#get you a man like timothy laurence

[thiziri]

Helpful boi 🥺

#I LOVE HIM SM #sweet baby boy #get you a man like timothy laurence #ALSO LOL AT THE WAY ANNE PUTS HER MASK ON #THE BOUFFANT #princess anne #princess royal #tim laurence #timothy laurence #brf #british royal family

[aimeedaisies]

How their love affair blossomed

The Princess Royal and Commander Timothy Laurence

HELLO! Number 233 | Published: December 19th 1992 | Article 2/2

When Princess Anne's happy secret that she planned to wed Commander Timothy Laurence leaked out it brought much-needed joy to the beleaguered royal family.

One of the rare happy moments in a year of royal troubles came in May when Anne danced around a ballroom in the arms of her dashing naval officer. By “going public" with Tim just four weeks after her divorce from Captain Mark Phillips, she signalled that she was planning a future with the Queen's former equerry.

It was also her way of testing the water - to find out what the public's response might be. The general reaction was that the hard-working Princess deserved to find happiness at last after the break-up of her first marriage. But, in withholding the announcement of her betrothal until almost the last minute, Anne is once again proving that she likes to do things her way.

When she married Captain Phillips in 1973 she broke with royal precedent by insisting that her husband should not be given a title which he had not earned. This meant that her son Peter, 14, and daughter Zara, 11, have been the only grandchildren of a monarch this century who remain untitled.

Now Anne is once again setting a precedent by becoming the first divorced member of the Queen's family to marry for the second time. But, to avoid embarrassing her mother who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which does not sanction the remarriage of divorced people, she made the decision to wed in Scotland, because the Church of Scotland does not ban divorcées from remarrying.

And the man she has chosen comes from a vastly different background from her own. Tim Laurence is the great-great-great-grandson of a real-life merchant of Venice, called Zaccaria Levy, who in the 18th century left his home in the Italian city to forge a new life in England.

His business flourished and he became one of the first Jewish underwriters to become a member of Lloyds. In 1826, his son Joseph changed the family name to Laurence and by the next generation the family had abandoned its Jewish faith with Joseph's son, Percy, becoming an Anglican vicar.

And, at the weekend, Tim Laurence married in a Scottish village church, so different a setting from Princess Anne's first wedding in Westminster Abbey. But the Princess wants her new life to go on the way it began - out of the spotlight.

It was away from the limelight of official occasions ; that Princess Anne first began to notice Tim Laurence. In fact, they met through work - Tim was a junior officer in the Royal Navy, serving aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. But it was not until 1986, when he became an equerry to the Queen, that they really got to know one another.

The Princess, who was frequently at Buckingham Palace on official duties, could not help bumping into the quiet, well-spoken young officer. And when she needed an adviser on her work for a charitable trust she thought of Tim Laurence immediately. Although the Princess was still married to Captain Philips, she was lonely. Tim was sympathetic and the soul of discretion but they maintained nothing ; more than a friendship.

At the same time, the Queen recognised her equerry's worth by turning to him constantly for assistance on her royal engagements. She awarded his diligence in August 1989 by making him a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, MVO, a personal award.

During this period, while the world speculated about her private life, Princess Anne simply got on with her job. The Queen grieved for her daughter and appreciated the fortitude Anne displayed over such a long period of unhappiness. Her dedication to a number of good causes, notably the Save The Children Fund won her the respect and admiration of the public and gradually the transformation from the former royal spoilsport, who told the Press to "Naff off", into the royal workhorse was completed.

To single her out from her sisters-in-law, the Queen wanted to honour her only daughter with the title Princess Royal. It was some time before Anne, who had been initially reluctant to accept, agreed - and the title was conferred in 1987. Between then and now the Princess Royal has devoted herself to her work but for the whole of this year her happiness has been evident to those around her and said far more than any Palace announcement.

And not even the ruby ring on her third finger, left hand, could match the sparkle in her eyes when the news was officially given that she and Tim would marry. Not so long ago, the Princess said: "Sailing on a sunny day with a fresh breeze blowing, with maybe somebody you really care for, is the nearest thing to Heaven I will get on this Earth", and it seems no coincidence that since she became close to Tim her love of sailing increased. At first the couple sailed on the Solent but when their plans to marry in Scotland were completed, her 36ft yacht Blue Doublet was moved to a new mooring on Lock Craigie.

Over the past month they have enjoyed several weekends sailing to the Outer Hebrides and to the islands of Jura and Mull. Far from the world's prying eyes, they could just be together, not Princess and commoner but friends who found love.

Princess Anne shone with happiness (above) when she was seen in public with Tim for the first time, in May at the Royal Caledonian Ball.

They've also been spotted together in private (left). He was a step behind her (right) at Ascot in 1987.

Tim’s calm discretion and charm quickly won him a special place in the midst of the royal family. Only a few feet from Anne (top) and already a familiar presence with little Zara (left). Over four years ago (right) he was a protective presence behind Princess Margaret.

Christmas Day 1987 at Sandringham and Tim leaves church with the royal family, right behind the Duchess of Kent (top left). When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Queen at Windsor Castle, Tim was there too (top right) smartly saluting only a couple of paces behind Her Majesty and Mrs Gorbachev (below centre)

Commander Tim Laurence and Princess Anne’s family trees.

REPORT: JUDY WADE

MAIN PHOTOS: NICHOLAS READ/REX FEATURES

#and they’re still going strong 30 years later #cutest couple in the brf #they deserve the whole world #get you a man like timothy laurence #always there to support his wife #they are so in love and always have been #princess anne #princess royal #tim laurence #timothy laurence #hello magazine

[allie-writes]

telling the bees

Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Relationships: Sherlock Holmes | Herlock Sholmes/Mikotoba Yuujin Other relevant tags: Retirement, Domestic Fluff, Post-Canon, Implied/Referenced Period-Typical Homophobia Word count: 1418 Language: English Read on: AO3

Setting his bread aside, Yuujin eyed first the sheet of paper, then his friend, wearily. “Whatever are you on about, Holmes?” he asked. Apprehensively, he plucked the letter from Holmes’s hand. “Is this someone requesting your services?”

Holmes leaned forward in his seat. “Read it.”

With a sigh, Yuujin picked up his reading glasses from where they were still resting atop the morning paper, then turned the sheet over.

holmes and mikotoba receive an invitation in their sussex cottage.

written for @homumikoweek2023's day 7 - retirement!

CW: this fic features Iris/original male character as a narrative prop of sorts. It is entirely off-screen and Iris should be well into her twenties, if not her thirties, by the time this story takes place. Please exercise discretion when it comes to what you are comfortable reading.

The honey was slowly trickling off Holmes’s bread and across the fingers of his left hand as he stared open-mouthed at the letter clasped in his right. It made for a comical picture across the breakfast table, Yuujin thought as he buttered his third slice of bread that morning. He felt almost compelled to scoop up the little puddle of honey that was slowly forming on Holmes’s plate to slather onto it, just so it wouldn’t go to waste—it was one of the first jars Holmes’s hives had produced.

His train of thought was derailed by the sound of Holmes’s jaw snapping shut. “I simply can’t believe it!” exclaimed he, then jabbed the letter towards Yuujin. “Read this and then please, do tell me that I am misunderstanding the contents of this letter, my dear!”

Setting his bread aside, Yuujin eyed first the sheet of paper, then his friend, wearily. “Whatever are you on about, Holmes?” he asked. Apprehensively, he plucked the letter from Holmes’s hand. “Is this someone requesting your services?”

Holmes leaned forward in his seat. “Read it.”

With a sigh, Yuujin picked up his reading glasses from where they were still resting atop the morning paper, then turned the sheet over. There, neatly centred and expertly calligraphed, the letter read:

Lord Barok van Zieks announces the marriage of his niece Iris Watson to Mr. Laurence Timothy Basil on Saturday, June the tenth, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, at twelve o’clock, in Marylebone, London.

And below that, in the left-hand corner and somewhat smaller, was written An answer is requested.

“Oh.”

“Yes, my good man! Oh, indeed!” said Holmes, smacking his palms flat against the breakfast table. “My own daughter is conspiring against me!”

Yuujin pushed his glasses on top of his head to pinch the bridge of his nose. He was suddenly feeling rather dizzy and could already feel a headache coming on. “Has she ever spoken to you about—any of it? This Mr. Basil, for instance?”

“This is the first time I am seeing, hearing, or reading anything of a man by that name! Why, had I known that retiring to Sussex would mean my retirement from Iris’s life, I would never have—"

The table tilted slightly under Holmes’s weight, so heavily was he leaning on it. His honey-drenched hand was visibly stuck to the tablecloth, which did nothing to deter Yuujin from reaching out to cover it with his own. “Calm yourself, Holmes,” he said, meeting his friend’s eye. “I completely understand how shocked you are—believe me, I am too. But you aren’t doing anyone any favours by getting worked up like this.”

For a moment, Holmes stared blankly at Yuujin; then, he inhaled sharply and did as he was told. Slowly, creakingly, he sat back in his chair until the table, too, was once more stood firmly on the ground. He took a deep breath. “She didn’t tell me anything.”

“It is rather odd, isn’t it?” Yuujin mused and pulled his hand back. “But clearly Lord van Zieks knew of it.”

“What right does that man even think he has, giving away Iris’s hand in marriage?”

Yuujin sighed. “Perhaps, as her next of kin…”

Holmes scoffed and picked up the next letter from his stash of the morning mail, cutting it open with his honey-stained bread knife. “Her next of kin? No, Mikotoba, he is merely her closest blood-relation. But who knows, perhaps she will insist that he walk her down the aisle, too! Blood is thicker than water, et cetera. Who am I to dictate what she or Lord van Zieks do?”

Yuujin looked back at the invitation—blurry, now that he wasn’t wearing his glasses anymore. “Well, we might be considering it from the wrong perspective.”

“You mean that there might be a hidden message?” asked Holmes, suddenly perking up. “Why, yes, Iris might simply be playing a trick on us, and her meaning is hidden somewhere inside this fake invitation—”

“No, that’s not quite what I meant, Holmes,” interrupted Yuujin. He made sure to meet his friend’s eye across the table with a reassuring smile. “You are assuming that her engagement to this Mr. Basil has been a long time in the making. That she has been keeping it a secret, and that she and Lord van Zieks deliberately went behind your back to announce the wedding so suddenly. But Holmes, my love, please consider that dear Iris may have been just as surprised by this development as we are now.”

Holmes wrinkled his nose. “What are you saying? That she got engaged on accident?”

“Not quite,” said Yuujin, picking up his long-forgotten bread again, “but I could imagine that she might have been swept off her feet by the young man’s charms and fallen for him at once. A proposal could have followed soon after.”

He took a bite out of his bread and chewed thoughtfully as he watched Holmes turn the scenario over in his mind. A deep crease fell between his friend’s brows. “It would seem rather reckless of her to accept, if that were the case.”

Yuujin grinned. “Perhaps the notion is a little too far on the romantic side for you to understand,” he teased.

Holmes’s gaze dropped to the table. In one hand, he was still gripping an opened, though unread, letter. “I want to trust in Iris’s judgement. I really do. But it’s only natural that I would fear for her, no? Marriage is a rather big commitment, and I myself have no point of reference for it.”

Something soft unravelled inside Yuujin’s chest at once. He took one last bite off his bread and stood up slowly, his knees creaking in protest. “I wonder if you don’t, Holmes,” he said as he rounded the breakfast table to join Holmes where he sat. Gently, he drew his friend—his partner and the precious second love of his life—into his side.

Holmes leaned his head into him with a sigh and Yuujin at once felt compelled to comb a hand through his slowly thinning hair. “You know as well as I do that marriage is not in the cards for us, Mikotoba,” he mumbled into the robe Yuujin wore over his sleepwear. “The law will never recognise the way we live.”

Yuujin hummed. “In some cases, a marriage is little more than a contract.”

“And still, no notary will see to men like us.”

“Well, there are other contracts,” replied Yuujin, at last prying the forgotten letter that Holmes was, somehow, still holding onto, from his hand and placing it on the table. Holmes huffed a little laugh, his breath warm against Yuujin’s stomach.

“What contracts?”

“We bought this here cottage in shares, for example.”

Holmes glanced up at Yuujin at that, a smile dancing in his eyes. “I wonder which one of us truly struggles to understand romance. I, for one, find myself struggling to imagine anything less romantic than real estate law.”

“Perhaps the contract’s conclusion itself is indeed lacking in romance,” Yuujin acquiesced, “but all the same, I signed down my name to spend the rest of my days with you.”

“Oh,” breathed Holmes. It was all the reply he could manage, it seemed, as he continued to stare up at Yuujin with slowly moistening eyes.

“So? Do you not have a frame of reference for married life, after all?”

“Perhaps,” began Holmes, his voice cracking, “I do, after a fashion.”

Yuujin carefully disentangled himself from his friend, stepping back. “And do you believe Iris might be happy, under similar circumstances to our own?”

Holmes pursed his lips in thought, sizing Yuujin up from the corner of his eye. “Perhaps,” he said, “or perhaps not. I shall have to meet this Mr. Basil in person, and ideally, I will meet him before he marries my daughter.”

“They are requesting a reply,” answered Yuujin mildly. “We could send a telegraph today and start packing as early as this evening. Then, we could take the first train to London tomorrow morning.”

“The first train,” echoed Holmes, his face scrunching up in distaste. He picked the discarded, honey-stained letter back up and slipped it out of its envelope, clearly in a bid to give his hands something to do. “We will see about the precise time, but I don’t see why we should not. But first, let me go through the rest of the mail, and then…”

“Then what?”

“Then, I believe, I have two marriages to inform my bees about.”

#homumikoweek2023 #homumiko #hmmk #dgs2 spoilers #tgaa2 spoilers #the great ace attorney #dai gyakuten saiban #yujin mikotoba #herlock sholmes #iris wilson #iris watson #sherlock holmes #cw: homophobia #fanfiction #word count: 1k+ #putting the 'late' in 'late submission'

[dork-empress]

So I started making a list of british actors for varied parts. A lot of it is variable, as most of Temeraire is a bunch of Uptight British Gentlemen types, and England makes those in Bulk.

HOWEVER, as I was doing it, the cast list looked very...white. In future books/seasons where they go to other countries, this list is expanded, of course, but still. I thought 'well it is a historical piece, so it is accurate' and then I threw up on myself and came to my senses. It's all made up anyway, and Naomi Novik herself came up with a plausible reason to have women lead characters. I could do the same!

I still do want Will Laurence to be played by a white man, specifically this one:

Charlie Hunnam, of Pacific Rim and King Arthur fame. The Perfect Twunk British guy who's all strong looking, but could play both the Very Proper (Awkward) British Gentleman, as well as a fun loving dragon dad, and a feral warrior captain. He's our fish out of water character, so it makes sense he's as close to our idea of old timey british man as we can get.

NOW THOUGH: The aviators in this series are canonically lower staffed as it's hard to find people unafraid of dragons, plus they're a bit looser with the rules: as long as they get people on the dragons, they dont much care who they are, and dragons certainly don't give a damn about racism. Therefore, I think *historically* it would make sense as a career for a Freedman, or a Freedman's son, who may not have many prospects.

Enter John Granby:

THATS RIGHT ITS A PACIFIC RIM REUNION

Canonically, John Granby is lower-class, and was sent to the Aviators at age 7 because his family couldn't feed him. This contributes to how bitter he is about Laurence, a gentlemen, just GETTING an uber rare dragon egg with no work, basically. Changing his race doesn't really change his backstory, and in fact enhances the tension with Laurence: We imagine he has had to have worked 4 times as hard as everyone around him to get half as much. Plus, John Boyega can do the physical comedy amazingly once he gets his own dragon (spoilers) who is a fireball.

Harcourt and Berkley can go a number of ways, though I favor Rose Leslie for Harcourt because pretty and feisty red head. Though Bonnie Wright may also work. I have Timothy Spell for Berkley, but again, I just need an overweight british man, I think I can find one.

For Jane Roland though:

ITS CERSEI'S TURN FOR A DRAGON, BITCH!

But honestly it's her role in Imagine Me and You (great lesbian film if you're looking) that sets her as the crass but firm leader that Jane Roland needs. Plus, look at her, she could definitely Dom Laurence.

(though if we're opening this up to American Actors, she may have to fight for the role with Charlize Theron....)

For the dragons voice acting, I would like a Chinese-British voice for Temeraire, seeing as he's a Chinese Dragon raised British. You could bring forward some great british voice actors like John Rhys Davies and even, I'll say it, Benedict Cumberbatch. Say what you want, he has a good voice. Also Tom Holland for Levitas. Saying a brittle "You Came!" to his Captain as he dies, in the same tone as Spider-man's "I don't feel so good..." Ugh, I'm gutted thinking about it.

I want to throw Riz Ahmed in there somewhere. Maybe for Keynes, the Dragon Doctor? I can't pin it down, but he feels right for this series. I'd like a few British Indian's among the cast, considering the time period.

for season 2 I think Chow Yun-fat for Prince Yonxiang, Benedict Wong for sympathetic Sun Kai, and Gemma Chan as voice of Lien, the "evil" dragon. In Season 3, we need someone mixed Chinese and Caucasian for Tharkay, and I think Andy Serkis to do voice for the Feral Dragon Leader Arkady. Oh! And change Gong Su the chef to a woman. If you really want historical accuracy, maybe she came with her husband who died (there was another chef who disappeared on the journey). we just need more women of color in here. Maybe one on Temeraire's crew? Hm.

So yeah. I mean, it's not like a lot of them are set in stone, but I'm happy with a few of these choices to the point I can see it clearly in my mind.

#Temeraire #casting thoughts #i just #please put me in charge of this show #HAND OVER THE RIGHTS PETER JACKSON #YOURE NOT USING THEM YOU MADE THE HOBBIT INSTEAD

[princessanneftw]

Tim's Crush

By @lotuslioness

For @babymerton

The British Royal Family gathered inside Westminster Abbey among other guests for the Service of Thanksgiving celebrating Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s 60th wedding anniversary.

Among them was Anne, The Princess Royal, sitting next to her husband and children waiting for her parents to arrive so the service could start.

The Princess looked at her husband, who had finished reading the service's and whose eyes were roaming the Abbey. She was about to ask him what he found so interesting when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived.

During the service, Anne once again noticed her husband lost in thoughts. When she whispered what he was thinking about, his only answer was "You" with an enigmatic look.

After the ceremony and when they finally got inside the car, Zara turned to her stepfather asking why it took him long to get out of the Abbey. His answer as usual was "we were just talking about the building" with his usual smile. Needless to say the short journey to Buckingham Palace was marked by Zara's harmless teasing about her history lover stepfather.

Later that night, after the long day, Anne slid into bed while her husband was reading a rare book about Westminster Abbey. Zara had convinced her grandfather to lend it to Tim, "so he could get over his obsession with another historic building."

"So, will you tell me what your sudden obsession is with the Abbey?"

"Hmm?" Taking off his reading glasses and marking the page he was reading, the Vice Admiral focused his attention on his wife.

"Nothing really, it’s just a fascinating building. It’s always captured my interest since I first saw it on the telly."

"And when was that?" Asked Anne, snuggling into her husband's side. Combing her lose her with his fingers, he smiled.

"Well, I guess the first time was Princess Alexandra’s wedding, but I was too young to notice and was more interested in playing with my cousins." They both chuckled at that. "But It was during your wedding to Mark that I first saw it properly."

Anne looked up at him in surprise. She knew that a lot of people had witnessed her first wedding - much to her dismay - but given they had never discussed whether he had seen it or not, she never thought that Tim was one of them, and she told him so.

"Well, I was in my first year of University and we were all gathered to watch it, they even got us colour television. It was a fantastic experience and Westminster Abbey was delightfully decorated. I was so focused on the architecture of the building that I hardly noticed what was happening, until-"

At this, Anne raised a brow and looked at her husband. "Until what?"

"Until you stepped down from the carriage, and took my breath away," he said, smiling at her.

"Is that so?" She asked in disbelief.

Humming, he continued. "I thought you were the most breathtakingly beautiful, gorgeous woman in the world, and so was more or less the opinion of most of the lads present. The ladies were all mesmerized by your dress and your hair. It was a grand occasion, and you were the most desired woman in the United Kingdom, I don’t think there was a young man in the country who didn’t have a crush on you and who was convinced that Mark didn’t deserve you.”

"Did you think Phillips wasn't suitable for me?"

"I did. Some of my college mates were die-hard monarchists, and they thought you should've married someone of your social status, not a commoner who was obsessed with horses. But for others like me, it wasn't that he was a commoner or an equestrian, he was and still successful in the field. It was the idea that, even if he was in love with you, would he cope with your lifestyle? The strain of being a princess’s consort?" Explained the Vice Admiral.

"Well you were right about the second part," but not wanting to dwell on the past, Anne poked her husband’s side playfully. "So tell me Mr. Laurence, did you have a crush on me too?" Teased the Princess, who was rewarded with a gentle kiss from a red-cheeked Tim.

"Of course I did, though I knew you wouldn't spare me a glance if we ever crossed paths."

"Excuse me Mister! I very much spared you more than a glace when I first saw you!"

A hearty laugh was her husband's response. "Yes, but that was nearly 36-year-old Anne noticing 31-year-old Lieutenant Commander Timothy Laurence. Not your 23-year-old self seeing 18-year-old Tim, first year geography student with a Naval scholarship."

Before she could argue, he continued. "Love, you were in the prime of your life. European Eventing Champion, you had great potential to participate in the Olympic Games, a fashion icon and a devoted Royal. No one would expect you to look at someone who was just taking his first baby steps into adulthood. So I resigned myself that you were a wishful thought that would never come true, and went on with my life and buried that crush deep down and never gave it much thought. Until I met you 13 years later in your mother’s drawing room, and by the end of my three-year service, I was deeply in love with you as you were with me. Now, 34 years later, I went from barely adult Tim, admiring your beauty from the television screen, to 52-year-old Tim holding you in his arms and calling you his wife".

Feeling a strong surge of emotion enveloping her, Anne kissed him deeply then settled back in his embrace. After some minutes Tim spoke again.

"You know, some of my friends from my university days told me that it was inevitable that I ended up with you after the affair between us went public. That's because every woman I dated since uni had some resemblance to you."

He was amused by the death glare he received from his wife.

"But I’m the one who got you in the end, and they’d better steer out of your way if they value their life. I don't share." Tim laughed at his wife’s jealousy and kissed her nonetheless.

"Don't worry darling, you're the only one for me,” assured Tim.

"As you are for me," added the Princess, burying herself deeper into her husband's arms.

#the cutest #my poor shipper heart #we know he watched it at uni #so it wouldnt surprise me if this happened 🥺 #fannefiction #i will go down with this ship #submission

[rebellect-writes]

[SIZE=1][b]Name:[/b] Jess. [b]Age:[/b] 21. [b]How?:[/b] Well your honour… It was justified.

[align=center][IMG]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li7iezLOa81qcbv2lo1_500.gif[/IMG][/align]

[b]Name:[/b] Elijah Wyatt Hobbs. [b]Nicknames & Aliases:[/b] [LIST][x] Nickname: Eli. [x] Nickname: Hobbs; answers to this more than his given name. [x] Nickname: Cowboy. [x] Alias: Rick Dixon. [/LIST][b]Age:[/b] 43. [b]Date of Birth:[/b] May 10, 1968 [b]Gender:[/b] Male. [b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Heterosexual. [b]Occupation:[/b] [LIST][i]Formerly:[/i] Monster hunter, specializing in common supernaturals. [i]Currently:[/i] A carpenter with his own small business. [/LIST][b]Powers:[/b][LIST][b]Electrokinesis:[/b] Elijah is a moderately adept [b]electrokinetic[/b], meaning he can mentally manipulate and control electricity and electric fields. He’s got enough training under his belt that he can produce a number of things, from an electrical defensive force field – enough to cover himself as well as two others maximum - as well as manipulate electricity into different shapes and if necessary, projectiles. The more he uses the power, the more weak and tired he becomes since the electricity actually comes from him. The major downside to his power is that he has to stay away from built up electronic areas such as offices and the like in case he causes the machines to short circuit. [/LIST][b]Face Claim:[/b] Timothy Olyphant. [b]Description:[/b] [IMG]http://i672.photobucket.com/albums/vv90/bloodwillout/app%20pics/Image1-1.png[/IMG] [i]Height:[/i] 6'0 [i]Weight:[/i] 165lbs [i]Eyes:[/i] Brown. [i]Hair:[/i] Dark brown peppered with grey. [i]Build:[/i] Average. Muscular in his own way but more thin and rangy. [i]Visible marks:[/i] He has a small black [URL=http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/c/e/l/celtic-knot/i/003.jpg]Celtic Knot[/URL] on his left inner wrist. His hands are calloused and rough from work, and he has a couple of smaller scars; one on the small of his back that looks like a cat clawed him, another higher up on his back from a knife. [i]Style:[/i] Casual and laid back, unless he wants to be flashy in which case he’s suits.

[b]Special Skills:[/b][LIST][x] Can speak Spanish. [x] Knows how to brew his own vodka. [x] He can actually cook! [x] Knows how to clean vampire bites, as well as tend most other hunting injuries. [x] Knows mixed fighting styles, can mostly hold his own as long as he's sober. [x] Moderately skilled with small to medium firearms. [/LIST][b]Personality:[/b][LIST]First and foremost, Elijah is a bit of an old fashioned gentleman. He’s the type that will hold a door open for a lady, say his pleases and thank yous and pull a chair out for a woman at the dining table, and more. He believes that a man should never raise a hand to a woman, and if they do, then that woman is entiled to react as she sees fit, it’s the same if a woman is being verbally abused by a male. Elijah also believes that a person should never walk into another person’s home without the proper invitation; and if they do, well he’ll happily escort them to the door. There���s pleanty of general conduct rules that he’s broken and discarded over ther years, but those are the ones that have stuck close to Elijahs heart. There’s some lines that he’ll cross with his own little code, but that’s mostly if it is mainly saving his own hide.

Elijah by nature isn’t a violent man, he doesn’t go out of his way to start a fight – either verbal or physical- he will be the first to put someone in their place when they try and draw him into violence. It’s only a curtasy to give them the option to back out without having to get violent.  The only time he has openly shown his violent and angry size is when he’s had a bit too much to drink and the other person had pissed him off for some reason or another. He generally learns after that…for a week or so before he’ll do it all over again and go right back to square one.  He doesn’t take crap from people, if they want to take an issue with him, that is all find and dandy, but he won’t put up with them trying to sneak up on him when his guard is down to try and kill him.  

One of his other major faults is that he’s a little closed off with his more truer emotions and his agenda. He’s protective, though he may not show it in the most reliable sense of the word and he’s caring, even if at times it doesn’t really feel or look like it.  He’s tolerant enough that he’ll put up with a lot of crap for people and he’s accepting of a lot of faults that people seem to need to express.  He’ll help someone out, but he won’t continuously hold their hand or wipe away their tears because after a while even his patience will wear thin. It’s safe to say nderneath the bad ass calm exteria of Elijah Hobbs is a little bark and a little bite.

If someone was to go at someone close to Eli, he would bring down hell onto someone’s head with the vengeful streak he keeps hidden for everyone’s sake. In a way he’s a bit of a masochist in that respect, he’s left pleanty of people alive that he should’ve killed but didn’t, and he expects them to come after him one day but until then, he’s happy to keep things nice and civil. Generally, he’s quick to take action in a no nonsence kind of way, rather than letting things fester and wait on him to get to them. It is only after the fact that he’ll actually sit back and ask questions, and by then sometimes it’s just too late to do anything about it so he doesn’t let it get to him.

Elijah is loyal to those that have earned it. While he may think that he can do things on his own like some cowboy straight out of the wild west, he sure as hell can’t, and if someone can put up with him for long enough, he’ll show the same loyalty and respect that they showed him; even if he has to play by someone elses rules, he’d still show it. He may moan about it a little, but he’d still respect their choices and decisions. Old grudges have come and bitten him in the rear before, while he has a few, he won’t activly act on them and make them some big over blown issue that he must combat. He’d rather just deal with that quietly and move on. Should someone bring a grudge to him, well, there’s only two ways that could end. Peaceful or in pine boxes. [/LIST][b]Likes:[/b][LIST][x] Vanilla ice cream. [x] Fried chicken. [x] Working with his hands. [x] Not getting shot at. [x] A good strong drink. [x] Nature hikes and all it entails. [x] Smart mouthing without actually smart mouthing. [x] Finding a mostly peaceful way to end a confrontation. [/LIST][b]Dislikes:[/b] [LIST][x] When he accidently shorts something out. [x] Not being able to sleep; it makes him cranky. [x] People that moan at him to do something. [x] His anger issues. [x] People coming into a house uninvited. [x] Spending money on himself. [x] Getting shot at! [x] Seeing two consecutive dawns without sleep. [/LIST][b]Strengths:[/b][LIST][x] His control on his power. [x] Follows his gut instinct [x] His manners confuse most people! [x] Tries to keep his head down given his history. [/LIST][b]Weaknesses:[/b][LIST][x] A fine drink and a fine woman. [x] Isn’t that good at following someone else’s lead. [x] Has a habit of doing reckless things at times. [x] Not so controlled or polite when he's had a little too much to drink. [/LIST][b]Family:[/b][LIST][x] Fane Mitchell; nephew; unknown. [x] Abigail Mitchell; Baby sister; happily married/estranged. [x] Laurence Mitchell; Brother-In-Law; wishes he was dead! (Alive.) [x] Cooper "Cougar" Bennett; Adopted Brother/Best friend; prison. [x] Eleanor Hobbs; Mother; dead and buried. [x] Leonard Hobbs; Father; care home in Florida last Eli checked. [/LIST][b]History:[/b][LIST]Back in May of ’68, newlywed couple Eleanor and Leonard Hobbs moved into their new apartment in downtown Memphis, with their first child, Elijah. From the moment the boy could walk, he was always getting into some kind of trouble, either with his parents or with the neighbours that shared the apartment block with his family. He got into everything he should not have, despite his mother’s best attempts to keep the youngster out of trouble; it took his father taking his belt to Eli’s hide to settle finally the tiny tear away down. The transformation from midget monster to a little angel was almost instantaneous, much to Eleanor’s disapproval; though far be it from her to dictate what a father should teach his son. When he was five years old, Elijah’s little world started to fold inwards when Eleanor came home from the hospital with a daughter. His baby sister, Abigail. If anything, it was Abby that helped him grow up a little more, and over the next few years he was the token big brother that did everything he could for the little one, from helping his mother change her diapers, to picking her up when she fell down, and one time, making the tyke giggle madly when he accidently walked into a wall when helping his mom bringing in the groceries. It was a pretty typical child hood really in most respects, full of up's and down's, but that was not something that Ma Hobbs let disrupt them too much, not even when Leonard who'd had a little too much to drink and threatened her or the kids.

One constant in Elijah’s life was Cooper Bennett, his best friend. Their father’s worked together, they lived in the same building, and they went to the same school when they did not take it on themselves to flaunt their free will and skip out of school. It was as if Cooper was a brother in all but blood, even his ma, Eleanor called him son and offered him a place on the couch when Jameson got too rowdy and Coop’s mother sent the boy up so he would not fall prey to a drunken man’s rage. While Coop may’ve been his best friend and brother, it did not stop Elijah from breaking the other teenager’s nose when he discovered that he had been coaxing Abby to rob and cuss. The fight over that broke out at school, both teenagers barely scraping thirteen at the time did not really figure out their own strength, Coop ended with a broken nose and Eli ended with a black eye as well as a split lip. They had been held back late by the principal and when Eleanor came to pick them both up; she chewed them both out for being idiots. It was on the way drive home that things went from bad to worse. He started to feel odd, sick, and after asking his mom to pull over, Eli scrambled and ended throwing up his cookies. It was Coop that noticed the sparks at first. Then Eli did, they flickered around his fingers before fizzling and dying completely when Eleanor called him in. He didn’t pay it any attention, thinking that it was a figment of his imagination or just exhaustion.

Over the next two years, things started to go south. Misfortune ended up on the Hobbs' doorstep. Elijah's mom went back home one summer to Meadowbrook, Kentucky to visit her kin and decided that she wasn't coming back. She was sick of Leonard beating on her when he got angry, disappointed in his job, or had too much to drink, so they’d been told over the telephone by a great aunt. Leonard was angry when he heard the rage that descended on him was volatile and the first target that crossed his path was Abigail. Eli managed to get between the two of them and took the brunt of it. He wasn’t a stranger to a whooping from his daddy but this was different, some part of him knew that if Leonard didn’t stop that he would die in the living room and it was that that spurred something in him to act. Elijah reached out and grabbed Leonard’s leg as the elder Hobbs kicked and flailed. The electricity shot from Eli’s hand into his daddy, throwing the other male across the room. The last thing Eli saw was Abby and Coop running in hoping to save the day from something. When Elijah came around, he was in hospital. At the foot of his bed Leonard and Eleanor ranted and raved while Coop and Abby stayed off to the side. It took them a full ten minutes to realize he was awake and listening in, and within the week when he was fit to be moved, the car was packed and Eleanor, Abigail, Elijah and Cooper – after getting permission from his parents - were on the way to Kentucky for a vacation. Leonard, staying in Memphis to finish up things with work and stuff like that. Elijah knew what was really happening, even if his mother didn’t want to talk about it. His parents had decided a divorce was in order.

Life in Meadowbrook was quiet, peaceful and just what they needed. However for Elijah, things started to get complicated. When he was angry or confused, things happened. Electrical appliances would suddenly fry themselves or the lights in the house would flicker and then die. He put it off for a long as he could, then one day just walking through the woods, Elijah let all his pent up rage and feelings out that he’d stored over the years. The blast that he threw out cracked this big old tree right down the centre. Shocked and left stunned, he tried to recall the feeling, but rather than repeating what had happened, he was left staring at the smouldering tree like a kid outside a candy store with no money in his pocket. Over the next few days he returned to the same spot, afternoon after afternoon he tried to recreate the feeling. He managed to spark up, just a little snap crackle and pop but the feeling died.

That's when he met a man named Messer.

On the way home he found the man tangled in a patch of scrub, looking like he’d gone a round with a meat tenderizer and come out swinging. At first Messer tried to push Eli away but the stubborn kid hung about and – while he was curious about the weapons and the general state of the other male – managed to haul the grizzled old hunter up and drag his hide back to his truck. Now Eli knew that he could’ve been walking into anything when he’d decided to help, but he couldn’t just leave the guy out in the wilds and Messer had demanded that if he was going to help that he couldn’t take him back to Eli’s home in case something followed; ‘something’ Eli had known would follow them. Following the mumbled directions Eli to drive them to Harrods Creek in neighbouring Louisville. Messer bounced in and out of consciousness on the way back, but it was Eli that was in for a shock when he pulled up outside of the house that the hunter had directed him to. He got out of the truck only to face the business end of a twelve gauge shotgun and a hunting rifle.

As he no doubt, looked suspicious, covered in Messer’s blood and grime, he didn’t blame the other hunters for taking the precaution even if it hurt like hell at the time to get coldcocked, tied up, gagged and left for God and providence in a back room of the house the hunters had taken over. Tanner as he’d later introduced himself, was the reasonable one next to Messer himself, it was Samuel that thought Eli was a spy and took great delight in telling Eli that he was going to be chopped up into little pieces and fed to gators if Messer didn’t survive the night. Thankfully the old coot did, and that morning Eli was released with a down right civil apology from Messer and Tanner, though some coaxing was needed for Samuel. Since he’d done the hunter’s a favour – so they said – Eli got Tanner to call his momma and explain as to why he’d been away all night; in the nicest way possible and without the mention of guns and blood. After a quick conversation with his momma, Eli decided that he’d stick around a few days to make sure that Messer was ok; the icy feeling in his stomach warning him about something.

The night he was due to go home, things went crazy. The small group of lycanthropes that the hunters had been tracking for months and the ones that had thought they’d taken out Messer, had followed them back to Harrods Creek. First Samuel was the first to go down under the biggest black feline that Eli had ever seen in the initial first few minutes and dragged off screaming. Tanner and Eli had no choice but to fall back into the house as the weretigers taunted them, demanding that Messer come out in return for Samuel. Both hunters turned down the offer and that only served to enrage the felines all the more. The second attempted assault came in the early hours of the morning; Tanner blew the hybrid werefeline away like he was nothing. Another came a few hours later, this time from the front, Messer took that one down despite his condition. Then the rest came. There were three in total, two alphas and a feral omega. Messer clipped the omega with a silver bullet to the brain before one of the hybridized were’s threw him through a wall, Tanner was clawed up pretty badly in the fight but in the end it was just a teenager against two monsters.

That feeling he’d had days before when he’d cut through that tree like butter, chose to come back, and rather than rage and anger, it fed on the pain and the fear brought about by his current predicament. Rather than question it, Eli tackled one of the monster felines and threw all he could at it. The cat gave an almighty roaring sound before simply falling limp, smoke curling from the body; the other one that had been about to pull Eli off, thought better on it and bolted. That was the last thing he knew until he came back to consciousness three days later with Tanner trying to get him to count how many fingers he was holding up. On one hand he was glad that Tanner had survived what had happened to him, but he didn’t like the tension that hung in the air. Rather than beating around the bush, Elijah flat out asked what their problems where, and rather than lead him around in the dark by his junk, they answered. Tanner had survived but he was no longer human; and apparently Elijah wasn’t exactly human himself. Messer explained that while he was human, he had a gift. At first Eli hadn’t wanted to believe it, but Tanner backed up Messer. They were so serious, and Elijah – rather than fight with himself any longer – accepted it and told them when he’d really noticed things had been different.

“If you’ve been sparking for year’s kid, you’re lucky to be alive.”

He took that to heart since it was the last words he heard from Tanner, the following morning the fresh lycanthrope was gone and Messer would glare furiously whenever either of his two friends where mentioned. When the old hunter dragged Eli back to his mother, he was told that there would be words. Messer took Eleanor aside and after a brief reunion with Cooper and Abigail, Elijah was told to pack a bag and make sure he got everything he wanted because he was going away with Messer to learn. Eleanor tried to put a brave face on it, but when she tugged him aside his momma broke into tears and clung to him. The last thing he heard from her was that had a God given gift and he needed to put it to use with Messer. Before things got really messy, the old hunter steered sixteen year old Elijah away from his only family and spirited him away into a world full of monsters that most people would never know existed outside of the story books.

For seven years and half years he travelled all over with the hunter, learning things like how to track lycanthropes and pick up a vampire’s trail; in-between learning how to harness his powers. It wasn’t easy at all, they didn’t get paid for what they did but they did get a sense of satisfaction that they’d removed something dangerous. The few times that they did get paid it was with a warm bed, a bath and a hot meal. A very simple life really, and one that Elijah was actually quiet fond of. He met other hunters and all kinds of people that lived quite comfortable in the supernatural world. One of them was Aries De Luca, barely out of his teens. It was a seer down in New Orleans that told twenty three year old Elijah that his momma had passed on, and that his old life had turned to darkness. He didn’t question it in the end, he went back to the one person he hadn’t seen since God knows how long. His daddy. Since Messer didn’t want to come with him, they parted ways after a beer.

He tracked Leonard down to Florida; Elijah supposed that the old timer was living it big in a sunny city for shady people. Leonard was nothing like Elijah remembered, a bitter old man that hated the world and himself for losing his family. Elijah himself had to bribe him with a bottle of bourbon to find out what happened to Eleanor and was shocked to find out that she’d passed on in a car accident. He asked about Cooper and found out that his best friend and brother had run off to join some kind of Religious cult in Mexico and he asked about Abigail. Something must’ve snapped in the old man because he came up swinging and clocked Elijah straight in the face before ranting about how Abby had moved on and moved in with some hot shot Englishman. Elijah found that very hard to believe at first, his sister was only eighteen and it made no sense, but when he saw it for himself, and the Lawrence fellow that Abby had taken a shine to grated on his last nerve from the moment that they shook hands.

Rather than move on, Elijah stuck around Miami for a year as he made sure that Lawrence wasn’t using his sister for some sick and twisted game, but when they announced that they were getting married and moving, Elijah put his foot down. If anything, he just wanted to reconnect with his sister but he only succeeded on pushing her away more. The saddest thing is, she left on his twenty fifth birthday, and rather than tell him, left a letter with Leonard that he didn’t even get until eight months after the fact when it was too late. His bitterness drove him on a weeklong bender, he would move from one bar to another, pick up a woman here and there, but it was Messer that dragged him back from the abyss. The other hunter had been passing through Miami when he’d caught sight of Eli staggering out of one of the bars and after a day of intense sobering, Elijah finally confessed what had driven him to the edge. Messer didn’t take any pity on him, in fact the older hunter told him to suck it up and move on before kicking him out of his motel room.

It was on the way home that he was run into by two gentlemen that seemed to be on a mission. Again that pesky gut instinct kicked in, and rather than letting them go on their way, Elijah followed them out of the city and smack bang into the lap of a fey. The gentlemen he’d been following had attacked her, and jumping to her defence too late, he managed to attract her attention, only he didn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. Elijah didn’t know what hit him, one moment he was trying to get the hell out of there and the next thing he knew everything was lit up with a bright white/gold light, and then there was nothing. He was left in utter blackness, blind. Rather than finish him off, the young woman demanded to know what he was doing, why he was there; she practically chewed him a new rear before she allowed himself to explain fully. That’s when the mistake came to light, no pun intended. Brigetta, as she called herself, apologized and Elijah accepted gracefully. However, rather than stumbling about with no idea what was around him, he let Brigetta be his eyes for a month.

When his sight came back, he found Brigetta gone. Rather than mourning her – and in his own way he did, don’t get him wrong – Eli carried on as usual until one day a few months later he found out that Abigail was pregnant and expecting her first. Together with Leonard, both Hobbs men got on a plane and made the long and tiring journey to the UK within weeks of the news. Leonard was happy, Elijah not so much. He [i]really[/i] didn’t like Lawrence. Rather than complain kick up a fuss, Elijah soon left taking Leonard back with him to the States despite the old man’s complaints that he wanted to stay with his daughter. He dropped Leonard back off in Miami before driving down to Meadowbrook to pay his respects to his momma and tell her everything that had happened since he saw her. It didn’t feel weird talking to a grave marker, and it didn’t really give Elijah any closure but it felt like something he needed to do so he could move on.

He didn’t see his sister for another year, rather than go over to the UK to visit the Mitchell’s came to him in Memphis of all places. He met his nephew Fane for the first time, cute as a button and loud as he was! The next time he saw them Fane was about three years old and he’d been on a pretty nasty hunt involving a snake calling vampire master in Canada. He showed Fane a ‘magic trick’ and sparked up for him, nothing harmful, just hell’a flashy. When Fane hit five and a half, that’s when things got heated. After a particular stressful hunt, Elijah and Lawrence got into an argument that left the electrobug fuming. In thirty two years he’d never unleashed his powers near his family, but Lawrence’s car was the best target outside of the man himself. He made the car explode before realizing what he’d done, by then it was too late, Abby didn’t want him near her or Fane. Rather than stick around where he wasn’t welcome, Elijah returned to the states after taking a small three month detour to Brazil when he heard Coop was in trouble with a woman of some sort, and then gotten his behind thrown in jail again.

When he hit the big four oh, Elijah took a look at his life and saw where he’d gone wrong. While he didn’t regret what he’d done and the choices he’d made, it did hit him kind of hard. He had next to nothing in his life. It was only in November of two thousand and eleven that he decided something needed to change and that he needed a fresh start. After relocating to England in December twenty eleven, and hanging up his holsters, Elijah’s kept his head down the last few months when it came to the supernatural and even opened a small carpentry shop in a quaint little city called Jackford. While it has been over fifteen years since he saw Fane and Abby, longer still since he's seen Cooper or his daddy or even Messer himself. Though he still thinks about them now and again. [/LIST][/SIZE]

[archiveofidentityconstellations]

What's Steph's first fathers day with Bruce like in the Bratkid au?

good question! probably awkward, because oh yeah Father’s Day is a thing, huh. Dick is like “yeah I was thinking of stopping by” and Steph like “lol why” and he’s like “Father’s Day?” which. They haven’t had Father’s Day since Jason died. But Dick figured he’d stop by, maybe drop off some of Bruce’s favorite takeout that they used to get when they were younger, that sort of thing.

And Steph is like. I feel uncomfortable with this because I have little to no experience. Of course the thing to do is turn to my comrade in all situations/bully victim, Timothy Jackson Drake.

and she’s like “surprise! we’re going to do something for Bruce! and when i say we i mean you because i’ve never celebrated Father’s Day”

and Tim is like “uhhhh cool but I’ve never really celebrated Father’s Day either”

and so she’s like wow we’re pathetic. dads like ties, right?

Tim is like idk he has a lot of ties (Dick got him ties all the time when he was a kid)

Steph is like maybe I should ask Kennedy Laurence, she knows everything. but then she thinks about it more and she’s like “this man has everything, and i have never given a bad gift in my life, so put your thinking cap on, Tim”

and Tim is like “I think Dick was thinking of easing him into it, keeping it chill”

And Steph is like “that’s a good idea. but Absolutely Not”

and yeahhhhh

[letterboxd]

Screen Time.

Can the data about actors’ time on screen help bust open Oscars category fraud? Jack Moulton talks to stopwatch-wielding Academy Awards fan Matthew Stewart about his hours (and hours, and hours) of timing Academy-nominated performances down to the second. Pictured above are the longest on-screen appearances for winning lead and supporting performances: Charlton Heston, Vivien Leigh, Tatum O’Neal and Mahershala Ali.

“It’s a shameful practice and in order to argue against it, there has to be evidence.” —Matthew Stewart

The Oscar categories for Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor were introduced at the 9th Academy Awards in 1937 to recognize those who excelled in roles that were less-than-leading, but no less important to the story. It’s a category in which emerging actors, fantastic character performers and non-famous industry veterans have found their way to Oscar glory.

Except that in recent decades, there’s so much more to an Oscar-winning performance than what we see on screen. It’s often a deliberate campaign, using every publicity trick in the book: red carpet walks, ‘surprise’ Q&A appearances, press coverage about the sacrifices involved in playing the part, narratives about previous ‘awards snubs’.

And then there’s category fraud—a strategy where studios split two stars across two categories, in order to nudge both towards the Academy’s podium. Example: for their equally leading roles in Carol, Cate Blanchett won the leading actress nomination, while Rooney Mara was nominated for supporting actress.

The problem, as Anne Thompson writes in her recent Thompson on Hollywood column assessing this year’s likely category-shifts, is “when lead actors (or actresses) decide they have a better chance in supporting, they take a slot away from another deserving performer”.

As history moves on and the politics fade away, measuring screen time is perhaps one of the few objective, quantifiable and finite pieces of information the director passes along to the audience and Oscar voters about an actor’s contribution to a film.

Enter Matthew Stewart: a 28-year-old Oscar buff and Letterboxd member from North Carolina who’s been following the Academy Awards for fourteen years. Curious as to why Frances McDormand and William H. Macy were nominated for Lead Actress and Supporting Actor respectively for Fargo, he set out to investigate how egregious their category placements were, by comparing their time on screen. Turns out Macy is on screen for 38 seconds longer than McDormand.

Matthew is our type of completist. Over the past twelve years, he has made it his mission to time all of the Academy Award nominated performances; tracking actors’ seconds on screen (whether seen or heard), keeping track of the time in his notepad, and then summing it all up. He certainly knows more than the Academy, who broadcasted incorrect trivia on last year’s Oscar game that Matthew was quick to put right.

His motivation is largely to debunk myths, such as the commonly repeated ‘fun fact’ of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs having the shortest Best Actor Oscar-winning performance. The shortest, in fact, is David Niven’s appearance in Separate Tables, which is exactly one minute and thirteen seconds shorter than Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter.

Of course, screen time does not reflect quality by any means. Having a character on screen for longer does not mean the role is better acted or more well-written. In many ways, it can be more impressive when an iconic or powerful character is technically on screen for half an hour or less.

We spoke to Matthew about his hobby, his opinions on category fraud, and the data he has on this year’s nominees. He shares his results on Twitter, his Letterboxd profile and his website, Screentime Central.

Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939).

Let’s get to those stats. In Academy Award history, what is the longest performance to be nominated for an Oscar? Matthew Stewart: By length, 1940 Best Actress winner Vivien Leigh is seen on screen in Gone with the Wind for two hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds. By percentage, 1976 Best Actor nominee James Whitmore is on screen in Give ’em Hell, Harry! for 96.52 percent of the film’s runtime.

And the shortest? Both by length and percentage, 1960 Best Supporting Actress nominee Hermione Baddeley is on screen in Room at the Top for only two minutes and 19 seconds, which is just 1.98 percent of the film’s runtime.

You’ve done the math: what was the most egregious category fraud of all-time? And also—the worst failed attempt at category fraud? The most egregious case of category fraud is Richard Burton’s supporting nomination for My Cousin Rachel. Others come close, but that is the worst. He’s the main focus of the film and is in 85 percent of it, making it one of the 25 longest performances nominated in any category. And his co-star, Olivia de Havilland, is only in 44 percent of the film, so there’s no explaining it.

One of the most serious cases of fraud I can think of that didn’t result in a nomination is Jacob Tremblay being campaigned as supporting for Room. It’s a shame that that kind of bias against child actors still exists. And then there are cases where a definitive decision on placement wasn’t made, resulting in no nomination at all, like Lesley Manville in Another Year.

How does your husband feel about your time-consuming hobby? I actually didn’t tell anyone about my hobby for the first four years or so. I wanted to avoid the judgment of people thinking it was odd.

My husband was interested as soon as I told him and showed him my work up to that point. He’s always been willing to listen to my Oscar-related ramblings, so I shouldn’t have been worried!

Why do you think it’s important to keep such scientific track of category fraud? I think it’s important to because it’s a shameful practice and in order to argue against it, there has to be evidence. And the evidence is stacking up just about every year. I want to provide as much screen-time data as possible as a way to support correct category placements, and of course I hope that someday the Academy will catch on.

Now we have the data, has category fraud gotten worse over the years? Can you tell if the recent absence of Weinstein has helped ease fraud? Category fraud seems to have gotten worse in recent years, with cases like Rooney Mara [in Carol] and Alicia Vikander [winner of Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl] in 2016 and the cast of The Favourite last year. But really, it’s not any worse now than it’s been since the introduction of the supporting categories.

The worst thing about it now is how blatantly greedy some studios are in terms of winning as many Oscars as possible. It’s sad that we’ll never again see two leading actors or actresses nominated for the same film out of fear of them cancelling each other out and neither winning. Campaigning one of them as supporting makes for two potential wins.

I think Weinstein intensified the trend so long ago that his absence doesn’t change much. Some studios have campaigned that way for so long that I don’t think it will get better any time soon.

Which is the most significant difference between a nominated lead and supporting performance in the same film? [See Matthew’s list: Who’s Supporting Who?] The worst case is Timothy Hutton [supporting] over Mary Tyler Moore [leading] in Ordinary People. Hutton is onscreen for 32 minutes and eighteen seconds more than Moore! I would personally classify both of those performances as leading, as well as Donald Sutherland’s performance in the same film.

Meryl Streep in ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, the first—and longest—of her three Oscar-winning roles, from a record 21 nominations.

Have you timed which actor or actress has the most Oscar nominated minutes ever? Or, let me rephrase: how many minutes do Meryl Streep’s 21 Oscar nominated performances add up to? Meryl Streep’s Oscar-nominated performances add up to 21 hours, 19 minutes, and 39 seconds, which gives her an average of about 61 minutes per performance.

And the runners up? After Streep, it’s Katharine Hepburn (12:45:10), Jack Nicholson (12:32:27), Bette Davis (12:09:13), and Laurence Olivier (10:54:22).

Which were the hardest and easiest films to time? Naturally, the harder it is to see the actor on screen, the harder it is to time them. So I really despise drawn-out battle scenes or scenes with huge crowds. Timing Charlton Heston’s performance in Ben-Hur during the chariot racing scene wasn’t that hard, because you know where he is, but timing Hugh Griffith’s performance in the same scene was much harder because he’s part of that enormous crowd.

The easiest one I’ve ever done is James Whitmore in Give ’em Hell, Harry!, since it’s a filmed one-man stage show. Sleuth and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were easy too, because there are so few actors in the cast.

What results surprised you the most? I remember being shocked to find out that Robert Strauss’s supporting performance in Stalag 17 is nineteen minutes longer than William Holden’s leading one. But still, in that case, I don’t have a problem with the category placement. More recently, I was surprised by the shortness of Sam Elliott’s performance in A Star Is Born [eight minutes, 45 seconds!], and the fact that Scarlett Johansson’s performance in Marriage Story is 20 minutes shorter than Adam Driver’s.

Of those you’ve timed so far, what are the screen times for this year’s nominees? [Actors are ranked below by screen time as a percentage of each film’s total runtime.]

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) – 1:43:44 / 85.3% Adam Driver (Marriage Story) – 1:25:03 / 62.1% Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) – 1:12:42 / 57.7% Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory) – 59:31 / 52.5% Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 1:01:12 / 37.9%

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Renee Zellweger (Judy) – 1:27:29 / 74.0% Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) – 1:25:12 / 68.2% Saoirse Ronan (Little Women) – 1:15:01 / 47.7% Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story) – 1:05:19 / 47.7% Charlize Theron (Bombshell) – 37:16 / 34.3%

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) – 55:14 / 43.9% Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 55:12 / 34.2% Al Pacino (The Irishman) – 53:58 / 25.8% Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) – 44:56 / 41.4% Joe Pesci (The Irishman) – 43:22 / 20.7%

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Florence Pugh (Little Women) – 42:06 / 31.2% Margot Robbie (Bombshell) – 26:16 / 24.2% Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) – 25:06 / 19.2% Laura Dern (Marriage Story) – 18:36 / 13.6% Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit) – 15:36 / 14.4%

It looks like the more time on screen, the better the chances of a win, judging by some of the frontrunners this year. Is that an identifiable trend in your data? Looking at the data from the last ten years, Oscar wins do tend to favor longer performances across all categories. The shortest Best Actor or Actress nominee of the year has only won once since 2010—Olivia Colman last year for The Favourite.

The average winning leading performance since 2010 is 75 minutes long (63 percent of screen time), with none under 50 minutes (when the previous decade had eight under 50, and five under 40 percent). The average winning supporting performance since 2010 is 36 minutes long (28 percent of screen time), with only one under 20 minutes (which was Allison Janney in I, Tonya).

Have you noticed any fun stats for this year’s nominees? The only screen-time-related stat I’ve noticed is that this year’s Supporting Actor nominees have either the highest or second-highest average length of all time in the category. I can’t say for sure until after I time Tom Hanks, nominated for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

With an average age of 71.6, this year’s Supporting Actor Oscar nominees are the oldest group ever nominated in any acting category. This is the fourth time this decade that the Supporting Actors have broken the long-standing record of 61.3 held by the 1965 Supporting Actress group.

Also, all of this year’s acting nominees make up the second-oldest group ever nominated, with an average age of 51.8. The record is still 53.1 for 2017—the third time the record was broken this decade after previously being held by (again) the 1965 group (49.3).

So far, this year’s nominees haven’t broken any records. Phoenix’s performance could be the overall longest Oscar-winning performance of the decade, but that’s about it.

Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley in ‘Green Book’ (2018).

What nominees in the past decade broke records? I think one thing worth mentioning is that Mahershala Ali just broke the record for longest Supporting Actor winning performance last year [for Green Book], previously held by Christoph Waltz in 2013 [for Django Unchained], who took the record from Timothy Hutton.

And the female percentage record was broken twice this decade after being held since 1991 by Meryl Streep [for Postcards from the Edge]; by Marion Cotillard in 2015 [for Two Days, One Night] and then by Charlotte Rampling in 2016 [for 45 Years].

Three of the ten longest Best Supporting Actress-nominated performances of all time (by minutes) are from 2016 (Mara, Vikander, Leigh). Mara and Vikander also make the percentage top ten, along with Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Emma Stone (The Favourite) and Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)—so exactly half of that top ten are from this decade alone.

2019 was the first time ever that two performances under ten minutes were nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the same year—Sam Elliott, and Sam Rockwell in Vice.

And what about performances you timed from 2019 that were snubbed? (More from other years are here.)

Awkwafina (The Farewell) – 1:00:19 / 60.4% Zhao Shuzhen (The Farewell) – 37:33 / 37.6% Constance Wu (Hustlers) – 1:02:31/ 56.8% Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) – 53:09 / 48.3% Robert De Niro (The Irishman) – 2:14:19 / 64.1% Lupita Nyong’o (Us) – 57:21 / 49.3% Robert Pattinson (The Lighthouse) – 1:23:18 / 76.4% Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse) – 56:02 / 51.4% Margot Robbie (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 17:00 / 10.5%

You’ve watched more nominees than most people (let’s face it, maybe all people). Forgetting screen time, what are the most underrated nominated performances you think people should check out? Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman (I can’t separate them, sorry!), Mickey Rooney in The Bold and the Brave, and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette.

How about greatest snubs. Who are you dying to see get nominated for an Oscar? When I think of who the Academy has snubbed the most, I immediately think of John Goodman. He’s everyone’s go-to answer, but it’s true. After him, I’d say Emily Blunt, Steve Buscemi and Alfred Molina.

What Oscar win are you rooting for the most on Sunday? My favorite Oscar-nominated performance of the year is Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. I know the film is polarizing, but he’s undeniable, and I hope he wins. As for upsets in below-the-line categories, I’d love it if The Lighthouse won Best Cinematography, and it’d be so cool if Parasite won Best Film Editing.

The 92nd Academy Awards take place on Sunday, February 9, at 5:00pm PST. See also: The Best Best Picture Lineups and All the 2020 Oscar Nominees.

#academy awards #oscars #oscar #oscars 2020 #awards #acting #actors #time on screen #matthew stewart #leading actor #leading actress #supporting actor #supporting actress #letterboxd

[thiziri]

Princess Anne and her husband Sir Tim Laurence love matching their clothes 🥰💕

#DORKS #😭😭😭 #i love them so much #MATCHANNE #couple goals #get you a man like timothy laurence #princess anne #princess royal #tim laurence #timothy laurence #brf #british royal family #posts

[aimeedaisies]

It was thirty years ago today…

With pipers playing a traditional Scottish air, the wedding party emerges from Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral Castle. From the left: the bridegrooms mother, Mrs Barbara Laurence, Commander Tim Laurence, the Princess Royal, the Queen and the brides daughter, Zara Phillips.

The wedding of The Princess Royal and Commander Tim Laurence

HELLO! Number 233 | Published: December 19th 1992 | Article 1/2

Princess Anne's short and simple wedding ceremony turned into a traditional Highland celebration when she and her husband drove through the gates of Balmoral Castle. Estate workers had prepared an open carriage drawn by fell ponies to take the laughing newlyweds up the hill to their reception in the Queen's Scottish home. It was a romantic ending to an intimate country wedding on Royal Deeside.

Just as the bride had wished, it was a quiet, unpretentious affair with only immediate family plus a few close friends and estate workers present. In stark contrast to the grand state occasion of her first marriage at Westminster Abbey 19 years ago, last week's ceremony was consecrated in a tiny granite kirk on a bleak hill in the remote and beautiful landscape beneath Lochnagar.

Outside Crathie Church, a small crowd had gathered by mid-morning in freezing temperatures, five hours before the bride arrived. The groom, smiling nervously, was the first of the bridal party to arrive with his brother Jonathan and best man Charles Barker-Wyatt. Tim Laurence, 37, wearing the uniform of a Royal Navy commander, looked at the sky and told his friend: "The weather is not too bad."

At 2.50pm the Queen, the Queen Mother and Prince Charles arrived in a Land Rover driven by the Duke of York. He gallantly leaped out to help his 92-year-old grandmother when she said: "I can't get down. Can you help me?" He brought a footstool from the back of the car and placed it by her door so that she could step down without difficulty. Next to arrive was Princess Margaret with Anne's son Peter in another Land Rover driven by Prince Edward.

When the bride finally swept into view down the road from the castle the frozen crowd gave her a warm welcome. As her car, driven by her father, the Duke of Edinburgh, slowly crept past, it was possible to see that Anne, 42, was wearing an ivory woollen suit. Her hair, for the first time in years, flowed down her back beneath a small brown hat decorated with freesias, and she carried a small posy of white Highland heather. In the back seat was her only attendant, her 11-year-old daughter Zara Phillips, in a warm red hooded coat.

The princess removed a brown checked shawl she had worn around her shoulders on the half-mile trip from the castle as the car pulled up outside Crathie Kirk. Then, her happiness clear for all to see, she paused at the church door and checked that Zara was right behind her. When the organ music began she turned to her father, took his arm, grinned and said: "Come on."

The ecumenical Church of Scotland service was conducted by the Minister at Crathie, the Reverend Keith Angus, a member of the Queen's Chapel Royal in Scotland.

The bride did not promise to obey. Instead, according to the ritual of the unrevised Church of Scotland Marriage Service, the couple simply pledged to be "faithful and dutiful" to one another. With Zara Phillips standing beside her mother holding her white heather posy, the Reverend Keith Angus told the couple that "marriage was not to be entered upon lightly or inadvisedly, but thoughtfully."

He reminded them that it was also "ordained for the lifelong companionship, help and comfort, which husband and wife ought to have of each other."

At the end of the solemnisation, the couple knelt together before the lona marble communion table at the front of the wood-panelled church. With the princess kneeling to the left of Commander Laurence, the couple both bowed their heads. The Queen and her family, in their own separate annexe, knelt in pine pews at right angles to the main congregation. Friends and estate workers followed suit as the Reverend Keith Angus recited the "favoured" blessing from the Church of Scotland's Book of Common Order.

At the end of the service, the newly married couple walked into the vestry to sign the register privately. And, just 25 minutes after the bride had walked down the aisle, the wedding was over.

Twilight comes early in the Highlands and dusk was creeping through the valleys as the newlyweds emerged from the kirk to the skirl of bagpipes. Two local pipers played a stirring rendition of the old Gaelic tune Mhairi's Wedding.

Two children who live on the estate then came forward to present the bride with bunches of heather before rejoining a dozen other local youngsters given a prime vantage point by the church door.

The beaming bride then beckoned to her daughter to come forward. “Are we all going to come out?" the Queen asked the Duke of Edinburgh, and when he nodded, the whole family joined Mr and Mrs Timothy Laurence outside.

Meanwhile, Princess Anne turned to her new mother-in-law and showed her the flowers and lucky horseshoes presented by the local children. When another guest asked where they came from, Anne indicated the excited crowd of youngsters on her left and said: "Over there."

As the couple received congratulations, the Queen asked: "Where are we going now?" Princess Anne replied: "We will have to wait to have our photographs taken before we go."

Then the bride stepped back into the blue Land Rover Discovery which had brought her to the church and, with Tim Laurence at the wheel, they drove slowly back down the hill and across the River Dee. Back at the church, the Queen walked over to say hello to the children. "Are you still having your Christmas play next week?" she asked. When informed it was still on, she apologised because she would not be able to attend. "I'm so sorry I will be missing it.

Then the whole family climbed back into their cars and followed the bride and groom on the short drive back to the castle. That is when the estate workers welcomed the newlyweds in true Balmoral style.

It has become a royal custom for the residents on the Queen's Scottish estate to mark special events in the family's lives in this way. When Prince Andrew came home a hero from the Falklands War the estate workers also decorated a cart to carry him from the castle gates. And instead of using ponies the locals pulled the open cart themselves. A similar celebration was arranged when Prince Charles and Princess Diana first visited the castle after their marriage.

On the happy day last week, the bride flung a white woollen shawl around her shoulders to keep out the cold on the slow, but fun-filled journey up the private road leading to the castle portico. Inside, the housekeeper was waiting with a real Highland high tea - including the local black bun, a kind of fruit loaf, that all the royals love so much. An hour after the wedding reception began, it was all over, and the guests began heading back along the Deeside Road to Aberdeen airport.

The princess and her husband drove off to spend their brief three-day honeymoon half a mile away at the grey stone Craigowen Lodge beside the Balmoral golf course. There housekeeper, Hazel Essen, had a warm fire waiting in the drawing room grate to welcome them. Then the newlyweds shut out the world to enjoy being man and wife.

It was not the usual kind of royal wedding. But as the bride once said: "I was never the fairytale princess." For the royal family it was a heart-warming occasion, a happy new beginning at the end of a year during which the Queen and her relatives have been beset by troubles.

It was the first time a divorced member of the Queen's immediate family had remarried. And as the Church of England does not sanction the remarriage of divorces, the princess had decided to hold her wedding north of the border where the Church of Scotland does carry out such ceremonies.

The happy result was a gathering of the blood royal members of the Queen's family in their best-loved rural retreat. It was a show of solidarity by the people who love the bride best - her parents, her three brothers and her grandmother.

Far away from the strife that has surrounded them all year, they could have a happy day privately with the spotlight of the media kept at a distance. And the small crowd who had gathered there to wish them well thoroughly approved of the starkly simple ceremony.

Lena Morrison, a nurse from the nearby village of Cairney, summed up the feelings of many when she said: "Now she is getting her second chance at happiness and we are here to show her and her mother - that we love and support them." The loudest cheers of all came when the Queen passed by.

As her annus horribilis drew to an end everyone seemed to be hoping that the New Year would be filled with many more occasions just as happy as her daughter's second wedding.

The newlyweds with the Princess Royal’s two children Zara and Peter (left). Taking their wedding vows the couple pledged to be “faithful and dutiful”. The bride looked radiant in an ivory fitted outfit with her hair worn loose and carefree.

The official wedding portraits. The bride and groom (left). The immediate families (right), back row, left to right: Commander Timothy Laurence, the Princess Royal and the Duke of Edinburgh. Front row, left to right: Peter Phillips, Mrs Barbara Laurence, Zara Phillips and the Queen.

The royal guests arrived in quick succession. Prince Andrew drove the first car with Prince Charles as the front seat passenger, and the Queen and Queen Mother together in the back (left). The bride, with her daughter Zara sitting in the back of the car, was driven to Crathie Kirk by the Duke of Edinburgh (right).

First to arrive was the groom with his best man Charles Barker-Wyatt, a former Navy colleague (left). They waited for a few minutes before going inside the church to wait for the bride who, in keeping with tradition, arrived a few minutes late (right).

The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Margaret with Zara in the background holding lucky horseshoes given to her mother (left). Prince Andrew and Prince Charles (centre). Reverend Keith Angus and Right Reverend Michael Mann chat to Brigadier Charles Ritchie (below right).

A joyful bride wearing something old - her ivory woollen suit - and something new - her gold wedding ring, pauses for a brief moment at the door of Crathie Church (left). Looking on, a happy Queen Mother and Zara Phillips with the grooms mother Mrs Barbara Laurence (right).

Princess Anne and Commander Tim Laurence step out into their new life together, as delighted family, friends and estate workers crowd around the church door to wish them every happiness for the future. Two local pipers in traditional dress played the Gaelic tune ‘Mhairi’s Wedding’ to greet the newlyweds.

Following the ceremony the Duke of Edinburgh drove the Queen Mother, The Queen and Prince Charles back to Balmoral for the reception (left and centre). Prince Andrew drove Princess Margaret and Prince Edward back from Crathie Church to Balmoral (right). It was cold and dark by the time the royal party arrived at the castle but their spirits were high as they celebrated the Princess Royal’s special day.

As the newlyweds set off for the reception at Balmoral Castle, the crowds who had gathered outside the church wished them a long, happy and healthy future together. The brides posy of white heather was propped on the dashboard of the couples blue Discovery for the short journey (above).

MAIN PHOTOS: NICHOLAS READ/REX FEATURES

REPORT: JUDY WADE

#wishing them both a wonderful 30th anniversary #and they’re still going strong 30 years later #they deserve all the happiness #get you a man like timothy laurence #always there to support his wife #they are so in love and always have been #cutest couple in the brf #hello magazine #crathie kirk #balmoral castle #1992 #princess anne #princess royal #tim laurence #timothy laurence

[luninosity]

For @thebestpersonherelovesbucky: here’s the full text of the fake film review I wrote yesterday, for Steadfast...

#

Steadfast Combines History and Heart Into Triumph

 Jillian Poe’s latest directorial effort, Steadfast is at once familiar and unfamiliar: a Regency romance set against the Napoleonic War, full of ballroom scenes and lavish costumes, crackling with politics and passion. It’s (extremely) loosely based on the 1940s novel of the same name, which in turn was based on the historical Will Crawford’s surviving letters and notes, and the romance is real in more than one way—assuming you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve seen the stories about on-set melodrama: Colby Kent and Jason Mirelli hooking up, being injured, falling in love, and from all reports being blissfully happy.

 Leaving the behind-the-scenes drama aside, the question is: is it a good film?

 The answer is unequivocally yes.

 It’s more than good. It’s a brave film, in the best ways: not only in telling a historical gay love story—and it is very, very gay; Jillian Poe and her cast don’t shy away from sex scenes—but in the raw emotion and power of the storytelling and the relationship. It’s the kind of film that gets remembered as a landmark: what good filmmaking can do. And it’s worth seeing, not only for the attention to period detail or the reminder that gay people (and black people, Indian people, and others; we see an impressively diverse London, especially among Will’s Home Office fellow recruits) have always existed in history, but for the sheer emotional experience. Steadfast is a romance, unashamedly so, and it wants you to fall in love, and you will.

 The casting and the script are spot-on, to start.

 Jillian Poe has her favorite stable of actors, so some familiar faces won’t be a surprise. Colby Kent, also a producer, and given co-writing credit with Ben Rogers, stars as Will Crawford—Rogers and Jillian Poe have independently confirmed that Colby did on-set rewrites, which means most of what we see is likely his. We’ve discussed Colby and the industry and uncredited script work at length back when that news broke, so here I’ll just say that Colby is a better writer than any of us realized—good at knowing and utilizing the source material, but also paring down, choosing the exact right word for each moment, giving his fellow actors dialogue that sounds effortlessly natural. Odds on a Best Adapted Screenplay award or two? Pretty high, I’d say.

 Speaking of Colby Kent, he’s always been quietly excellent on screen, often underrated (that Academy Award loss to Owen Heath should’ve gone the other way, no offense to Owen, who is also generally excellent), and equally capable of adorable clumsiness or aristocratic decadence. You could argue that playing young and wealthy and vulnerable and gay is exactly in his wheelhouse and hardly a stretch, and you might be right—but you would also be wrong.

 It’s an award-winning performance. It’s a master class in complex character acting. It’s compelling and dramatic and the core of the film, at least half of it, more on which later.

 Will Crawford—in ill health, a natural scientist, the Regency equivalent of a rich kid and only heir to a vast estate—might have come across as weak, or naïve and fragile, or in need of rescue. And Colby Kent’s good at fragile and lovely and desperate. But Will’s also a literal genius, determined to be useful, and willing to do anything—including spycraft and affecting the tide of battle and the fate of nations—to protect the man he loves. Colby Kent never lets us forget that, and the character and the story become richer for it. He’s almost at his best in moments without dialogue—I say almost because Colby, as ever, has flawless timing when delivering lines, both the heartbreaking and the wryly sarcastic. But his eyes and expressions say so much that every close-up could be a page’s worth of emotion-filled speeches, except not, because they’re not necessary. He’ll definitely get the Academy Award nomination; if there’s any justice, he’ll also win. Though, having said that, my personal vote might go to the biggest surprise of the film, just because I was so impressed and delighted. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

 The supporting cast is also superb—Leo Whyte, as Jason’s second-in-command, embodies complicated and compassionate loyalty, someone who’d follow his captain into battle and also sympathize with his captain’s difficult love, given his own socially fraught marriage to a poor Irish girl (Kate Fisher, having a marvelous time and some of the funniest lines). John Leigh gives his performance as a conflicted would-be mutineer some delicate nuance—he still admires his captain and ultimately makes a painful personal choice. Jim Whitwell epitomizes workmanlike British gentlemanly acting—though we get a hint of the dirtiness of his profession, and of his sympathy for Stephen and Will, which adds layers to his performance. And young Timothy Hayes is worth watching as Stephen’s favorite optimistic midshipman, with deft comedic timing in the midst of storms and the stalking of a French ship.

 The crown jewel of the supporting cast, of course—and the shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor—is Sir Laurence Taylor, notoriously picky about taking on new projects at this point, but here fully committed to his role as Will’s father, the aging Earl of Stonebrook.

 It’s easy to say that Sir Laurence is a legend, but sometimes we forget what that means. In this role, we remember. He delivers words that cut right through his on-screen son, and by extension the audience; but his anguish and grief are equally genuine: he’s a man who loved and lost his wife, who doesn’t understand his only son and heir, who clings to the need to protect the family name and estate and future, while faced with the dual truths that his son prefers men to women and in any case might die young—of illness, if not from daring the world in Regency spycraft. The Earl is awful and vicious and cruel to Will—but watching Sir Laurence stand at his son’s bedside, or come to the window and silently watch his son depart for London…those moments will make you hurt for him despite yourself, and it’s a virtuoso piece of acting.

 Speaking of brilliant pieces of acting, let’s talk about that biggest (and I don’t mean just the physique, though that can’t be missed) surprise of the film: Jason Mirelli.

 First, a confession: I, like quite a few people, felt some skepticism about this casting choice. That’s not to insult action films as such, and Jason Mirelli’s been a consistently reliable action-hero lead. But it’s a very different genre, and Jason’s previous filmography hasn’t, let’s say, exactly indicated much dramatic range. (Having said that, I’ll admit to unironically loving Saint Nick Steel. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Is it hilarious absurd so-bad-it’s-amazing fun? Also yes. Does it have Jason Mirelli in an artistically torn shirt chasing terrorists through a shopping mall while protecting small children and wearing a hat that makes him the reincarnated spirit of Christmas? Hell yes it does. We watch it every year.)

 If you, like me, were on the fence but willing to be convinced…

 I’ll say it right now: Jason Mirelli should be on that Academy Award ballot alongside Colby Kent.

 He’s the other half of the heart of this film, and the second he steps down from that carriage in the opening shot, he’s commanding the narrative. He’s captured the physicality of a wartime ship’s captain, but more than that, he’s captured the layers of character. Every motion of those shoulders, those eyes, that jawline, all means something—as do the moments when he chooses not to move and be still. Take the moment when he looks at Will in the morning-after scene, which is just a look and a few beats on camera, but Jason’s able to convey Stephen’s love, and wistful frustration over their different social classes, and genuine affection, and fear about Will’s illness, and surprised joy at having someone to wake up next to. It’s a hell of a role—romance, war, leadership on a ship’s deck, the shock when Will falls gravely ill, the emotion of the ending, which I won’t spoil here—and Jason’s a revelation. He’ll have his pick of roles after this, and he’ll deserve the Oscar nod, though it’s unlikely he’ll win—the Academy likes to reward previous nominees and is notoriously skeptical of popcorn-flick pedigrees, and Jason might need to prove himself once or twice more. But he shouldn’t have to. This is enough, and it’s fantastic to watch.

 Part of that epic transformation should be credited to Jillian Poe’s direction. With Steadfast, Poe demonstrates her skill as a director and her ability to handle multiple genres—she started out, you might remember, with lighter romantic-comedy fare, often also with Colby Kent—and her ability to get quality performances from her actors, every single one, every single time. I also wouldn’t be surprised at her picking up a directorial award or two; it’s an ambitious project, and also a labor of love, which shines through in each frame.

 The costuming and sets are as plush and attentive to detail as you would expect from an Oscar-bait period piece that’s a Jillian Poe production—that reputation for perfection’s deserved. The score is, if not anything out of the ordinary for a Regency setting, handled with delicacy and love—the music plays into the mood of each scene unobtrusively and expertly.

 Fans of the novel might have some minor critiques involving the looseness of the adaptation, in particular the ending, which—let me offer a minor spoiler warning, no detail, but stop reading if you want to know nothing at all—adds a final sequence that provides a happy ending for Stephen and Will. Is it book-accurate? No. But I called Steadfast a brave film earlier in this review, and this ending is an act of courage: imagining a happy ending for gay men in history, demanding that their love story end well and with joy. (And Colby Kent personally met with the novel’s famously reclusive author, so for all you purists, this change was made with permission.)

 Those stories matter. Steadfast as a film matters. Go see it. Fall in love.

#character bleed #i write fic for my fic #meta #headcanon #extras #thebestpersonherelovesbucky #esaael #turtletotem #nocturymiszczu #ahnjunae-blog #who am i forgetting to tag

[askshivanulegacy]

Get to know me tag thing!

1. Dogs or Cats? Dogs FTW! Though I could maybe have a cat one day, depending.

2. YouTube celebrities or normal celebrities? I’m not sure YouTube celebrities count as celebrities, haha. And I certainly couldn’t name a single one, so normal celebrities it is. I have a hard enough time naming those. :P

3. If you could live anywhere where would that be? UGH it depends on the day and how I’m feeling, honestly. I live for the wide-open countryside, but I love the mountains and the forest, and I would love some small, historic old town where I could walk everywhere on cobblestone streets. It’s easier for me to say where I don’t want to live than where I do!

4. Disney or DreamWorks?  Disney (especially now that it has Marvel and Star Wars), but honestly DreamWorks has some real gems.

5. Favourite childhood TV show? MY LITTLE PONY. Especially those old movies and that original 80s character style??? A+++ the new My Little Pony honestly failed hard in the style department (didn’t stop me from getting a stupid amount of the toys tho because they were so cute). :’D Then there was X-men and Spiderman, and later on Pokemon, Digimon, and Yugioh. ♥

6. The movie you’re looking forward to most in 2020?

I’m a sap for movies, I love them. so RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, probably on the top of my list next to whatever Star Wars is coming out then. Mulan, Artemis Fowl, Dolittle!! (omg that takes me back so hard) And probably some others I can’t remember.

7. Favorite book you read in 2019? I did not read a book this year. :sob: But there was some excellent fanfiction, some very excellent webcomics, and some very very excellent RPing <_<. Oh, there was a kids book, The Tea Dragon Society, which is super cute, highly recommend. Maybe next year I’ll get through my stash of backlogs. >_>

8. Marvel or DC? Marvel for movies, ANYTHING ELSE for comics.  Tho the Wonder Woman and Superman movies have been super epic too, hmm.  Anyway, I cannot stand these superhero comics, they’re convoluted and incoherent (and generic) as heck.  You can find so much better stories and artwork elsewhere.

9. If you choose Marvel favorite member of the X-Men? If you choose DC favourite Justice League member? G A M B I T

10. Night or Day? Day, except for the part where I work during it, and so most of my worthwhile activities get done at night. XD

11. Favourite Pokemon?  MEWTWO

12. Top 5 bands/artists:

Uhhh, there are a few country bands I actually like enough of their songs to recognize, except none of the names are coming to me OH WELL.  Celtic Woman, that’s one artist for you.  And Rockapella!  That’s it, all I got.  I just don’t pay attention to names.  XD

13. Top 10 books.

OK HERE WE GO have I got the books 4U:

The entire Star Wars X-Wing series.

The entire Star Wars Mandalorian series.

The Wolfwalker series by Tara K. Harper ( @dingoat <_< )

Dragon of the Lost Sea series by Laurence Yep

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville

Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce

The Pit Dragon Chronicles by Jane Yolen

All the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey

The Dinotopia books by James Gurney

The Belgariad series by David Eddings (loved all his stuff honestly)

A lot of those I read long, loooong ago so maybe I would have different opinions now if I re-read them.  But boy did they influence me A LOT growing up.

14. Top 4 movies

STAR WARS especially Rogue One :sob:, How to Train Your Dragon, Sherlock Holmes (the recent movies), The Man from UNCLE (also the recent movie).  This list will change by the hour. 8)

15. America or Europe?  Europe.  I live in America and it’s comfy and all, but really Europe has all the cool places going for it, AND ALSO public transportation, get your act together America.

16. Tumblr or Twitter?  Tumblr FTW.  I will never understand the point of Twitter, tho Blakk does have a Twitter account that he rarely uses. 8)

17. Pro-choice or Pro-life?  What a great polarizing question for such an innocent Q&A meme; gotta wonder what the author was thinking. 8)  I’m pro-you-can-have-whatever-opinion-you-want-as-long-as-you-don’t-inflict-it-on-other-people because it’s not your f*ing business to run their lives, pro-this-isn’t-worthy-of-becoming-law, pro-act-responsibly-in-the-first-place-and-use-birth-control, and, failing that because people sure as hell like to manufacture fake issues, pro-choice.  Because just imagine thinking you get to determine what someone else gets to suffer (and literally pay for, $$$) for 9 months and then force them through the horrific physical ordeal of birthing a baby when they just. don’t. want. to.  I mean, you might as well decide someone should just take an axe and cut off their own arm just because you want them to; it really amounts to the same thing.  :/  (Please note, wanting to have a baby and being forced are two entirely different things. It’s an ordeal, regardless, and not something to approach unwillingly.)

18. Favorite YouTuber? No one, don’t care enough to remember usernames. XD

19. Favorite author ? I’m so bad with remembering names, but here are some I do, so they must be worth something: Timothy Zahn, Mike Stackpole, Kevin J. Anderson, and also the above listed authors, half of which I had to Google. 8)

Also ME, because I know I write well and I love the stuff I write!

Honestly also everyone I RP with (past and present) because yeah there’s a reason I’m addicted to this hobby. ♥

20. Tea or Coffee?  I mean.  Coffee, ok??  But like, also.  TARO MILK TEA and a hundred other teas especially with cream and sugar, and the concept of High Tea is amazing.  ... That’s mostly the snacks, BUT STILL.

21. OTP ?  Blakk/Saare (old ship, many of you probably haven’t seen it, but it’s also my canon ship).  Blakk also ships stupidly well with several other OCs ... you know who you are ... and also how much I wish they could also be canon ...

22. Do you play an instrument/sing ?  Piano!  At least I could, before we moved around 6th grade and I gave it up.  But it was the one extracurricular activity I stuck with for a number of years.  I’m sure I’m ridiculously rusty.  Probably I can still read the music. 8)  I can sing (mainly in the car), but it doesn’t mean I should.  XDD

Tagged By: @dingoat, thank you!!! ♥♥♥

Tagging:  @kaosstar, @princess-triton, @theanaideialegacy, @starrealis, @lhunuial, @empire-at-war, @ you!  (I’ve been pretty awol lately in terms of interacting a ton online so I’m not sure who’s still around, haha!)

#memes #about me #ty for the tag!!!

[fussingoverfassbender]

An old interview from 2011 about Jane Eyre

BY EDWARD DOUGLAS ON MARCH 4, 2011

Actor Michael Fassbender may have first found his way onto filmgoers’ radars as Lt. Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (or Zack Snyder’s 300if you were paying attention), but before then, he had already established himself as one of the stronger dramatic actors of the decade with his unforgettable performance in Steve McQueen’s Hunger. He’s kept fairly busy since then with similarly stirring performances in Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tankand a few movies that slipped under most radars… and at least one that probably should have (Jonah Hex). Regardless, he’s poised to become a household name with his upcoming appearance as Magneto in X-Men: First Class and with his casting in Ridley Scott’s return to science fiction with Prometheus.

In Cary (Sin Nombre) Fukunaga’s take on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Fassbender gets to play the iconic literary role of Edward Rochester, a character previously played by the likes of Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, William Hurt and Timothy Dalton. This Jane Eyre is played by Mia Wasikowska, her second iconic literary character after starring in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and for those who haven’t read the book, the movie follows the life of that title character, an impoverished young woman trying to find herself a life without love who ultimately becomes the governess for the troubled Rochester, who falls in love with her. Fukunaga has taken a far more realism-based approach to the material which has been adapted many times previously, this time with a cast that includes Jamie Bell, Dame Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins.

Having spoken with Fassbender just last year, we already had a fairly comfortable rapport when we sat down with him a few weeks back, making it much easier to get right into a fairly freeform chat about the movie as well as other things he has going on.

ComingSoon.net: Obviously, “Jane Eyre” is a classic piece of fiction so when somebody sent you the script, you must have known at least the title. Did you have any sort of connection to the book at all? Michael Fassbender: Yeah, I had read the book I think six years ago or so, because I was involved in perhaps doing this thing called “Wide Sargasso Sea,” which is the idea of what would have happened in Jamaica before the Brontë novel. It wasn’t Brontë who wrote it, but (Jean Rhys’) take of what would happen in Jamaica and Rochester as a young man and what happened with Bertha the wife and all that. I read that and I read “Jane Eyre” at the time, and obviously I read it again once they offered me Rochester this time around. My sister and my mother were big fans when I was a child and when I was in my teens as well, they were always talking about it because my sister was reading it. That was the reason why I wanted to do it, so they could take a look.

CS: They must be thrilled. Have they seen it yet? Fassbender: They haven’t, no, I haven’t seen it yet! I’m waiting for the premiere to have the nerves and just to experience it for the first time with an audience.

CS: I don’t want to embarrass you but everyone I’ve talked to–men, women, gay, straight–they all have the hots for you after seeing this movie. Fassbender: Oh, really?! (laughs)

CS: Even though you already were a sex symbol, I think this movie is going to put you over the top. Fassbender: Oh, fantastic! (laughs)

CS: Rochester is almost as an iconic character as Jane Eyre herself, especially to the women who read the book who must have great expectations of what Rochester would be like. Fassbender: Yeah, that’s the thing, and I did watch all the previous versions as well, a lot of them I could get my hands on.

CS: Wasn’t Orson Welles one of them? Fassbender: Yeah, I watched that and at one point, I was supposed to be doing “Wuthering Heights,” about three years ago I think it was now, so I watched Laurence Olivier do his “Wuthering Heights,” and I was like, “Woah, it’s so overdramatic,” and the same with Orson Welles, it’s like (doing his impression of Welles) “Jaaane… Jaaaaaaaane…!” I think Toby Stephens was my favorite – he did it for ITV, one of the British channels, it was a six-parter for television. Then I threw it all away and then I sort of concentrated on what was in the book and what was in the script. By treating him as the Byronic hero, which Brontë wrote him like, that gave me all I needed and then I thought, “Okay, he seems a bit bipolar as well.” His moods sort of swing and it’s because of all the sh*t that’s going on in his head and the fact that (SPOILERS!!!!!) he’s got this woman locked upstairs in the attic that’s always with him in a way that’s almost like he’s carrying a weight with him as well.

CS: It must be tough, because he’s supposed to be the perfect romantic lead but he does have all these secrets and flaws, which slowly start to come out as Jane gets to know him. Fassbender: Definitely flawed, yeah, and at the beginning, and you think, “God, this guy is an ***hole.” He’s sort of manipulative and cruel and charming and you realize that he’s just been putting up all these fronts and layers and protections. I mean, as a young man, this sh*t happened to him, and he started off his life I always imagined bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to have a go at life and then BANG! He gets knocked on his *** and so, because of that, he doesn’t trust people, he doesn’t trust relationships. He’s been burned. So when Jane comes into the house, she just starts peeling away one layer after the other and in the end, she sort of heals him.

CS: When I talked to Mia and Cary a couple of days ago, they were saying they both had books with copious notes in them and had been referring back to the book and having all these meetings to discuss it. Did you have to go back to the book a lot yourself for reference? Fassbender: Yeah, I don’t really take a lot of notes. I’ve noticed that my scripts are usually quite empty of notes to be honest. I’ve scribbled down a few things, but I read the script over and over again a couple hundred times, it must have been. That’s the only way I kind of prepare, I just sort of read it and read it and read it, till you’re absolutely sick of it, and then you read it again. Then when I’m on set, it’s sort of in my skin, so I can then go anywhere I want with it and feel free to allow things to happen, as opposed to making sure I’m hitting all the points.

CS: The words from the novel especially for your character are great, some of the lines he says you kind of want to keep them in your head to use as pick-up lines. Fassbender: “Right, that would be a good one! That’s a first date line!” (laughs)

CS: Exactly, but you can only use those lines as long as the woman hasn’t read “Jane Eyre” and know where you stole them from. But was it Cary who wanted to make sure that some of Rochester’s best lines from the book remained in the film? Fassbender: Yes, I mean I didn’t change the script. It was so well written and it’s finding those little moments in the book. You’ve got a book and how do you condense it into a script and that’s the really fine art there, so everything that’s in there, every sentence, is there for a reason, because it’s been filtered down to what is absolutely necessary to have. That’s why I was saying that there was a precision that I wanted to find with him, so that I’m not just brush-stroking over stuff, that it’s more finite and sort of detailed.

CS: Were you able to use anything from the other script you had read that involved the character? Fassbender: “Wide Sargasso Sea”? That’s one way of going about it, and I tended to not go that way. The whole idea… I mean, I did often think, “Oh, God, poor Bertha. She might have just been a horny lady. She might have just enjoyed sex and back then, it’s like ‘Whoa, you’re enjoying this sh*t, you must have the devil in you or you must be crazy.'” So there is that take on it, but I kind of went along the lines that she was insane and it was a hereditary thing, her mother before her had mental problems, so that’s kind of the line I took.

CS: Let’s talk about Mia. I met her for the first time a couple of days ago, and she’s really quite amazing in terms of being 18 and really having it together. Can you talk about what makes her such a perfect Jane Eyre, and why she embodies that character? Fassbender: Yeah, it’s just because she’s such a gifted actress, really is. Once I found out she was playing Jane Eyre, and I got “In Treatment” and I watched her episodes on that.

CS: I assume this was before “Alice” and “The Kids Are All Right”? Fassbender: Yes, I haven’t seen “Alice” yet actually, but I was like “Oh My God, she’s got so much maturity.” There was this 17-year-old, or 16 as she was then, and I was like, “Wow, who is this girl?” Her choices are so interesting and she’s got a real connection with the camera. You’ve seen her as Mia and also the fact that she comes from this dance background. She’s got this great physical authority and command of her physicality that is brilliant and also a discipline that she’s brought from that dance world into the acting world. I just sort of had to try and keep up with her. She’s I think the future, she’s like Meryl Streep class.

CS: You’re also working with Carey Mulligan who is another one of those impressive young actresses. Fassbender: I know. That’s the thing. Once you’re put amongst a high caliber of talent, it raises you.

CS: Oh, and of course, the girl from “Fish Tank.” Fassbender: Yeah, Katie (Jarvis), wow, what an explosion she is. She’s not an actress, she’s just Katie. I’ll be interested to see what she does next or if she wants to act at all, I don’t know.

CS: Have you seen any of the Cronenberg film you did yet? Fassbender: I haven’t seen it. I don’t really see the films until there’s an audience. What do you say about David Cronenberg? Other than as a man, obviously his talent is clear for everyone to see. He’s a real master and a real technician, as well as being an artist, but he’s just such a nice guy and such a light personality and very warm, and funny. We had a good sense of humor on set, and then Viggo is obviously a big hero of mine, and Keira is going to make a lot of people sit up and what she does in this film is going to be really impressive.

CS: How’s it been going working with Steve McQueen again on “Shame”? Is this a little more conventional since you’re shooting in New York? Fassbender: (shakes head) No, it’s all the things you expect from Steve. It’s intense. There’s nothing left on the floor at the end of scenes. Everything goes into the camera. We improvise, we take risks, and it’s exciting and Sean Bobbit behind the camera again, it’s sort of dancing all together. We often say that, Steve and I, it’s like musicians and when the timing’s right, you can feel it, and when the timing’s off, you can also feel it. I’m back to working with him tomorrow so I’m trying to make sure I’m well prepared really.

CS: So is he doing a lot of location stuff here in New York? Fassbender: Yup, all location.

CS: How has he been adjusting to shooting here versus Ireland? Fassbender: Well, I think he went to film school or art school here, so he’s familiar with New York and always had the idea of setting this story in New York, so he’s been in and out of New York for the last couple years. When he first mentioned this idea to me in 2008, he’s been coming back and forth since then.

CS: It’s great that he’s shooting in New York. We really appreciate when filmmakers bring their films here. Fassbender: There was a time when there was loads and then there was a time when there wasn’t any, and now it’s sort of coming back again, which is great, because it’s such a fantastic setting to make films.

CS: Can you tell me anything more about the movie? Fassbender: I can’t really.

CS: I know that you have a history of sex. Fassbender: Yes…

CS: And that Carey Mulligan plays your sister. Fassbender: Yes…

CS: Is there anything else you can say about it? Fassbender: No! (laughs) But it’s a beautiful script and I have to say that it’s a very relevant topic and we’ll see, we’ll see.

You can also read what Fassbender said about taking on the role of Magneto, the Master of Magnetism in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class over on SuperHeroHype.

Jane Eyre opens in select cities on March 11. Look for our video interview with director Cary Fukunaga very soon.

#Michael Fassbender

[writemarcus]

TICKETS

AT-DOOR: $18 ADVANCED SALE: $15 Four programs of 6-8 shows..... 10-20 minutes each.... Ranging from comedies to dramas to alternative...... The Act One: One Act Festival 2018 is a self-producing competition-style one-act play festival. The audience will vote for each show they see, and thetop-scorers will have a place in the Finals: February 3rd @ 7pmPLEASE NOTE: ~Information and order of shows is subject to change. ~Please be forewarned: Some subject matter may be offensive or triggering.

Program 1 Jan 11 @ 7pm Jan 14 @ 5:30pm Jan 19 @ 7pm Jan 21 @ 8pm Jan 27 @ 7pm Jan 30 @ 7pm

Let's Hear It For Queens by Mark Lord (20 minutes) Musical   Book, Lyrics, Direction by: Mark Lord   Music and Musical Direction by: Joe Ferrante   Joseph Riley - Antiquous   Jim Haines - Poet   Dan Segredo - Linguist #1   Kent Williams - Linguist #2   Caroline Purr - Storyteller #1   Regina Fischedick - Storyteller #2   Erin Clancy Balsamo - Storyteller #3A condensed version of an original full-length musical in tribute to the borough of Queens. Featuring original songs, poetry and rap.Saint Fancy by Stephen Bracco  (12 minutes) Dramatic Comedy   Directed by: Stephen Bracco   Spencer Wolfe - Dr. Joey   Kitty Ostapowicz - Fancy It's trust-fund alcoholic Fancy's birthday; today, like every year, her birthday wish comes true. Last year, she turned her therapist into a liver; this year, he's fighting for his humanity, and hers.   Help Me Get Over You by Rollin Jewett (10 minutes) Comedy   Directed by: Joseph Sexton   Chris Ostrowski - John   Marcy Agreen * - Phyllis A man who broke up with a lady enlists her to help him get over her.   Personnel Best by Pete Holmberg (20 minutes) Drama   Produced by: Roust Theatre Company   Directed by: Jenny Tibbels   Stage Manager: Stephanie Hollander   Charlie Gorrilla - Luddy   Khris Lewin * - Kyle   Jonny Maldonado - David In the wake of Harvey Weinstein and the birth of the #metoo movement, three male partners in a successful PR firm convene behind closed doors to discuss a pivotal hiring decision. FACEBOOK (for Roust Theatre Co.) The King-Anning by Veronica Cooper (10 minutes) Comedy   Directed by: Emily Lyon   Jennifer Teska * - Mary Anning   Mateo Moreno - The King of Saxony   Aaron Kheifets - Carl Gustav Carus A comedic account loosely based on the very real meeting of world renowned English paleontologist Mary Anning and the King of Saxony, a natural history enthusiast. Set in 1844. Program 2 Jan 13 @ 7pm Jan 17 @ 7pm Jan 21 @ 3pm Jan 25 @ 7pm Jan 28 @ 5:30pm Feb 1 @ 7pm A Girl Smiles in the Arctic by Cambria Denim (18 minutes) Dramatic Comedy   Directed by: Madelyn Shaffer   Nayem Cardenas-Lopez - Nirliq   Andrew Griffin - Justin Bieber   Braiden Wells - Alan International pop sensation Justin Bieber and Siberian Inuit hunter Nirliq meet in their conjoined dreams every night. What happens when a depressive, childlike Englishman appears in their dreamscape? Hunt by Wil Hart (19 minutes) Comedy Directed by: Sophia Grasso Sarah DiRenno - McKenzie Katie Lugo - Miranda Dymon Davis - Megan In search of closure after her father's death, Mckenzie returns to the hunting shack where she spent time with him as a kid. Her two best friends tag along, not realizing what they're in for. Don by Kyle Smith (9 minutes) Comedy Directed by: Kyle Smith Mike Toperzer - Keith   Armand Lane - Don Don reflects on the choices he made to get where he is, as Keith struggles to get Don out of the rain. Clean-Shaven by Justin Schwartz (15 minutes) Comedy Directed by: Justin Schwartz Ruthy Froch - Lucy Jackson Knight Pierce - James All is well as long as James heeds to Lucy's one request: to shave himself before they have sex. Until the one time he forgets to do so. A Match Remade In Heaven by Amanda Terman (19 minutes) Drama Directed by: Jak Prince Harris King - Anna Crystal Ramirez - God Eric Parness - Brian A husband and wife reunite in heaven, but their relationship is complicated by unexpected news. Maryanne by David Lewison (10 minutes) Comedy Directed by: Barbara McGlamery Mimi Fischer - Maryanne Alexander Rybitski - Voice In the near future, a lonely old woman has a household computer to watch over her every need. But what will she do when her computer falls in love…with her? The Wonderful World of Science by Steve Gold (15 minutes) (NOT PERFORMING JAN 13 @ 7PM) Drama Directed by: Laurence C. Schwartz Jamie Lee Kearns - Dr. Lindstrom Emily Cordes - The Woman A drama about a molecular biologist researching HIV who receives a visit from a mysterious woman during the early days of the epidemic. Program 3 Jan 14 @ 3pm Jan 18 @ 7pm Jan 21 @ 5:30pm Jan 26 @ 7pm Jan 28 @ 8pm Feb 2 @ 7pm Supreme Solution by Tom Block (11 minutes) Directed by: Tom Block Jacob Horn - Timothy Patrick Leonard - Ernest Lisa Yapp - June At the end of her life, June murders the Supreme Court Head Justice. But power is more deeply entrenched than she believes, and her plan only succeeds in making her a murderer. Two Super-Heroes Walk Into a Bar by Bryan Leys (15 minutes) Dramatic Comedy Directed by: Brian Leys Ian Potter - Mike Dombrowski/ Major Hero Kenneth King - Sal Patrillo/ Kid Vicious A horrific crime has taken place in Cincinnati. Two working class superheroes hold a secret meeting to plot vengeance against the villain responsible. Justice and beer will be served.

Double Rainbow by Marcus Scott (20 minutes) Comedy Directed by: Justin Schwartz Lindsay Fabes - Lea Anthony Franqui - Stuart Mark Andrew Garner * - Michael Lea and Michael, two far-left democratic LGBT rights activists, are under arrest and facing criminal charges. The charge: Assault and Battery.

The Trapped Language of Love by Ronan Colfer (18 minutes)Comedy Produced by: Ronan Colfer and Alexandra Bigourdan

Directed by: Rebeca Castilho

Ronan Colfer - HE

Alexandra Bigourdan - SHE

A man and a woman fall madly in love with each other at first sight, but are then trapped by the emptiness of their everyday language.

Journey to Wellness by Larry Rinkel (16 minutes)

Drama

Directed by: Leslie Anne Weishaar

Gail Merzer Behrens * - "The Woman" (Sophia Czernowski)

Jordan Ausländer * - "The Man" (Russell Garbowski)

An elderly man and woman, both recovering from serious injuries, find an unexpected connection when the man realizes he knew the woman’s recently deceased husband.

The Hawthorne Book by Lora Danley (10 minutes)

Drama

  Directed by: Lora Danley

  Olan Montgomery - Stan

  Richard Alwyn - Joe

Joe, a struggling writer and deeply in debt, once again turns to his older brother Stan for help by asking him to part with his most treasured possession. This time, however, Stan has had enough.

  * Member of Actors Equity Association

For more information about the plays, voting rules, prizes and more. You can

click here

or click on the buy ticket link (located below the image).

The Secret Theatre 44-02 23rd St. Long Island City, NY 11101 E, M, G or 7 train to Courthouse SQ/23rd St. ONLY ONE SUBWAY STOP FROM MANHATTAN

For tickets, click HERE.

#Marcus Scott #MarcusScott #Write Marcus #WriteMarcus #Theatre Bleek #TheatreBleek #Playwright #Black Playwrights #Double Rainbow #Secret Theater #Long Island City

[princessanneftw]

Sulking

- @nottamedlioness

Knock knock knock

Anne sighed. She wasn't really in the mood to talk to anyone, so she ignored the knocks.

Knock knock knock

Swearing under her breath, she called out:  "Come in.”

It was Tim. Usually she would be happy to see him, but not today: she was still upset about their "fight". Well, not really a fight, more like a strong argument about something that maybe, maybe might be ridiculous, but still it was the first time they fought since they started their relationship and it had upset her.

"Still sulking I see?" said her lover after closing the door behind him.

"I'm not sulking," she grumbled, "and put that down!" she added when she saw him holding a framed photograph of hers that was on top of one of the little tables.

"I really love this one. I might keep it." He responded, smirking and showing her the portrait: her 19th birthday portrait, and made a show of putting it in his pocket.

"I said put it down, Laurence." Anne walked to him tried to take it back from his hand but he moved his arm out of reach each time she made a move to grab it. "Give it back Timothy!" Anne insisted trying and failing to be stern. Said Timothy had the gall to laugh at her, and held the frame higher where she couldn't reach.

He kept this up for few more seconds then put it down, and for some reason bent lower. Then suddenly, he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder, his arm tight around her legs so she wouldn’t slip.

Anne yelped in surprise and punched him on his back.

"Timothy James Hamilton Laurence, PUT. ME. DOWN," she said in a quiet but firm voice so no one could hear her outside the office.

"That’s quite t a mouthful, not even my mother calls me by my full name. Besides, if I can’t take that portrait, I'll gladly take the subject of the portrait. Though, you’re grumpier now than in the photograph but no less adorable." The still smiling equerry said with a mischievous glint in his eyes, walking slowly toward the door.

Twisting her arm a bit, Anne tried to tickle his sides but his jacket made it difficult for her, and he caught onto her game. "Playing dirty, Your Royal Highness?" Tim said stopping in his tracks and tickling the back of her knees which made her erupt in a fit of laughter.

"Tim, please put me down," begged Anne still laughing. Tim took pity on her and put her down but didn't let her out of his arms. "Now will you stop sulking? You're more beautiful when you laugh, not that you're not otherwise but I love your laughter more."

She just smiled at him. " You are one stubborn man, Commander Laurence"

"I'll take that as a compliment!" He said with mock modesty " Still, I'll take that portrait" Anne only laughed at him.

~33 years later~

Anne looked in the mirror fixing her hat and saw her husband looking back at her.

"Still sulking Annie?" He asked.

"I do not sulk," she answered, fussing with her hat.

"And what do you call that scowl on your face? Your resting expression" He asked her.

"Yes," she answered curtly while checking her handbag. Tim sighed and approached his wife, hugging her from behind carefully to not mess her hat. "As I can no longer throw you across my shoulder until you laugh and stop scowling - I'm getting old you know, not everyone is fit like you are," Anne only rolled her eyes at him, "I'll indulge you this time and accompany you to the races. On one condition: let me put on my jockey tie?" This got him a laugh from his wife, a kiss on the cheek, and a nod.

"You are one kind of a man, Admiral," said the Princess watching her husband happily entering the dressing room to change.

#my little shipper heart cant take all of these fresh stories #truly blessed #i love reading fics when theyre playful like this #cuuuuute #fannefiction #i will go down with this ship #she’s definitely the sulker of the two lol #submission