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marinerainbow · 2 months

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I think I'm getting a little bit back into Dragon Ball. Though I'm still on my WFRR/Tooniverse kick... I'm certain you guys know what happens when interests collide XD

WFRR DRAGON BALL AU

I know this is silly, but what does it matter if it's fun? ^^ also, I'm gonna give everyone Dragon Ball-esque names. I'm not sure how well I'll do though, so if anybody has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear!

Gume (Eddie Valient): A retired world martial arts tournament champion. After the death of his brother, Slooth, he lost his passion and resorted to alcohol to drown his sorrows, and refuses to partake in the tournament anymore, but has taken on a private investigator job. Even so, he is still a very skilled fighter, and pretty powerful for a human. A bit rusty around the edges, but he's still a formidable opponent.

Eddie's name is the first half of gumshoe. A gumshoe being another name for a private detective. Teddy's name is a misspelling of sleuth, another name for a private investigator.

Shoa (Delores): Shoa had also competed in the tournaments herself- in fact, that was how she met the brothers. However, nowadays, she's focused on trying to support Gume, and can be found in the city's bar as simultaneously the bartender and the security guard. She'll still help out Gume with some of his jobs, and can very easily hold her own in a fight. It's no wonder Gume and Shoa make an unbreakable pair.

Delores' name is a play on the second half of Gumshoe. Her and Eddia complete each other in more than one way ^^

Usagi (Roger Rabbit): A spry and cheerful acrobat who first introduced Gume to chi. He was looking to train under Gume, and his persistence managed to break through the gruff man. Usagi was actually quite surprised that Gume hadn't already harnessed his chi, but was more than happy to teach him everything his wife taught him. As such, the two slowly but surely developed a close bond and alliance.

Usagi is the Japanese word for Rabbit (according to Google Translate. I apologize for any mistranslation)

Uta the Sairen (Jessica Rabbit): Uta didn't originate from Earth. She came from a far-off planet after her home was destroyed. Her ship had landed on Usagi's property, and the two have been inseparable ever since. They fell in love sometime while she was teaching Usagi how to harness his chi, and she's taken it upon herself to protect him. Uta wasn't too sure about Gume, especially when he saw her and made some wild accusations about her purpose on Earth and why she chose to marry a human. But after seeing how protective she is of Usagi and her new home, and also having the chance to fight alongside her, Gume has had a change of heart, and would trust her with his life.

Jessica's name is the Japanese word for song, and her species name is Japanese for siren. I'm thinking maybe her planet would have been home to Betty Boop, Holli Would, Red Hot Riding Hood, and other attractive toons. I'm not quite sure why their planet could have been destroyed, but I'm certain that will become a plot point in this AU.

Beebee the Monoian (Baby Herman): Another alien that came to Earth, though only because he was searching for glory. Despite his jolly sounding name and youthful appearance, Beebee is a rather temperamental and nasty old man that uses his looks to sway humans and become a famous actor among them. He even convinced Usagi for a time that he was a friend- though Uta saw through his tricks and doesn't buy his act one bit. Even so, he had grown a soft spot for Earth and Usagi, and will help out when needed.

Herman's name is just a fun misspronounciation of baby. And his species' name is the second half of Wakamono, which is Japanese for youth.

Axit, Android 07 (Benny the Cab): A robotic creation of the infamous doctor. Axit was an experiment gone wrong; meant to be a war weapon, it seemed that somehow emotions had been programmed into him. Or at least the ability to process them. It wasn't too long before Axit rebelled against his creator, and set on his own journey. He met Usagi, and the two have become great friends. Despite being a machine, Axit has grown rather friendly and boisterous, and serves the city's public transport system. Though, being a weapon of war, you don't want to get on this androids bad side.

Benny's name is a jumbled spelling of Taxi. And his android number is for 1907, when meters were first implemented in taxis.

Doctor Domo (Judge Doom): A mysterious and cruel scientist who seems to make it his life's work to take over the city. Not much is known about him, not even his colleagues- now employees after he took ownership of the company Clover Tech- know much about him... There are rumors, however, that Dume is not as human as he claims to be...

Doom's name is just a fun jumbled spelling of his own name.

Pin-Kuu, Android 47 (Smartass Weasel): One of Domo's most successful creations just so happens to not be entirely machine. He, along with his whole team, were taken as humans and experimented on. None of them remember their human lives, but have become very powerful due to their mechanical enhancements. Since he is the most 'obedient' as well as ruthless and intelligent, Android, Domo has placed him in charge of the others. Though Pin-Kuu, along with his squad, aren't too happy about following the doctors orders... And now, with all the power at their fingertips, they'll be able to take matters into their own hands soon enough.

Smartass' name is a slight misspelling of the Japanese word for pink. And his Android number is for 1947, when the events of Who Framed Roger Rabbit take place. Also, notably, the same death year for Al Capone. (Also, for those who don't know, yes, they should be called cyborgs, but for some reason, in Dragon Ball, Android 18 and 17 were always called androids. As such, the weasels will carry this tradition in this AU)

Dori, Android 20 (Greasy Weasel): Dubbed as the second in command by Pin-Kuu, Dori is a rather selfish and wicked minded android. He was surprised when, after many failed experiments, Pin-Kuu not only survived but also rose the ranks in Domo's little army, and it wasn't too long before the two became 'allies' (or rather friends, as they would call each other after being given the freedom to live as humans again). Dori also makes it clear to anybody- especially pretty women like Uta- that just because he's part machine doesn't mean that he's lost his touch.

Greasy's name is the shortened japanese word for green, midori, and his Android number is for 1920, when the alcohol prohibition ended.

Ao, Android 14 (Wheezy Weasel): The second eldest living android, Ao doesn't look all that threatening, especially since he's not so obvious with his unnatural powers as the rest of his team are. But make no mistake, Ao is just as ready to break free of the lab as much as anyone. Though he also seems to be the only one really concerned about the bombs Domo planted in their chests as a precaution. If it weren't for Ao's sage advice of laying low for now, the others probably would have gotten themselves blown up. He's proven to be an irreplaceable member of team Android in many ways.

Wheezy's android name is Japanese for blue, and his Android number is a reference to cigarettes costing between 14 to 20 cents in the 1930's.

Kiiro, Android 11 (Psycho Weasel): One of the oldest androids, next to Axit, Kiiro has seen it all. Even as a human, he was wild and unstable, pushing Domo's limits with his expertise and patience, and even prompting the doctor to build a special suit for Kiiro; one that, with a push of a button, will restrain him if needed. The agonizing experiments as well as his imprisonment have driven Kiiro to madness, and he looks forward to the day he can rip the doctor in half for everything.

Psycho's name is Japanese for yellow, and his Android number is in reference to the first public asylum being opened in 1811.

Akka, Android 48 (Stupid Weasel): Even with all of his power, Akka is... Not the sharpest tool in the shed. But somehow, he still retained his big heart despite all the experiments. He will follow his brother and friends to the ends of the Earth, and had unfortunately only humbly followed what they did (though it didn't really help that it was drilled into his brain by Domo that he was only a tool for destruction). When they had a chance to live freely again, however, it was Akka who came to a good, normal life easiest, and the first to befriend Usagi and Gume despite their part in his and his team's defeat.

Stupid's name is a slight misspelling of the Japanese word for red, and his Android number is meant to be the one right after Smartass' as they are brothers.

Bonus! My OC's

Hanni (Poppy): As Usagi's cousin, Gume expected the woman to be as goofy and energetic as he was. He never would have expected a down to earth farmer to be related to Usagi and Uta. Hanni chose to live outside the city after some incident she doesn't like to talk about, and is much happier working on her rhubarb farm. At first, she was hesitant to learn how to fight and how to use her chi. However, when the Earth and her loved ones barely survived a massive threat, Hanni sought out Uta and Shoa to train under them, not wanting to just stand on the sidelines the next time help was needed. Even if she isn't the strongest human, her patience and kind heart shine through, especially when it came to a certain group of androids.

Poppy's name is meant to be a misspelling of the Japanese word for honey (I would have used flower or poppy, but I preferred how honey sounded).

Mura, Android 62 (Shiny Weasel): One of the last androids that Domo created. He put all of his perfected experience into Mura, making her a formidable foe in battle... Though he never found a way to reprogram her attitude and fierce independence, and that was part of his downfall. Being in the same boat as the others, Mura became close with all of them, especially Dori. When Hanni saved them and gave them a chance to live life as humans again, it was actually Mura that softened up to her first.

Shiny's name is the first half of the Japanese word for purple, murasaki. And her android number is a reference to when moonshine was illegalized in 1862.

Urufī (Moony Wolf): Originally, he was a brute of a martial artist. Snarling and pushing others around and seemingly holding onto some kind of anger in his heart. It wasn't until Gume humbled him in battle, and Hanni stood up to him on her cousins behalf, did Urufī really look inside himself and change his ways. After he became calm and caring, he and Hanni actually fell in love and lived together on her farm for some time. However, the two had decided it was best to remain friends for some unknown reason, and Urufī moved back into the city. Now working as a butcher, he and Hanni still cross paths at the market, and get along quite well. And he will always come to fight when his new friends are in danger.

Moony's name is the Japanese pronunciation/word for wolfy (I hope I spelled it right. Please correct me if I didn't.)

Fokushī (Henry Foxworth): A sly and conniving con artist, Fokushī plays with peoples hearts and trust like his life depends on it. It does become very helpful slipping away from enemies, but he's not a very strong man to begin with. And he knows it. When he met Hanni and used her kindness to get what he wanted from her before leaving, he had no idea that he would become the target of her new friends- nor would exoect a meek little thing like her to become so strong.

Henry's name is the Japanese pronunciation/word for foxy

Banī (Ben Cottontail): A city boy who is actually weaker than Fokushī, Banī seems to only focus on his life rather than the whole world around him, especially after he and Hanni split up and she left the city. Being one of the many humans killed and brought back to life, however, really scared him. He has no idea how it happened or what to do with this information, but he's become much more defensive. Even if anyone on this list could fold him like a lawn chair.

Ben's name is the Japanese pronunciation/word for bunny

Rati (Terry Ratt T.): One of the few empathetic scientists thar had worked at Clover Tech. He knew that everything Domo was doing was wrong, but was powerless to stop him. When the androids were still enemies, it was actually Rati who told everyone about the bomb and gave them the device to activate it, believing this to be more of a mercy kill for the androids- though was pleasently surprised to see Hanni wanted to give them a second chance. It took a long time for them to trust him, though once Rati proved he wanted nothing to do with Domo's experiments, he's now a trusted 'repairman' for the androids, including Axit. And has even become a close friend to Mura and Ao in particular.

Terry's name is the Japanese pronunciation/word for ratty.

This AU definitely needs some polishing if I'm gonna do more with this, but I hope you guys have fun reading this! ^^

May Akir Toriyama rest in peace. He left behind an unforgettable legacy.

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cryptid-killjoy · 1 year

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HC: Willem

The first thing Willem does before going back to Nola (as he only learns of the new name upon entrance when Delta gives them a welcome speech is get Figaro Valentine gifts from the outside a little worried after all Delta’s warnings about not getting out and how it’s changed of what they’ll have available to them. He’s not sure what they can loot, use, or ship in, or what kind of survivor population is there. So, he purchases Valentine chocolates Figaro before going in just in case.

He’d make Diana a box for Valentine’s Day. Nothing too fancy. Just a hinge box, but lined nicely, good for storing jewelry or her eyes and other doo dads.

He’d even get Hansel two new V-day lady pack of cards with hearts on them. It’s a bit of novelty now that’s he’s gotten him so many, but as a welcome home and Happy Valentines, nostalgia of their friendship, it just felt right. So to make it funny one had real ladies and the other had cartoon ladies like Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit hoping he’d get a kick out of it and a laugh.

He’ll also try to take notes from Valerie anything Diana might have mentioned in their dress up sessions to help inspire him for her since she had so much time with a real life woman, not a doll, no offense Figaro. Not that Diana and Valerie have the fashion sense but neither do Fig and Diana. So without Gep and the more official seamstress / tailor / fashion designer person of the house for the dolls he wanted to pick up on anything and everything that might have leaked in those girly time sessions she piqued interest in.

He will also write a very detailed letter detailing everything Scout and GoGo need to know about Parrish and his family. He really does not want them caught off guard with this guy so it will have a history of every doll and their personality and life history with the man including maintenance issues and tech problems, the best way to handle and approach, and even speak, when to in third person or directly to him, but knows they’ll have to get a feel for it when they meet them. (I’ll try to actually write this letter later in brief form but Willem’s would be overwhelmingly long like a flight manual) Scout will see on her desk after Willem leaves like what the fuck did I just get myself into?

Saying goodbye to Young Gep would have been the hardest. He’d make sure he had knew to make a copy of the manual not that he didn’t know his job. After a handshake he’d wish him fair winds forever and always until their return. Then he wouldn’t be able to stop him and just throw around a big ol’ hug because that’s Will.

Then the first thing Willem will do since they don’t enter through Funkytown is run to check on his favorite dog walking dog. The owner sadly had died with Horned King army and poor old McStinkeye was not very McGruff and very scared, hungry, and all alone when he was reunited with the pirate. It was even hard to identify the right home with all the structural changes but he found it. He obviously had to take McStinkeye McGruff back to Funkytown with them. But this will make it dawn on him that old Stinkers there can’t be the only abandoned pet after these deaths in this empty city. Some might not have lasted. It’s going to feel like a job for the Rescue Rangers. But they weren’t here right now. Feral is a big place for just him and Figaro to go combing through. Hell, he and Smalls would probably both realize it at the same time the moment they found this dog how many others there could be. He’s going to look at Smalls like damn, “We have a big job ahead of us.”

Then of course when he gets back to Funkytown he’ll be greeting every single doll individually, not one left unaccounted so happy to finally see all his favorite “people” in the whole word. Hansel back in his own walls is beautiful. Willem is ready for bloody V-day movie marathon on their own tv in their own living room where they belong with Slips eating his favorite order of pizza like it’s supposed to be. No offense honeymoon suite.

#willem head canon #head canon #gifts

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rivka-kopelman · 10 months

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Delivery Lemur Logbook : 14-A

AKA Enjoy What's Left of Your Pathetic Life

New Year's Eve, 3431

sleepy. sleeeeepy.

i think i'm throwing up. This is gross. what's going on

I was injected with.. something not good

Where am i?

My scalp is buzzing. My head is sooo heavy. I'm so tired I can't move. Can't stop the hot vomit running down my chin.

“Did you just,,, barf on me? are you trying to be ironic?”

Then my face really hurt. He punched my face. It feels awful. This is still a dream maybe. I try to tell him I'm going to leave, but all I can do is gargle. Legs are numb. Can't open my eyes. I hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. Wake up. Wake up.

“... Secret Service took back the watchtowers on L-80,” someone reported. “The upper aerodrome and north-68 are still held.”

“Tell Chain-Face and Golf-Ass to get up to L-81 and pour napalm down the lifts. Use it all,,, no point hoarding it now.”

“Yessir.”

Beep-be-beep

“Slurp's crew retook Gloria Street. He says he can press on to the palace if he gets air support.”

“Tell him I said sit and wait,,, don't give him any ships.”

“Right, yessir. It looks like the base at Vi Town was overrun by civilians. Rioters are swarming the ammo dump at camp-11. Gault is telling them where to go.”

“That's annoying,,, cut any fax lines out of Lugdunum we're not using. Make sure Dad knows. What's up with Bolo?”

“Blockade group says they're fucked, sir. Possum Patrol sees how thin we're stretched. Berg made a weak spot and they're nailing it. They're gonna break through.”

“Fuck it then,,, we held till today, that's all we had to do. Tell our guys to run. Conserve ships if they can.”

“...Yes - New transmission. Secret Service are getting into the Gold Dome over the old walkway.”

“Fuckers, okay,,, get over there now. Take Rake Jones and Betty. And call Leaf if you run out of guys.”

“Yessir!”

beep beep-beep ... then dialtone: duuuu

“Bubblegum,,, did you find that stealth pod we pinged an hour ago?”

“No dingus it's a stealth pod, I didn't find it.”

“Go look for it you dumb bitch,,,”

“I'm eating.”

“Eat later, Bubblegum,,, Fuck you, I'll kill you-”

“Man, ice cream cake, fuck you.”

“I'm-”

rrring rrring rrring

“Hang on,,, Hey, what do you need?”

“Hello son. It's time to take care of Madam Gault.” A familiar voice.

“Okay,,,” Beep-boop “Hey Bubblegum. That was Dad. Change of plan,,, We're gonna start Operation Burnt Popcorn. Tell Grass Stain to turn it on in,,,,,,, four minutes.”

*through a mouthful of cake* “Uh-huh, four minutes, oookay.”

duuuu

Cutbarf grabbed me. He found the spot on my face that was bleeding and pressed his thumbnail into it. I'm helpless. The pain is huge, it goes down into my cheekbone, I want to shake and squirm out of his grip but I'm too weak. So the pain goes on and on. Why does he want to hurt me? I'm. I'm just. I want to call out to Lopcorn for help but he's not gonna hear me. That's

“Hey dumbass,,, Can't let you out of my sight, so you're coming with me on a little job.” he said. “If you cause problems I'll take out your eyes,,, then I'll go to your mommy & daddy's house in Bobby-Town and cut their heads off and I'll put you all in the septic line. You can swim around in piss and shit and heads until you can't paddle anymore and you drown,,, Okay? Can you walk? Can you stand up?”

I can't. I squeak out a syllable. Cursing, Cutbarf slings me over his shoulder. I'm carried outside at a run, jounced and jostled. This truly hurts like hell.

My captor is dispensing commands over the phone. I open my eyes a crack and see gleaming pink and gold spires linked by innumerable abutments and bridges that twist and curve through hazy oblivion.

So I made it into Lugdunum while I was unconscious, okay

this is where i was trying to go

But i feel only terrible feelings, and i am sickened

- i wish none of this was real

Cutbarf ducks behind a baluster and drops me like a rock. A stampede of tuxedo'd elephants and rhinos rumbles past: The vaunted Secret Service.

I guess the SM is fighting the president's guards for control of the capital.

When they're gone, he carries me up spiral stairs onto a high walkway arching over the vast presidential city. He looks down at a fortified gateway where kids in pink uniforms and war-paint are attacking Gault's elite with flare guns and cutlery.

kshh

“Who's in the air by West-38 gate 20?”

bzzz

“SMVs Hellspit, Bloodtoilet, and Shitman II,” came the grainy reply.

“Bloodtoilet and Hellspit come shoot at the gatehouse but miss,,, let the old lady think we can't get in, or she'll run. Shitman II, fly over their AA and let them hit you, then back off.”

“Yessir!”

bzzz

Cutbarf kicked open air intake duct. In we went.

bzz

“Cutbarf to Noodle-Knife,,, hey.”

“Hey commander what's good”

“You guys chilling by the back door?”

“Yeah man”

“You doing what I told you to do?”

“Yeah. Nobody's going near it. We're all over the palace except there.”

“Hide your ships behind the upper pylon,,, stay out of sight but keep your reactors hot.”

“They'll see us if they scan shortwave.”

“Yes, they will,,, The trap's hidden just badly enough. She won't run.”

“Gotcha. We'll run red hot. Good luck.”

bzzz

Cutbarf comes to an abrupt halt and I puke again. He peers through a grate that casts thin bands of light across his pimply face.

“There's the hag,,,” whispered Cutbarf. He meant President Gault, who was surrounded by a phalanx of giant bodyguards in the room below.

I see the four-minute timer on his watch reach zero and turn red. I hear alarms going off.

“Report!” demanded a shrill voice.

“Radiation spike on Level 82, Madam President!”

“A bomb?”

“Could be – an unusual one. It's small. 1300 zW.”

“What is the z-wattage of the Possum Patrol's artificial hearts?” she demanded.

“Standby... Yes ma'am, that's in the same range as nuclear hearts.”

“They're here! They're here already,” she hissed. “Localize the spike. Immediately.”

“Checking, standby... Palace level. Section D-20.”

“Too close!”

“Get down there! Now!”

Loud commotion. Guns cocking and panicked whispers, running footsteps. It faded away.

“lmao,,,” muttered Cutbarf. It was quiet in the office below for a minute.

kshhh

“False alarm! False alarm! We're at the warehouse in D-20. The insurgents filled it wall-to-wall with microwave ovens and turned them all on at once to trip our radiation safeties.”

“Get back into position as soon as possible, the-”

Cutbarf dropped through the vent into the president's undefended office.

Gault's lips peeled back in a snarl. Her fury made her hideous and frightening. Her voice was very flat.

“You, boy?

“Me.”

“Fine work. Tell Franz I'll see him in hell. And you.”

“lol looking forward to it,” said Cutbarf. He sliced her head off, and looked up at me in the ceiling. “I can't reach,,, help me up.”

I can kind of wiggle around now so I try to reach down but i'm slow and frail and uncoordinated.

He pulled a chair over instead and was able to hop in from that. He slapped me.

“Useless,,, come on. You oughtta be able to walk by now. Go.”

Somehow I start moving. Cutbarf leads me through the tubes back outside.

Bzz

“Got her,” he said into the phone.

“Good. Thank-you, Commander. Now please bring me the Delivery Lemur.”

“On our way.”

Bzz

“Okay Lemur,,, Back to the base,” Cutbarf announced. I flinched when he reached for my arm with his red hand and I fell down. He moved closer and I gasped and scuttled back until I bumped into a wall. He laughed. “Come on. If you think I'm bad, wait till you meet Dad,,, He's the world's worst.”

I have met him.. .

He dialed something on his phone again. “Hey I want my ship.”

A minute later, SMV Barfbag emerged from the mist and took us aboard.

“Department of Defense,” he told the pilot. When the floor started moving I got dizzy and fainted.

My mental clarity was diminished for a time.

I started to come to my senses in an elevator.

Ding ... ding ... ding ... up we go. Or down?

Can't tell .

No idea.

My head hurts but I'm not as impaired as I was.

Cutbarf's got me by the scruff of the neck.

This demon. He killed Lopcorn. And the President.

He's taking me deep into the

Wherever. It's bad. This is very bad I don't want to , uh , uh

- I go away inside, like I do.

tum te tum .

no. wait it's not going to work .. I'm not going to wake up back home . I have no voice and no control. where is he taking me ? I don't want to go. um. Is this my last day living?

when this elevator stops moving, my life is over, isn't it? hes taking me down here to kill me. It's . fuck. hes gonna kill me. I'm going to die.

"help me" I gasp.

“No," Cutbarf replied.

Didn't mean you. Miss Menosky can you hear me? please help me. I am in trouble. please help me right now. Please hear me. mocha mocha mocha mo

"yes ~ hi and hello ~ Sorry, I was dreaming! Dreaaaaming ~ Oh! Goodness you're terrified ~ show me what's wrong?"

"This human's bad. He's taking me somewhere, and I'm really really afraid. They're hurting me. I think I'm going to get murdered. can you please do something.”

"Okay!"

Cutbarf hit the floor, limp as an empty bag.

"He wanted to bring you to someone. Oh Deliveremur ~ this boy is very troubled. I'm sorry he put you through all this ~ The normies never showed him any kindness ~ never ever. I'm going to take away his pain."

Cutbarf began to sob like a baby. Snot rolled out of his nose. He curled into a ball. Oh wow .

“He's feeling love for the first time ~ you should pity him, deliveremur,” Mocha thought. “Don't be afraid. His cruelty is all gone.”

Just like that?

The adrenaline in my bloodstream is so thick I'm not able to calm down but she helps me. All the sharp edges of my feelings are bevelled and made soft. Her sweet silly smile is shining in the centre of my heart. The horrible wet black curtains of certain doom are parted and I know my future is warm and full of everything I like. Everything good.

“You're okay ~ Everything will be fine. I've got you.”

“Yes. Thank-you.”

“Everything's okay now.”

“You saved my life. You seriously..” My empty belly is heaving. I cough and spit. “Thank-you. I dunno what I would have done.”

I notice I'm leaning on the wall. I slide down and sit on the floor of the elevator across from Cutbarf. He's sobbing and hugging himself tight, rocking back and forth.

“You always have me, Lemur ~ no problemo!”

“I'm very appreciative. Really, and. I owe you. What's up, what are you doing today?”

“Ummm! I'm up in orbit today ~ I've got the conservatory to myself. Needed some space, ya know ~ but I want to do a new podcast soon. Hey, you should be my..................”

ding

“Huh?”

“if you want ~ come and............”

ding

The warm feeling under my skull is fading. Our mingled mind(s) are peeling apart. It's like forgetting your first language, or losing a limb. “Mocha? What's happening?”

“Lemur ~ Where are.............”

“I can barely feel you. Please, please, please,”

“Lemur? Lemur ~ Hello...................”

“Miss Menosky! Hi hi hi! Hey! Mocha? I can't --”

“It's like ~ You're in a...........................................................”

ding

The elevator doors opened.

I see a dark room. Can't fathom if it's big or small. There's a pillow & blanket fort dead ahead.

I try to get the elevator to take me back up but you need a code.

“What are you waiting for?” someone says.

That's in my ears, not in my mind.

I trip over my own tail as I stumble ahead. The doors close behind me. I duck inside the pillow fort.

A little human is playing a plastic tic-tac-toe game with Franz Welker. He's got two babies snoozing in the pockets of his too-big suit jacket.

“It's good to see you again. Come in, make yourself comfortable. Plum, this is Delivery Lemur,” he said.

The kid gave me a perfunctory wave without taking her eyes off the game.

“Hi,” I say. I sit. It smells like chip crumbs and pee. Plum drops an X on the board. Welker puts his O in the corner so she can make three in a row. Gracefully, the omnipotent warlord lets her win. She tried not to smile, but did.

The sloth bowed his shaggy head. “You win again.”

“Do you surrender?”

“Not today,” he laughed. “Not tomorrow. Let me try it again.”

She pursed her lips so as not to grin too broadly, clearing the board and separating the plastic X&O blocks into neat stacks.

“It's getting late,” said Franz, looking at his watch. “Would anyone like a snack?”

“Yes please,” said Plum.

“Yes please,” I echo.

I mean why not

Franz procured a loaf of bread and two jars containing peanut butter and red jam. He made two sandwiches with meticulous care, using a silicon spatula to spread the pb and j in perfect evenness.

He gave the first sandwich to Plum. She burrowed waist-deep in a pile of cushions and started munching noisily. He tucked a napkin under her chin. She had jam on her face already.

Welker passes me a sandwich. His claws are unkempt, gnarled, yellowed, notched, and dirty. And they're long – even for a sloth. They look disgusting.

“Thanks.”

As it happens, the sandwich is delicious. I eat the crusts only. It's the best, most reliable part. I'm starting to feel less impaired.

I think about Lopcorn. I remember how he looked falling down. Swallowed by that nothingness. No one will ever pull his remains up.

I chew another bite of jammy crust. The sloth's looking at me.

If only he was never born.

I cry as I eat because I won't get to fly around with Lopcorn after I escape.

“Plum, it's more polite to chew with your mouth closed,” Welker said. With a sigh and rolling eyes she obeyed.

I look at Welker's old face and his careless hygiene. I look at his company of well-fed misfits. Plum goes back to chewing with her mouth open and Franz wipes jam off her chin.

There's no reason to keep me alive.

He's affecting perfect harmlessness. I guess when you have the power to do absolutely anything, you don't care about flaunting it in front of Delivery Lemurs.

“You must be missing your companion,” he said. He started shaking his head. “Lopcorn used to live here, you know. I thought he was very special.”

“Me too dude.”

“Ah...” He went quiet for a bit.

Chewing this crust, I start to think about how different I'd feel if my friends were here. What they'd say and do if we were all together.

Under these circumstances, I can't quite imagine it. I'll be getting through this night on my own.

“I'm glad we got to meet again,” Franz said.

“Mmhm.”

“Have carried out the delivery mission I gave you?”

“Sort of. It was a trap, wasn't it?”

He smiled apologetically. “Yes. I am sorry about that. But since you're here, will you tell me what happened between Private Lopcorn and the mutant Rudler Stackland?”

“They had a fight, but nothing came of it. They figured out it, uh, was a trick.”

“So they did. I regret the contrivance. But I do wish I could have seen Mr. Stackland in action.”

“It was gross. And really dangerous.”

“I have a scientific interest in the Zag-IX survivors,” he explained. “What is the nature of R. Stackland's mutation?”

One of his babies stirred. He patted its deformed cranium, crowned with swollen white veins.

“I couldn't really tell.”

Mocha? Mocha? Can you please hear me? I'd like your help again, I really don't want to talk to this guy. Please? Hello? Hello? Aren't you there?

“I see,” he muttered, shaking his head. “We don't need to discuss it tonight. But I would appreciate hearing some more about what happened, in your own time.”

Can't handle his eye contact so I look down. That's even worse somehow, so I look at him again. His broad-set eyes are those of a primeval predator. He's a bottomless ocean of patience. He doesn't care how long it takes for me to fold. I flinch from the intense discomfort of the whole situation. It's like staring down a dinosaur fossil and you feel its breath.

“I don't want to talk about that, or anything really.”

“Obviously I can't force you,” he said. “I have a difficult job, Delivery Lemur. I'm responsible for protecting everyone. You have no idea of the danger we're in. I wanted to bring the Zag-IX survivors into the Space Military. One mutant can do more than a thousand of my soldiers. Our force has to be as robust as possible.”

“But why? The aliens are a hoax. You made it all up. Once you convinced President Gault, nobody could stop you.”

“Yes,” Franz nodded. “Before you were born, in the Shark War, I carried Jen Gault out of a shell crater under fire. Her squad left her for dead. I found her quite by accident. I got her home. She owed her life to me. I was trusted; That trust represented an opportunity I could not ignore. I knew how high she would rise. After the Floom Expedition, I showed her my brain-scans and said the lesions were marks of alien torture. I told her horror stories about an all-powerful civilization in deep space. What must we do, what must we do...”

“What do you get out of doing this?” I ask. “Building the Space Beams wasted so many resources that all Eight Galaxies fell into poverty.”

“That's not his fault,” snapped Plum. “Everyone thinks Poppy's a bad person but they're wrong. You'll see. And then you'll feel so silly, once you know. The Space Beams are saving us.”

“Right you are, little lady,” said Franz. “Plum is an A+ student, Delivery Lemur. You should listen to her.”

“If there's a good reason, why did you need to make up something like-”

Welker was looking at his watch and his eyes widened a degree. “It is nearly time. You won't want the miss the New Year's countdown. You're free to go. Commander Cutbarf will take you home.”

He typed something on his phone.

Ding

Beyond the cotton-polyester walls of the little fort, I heard the elevator open. 10 seconds passed.

Franz Welker looked over my shoulder.

“Cutbarf? Son?”

There was no answer. Franz threw the flap aside and went out. He saw the prostrate babbling Cutbarf on the floor, with tears streaming from his eyes.

Welker twitched, staring uncomprehendingly at the boy.

“What's...” he trailed off. When I stood up, Welker retreated a step. He was rigid with dread.

“What did you do?” he rasped.

I think for a second.

Ah yes. It must seem pretty weird to him that a delivery lemur could get in an elevator with Cutbarf and leave him in such a state. Jeez, how the heck can I explain this?

“Just listen,” I say, getting up. A thin metal object falls out of my pocket and clatters to the floor. A shining steel salad fork. The one Rølvag gave me. Oh I still had that.

Welker's eyes fix on it. His posture changes. The tension in his shoulders makes him quiver slightly.

“Plum, grab that before he puts it in your throat!” he barks. She nabs the salad fork and hops up to hide behind Franz.

He spreads his claws like a protective shield over the deformed human infants in his jacket. He's so scared he looks like he's gonna lose his mind. No one ever looked at me like this before.

“What are you?” he asked, his voice paper-thin.

This I know.

“I'm Delivery Lemur (deliveremur).”

“An assassin lemur? Where were you born?”

“I'm a local. Born & raised down in Bobby Town.”

He took a gun off his belt and pointed it between my eyes. “Tell me what you are.”

I pee. Someone save me?

Mocha hear me please?

. . .

She can't hear me. I'm alone.

“What are you?” Welker demanded again. He's really freaky and 100% insane. Capable of anything. I have no doubt that he'll murder me.

“I'm- I'm- a regular lemur, what do you want?”

“You're not. You can't be a Psy...What did you do to Cutbarf? ”

“I didn't do anything, it wasn't me. It was a podcaster.”

He looked like he was suppressing a panic attack. Welker pulled the veiny babies up to his chest like they were his final shield. He pointed his gun at my heart.

“You can't be here... I can't have you in here...”

He pulled the trigger.

A white blur was in the corner of my eye. A shape appeared before me faster than the echoing pop of the pistol. Displaced air blew apart the pillow fort. Lopcorn caught the bullet. He swept off Welker's hands and feet with an imperceptible motion and slammed him down head-first.

“रRग痛у疼טឈឺיקчть,” Welker bubbled, his four red stumps spraying gore.

Plum ran to him with wide eyes. “Poppy! Poppy!”

I was looking at Lopcorn. He watched the maimed defense minister until he was satisfied that he was no longer a threat, then he gave me the once-over.

“You okay?”

“Are you real?” I asked him.

“Yeah, you?”

“As far as I know.”

He kissed my mouth. I kissed him back as hard as I could, for everything my little life is worth. I really did.

“How are you here?”

“Your friend Stackland was lurking around in one of his stealth pods. Saw me falling and caught me in a web of his fat. I went through Lugdunum from the bottom, as planned.”

“ αίडाμα muកាиរចាប់čeболWьní, त,n” Franz was gasping.

“4+4 Poppy! You can do it! 4+4!” Plum cried, cradling him.

“ж¿ ..o..cho..” the sloth spluttered.

“10+10! Try 10+10, what's that Poppy?”

He shrieked like he was being boiled. “πό想νοςčč伤ččč베다”

Who does that remind me of?

“Try again! Come on now! What's 10+10!”

“Tw..боле��벌 twe!” he shook his head back and forth. “Th.. Twenty. Twenty. Plum?”

She hugged him tighter than ever. “Poppy! You're hurt. What do I do?”

“Take Natasha,” he wheezed. Plum extracted one of the infants.

“Run and wake up Milo right away.”

“Yes! Yes sir!”

She scampered off.

“Call whoever you want,” said Lopcorn. “You're done, Mr. Welker. Pa. This is a citizen's arrest.”

“I am surprised that you would saddle yourself with the karma of such a decision. I did not think you would get over your cold feet,” Franz spoke clearly. He had quashed his strange outburst, and gave no visible sign that he was in pain, despite his ghastly injuries. “You've grown. I congratulate you.”

“Thanks. Now you want to tell me it's an act of self-destruction?”

“I have nothing to teach you, Lopcorn. You've gone your own way. You are your own man now. If you were one of us, you'd know: Our victory was sealed six years ago. There's nothing you can accomplish here. You're going to die a meaningless death.”

A hatch opened in the floor and Plum came back in with a big rooster. Baby Natasha was strapped into a little saddle on its back.

“Good morning, my friend,” said Franz.

Plum put on a big pair of earmuffs. She put another pair on Franz and put baby-sized earmuffs on the two babies.

This rooster was of the Jersey Giant breed. He's as haggard and rumpled as one lightning-struck. His comb was tall and bright red. His blank, baggy eyes were rhythmically swelling and contracting.

“Is this Milo?” Lopcorn asked.

“Ba-Kaw!”

The sky came in. Milo's voice knocked half the building off, and the hundred or so floors above us exploded. Then Milo looked right at me and opened his beak. Lopcorn grabbed me and jumped. We sailed a mile through the air and landed in another tower. Right away another soundwave shattered it to tiny bits, every tile and nail and floorboard undone. He jumped with me again.

“Ba-Kaw!”

My eardrums feel like hot potatoes. The entire city block violently disintegrated under us. Huge chunks of Lugdunum are breaking off and falling into the fog. We retreat and retreat.

“Looks like Welker found a mutant for himself after all.”

“Yes,” I agree. “Let's run away.”

“I'm gonna go kill them somehow,” Lopcorn decided. “Run somewhere and hide. I'll find you.”

“Run and hide with me.”

“Not yet,” he said.

“But. We can just get away.”

“I'm-”

The distant echoing cry of a baby was suddenly close. The thing was right there, with its wailing young rider thrashing in the saddle.

“Ba-Kaw!”

Lopcorn tackled me off the roof a millisecond before the whole structure and the six behind it blew up.

We landed in a crowded intersection where Secret Service rhinos were brawling with the soldiers. They noticed us but before they could even awkwardly pause, Milo erased the street and everything in it with a single breath.

Lopcorn took me under his arm and we ricocheted through the twisted girders and toppled walls. I'm not tough enough for this kind of thing.

“Hey! Slow down!”

Lopcorn doesn't react to my voice. Blood is streaming out of his ears. He looks over when I start waving my arms.

“Oh. I'm deaf,” he said. A statement of fact.

He's been in front of me for all of this, taking the clangor face-first.

“You need a doctor, come on, we'll find somebody.”

“Can't hear you.”

I realize he's woozy and off balance. Then Milo caught up.

“Ba-”

The cracks in the road were distended by a mesh of red veins that uncoiled in the shape of a gum-line, sprouting yellow teeth. Milo was eaten by a giant mouth. There came a muffled “Ba-kaw!”

The jaws were sundered and a tide of blood washed us away. The steaming gore congealed instantly into a trillion long-nailed fingers that drove at Milo from all directions.

“Ba-kaw! Ba-kaw!”

The shockwaves of his voice atomized everything. The broken fingers bubbled and oozed and morphed back into the human figure of Rudler Stackland.

“Ah, hi guys, what is with this chicken?”

“Whaat?” cried Lopcorn.

“He's gone deaf,” I explain.

“Oh... That's not good,” Stackland muttered, wincing. “I don't know how to fight a guy like this. He has mutated vocal cords, that's certain.”

“What do we do?” I ask Lopcorn.

“Whaat? Are you talking about killing the rooster?” he yells.

I nod. “We need a plan! Plan!”

“Rip his head off,” Lopcorn told Stackland. “Just keep trying until we get it.”

“That's – That's the strategy?”

“Can't hear you! I'm going to attack! Help or don't!”

He was off like a shot. Stackland grew a hundred legs and sprang after him.

“Ba-kaw! Ba-kaw! Ba-kaw!”

Even their combined effort was no good. Milo's deadly voice repulsed them over and over.

The air is dust and death and chaos. The whole city was being destroyed. Many had fled but no organized evacuation had begun. A writhing ball of fingers and toes and hair rolled bolder-like through the endless avenues snaking between the old gold skyscrapers. Stackland picked up tremendous velocity (it is dizzying to watch) and aimed his rush at the rooster. He couldn't connect. Milo opened his beak and his cry knocked down buildings like dominos and scattered bloody chunks of Stackland for miles around.

While Milo looked left, Lopcorn appeared at his right like a little cannonball. But it was too easy for Milo to simply turn his head; Lop retreated before the "Ba-Kaw!" carved another canyon through the cityscape. Milo waddled jauntily through the wreckage. Twinkling glass shards fell like snow around him from two buildings that had collapsed against each other, stuck like an A-frame. The sight is awe-inspiring.

Stackland's stomach unleashed a fuming fountain of gastric acid but it was was blown back. He gushed high curtains of blood to obscure Milo's sight, then he charged in from one side and Lopcorn from the other. It was enough to make him swivel and shout twice, but they still couldn't touch him. Milo stepped right up to Stackland and said ba-kaw and burst him. A grotesque profusion of guts and globs and sinew were sprinkled all over the the plaza. Lopcorn ran rings around him, changing directions suddenly and leaping and diving at random. It would only take an instant to close the distance and kill him, but there was no safe way to approach.

I'm so useless sitting up here. Can I figure something out... Is there some classic weakness that all roosters have? I don't know much about roosters.

There must be something, I'll look it up.

As soon as I connect to the internet, all I see is shelter-in-place alerts: the Bolo blockade has been breached, and Possum Patrol has entered the system.

The Space Military is in complete disarray. Tens of thousands of Possum Patrol modems are connecting to Cloudout's federal wifi-sphere and they're spamming every website and fax provider with a text file. I might as well see what it says.

hear the truth, tell the truth

know it,

tell everybody

hark! we are peaceful

This is the yarn of Forefather Grak:

this is the darkest archive of misery and torment in the whole history of the world

franz was made to eat it. and eat it he did

we possums were there , we've told and retold it . we were there

this is the truth

aboard the Callier long ago

with the preachers and the scholars and the stern stalwart leader, enlightened Franz with his dreams and principals, Franz the veteran and scientist and artist and friend to all. We agreed he was the one who should stand to the fore and meet the aliens

at the end of the thirteen year journey to the Floom, there was no kaleidoscopic citadel of higher intelligence, no hive or mind nor hivemind. there was a dim little bubble of dark matter that spun clockwise

and Psy Brigade, who were aboard, were bored , and they simmered and they ground their teeth, because they were really all Drifters who pedalled pleasure and pain;

they ate the memories of the traumatized, if they could pay

always carrying the hurt, always holding it, always feeling it.

They are really wretches

the Callier mission seemed a simpler payday so off they go

but 13 years was too long to wait. and to reach a pointless destination: it was too wretched.

psy brigade mutinied and they killed the crew

slowly they did it

they poured out their bank of madness and suffering

The Catfish Pope, a gentle fellow, reached his escape pod thanks to the sacrifice of our kin

on the bridge,

I, Grak, Boss of the Possums, tried to protect Franz but they broke my will

Franz fought them the hardest

so they saved him for last

while i was going mad I saw him crawling

they made a river of pain from brain to brain to brain. Curse them forever!

It was their long-awaited unburdening

they made him their final reservoir

Hark! Drifters can only forget things by making someone else remember it.

they put their full hoard in his mind, and 36 lifetimes was the sum

he didn't die. His spirit held. I, Grak, saw him moving. he shook like a leaf and wriggled like an insect. inch by inch he was crawling

he was going to the helm

he kept his wet eyes on it, forward and forward, forward, onward

as he bore the unbearable grief and horror and insanity, for life after life, every tragedy, every moment of it

he slithered for an hour or a thousand years across the bridge and reached the control panel

he vented the oxygen from the crew quarters and killed them all

then he steered the Callier into the dark matter

there are no aliens in the flume

[the end]

That's weird! Mr. Welker went through something so messed up?

I can't imagine what kind of suffering could drive someone to choose emptiness and pawn their memories. How does it feel to experience 36 lifetimes of that?

It reminds me of Drywowl, who was so traumatized by drifters that she lost her sense of self. She cried like a faucet all day long. Nothing would calm her down, but she liked watching us play board games. Something about the dice or the straight lines or the silly simplicity.

But Drywowl's fine now – Miss Menosky fixed her up in a second. If only she had been on the Callier.

A tremor knocks me off my feet and out of my reverie. I find myself in the midst of the corpses and the groaning near-dead and, slumped bleeders caked with the grey powder of broken concrete or white plaster. The crackling din of the battle and Milo's haunting cock-crows split the ears. Geese and goats and salamanders and all sorts run to and fro, trying to escape both upwards and down, or tucking themselves into hiding spots. They dig through the rubble for buried friends. Then they hear the rooster again, and they're too close this time, and they explosively die.

I call out to her. I shut my eyes and try to go away, to recede. I think her name, I think it over and over and over.

“deliveremur ~ what's going on? are you safe there?”

I'm surrounded by dead bodies i'm trying not to look at them.

She has me and she takes care of me now

~Shhhhh

i'm relieved and i'm okay. I am loved

Miss Menosky! I can feel her/you. What happened in the elevator? How did we get disconnected?

It was so strange ~ it was like your mind was being blotted out and I couldn't find you. All folks everywhere are in such a panic today! I was ~ getting very very concerned!

I though, can you do me an emergency favor ?

yes ~ yes?

There's a rooster here destroying the city. Can you get in his head and make him fall asleep like you did with Cutbarf?

...What rooster? I'm not feeling any rooster around you.

Use my eyes and you'll see it. I'm a mile or two away. Hes down in the square.

That ~ is ~ very ~ strange. I see what you're seeing ~ but I can't feel it! Is that rooster a living thing? With a brain?

he must be, right?

I glimpsed the human on Milo's back and sensed/shared Mocha's revelation. it's deformed.

those pale, thickened cranial veins.

That little baby has sindla syndrome ~ I'm allergic, all psys are. I can't go in the rooster's mind with that sick girl right there ~ she's like a black cloud around him.

How perfectly inconvenient. What are the odds of that?

The battle was not going well. Stackland was trying to amalgamate enough little pieces of himself to form a viable body but Milo spread him like paste thinner and thinner until he covered the city like a spilled smoothie. Lop looks like a buzzing fly, a petty annoyance to the invincible rooster.

Jeez can we really not win with the greatest psy plus Lop and Stackland?

Mocha thinks Aren't you forgetting someone? She means me.

Yes. I must save everybody.

Okay.... what's the logical thing?

I think and think. how to stop a rooster. or just his voice. how to stop the sound. maybe if we were underwater... but that would take a whole ocean. hmm. Sonic vibrations cant go through antimatter, but I don't have any.

Vibration, resonation...

What if I could get a second mutant rooster and get them to say ba-kaw backwards? It would make an inverted sound-wave, like noise cancelling headphones. And then punch him right in the face!

ah that wont work.. what can I do, I've got nothing to work with. I got lots of floss. can we defeat Milo with dental floss?

Can we? Nah that's the stupidest thing yet, it's not like he's

oh we can totally win with floss.

I text lopcorn my idea.

he hides to type an answer and there's a lull in the cacophony.

[lol that would take like a thousand miles of floss]

[I have &30,000,000R worth of floss right on my phone]

[you do. this is the stupidest thing I ever heard but okay. text stackland.]

A moment later he hops up to my perch. I give him my phone. He nods and he's off again.

Though spread as thin as varnish across half of Lugdunum, Stackland's body is still functional. He starts to foam, excreting bubbly saliva.

Lopcorn comes in low, zigzagging through the froth. Milo sees him. Lop gets near, fakes left and right and (dropping something) left again then jumps up. Milo screams at the air but Lop sailed over him.

“Ba-Kaw!”

This one's bad. The city has taken so many of these that a whole quarter of the superstructure is shaken loose. Lugdunum starts to tilt.

A tiny hand, pink and boneless, sprouts from Stackland's paste on Milo's left and feebly reaches for him. Milo blasts it – Lop dives in from the opposite side. Milo steps back and twists his neck, locking his eyes on the incoming hare and blows him away. Again, Stackland musters a tiny attack from the left, just a single finger – mercilessly answered with a full-power sonic-boom. Keenly he anticipates Lopcorn's accompanying attack and repositions himself, but it didn't come. Lop was long gone.

Milo had stepped backwards, into the zigzag trail Lopcorn had made through the spit bubbles.

A dental floss snare tightened around his foot.

Two miles away, Lopcorn held the other end of the trap: my phone. He ran circles around Milo who screamed and screamed, but Lop was out of range. He looped him twice and thrice. The rooster's legs were caught. He tried to shimmy out, keeping his eyes locked on Lopcorn.

Since all the buildings had been flattened, he had a clear field. I've never seen Lop run this hard. Poor guy's been fighting all night. Around and around and around – He's wrapping Milo up like a mummy, spooling out my whole investment.

“Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw!”

Milo's desperate blitz is apocalyptic. But he can't hit Lopcorn. Struggling against his bonds, he starts to lose balance. Finally, he tries to get his beak under the floss to gnaw himself out.

With the threat of reprisal on pause, Lopcorn pulled the line taut and dashed faster than ever. The rooster was bound from hackle to spur. He rolled and bucked wildly.

“Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw Ba-Kaw!”

He hooked his lower jaw in the tight strands and chomped and tugged and screamed.

Lopcorn circled closer and closer.

Milo twisted and shook with visible distress. Baby Natasha was lurching uncontrollably in the saddle and her earmuffs fell off.

“Ba-Kaw!”

The floss snapped – he freed himself. Natasha's head exploded. Lopcorn had launched himself straight at Milo and couldn't change course. The monster took a deep breath. He opened his baneful throat.

Mocha, right now!

Milo sat down placidly. Lopcorn's kick got him in the sternum, fatally caving it in and splattering him. Nothing was left but a dark smear and a puff of feathers.

Ahh it was probably not necessary to kill him. With just an extra minute I could have explained about...

Lopcorn came and got me.

“That was pure luck. He must have run out of steam at the last second.”

Back at street level, I knocked on Stackland like he was a door (what else can I do) and a little ear formed in the gory ooze.

“Hey, it's Delivery Lemur (deliveremur). Are you okay?”

A mouth forms next to the ear.

“I'll be fine... I need... a bit...”

“Okay. Yeah have a lie-down. Nice work with all the spit. And all the other stuff.”

“..thanks..”

Lopcorn leaned down over the little ear.

“Nice fight. You did good.”

Stackland made a thumb and gave a thumbs-up.

We went back to the half-wrecked department of defense. Franz had not been moved. Plum was tending to his four stumps. She squealed when she saw us.

“Poppy, they're back.”

The sloth looked up at the sky rather than at us. He wheezed hoarsely in and out for a tedious moment before he spoke.

“Oh, you're monstrous. You killed him,” he groaned, turning away in revulsion. “Milo had an important role in the new world. The next few years are going to be much more difficult. I wish you hadn't killed him. That was monstrous of you.”

“What did you do?” demanded Plum. She rose, her eyes streaming. She started pummelling Lopcorn ineffectually. He ignored her.

“Your demon chicken blew out my eardrums, so I didn't hear anything you just said,” he said. “And I wouldn't listen if I could.”

“Yes, yes. Come here, Plum. Stop that please.” He held his stumps up in token of surrender.

Plum gave Lopcorn one more jab and a mean look, and sat back by Welker's side in a huff. His blaring max-volume phone showed Berg Lazerson and Anna Siong broadcasting from the president's office. The live overlay showed Possum Patrol ships overrunning the Cloudout armada and dismantling the Space Beams. Lopcorn broke the phone under his foot as he hoisted the mangled handless footless sloth.

“We're gonna find a judge for you to confess to, then I'm giving you to Berg,” he announced, and started walking toward the center of the city. Plum followed with a sullen frown, carrying the other baby. “You can explain to the world why you blockaded Bolo, and made doomsday weapons, and unleashed a mutant on Lugdunum. None of it worked, by the way. Whatever pointless secrets you were trying to protect about the psys on the Callier are all out in the open.”

I want to talk to him about that. I'll interject, uh...

“I will make a thorough confession. The need for secrecy has passed,” Welker said. “You can lock me up, or behead me. Everything I've done has been to preserve our civilization from torture and extermination. I saved the world.”

If not from aliens, then...

“You means the psys?” I ask. “I think I understand now. Mr. Welker, I know someone who can fix you. I know you were tortured by Drifters and you're suffering constantly.”

“Delivermur?” Lopcorn prompted. “What are you two talking about?”

I hold up a finger. “Just a sec. Mr. Welker, you're wrong about the psys if you think they want to hurt us. They're really nice.”

“Your opinion is meaningless. You're fortunate, lemur, or whatever you are. You have never been felt pain. True suffering will never touch you. You are so fortunate that you will never understand.”

Maybe so; I'm still trying to compute what he meant about saving the world. I have to think for a moment.

“What was in the dark matter anomaly? Were you firing the Space Beams at for six years?”

“A wormhole.”

His watch beeped [11:59 PM] and started a countdown.

“A – huh? A wormhole to where?”

“Its terminus is just outside Galaxy 2.”

Galaxy 2...? That explains the 'impossible' timeline of the Callier's return.

Lopcorn stops walking

“All that continuous shooting...?”

“Yes. Perfectly measured, and angled, and timed,” Welker said. “In a few seconds seconds, the gravitic drift of the Sheol nebula will reveal the far side of the wormhole, and what I've done will be apparent, but it's too late to stop it and too late to flee. At the same instant, six years worth of bombardment will reach the local side of the wormhole and strike every inhabited planet in the Psy Sanctuary.”

“But wait, just wait,” I say. “You don't need to get revenge, I know someone who can take your pain away. I swear. It's no problem. It'll be like it never happened. You can be yourself again.”

It was midnight.

Beedeebeebeep-Beedeebeebeep-Beedeebeebeep-Beedeebeebeep

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clemsfilmdiary · 2 years

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Betty Boop’s Life Guard (1934, Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky)

Betty Boop #30

5/10/22

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gypsyastronaut · 5 years

Photo

#Betty Boop #Betty Boop's Life Guard #drowning #gif #1934 #1930s #Fleischer Studios #wave #ocean #drown #struggle

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bearicorn · 7 years

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Betty Boop ’s Life Guard

#his name is freddy and i love #him #this explains so much #bc of my #uh #size kink #betty boop #me tbh #betty boop's life guard #betty and Freddy

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gameraboy2 · 2 years

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Betty Boop's Life Guard (1934)

#my gif #Betty Boop's Life Guard #1934 #1930s #gif #gifs #vintage #animation #cartoons #film #movie #octopus #dancing

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allthingsfern · 3 years

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Finally took some pictures, as life goes on

On Saturday, 01-16-21, a little after 2:30 pm, I happened to see the title of an article about how US state capitol buildings were being protected by temporary fences and other barriers and by police and military forces in case of armed terrorist attacks by US white supremacist terrorists and other right wing extremists, attacks against US democracy similar to the insurgency at the US Capitol on 01-06-21.

Davis, CA, where I live, is a small, liberal, middle class college town that is about 12 miles from Sacramento, the state capital city of California. The California State Capitol building is about 15 miles from Davis. Every so often I rent a car 9or sometimes take the train) to go and take photos around there, plus there are great restaurants in Sacramento, close to the capitol building, and even Mike’s Camera, where I bought my 2 Sonys and where I buy most of my camera gear, is close to the capitol.

Anyway, I rented a car and drove to the capitol, getting there at around 3:30 pm. It was mostly deserted, except for small groups of soldiers and/or police officers and the usual joggers, tourists taking smartphone photos of the scene and selfies, residents of the area walking their dogs. Oh, and a surprise bunch of folks I will talk about later. And there were police and military vehicles.

The whole scene, for me, was disturbing, because it took me back to post-1959 Havana and the military presence visible throughout because of ongoing contra-Castro sabotage and the fear, starting in mid to late 1960, of a US led invasion. Many regular citizens were often dressed in military uniforms while they did volunteer security checks and stood watch, prepared for any attacks. My dad, who supported the new regime until April 16, 1961, the day Castro declared his nascent administration “comunista y socialista,” coincidentally the day before the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Both my parents supported the Castro government until that day.

I also recall seeing anti-aircraft guns along El Malecon, Havana’s renowned “broad esplanade, roadway, and seawall that stretches for 8 km along the coast in Havana, Cuba, from the mouth of Havana Harbor in Old Havana, along the north side of the Centro Habana neighborhood and the Vedado neighborhood, ending at the mouth of the Almendares River.“ (Source) And after the “French freighter La Coubre exploded in the harbour of Havana, Cuba, on 4 March 1960,” I recall my parents taking us on a small wooden water taxi to see what was left. BTW, the explosion occurred “while it was unloading 76 tons of grenades and munitions. Casualties may have been as high as 100, and many more were injured. Fidel Castro charged it was an act of sabotage on the part of the United States, which denied any involvement.” (Source) 1960 and 1961 was a period of constant fear, every so often hearing explosions at a distance, seeing the armed presence of military alertness, all the while having to hide the fact that my sister and I were leaving the country; my parents and newborn sister were able to get out in 1962. And then, once in the US, there was the 8 months of separation, the total disavowal by our pro-Castro family in Cuba, the fear that my parents and baby sister might not be allowed to leave, and soon after my parents and sister arrived, there came the October Missile Crisis.

On Saturday 01-16-21, all of that kept popping up, physically making me hyper aware, stirring up my little Cuban refugee anxieties and my childhood struggle to make sense out of what made no sense. Yet, that all my past pain and confusion and fear also grounded me in a faith of knowing I was going to be okay, the small groups of soldiers and/or police officers and the usual joggers, tourists taking smartphone photos of the scene and selfies, residents of the area walking their dogs were all going to be okay, the whole thing, the whole country, all of us were going to be okay.

So, I walked around. I asked the first small group of soldiers I saw if it was okay to take pictures of them and the surrounding area and they said it was okay, that I was only the second person to ask, which they appreciated, but most people just took pictures or video of whatever. They were very polite and seemed relieved to have a moment of civil conversation. And yes, I also thanked them for being in the front lines. And I walked around.

I think I got a couple of good photos of people being people, but I was especially blown away by the one group that, I guess, was a big a family, with parents, kids, cousins, aunts, uncles, all dressed in formal wear, posing in front of a young woman, also all dressed up, who was taking their photos with a nice setup that included a tripod. I guess the photos were for a wedding or a quinceañera. They were on the steps of a government building across the street form the capitol building. And what blew my mind was that to their right were 3 soldiers, standing guard, fully armed and ready, while they also watched the photo shoot. See, the capitol and its surrounding gardens and buildings are often used for backdrops for graduation, quinceañera, wedding, and family portraits.

My stormy emotions and painful memories were calmed by that family, by the usual joggers, tourists taking smartphone photos of the scene and selfies, residents of the area walking their dogs, all being people, And yes, by the very polite soldiers. And the beauty of the capitol and its gardens and buildings also soothed my anxiety. All those people in that lovely place reminded that life goes on. See, even during the violence and uncertainty of my childhood, life went on. My parents went to work. I went to school, played games, my family got together, we went to the beach, had fun. I watched One Step Beyond and Flash Gordon and Rosita Fornes and Betty Boop and Perry Mason and Pepe Biondi on our little B&W TV set. While the 1959 Revolution and the contra-Castro aftermath raged on, we went to the movies, had fun.

Life went one.

Really, kinda like now, during the COVID19 pandemic and political and social upheaval.

Life goes on.

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ladykailolu · 3 years

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To be honest, Mela and Sadie are very similar

When I first saw/read about Mela I totally got Girlboss energy and awesome bitch energy

I didn't expect her to be the gentle type, she came off as someone who would step on you if you breathed on her wrong.

It's honestly a lot like Sadie because, believe it or not, Most of the time Sadie is quite soft. But she can go from 0-100 like that

She still has the fabulous wretchedness/refined sassiness like say, Cruella De Ville (who I based part of her off) but she has a sweet soul [at least in the normal au, in the Villain one that soul is very broken]

{Also did I mention that she has this adorable little voice, It's like betty boop but with more of a American, NewYork accent}

I think I forgot other details about Mela: her personality and mannerisms reflects what I think is the common visage of a "proper lady" living a life of luxury in a gilded cage. Despite this, Mela has a hidden temper underneath all that and it shows itself after she puts up with something for a great deal of time and her patience withers away. She can get snappy at others, but it's usually after a long time of stress. For example, when she dumps her fiancé and the altar, she says to him, "Armani, I will always know that you are a wonderful man. But you are a conniving and manipulative human being, and you disgust me!" Then she walks away and sells the very expensive ring he gave her for some quick cash to build a better life with Jodie (because she also cut herself off from the Zeppeli family and so won't see that money).

She also plays the piano! She hates the piano! She grew up learning how to play, but it was just another strict measure in her life, so she got sick of it. To please her family, however, she diligently plays it.

Her nickname is "MAZ" which is short for her full name, "Mela Aspesi Zeppeli," and she carries around brass knuckles in her purse that say "MAD" on one of them and "MAZ" on the other. Despite her "proper lady" visage, she had taken self-defense classes in secret. She also says mildly threatening stuff but in a very chill, upper class lady sort of tone, like she’s talking to Caesar and Gyro and the boys mention that they’re trying to find a way around a locked door, when Mela, while filing or painting her nails, says, “I’d be searching for my cute little crowbar.”

Now, when she’s with her cousins, Caesar and Gyro kinda act like tough guys around her--bodyguards, if you will--so she doesn’t even need to lift a finger to defend herself if some asshole guy tries something with her. For example, there was this one guy who licherally punched her in the chest after an argument, and Gyro and Caesar descended upon this asshole in the next instant, yelling, “Get the fuck off of her!”, knocking him to the ground and kicking and punching him while Mela sits off on the side, trying to catch her breath. Afterwards, her cousins check up on her, and she says that she got the wind knocked out of her. So, they escort her home and keep an eye on her.

And I listened to a Betty Boop song and oh my god, Sadie’s voice would be so precious!!! I imagine that she could like disarm people with her voice because it makes her sound so young and charming, but when they let their guard them, she’s got her gun cocked and ready to go off on their heads lol

#Gyro Zeppeli #Mela Aspesi Zeppeli #Caesar Zeppeli #Sadie Maddlin #jjba #jjba oc #the bastard zeppeli daughters #the zeppeli family

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chiseler · 3 years

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Ginger Rogers: Curse of the Working Class

A natural-born mimic, ham, tease, hard worker, stoic follower and out-of-reach babe, Ginger Rogers has proven one of the most difficult to define of all the 1930s Hollywood stars. At her best she was a synonym for fun and high spirits while also conveying a dignified and skeptical kind of resistance to other people, and these contradictory impulses made her one of the most special and ambiguous performers of her time. Rogers excelled in her first seven musicals with Fred Astaire and in several of her comedy vehicles and even in some of the programmers she churned out in the early 1930s. She was beloved, and rightly so.

In Stage Door (1937), Rogers gives one of the most distinctive, most suggestive, and most perfectly judged performances of the period, molding every one of her bone-dry, wisecracking line readings (and what lines she has in that movie!) into something pleasurable, something unexpected, even something profound, delivering them all with her guarded, in-transit sort of face.

I’ve seen Stage Door probably more times than I’ve seen any other movie, but I always notice something new in it, some new line, some new angle. As a kid, I didn’t really understand the source of Rogers’s misgivings here, which is the same source that animates her outrageously and inventively bitchy yet somehow tender and worldly fights with Linda (Gail Patrick), her high-falutin’ former roommate. Linda is the mistress of Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou), a powerful Broadway producer. When Powell sees Rogers’s Jean Maitland rehearsing a dance routine, his little weasel eyes light up with lust. He thinks she’s just playing hard to get when she makes her habitual mordant jokes at him, but she is really just trying to delay the inevitable. She wants no part of sleeping with a man for his money not because she thinks it’s morally wrong, per se, but because she’s basically too tired-out to go through those motions.

Jean is so disenchanted that the disenchantment seems to be leading her to some kind of drastic change. She talks herself into going out with Powell but gets out of sleeping with him by getting, or pretending to get, disruptively yet vaguely drunk. Jean gets drunk the way she does everything else, at some very unusual kind of steady and wary behavioral half-mast. She cracks wise as a matter of course, but she sleeps with a doll and she plays a ukulele. These cute details don’t seem to fit her character, but they do express the divided character of the woman who was playing her.

Jean stumbles home from Powell’s penthouse to her new roommate Terry (Katharine Hepburn), a rich girl with airily la-di-da attitudes about life and the theater. Hepburn had not endeared herself to Rogers with her much-repeated remark about Rogers’s partnership with Astaire: “He gives her class and she gives him sex.” The competitive rivalry between Hepburn’s upper-class pretension and Rogers’s low-burning common sense is the heart of their conflict in Stage Door, and this conflict and mutual dislike reads as pure chemistry on screen, just as it did for Rogers with Astaire.

There is such chemistry between Jean and Terry that Stage Door has always been a kind of closeted lesbian classic just waiting to burst into full-on Sapphic love. Terry has no love interest and shows zero interest in acquiring one, while Jean looks more than ready to give up on poor, unreliable young men and rich, sexually demanding older men like Powell. Jean and Terry, in fact, are perfect for each other and wind up with each other, and in the last scene Rogers reaches a kind of epiphany as she reacts to their friend Judy (Lucille Ball) leaving New York to get married. “At least she’ll have a couple of kids to keep her company in her old age, and what’ll we have?” she asks. “Some broken-down memories and an old scrapbook that nobody’ll look at.”

I first saw Stage Door when I was eight years old. Now that I’m well into adulthood, these last few lines that Rogers tosses off with such face-the-facts casualness have the force of revelation, as if she has finally washed up on the shores of some final philosophy. They predict the real lives of both Hepburn and Rogers (though some people still do want to leaf through those particular scrapbooks) and Terry and Jean, and everybody else for whom the easy way and the conventional way of living will never fit or will never be acceptable.

Rogers was capable of that tough-minded and frank and bleak attitude on screen, but in life and in general she was actually, and alarmingly, one of the most clueless of stars, never quite knowing what it was that people liked about her. Starting as early 1938, the year she made Vivacious Lady and Carefree, something peculiar started to happen to Rogers. After years of the most unlikely and enormous success in her Astaire films, where she was up to any dance challenge he gave her and where her timing in both musical and comic and dramatic scenes was magically sharp, her timing started to go horribly awry. Rogers began to be afflicted by self-consciousness, miscalculation, cutesiness, self-infatuated archness and flashes of deep-rooted mean-mindedness. She slipped back into her best controlled star mode in several films after that year, but she started to deteriorate more and more by the mid-1940s, almost as if someone had put a curse on her.

Rogers was born Virginia McMath in Independence, Missouri in 1911. Her formidable mother Lela Rogers was a writer for silent films and a journalist, and she was seemingly joined at the hip to her daughter. It was Rogers who wanted a career as an actress, and Lela resisted this at first, but when Ginger won a Charleston contest Mama Lela knew which way the wind was blowing. She poured all of her own considerable energy and ambition into making Ginger a star and keeping her one (that first name supposedly came about because a cousin couldn’t pronounce the name Virginia).

At the height of her stardom, when Rogers was sent the script of The Hard Way (1943), she wonderingly said, “This is the story of my life,” and turned it down. In that movie, Ida Lupino works like a demon to get her malleable kid sister (Joan Leslie) into show business, and the comparison is not flattering to Lela, who made a fool of herself testifying before HUAC as an expert on Communist infiltration of Hollywood, citing particularly the time when Rogers had to say Dalton Trumbo’s line, “Share and share alike, that’s democracy” in Tender Comrade (1943). Lela herself actually turns up playing Ginger’s mother in Billy Wilder’s The Major and the Minor (1942), and she’s a rather low-key presence, but she talks and moves like a woman who has power and feels no need to make any outward show of it.

In that Wilder movie, Rogers spends most of her time pretending to be a twelve-year old, and this uneasy reversion to little-girlhood was one of her most troubling fallback modes. She had made her first successes on stage with “baby talk monologues” written by Lela, and her early style, as seen in films like Young Man of Manhattan (1930) and Honor Among Lovers (1931), was very much a hold-over from the 1920s, a Betty Boop baby vamp persona that was more suited to cameo roles than to leads (Claudette Colbert, the star of Young Man of Manhattan, gently mocks these baby affectations after meeting Rogers’s character).

She churned out lots of low-budget programmers in 1932, and in 1933 she made ten films. In two of those, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, Rogers nearly steals the show in fairly small parts. As Anytime Annie, a notoriously obliging chorus girl in 42nd Street, Rogers is first seen wearing a monocle and affecting a grand manner accent, and this was the first sign of her aptitude for two-faced disguise. As Manuel Puig once said of Ann-Margret, Rogers is anything but reassuring.

She’s close to surreal in her gold-coin outfit singing “We’re in the Money” with pig Latin verse in Gold Diggers of 1933, looking directly into the camera and not flinching as it travels all the way up to her face. Rogers gobbled up attention like that, and she had what it took, but she needed something or someone to stabilize her. When she strips down to her slip and stockings and gyrates in Professional Sweetheart (1933), an outraged Norman Foster spanks and then punches her, the first in an increasingly ominous series of punishments that would shadow her later career.

In the very horny Pre-Code musical Flying Down to Rio (1933), her first film with Astaire, Rogers is a hot mama, singing and swaying to “Music Makes Me” in a vagina power dress that even Marilyn Monroe might have rejected as too overt. When they dance “The Carioca,” Astaire starts out holding his head slightly away from Rogers, as if she might be diseased, but by the end their electric chemistry has fully kicked in.

Astaire had spent his youth dancing with his sister Adele and didn’t want to get stuck with another steady partner. Rogers had her eye on dramatic parts, announcing to an incredulous press that she wanted to play Joan of Arc. She was an ambitious and competitive person, and she knew that she was not even close to Astaire’s Olympian league as a dancer. But that’s part of the magic of their series of films, in which Rogers improves as a dancer bit by bit until she is fully capable of following his every step.

Astaire objected that no one would believe Rogers as an English girl in The Gay Divorcee (1934), and surely no one could mistake her for English, but this part gave her the reserve that she intriguingly used and toyed with for her best years as a star. Like most first sexual experiences between two people, their first real romantic dance together in that film, “Night and Day,” is both exciting and a little awkward. In their follow-up Roberta (1935), Rogers looks tense during their slow “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” routine, but she comes wonderfully alive when they casually tap to “Hard to Handle,” their first really great dance together.

She was always at her best in the lively comic numbers, where her wacky energy seems to warm Astaire, but she worked hard at the dramatic routines, so that when they do “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” in Follow the Fleet (1936), Rogers has somehow ascended up to Astaire’s level as a dancer. It must have taken nearly super-human will, but she did it, and audiences saw and felt her progress, and they loved it because it meant that anything was possible if you worked hard enough, even dancing like or with Fred Astaire.

Astaire didn’t like her feather dress for the “Cheek to Cheek” dance in Top Hat (1935), and you can see why he didn’t: it’s a little tacky. Costumer Walter Plunkett said Rogers always wanted to “add a crepe paper orchid or a string of beads or some goddamned feathered thing. She just never could resist little improvements.” But her feather dress in Top Hat does move beautifully when she dances, even if we do see some of the feathers floating away from them, as if she’s molting.

A more characteristic and winning image of her comes in the way she hikes up her skirt in the “Pick Yourself Up” number in Swing Time, which has a deeply charming kind of put-on nonchalance, or in the soldier-like way she executes a series of brutally exacting turns at the end of the “Never Gonna Dance” finale toward the end of that movie (while she shot this scene, her feet started to bleed in her shoes). One of the real pleasures of American moviegoing is watching Rogers as Astaire sings a love song to her: she would listen so intently, with barely any change of expression, but with such sensitive receptivity behind her eyes and in the set of her mouth.

People like to wonder if Astaire and Rogers hated each other. Maybe there were moments when they did, but mainly they just resented being tied together as a team, and those misgivings are part of what give their partnership and their best dances such impact, such crackle. Rogers reported in her autobiography that Astaire had taken her out on dates in New York when they were both working in theater, and at the end of one such date he gave her “a kiss that would never have passed the Hays Office Code!” But when they worked together in films, Astaire was married to a woman he adored, and he was a distant taskmaster in the killer rehearsal sessions for their dance routines. His friends, cultivated when he played on stage in London in the 1920s, were the English gentry. Rogers was not his cup of tea, and he made that known to her in subtle ways. She said either, and he said eye-ther, and they wanted to call the whole thing off, but no one else ever did.

In the many years after their partnership ended, they were still stuck with each other, and they both still resented that. Rogers would sometimes make friendly overtures to Astaire, and he would politely but firmly put her off, and this led to hurt feelings for her, so much so that she didn’t even go to his American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony. Film scholar Joseph McBride helped to put together that evening, and when I asked him about it, he remembered Astaire saying, “I suppose we’ll have to have Ginger,” in an irritated voice. When she didn’t come to the ceremony, it seemed like sour grapes on her part, but it had been made clear to Rogers that Astaire only wanted the bare minimum to do with her, and so she withdrew. It would do well to remember, of course, just how obnoxious Rogers could be. If you want to feel the full force of that, just look at any number of the films she made from 1944 to 1964 and you’ll see one garishly misplayed, mistimed performance after another, including the last one she did with Astaire, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), where her dramatic aspirations were mocked and then the mockery was unintentionally confirmed when she did a goggle-eyed recreation of Sarah Bernhardt reciting the Marseillaise.

So what happened to Rogers? Why did she lose all of the qualities that had made her a star right after her stardom was confirmed? Many writers have tried to explain it. Analyzing Astaire and Rogers in The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (1972), Arlene Croce says, “She’s an American classic, just as he is: common clay that we prize above exotic marble. The difference between them is that he knew it and she didn’t. Rogers always wanted to be something more. Probably no other major star has so severely tried the loyalty of her public by constantly changing her appearance and her style.” In his book Romantic Comedy (1987), James Harvey writes, “Can there be any other major star who was so variable, even from film to film, as she was?”

Harvey blames George Stevens, who directed maybe the finest Astaire/Rogers film, Swing Time (1936). He sees a softening of her character in the straight scenes in Swing Time, but the rot really sets in with Vivacious Lady, a romantic comedy that has all the elements for success but perversely ruins them with its taffy-pull pacing, its willful lack of coordination, its leaning on jags and cutesiness and bizarre sequences like the fight scene between Rogers and a rival that devolves into a series of unmoving tableaus broken only by a coy laugh from Rogers, as if Stevens wanted to turn her into Frank McHugh. In the same year, in Carefree with Astaire, Rogers exhibits such unpleasant sadism when her character is under hypnosis that it feels like a revelation of some inner nastiness that had always been prudently hidden from view.

The damage was reversed in Bachelor Mother (1939), a working girl comedy that has no right to be as charming as it is, where Rogers added a kind of moony dreaminess to her repertoire of personas. She then made two films for Stage Door director Gregory La Cava, 5th Avenue Girl (1939) and Primrose Path (1940). In her second La Cava film, Rogers is so deadpan that it reads as a lack of basic vitality, a first in her career; it’s as if La Cava is unearthing the suicidal or even homicidal side of Jean Maitland. “People annoy me,” she says in that movie, and boy does she mean it. In Stage Door, when Powell tells Jean he wants to put her name in big electric lights, she says, “Gotta be big enough to keep people away.” La Cava is the director who understood Rogers the most, discerning something anti-social and solitary behind her sunny audience-pleasing looks and manner. In Primrose Path, he cast her as a teenager who breaks away from her family before she joins their prostitution racket, and her work in that movie is stark, clean, unsentimental.

Rogers won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle (1940), and many have dated her decline from that point, even if she is modestly touching in what is a modest working girl soap opera. She was close to unbearable in Tom, Dick and Harry (1941), where director Garson Kanin seems to dote on every moment of her self-indulgent performance as a dumb and narcissistic telephone operator who must choose between three suitors. Something about playing dumb here makes Rogers’s style seem laborious and throws her timing all out of whack, yet the following year, in Roxie Hart (1942), she certainly gets her laughs with her broad playing of a very dumb murderess who lives for publicity and likes to do the Black Bottom for reporters. In her segment in Tales of Manhattan (1942), you want to say to her, “OK, you can have all that hair on the top of your head or you can have all that hair fanning over your back, but you can’t have both, Ginger.”

Leo McCarey’s Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) did her no favors, but most writers agree that the real coup de grâce in her career was Lady in the Dark (1944), a Technicolor movie of the psychoanalytical stage musical that had starred Gertrude Lawrence. Rogers insisted on playing it, and she was at loggerheads with director Mitchell Leisen and Paramount studio chief Buddy DeSylva, who vengefully cut most of the Kurt Weill songs from the film. All in all, the mercifully little-seen Lady in the Dark looks now almost as if it had been made in a spirit of deliberate sabotage. It is has to be the most nastily misogynist of any major studio production of this time, constantly hammering home the idea that Rogers’s Liza Elliott is an unnatural woman unhealthily attached to her work, and her leading man Ray Milland warrants particular scorn here for the gleefulness he brings to the scenes where he humiliates Rogers’s character. In the one extended musical number Rogers has, “The Saga of Jenny,” she doesn’t seem to have been given any choreography or direction and she can barely move in the outfit Leisen designed for her. “After Lady in the Dark there was nothing left of the Rogers character,” wrote Croce. “She died on the analyst’s couch.”

Rogers’s career proceeded only through sheer determination on her part (and on Lela’s part). She floundered in an updated remake of Grand Hotel (1932) called Week-end at the Waldorf (1945), and the next twenty years of her career were a real trial for her fans from the 1930s. Howard Hawks’s Monkey Business (1952) was supposed to be about scientist Cary Grant reverting to childhood when he drinks an elixir of youth, but Rogers insisted that she “wanted to do the kid thing too,” and so she ripped into scene after scene of coarse-grained youthful impersonation, the wise child of her early ‘30s character bearing rotten and poisonously un-watchable fruit. Cast as a hardened gangster’s moll in Phil Karlson’s Tight Spot (1955), Rogers is so heavy-handed and slow and cutesey with her dialogue that the effect is ghastly. If I were to make a simple diagnosis of her problems in the last half of her film career, I’d say that she caught a bad case of George Stevens-itis and never got over it (she had an affair with the married director during Vivacious Lady, which had Lela up in arms).

When she worked with a fine and sensitive director, as she did with Frank Borzage for Magnificent Doll (1946) and with Edmund Goulding for Teenage Rebel (1956), Rogers was still capable of restrained and acceptable if somewhat colorless work. But hateful things kept happening to her. In something like Storm Warning (1951), where she does battle with the Ku Klux Klan while also doing a transposed version of A Streetcar Named Desire, it seemed as if someone behind the scenes wanted to see Rogers punished. When Steve Cochran attacks her in Storm Warning, the scene is so prolonged that finally it is Rogers being humiliated and hurt, not the character she is playing.

Rogers went through five husbands, including the pacifistic and beautiful Lew Ayres, and most of them lasted for a couple of years, but Lela was her real partner for life. The last husband, William Marshall, got her to play a madam in a dire film shot in Jamaica, variously known as The Confession and Quick, Let’s Get Married (1964), and after that low point she made only Harlow (1965), where she was intriguingly cast as Jean Harlow’s mother, before retaining her star status in long-running stage stints in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway and Mame in London. After that came a little TV and nightclub work, where she ended most of her songs with a corny wink to the audience. A Christian Scientist like her beloved or at least inescapable mother, Rogers refused medical treatment after having a stroke, and she was ill for several years before dying in 1995.

The last forty-five or so years of Rogers’s long career basically ran on fumes of good will from her first twelve years in movies, and particularly those Fred Astaire musicals that she preferred to forget. Like many actors, Rogers had no real center or base that was really her, and this lack of center meant that she was able to in effect be something she wasn’t with Astaire, and transcendently so, but it also meant that bad habits and instincts were ready to rush in and overwhelm her when her guard was down.

“May I rescue you?” Astaire asks her in Top Hat, to which she snaps, “No, I prefer being in distress.” The Astaire/Rogers films are so romantic because part of her resistance is that she is suspicious of romance, and maybe she doesn’t believe in it at all. That lack of belief was what made her so sexy beyond her God-given but worked-on perfect figure (“Women weren’t born with silk stockings on, you know,” she says in Follow the Fleet). Look at how cool and unreachable she is when Fred is singing his heart out to her during “Never Gonna Dance” in Swing Time. She preached that God is Love and soda fountains were forever, but in her best work with Astaire and in Stage Door, she let darker and more movingly yearning things cloud her almost cartoonishly pretty brow, and those things are what should define her and what should be remembered.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #The Chiseler #Ginger Rogers

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