#Screen Training Ireland

[handweavers]

have you ever seen a man look aggressively irish and i mean irish in the real sense like how irish people actually look, like i saw this thumbnail and without looking at the title or name of the channel i instantly had this feeling that this man is not only irish but from county donegal specifically (where my grandpa is from) and i can't explain it i could just smell it on him through the screen like a bloodhound trained to identify old irishmen from the northwest coast and when i opened the video the very first thing he says. is that he's from co donegal ireland and i almost threw my phone

[almostarts]

Gaetano Pesce (8 November 1939 – 3 April 2024)

Moving against the stream of rational, functional modernism in the 1960s and early 70s, Mr. Pesce experimented with materials and production methods to create furniture pieces imbued with political or religious meaning for brands from Cassina to B&B Italia.

Many would go on to become icons of Italian design including the Up5 chair – an innovative vacuum-packed chair designed to resemble a female prisoner – which he designed for B&B Italia precursor C&B.

Pesce moved to New York in 1983 and began to move away from mass production to create "standardised series" in everyday materials like resin, adapting conventional production techniques to create varied and imperfect outcomes.

The result are pieces such as the 1884 Pratt chair, which toe the line between functional design and decorative art, helping to create a new category that would later become collectible design.

Mr. Pesce was born in the Italian city of La Spezia in November 1939, only two months after the start of world war two.

As was common at the time, he trained in both architecture and design, studying first at the University of Venice and later at the Venice Institute of Industrial Design.

Among his architecture projects is the Organic Building in Osaka from 1993, with its plant-covered facade made of orange fiberglass that served as a precursor to today's vegetation-covered green walls.

But Mr. Pesce's most pioneering and well-known work happened in the world of design. In the late 1960s, he became one of the leaders of Italy's Radical Design movement, rejecting modernism's rigid focus on forms dictated by function.

Instead, Pesce focused on the idea that functional objects, much like art, could carry a deeper message.

One of the most famous examples is the controversial Up5 chair from 1969, which manufacturer B&B Italia describes as "the first product of Italian design with a political meaning".

Rest In Power !

"Up 5 & 6" Dressed Up Chair & Ottoman, 1969 – 2014, Polyurethane foam, fabric, Height: 40.5 in (102.87 cm)Width: 47 in (119.38 cm)Depth: 51 in (129.54 cm)Seat Height: 16 in (40.64 cm),

“Square Airport Lamp” (1986/1994). Photography by Elizabeth Carababas/The Future Perfect. Light sculpture consisting of a flexible rubber membrane studded with small light bulbs. Although made from a mold, no two lamps are alike, due to the imperfections that arise from the hand-mixing and pouring of colored urethane. H 92 - W 65 Cm,

"Feltri" Armchair for Cassina, 1980 -1989, Felt, Fabric, Resin, Width: 156 cm, Depth: 80 cm, Height: 129 cm, Seat height:42 cm, Courtesy: Oldera,

"Pratt Chair #7," 1984 2018 (purple), 2018, Transparent polyurethane, :93 x 53 x 53 cm. (36.6 x 20.9 x 20.9 in.),

"The Cabinet of The Tired Man," 2018, Photo: Courtesy of Salon 94 Design and Gaetano Pesce,

"Tramonto a New York" three-door screen, for Cassina, Made of coloured resin, hinges and feet in burnished brass, Width: 221, Height: 199,

"Organic" Building, Osaka, Japan, Completed in 1993 to embody the corporate ideal of Oguraya Yamamoto Co., Ltd,

"La In-Portante" Modular Bookshelf from the "Abbraccio" Series, 2010. Comprising 57 adjustable polyurethane resin shelves. Produced by Le Fablier, Italy. Polyurethane resin, painted wood, lacquered metal, 86½ x 118¾ x 16⅞ in. (219.7 x 301.6 x 42.6 cm) Courtesy of Sotheby's,

La Michetta Modular Sofa,Compostion of 8 by Meritalia, Structure in Lacquered Wood Seat with Elastic Belts, Flexible Polyurethane & Fiberfill Padding, Dimensions: W370 x D245cm,

Unique 'Ireland' table, Made of polyurethane and metal. The table was made and exhibited in 1996 by Gallery Mourmans, Knokke-Zoute, Belgium. It was part of a series of 'EU tables', where all 15 member countries were represented as a table, in this case Ireland. The top of the table has the shape of the outlines of the country and it stands on legs in the shape of question marks. W.80.71 in;H.28.74 in;D.57.09 in; (W.205 cm;H.73 cm;D.145 cm), Courtesy: Incollect.

#art #design #sculpture #furniture #seat #chair #forms #cassina #B&B #polyurethane #incollect #ireland #modular #bookshelf #table #fiberglass #sofa #gaetano pesce #rip #rip gaetano pesce #screen #iconic #up5 #UP6 #political #pratt chair #feltri #tramonto #new york

[killersfool]

I Want You | ELIJAH HEWSON

PAIRING : elijah hewson x original f!character

GENRE: fluff, friends to lovers

SUMMARY: dahlia jenkinson, josh’s sister is asked to fill in as photographer at his bad’s concert. her plan is to ask him out by the end of the show as she’s been crushing on him for ever. what she doesn’t expect is that one of their songs was written about her—and she’s right there when he confesses it.

WORDS: 5.6k

WARNINGS: smoking, drinking, kissing

Friday. Underground. London.

I run through the station passing the endless people, posters and children's screams. My brother, Josh, had asked me yesterday to help out at his band's concert. He'd told me that their photographer had gotten COVID so he needed someone to fill in.

I dragged my roommate along with me as my moral support, seeing as she's heard me spill every secret in my mind about the band's lead singer, Elijah.  I've been helping Josh with his band's endeavours for years and have also had to condone countless sleepovers. I've had the sound of drumsticks crashing together engrained in my head by this point. Robyn has always told me to 'stop being a pussy and ask Eli out on a date' but honestly, I'm terrified I'll ruin everything. This photography thing has really helped to get me new jobs and more exposure.

"So, you still crushing on Eli?" Robyn asks. She's been glancing over at my phone for the past few minutes. I've been texting the band group chat that I've been added to. They usually kick me out randomly. This is the longest period of time I've been in it without having an argument. I'm pretty proud.

"Shut up." I scoff. "If you dare say anything to any of of them, I will kill you."

"I wouldn't," she laughs. I give her a look. "I'll try not to..."

"You and your big mouth."

"I can't help it."

"I shouldn't tell you things."

"Who else would you tell?" She grabs at my phone, noticing a message from Elijah pop up.

It reads: "Missed you. You've always been the better Jenkinson." I try to contain my smile at the stupid message. It's just a couple words beneath a name on a screen and I'm getting all nervous. It's pathetic. God, this is getting bad.

"That's cute," Robyn says and is about to start writing a message back until I snatch my phone back. Who knows what kind of bullshit she'd start sending. She'd surely send some terrible pictures of me. That's happened on many ocassions. I've learnt my lesson to never trust her with my phone.

"Cringe." I type back, although the smile on my face is betraying the words on the screen. I stare at his profile picture for a few seconds. It's a selfie of me and the band. I look half asleep, probably drunk. Eli's hair is all over his face and Josh is squeezing Ryan's cheeks. Bobby is just angrily staring at the camera. He definitely didn't want to be in that photo. It's sweet that Eli has kept his profile picture that way for so long. We haven't seen each other in months. I send another message, "Well you're not my favourite Hewson."

He sends an angry emoji. "Who is then?"

"Bono, course."

He sends a few more angry emojis before spamming the group chat. There is already some kind of argument happening. Robert seems to be late and they're all asking where he is. I switch my phone off, sliding it into my pocket. Robyn's been unusually quiet.

"What have you done this time?" I ask with a subtle tilt of my head. She's chewing on some haribos she'd bought moments ago. She then smirks to herself, "Nothing."

I'm a little worried but decide to brush it off. We leave the train station and I'm struck by the freezing air. I sometimes forget how cold England is. Having moved from Ireland over a year ago, I feel like I should've acclimatised. But, why is it always so cold? I hold my jacket closer to myself to try to warm up.

We pass at least ten people with 'I love London' shirts. Sounds of street sellers are familiar along with the hustle and bustle of late London nights. I see the London Eye twisting in the distance. Big ben is tolling. The venue comes into view a few streets away. I'm dreading it slightly. I feel as if I'm not going to cope this time seeing that ever-so-familiar face. It's as if with each passing month, he gets better looking. It should be crime. I'll probably melt when I see him.

I instead focus on seeing Josh and my excitement for seeing the gig. They've all really improved over the years. They really know how to put on a good show. Adrenaline rushes through my veins. It'll be fine. Surely.

"You're nervous, aren't you?" Robyn takes notice of me fiddling with my earrings. It's become some nervous habit. I find a comfort in twiddling the crystals between my fingers.

"A bit," I say. Honest. "What if he finds out? We'll surely get piss-drunk. What if he only wants to be mates?"

"Lia, darling, you've got to stop overthinking it. After hearing all these stories you've told me, it sounds like he likes you a lot," she says, grinning. "I'll tell you if I see any looks passed or anything suspicious, okay?"

"You're the best." I give her a hug, forgetting for a moment about the crowded streets around us. Robyn hugs are always too good to be true. I sometimes forget how unbelievably short she is and how she tries to suffocate me with her arms.

Just as we're about to continue down the endless streets, I see someone running past us. I barely even realise he's passed me until Robyn points him out. I see long, curly hair and a massive case swung over his shoulder. Bobby. Then, he turns to face us. Blue eyes catch me off guard then a massive grin. He seems to question whether he should stop or get to the venue. He's very late.

"Is that the bassist?" Robyn wonders. "Robert?"

"That's me," he says, retracing his steps. His mullet has gone all messy in the autumn wind. He's trying to swipe away a few stray hairs from out of his face. "Hey Dally. Who's this?" He points towards my friend with a lazy smile.

"This is Robyn. My roommate. She's the one who accidentally stepped on a pigeon."

"Ah." He then turns into his bird lover mode. "How could you do that to a poor, helpless bird? How could you? Can't believe you're called Robyn. That's a disgrace. Wish I was called Robyn. Or sparrow. Or some kind of bird. God, do I love birds—"

"Okay, Robert. We get it," I interrupt with a finger in the air. He crosses his arms over his chest, pouting. Robyn is laughing at his angered demeanour. He always puts on this irritated-sarcastic face in moments like this. He looks like a child after stepping on lego.

"Aren't you late?" Robyn asks the blue-eyed boy. His phone has been pinging with notification throughout the few minutes they have been walking together. He seems to be a little stressed. I have to almost run to keep up with this speed of impossibly long legs.

We approach the venue. It's a huge, pretty rundown building which strikes out in stark contrast to the fancy buildings around it. The words 'Inhaler:tonight' are written on a chalkboard beside the entrance. The place really matches the band for some reason. There's a queue of fans outside. A lot of them are sat down on the pavement. They scream at the sight of the bassist, piling around him. Phones are being held up to take pictures of him.

"Sorry guys, I've got to get inside. Thank you for coming," Robert mumbles.

Robyn and I act as body guards, preventing anyone from getting too close. Banners have been dropped onto the ground, passersby glance over in confusion. There's colourful cowboy hats covered with jewels everywhere. That music video really drove the world crazy. It definitely drove me crazy. I probably make up at least half of the views.

The majority of the crowd continue to take photos. Some say 'Oh my God, that's Josh's sister!' I give them a smile whilst simultaneously pushing Robert forwards.

We finally get to the back door. The gathering give up after a while. They go back to the queue, attempting to slot in to their previous place.

"Well, doors haven't opened yet so you can't be that late," I remark. The front doors are still locked.

"I'm missing sound check though."

I hear music booming quietly through the walls. I open the door, pressing down on it with fingertips. It creaks open to a long corridor with white plastered walls. It smells of fresh paint. The light is barely even attached to the ceiling. It looks like some horror film scene. Creepy.

But then Josh comes around the corner. His guitar is slung over his chest and his face lights up to reveal a huge smile that I've always adored. He's taller than the last time I've seen him. He runs straight towards me, engulfing me with his arms. I'm uncomfortably pressed against his guitar but I couldn't care less. I'm so glad I came. I missed him so much.

Robert slides past us and Robyn awkwardly stands in the doorway. I introduce her to my brother. He gives her a hug as well. She seems to enjoy this whole situation a lot. She's getting all loud and giddy.

The rest of the band are still playing through songs. They're running through 'Dublin In Ecstasy'. Elijah's voice is echoing through the entire building, sliding it's way through my skull. There's a part of me that wants to turn back. I could just make my way back to my apartment, have a cup of coffee and stalk Twitter accounts of people who went to the show. I definitely haven't been doing that for the past few months. I'm not that insane. Or obsessed.

"Do you want to listen to sound check or hang out back stage?" Josh asks us. He's been talking to Robyn, getting to know her and she seems to like him, thankfully. It'd be downright awkward if she hated his guts.

"I'll follow you," Robyn says to Josh. She starts to traipse down the corridor. I watch her curls bounce from side to side as she jumps with every step. She suddenly realises that she's left me behind. "You coming?"

I groan, staring at the door. "Yeah. Fuck it."

I pick up my camera in preparation. I've been using the same one for years. It's got stickers all over it. Some of random bands, some from different countries and little letters spelling out my name. Elijah had bought me a few pages of letters of the alphabet as a birthday present when I turned 15. I still remember that day. We were all huddled inside my living room after being drenched by a sudden storm. There were about fifteen of us, including the band. The fireplace before us was the only source of light in the darkened room. I think I was dating Ryan at that point. That was a strange time. He was sweet. It only lasted a couple of weeks. Elijah had a girlfriend too. Younger me was very jealous. I think that's what made me realise I liked him.

Now, fast forward eight years and my heart is beating in my ears like I'm a teenager all over again.

I allow Robyn to go first. I trail behind. Josh has left us to our own devices and we try to figure out where exactly we're supposed to go. We decide to follow the sounds of music booming. Closer and closer. We go down a staircase, open a door then we're right at the stalls, just beneath the stage. The door crashes so loudly that all of the band stop playing. They all peer down at us.

The band name 'Inhaler' is upon the wall and coloured lights paint the stage. This room is a lot nicer than the exterior. There's a standing area then seats up along the top. The walls are painted a deep shade of crimson with gold lines intricately painted everywhere. It's too good to be true. It feels so weird being at one of their gigs again. It feels even weirder to see all of them in the same place at the same time.

I trace my gaze along the stage. I take a quick glance at Josh who is tuning his guitar, then Ryan who's staring at us with wide eyes. I shift my eyes a little further to see Elijah. He's dropped his mic at the sight of us. I take notice of the length of his hair. It's falling over his eyes, a mess of curls shrouding his face. He's wearing a white vest top and a bulky blazer which is holding onto his shoulders for dear life. I can't see him very well from here. What I can see is the complexity of his gaze. The way he's looking at me is making me nervous. I take a deep breath.

"Dahlia?!" Ryan calls out. He drops his drumsticks similarly to Elijah.

"Surprise?" I say. I thought Josh had told them I was coming. "Wait, did Josh not tell you?"

Elijah picks up the microphone from the ground, not taking his eyes away from mine. "Josh, you gobshite. I thought she was coming next week," he says into the mic, words jumping through my ears. I hate how warm his voice is through those speakers. It's sickening.

"Well, I'm not complaining." Ryan jumps down from the stage, giving me and Robyn a hug. It's a group hug where we're all squashed together. He's grinning from ear to ear.

"You're still short," I say. I can still look down on him, especially with my chunky boots. He rolls his eyes.  "This is Robyn." I introduce my roommate to both Ryan and Elijah.

"Nice to meet you," Elijah murmurs as he jumps off the stage. He's left the mic on the stand. He's pushing his hair from his face.

Robyn gives me a look, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Elijah. She's got a malevolent smile. What's she going to do? Maybe I shouldn't have brought her.

"I've heard all about you." Robyn gives Elijah a little wink. I kick the back of her leg .

His lip raises the slightest bit. I find myself staring at his mouth for far too long. There's stubble lining his chin and a splatter of freckles on his cheeks. "Have you, now?" His low voice drifts through the air. He's maintaining eye contact with me. I'm trying to evade his gaze.

"She's exaggerating." I assure him, trying to stop myself from giving Robyn another thwack.

"Eli! We have like 5 minutes until door opens and Dublin In Ecstasy is a mess. Get up here. You can swoon later." Robert is already playing the introduction to the song. Ryan and Josh join in.

"Swoon?" Eli shakes his head with a grin.

"We're just that amazing," Robyn whispers to me.

I hold up my camera, taking a picture of the three lads on stage. Then I point it at Elijah. I take a few of his confused face before he leaves us to sing along to the music.

"He's whipped." Robyn watches as he climbs back onto the stage. "Likes you so much he can barely even function-" She points out how he can't even plug his guitar in. He's been trying to shove the lead in for a while but his eyes are wandering elsewhere. "You've got to say something to him. He's leaving tomorrow, isn't he? Maybe tonight.."

I breathe in. "Alright. I'll try."

Robyn and I hum along to the tune. Elijah's rough vocals make my mind go cloudy. He sounds so much crisper in person. I think back to the cuts and bruises vinyl on my shelf. Robyn had bought it the day it came out. Josh sent me every version possible. Robyn went on about supposedly being 'the first person in the world who bought it'. She said she saw the record in HMV and instantly thought of me. We had stayed up late that night to listen through each track. Eating popcorn, drinking alcohol, talking about random shit. That was when I told her everything about Elijah. From the schoolgirl crush, to the trying to forget him then to the full-blown infatuation. She enjoyed listening to every detail I had to offer.

Elijah continues singing. I'm holding my breath, my palms are sweaty, I feel my heart pulsing at my throat. Robyn is swaying to each beat of the drums. Elijah won't stop looking at me.

Then the song ends and we all tun backstage, in an attempt to evade the incoming fans. I hear shouts echoing in the distance. We've gathered in a little room backstage. Josh is showing me some fancy chocolates he bought in Rome. I'm taking pictures of the band members. Robyn keeps photobombing. I rest my head upon the armrest of the sofa, closing my eyes. It feels nice. Calm. Until, someone settles beside me. They grab my legs so that they can properly sit down. The hands are cold and fingertips are calloused. That someone is Elijah. "Excited for the show?"

He's got his pre-show drink in one hand and his phone in the other. I close my eyes once again.

I shift around in the soft cushion attempting to get into a more comfortable position. He scoffs and pulls my legs up by the ankles to rest them over his thighs. "I know you're tired," he says. He takes a sip of his drink. "But if you dare fall asleep during the show, I will throw my guitar at you." I move my legs around his thighs then actually raise my head to look at him. I take a picture as he makes a stupid face. I don't know how he can do that whilst still looking pretty.

"Is this comfortable?" I ask. He's been very still. "I can move if you want."

"It's nice... fine," he mumbles as he scrolls through messages on his phone. "Reminds of that music lesson. Must've been our first year of secondary school. You fainted after some practice test we did. We were sat in this exact position for at least an hour. I think my legs stopped working."

I try to bring my head back to the memory. He was so different back then. Shorter hair, insanely asthmatic. He only knew me as Josh's twin sister. Somehow that was enough for him to stay there with me and keep me safe. After that, he had some complex where had to look after me with his life. It was charming.

"I had to kick you about nine time because you feel asleep, " I recall. My mind is wandering through moments I can barely even remember. "You were so strange."

"I could've left you there in the practice asleep. You should be thanking me for saving you from embarassment-"

"Why, thank you. Oh how you've changed my entire life. I owe you all that I have."

He shakes his head, squeezing the skin at the bottom of my ankle. He then rests his hand there. As if it's normal. He's still reading through messages, biting the top of the plastic cup.

"When do you lot go on then?" I ask everyone.

Robyn has started drawing eyeliner onto the other boys. She just pulled it out of her pocket randomly and asked if they wanted her to do it. They've filed into a queue. She's done some graphic liner on Bobby with little stars that makes his bright eyes pop out all the more.

"Ten minutes." Ryan is putting some hair gel through his hair. He puts some music on using a bluetooth speaker they placed in the corner. Lover, You Should've Come Over by Jeff Buckley comes on. I'm trying to stop myself from falling asleep but it's getting harder with each passing second.

"I'm so excited," Robyn says as she does Josh's eyeliner. She's made his more smudgy and messy. It suits him a lot.  "Elijah, should I do yours? Or Dahlia can do it?" She passes the tube towards me. There's some malicious intent behind her eyes. I narrow my eyes down to the black contraption, taking it uneasily between my fingers.

He lays down his phone and drink. He's trying to push all the hair out of his face to give me some access to his eyes. I kneel down on the sofa beside him. I grab a hair bobble from my wrist then tie the top half of his hair up. He groans as I pull some strands way too hard then relaxes into my touch. He smells like cigarette smoke and cologne.

"How should I do it?" I wonder out loud. I've opened the tube and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this. He looks like his teenage self with his hair like this. His eyes are maintaining a hard eye contact as I near him. There's a warmth rising to my face.

Robyn pulls out her phone and shows me a picture of Rodrick Hefley. I snort. "Try it like that," she says.

Elijah closes his eyes as I begin to draw little lines then smudge. I've grabbed his chin to keep him in place. I can feel the sharp stubble poking at my fingers. He opens his eyes every now and then. They're half-lidded, watching. I poke his eye by accident. I scold him for opening his eyes. He decided to instead keep them closed.

I admire my work once I've done. It's not my best liner but it's alright. The other boys gather around to get a look at him. His hazel eyes come into view and he smiles widely at the sight of us all. "Does it look good?"

"Looks class," Ryan says as he grabs a mirror. The other boys nod along.

Elijah looks at himself. He seems to not know if he likes it or not. He smiles at me and says, "Thanks, love."

I just smile back, pulling out the bobble from his hair. An unruly splatter of curls cascade across his forehead. There's something about him wearing eyeliner that's stopping me from thinking straight. It's different. I'm still sat half on top of him, one knee resting on his thigh and the other on the sofa. He helps me off of him then stands up.

He ruffles his hair as he says, "Let's get going lads."

The four boys grab everything they need for the show. Water bottles, instruments, drumsticks, their sanity. They all give each other a group hug. It must be some pre-show ritual because they all down their drinks at the exact same time. If that wasn't planned, it was uncanny.

"Good luck." I wave them off and they travel down the corridor in a straight line. As each of them walk out, I take a picture. Elijah is the last to leave. He stops in the doorway, still holding his plastic cup. He raises his lip to reveal his white teeth as I take the picture. He really enjoys making the strangest faces.

"If you don't get our best angles, I'll have to think about firing you." Elijah warns me just before he turns around. He then disappears down to another asylum-like corridor before I can get a chance to insult him. I let out a breath.

"That went well, right?" Robyn's trying to figure out what's going through my head. I can't even comprehend anything that just happened. The feel of his hand still lingers at my ankle. "That whole time you were talking to Josh about those chocolates, he was staring you down. It was pretty creepy, to be honest." She laughs. "Don't even get me started on the eyeliner. All of us felt like total third wheels."

"Sorry," I say. I play around with the bobble at my wrist. It had been wrapped around those glorious curls only moments ago. "God, I'm so in love it hurts."

"That's how I felt when I started liking Emmy. Literally all I could think about was her." Robyn is in a daze, eyes glued to the wall. "You need to do something before it's too late."

"After the set, I will tell him." I finally accept my fate. I could possibly not see him until next year. Or the year after. Who knows how busy I could get?

"Good," Robyn says. "I'm tired of hearing Elijah this Elijah that. Girl, I get it."

"You had an Emmy this Emmy that phase. Don't even start."

She frustratedly sighs. "Come on. I think they're going on."

I hear the crashing of drums reverberating through every wall, every floorboard. Slowly, we approach the main room. The bodyguard lets us through to the wings of the stage. I can see all the crowd from this angle. There are phones, cowboy hats and banners littered through the crowd. Some of the audience are people we had seen when Bobby was surrounded. They're screaming at the sight of the band.

The first song they play is These Are The Days. I keep my camera handy through every song. Elijah takes notice of us standing there. He steals a glance at us when he has a chance to breath. He's singing a lot stronger than I'd ever seen online.

Then they play through a few more songs on the new album. I sing along, I dance, I try not to get blinded by the flashing lights. Then all of a sudden they've finished playing Love Will Get You There and he turns to look right at me.

"This next song..." His words are pretty slurred. He's drunk. "This is an old one. I wrote this when I was about 17. There was this girl at my school who I just liked so much— I couldn't even focus in class. I played it to her once we'd got it perfect and she had not a single clue that it was about her. She still doesn't. It's been six years and I've never told her." He pauses and looks at me. "This is for you."

I'm overwhelmed by emotion. I raise an eyebrow at him. He just starts strumming along with his guitar. That's when I realise he's playing I Want You. They'd played that song to me in Elijah's garage. I asked him who it was about. He lied and said it was about his ex-girlfriend. I never thought twice about it. I never listened to it because it made me sick to my stomach that it was about her. A girl who I had been so jealous of.

"You got your lipstick on..." He starts singing. He's literally pointing at me. The crowd looks confused. They can't see me.

"Oh, Jesus," Robyn exclaims. "Oh, wow. I can't believe this. He's fucking confessing! Dally, I'm so happy for you right now. What the hell!"

Robyn is just as shocked as I am. We're both slack-jawed, wide-eyed yet caught in a silence as the song goes on. The crowd sings along with each and every line. The other members of the band have caught on with what is happening. They all seem to be pretty proud. Especially Josh. He's smiling so big it's making me smile too.

The truth is, I don't want the song to end. Or the show. I just want this moment to drag on forever. It all feels too good to be true.

The song finishes, the lights switch off, the crowd screams. I'm left in the darkness. Robyn is holding onto my side for dear life. The only thing illuminating the world around us is a tiny light bulb above us. My eyes start to get used to the darkness. I see a figure approaching.

"Can you come with me?" It's Elijah. His cheeks are tinged a shade of bright red. There's sweat lining his throat and his chest. He's taken off the blazer and has slung it over his shoulder. The eyeliner has bled down a little.

"Yeah..." I'm exasperated. My throat is raw from singing so much. My brain can barely process what is happening around me. My hands want to reach out and hold him close to me.

He grabs my hand, pulling me down through a corridor. We're both running towards the back door. I'm trying to match his pace but his longer legs give him an unfair advantage.

We finally reach the exit. He opens the door for me, allows me to pass through then shuts it. I'm met by London streets. Brick walls, crooked alleyways, a rubbish bin. It's not particularly romantic. But, with him standing there in front of me, it becomes the most romantic place on Earth.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like that," he admits. "I just couldn't stop thinking about you when you left. I was going to tell you at the airport when you were about to leave Dublin. So that you could think it through without us seeing each other every day. Then I got fucking terrified."

"I was going to tell you then too." I press my back against the wall. He's pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He offers me one. I let it rest between my lips. "I had plucked up some courage after I went to the toilet but then I sat beside you and forgot the whole script I'd planned out in my head. That was a pretty awkward five minutes. Felt like a century."

"We're idiots, aren't we?" He says as he lights his cigarette. "Josh has always known. I don't know how he never told you. He's great at keeping secrets. Six years of keeping his mouth shut. I don't know how he has that much self control."

"Six years?" I blow out a puff of smoke into the air. My eyes wander across the star covered sky. The moon is looming and watching us.

"I know." He's blushing again. He's trying to keep his distance from me, leaving a slight gap between us. "I'm pathetic."

"I liked you for longer."

"What?"

"Eight years. Since the day you started dating the blonde girl." I feel stupid saying it out loud. He's laughing at me.

"That's class."

We stand there in silence just looking at each other. I can hear ambulance sirens and birds calling. The brick walls is hard against my back. My shoes are covered in water from standing in a puddle. I can imagine that there's a camera above us. This could be a scene straight out of a film.

"Are you going to kiss me then?" Some sudden burst of confidence brings those words from my lips.

He's taken aback. His eyes fall down to my mouth. He then takes a step closer. I can feel his breath at my cheeks.

"Do you want me to?" His voice goes all low and his accent gets thicker. His hand reaches up to cup my cheek. Metal presses against my cheekbone. His thumb lazily draws a line across my bottom lip. His words hang in the air. "Dahlia, my love. Do you—"

I press my lips to his. I can't hold back anymore. I can taste the smoke on his tongue. His mouth is minty and his lips are soft. I've imagined this moment countless times. In a bookstore, in a train station, in the garage. But, this is perfect. Perfect.

My fingers sink into his hair. He groans into my mouth as I pull a few strands at the back. His thumb is sliding across my cheekbones. He's dropped the cigarette to instead use his other hand to clutch my waist. My hands are at his chest. His heart is beating incredibly fast. He holds me tight against him until I feel his chest rise and fall. Up and down. Breathing in and out.

We hear voices behind us. He pulls away quickly. We both turn to see a group of fans. They're teenagers and they're all dressed in bright outfits. They didn't see anything but they seem rather suspicious, whispering.

"Eli! Oh my God!! Can you take my BeReal please?" One of them shouts over.

Elijah runs his fingers over his lips. His ears are a pink shade. He slides his hand away from my waist.

"Yeah, sure!" He approaches the three girls with a small smile. He's trying to act normal. "I love your hats." He points at the 3 cowboy hats which spell out the word 'Inhaler' when they're all stood side-by-side.

"Thank you so much!" The darker haired girl passes him her phone. "Your eyeliner looks so good. You should do it like that more often."

"I had a grand makeup artist." He winks. I roll my eyes.

"Could Dahlia be in it?" The girl with glasses notices how I've awkwardly shifted to the side.

"Course she can," Elijah says.

I stand in the frame next to Elijah as he holds up the phone. His lips are red after being stained by my lipstick. I drop my head onto his shoulder and close my eyes. He nestles his face into my hair as he takes the picture. We're both giggling like lunatics.

I'm so glad it happened like this.

#inhaler #elijahhewson #imagines #inhalerimagines #fanfiction #romance #bobbyskeetz #robert keating #elijah hewson #josh jenkinson #inhaler imagines #inhaler oneshots #inhaler dublin #inhaler band #eli hewson #ryan mcmahon

[aria-ashryver]

Meet my MC - Luca O'Rinn

Name and Meaning: Luca — Bringer of Light / O'Rinn — Descendant of the Stars

Book: Immortal Desires Love Interests: Cas Harlow and Gabriel Adalhard Pronouns: He/they Birthday: 5th January 1997 Sign: Aquarius Born: Kinloch Rannoch, Scotland Raised: Inverness, Scotland Heritage: Scottish with ancestral roots in Ireland

More under the cut! 🖤✨

Family

Therese “Terri” O’Rinn (mother) Wayne MacAllister (father — estranged) John “Jock” O’Rinn (grandfather) Esther O’Rinn (grandmother) Morag O'Rinn (great aunt) Phoebe O’Rinn (cousin)

Skills / Hobbies

Dance, drums, butterfly knives, annoying ancient vampires with incessant questions and somehow not being murdered outright

Random Trivia

Luca has an avid curiosity (which often gets them into trouble) and is fascinated by how the world works — in every possible universe, they would have found out about the vampires in Crimson Beech.

He gets bored if he hasn’t learnt something new in a while.

Luca has Combined Type ADHD and frequently needs something to do with their hands — they can often be found flipping small items (pens, drum sticks, balisongs, etc, their phone, if they can’t get their hands on anything else)

...His phone screen is always cracked.

TERRIBLE at replying to text messages if they don’t do it then and there. Cannot make a phone call to save their life.

Has no problem biting ice cream, but sometimes sensory things ( unexplained sticky hands, clothes textures that feel suddenly wrong) with make them explode with sudden rage that comes on fast and goes away even faster. (It always alarms Gabriel whenever it happens. He tries to help and inevitably gets in the way and makes it worse. Cas knows to just ignore him when he’s having a moment.)

Loves playfighting with Cas (despite always losing and probably getting thrown somewhere)

Late. For everything. All the time. Zero time management skills.

Luca's first crush was Howl Pendragon of Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle

He takes his tea/coffee without milk bc he’s forever forgetting to drink it — there is always a small army of half-full, forgotten cups and mugs around his room.

Restless sleeper, abhors early mornings, can’t fall asleep unless he feels safe (which leads to a lot of falling asleep on Gabriel and Cas)

He despises math and still counts on his fingers. Numbers make his brain short-circuit.

Will absolutely eat food off the floor if they drop it.

Forests have always made him feel calm and want to dance.

Luca has had a habit since childhood where, any time they are walking alone through a forest, they’ll slow their pace and hum a gentle tune, trying to see if they can catch sight of any fairies or little fae creatures out of the corner of their eye. (Which seemed like a silly superstition until a few months ago, but now that they know vampires are real? Hey, maybe little Luca was on to something.)

Education (Scotland)

Rather than traditional schooling, Luca attended a specialised Arts school from the age of 14, in their hometown of Inverness, Scotland. Avalon Academy of the Arts is an alternative educational institution, covering both secondary- and tertiary-level studies in fields such as traditional arts and media, photography, music, theatre, and dance.

At Avalon, Luca trained primarily in ballet, lyrical jazz, contemporary, jazz funk, street dance, and urban hip-hop. Luca does enjoy ballet, but he found most of the ballet students too pretentious, cut-throat, and close-minded to consider pursuing a career in ballet long-term (especially as a non-binary dancer in an extremely gendered environment).

Luca’s main dance style tends toward a unique blend of lyrical, ballet, and street — though in recent years, there is definitely something of a K-Pop influence present in their choreography. They idolise Lee Taemin of SHINee, in part because of his expression and technical precision, but also because of the androgyny and power of Taemin’s dance style. They enjoy watching dance practice videos on YouTube in order to study other dancer’s body lines, transitions, and use of tension.

Education (USA)

In transferring to Crimson Beech High to round out their formal education, it became clear that Luca was very behind in some areas (math, physics, sciences) and very ahead in others (history, literature, anything pertaining to arts studies).

The semesters at Avalon do not align with traditional US schooling system (beginning in February and wrapping up in December to mirror their sister school in Avalon, Australia), so Luca is actually marginally older than many of his current classmates at Crimson Beech High.

(well. Those that aren’t vampires, anyway).

As at the first chapter of ID/SICSIG, Luca is 18, and will be turning 19 in January.

Hobbies

Luca could have taken music as an elective at Avalon, but he never did. Music is something that is purely for self expression and fun. While he did take drum lessons for about a year as a child, most of Luca’s musical ability comes from the school of fucking around and finding out — he is a kinaesthetic learner, so much of his drumming is self-taught.

Wayne (read: awful person) never really approved of Luca’s dancing and wanted them to quit when they first started taking lessons in primary school, but Terri put her foot down when she saw how happy it made them to have a form of self-expression that really spoke to who they were. As a means of compromise, Wayne suggested Luca take up drumming — something he saw as a suitably “masculine” hobby to “help him man up”.

A lot of the arguments Wayne and Terri had regarding Luca’s hobbies in their formative years were, in truth, veiled conversations about Luca’s sexuality and gender identity. Terri has never been anything but accepting of her child, and Wayne has never been able to get his head out of his own ass around Luca being gay, let alone non-binary. Though Terri tried to shield them from it, Luca often bore the burnt of a tirade of queerphobic verbal abuse, which escalated to physical violence in the years preceding Wayne and Terri’s separation.

There were a whole host of reasons why the O’Rinn household wasn’t the easiest or safest place to be growing up (which I have explored more in Starlight!); understandably, Luca had a lot of energy (and, in the years before Wayne’s arrest, a lot of anger) that he was able to take out on his drum kit.

Drumming on his own has turned into a really therapeutic space for Luca, wherein he can get into a flow state, lose the outside world, and work through a lot of his feelings. As much as Luca despises his father, he loves his drums — and knowing his father was the one to buy him his first ever drum kit is something of a sore spot. To this day, Luca still has mixed feelings about it.

Drumming with Viktor’s band, however, became a space of growth and celebration. Your Bisexual Awakening (as they are currently called — the band's name changes with almost every gig) is made up of other students from Avalon, and is unapologetically queer and in your face about it. They mostly play classic rock, punk, and grunge tracks, but ultimately do not limit themselves by genre.

Viktor, the band’s vocalist and frontman, is an OC (and will probably get his own "Meet My OC" profile!) (eventually); the other band members are Easter Eggs from other Choices books: WtD’s Angel on bass, NB’s Cal on keys, and ILITW’s Ava on lead electric guitar.

You can find out more about Luca via my masterlist, or read about them in my longfic, snow in crimson, starlight in gold on AO3! 🖤(direct link, fic is rated Explicit)

tagging: @choicesficwriterscreations

#SICSIG #luca o'rinn #meet my mc #cfwc meet my mc #choices immortal desires #immortal desires #playchoices fanfic #choices fic writers creations #🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈🏳‍🌈

[blackswaneuroparedux]

I never admitted to anybody during my entire military service that I had been an actor. I was terrified that I would be put in charge of Ensa [Entertainments' National Service Association]. Not even my closest friends knew I was an actor. I told them I was reading English at St Andrews University.

- Richard Todd

In his heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Richard Todd was Britain’s leading matinee idol. If you love old movies, you’ll have seen Todd in one of his starring roles in “The Virgin Queen” opposite Bette Davis, “Stage Struck” with Marlene Dietrich, or “The Dam Busters” for which he won a Golden Globe Award. He was the tough little Scotsman in the wartime weepie “The Hasty Heart” and had audiences madly hunting for hankies.

Those were the days when Todd streaked across North American film screens as virtually every romantic hero from Rob Roy to Robin Hood. Ian Fleming chose him to play James Bond in “Dr. No” in 1962, but a schedule clash meant Sean Connery stepped into the role.

Little less known is the fact that he was also among the first British soldiers and the first Irishman to land in Normandy on D Day. More specifically, he participated in Operation Tonga during the D-Day landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944.

So it must have been surreal for Richard Todd the hearthrob actor to find himself playing Major John Howard in the epic movie ‘The Longest Day’ (1962) based on Cornelius Ryan’s book. Not least because he served with Howard and took part in the fighting at Pegasus Bridge that Major John Howard was tasked to secure on D Day.

Richard Todd was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1919. His father was a medic in the British Army and, as his posting required, the early years of his life were spent in India. The family settled in Devon upon their return to England, and Richard was educated at Shrewsbury Public School, in Shropshire. The theatre was his first love, and he furthered his dramatic skills at the Italia Conti school, thereafter moving to Scotland where he helped to form the Dundee Repertory Theatre. When War was declared, Todd went to St. Andrew's University on the following day to volunteer. He was not a member of the University, but he not only convinced the selection unit that he was, but also added that he had been reading English there for six months, and that he had obtained a Cert A in his school cadet corps; a key point to being accepted as an officer. Despite success in passing off this invented career, Todd was to be disappointed by a lack of interest in him thereafter.

Becoming increasingly desperate to get into the War before it ended, he sent numerous letters to the War Office to press his case, which, in June 1940, was finally noticed.

Accepted by the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, Todd went to Sandhurst to receive his officer training. He had a very lucky escape here when he was in a corridor on the second floor of a building when it was hit by a bomb, and he was blown into the garden outside by the blast. He got to his feet in the darkness and did not feel particularly affected by it, but an examination by torchlight revealed that his whole body was covered in blood from numerous small wounds.

A spell his hospital delayed his passing out from Sandhurst until early 1941. Celebrating in London, he narrowly avoided death again when he found his usual haunt, the Cafe de Paris, was too crowded to admit him and so he went elsewhere; it was hit by a bomb that same night and 84 people were killed.

His Battalion, the 2nd/4th Battalion The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, was posted to XII Corps in defence of Kent, where a German invasion if it came would almost certainly land. Todd was given command of the infantry in the Dymchurch Redoubt, a fort of the Napoleonic era mounting two six-inch guns.

In the event of an invasion, this would certainly have been a primary target for the enemy, and those manning it were told that, with the main defensive line far to their rear, they would be left to fight to the end. General Montgomery commanded XII Corps at this time, and his characteristic emphasis on training and preparedness led to the formation of the first Battle Schools. Richard Todd attended one of these, and the experience allowed him to run his own School when, in December 1941, he was sent to Iceland with the 1st/4th King's Own Light Infantry to be trained in arctic and mountain warfare. Returning to England in September 1942, he eventually ended up in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division. He was among troops of the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion who, at 00:40 hours on 6 June 1944, landed behind the Normandy beaches in a cornfield, perilously close to tracer fire.

Todd scrambled into a wood and with 150 other paratroopers reached Pegasus and Ranville bridges, vital crossings to allow Allied forces to break out from the beachheads into Normandy. They had been seized by a glider force from the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry under the command of Major John Howard, who needed reinforcements to fend off ferocious German attacks.

In his memoirs, Caught in the Act, Todd would write of the carnage, “There was no cessation in the Germans' probing with patrols and counter-attacks, some led by tanks, and the regimental aid post was overrun in the early hours. The wounded being tended there were all killed where they lay. There was sporadic enemy mortar and artillery fire we could do nothing about. One shell landed in a hedge near me, killing a couple of our men.”

Todd would go on and see action at the Battle of the Bulge and push into the Rhine into Germany. After VE day, his division returned to the UK for a few weeks, then was sent on counter-insurgency operations in Palestine. During this posting he was seriously injured when his Jeep overturned, breaking both shoulders and receiving a concussion. He returned to the UK to be demobilised in 1946. 

In 1962, Todd was given the part of Major John Howard in the film adaptation of Cornelius Ryan's book about the D-Day landings, ‘The Longest Day’ (1962). Due to the nature of cinema, it was impossible for the film to give a thorough reflection of the role of the 6th Airborne Division during the Invasion, and as such their activities were solely represented by a reconstruction of the capture of Bénouville Bridge by Howard's coup-de-main force. Although briefly mentioned, the role of the 7th Battalion in the defence of the western bridgehead was largely ignored, and so it appeared as if the defence of the bridge rested only on Howard's men.

Naturally, the omission of their fierce defence of Bénouville caused some resentment amongst veterans, not least because one of their own was championing this re-working of history. Todd, however, regarded ‘The Longest Day’ (1962) as a film rather than a documentary, and his part in it was simply that of an actor doing as he was told.

Richard Todd would never have guessed, that in 17 years since he was on Pegasus Bridge as a paratrooper that he would standing there again as an actor portraying Major John Howard who was given the order: 'Hold,… until relieved'. It had to be Richard Todd’s 'twilight-zone' moment.

The ‘relieve’ for Howard had to come from Lord Lovat and his troops, who had landed on SWORD Beach, and were legging it towards Pegasus Bridge.

Before the shooting of the scenes were started at Pegasus Bridge, the film producer of The Longest Day, Darryl F. Zanuck, had the real life Lord Lovat and Major John Howard brought over to meet the men who were going to portray them (Peter Lawford portrayed Lord Lovat). The men had not seen each other since 6 June 1944.

Photo (above). From L-R: Peter Lawford, Lord Lovat, Richard Todd, Major John Howard.

#todd #richard todd #quote #british army #D Day #DDay #Normandy #pegasus bridge #war #second world war #major john howard #parachute #battle #actor #soldier #paratrooper #the longest day #film #movie #cinema #britain

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen born 21st September 1963 in Glasgow.

MacFadyen had a nomadic upbringing; thanks to his father’s job with the World Health Organization, he spent his childhood and adolescence in places no less diverse than Africa, Australia, France, the Philippines, Singapore, and Denmark. He went on to attend the University of Edinburgh and received theatrical training at the Central School of Speech and Drama. MacFadyen got his professional start on the Edinburgh stage, appearing in a number of productions at the famed Fringe Festival.

Breaking into television in the early ‘90s, Angus appeared in a number of series for the BBC, including an acclaimed adaptation of David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes. Following the critical and commercial success of Braveheart, the actor got a rudimentary dose of recognition across the Atlantic, but remained largely unknown outside of the U.K. He starred with Gabriel Byrne and Bill Campbell in the World War II drama The Brylcreem Boys in 1996, playing a German pilot being held captive in neutral Ireland. Until 1998, when he portrayed Peter Lawford in the made-for-cable The Rat Pack, MacFadyen’s other screen appearances tended to be in films that were widely ignored by audiences and critics alike.

He has played Orson Welles in Tim Robbins’ 1999 film, Cradle Will Rock, Philip in the BBC’s production of The Lost Language of Cranes, Dupont in Equilibrium and Jeff Denlon in the Saw series of films

Some of you might remember Angus in the excellent Takin’ Over the Asylum which also starred two great actors in Ken Stott and David Tennant. We last say him on the big screen in very underrated The Lost City of Z

Angus reprised his role of The Bruce last year in Robert the Bruce, among the co-stars, playing his wife Elizabeth de Burgh is Mhairi Calvey, who aged just 5 was ‘Young Murron’ in Braveheart. While I enjoyed the film, I thought that maybe the role of The Bruce was maybe better suited to a younger actor, but it was his “baby”, and he strived for years to get the film made.

He also appeared in the TV series Strange Angel, about a rocket scientist in 1940s Los Angeles is secretly the disciple of occultist Aleister Crowley, played by our man. I have yet to see this, but must look it up. The series was canceled after two seasons.

Angus is currently part of the Outlander cast playing a Redcoat Brigadier-General, he has no less than five projects on the burner at the moment, the pic of which, for us Scots is probably a movie called The Last Redemption, which also satrs the popular James Cosmo.

#scotland #scottish #actor #cinema #theatre #television #Braveheart #robert the bruce

[fans4wga]

'Hollywood Is on Strike Against High-Tech Exploitation' - by Alex N. Press

"LOS ANGELES — Before she appeared on HBO’s White House Plumbers and Fox’s New Girl, Stevie Nelson hosted a television show on Nickelodeon. On Crashletes, she and her cohosts, along with an audience of kids, reacted to viral videos of people failing at sports. The production ran for three seasons, wrapping at the end of 2020 with a total of sixty episodes.

Nelson worries that soon, a studio could use that body of work to train artificial intelligence (AI) to create a likeness of her to be used in perpetuity: a digital Stevie Nelson, doing things that she has never done, saying things that she has never said, yet indistinguishable from the real Stevie Nelson, based on her past on-screen work.

“There’s enough footage of me that they could technically have me host other shows for the rest of my life without ever having done it, and I’m sure I would not be fairly compensated for it,” said Nelson. “The idea of not a real person hosting shows is scary. The magic of acting, and of hosting, is its impromptu nature. I can’t imagine how soulless it all would be to replace it with AI.”

Nelson and I were speaking on Monday, July 17, a few feet from the picket line outside of Netflix’s corporate office in Los Angeles. She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), one of 160,000 such members who were then on their second day of a nationwide strike. In walking out, the performers joined roughly 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since May 2. The last such double strike was in 1960, when Ronald Reagan was SAG’s president.

Unlike less accessible studios in the Los Angeles area — the standout being NBC Universal, which currently lacks pedestrian walkways and shade thanks to studio machinations — Netflix is in the heart of Hollywood. On Monday, morale was high: hundreds of union members picketed while music that sampled news coverage of the strike blasted from stereos and union staff supplied workers with beverages, snacks, and sunscreen as the temperatures soared above 90 degrees.

Nelson’s fears that an avatar of herself will host television shows indefinitely in a digital purgatory might sound far-fetched, an idea more fit for a Black Mirror script than the real world, but such a possibility is central to what is now the largest strike in the United States. In negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for a new three-year TV/theatrical contract, SAG-AFTRA is seeking to regulate the use of AI to protect performers like her.

Writers want to regulate the usage of AI in their own negotiations with the studios, but the technology poses an even more immediate threat to performers. SAG-AFTRA proposed provisions that would require the studios to get informed consent from a performer before using her likeness and fairly compensate her for that use. They also offered proposals concerning the use of generative AI for training purposes.

The AMPTP didn’t agree. While the organization called its AI counterproposal “unprecedented,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland characterized the studios’ offer as unacceptable.

“In this ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation,” said Crabtree-Ireland at a press conference on Friday, July 15, announcing that the union’s board of directors had voted unanimously to call a strike. “If you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

“The companies have responded to a number of the proposals we put on the table, but the problem is that the devil is in the details,” explained Crabtree-Ireland on The Town, a podcast about the entertainment industry. “We had reached some agreement on there being a requirement for consent but from our point of view, it has to be informed consent. Consent is not a boilerplate provision at the time you’re first hired on a project that says, ‘The company can create a digital replica of you and use it for whatever purpose they want, forever.’”

[continue reading]

#sag-aftra strike #sag strike #ai #union solidarity #current events #actors strike #fans4wga #wga strong #wga strike #writers strike

[unchartedthelostlegacy]

Midnight snacks part 1

Chloe would think about it too much. She even would trick herself into thinking she wasn’t thinking about it, and then notice her heart was pounding, or she had been rubbing a circle into the countertop with her finger for five minutes straight and her coffee was done and the pot was growling.

The butterflies were always there. Even if Nadine was not on her phone screen, Facetiming Chloe while tiredly stirring something on the stove, or on a run, or grocery shopping. Showing off her natural beauty in the most ordinary of circumstances and making Chloe lose her train of thought.

There was that one time Nadine Facetimed her in the bath and didn't realize she had the camera on. Chloe had nearly lost all her boogers bursting out laughing, not because she could see anything more than muscled shoulders with all the bubbles, but because she definitely spied a rubber ducky in the corner of the frame.

“What the hell, Frazer?”

“Mate--you’re--I’m dying--you know your video’s on?”

“What?! ” And then: "Shit!"

Nadine had ended the call, but Chloe had bombarded her with calls and texts reassuring her it wasn't too risque and to send nudes to make up for how pg-13 it had been until she called back, angry but not really.

"Don't bring this up in casual conversation."

"Are you really that embarrassed, china?!"

"Yes."

"Nadine," Chloe chortled, "You can probably find compromising photos of me on the internet from back when we all had dail-up."

"This conversation is over."

"I think I sent tit pics to a guy in exchange for gold in RuneScape once."

"And Shoreline was just my day job until I could afford a rare Draik egg in Neopets," Nadine snapped. "Can we move on?!"

Chloe was gasping for breath. "You would! Only you!"

"And what's this about me flying to Ireland? You know leprechaun gold's not real, right?"

Chloe had developed a keen sense of when Nadine's worry level decreased and her levity level increased in response. She could hear it in Nadine's voice.

"It's where I live. I want you to come visit me."

"Oh."

"You said your dad was giving you a headache, right?"

Nadine murmured, "I thought you...never mind.""

"You thought I lived in Australia and visiting me would mean visiting the kangaroos and koalas. Got it. Totally didn't spend three days deep cleaning my flat for--"

"Frazer, it's fine, really."

"Mate," Chloe snorted. "I can hear your disappointment."

"I'll bring the Draik egg to look at when I'm bored."

Chloe was seized by another laughing fit. "F-fuck. You got me. I've been a bad influence."

"I...really don't think most of your friends would agree."

Chloe stared at the black screen of her phone and its little Nadine-photo icon.

"I...live on my own. I'm not asking you to come to America? What's your point?"

She heard a very Nadine sigh.

"I guess you don't care about your reputation much."

Oh, if only Nadine knew how far too late for that it was.

But what Chloe said was "You don't know what I've done for Club Penguin money."

Just so she could hear her partner dissolve into giggles.

#chlodine #nadine ross #chloe frazer #uncharted #the lost legacy #uncharted: the lost legacy #fanfic

[denimbex1986]

'**** Cillian Murphy headlines Small Things Like These, an understated drama that’s miniature in scale but not ambition.

Opening the Berlin Film Festival, it arrives just weeks before Murphy heads to the Academy Awards to compete for his first Oscar – for his role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

The two films couldn’t be more different, despite both being anchored by the consummate Murphy’s un-showy presence.

Set in 1985, he plays Bill Furlong, who runs a small coal business in County Wicklow, Ireland. Married to Eileen (Eileen Walsh), he’s a father of five daughters – the quiet one in this all-female household.

Set over Christmastime, his children are naturally excitable, but emotions are swelling inside Bill. When one of his offspring asks what he used to get for Christmas, he replies that he once got a jigsaw. Once. It's a heartbreaking admission, one that allows the film to flash back to a sparse childhood.

At one point, we see the young Bill given a hot water bottle as a present; the disappointment etched into his face speaks volumes.

When his wife asks him what he’d like, he suggests David Copperfield, the classic Charles Dickens novel. And indeed, there is something distinctly Dickensian about this story, where poverty seems to exist on every street corner. Quite literally, in one scene, where Bill sees a small barefoot child lapping from a bowl in the road like an animal.

Adapted from the 2020 novel by Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These really is a character study, as Bill’s childhood trauma begins to catch up with him.

The film’s director, Tim Mielants, who previously filmed Murphy in several episodes of BBC show Peaky Blinders, misses no opportunity to train the lens on Murphy’s face, notably when he mournfully stares out of a rain-lashed window. Shots like these speak volumes of his under-the-surface turmoil.

The film really takes hold when Bill delivers coal to the local convent, run by Sister Mary (Emily Watson, who expertly essays a servant of God you simply wouldn’t want to cross).

Bill encounters a young girl named Sarah (Zara Devlin), who has been locked in the convent’s coal shed, and is in desperate need of help. Without ever really explicitly detailing it, the film alludes to the ‘Magdalene laundries’, Catholic institutions that became notorious for exploiting women who were admitted there, often simply because they had fallen pregnant out of wedlock.

It’s not the first time this has been exposed on film, notably in Peter Mullan’s 2002 Golden Lion-winning film The Magdalene Sisters. But while that was a full and frank look at this horrifying practice, Mielants’s movie is deliberately more subtle.

Gradually, we learn that Bill was the son of an unwed teenage mother who escaped the laundries, making his sympathy towards Sarah understandable. Rarely, though, does the film slip into melodrama; expect no grandstanding from Murphy or his co-stars here.

Scripted by playwright Enda Walsh (whose play Disco Pigs was previously adapted on screen, and gave Murphy an early, show-stopping role), Small Things Like These really scores highly in the way it’s been shot.

Mielants and his cinematographer Frank van den Eeden beautifully capture rural Ireland in the mid-'80s, in a way that suggests how little has changed since Bill was a boy in the 1950s.

With much of the film shot around dusk or nighttime, even the sight of carol singers in the street comes with an eerie tint.

At the heart, of course, is Murphy, who gives a performance of great stillness and control. It’s unlikely to catch Hollywood’s eye in the way Oppenheimer has, but it’s another reminder of what a fine and nuanced actor he is.'

#Cillian Murphy #Oppenheimer #Small Things Like These #Frank van den Eeden #Berlinale #Berlin International Film Festival #Eileen Walsh #Claire Keegan #Tim Mielants #Peaky Blinders #The Magdalene Sisters #Enda Walsh

[victusinveritas]

Patrick Pearse spent much of the last summer of his life (1915) in Rosmuck, Connemara with his brother Willie and a friend named Desmond Ryan.

It was a relaxed holiday although Pearse found the time to write one of Ireland's most famous speeches - 'Ireland unfree shall never be at peace,' spoken at the graveside of O'Donovan Rossa and considered by many as a key moment in the lead up to the Easter Rising.

Ryan recalled the summer fondly:

"The next day we proceeded to Rosmuck by train, or rather part of the way, for Rosmuck lies nine miles from a railway station, and we had a long drive by side-car through granite and peat from Maam Cross Station over winding, peak-screened roads.

It was a stirring view along those serpentine roads, ever winding and twisting to avoid the bog.

The horse trotted bravely while an O’Malley drove, and Pearse explained what famous people the O’Malleys were in Connemara.

All the while, bluish granite mountains soared and all around spread the peat-bogs starred by the tiny lakes, each with a local name and every name known to Pearse, who declared for the hundredth time he could find his way blindfold on any road in Connacht.

The Twelve Bens came in sight and Pearse waved his hand here and there over the land, naming lake, mountain and district away to the Joyce Country under its purple mist.

He told us many stories he had learned from the people.

Away there on that gloomy mountain yonder a stranger had lived for years, coming suddenly in the night from nowhere, henceforth a hermit, perhaps doing a penance of solitude and silence for some deed of blood.

We passed a peculiar green building of corrugated iron, a Protestant Church, [Screebe?] and then Pearse remembered that many years before the Bible Societies had carried out a proselytising campaign, and even in 1915 a small remnant of the Irish-speaking Protestant colonies still survived.

Once on his rambles, Pearse had met one of the members, an old man up in a cottage among the hills who opened his Gaelic Bible, read it aloud and argued with Pearse for an hour until the old man’s daughter came in and told her father that he had no manners and that he did not know how to treat a learned man who knew enough Irish and enough Bible to make up his mind for himself, and the attempted conversion of Pearse went no further.

A lonely letter-box on a post at a crossroads led Pearse to tell of the extravagant family, long bankrupt and extinct, who had had the box erected as a monument to their exclusiveness, recklessness and pride.

A barracks rose beside the rattling wheels and Pearse knew that the sergeant within was a crusty and cantankerous fellow companioned by six splendid constables, enthusiastic Irish speakers who spent their time in shooting wild ducks, fishing and studying with zeal the poems of Eoghan Ruadh O’Sullivan.

The car stopped at the schoolmaster’s house and Patrick Connolly welcomed Pearse warmly. His wife came out too.

Inside like startled birds, the four daughters of the schoolmaster retreated from our gaze while their mother laughed and said they would grow out of all that, but when young people lived among lakes and bogs they became curlews and mountain birds, easily startled by wild young men from the cities and poets from Dublin, all this for Willie and me whose ties and locks must have startled her ducklings.

We proceeded to the cottage, a white, thatched, oblong building with green

door, porchway and two windows in front, approached by a peat-sodded path from the main road. Here was the spiritual home of Pearse, which in the last years he visited every summer to pay a last farewell.

Below lay a fifty-acre lake legend tenanted with a Water Horse.

Beyond the rare walls of the cottage, the Atlantic heaved and moaned with tales of lost ships or murmured a summons to ride on its bosom to the Aran Isles on a fair day.

On every side rose the purple hills and peat, agleam with unnumbered lakelets. Pearse sat at the kitchen table writing the closing tales in his book of short stories, 'The Mother.'

He turned aside to discuss the completed stories with Willie and me, and said he thought the best the grimmest one, a tale of a woman under a curse called the “Black Chafer.”

Then he sighed that he had never written a story about turf or shown up enough the

hard life of the people. He said this sadly with almost the air of a man who all at once comes upon an intolerable personal grievance.

Sometimes he went down and bathed in the lake while Willie guarded him from the banks with a long, strong rope as Pearse was no swimmer. This tickled the brothers so much that they gave up the attempt with loud merriment and mutual criticisms.

Returning, Pearse mused on his cottage and said that one of the builders had been an old man who took his task very slowly and seriously, making progress by inches, but consoling Pearse’s impatience with the sole remark:

“Won’t it be a fine house when it is finished. Indeed it will be a fine house when it is finished.”

Pearse was more outspoken than I had ever known him before.

Night by night he spoke to Willie and me about everything by turns.

Much about the future of the Irish language. Here in this self-contained community which he had once known as purely Irish-speaking, English was creeping in among the younger generation.

It amused him when we walked abroad in the day-time to speak to the men working

the land and smile at the English expressions speckling the Gaelic:

“Becripes, tá . . . bedamned but tá...' from those who knew no other words of English, but he said this was the beginning of the end unless some great change came.

And what the change would be sometimes broke through his thoughts...

Who could have guessed that behind his gentle words and look, an insurrection simmered, a certainty that his days were irrevocably numbered and in this place he would never see in another summer?"

Pictured above are Patrick Pearse and his brother Willie, neither of whom would live to see the summer of 1916.

Taken from Desmond Ryan's 1934 auto-biography 'Remembering Sion.'

All of this was taken whole cloth from The History of Connemara Facebook group.

#irish studies #irish history

[mariacallous]

The thread was 10 tweets long—verbose by X standards—and 219 words, but there was just one word that stuck out. Threat. The message, posted on the @SAG-AFTRA account, summed up everything the actors union had fought to get in the tentative agreement with Hollywood studios. In the context of the rapid rise of generative AI, it’s worth reading in full: “We have achieved a deal of extraordinary scope that includes ‘above-pattern’ minimum compensation increases, unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI, and for the first time establishes a streaming participation bonus.”

“Threat,” of course, is how many people have come to view artificial intelligence. US president Joe Biden’s recent executive order on the technology was seen as, in part, a way to address the risks the technology presents to national security. Last week, 28 countries, including European Union nations and China, signed on to an agreement to contain AI, warning that it was advancing in a way that could bring “serious, even catastrophic, harm.” In Hollywood, the fear was that AI would be used to scan actors and recreate their performances without consent or compensation, or that large language models would be used on scripts in a way that would edge out screenwriters.

Terms of the contract between the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) won’t be revealed until after it’s been reviewed by the guild‘s national board, but based on SAG’s tweets, it seems likely the union got the AI protections they’d been holding out for. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the most recent proposal from the AMPTP sought to allow studios to pay for AI scans of what are known as “Schedule F” performers and, following the actors’ death, allow them to use those scans without the consent of the estate or SAG. The guild pushed back, asking for compensation and consent.

When the Writers Guild of America settled their labor dispute with the studios and streamers in September, they got a contract that put up protections to ensure AI-generated material didn’t come to them for rewrites and that prevented studios from training AI models on their scripts without approval. On Friday, presumably after SAG signs the deal with AMPTP, the world will know if they got equivalent protections.

AI has been the major sticking point in strikes carried out by both writers and actors this year. The last time there was a big work stoppage—the writers strike of 2007-08—one of the major issues was fair compensation for content produced for the web and better residual payments for content that gets downloaded from services like (then) iTunes. Mind you, this was years before House of Cards and Netflix’s big push into original content. Hell, it was years before Netflix would join AMPTP. But, as with other Hollywood labor disputes before it, the strike now looks like a canary in a coal mine. Streaming has come to dominate the industry in the years since, “disrupting” the system and leading labor unions in Tinseltown to seek greater compensation for work that, 15 years ago, seemed fringe compared to network TV and big-screen blockbusters.

It’s no longer fringe. All of that disrupting worked, and going into this year’s negotiations, the guilds sought to beef up how much writers and actors were paid when their shows got licensed to streaming services. “They’ve got a 2023 business model for streaming with a 1970 business model for paying performers and writers and other creatives in the industry,” SAG chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told my colleague Will Bedingfield back in June, when the union’s members were considering a strike. “That is not OK.”

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.4 (after 1900)

1901 – McKinley inaugurated president for second time; Theodore Roosevelt is vice president. 1908 – The Collinwood school fire, Collinwood near Cleveland, Ohio, kills 174 people. 1909 – U.S. President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution's Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State. 1913 – First Balkan War: The Greek army engages the Turks at Bizani, resulting in victory two days later. 1913 – The United States Department of Labor is formed. 1917 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives. 1933 – Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd President of the United States. He was the last president to be inaugurated on March 4. 1933 – Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet. 1933 – The Parliament of Austria is suspended because of a quibble over procedure – Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss initiates an authoritarian rule by decree. 1941 – World War II: The United Kingdom launches Operation Claymore on the Lofoten Islands; the first large scale British Commando raid. 1943 – World War II: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea in the south-west Pacific comes to an end. 1943 – World War II: The Battle of Fardykambos, one of the first major battles between the Greek Resistance and the occupying Royal Italian Army, begins. It ends on 6 March with the surrender of an entire Italian battalion and the liberation of the town of Grevena. 1944 – World War II: After the success of Big Week, the USAAF begins a daylight bombing campaign of Berlin. 1946 – Field Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim, the 6th president of Finland, resigns from his position for health reasons. 1955 – An order to protect the endangered Saimaa ringed seal (Pusa hispida saimensis) is legalized. 1957 – The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90. 1960 – The French freighter La Coubre explodes in Havana, Cuba, killing 100. 1962 – A Caledonian Airways Douglas DC-7 crashes shortly after takeoff from Cameroon, killing 111 – the worst crash of a DC-7. 1966 – A Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people. 1966 – In an interview in the London Evening Standard, The Beatles' John Lennon declares that the band is "more popular than Jesus now". 1970 – French submarine Eurydice explodes underwater, resulting in the loss of the entire 57-man crew. 1976 – The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland resulting in direct rule of Northern Ireland from London by the British parliament. 1977 – The 1977 Vrancea earthquake in eastern and southern Europe kills more than 1,500, mostly in Bucharest, Romania. 1980 – Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe's first black prime minister. 1985 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for HIV infection, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States. 1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley's Comet and the first images of its nucleus. 1990 – American basketball player Hank Gathers dies after collapsing during the semifinals of a West Coast Conference tournament game. 1990 – Lennox Sebe, President for life of the South African Bantustan of Ciskei, is ousted from power in a bloodless military coup led by Brigadier Oupa Gqozo. 1994 – Space Shuttle program: the Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on STS-62. 1996 – A derailed train in Weyauwega, Wisconsin (USA) causes the emergency evacuation of 2,300 people for 16 days. 1998 – Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex. 2001 – BBC bombing: A massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring one person; the attack was attributed to the Real IRA.

#Events

[purpleplaid17]

Jess Watches // Sat 7 Oct Synopses & Favourite Scenes

Upload 2x06 The Outing

Nora and Aleesha pursue the mystery into New York City with Nathan and Luke along on screens. Ingrid receives unexpected visitors.

I should get a tablet set up like them so people can take me out for walks with them. Not sure I'd want my face that big though lol.

I'm a Virgo 1x05 Brillo, If Possible

Bear wakes up after a night of drag racing and is surprised to find himself shrunken, along with all of his neighbors. The media coverage of Cootie and the demonstration has started.

Bear driving a remote control car with a regular-sized microphone on top so he could be heard was pretty ingenious. Also, the tapping rhythm the uncle has to unlock all the secret hidden compartments was

Supernatural Academy (with friend) 1x14 Fractured Part B

The twins train to partake in Louis' plan to destroy the Dragon King; Elda explores her powers.

The gang's all here, yay! Jessa finally letting her dragon side fly only to be nearly caught by [not who I ever expected]. And is witch (?) mum in the frog somehow?

Rugby World Cup 2023

England (6) vs Samoa (12) (with friend)

Wasn't really planning on watching all this match, but checked in at 8-7 and couldn't take my eyes off it. What a nailbiter it was. A scrappy match that had me cheering any time things went Samoa's way. Y'know, like the proud England patriot I am lmao.

Ireland (1) vs Scotland (5)

I stopped watching 5 mins into the second half after Ireland scored again and Sexton went off. Gutted Scotland were in a Pool with the top 2 teams because they should've at least made it to the quarter finals :(

#upload amazon #i'm a virgo #supernatural academy #rugby #rugby world cup #rwc 2023 #polls #tumblr polls #jess watches #day 18

[darkangel1791]

Why Actors Are Going on Strike

BY LAURA ZORNOSA

Time.com

UPDATED: JULY 12, 2023 4:37 PM EDT | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JULY 12, 2023 4:28 PM EDT

Just after midnight on the West Coast, the contracts between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expired—meaning that a deal between the two had not been reached. SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee unanimously voted to recommend a strike to its national board, which is expected to formally announce the strike on Thursday.

On June 5, nearly 65,000 of the approximately 160,000 members that make up SAG-AFTRA approved a strike authorization with a 97.91% “yes” vote. The union includes actors, dancers, DJs, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists, and other media professionals.

Two days later, SAG-AFTRA entered negotiations on its agreement with the AMPTP, including Amazon/MGM, Apple, NBCUniversal, Disney/ABC/Fox, Netflix, Paramount/CBS, Sony, and Warner Brothers. On June 30, the contracts between the two were extended, and they now expire at midnight on Wednesday.

“There has been a sea change in the entertainment industry, from the proliferation of streaming platforms to the recent explosion of generative AI, and at stake is the ability of our members to make a living,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, said in a letter about the strike authorization referendum. “We must ensure that new developments in the entertainment industry are not used to devalue or disrespect the performers who bring productions to life.”

On Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA agreed to AMPTP’s last-minute request for federal mediation, which would bring in a neutral third party to help work toward a compromise. SAG-AFTRA clarified, though, that it would not extend the negotiations for a second time.

“We will not be distracted from negotiating in good faith to secure a fair and just deal by the expiration of our agreement,” the guild said in a press release. “We are committed to the negotiating process and will explore and exhaust every possible opportunity to make a deal, however we are not confident that the employers have any intention of bargaining toward an agreement.”

Among SAG-AFTRA’s demands are increased minimum pay rates, increased streaming residuals (neither of which have kept up with inflation), and improved working conditions. Royalty payments, which are contingent on the number of a show’s reruns, are no longer reliable. Streaming, which has shifted to shorter seasons over longer periods of time, has made less work available to actors. And union members want guarantees from studio and production companies about how, exactly, artificial intelligence will be used—they want to protect their likenesses and make sure they are well compensated when any of their work is used to train AI.

On June 27, more than 300 actors—including Meryl Streep, Quinta Brunson, and Jennifer Lawrence—signed a letter to the SAG-AFTRA Leadership and Negotiating Committee stating that “SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not.”

“We hope you’ve heard the message from us: This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough,” the letter reads. “We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade. We need to reverse those trajectories.”

When was the last time SAG-AFTRA went on strike?

SAG-AFTRA has a long history of strikes and boycotts. In 2021, the union barred Donald Trump from ever rejoining because he obstructed the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden—and because of his attacks on journalists. (Trump had resigned from the group earlier that month.)

In 2018, SAG-AFTRA announced a strike against the global advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty after the advertising agency stated that it would no longer honor its long-standing contract with the union. Ten months later, the advertising agency agreed to sign SAG-AFTRA’s new commercials contract.

SAG and AFTRA, which merged in 2012, went on strike together for the first time in 2016, against eleven American video game developers and publishers, which became the longest strike within SAG.

In 2000, before they merged, SAG and AFTRA issued a controversial six-month work stoppage over the protocol for paying actors who appear in TV commercials. Twenty years prior, SAG and AFTRA jointly called for a successful boycott against 1980s’ Emmy Awards, striking for an increase in minimum salaries.

How the ongoing writers’ strike factors in

In 1960, SAG went on strike against AMPTP over pay, joining the Writers Guild of America (WGA), which had already been on strike for more than a month with similar demands, largely over pay rates. That marked the first industry-wide strike in Hollywood.

In a historical echo, today, the WGA has been on strike since early May. If SAG-AFTRA’s demands are not met this time around, it will join the WGA on strike, bringing Hollywood to a near standstill. In preparation, SAG-AFTRA has called for volunteers to serve as strike captains, and WGA captains—already on strike at several studios—have offered training from the picket lines.

What this means for movies and TV shows

If SAG-AFTRA members do go on strike, any film or TV production that has not already been halted by the WGA strike will essentially shut down. Overseas productions, in particular, where studios have tried to continue shooting some shows without WGA writer-producers, are likely to feel the impact.

#actor's strike #sag-aftra strike #studio actor's guild #american federation of television and radio artists #sag aftra #sag-aftra

[coochiequeens]

Another social justice warrior with a history of abusing women.

Famed author J.K. Rowling called out Twitter’s lack of policy enforcement after an account which released her address with a threatening message was allowed to remain active for days despite reports. Reduxx has now learned that the user behind the account is an Irish social justice activist and “feminist” organizer. 

Rowling set off a firestorm of concern from netizens on July 1 after uploading a screenshot of a disturbing tweet that had been directed at her from June 14. 

Originally posted by user @fuckfinegael, the quote retweet featured two images — one of Rowling with her address overlayed on her face and a pipe bomb in the corner, and the other of an Improvised Munitions Handbook. The guide, originally published by the US Army in 1969, was created for the purposes of teaching soldiers how to create explosives and weapons using limited resources. 

In her tweet of the screenshot, Rowling clarified she had covered her family’s address to prevent further circulation.

The threatening message had been in direct response to a post Rowling had made in support of a male detransitioner.

In her post, Rowling stated that the account was still active despite having released her home address with an obviously abusive connotation. After Rowling’s tweet went live, the account, @fuckfinegael, was deactivated and then deleted by the user, suggesting no action by Twitter had been taken. The handle has since been claimed by a user unrelated to the situation.

Prior to deactivating, @fuckfinegael‘s only other identifying information was a first name: Shane. 

But despite being deactivated, a quick search through the publicly-accessible Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine will quickly reveal that the account belongs to Shane Murray, an Irish social justice activist.

A screen capture of Murray’s account from 2021, taken by the WayBackMachine’s automated system, shows he described himself as an organizer with multiple social justice groups, including End Image-Based Sexual Abuse (End ISBA) Ireland, Youth Against Racism and Inequality, and ROSA Social Feminist Movement Ireland.

Murray was featured as a social media coordinator for the End ISBA campaign on two occasions in 2020, in both the University Times and the College Tribune. The advocacy group was an effort launched by University College Dublin Student Union representatives of which Murray was one, and was focused on targeting internet-based abuses, specifically that of a sexual nature such as ‘revenge pornography.’

Last year, the End ISBA official Twitter revealed Murray was one of its team members certified by Ohana Zero Suicide in crisis awareness training. Just prior to deactivating his Twitter account, Murray abused women critical of gender ideology and, in at least one archived instance, suggested a feminist commit suicide. 

In November of 2020, Murray was highlighted by the University College Dublin Students’ Union as an “intersectional feminist” activist.

According to WayBackMachine logs, Murray deactivated his Twitter account in April of 2021, only to return in May of 2022 with the stated purpose of finding spare tickets to a concert he wanted to see. It wasn’t until June that he began to use the account regularly again, this time also revealing he identified as transgender. 

Murray has since deactivated all social media, including his Facebook. 

On July 2, Police Scotland announced an official investigation had been launched into the threats aimed at Rowling. 

Since first revealing she had concerns about the impact of gender ideology in 2019 by throwing her support behind British feminist Maya Forstater, Rowling has been the subject of ample abuse from trans activists, media, and other celebrities. 

Earlier this year, Rowling’s fantasized death was celebrated in an Amazon-bestselling gore novel titled Manhunt. Described as an ‘LGBTQ horror,’ the plot of the book is centered around trans-identified males graphically murdering feminists, referred to as ‘TERFs.’

In a Tweet advertising the book published by the author, Gretchen Felker-Martin, the death of JK Rowling is alluded to and treated as a point of entertainment.

The book contains two references to the death of the Harry Potter author: one in which she is burned alive, and a second allegory of her demise in the form of a weapon called the Galbraith being destroyed.

The ‘TERFs’ in the novel are also referred to as “the Knights of JK Rowling,” with the women holding her namesake participating in the brutalization and sexual abuse of trans-identified males. 

The details in this article have been passed on to Police Scotland.

#IStandwithJKRowling #leftist men and women violence towards women #UK

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen born 21st September 1963 in Glasgow.

MacFadyen had a nomadic upbringing; thanks to his father’s job with the World Health Organization, he spent his childhood and adolescence in places no less diverse than Africa, Australia, France, the Philippines, Singapore, and Denmark. He went on to attend the University of Edinburgh and received theatrical training at the Central School of Speech and Drama. MacFadyen got his professional start on the Edinburgh stage, appearing in a number of productions at the famed Fringe Festival.

Breaking into television in the early ‘90s, Angus appeared in a number of series for the BBC, including an acclaimed adaptation of David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes. Following the critical and commercial success of Braveheart, the actor got a rudimentary dose of recognition across the Atlantic, but remained largely unknown outside of the U.K. He starred with Gabriel Byrne and Bill Campbell in the World War II drama The Brylcreem Boys in 1996, playing a German pilot being held captive in neutral Ireland. Until 1998, when he portrayed Peter Lawford in the made-for-cable The Rat Pack, MacFadyen’s other screen appearances tended to be in films that were widely ignored by audiences and critics alike.

He has played Orson Welles in Tim Robbins’ 1999 film, Cradle Will Rock, Philip in the BBC’s production of The Lost Language of Cranes, Dupont in Equilibrium and Jeff Denlon in the Saw series of films

Some of you might remember Angus in the excellent Takin’ Over the Asylum which also starred two great actors in Ken Stott and David Tennant. We last say him on the big screen in very underrated The Lost City of Z

Angus reprised his role of The Bruce last year in Robert the Bruce, among the co-stars, playing his wife Elizabeth de Burgh is Mhairi Calvey, who aged just 5 was ‘Young Murron’ in Braveheart. While I enjoyed the film, I thought that maybe the role of The Bruce was maybe better suited to a younger actor, but it was his “baby”, and he strived for years to get the film made.

He also appeared in the TV series Strange Angel, about a rocket scientist in 1940s Los Angeles is secretly the disciple of occultist Aleister Crowley, played by our man. I have yet to see this, but must look it up. The series  was canceled after two seasons.

Angus is currently in the part of the recurring cast in the DC comics TV production  Superman & Lois as Jor-El, although he died when the planet Krypton was destroyed, he lives on in holographic form, so could turn up again in the next season. He played the part of MacBeth in a modern telling of the story called  Curse of the Macbeths, the film has mixed reviews, he also wrote the screenplay for the film and directed it.

MacFadyen is also involved in a few projects, a comedy film,  The Trouble with Billy and sci-film  Kaia: Kill or Be Killed are just two of several. 

#scottish #Scotland #actor #director #writer #happy birhtday