arrive. Two youtubers dead in two days, both brutally taken apart and missing organs? Some people mock the theorists for it. Who had even said Louise had been killed the same way as Ronald, anyway? That is, until more apparent police reports are leaked revealing the details of Louise's death. The internet goes wild. The Los Angeles police department posts a video begging whoever's causing the leaks to stop, to think about the families of the deceased. All this does is prove that they're true. This video, too, is later taken down.

You log off in disgust. Some people have no fucking shame.

Things heat up the next day, on October 18th, when user rrroadblock, or Aryan Jha, dies as well. The death is covered up for the first few hours afterwards, but eventually is leaked in the same manner as the last two murders. This time, the theorists are no longer labeled as crazy. In fact, everyone's getting in on this mystery now. Three popular youtubers dead now, each found in bloody states in their own homes, three days apart? No one knows what's happening, but that doesn't stop people from guessing. And while you refuse to involve yourself in any of this, you also find yourself wondering who or what - not what, of course it's not a what, that's just ridiculous - who is killing all of these people.

Day four. The internet is silent, waiting. And yes, sure enough, youtuber KrisDoesGAMEZ, or Kris Velvet, is dead.

This time, someone realizes something that makes everyone pause. Each of the dead youtubers are all the ones who were given the free demo of Dawn Station, and are even dying in the order that they played it in. Everyone goes insane. Even you're suspicious - of what, exactly, you don't know, because why would someone murder someone else so brutally over a video game? Despite that, this can't be a coincidence. People place bets on whether youtuber ducksontheroof, or Donna Campbell, is going to be the next one to be found dead. Donna herself makes a statement on her Instagram, expressing disgust at all the people who were spreading such information around. She then deactivated all her socials apart from her YouTube. The people who had been making bets were shamed, and you have to log off yet again. This is getting to be too much.

You stay offline until nearly four pm the next day. Your friend calls you up to give you the news, but you already know what they're going to say. Let me guess, you start, voice flat and tired. Donna Campbell's dead.

They confirm it. You don't know what to say.

Her family put out a statement asking people not to theorize about her death. People do it anyway. Reports state that the remaining five youtubers who had played Dawn Station, along with, surprisingly, Jack Mcloughlin himself, had been taken into police custody. For protection, you assume. Once again, the internet goes insane. This proves their theories about the game connecting all the deaths, and a silent dread and buzz of twisted excitement hangs over everyone. You're just disgusted. People are treating this like some kind of murder mystery game, like this isn't real, actual lives.

Two days pass without news. At the end of the second day, there's yet another leak. Youtubers Doomandgloom - Persephone Henry - and TheSkinnerr - Rodney Pratt - are dead. You're just numb. You're just so fucking numb.

This reveal, of course, inspires yet another debate. If the youtubers had been under police protection, how had they died? Had the police seen anything? Why hadn't the leak said anything about it? Who was killing all these people in so little time, how hadn't they been caught? Had, really, no one seen anything at all?

There are now three youtubers left who'd played the game. Hothothotstanley, or Stanley McIver, visualthursday, or Khia Herrera, and BroAverage, or Chase Brody. You met Stanley McIver, once, at a convention in London three years ago. You have a picture on your memory board of you standing in the convention hall, him with his arm around your shoulder, you with a grin and sparkle in your eye. You can see the picture from your bed. You turn away from it.

However, the next day is a surprise to everyone. A video is uploaded to someone's Twitter - a full, uncensored video of the murder of Stanley McIver inside the government safe house he and the others had seemingly been kept in. The video is immediately taken down and the Twitter deleted, but everyone has seen it. Including you. The video is… horrifying. Of course it is. Why did you watch it? But you do manage to see who it is that killed him. Everyone on the internet does. And this - this video, that's maybe five minutes long - is enough to make everyone go silent.

The killer looks exactly like the Anti from Dawn Station.

No one knows quite what to make of this.

Even less so when Jack Mcloughlin dies the next day.

He's murdered. Same way as all the rest of them, in police custody. Now this is enough to shock everyone into mourning silence. Only a few pricks are left, and their accounts, channels and blogs are swiftly deactivated. Nine deaths in nine days. Nine deaths. Nine. Jack Mcloughlin.

The next day, Khia Herrera - well, you know.

Chase Brody is the last one left alive. You never watched his channel that much - he's really into horror, and is known for his Walking Dead playthrough and his Undertale Genocide run - but you still already feel a strange sense of loss. A sort of emptiness. Something churns in your stomach that you don't understand. There's a lot that you don't understand.

The release of Dawn Station is cancelled.

You spend the night at a friend's house, and just bawl for hours. You shouldn't be so upset, you shouldn't! You never knew any of these people! But fuck, there's something about seeing all these people who you'd been watching online for so long, who have given you so many happy days, so many laughs and inside jokes… just die. How had this happened? Who was it who was doing this?

Your friend sadly suggests it's some sick Jack Mcloughlin hater who decided it'd be fun to cosplay as his newest character and kill people to scare everyone. But while you outwardly agree, you internally know it's not true. Because every time you watch that video, every time you watch Stanley die - and you watch it a lot, just trying to make yourself feel something, even if it's just sick - you can tell the person isn't human. You know that's ridiculous, of course. But there's something about its eyes. Its face. It glances up at the camera and makes eye contact, and grins with too many white, jagged teeth, like an anglerfish. The eye in its throat sees you too. It glows. You shudder every time, watching it shake with glitches and laughter.

You're scared. You feel sick and dizzy and you lock your doors out of fear. You stay inside and open Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram again.

Poor Chase Brody, says the internet. They're already mourning. Already accepted his death. Poor, poor Chase Brody.

You hope he's ok, wherever he is.

#dawn station #jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #boop writes

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birlcholtz · 4 years

Note

your rare pairs are just fantastic. If I could trouble you for some Ransom/Tater, please?

of course!!!

RANSKOV

tater swings by the haus for pong, lardo is like rans you have to partner with me in pong and rans is like okay and she's like you CANNOT back out and he's like okay???

and then he sees their opponent is tater (and holster but ransom sees holster every day) and he's like oh god and lardo's like no backing out i told you.

SO they play pong which breaks the ice and they fall in LOVE.

rans and tater follow each other on instagram (ransom is having heart palpitations) and jack accidentally plays cupid and bitty, lardo, and holster intentionally play cupid (bitty has a lot to do with jack's role in the whole thing)

tater thinks hockey shit is the greatest thing on earth and is INSTRUMENTAL in getting ransom and holster the capital to get a youtube channel up and running. (he's also the one who convinces them to do it in the first place. ransom is immediately in.

holster is like ...............yeah okay running a youtube channel with the intent of getting money from it is close enough to soulless econ major recent grad work that i'll take it. (that's not what he says but it's close enough. holster talks a big game when it comes to ransom making the world a better place with his brain, but he himself is much more of a 'just let me earn some money and retire' kind of guy.)

also, he agrees for the cause of ransom and tater's love

they wind up filming a backlog of their previous hockey shit episodes while they're coming up with material for their next episodes and they do, in fact, have a clip of tater talking to reporters in there. (they also convince jack to reenact his conversation with ford, complete with jack literally changing into his uniform and then ransom adding a thoughtfully placed jump cut. ways of convincing jack to do it included: 'it'll take like 5 minutes', 'tater will be sad if you don't', and 'you get to talk about bitty')

there's also several clips of noted american hockey players saying 'eh' in interviews for the 'spontaneous canadian accent' part

when they post the hockey speak one tater tweets about it and it's an instant classic

ransom and holster also do a very serious episode about how pie and jam are a newly developing part of hockey culture. it's a collab with bitty in bitty and jack's apartment, featuring many falconers discussing their love for baked goods, the whole rumor mill about black market pie trading (poots looks mildly to severely uncomfortable for this entire part), and many segments where ransom and holster are just trying to talk to bitty and tater keeps yelling about blueberries from wherever he happens to be in jack and bitty's apartment.

yes he sticks around for the entire filming of this episode. let him live he just wants to wait for bitty to inevitably bake something and also gaze at ransom's beautiful face in peace

anyway the youtube channel is a career but also totally an excuse for ransom and tater to talk to each other all the time (tater is the 'nhl correspondent' which really means he and rans talk all the time and occasionally tater mentions something that ransom thinks he and holster could do a video on)

holster, by the way, is exhausted at this point and thinks the squad (him, lardo, bitty, and, without his knowledge, jack) need to do something more drastic to get them to actually talk to each other about their feelings which is how haus 2.0 (minus that one roommate) winds up being invited to providence for a weekend. yes shitty's in on it now he's delighted

what follows is a full weekend of shenanigans fully designed to keep forcing ransom and tater together until one of them says something. notable events include a hike in the park in which everyone subtly pulls ahead until ransom and tater are trailing the group by like. 30 feet. putting on a rom com for a movie night and then everyone gradually disappearing until just ransom and tater are the only ones actually watching the movie. more beer pong just because. bitty makes blueberry crumble secretly while jack is (unwittingly) distracting tater via hanging out in the living room, then is like HEY RANSOM HELP ME WITH SOMETHING, immediately followed by JACK HONEY COULD YOU GIVE ME A HAND WITH SMTH. ransom arrives in the kitchen. jack arrives in the kitchen, leaving tater alone in the living room. bitty sends ransom to the living room with blueberry crumble for tater and is like oh jack i just wanted to see your face :)

at which point jack is like bits what the fuck is going on so bitty relates the entire thing to him in a whisper and jack's like omg. do you know what you need to do and bitty's like no????

and jack is like you need to do. what bad bob did. (he doesn't actually refer to his father as bad bob but u see where i'm going with this)

and bitty's like okay but how and jack's like i got it dw about it and bitty's like okay??? and so the next morning jack recruits tater to go grocery shopping with him and while they're grocery shopping he's like Hey Tater. You Know What Would Be Cool. and tater's like what and jack's like you not letting all of them go back to boston without saying something and tater's like >.> what do you know

meanwhile. lardo, bitty, shitty, and holster are ganging up on ransom to convince him that actually, tater isn't out of his league, and that tater goes to such lengths to interact with ransom that isn't it within the realm of possibility that tater is interested in him too? wouldn't that make sense justin??? (holster has utilized his econ powers to make a spreadsheet. he pulls it out and ransom is like fuck i can't argue with excel)

by the time jack and tater get back with groceries both tater and ransom are 100% determined to not let the weekend end without saying something so of COURSE bitty's like hmmmmmm. i think i'll make something complicated with a lot of ingredients we don't have for dinner. i'm gonna need three pairs of hands so lardo and holster can come with me

and then as soon as they're out the door jack is like hey shitty i just finished this cool book you might like it let's go talk about it and shitty's like YES i would love to see this book. oh it's not in the living room you say??? well that is fine with me let's go see this book and they vanish

and then both ransom and tater are like MY TIME HAS COME and they lowkey just blurt it out at the same time because their ability to be smooth has been pretty incapacitated

ransom gets tater to wear salmon shorts (and holster is almost incoherent with rage)

ransom used to like blueberries but now they make him happy because they remind him of tater (sometimes it's kind of a bittersweet happiness if they haven't seen each other in a while honestly, but once shitty graduates from law school it's easy enough for haus 2.0 to pick up and relocate to providence, aided by the money from ransom and holster's channel)

tater ALMOST gets re-nicknamed dopey when ransom visits the falcs once, just because of the dopey grin on his face, but it doesn't stick (thirdy is sad about this. he really tried)

ransom and bitty with the other SOAPs at games going absolutely FERAL

ransom is big enough that if he wears enough of tater's falcs issued workout gear in public he starts to get looks as people mentally run through the falcs' roster to figure out which one he is because he looks SO familiar and he's wearing all that gear he must be a falconer right???

turns out he looks familiar because hockey shit is becoming a cultural cornerstone (right along with pies) of hockey and he's wearing all of that gear because of his nhl boyfriend but you know. i'm terrible with faces so this would be me

tater seeks holster out to ask what the best way is to support ransom when he's going through it (there are better terms but my brain will Not let me think of them)

'affectionate wrestling' is kind of the name of the game here

they get a big dog (and then they get a second big dog as well) and that's canon

#crocophant #ranskov #omgcp #fun with rarepairs

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slurrmp · 4 years

Text

not another info sheet.

sasha o’neill (stargate sg1)

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: sasha maria o’neill PRONUNCIATION: SASH-ə MEANING: defender, helper of mankind REASONING: named after her mother’s grandmother NICKNAME(S): sash (most common), ash, asha, kid PREFERRED NAME(S): just her full name or sash BIRTH DATE: october 20th 1972 AGE: 33 (as of season 9) ZODIAC: libra GENDER: female PRONOUNS: she/her ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual NATIONALITY: american ETHNICITY: white CURRENT LOCATION: colorado springs, cheyenne mountain LIVING CONDITIONS: a little apartment in the city, but will mostly stay at jack’s home. TITLE(S): miss

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: san francisco HOMETOWN: fairfax SOCIAL CLASS: fairly wealthy, but not exactly rich EDUCATION LEVEL: almost finished college FATHER: angus o’neill (deceased) MOTHER: maria o’neill (nee barnes) (mia) SIBLING(S): none BIRTH ORDER: only child CHILDREN: none PET(S): a pet gold fish named bruce, however, is too busy with work to actually have the dog she always wanted. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: jack o’neill (uncle), sara o’neill (aunt), charlie o’neill (cousin) (deceased) PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: max turner (four years), jonas quinn (two years), cameron mitchell (??) ARRESTS?: when she was a teenager and her father passed away, and her mother basically disowned her - sasha rebelled against her aunt and uncle, doing petty crimes such as shop lifting and grand theft PRISON TIME?: spent two nights in the county jail for stealing a car from the mayor

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: working for the sgc SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: it’s really disguised as working for the air force TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME: she writes a column in the local paper APPROXIMATE AMOUNT PER YEAR: uhhhh couldn’t tell you, but it’s enough to live comfortably CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: very much so PAST JOB(S): worked at a fast food chain until she was 17, then worked for a supermarket (but was caught stealing & was fired) SPENDING HABITS: she knows what she loves and will always buy what she needs MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: her father’s dog tags, which she constantly wears around her neck

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: she was a cheerleader in high school before her father passed - moving into senior year of high school, sasha locked herself away from others and herself - which meant that she wasn’t as physically fit as she used to be. she was never overweight, but she couldn’t do a cartwheel to save her life anymore. however, joining the sgc - she’s managed to gain back her fitness and once again can do that cartwheel. OFFENSE: no DEFENSE: yes. her fighting style is more protect her body than anything else. SPEED: she’s not incredibly fast, but if something is chasing her, she has the will to go faster. INTELLIGENCE: rather intelligent, however, it is less mathematical smart and more historical smart. ACCURACY: she grew up in a military family, she’s very accurate AGILITY: after working back her fitness, sasha’s very good at climbing walls and leaping across tall buildings. STAMINA: it’s fairly good but no where near as good as it should be TEAMWORK: she depends on her team to survive and they depend on her to keep them alive TALENTS: can translate a different language within an hour, rather good at the piano SHORTCOMINGS: she’s judgemental, snippy and can be rather short with people. all in all it’s that o’neill charm LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: english, german, russian, dutch and japanese DRIVE?: yes JUMP-STAR A CAR?: yes CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: yes RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes, badly though SWIM?: yes PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: kind of, without practice she loses her skill PLAY CHESS?: no (daniel’s trying to teach her though) BRAID HAIR?: yes TIE A TIE?: yes PICK A LOCK?: yes

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: alyssa milano EYE COLOR: brown HAIR COLOR: brown HAIR TYPE/STYLE: there’s almost a different style each year. season one: short and almost in a bob. season two: it has grown out more and now reaches her shoulders - curls. season six: it was shaved almost completely off. season three, four, five, seven, eight, nine and ten: it remains at shoulder length and wavy. GLASSES/CONTACTS?: only for when she’s reading DOMINANT HAND: right HEIGHT: 5′2″ WEIGHT: 60 kg BUILD: athletic EXERCISE HABITS: spars with teal’c once a week, while also uses the gym equipment at the sgc twice a week SKIN TONE: pale, but is able to tan rather easily TATTOOS: one on the back of her neck and one on the left side of her lower back PEIRCINGS: both lobes, including seconds, has her nose pierced as well MARKS/SCARS: there is a birthmark over her left hip. a scar just on the right side of her upper lip (which she got when she fell over on the driveway of her family home when she was six), a scar through her left eyebrow - which eerily is like jack’s, however, it was given to her on a mission NOTABLE FEATURES: her eyes and the mirroring scar in her eyebrow, just like jack. USUAL EXPRESSION: she is beaming most of the time - bright and bubbly expressions CLOTHING STYLE: very modern, loves a crop top and low cut jeans, but while she’s on base it is the typical sg uniform. blue fatigues mostly, considering the green makes her look sick JEWELRY: nothing too fancy considering her line of work, a couple of rings and bracelets ALLERGIES: peanuts, bees BODY TEMPERATURE: a normal body temperature DIET: she’s lived with jack for most of her life, it mainly consisted of bbq steak and when she was old enough beer. donuts, and snacks. PHYSICAL AILMENTS: continuously breaks limbs, but nothing too serious to bench her from off world work.

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE: enfj ENNEAGRAM TYPE: the achiever MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good ELEMENT: air PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: logical-mathematical APPROXIMATE IQ: 124 MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: struggles with ptsd after the death of her father and the events that have occurred in her life so far SOCIABILITY: very out going and loves to meet new people EMOTIONAL STABILITY: she’s been hurt so many times that sasha has started to pull away from anything emotional lately, so not good, but she hides it well with her outgoing personality OBSESSION(S): making sure that everything is perfect, making sure that missions will go correctly and nothing bad will happen. PHOBIA(S): tight spaces, spiders, flying, ADDICTION(S): none DRUG USE: none ALCOHOL USE: limited, loves a good beer every sunday afternoon PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: if push came to shove

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: she’s very articulate with her words. when the occasion calls for it, she can speak in a rather professional manner. but when she’s around friends or family, she won’t talk quite as stiff ACCENT: very clearly a west coast accent QUIRKS: she bounces a lot when she’s excited or even happy. it’s absolutely because she’s the shortest of the group and it makes her feel tall HOBBIES: reading is a big one - basically what she does to escape the ‘real world’, mainly romance and comedy novels because horror/sci-fi and action is what she lives on a daily basis HABITS: she has a habit of biting her lower lip, usually when she’s thinking or worried. NERVOUS TICKS: bounces her leg up and down when nervous, she will also pace a lot DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: one is absolutely to save the world from the goa’uld, while the others is her family and her friends FEARS: losing said family and friends. she has a terrible habit of latching onto people she’s met - which isn’t good in her line of work. however, it helps her POSITIVE TRAITS: loyal, strong willed, will fight for her family NEGATIVE TRAITS: falls in love too easily, tries to see the best in everyone - which usually gets her into trouble SENSE OF HUMOR: very dry, it’s that o’neill sense of humour though DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: on and off CATCHPHRASE(S):oh for crying out loud

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: reading ANIMAL: fox BEVERAGE: beer BOOK: pride and prejudice CELEBRITY: brad pitt COLOR: pastel brown DESIGNER: vera wang FOOD: fried rice FLOWER: sunflower GEM: diamond HOLIDAY: christmas MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: mini cooper MOVIE: sleepless in seatle MUSICAL ARTIST: elton john SCENERY: snowy day next to a fireplace in the city SCENT: lavender SPORT: football SPORTS TEAM: 49ers TELEVISION SHOW: simpsons WEATHER: winter VACATION DESTINATION: bora bora

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: to see the goa’uld destroyed and to have her family safe GREATEST FEAR: to lose the planet and her family MOST AT EASE WHEN: things are going the right way, no matter the scenario - could be in the middle of a mission, but as long as she knows what’s she’s doing, sasha can breeze through it LEAST AT EASE WHEN: everything is going wrong, mainly when missions stuff up. as well as when she has no control over a situation WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: one of the alternate world’s reality, becoming her reality. the goa’uld taking over the world and enslaving humanity BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: finally getting into college BIGGEST REGRET: losing her daughter MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: it’s not everyday that you come face to face with a new species, it’s also not everyday that you decide to trip UP stairs when coming to greet them, falling flat on her face and breaking her nose BIGGEST SECRET: max and sasha were expecting a baby - but they were not compatible and the baby died during the first trimester, she never told anyone besides janet TOP PRIORITIES: her job and her family

#ch. sasha o'neill.#promise that you'll never find another like me.#* & MEET MY OC'S.#stargate

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itsblosseybitch · 4 years

Text

Well Dunne by Fred Schruers (from Rolling Stone magazine, November 7th, 1985)

The star of ‘After Hours’ knows how to produce a lot of laughs

The day Warner Bros. previewed After Hours at its Burbank, California, studio for a randomly selected public - “People who may have been coming out of Wendy’s on La Cinega” is how Griffin Dunne puts it - leading man Dunne and his co-producer, Amy Robinson, joined a line of cars stop-and-going through the gates to the studio. As he tells about it now, a month later, he mimes the part of a power-buzzed security man clutching a walkie-talkie: “Get these people out of there...Can’t let the audience see you, sir...We’re at Building C, walking the producer and the star over now...”

They hid Griffin in the projection booth till the lights went down. Then he sneaked in and listened. Very happily. “They laughed. Went crazy. You couldn’t hear the dialogue.”

A lot of his best lines got lost in the hubbub then, no? Dunne lets his swivel chair rock down from a perilous two-legged tilt and gives the serious, almost beady-eyed take meant to remind you what an alarmingly hostile world we live in: “Let that be the most serious of my problems.”

In fact, Dunne has hardly any problems just now that stand much chance of knocking him from the embrace of the bitch goddess Success. Costing roughly $4 million and described by director Martin Scorsese as “an experimental, psychological farce,” After Hours took only one September weekend to show it would clamber out of cult status and be recognized as something the studio could platform into a nice little hit.

As a producer, then, the thirty-year-old Dunne is at speed. The grudging credit the industry gave him for co-producing Chilly Scenes of Winter, at age twenty-three, and added to with 1982′s Baby, It’s You (OP NOTE: This is an error. Should be 1983), must now give way to admiration. As an actor, he’s got many people besides the studio guards referring to him as an arriving star. He’s onscreen in virtually every frame in After Hours, and his highly expressive face, which seems to be hastily if handsomely thrown together, accented with dark eyebrows and riveting brown eyes, is undeniably crucial to our comic appreciation of the very odd goings-on during the protagonist’s interminable night among the sexually flawed denizens of artsy SoHo. Whether recoiling from the kinky come-ons of Rosanna Arquette’s Marcy and Linda Fiorentino’s Kiki, feeling mousetrapped by Teri Garr’s Julie, marked for slaughter by Catherine O’Hara’s Gail or imprisoned by Verna Bloom’s June, he’s a catalog of nearly nuanced lab-rat reflexes.

The key to Dunne’s performance is clearly reaction, as Amy Robinson points out: “It was imperative in this movie that the character be very likable. Otherwise, why would you want to spend this hour and a half going through such trials and tribulations?”

Adam Brooks, who directed him in this year’s unkindly received Almost You, judges Griffin to be just the right everyman for this opening up in Scorsese’s work. “He’s alone, like other Scorsese heroes, but not obsessed. He’s more like us - a child of computers and television. Lonely, but not driven.”

“A lot of people say Griffin looks like Dudley Moore, but I think he’s a lot more like Jack Benny - his comedy works when he’s surrounded by a lot of crazy people, crazy events. He’s charming, endearing. What’s great about After Hours is that the charm gets defeated at every point and ends up being a kind of vanity - so you’ve got this nicely mounting hysteria.”

The Joseph Minion script for After Hours - dispatched to Griffin after being handed to Amy Robinson by Minion’s film-school professor, director Dusan Makavejec - caught the actor’s fancy on page 2. He could sink right into the role of Paul Hackett, a lonely and bored word processor who meets an enticing girl at a coffee shop. “I understood the speech patterns, the other characters and the tension. And the situation of a horrible date. Of being with somebody, trapped in a situation. I’m looking around the room, going ‘How do I get out of here? And how the hell did I get in here?’ Which is a pretty funny basis for a movie.”

“My only criterion for directing Griffin,” says Scorsese, “was ‘I don’t believe you. For all you know, you’re pleading for your life. If I don’t believe you, I’m not gonna print this take, and we’ll just continue till I believe you.’ He had to get in touch with something in here, he had to plead for his life. And that was - fun.”

Thomas Griffin Dunne was born June 8th, 1955, in New York City, the first of three children of Dominick and Ellen (known as Lenny). His father was a Connecticut-bred, Williams-educated stage manager en route to producer status; his mother was an actress and model raised in Nogales, Arizona, by her Mexican mother and her cattle-rancher father, Thomas Griffin. Dominick worked on everything from Howdy Doody to Playhouse 90, and when colleague Martin Manulis moved to Los Angeles in 1956, Dominick took his work and family went as well.

They settled in then quaint Beverly Hills (”Not the Iranian gun boutiques they’ve got now,” grumbles Griffin), where Griffin hung out with other showbiz whelps, like Carrie Fisher, until heading east to a prestigious old prep school. One unfortunately whimsical day, under the influence of a notorious Moby Grape album cover, he extended his middle finger toward the camera in the football-team photo. By chance, two years later, the headmaster glanced at the photo; the punishment was five swats.

(OP NOTE: I actually contacted Fay School about this photo, and they claimed they didn’t have it. In hindsight, I should have tried a different approach because, to quote Mandy-Rice Davies, “Well they would, wouldn’t they?”)

Next stop was a less stodgy boys school in Colorado, where he won a plum role in The Zoo Story as a sophomore and became “Joe Theater” on campus. By senior year, he was preparing for his greatest performance, as Iago in Othello. The evening before the big day, Griffin and a friend were in a dorm room contentedly smoking dope when the door swung open. They smothered the joint just in time to look up at the school’s “one badass” faculty member, who asked, “What’s that smell?” “There was the longest pause,” recalls Griffin. “Finally, I said ‘What smell?’ “ The smoke, he says, “just poured right out - mocked me.”

Griffin, sent packing, hitchhiked home quite certain that his proper trade was acting. He got a bit part in Medical Story as an intern hooking up an I.V. line amid much medical palaver, but they changed the diagnosis on him at the last minute. Frantically trying to memorize the new bit during a five-minute break, he burned his lip trying to light a cigarette and went before the camera lisping, sweating, shaking, and bereft of words. Actress Linda Purl took pity and wrote his lines on her forearm, where the I.V. was to go. “It was such a classy move,” he says.

Still, deciding he’d better learn the trade from scratch, Griffin migrated to New York and joined the legion of struggling actors. He was catastrophically nervous at auditions: when he went before the stern Uta Hagen to apply for her acting class, he “went up” - completely forgot the text he’d prepared from The Catcher In The Rye. So he improvised, giving the story that morning’s trip downtown as Holden Caulfield might tell it. She was alternately rapt and chuckling, and signed him on. But he was soon shown to be the dunce of a class full of working actors. Finally, one day after he set a prop door up backward for a solo exercise, then frenziedly tried to shove it the wrong way through the jamb, she took him aside and told him he was simply not ready for her class. But he begged her one more chance, and the next day he skipped forward several exercises to do an imaginary phone call. He wowed Hagen and the class and went on from there.

As he built off-Broadway credits, Dunne lived in various shabby apartments and worked odd jobs, notably, selling candy and popcorn at Radio City Music Hall, where he was stung by the indifference of the Amazonian Rockettes: “They certainly had no time for a guy in a polyester zip-up baby-blue jacket with a cadet hat and shoes two sizes too big that had belonged to an usher who died of old age.”

He met Amy Robinson, who had gone from Scorsese’s Mean Streets to searching for work, at a party. With a third actor, Mark Metcalf, they became upstart movie producers by optioning Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter. Joan Micklin Silver came in as screenwriter and director, and they got studio financing to make a cult prestige item. It marked the beginning of a time of happy overwork for Griffin. He came back from shooting a TV film called The Wall in Poland (opposite Rosanna Arquette) to do the play Coming Attractions, which he then left to do John Landis’ film An American Werewolf in London.

He had come back to work full-time on producing Baby, It’s You when horrible news came: his sister, Dominique, a promising young actress, was strangled to death at the age of twenty-two by her boyfriend, a chef at Ma Maison.

“It brought all of us who were left together for every moment for a year between what happened and the verdict,” says Dominick Dunne. “It’s never for a moment not a part of you. The point is, you have to go on, you have to cope, to live your life. He threw himself into his work.”

Baby, It’s You was completed that year and dedicated to his sister. Then, even as he helped with script revisions to After Hours, Griffin was before the cameras in Adam Brooks’ Almost You. It’s about a couple suffering from the young man’s restlessness, and though Dunne and Brooke Adams agreed to do it while they were very much a couple, by the time it got financing, they were just friends. “I guess you could say they had a lot to work with,” says Brooks. “but that never interfered with the production.”

Griffin’s been seeing New York actress Ellen Barkin lately; she was on his arm for the New York premiere of the film and afterward was a proud but not proprietary presence as he accepted congratulations well into the night from a buzzing crowd of friends at a downtown restaurant. He was due to head cross-country for promotional chores, but he’s got further plans for his unusually hyphenated career. He and Amy Robinson have optioned the hit play The Foreigner, written by the late Larry Shue. And after the rigors of making After Hours on a nocturnal schedule, Griffin is very happy to have the phone plugged back in and the shades up.

(OP NOTE: As I mentioned in the transcript for the American Film article, The Foreigner never materialized as a feature film, though Robin Williams was attached at one point. That’s all the information I have about that at the moment.)

“I noticed that Griffin is the kind of guy who gets around a lot, parties a lot,” says Scorsese, “and I knew the hardest part of his job was sustaining the anxiety for eight weeks of shooting.” The director pauses for a grin that demands to be called devilish. “So I told him, ‘No sex for eight weeks. We’ve got careers on the line here. I don’t want you up at night talking, wasting your time and your precious bodily fluids.’

“Really, the idea was to contain him and keep him in this night world for eight weeks, ‘cause his performance depended on anxiety, and if he was satisfied, he would never be able to get that.”

Dunne, reminded later of the challenge, tips back his chair and grins to himself. “Aw, that was easy to live up to,” he says, then waits a beat to settle into the deadpan expression that is such a comic weapon for him. “Did you ever try to get a date a six-thirty in the morning?”

#griffin dunne #rolling stone #rolling stone magazine #vintage magazines #archive #journalism #martin scorsese #after hours #amy robinson #after hours 1985

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