#petition for Mickey to be made a love interest

[cinnamontimecrunch]

LET ME LOVE THEM PLEASE

#petition for Mickey to be made a love interest #degrees of lewdity #dol #degrees of lewdity mickey #dol mickey #mickey the hacker

[mwooterssvad-gd]

Inquiry 1

During the last two weeks of Process and Systems, I completed my first design sprint. The project began with a trip to the hardware store and a $5 budget. I was unsure about what to get at the hardware store, but I landed on the idea of a springy door stop. As a kid, I loved to play with the door stop and hear the weird sound that they made, so I figured it would be a good basis for a toy. I then used some scrap wire to make arms, paint chips to create a base, and a paint marker to draw on a face. Thus, the Springy Slugger was born. 

I decided to make a series of three posters inspired by vintage toy advertisements. This choice went on to inspire the color palette of this project as well as the typography. I then struggled with what style of illustration the toy should be in, but I landed on a Cuphead/Mickey Mouse look. This prompted me to give my character big shoes, gloved hands, and bold linework. I used a textured background to try to give the poster a vintage feel, and then I layered comic “explosion” shapes with spiraling lines to emphasize the purpose of the Springy Slugger, which is to spring and throw punches. I aimed to make my posters look almost like frames of an animation, with the character’s movement progressing throughout. 

The sections of the design matrix which I was focusing on were toy, posters, and memory. I wanted to give kids and adults alike the nostalgic feeling of playing with the door stop as a young child. I also pushed the feeling of nostalgia by choosing vintage typefaces and a more traditional illustration style. 

I am happy with what I created, as it is quite different from other things I have designed, but I feel that I could definitely have pushed myself further. After seeing my peers’ presentations, I realized what level of work is being created in this class, and it inspired me to want to push myself further for the next project. Also after reading the rubric that we used to provide feedback in class, it became clearer to me what the expectations are. I want my work to come off as professional and portfolio-ready, like many of the presentations that I saw. I especially noted how many people brought in physical mockups of their products, which I think is a really nice touch. For the next presentation, I will be sure to include personas of my target audience as well as where my inquiry falls on the design matrix. 

Media 1

I thought the podcast episode of 99 Percent Invisible was really interesting. I have a love for all kinds of music, but I am relatively uneducated about the history of the music industry. I think this podcast emphasized the importance of packaging and design in all industries, even in the realm of politics. I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of CD longboxes before listening to this podcast and subsequently looking up images. While longboxes did solve the temporary problem of shelving CDs in record stores, I do agree with the members of R.E.M. about the wastefulness of the packaging. 

I was vaguely familiar with the phrase “Rock the Vote”, though I did not entirely know the message and group behind it. I also had no idea about the Motor Voter Bill, and I’m somewhat surprised that people were even against it! I suppose if your voter base is primarily older generations, you may not want to make voting more accessible to everyone, especially younger people. I think that the idea to put petitions for the Motor Voter Bill on the back of the longboxes was a really smart solution. It kept record stores happy, but also pushed forward a good cause that R.E.M. could get behind. It was especially smart since people would normally just get rid of the longboxes anyways, so it really cost the audience nothing to just sign and submit the petition! I also think wheeling in so many longboxes was a great way to tangibly show how many people supported the cause, rather than simply reporting the numbers. This was a great example of how smart design choices can really have an impact in the world. Great episode!

[sabrinajennings]

A Word About Character Development: Appearances

So this is a super hot button topic in which opinions are widely varied, and I'm actually kinda afraid to put my thoughts out there. So definitely don't think this post is meant to be dogmatic (btw NONE of my posts are meant to be dogmatic). I actually struggle really badly with writing characters physical appearances, so most of my opinion here comes as a reader.

1. Ditch the numbers: The only time I would ever describe someone by their height and weight would be to the police, and even then it would be their height and clothes size. I would never ever describe one of my friends to another using their size as a description and I hope they wouldn't describe me that way either. Yet for some reason I read descriptions like "She's 5'11", 125lbs" (btw that's probably an unhealthy weight for someone that tall). Reading a description from a friend (or love interest) that way sounds unrealistic.

It doesn't come off any better in the mirror either. How often do you stand before a full length mirror and think about your appearance in numbers?

Exceptions? If your character is especially tall or short their actual height may become relevant (I have an adult MC who is 4'11" and I have mentioned it.) otherwise words like tallish or on the petite side or average all work fine.

2. Instead try proportions: If you must describe your character's body (and you may find you can forgo such a description - l have found many of my favorite authors do) try proportions.

Examples:

'... Her skirt swirled around her ankles in the summer breeze; the vertical stripes drawing attention to her long legs.' (so it's not a great description - told you I struggle--but you get the idea and it is better, IMO, than 5'11", 125)

or "The western cut of the shirt accentuated his broad shoulders, drawing taut across them as he reached up to adjust his bolo tie."

3. Readers don't need full descriptions on page (or chapter, or even part) 1: I think this is a misconception that leads to the numbers and mirror descriptions. Authors seem to feel the reader needs to 'see' the character from the minute they are introduced when in reality what the character is doing is more interesting than what they look like. Plus readers tend to have pretty vivid imaginations so trust me, they aren't going to picture the character as a crash test dummy until you fill them in. If that's what your worried about, that the reader will picture your character differently than you do- well, I hate to say it, but you *might* have to loosen up on that idea a bit. I know you've spent hours plotting every contour of their face and memorized their scars and/or tattoos, and the way the sunlight glints off that one part of their hair, and the idea of anyone seeing them another way is anathema. But it'll be okay. If you work in some descriptive details here and there later the reader will adjust their idea gradually until it matches yours and it will be much more effective than an info dump on page 3.

4. (most) Readers aren't police sketch artists: Maybe I'm just really bad with art (okay no maybe- I'm hopeless at art) but when I read a description like: 'She had a heart shaped face with high cheekbones, a button nose, and hooded brown eyes framed by hundreds of tiny dredlocks...' I have no idea what this character looks like except for eye color and hair. This description may be perfectly clear to those of you who are artists, but I'm going to have to go to goolge images to try and figure it out. (actually I'm probably just going to imagine what I think they might look like my own way and go on). Once again I would never describe my friends like I was talking to the police.

5. Let them Smile: or frown actually. If you want to talk about their face tell me if their cheeks push their lower lids into a squint when they smile or how much their eyebrows close the upper lids when they frown. Describe dimples and scars. Let me know about nervous habits (do they bite their lip or tongue? Cross their eyes in frustration? Can they raise one eyebrow? (and which one or both independently)). These little things provide (to me at least) a much fuller picture than a description of shapes, and they make the character much more 3-dimensional.

6. Please not a clothes-horse: Wedding? Prom? Halloween? Actual superhero? Model actually during a fashion show? Okay then we probably need to know exactly what the character is wearing. Otherwise a vague (or nonexistent) description of their clothing will suffice. In a contemporary story this slows the pace too much, and in a historical work is slows the pace AND feels like you're trying to show off your research. Plus it makes the POV character feel a bit shallow to me if they are always talking about clothes. Tell me they have on jeans and a T-shirt (or their pj's, Or that they changed into their riding habit) and I'm good to go.

Exception: in addition to the above exceptions, if the characters clothing choices are a noted quirk (I have a character who basically collects pajamas), you should mention them, but a brief description will still get the point across. (example: the character I referred to previously will always be wearing a different pair of pajamas in a night scene, but I still don't go overboard with detail ('red plaid flannel', 'princess camo', 'mickey mouse'). The words on a graphic tee are another great example or a collection of eclectic color sneakers. If the outfit requires a multi-sentence description it needs to be a special outfit.

7. Furniture: Furniture descriptions are pretty rare, but I'm still going to mention it quickly. Basically everything I just said about clothes applies to home furnishings too. If you describe the trash can, it needs to be a really special trash can.

8. Building layout: Ooh this is a tough one. I struggle with this as a writer because I literally use like 2 basic blueprints in my head so if I'm not careful everyone's house comes out the same. Obviously you don't want that, but that's probably a rare problem. More commonly I see way too much detail and I get confused. Maps? They are a staple of certain sub genres but I'd rather not see them elsewhere. I would say most scenes are not dependent on the layout of the building so you can probably leave off the turn by turn tour. Action sequences seem most likely to require specific detail about the setup, and 1 method is to have 2 characters planning an attack which will involve going over the description of the building together. If that doesn't work you can have a single character assess the place in their head right before the information becomes relevant. A verbal blueprint in chapter 1 is probably going to be forgotten by the time we get to a fight scene in chapter 15.

But don't forget your characters are human too. (unless they aren't of course). So they might not remember the layout of a multi story building perfectly and realize only after they have made a mistake (oops we were having a major brawl over top of the jewelry store that has motion sensitive alarms and now the cops are here).

Personally I try not to describe any unnecessary rooms - even their location. If you tell me we are at a 3 story mansion, I will assume about 30 rooms even if you only describe 2. If you try to tell me where all 30 rooms are I will probably skip the description and review it if it becomes relevant.

Yikes that was a long post! Hope this helps someone!

#writer #writing #writers #words #descripcion #authors #author #creativity #creative #character development #character design #writing advice

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 224: More Like Slidin’ Go Fuck Yourself

Previously on BnHA: We caught up back to real time and learned that the Shigaraki Squad has been battling Gigantomachia basically nonstop for the past month and a half. Tomura in particular has barely eaten or slept (the others at least got breaks), yet is in an oddly good mood despite having not made much progress. Anyway, Twice got a phone call from Giran’s number, except that it turned out not to be Giran, because we of course know that the Quirk Liberation Army has captured him. Guess what else they’ve done! If you guessed “tortured him for a week and severed five of his fingers and placed them in symbolic locations to send a message to the League,” you guessed right and that’s pretty fucked up that you actually guessed that! So anyway, DetCEO, who apparently goes by “Re-Destro”, bragged to Tomura about how they have 116,516 “liberation warriors” spread throughout the country and have been preparing for this moment for generations. They want to tear down the world and rebuild it as a place where everyone can freely use their quirks. Almost doesn’t sound too bad, until you remember the whole “kidnap, torture, and dismember” thing (and the fact that Re-Destro killed poor Mickey Mouse just a handful of chapters ago). Also they knew Tomura’s exact location somehow, and Re-Destro threatened to sic all of the top heroes on them if they don’t cooperate. He told Tomura to meet them at Deika City in Aichi Prefecture so they can have an epic battle.

Today on BnHA: Re-Destro invites the Shigaraki Squad to a big ol’ murderfest free for all in Aichi prefecture. The squad takes a few minutes to debate the merits of accepting this invitation, with the most pressing arguments in favor being “they kidnapped and tortured our bro Giran” and “they know our location and will sic all of the top heroes on us if we don’t”, while the biggest argument against is the whole “it’s obviously a trap” thing. Ujiko, who’s listening in on the whole thing, warns that he won’t be able to lend them any High Ends for the time being. But Tomura doesn’t seem too concerned, and asks Ujiko to warp them over. His plan is to have Gigantomachia follow them and fuck up the Meta Liberation Army’s day, thus killing two birds with one stone for him. So they head to Deika City, picking up Dabi on the way, and are greeted by none other than fucking Slidin’ Go, who’s apparently evil. Huh. He leads them through the city, which seems mostly abandoned. “Seems” being the operative word, as it turns out the city is occupied by Liberation army cronies, who proceed to greet Tomura and the gang with some friendly violence. Tomura and co. respond in kind, and the focus shifts to Toga, who’s facing off with Kizuki from the Army who has All Might’s eyes and Katsuki’s quirk (a winning combo if I do say so myself). Anyway so now they’re gonna fight.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 226, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

so apparently Re-Destro told Tomura to be at the location within the hour, because Horikoshi has apparently learned his lesson about long, drawn-out arcs. thank you god, thank you jesus

apparently they know the League can warp, so they won’t accept any excuses for them taking their sweet time

and this is super creepy tbh

satellites. why didn’t you think of that, Tomura? here you guys are relying on secret traitors for your intel instead like amateurs

but seriously, it’s so creepy to have people with this capability and have them be the bad guys. imagine what kind of dystopian shit they’d get up to if they actually won?? it wouldn’t be pretty, I can tell you that much

obviously go meet up with them and kick their asses. or, even better, take the gorilla with you

oh my god Twice I love you so much though

Twice you are the Kirishima of villains. Tomura! listen to him! you can be villains who both win and rescue!!

oh my god Toga

TOGA I BELIEVED IN YOU WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS

Twice is passionately saying that if there’s even the slightest chance he’s still alive, they have to go

now Compress is chiming in and pointing out that charging in with no plan is a very bad idea and that Twice always gets “attached” too easily. omg. stfu Compress. so sorry for actually giving a shit, dude

so what does Tomura have to say about all this? villain he may be, but his origin story involves being “rescued” by AFO after being seemingly abandoned by everyone else (or so he believes anyway). are you going to just leave Giran to a fate like that? and then there’s the matter of that satellite tracking you too

oh shit

wow what a fucked up move dude. but effective though

ooh now he’s getting in touch with Ujiko and asking if he was listening in

Ujiko is all “you kids are always on your fancy little ‘radios’“ lol what. Ujiko it’s 2214, cell phones have been around for 250 years. get with the fucking times dude

meanwhile poor Twice is clutching his head and moaning that he’s splitting apart, but only Toga seems to care. ;_; ahh Twice

Compress is getting all hopeful and thinking that they can use the High Ends to battle the Liberation Army

but Ujiko is all “sorry but no”

please stop calling them children you fucking creep omg. do you not even care

so Hijack Noumu’s name was “Hood”, huh? farewell, High Puns Noumu. it’s been fun times but I was seriously running out of things that start with “high”, so I’m gonna latch on to this Hood thing if you don’t mind lol

well we all know AFO being gone is more of a temporary inconvenience (:

lastly, it’s very curious how he says “difficult” as opposed to impossible. please give us the deets of how Noumus are made already Horikoshi. I know I’m gonna regret being so curious but I want to know all the same. open that big ol’ Pandora’s box

Compress is all “well fuck”, but Tomura says that wasn’t his plan anyway. oh?

I bet you he wants to use the recording of AFO’s voice to get Giganto under control

ahhh, yeah, it’s looking that way my dudes

oh my god you guys

fuck me. but just. it’s the first time I’ve ever been struck by a resemblance between the two of them, is all. something about the confidence in his smile. for once he’s not unhinged; he’s perfectly in control of himself and he is a man with a plan, and just. damn. boy you look like your grandma and I’m feeling those Shimura feels though

anyway, so it’s interesting that he’s also getting Dabi to meet up with them. meaning his plan is (for the moment, at least) beyond my comprehension, because I certainly can’t figure out wth he’s thinking right now

and now Spinner’s all “we’re seriously rushing straight in?!” and pointing out that they have no idea what they’re getting into and they’re going up against an army that’s supposedly 110,000 strong

ah, okay, maybe I did figure out his plan after all

okay but then why do you need Dabi

now Ujiko is yelling in his ear “BUT WHAT WILL YOU DO IF IT WAS ALL A BLUFF?!”

and Tomura is all “well then Giganto will fucking die, s’no skin off my back”

Spinner keeps expressing doubts and it’s really starting to look like he may actually switch sides you guys

Tomura is all “don’t make me say it again”

oh good he is fixing Twice up now

... [headpats]

oh Tomura

the good folks of Deika City might want to think about getting the fuck out of Dodge you guys

(ETA: they are all bad folks. you fuckers have only yourselves to blame. have fun being dusted, roasted, compressed, and floated twice over. and Goron pounded. and whatever Spinner fucking does. is it really just the samurai sword. whatever.)

oh look Dabi did join them after all

you guys seeing them act like heroes is so fucking weird though. I know they’re our protags for this arc but still. weird

why did you agree to come?? because you love them you jerk. and you owe Giran as much as anyone

petition to rename this the Villain Feels arc you guys

oh shit

good instincts you guys! good eye, Toga!

OH MY FUCKING --

MOTHERFUCKER!?!?!

so there really was a reason chapter 219 was named after this guy, huh?? he had such a minor role but Horikoshi wanted to make sure we didn’t just immediately forget about him! holy shit. motherfucker did you even return all of those wallets??

holy shitballs this frictionless fuck hugged Katsuki and Shouto and no one suspected a damn thing

AND!!!

as we know, Katsuki was right to call attention to this. but now we know Slidin’ was being intentionally dismissive of the villain’s tech in order to hide Detnerat’s involvement! son of a bitch. that might even have been why he was there in the first place

look at this piece of shit

fuck this guy so hard

oh my fuck

petition to rename this arc the Villain Feels/Stephen King Novel arc

holy shit

well at least we know they’re all expendable. that’s good, considering the League isn’t likely to go out of their way to keep any innocent passerby from dying horribly. run that mission statement by me again one more time, Tomura? “destroy everything?” yeah that’s what I thought you said, thanks

wow and the big bads are here too already!!

if the one on the left (Kizuki, just went back and checked) fights anyone other than Toga I’m gonna lowkey be rooting for her ngl

YOOOO

WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM ALL OF A SUDDEN AND HOW QUICKLY WILL DABI BURN THEM ALL TO DEATH, DO YOU THINK

like, okay, so you wanna come at us like that then?? fun! fucking bring it!

holy shit this guy is a politician??

is that what he means by “party”? damn these guys are in the fucking government and everything

government, big business, satellites... look, no pressure here Tomura, but if you don’t win, I’m starting to think we are seriously screwed

anyway so Twice is all “who cares about these guys, where’s Giran?” and I have to admire his focus in the face of... all this

Hanabata is gesturing to the observation tower in the distance and says Giran is “waiting” over there with Re-Destro

and Twice is all outraged because they said they’d return Giran to them when they got there. “you filthy liar.” wow imagine that. bad guys lying about shit

someone or other appears to be watching everything from the nearby security cameras. probably RD. motherfucker

now these two guys are introducing themselves to Tomura because I guess they’d like to be disintegrated today

nice knowing you guys. but not really

hahahahahhaaa

I know it’s fucked up, but they had it coming, and that was some of the stupidest shit anyone in this manga has pulled in a hot minute though

um

hard not to see an explosion and immediately think of my boy Kacchan! but obviously he’s not there, so what gives??

oh shit

sladkfjalskdfowiehfoksSDLFKJSLDGKHL

okay. okay hold up. gather my thoughts. can’t just keysmash, gotta get my brain back into working order here...!

motherfucker how did I know the girl was gonna fight the other girl. well whatever

THIS BITCH HAS KATSUKI’S QUIRK BUT FROM LONG-DISTANCE?! LIKE PYROKINESIS BUT WITH EXPLOSIONS?! WHAT DO YOU CALL THIS, COMBUSTIKINESIS?? ALSO I KNEW I WAS RIGHT TO LOVE HER FROM THE OUTSET OMG

and on top of that, that gesture with her fingers is giving me strong flashbacks to [S] Cascade from Homestuck

TOGA FAKED HER OWN DEATH TELL ME MORE!?!?

ARE WE GOING TO GET SOME MOTHERFUCKING TOGA FLASHBACKS YOU GUYS I CAN’T. I KNOW I’VE SAID IN THE PAST THAT I DON’T CARE AND WOULDN’T MIND IF SHE JUST STAYS CRAZY WITH NO EXPLANATION BUT THIS IS ALSO GOOD YOU GUYS. I CAN’T LIE, I’M SO FUCKING HYPED RIGHT NOW??

TOGA YOU HAD BETTER FIT THAT FLASHBACK INTO A SINGLE CHAPTER THOUGH BECAUSE THE GOLDEN WEEK BREAK IS ALMOST HERE AND I S2G HORIKOSHI IF YOU PULL ANY BULLSHIT AND LEAVE ME HANGING FOR TWO WHOLE FUCKING WEEKS, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN MOTHERFUCKER

(ETA: THIS BITCH DOESN’T EVER LISTEN TO ME AND MY EMPTY THREATS. GODDAMMIT.)

oh my god. hype for days. you guys. this is amazing

#bnha #boku no hero academia #league of villains #shigaraki tomura #twice (bnha) #himiko toga #dabi #mr. compress #spinner (bnha) #re-destro #giran #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #pour one out for my boy hood ornament noumu though guys #fried to a crisp by endeavor before we even found out his real name #here I was making the wrong kinds of puns this entire time #robin hood noumu #red riding hood noumu #boyz n da hood noumu #so many possibilities #ah well

[belphegor1982]

In the immortal words of Samwise Gamgee, well, I’m back :o) And what a trip. Okay, I spent some of it complaining because (in no particular order) heat, blisters, period cramps and the need to make frequent pit stops, and generally feeling tired and gross.

But let’s recap (again, all out of order). (Meant to add pictures I took, but can’t upload them for some reason. Bugger.)

Paris felt a lot - a LOT - like Bordeaux. The buildings have essentially the same feel to them, only bigger and a couple of storeys higher - it’s the same light-coloured stone, the same trees, the same roundstone, the works. That cognitive dissonance hit me several times, really strongly. 

The Métro, though. Awfully convenient, gets you places quickly without ever being impeded by traffic. Also makes it feel like you spend half the day underground. It’s uncomfortably hot (corridors and trains), SO MUCH NOISE. Still pretty sure the station of Châtelet-les-Halles is some kind of version of hell, or at least liminal space. It’s so enormous it’s got a multiple-level mall, a cinema, and a swimming pool somewhere. It’s harder to navigate the flow of people than a motorway (and about as easy slotting your way in).

While we were ankling around the Île de la Cité we swung by Notre-Dame. She’s surrounded by scaffolding and prefabs and you can’t even get to the parvis. It’s funny (and I mean weird), because the scaffolding looks like any other time a historical building’s having work done on, until you realise there’s no roof anymore and the spire is just... gone. 

Disneyland. Oh man, Disneyland. I can’t regret the blisters I got walking up and down the Magic Kingdom. I teared up before we even made it past the gates because just being in the Fantasia Gardens with the speakers blasting an instrumental version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious :o) And that feel basically lasted till the end, despite the exhaustion. The level of detail you can spot all around is amazing, the music is unobtrusive enough and not annoying, and I love the number of rides that include boats and water ♥

A number of rides were closed for repairs, and I was surprised at how many got stopped then started again as the day went on.

Queues were generally not too insane, except on “Peter Pan’s Flight” where we queued for over an hour for a ride that turned out to be about 10 minutes long? And we never got around to do Big Thunder Mountain because the estimated queuing time kept going up and up and up. But on the whole, it didn’t feel like we spent our time standing in line, which I was afraid of.

Also I thought we’d see more characters! But apart from Donald (whom I got to hug ♥) and Jessie, a glimpse of Snow White and Mickey (from afar), we didn’t see anyone. 

But then again we missed the parade (doing Phantom Manor) where I could’ve seen many characters. *fatalistic shrug*

The map said picnics were to be eaten outside the park, but we totally just sat down and had our sandwiches in a bit of a hurry :D 

Most of the rides were in a mix of French and English whenever there was text and I was really happy about that!

Apart from the Tutankhamen exhibition - which was SPECTACULAR (3,000 YEAR OLD WOOD statuettes, gah, so much beautiful I might make a post just for that), we ended up doing none of the museums we thought we’d be doing. We were (okay, I was) too knackered for the Louvre, the Quai Branly museum closes on Mondays, and we gave up on the Musée d’Orsay because at that point I simply couldn’t muster the energy to go from Iena to Orsay even with the Métro. But we did end up visiting the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques, which had an excellent temporary exhibition on the lives of the Buddha (focusing on Gautama, but with references to past lives as well), with magnificent parchments, gold-plated wood and stone statues and painted cloths from India, Pakistan, Tibet, Thailand, China and Japan. It was beautiful and very interesting.

on a general Paris note, we ended up eating out every lunch/dinner, and apart from Disneyland, the picnic we had planned (which was v. nice) with friends, and a quick McDonald’s after seeing Spider-man Far From Home, we only did Asian restaurants. Not on any kind of purpose, but the food is so diverse there! We had Cambodian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and I got bubble tea twice ♥♥♥ Really wish we had more bubble tea places in Bordeaux. It’s freaking delicious and exactly what’s needed on a hot day.

One of the restaurants we went to was Le Petit Cambodge, one of the places the terrorists hit on November 13th 2015. We were in the neighbourhood a bit late for lunch and it was open all afternoon. Turns out that 1) they make a pretty fantastic natin and 2) the idiots on Tumblr mocking the French crying because “white tears” really were talking out of their asses, big time. Said neighbourhood is quite diverse, like most of Paris. But idiots will say/do anything, that’s how you know they’re idiots. 

SO MUCH GOOD FOOD. Like, that’s what I’ll miss the most - being able to just take the métro (or not, the relatively - still 10x people than were we live - small town we stayed in had lots of restaurants, too) and find diverse and not too expensive places to eat. *sigh*

I have 250 posts in my queue and 112 posts in my drafts and I have no idea how I’ll be able to make them trickle out and not swamp your dash ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Bref, all in all, a pretty good stay - glad to have gone, and glad to be home :o)

#Bel's adventures in the real world #local dork goes to Disneyland

[dreadhaus-literature]

{Headcanon} 📱💕

I’m, as I have said before, coming out of hiatus later today! I posted March’s prompt list a couple days ago in preparation and tonight I’ll be diving back into writing stories again--and I mentioned, I thought I should do something, even something small, to get back into the creative groove of writing and getting in touch with FL again. The week off was necessary and honestly good for me, I wrote for two months solid and a little vacation before diving into spring writing fever should hopefully have done some good.

So! I decided to do a fun little headcanon exercise--but not those bullet style posts. It’s still a headcanon, just formatted a little differently, and it’s one I’m actually pretty excited to do.

It’s something simple but fun, and I think it’ll be a nice treat for Monica to read. ♥

❝The Dreadful & Triquetra (Executive & Assorted Branch) Men Detail Monica’s Special Nickname in Their Phones.❞

The Dreadful’s

Atamu - lily Atamu’s old school, so He doesn’t have any emoji’s beside Monica’s name in His phone, preferring to demonstrate His love and affection in person. Like the courting styles of yesteryear, He’s concise and to the point with His adoration of His little girl. His inspiration for her title? she calls Him Poppy, and in return, she’s His lily. Poppy and lily.

Cavon - angel 😘 Cav’s new school, unlike his Father, so he’s got an emoji beside Monica’s name--but the name itself changes, quite a lot, usually when Cavon’s drunk and in his feelings regarding His babygirl. So don’t expect this nickname to be the same in 48 hours, but you’ll always be able to tell which one’s Monica, because it’ll be his most viewed, contacted, and edited contact in his phone.

Savon - 🎀 beautiful belle 🎀 You can try to tell Savon his nickname for Monica in his phone is redundant but he’s not going to listen to you--or he’ll sneer at you for daring to presume His lifemate isn’t deserving of being called beautiful twice in a row. Savon changes Monica’s nickname almost as much as Cavon, and he also rotates out her picture at least once or twice a day, as he’s constantly begging her for selfies and he has a terrible time trying to decide which one to use. After all, how could one possibly expect him to choose between perfection? It can’t be done!

Luvon - lifemate Luvon isn’t as old school as his Father but he’s definitely an old soul, and with that comes the way he regards the future mother of his pups. Luvon reveres Monica, adores her, and regards her with the highest honor a Shifter can their mate--and that is exactly why her title has been ‘lifemate’ in his phone from the first moment he saw her.

(Although Cavon rumored over Valentine’s Day that Lu added the 💘 emoji by her name, but without a screencap no one can prove that.)

Tod - Minnie Mouse 💗 There’s a backstory to this, which is that Tod is the Mickey to her Minnie--not too hard to figure out, right? It may seem simple to others, but to Tod it’s everything. The contact photo he uses for her is the selfie they took wearing matching Mickey/Minnie shirts complete with the ear hats, and it’s something Tod looks at every single day. Tod runs the risk of being the most obsessed, the most desperate of all the Dreadful men and with that comes the need to be involved in all Monica’s interests--so the fact that he shares a love of Disney with her, he keeps close to his heart. Just like his Minnie.

Zaos - little treasure ✨ Zaos isn’t known to treasure much; he’s selfish and vain and gets bored very easily, so it says quite a lot that he considers Monica His treasure. When you have access to hidden, unknown realms, things start to seem less special but if you ask, he’ll tell you (maybe, if he speaks to you at all) that in all the realms he’s seen, all the realms he’s been, he’s never encountered another even close to Monica. She is, and always will be, His greatest treasure.

Markus - little bunny fifi 🐰😍 Markus is a complicated man that a lot of people have trouble figuring out, which isn’t surprising considering he’s the “man who can be anyone”, but like the other Dreadful men, Monica’s name in his phone speaks to the adoration and love he feels for her. And anyone who sees his face when he gets a message or a call from her can tell you, his smile tells all you need to know. For a man who can be anyone, it’s important to be someone to her--her constant contact with him helps him know he is.

Lucca - Mother Dearest From the outside, looking in, this is a simple title with a simple message, but you haven’t spent enough time around Lucca if that’s what you think...but I don’t blame you. Kid’s like a void where conversation goes to die--unless you’re Monica, which is why this nickname is significant. It, like Tod’s, is everything to an orphan boy who never had a mother to love him and whom he could love in return. Monica is the center of this pup’s universe, the only one he feels anything for, and he clings to that feeling with desperate, grasping hands. The capitalization is important, as it shows his reverence and respect for her, and the title itself speaks to the same way he mutters the endearment against her mouth each night in bed.

Jax - 😚 Momma-Bae 💛💙 Jax is Lucca’s twin, and though the two look identical, most would argue that was where the similarities stop--but it isn’t. Monica is another common factor the twin’s share, because like for Lucca, Monica is the center of Jax’s world. He’s an angry, brash, desperate pup who never got the love he needed as a boy and that has made him ravenous for it now. Monica is everything to him, always will be, and he will never take for granted that he can call her Momma--and so he does, as often as he can get the title out...even in his sleep.

The Triquetra

The Triquetra are “new” (they’ve been here for the past year) and in an attempt to ease Monica into getting to know them, Fintan has been introducing Monica to them slowly, person by person--but that doesn’t mean they don’t know who she is. Quite the opposite, actually, and at a later date we’ll detail more Company members’ nicknames for Monica, but for now we’ll stick to the ones who have been making prominent appearances around the Family Empress.

Fintan Rivershire - Mrs. Rivershire Is it presumptuous of Fintan to already have Monica listed as his future wife in his phone? You can ask, but I already did and he said no, it isn’t. It’s no secret to anyone the Triquetra made the move to New Senzannini with full intent to be with Monica, so smitten were they with her, and at the top of that food chain is the President himself. From the moment Fintan laid eyes on her, he knew she would be his, and all you need to do is look in Fintan’s eyes to know he is a man who gets what he wants. Or, in this case, who.

Hayden Jernigan - petite little sweet 🍭💖 Fintan’s Vice President and the CFO of the Triquetra is a man every bit as ruthless as his business partner, with one known weakness--he has an incurable sweet tooth. It’s something that’s plagued him his entire life, he simply cannot get enough sweets to satisfy...and the moment he laid eyes on Monica, the moment he pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, he got a taste of her and his weakness doubled, tripled, crippled him. Now, even a spoonful of sugar can sour against his tongue if what he’s wanting is Monica, and there’s only one way to cure temptation--give in to it.

Narcisse Fiermin - mon petite lapin 🎀✨ Narcisse, to no one’s surprise, is a vain thing. He’s handsome, or beautiful, depending on the day, and he knows he is. As Hayden and Ashton’s cousin, the two often joke Narcisse’s mother knew he was going to be the center of the world before he was born, and thus, his name--but Narcisse doesn’t believe that, anymore. At least, not entirely; you see, the center of the universe actually has two seats, one for him, and one for Monica. Does he care that she hates the French? Not at all. In fact, the more she insults him...the more enamored with her he seems to become. No one has ever dared to speak to him the way she does, and one might think he gets off on it or something.

Daniel Maki - Miss Frenzy I know what you’re thinking; how plain, right? Wrong. Daniel Maki is another straight-shooter and, like Lucca, he’s not known for his emotional displays. In fact, one might even go so far as to say that Daniel is as tsundere as Monica is. He’s also incredibly disrespectful to pretty much anyone who hasn’t worked hard to earn his respect (good luck with that) and so the fact that Daniel is regarding Monica in such a formal way...could be the equivalent of him taking her by the chin, putting his lips right against hers, and telling her how much he loves her--and hey, whose to say he hasn’t, already?

Ashton Rayner - Miss Peach 🍑 Similar to Daniel but with an entirely playful, almost flirtatious spin, Ashton’s displaying his wild attention to detail with this nickname. Although it’s no secret that one of Monica’s titles is Princess Peach (and well-deserved, really) it’s another thing for one of the Triquetra to be calling her that, already. It shows not only the truth in that they’ve been here, observing her, admiring her, for a year, but also that Ashton already has his eyes on the prize. I’ll uh, let you take another look at the emoji he used and figure out for yourself which prize that is.

Henrik Ingolsson - Sugar Bunny-Baby 💋 Henrik is a Sugar Daddy wanna-be--not because he doesn’t have the money to be one, because he does (tenfold), but because he knows Monica doesn’t know him well enough to consider him a Daddy, yet. But that’s end goal for this luxurious billionaire, who lives a life of exotic flair and lavish spending. If he has his way, Monica will never want for anything in the world, as a woman of her standing (and there are no women of her standing, he’ll insist) should never be left unsatisfied in life. Give him a chance, Monica, and you’ll see he’ll make good on the nickname--and a whole lot more.

Jordi Basurto - Bomboncita 😖💘 Jordi’s Hispanic, so that’s bound to earn him some bonus points with Monica, right? Especially since his nickname for her comes not only in their native language, but also that he knows her and knows just how much she loves candy--which makes her his little candy. The emojis rather speak for themselves, too, since that’s the fact Jordi makes every single time Monica texts or calls him; he’s never had a girlfriend before and he’s totally unsure how to handle this, in any capacity. But hey, at least he got the nickname thing down, right? Baby steps, Jordi. Baby steps.

Adrian Jaroslav - Мой. If...you were wondering, that nickname is a lot simpler than it looks. It’s simply, “Mine.” So yeah. That should tell you all you need to know about Adrian and how he feels about Monica.

Aleksei Jaroslav - zaika moya Aleksei has a little more to say about Monica, with his title of “my bunny,” but the possession he feels is just as prominently on display as his twin’s...especially since the contact picture he has up of her is the two of them, with his hand curled around her throat and his painted lipstick smile smeared onto her cheek from the kiss clearly able to be seen.

Greyson Van Cann - myshka In keeping with the tiny, cute animals theme, Greyson shows a softer side than anyone has ever seen by putting Monica in his phone as His “little mouse”. It’s really no wonder this is how Greyson sees her; she’s so much smaller than he his, and Nighyingale has been heard around the Haus and Compound saying Greyson keeps remarking he’s “afraid he will step on her”. There’s no real fear of that, however, if you’ve seen the way he is with her. Like Luvon (whom he gets along extremely well with, by the way), Greyson is so overprotective of Monica it’s a wonder she’s ever out of his sight. Or maybe she never is, who can really say?

Sebastian Van Cann - Yedinstvennaya 🖤 You’re going to notice a trend with Monica’s Russians, too--a lot of them favor their native tongue when complimenting or describing Monica, and Sebastian is no exception. Her name in his phone translates to “my only one,” and speaks to Sebastian on a level most will never get to know him. Sebastian is a twin, but his soulmate is Monica--this, he knew from the moment he saw her. That will never change, and it’s honestly a good thing Monica doesn’t seem to mind--because one look in his eye when he’s looking at her and you’ll know he’s never letting her go.

Nighyingale Van Cann - 😚 moy malen'kiy golub' 😚💞 Unlike his twin and older brother, Nighyingale is fully in touch with his emotions and he’s not at all afraid to be--he wears his heart on his sleeve, and his heart is very clearly for Monica. They have matching names; Nighyingale was named after a songbird and so he has given Monica the nickname “my little dove” so that he feels even closer to her; that’s all he wants, day in and day out. The boy would tie himself to Monica if he thought he could get away with it, but for now, he settles for being her shadow, following her anywhere she might go with an eager, happy smile and a heart full of song for her and her alone.

#{theme} : for monica #{theme} : headcanons #{ I'm...not gonna tag all these fools } #{ Y'ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE } #{ i'll tag you when you're in the big leagues and have your own stories }

[inthedarkofficial]

Good Things that happened today:

The DUP lost the seats it needs to use the petition of concern without other parties, thus meaning they can no longer block same sex marriage in Northern Ireland

Colum Eastwood slipped in his victory speech and accidentally undermined united Ireland (it was really just funny, but I live for “we have to ensure we are not ruled by Dublin- er- London”. Genius.)

my mum kind of came out as bisexual and that was really cool and I’m super proud of her!?

Claire Bailey of the Green Party got reelected and that’s nice because the Green Party is great, Bailey is great, and also she’s my mum’s friend so we were rooting for her

My Great Uncle Mickey forgot he’d emailed my granny photos and the photos had no explanation, leading to some confusion over the name of Mickey’s mother and that lead to my granny saying the phrase “you didn’t call his mother Craig, you called her Rock Monahan” and I love that and I want to make an Irish traditional music version of Rock Lobster now

We learned Great Uncle Mickey takes screenshots of facebook posts and emails them to people who don’t have facebook, and I think that’s beautiful

My 86 year old grandmother threatened very seriously to kill a man and considering what that toxic man has been doing I completely believe she may go through with it, and possibly bring my father and his brothers along for the ride, and that kind of bonding is exactly what my family needs right now

I read at my first poetry reading in 17 years and made some members of the Belfast poetry scene feel old. I also got a lot of positive feedback, which was nice.

Saw my dad read, which was great, as always

The reading was just generally filled with very sweet, very talented people and it was a great way to spend the night

Had The Sandwich.

Also The Hot Chocolate, and Plautus, and got a very nice ring and gotta love George’s Market basically

Just, quality time with the parents and granny and the poetry crowd on what was a very interesting day that shows great progress and the beginning of change in Northern Ireland and it once again drove home why I write about here and keep coming back here and why this is home.

Also heard the phrase “he didn’t need a Baldric ‘cunning plan’“ on the radio and that was fantastic. Northern Irish people talking politics is iconic.

#personal #rowan rants #I'm a bit drunk sorrry for all the text posts #out of the dark #belfast #home

[canaryatlaw]

Well today was pretty good for a 12 hour day, haha. I was annoyed because I only ended up getting like 4 hours of sleep. We've been having issues with our heater, mainly that we can't get it to turn itself on when it gets too cold, so it just continues to get colder, so we have to turn it up really high if we actually want to heat the apartment, and last night holy fuck it was freezing, so we had it like all the way up. So then I wake up at 5, two hours before my alarm goes off, and of course now it's sweltering, but I don't want to touch the thermostat because I don't wan to put it down to far and then fuck it over again. And I guess that and a combination of a few other random things made it impossible for me to fall back asleep, so that was somewhat less than ideal, but oh well. Got ready for work and headed there, went to my supervisor and showed him my new fancy 711 license, who then had me show it to all the other attorneys on the calendar haha he's a nice guy. So he started talking about cases I could take, probably starting with permanency hearings because they're super easy, just status updates on cases after adjudication (and sometimes termination of parental rights) have taken place, so you're really just asking about the kid and the parent's progress, basic stuff. And he said I could probably second chair some other stuff and then work on it on my own, like temporary custody hearings, which again aren't terribly hard because the GAL doesn't have the burden of proof, and probably 95% of the time they're gonna side with the state. But it's all really exciting! I was looking at the license and it legit says I'm "temporarily licensed to practice law" and just !! That's so official!! I'm lawyering!! Actually practicing law and lawyering!! And I just, I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to get to this place. So, so many years saying I'm going to be a lawyer, I just have to get through this first. But now I'm here and I'm doing work I love so much, and I'm just so happy because I'm really just at peace with my life in a way I haven't been in a long time now. I'm just happy to be here and living my life and doing what I do, and that's such a wonderful feeling I can't really describe it. But, anyway. Despite the exciting start I didn't actually make it into a courtroom today, but instead got saddled with some other projects. I had some free time in the morning to hang out (read fanfiction) and then one of the lawyers on the calendar came in and pulled a couple files (there's like, mountains of files in my office, you basically have to step over them to get anywhere) from this case with like ten kids or something ridiculous like that in the system, and one of them who's aged out wants a copy of his birth certificate, and she doesn't think we have a copy of it, but wants me to look through all these files to make sure haha. I mean, not the most interesting work but I've definitely had worse. So I get to looking, stopping occasionally to read something that peaked my interest. There was one really concerning report I read, it wasn't about the kids whose file it was, but about a girl at the same residential facility one of them is in, and due to the nature of the problem a copy of it gets put in his file for safety/documenting reasons. And like, I've read a lot of residential facility horror stories, but this one definitely takes the cake. Now, the staff in these places and trained in certain restraints they sometimes have to use on kids who are just completely out of control, obviously it's a last last result and I'm not terribly fond of the idea, but at least if they're done correctly the kid won't get hurt. WELL. Apparently this one wasn't done correctly, because this poor girl ended up with her arm being broken in FOUR FUCKING PLACES. Like you could not make me more furious about this if you tried. Just....agh! This shit makes me so angry because it's putting kids who've been removed from their parents because of being in an abusive environment right back into an abusive environment at the hands of the state and the dollar of the taxpayer. Just...ugh. And of course this isn't her file so I don't get to see any of the follow up papers and find out what happened, just one sheet of paper that made me so goddamn furious. But, anyway. The rest of it was pretty basic and not very interesting. When I was just about done with those (birth certificate, unsurprisingly, nowhere in sight) another lawyer comes in and hands me a CD of medical records and asked if I could look through them for any mental health diagnoses for the mother. The state filed a termination petition, and one of the grounds you can use to terminate is that the parent is incapable of caring for the child because of mental illness. He said they only have it documented that she has depression, but he thinks it may have been depression with psychotic features and that obviously makes a much more convincing case, so I set to work with those. There were about 60 sets of records, ranging in size from 8 pages to 80 pages, so I went through them. Sad story, especially to read in reverse. The kid this petition is about was only born in January 2016, which is pretty fast moving for termination. But she had another child a year prior who was removed from her care at like two weeks old because, according to her, she was "feeding him orange juice" at two weeks old (and not because of malnutrition that was reported by the doctor). The kicker to that is that yet another year prior to that she had her first baby (or at least first she kept, there was one reference to her giving one up for adoption at birth but I didn't see anything else connected to it), who died at like 13 years old, because of malnutrition/SIDS/her rolling over on the baby in her sleep, depending on who you ask. So being that there already was a child death here they weren't taking any chances. So I looked through many records, which I don't really find boring because I'm actively looking for something so it keeps my mind occupied. Many many records, until I got back to right after her first baby died, and it had recordings of post-partum psychosis and severe depression with psychotic features. Bingo, that's what we needed. So that was good. Headed out at 5, hopped on the bus to the train and then the train from one courthouse to the next for trial advocacy tonight, which was pretty good. I got to be a witness this week, and you know I hamming it as a witness as much as possible and just making it hilarious for everyone, and the material here was so easy. It's some dumb contract case about this lady who signs a contract to buy a sports car but then the next day decides she wants a minivan so she calls to change it and they say they will, but then in two weeks they call saying the sports car was ready and they have no record of the contract modification, so my character wanted her minivan or her $2K deposit back. So given those facts, I decide the only plausible reason someone would want a sports car one day and a minivan the next day is that they're going through a midlife crisis, so I went for that angle and oh it was so easy. They do the introductory questions at first and ask about family, so I said I had a wonderful husband named Wadsworth and two beautiful sons named Mickey and Pluto (and of course say this with a completely straight face), because why the fuck not? Lol. So then I start talking about how I need this sexy sports car in my life so I go and find the best one, then the next day I realize if I try to drop Mickey off at soccer practice in that car all the soccer moms are going to go nuts, and I should really just accept that I'm a soccer mom and get the accompanying minivan 😂 I thought it was a pretty good strategy, and I think everyone else did too as observed by their reactions. So I had fun with that. After that I had to do a cross, which didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped just because their was some confusion about impeaching, but it turned out alright. We had the guy instructor this week who kept telling me I talk too fast (I'm from New York okay, it's what we do) so I apparently have to work on that, lol. But overall pretty good class. We get out and 8 and of course I "rush" home as much as one can while on public transportation, arriving a little after 9 and flipping on legends after trying to very nicely beg my roommate to let me use the tv. (which I felt like an asshole about because she was watching something, I just needed to see my show dammit!) So, the episode. I feel like I have a disconnect in my head between the excitement I get about new episodes versus the reality we actually get, and the reality can be somewhat underwhelming at times. But, that being said, I did enjoy the episode. Everything they did with the film students was a PERFECT parody, one someone can only learn from going to film school (we share a building with them and I hung out with pretty much all of them, so I was close enough) and Rip as "Phil" was just cracking me up, and I think I like him better than Rip haha 😂 I did like the moment he had with Sara in his old office in a very BROTP way of course, but it was sweet. Nate and Ray were hilarious, what giant dorks they are that they based their life choices around their favorite movies. I need to see an alternate reality where Nate is a yoga instructor, okay?? It needs to happen, stat. There's a lot I feel I can comment on but my eyes are closing quickly (see beginning of post) so I'll try to keep it brief. I'm not sure how I feel about the Mick and Stein plot, just because it felt pretty useless to come up with this whole thing with a device in his brain that could be causing this, then "oh, guess it wasn't that, oh well!" and Stein is basically like "we all hear different voices in our heads" because that's totally the same as visual and auditory hallucinations?? Come on bro, ya killing me here. I'm a little sad we didn't get to see any Snart in this episode, but I'm comforted by the fact that he will be coming back in actually alive form very soon...(or at least it better be real soon, or I'm gonna hurt someone, preferably the writers). Okay, last comment, the whole "let's break Rip out of jail with this crazy scheme" coupled with Merlyn and Darhk just going in there and start killing people were both sooooo overdramatic and unnecessary because they definitely could've bailed him out for like, 10 bucks. I mean come on, he's not even gonna get charged with anything, they don't have enough proof. I'm just saying, they really went overboard when they had an easy answer in the legal system, lol. Okay I'm done now. Tomorrow should be good, finally getting my haircut! And yes, eyes definitely want to be closed right now so I'm going to do that. Goodnight people. Be well.

#daily journal #January 2017 #rachel watches legends of tomorrow

[otisoverturf]

Darts – The Albums 1977-81 – Album Review

Darts – The Albums 1977-81

7T’s

4CD/DL

Released 21st June 2019

Boxset containing everything Darts recorded for Magnet Records in the band’s halcyon days including number 2 hits Come Back My Love, The Boy From New York City and It’s Raining……LTW’s Ian Canty looks at almost forgotten chart powerhouse of the late 1970s….

People sometimes make the mistake of retrospectively grouping Darts with Glam Rock & Roll revivalists like Mud and Showaddywaddy, but they were in truth miles different. There was nothing really like Darts. Rhythm and Blues crate diggers before the term was invented, they furnished themselves with obscure R&B gems from the 50s instead of just reviving tried and tested 50s Rock hit singles. Crucially they gave them a pure shot of energy which was all their own. Added to that there was the fact that instead of the drape uniforms, their thrift shop chic meant they looked more like they had met in at a bus stop (just like the Kilburns did).

This band of interesting personalities formed in 1976, with bass singer Den Hegarty and Griff Fender recruiting fellow vocalists Rita Ray and Bob Fish (who had previously been with Mickey Jupp’s band). On the musical side bass player Thump Thompson, guitarist George Currie and John Dummer on drums all came in from the latter’s own band, with saxophonist Horatio Hornblower (real name Nigel Trubridge, writer of a majority of Darts’ self-penned material) and Hammy Howell on piano completeing the line up. Hegarty, Fender, Ray and Hornblower had all previously been part of Rocky Sharpe And The Razors (Sharpe have some success with the backing of the Replays).

A nine piece band with four singers, they had more than enough musical muscle, energy and vocal finesse to apply to any given situation that occurred in their own compositions, as well as those choice cover selections. Their lives shows were manic, theatrical and full of ribald humour and even a young Johnny Rotten was espied checking them out in 1977 (Kate Bush also attended a Darts’ gig, despite keeping the band off the Number One spot with Wuthering Heights). Later on they were an undoubted influence on the main Two Tone bands. For example Madness were fans and certainly approached their frantic stage show in a manner akin to Darts. The Specials and future Magnet label mates Bad Manners employed a similar all-action approach in concert to them as well.

The glowing reputation they rapidly gained in concert meant they were snapped up by the aforementioned Magnet Record label. Their debut single, a mash-up of Daddy Cool and The Girl Can’t Help it, steamed all the way up into the Top Ten. It worked as the perfect introduction to the band – Daddy Cool was an old Doo Wop b-side, Darts musically gave it a fast workout and Hegarty’s mugging on Little Richard’s The Girl Can’t Help It was priceless. It was quick, witty and fun and deservedly started the band on a long run of chart success in the UK.

Coming out at roughly the same time as the single, the self-titled first album generally pleased most fans of their high-octane live act and provided another smart hit in the guise of Come Back My Love, the first of three number two singles in a row. Not merely appealing to the Teddy Boy revival (in fact they were not well-received by that fraternity, as Griff states in the sleevenote that accompanies this boxset), Darts played alongside New Wave acts (and I’ve been told they featured in the Sounds New Wave chart at one point) and their sheer energy and exuberance helped them pick up fans from all sides.

On this first LP Young Blood is powered along by some decidedly sleazy sax and a great vocal from Rita, it has a real swagger to it. Darts were always a ruder proposition than they first seemed and could pen a punchy piece of R&B like the memorable Shotgun. Years before the bloody Flying Pickets, they did some fine Doo Wop acapella on Sometime Lately and showed that away from raw Blues they could also handle pretty sounding 50s Pop expertly, like on another cool band original Bells In My Heart.

It made sense that the LP went out on a real highlight of their live set, another concoction of songs which featured I’m Mad, Fancy Man, Framed, Trouble and Riot In Cell Block No.9, all put together in a maniac/comic style. It was a show-stopping end to what was a very good first Darts LP. The bonus tracks on this disc are the single version of Come Back My Love which has a shorter vocal intro and raucous semi-instrumental b-side Naff Off.

Though the debut was good, the best was to come on second LP Everyone Plays Darts. Probably their most satisfying record, it brought together all the flash and flair that made the band so special. From the word go it is excellent, a non-stop cavalcade of fun that was as smart as it was entertaining. Rita’s velvety voice works wonderfully on big hit The Boy From New York City, an irresistible vocal performance which shot up the charts and kicks off Everyone Plays Darts.

This record was in a way the perfect music for 1978 – a bit more retro than the Rezillos (in fact Make It could almost be them), but matching their sense of fun and scattershot musical thump. Honey Love has an exotic rhythm with the band camping it up marvellously and Hegarty milks the comedy value of My Friend’s Wife for all it is worth. Another hit was the sublime It’s Raining, a Griff Fender song that showed Darts not to be confused with mere tribute acts that had to rely on covers for singles.

Howell showcases his piano skills on the Hammy’s Boogie (don’t run away, it isn’t Jools Holland!) and Late For Work is another comic ace from Den’s playbook. This is why Everyone Plays Darts is so entertaining – they can skilful navigate from a comedy number like that to heavenly Doo Wop on Late Last Night or killer R&B or dirty Soul strut in I Gotta Go Home – but it is still all recognisably Darts and everything they try here is pulled off with a real flourish. Everyone Plays Darts is just a great record.

Along with single versions of tracks on the LP we get both sides of the Don’t Let It Fade Away single (another Top 20 hit) and Messing Shoe Blues as bonus tracks – only Den Hegarty could get away with a Blues Rocker about stepping in dogshit! After this album a big-selling compilation entitled The Amazing Darts was issued before their third LP proper Dart Attack.

Before the next album Darts were dealt a blow when founder Den Hegarty announced he was leaving to look after his terminally ill father. Later he would have a minor hit with the song Voodoo Voodoo and appear on the Clash album Sandinista, as well as hosting a few TV series including Saturday morning institution Tiswas. He was replaced by Kenny Andrews, who made his debut on Duke Of Earl single and Dart Attack LP. He was a more than adequate replacement vocally, but the album does miss some of the comic insanity Den specialised in. Duke Of Earl was a faithful rendition of a quite well-known song, not their usual modus operandi. Maybe this was Darts steadying the ship in the wake of Den’s exit?

The album is solid enough and contained two more minor hit singles in the guise of Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love and a version of Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite. Curiously it has four songs that begin with the word Don’t – perhaps an unconscious message that all was not well as their run of hits appeared to be tailing off? Putting such speculation aside, Can’t Get Enough Of You Love surely deserved a better fate as a single than just brushing the Top 50 – it is elegant and catchy Pop with a 50s feel and even commences with a sitar sound, a first for Darts.

Don’t Look Back Now was another more or less straight Pop winner and the beaty and brassy Goodbye Brenda has a touch of the Beach Boys in its vocal arrangement. Cool Jerk may have been a bit of an obvious choice for a cover, but it does recall the band’s mad live energy. There isn’t much wrong with Dart Attack, but I suppose as trends changed and we approached the 80s with synths moved in perhaps there wasn’t a place for the band in the UK record buying public’s heart anymore.

The bonus tracks appended to this disc however are excellent and surprising. Both the self-penned Get It single (with a touch of Time Is Tight in the intro) and flipside How Many Nights are fine efforts, which deservedly returned them to the upper reaches of the singles chart. But the real eye openers for me are the other two bonuses. I Have It My Way is an out-and-out Steve Marriott music hall job, complete with banjo and riotous ending featuring Police sirens, barking dogs, wild threats and various other mayhem! When you thought Darts couldn’t pull anything out of the hat you didn’t expect, they do this. The final song Sing Out The Old, Bring In The New is marked “album outtake”, but seems to me more like a projected Christmas single that never was, complete with Wizzard-style kids chorus. It stayed in the vaults, a shame as I reckon it would have been a yuletide smash.

By the time of the final album featured here Darts Across America in 1981 (only released in the US), fashions had changed and the band’s chart career had drawn to a close. Though a Rockabilly revival was just hitting the UK courtesy of the Stray Cats, that was never what Darts were about. Perhaps they aimed this record at the US thinking that was the home of R&B and might take the band to its heart? It never paid off, but Darts Across America isn’t a bad record at all.

The album’s big single, a revival of the Four Seasons’ Lets Hang On, had got the band back on Top Of The Pops and in the UK Top 20 in the early part of 1980, but again choosing such a well known song signalled all was not rosy in the Darts’ camp. Follow up Peaches And Cream barely made the Top 75, which was a shame as if it was released in 1978 it would have surely breached the Top 10, but times had moved on. A double A side pairing which featured a new take of Sh-Boom (originally on the debut album) and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas felt like the band were getting desperate. So much for the singles.

For this album Darts focussed more on their Soul side, which was at times very good, but lost a little of the R&B toughness and crazed havoc that informed what they did so well. Speedo nicely re-introduces back a bit of the comic fun they were known for and the quick strut/mash up of Joe Tex’s Show Me and Berry Gordy’s Do You Love Me authentically recaptures the classic Darts style of old. Only percussion accompanies acapella singing on False Alarm (bonus track Green For Go is structurally similar) and Sad And Lonely is a more than decent ballad, but overall it struggles to make the impact of the previous three LPs

Bonus tracks include both sides of the Jump Children Jump single, the first Darts’ 7″ to miss the charts entirely. But the hook for hardcore Darts fans may well be the last five bonuses, from the projected Frantic Attack album of 1980 that remained unreleased. They generally show Darts moving towards the Soul direction of Darts Across America, with Rita Ray working wonders on Holland Dozier Holland’s Feelin’. But the best efforts for me are bright sax instrumental Tight Lines and the Doo Wop Reggae (!) of Hey Jo Girl, which isn’t actually that far in sound from the Tow Tone bands they inspired in the first place….

To put it very simply, Darts were just extremely good at what they did. Their full on and fun approach yielded twelve hits singles and three top 20 LPs over the four year period this boxset covers, making them clearly one of the biggest bands in the country during 77/78/79. They were in the business of effortlessly supplying that joyful rush that only great Pop Music can only provide. For a few years they really had a magic touch.

Darts still play the occasional gig and you can put your shirt on it still being the wildest show in town. Above all Darts richly deserve a bit of respect (and this boxset), it was plain to see they were one of the finest Pop outfits the late 70s spawned. Hopefully this set will help people see how good they really were. They rarely put a foot wrong and constructed a steady stream of cool grooves that were imbued with one thing a lot of bands think they offer but few really do – tune into the pure fun of Darts right here.

Darts are on Facebook here

All words by Ian Canty – see his author profile here

The post Darts – The Albums 1977-81 – Album Review appeared first on Louder Than War.

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Source: https://socialjuicebox.com/ Darts – The Albums 1977-81 – Album Review published first on https://socialjuicebox.com/

[staticid-blog]

My pandora stacking rings

I brought my pandora stacking rings daughter the Mickey Mouse petites and a locket and she said mum Pandora should make a locket shaped as Mickey Mouse. Kleio, I don't know if there is a dangle version of that adorable fish, but I can make out in one of Urban Diva's photos that the one button-style charm (I know these are not popular with everyone) with the turquoise enamel does indeed contain that same fish (with some additional pave details on the charm). I'm trying to figure out what is on the the button-style charm that appears to have some turquoise and pink pave. I'm thinking it could be two palm trees and a flamingo? As cute as they are I have found them difficult to style so they have spent most of their time in a plastic pouch. They are really great and so easy to tailor to your specific collection, especially if you can't get hold of the official Pandora boxes! Hi Judie, I have not noticed any scratching on my Essence beads - but then I don't wear them with the Moments bracelets very often these days. I wish so, because I won't add any button-like charms on my summer bracelet. Wonder what petite I should get? It will be my first, so I will give it a lot of thought. Do you think the 17 cm bangle would be too loose then? I am planning of wearing my Disney charms on it (so far Eeyore, Tink and the 2 castles).

MiscellaneousThis charm reminds me very much of a Pandora Essence charm, with its abstract, spherical design and the word ‘Sacrifice' written on it. I haven't used the service, but The Art of Pandora has used it, and says it works great. Here's a run down of some of the best Pandora-loving channels on YouTube. The rest of my purchases consisted of the Pink Sparkling Strands Bracelet, the Summer Fun charm, the new Green Cosmic Stars Clip, and two of the Clear CZ Shining Elegance Clips (which I bought because my leather bracelet recently pulled apart when I was taking off one of those silver stopper beads from Amazon as they can be tricky to take off the bracelet, so I'm now afraid to continue using those on my leathers but hate when my charms slide around). Nonetheless he is still cute, just that I'm getting more selective these days with charms. As nice as it is to celebrate Women's Day, I don't find the design of this charm particularly interesting, not in comparison with all the lovely Spring beads that we've got to look forward to pandora infinity ring in a week's time, so I think I'll pass on it for now. As usual, it can be difficult to make out the pieces in a lot of these shots, but I think weve got a rather comprehensive grounding as to what sort of thing we can expect this season, especially in terms of the Pandora Summer 2017 collection! I have never done the UK bracelet promo, I just always do the US/Canadian one as it works out so much better. I love how nice and casual it looks compared to my other charm bracelets - so I'm glad to hear that you like it too! My leather bracelets are all size medium.

I will be wearing my Wild Flower Tribute bead tomorrow as well - I also wear it on a red leather!I'm so pleased to hear that you enjoyed the review - your ideas were a great read, as well! Thanks so much for commenting, Lisa! Aww... I'm sad to see that they are retiringall those gold murano beads. I have been wanting to get at least 2 but i haven'tbeen able to because they are so expensive. I willhave to save up to get them before they are gone.I have noticed they are retiring a lot of beautifulgold charms. Do you know if they are making newones to replace them? I sure hope they are notplanning to get rid of their gold pieces altogether. This murano does not have any bubbles inset into the glass, unlike the other Fizzle/Effervescent muranos. Yay! I absolutely know the feeling about not being to wait on launch day. Even if I'm waiting for a later GWP, I have to buy a little something to tide myself over. Today it was the Filled with Romance heart, which is gorgeous and (relatively :P) inexpensive! I would have bought the Wild Hearts murano but the store I went to didn't have it in it was the only thing missing from their shipment. I haven't heard of any widespread problems with, so hopefully they were just unlucky. Glad to hear you love yours - I can't wait to see it for myself! I am blown away! And not in a good way. I wrote a whole comment but decided not to post it because it was pretty bad. I will try instead to say something positive, like the orchid is very nice and will probably go on my wish list, even though I am not a pandora tiara ring fan of enamel. I wish they made an all silver version with just a little stone or enamel touch for the middle. The prices of the turtle, dolphin, and snake are really ridiculous though. I think Pandora is has some really greedy people in charge right now. I was in Pandora Heaven for a few minutes!!! Hi Rachelle! Yes, I've had many questions about that bead since posting it on Instagram etc. It seems like it would be a sure hit worldwide, so perhaps Pandora in Copenhagen will pick it up and think about doing a proper charm on those lineshaha, you're not crazy, it's just a very nice bead haha! Your idea for a design sounds lovely - it would go great with the existing globe, and be a nice contrast to it. You can feel better about it being your twentieth bracelet if I tell you that I hit twenty some time ago and haven't looked back haha! You’re very wise, Natalie! :P The number of times I’ve done a u-turn on pieces I thought I didn't want.

Reaction from fans when I first published my sneak peek of this charm was a bit mixed, which surprised me a little. I love the crown, where the abundance of pave makes design sense. My friend want to split the bill with me now. It's a shame that this wasn't on offer with the charm elsewhere. Not sure if I completely understood what you meant by the silicone rings - the black ones or the new clips and putting a cut in the silicone lining? Sounds interesting. Since I am not Canadian that is where it will stay! I guess I am lucky when I hear their prices are higher. At first I don't consider the Signature heart at all but I change my mind after I see it. The pearlescent Abundance of Love pandora flower ring spacer is gorgeous, and goes with just about anything. It looks especially nice when paired against the bolder pinks of the Wild Hearts murano and the In My Heart charm.I've added my In My Heart charm to my pink-and-blue bracelet, which you can see here in this shot from my sparkly new Instagram page. This is a more unusual colour combination for me, but I really like how it's turning out. Those Cinderella blues look great with so many different combos!

[nerdy-bits]

Far Cry New Dawn: A Familiar Walk in Unfamiliar Surroundings

In June of last year, a few months after the release of Far Cry 5, Terry Spier (Creative Director, Red Storm) said that the Division 2 would not be making a political statement. The game takes place in D.C. after a plague decimates the population. D.C. is in ruins, and the trailer released at E3 last year says “A remnant of a corrupt state lurks in the shadows, ready to engage in a new civil war. Agents of the Division are the only one standing against it.” So how…what the…?

I brought up Far Cry 5 earlier and I need to explain why these two are inextricably linked. Far Cry 5 could have been very political. The first Far Cry game to take place in the United States dived deep into satirizing what makes America tick: Guns, preppers, piss tapes, and fanatical religion. There was a little Trump, a little Alt-Right, a little religious violence, and for the first time ever, mostly white enemies. Who would have thought people actually would be upset by any of these things (definitely not the author of this [fake?] Petition?). 

What is most interesting about the setting and cast of Far Cry 5 is that, despite the ample material to draw from, it tried so desperately to remain apolitical. In fact, Ubisoft didn’t make a true political statement about the title’s contents, publicly or in the game itself. Something that reviewers and critics would hold issue with as literature began to be written up. So do you side with the petition and get angry at how political it is? Or do you side with the reviewers and get angry at how hard it tries not to offend anyone?

3 months later…

[The Division] is not a political statement? “Absolutely not.”

See, the line isn’t hard to draw here. Extremely mixed response from undecidedly political/apolitical game = Nope. No politics here. But boy would you look at how great D.C. looks? 

Enter Far Cry New Dawn. The first direct sequel to a Far Cry game. 

SPOILER ALERT

At the end of Far Cry 5. Nukes detonate all across America, making the big, bad, religious creep Joseph Seed “right” (ugh) and then the game rolls credits. New Dawn picks the reins back up seventeen years later. The wildlife has been altered, the flora is colorful, the world is overgrown, largely untouched by the hands of man. In the time that has passed, people have rebuilt, or at least they have begun the process. Within seconds of New Dawn’s establishing shots (you are the hero, you travel the wastelands and help small settlements get back on their feet, you’re on a train full of people and supplies) the antagonists show up. Colorful dirt bikes, wacky attire, fireworks, smoke grenades. 

Essentially you get rolled on by patrons of the post-apocalyptic (regular?) Burning Man and, well, it is kinda awesome.

Here is where I realized Far Cry New Dawn would be different: in the introduction of its antagonists, two black women, Mickey and Lou. For the first time since I played Far Cry 3, I didn’t hear an ounce of allusion in their intro. They weren’t the personification of anything but post-Collapse, cut-throat survivors that took the dark path. 

This isn’t to say that New Dawn is without its own politics. There are plenty of story beats that lean into corruption, bribery, and religious fanaticism, but there is one key difference: this game doesn’t fee like it is about those things.

Outside of the return of a few of Far Cry 5’s characters, New Dawn largely stays away from what made its predecessor such a split-decision for most people. And while the setting and execution is familiar (think Mad Max, Rage, or a little Borderlands), there is something fresh about playing this setting in Far Cry’s formula, despite Far Cry’s formula being more than a little played out.

That perhaps is my biggest, and only real, gripe with Far Cry New Dawn. It just feels like more Far Cry. 

In many cases this isn’t a problem. When you love the mechanics of a game, when the studio changes those mechanics up it can be disorienting. Even disenfranchising. The thing is, Far Cry 3 released in 2012, and while I absolutely loved that game and its reimagining of what Far Cry was, those changes have remained largely unchanged in its successors. 

Outposts still operate the same way: Kill everyone silently for a large bonus, knock out alarms and go loud for a small bonus, or throw caution to the wind and kick down the door, no bonus added. The vehicular mechanics remain the same, the shooting feels the same, the hunting and wildlife feels the same (except this time you are getting attacked by Wolverines, not Honey Badgers), and the bow is still the best weapon in the game. Though I want to make sure I don’t knock (get it) the bow - it fucking rocks - I need Far Cry remember how to change again.

The new mechanics introduced to this game are largely inconsequential. You can build up your base by collecting Ethanol, adding a bit of functionality to taking outposts beyond just shooting (or stabbing) people. But that neither feels adequately rewarding, nor does it explain how Prosperity (the base) builds a farm with…Ethanol. Once you upgrade the Workbench to make Epic weapons, you can completely ignore upgrading the rest of the base outside of the story mission that requires it. 

I should make it clear that New Dawn is a direct sequel to Far Cry 5, and is likely built with the same exact engine and tools. Appropriately, Ubisoft priced the title at only $40. These things together make complaining that New Dawn feels like more of the same, feel a little obvious. That is literally what it is.

Minus one thing: Painfully irreverent and borderline overwhelming political overtones. 

There is a part of me that wants Ubisoft to not be afraid of having political commentary in their games. Then, there is another part of me that believes that there is some kind of political commentary in New Dawn. That perhaps this title feels better because it doesn’t appear to be commenting on current events, but that doesn’t mean it exists without a message. 

Then I come back to Spier’s response to the question about The Division 2 making a political statement: Absolutely not. Perhaps making a political statement means something different here. New Dawn had a message: Do everything it takes to make the world a better place. And that message could be seen as having political applications. But a direct political statement, that forces players to choose a side or fractures your base? Maybe that is what he meant to steer away from. 

New Dawn appears to be the result of that decision. It wipes the political slate clean with a few dozen nukes and tells a surprisingly human story devoid of Alt-Right mouthpieces and trumpeted up stereotypes.

I want games to have a political voice, to take a stand on something, if they want to. But maybe this isn’t the worst thing ever. 

@LubWub

#Far Cry New Dawn #Far Cry #New Dawn #Ubisoft #politics #hope county #Xbox one X #xbox #xbox one s #ps4 #ps4 slim

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Desiree Akhavan: 'The only mainstream queer female stories have been directed by men – it disgusts me'

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/desiree-akhavan-the-only-mainstream-queer-female-stories-have-been-directed-by-men-it-disgusts-me/

Desiree Akhavan: 'The only mainstream queer female stories have been directed by men – it disgusts me'

Saturday morning, Shoreditch House. Desiree Akhavan sits in a comfy corner of east London’s media darling hangout, and does not seem out of place. Her hair is shaggy and rockstar-esque, her red lipstick sharp. Slim gold chains dangle from her neck. She looks like she belongs.

This might seem trivial, but it’s not. What writer/actor/director Akhavan is interested in – what she examines, unpicks, takes seriously and takes the mickey out of – is fitting in. “A lot of life is about identity, and comfort within that,” she says. She admits to feeling odd if she’s in the wrong clothes. “Even something as stupid as that – what I’m wearing – needs to feel like it represents me. If doesn’t, I feel… off.”

Identity can seem a daft thing to worry about, until you consider how much trouble it can cause. (Do you identify as British? Or European? We’ll stop there.) And everyone sends out signals about who they are; Akhavan is brilliant on how those signals affect how you’re treated by others, particularly if you’re a young gay woman. Plus, she makes you laugh. “I see where the funny lies and where the story is, and I chase the story wherever it leads me,” she told the New York Times recently.

If you haven’t yet seen her work, she has two new pieces landing in August and September: her second feature film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance film festival in January; and a Channel 4 series, The Bisexual. Cameron Post is a moving chronicle of a teenage lesbian sent to gay conversion camp in the 1990s; The Bisexual is a comedy about a contemporary gay woman who decides to date men. They’re very different, but both, at their heart, reveal how life can be when you’re young and don’t have an easy path within straight culture.

Akhavan made a splash in 2014 with her first feature, Appropriate Behaviour, which saw her playing Shirin, a raw, self-obsessed, coulda-shoulda gay woman emerging from a live-in relationship. We followed Shirin around Brooklyn, New York, as she experimented with hookups (an excruciating threesome was a dubious highlight) and worried about hiding her sexuality from her Iranian family, and learned the story of her just-finished love affair. Appropriate Behaviour was explicit, hilarious and bang-up-to-the-minute. Comparisons were drawn with Lena Dunham (who cast Akhavan in Girls after seeing Appropriate Behaviour), and also with Akhavan’s own life. Born to parents who moved to New York following the Iranian revolution in 1979, she, too, is bisexual and found it hard to come out to her family. Still, it wouldn’t be right to view her work as documentary. “It’s my world,” she says, “but it’s not me.”

There’s something toxic in the industry, a place where women are paid a quarter of what men are paid for the same job

Desire Akhavan

Let’s begin with The Bisexual. Set in east London, where Akhavan now lives (“I felt my humour had a home in London. Also, I don’t know the hierarchies here. I’m sure they exist, but I don’t know them like I do in New York”), the cast includes Maxine Peake and Brendon Gleeson, and explores some of the same themes as Appropriate Behaviour. Akhavan plays Leila, who splits up with her girlfriend of 10 years (Peake) and starts dating men as well as women.

“The elevator pitch was always: ‘What if a lesbian did the worst thing in the world a lesbian could do, and became interested in men?’” she says. “I wanted to write the show because I hated coming out as bisexual. I came out as that from the get-go, but that word always felt uncomfortable. Bisexual sounds gauche and tacky… Disingenuous. Whereas there’s only pride when I say lesbian, there’s only coolness to say queer. Bisexual didn’t feel like it represented me and I wanted to know why, when technically it very much represents who I am.”

It’s not just about the label. Akhavan knows first-hand how the world changes when your partner does. “If I’m walking down the street with a woman, I’m a lesbian; if I’m holding hands with a man, I’m straight,” she says. “And you see the world through that lens, and everyone treats you accordingly. Your lifestyle is completely different, the people you hang around with are different, and when you fight so hard to be openly gay, and claim that space – then having to reverse engineer it, and notice the world change around you, and the perspective change around you, that is a real head-fuck.”

Akhavan describes a couple of scenes to me; The Bisexual sounds funny. I can’t be sure, though, as the series isn’t finished when we meet; so before we do, I email Maxine Peake. Peake, who seems to have had a great time on set, admires the way Akhavan made her co-writer/director/lead actor multi-tasking seem “effortless”. “She always felt like a team member,” writes Peake.

Akhavan is embarrassed when I read this out to her, even more so when I read Peake’s payoff line: “I appoint Desiree the new ambassador of cool.” Akhavan squirms because she’s not always been cool, by any means. Actually, she spent much of her younger life as a very uncool person. “Not even uncool. Just invisible,” she says. But before we get to that, we should consider The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

John Gallagher Jr and Chlöe Grace Moretz in The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Photograph: Jeong Park

Adapted from Emily M Danforth’s 2012 book, the film tells the tale of Cameron Post, played by Chlöe Grace Moretz, who’s outed as a lesbian when she’s caught by her male prom date making out with a girl. She’s immediately packed off to God’s Promise, a Christian teen camp, in order to be “cured” of her sexuality. The cure consists of living among other teens who feel SSA – same sex attraction – and who are, mostly, working hard to overcome this through talking therapy, physical exercise (“blessercise” workout videos), loving Gahd and having no contact with the outside world (Post has her Breeders cassette confiscated). It’s a funny and gut-wrenching film, with moments of poignancy and some excellent performances.

Interestingly, for such an emotive subject, none of the characters are portrayed as completely evil. “I didn’t want it to be propaganda,” says Akhavan. “Though I think that would be a more commercially successful film. I wanted the tone to be right… Every film about teens is really about the moment they realise that none of the adults know what they’re doing.”

On the surface, Cameron Post is a move away from Akhavan’s other work, less obviously tied to her own life experience. But when we talk about her background, it becomes clear that this film, too, is a way of her exploring her own past.

Born in 1984 (she has one brother, who’s a paediatric urologist), Akhavan grew up in New York State, some distance from the upmarket Manhattan high school that she attended. Like many girls, she covered the wall of her room in magazine cutouts: “Pretty girls in pretty dresses, like a how-to guide on how to be a normal teenager.” But she wasn’t deemed normal – she was tall and overweight, with big feet – and school was tough. “I was the girl who made birthday cakes on your birthday,” she says, “that had tissues if you needed them. You know? The one that tried to kill people with niceness. Because niceness was all I had.”

When she was 14, Akhavan received an anonymous email, with a website link. “There was a website for the hottest person at school,” she says, “and it was very popular, and the link was to the opposite, the ugliest person at school. I had 40-something votes, and everyone else had two or three.” She pauses. “That’ll shape you.” Her nickname at school was the Beast.

She understands why she didn’t fit in – “there was one aesthetic, and it was: very thin, very petite, straight hair, straight nose, Petit Bateau T-shirt, 7 For All Mankind jeans, North Face fleece” – but these things take their toll. Still, she now thinks she was lucky: “I know those girls who fit in at that age, and it was through a sexual power that they couldn’t handle. Power is a really tricky thing, it’s overwhelming. If men had paid attention to me at that age, I would have gotten in trouble.”

Back then, however, she had no self-comforting theories. She was unhappy. She made it through school, and then went to film school, where she spent most of her time being lonely, eating a lot and smoking weed. She sank all her energies into her graduation work, a short movie she shot in very expensive Super 16 film, then sent to 30 film festivals. It was rejected by all of them. By this time, she had full-on bulimia.

“I was trying so hard and failing so miserably,” she says. “I’d got to the point where I had no idea if my graduation film was any good or not. I had no idea what my taste was… the same way I didn’t know if I was hungry or full, because I was making myself sick all the time.”

Akhavan as Chandra in Girls, with Lena Dunham. Photograph: HBO

So, aged 25, she went into rehab, at a place called the Renfrew Center in New York, where she was given a programme for eating (“diet, nutritionist, meal plan”), plus various forms of intense therapy. It was this time that she drew on for Cameron Post. “Really, it’s my film about rehab,” she says. “In rehab, there was always this question of: ‘OK, what if overeating is actually my personality? What if it’s part of me, the way my sexuality is?’ That became the question that I wanted to explore. We all wanted to be better, but what if we wanted to be better from something we could never get better from?”

In the film, Akhavan identifies most with Cameron’s room-mate Erin (Emily Skeggs), a relentlessly upbeat girl who never stops trying to not be gay. “She really wants it to work,” she says. “That’s like me. I remember my first few weeks in rehab, and I was like: ‘What am I doing here, I hate every single person here, and I don’t want to listen to their problems.’ And then, as you stay a little longer, you realise that you’re staring at 12 different versions of yourself, and what you hate in them is everything you hate in yourself. That was something I wanted to make a film about, and I wasn’t ready to make a film about eating disorders.”

When I wonder if there are any films about eating disorders, Akhavan points to Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet. “I love that film. That sequence where she binges and purges, it’s terrifying, and it’s exactly how it felt! No other film deals with it quite as horrifyingly.”

In addition to going into rehab, Akhavan fell in love with a woman and came out to her parents. This was not easy. “No,” she says. “It’s just a really, really horrifying, shameful, awful thing to say. It took all the guts in the world to say it. And also, coming out as bisexual. I mean, everyone was heartbroken, and really worried. My family was like: ‘Well, if you could choose, why would you choose something that makes everyone so unhappy and that makes your life worse?’ And I understood their point.”

Now, her family is completely supportive; so much so that Akhavan’s dad worried that if she started dating men again, she might alienate her audience. Akhavan laughs about this. It’s almost impossible, when confronted with the confident, clever woman that she is today, to imagine that she blossomed from such a dark time.

[embedded content]

Watch a trailer for The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

But she did, and, even as a success, she still needs to draw on that confidence. Cameron Post, despite winning Sundance, struggled to find a distributor. “Very few women have won the Sundance award, and it’s not escaping me that the one film that’s about female sexuality, directed by a woman, is having a harder time getting out there,” she says. “I mean, other than our film, I can’t think of a [Sundance grand jury-winning] film of the recent past that hasn’t been a major player and been nominated for an Oscar… Things are changing in the industry, but female-driven stories, specifically sexually driven female stories, are very difficult. If there is sex in the film, it has to be a man’s pleasure.” (Chlöe Grace Moretz has recently pointed out that another forthcoming film about gay conversion therapy, Boy Erasedcorr, made by Joel Edgerton, has had no such distribution problems.)

Which brings us to the inevitable Harvey Weinstein question. “I think it can only be good, what’s happening,” says Akhavan of the #MeToo movement. “I want people to be afraid and I want people to check their behaviour. I’ve had to. Not in a Weinstein way, but because I’m so direct on a shoot, I got feedback that how I talk could be seen as insulting. And I learned from that. I think you should learn, as an adult, how to be yourself, and not be aggressive to other people. It is totally good to have a healthy sense of awareness. There’s clearly something toxic in this industry, a place where women are paid a quarter of what the men are paid for the exact same job. Clearly there’s something diseased here. And now maybe we’ll see that the work won’t suffer because of this, that it will become exciting and diverse and tell stories we haven’t heard before. The fact that the only mainstream queer female stories we’ve heard have been directed by men – that disgusts me.”

She goes back to her rehab time, the six months that totally changed her. It is not as though she doesn’t still have problems, she says – “at all times in life, even when you reach success, the dust settles and there are new sets of problems, new identity crises” – but after that, “I was fearless. It wasn’t rebellion, it was just: ‘I want to make the calls. I want to do things on my terms, and I don’t want fear to drive anything I do.’ I truly became fearless. And that’s what the change was.”

Not fitting in can feel terrible, but outsiders make the best art, I say. Akhavan thinks it’s more than that.

“Before rehab, I had the feeling that I’d rather be dead than fat,” she says. “But then I started thinking: ‘What kind of power could I have as a woman who wasn’t beautiful?’ This is the superpower of the late bloomer. Time proves you wrong, and something that you think will handicap your life ends up becoming your superpower. All my handicaps became my superpowers.”

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is in cinemas 7 September

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/12/desiree-akhavan-miseducation-of-cameron-post-mainstream-queer-female-stories

[secondsightcinema]

Marsha Hunt: Living Well Is the Best Revenge

Last month, in October of 2017, Marsha Hunt began her 101st transit around the sun. She continues to grace our increasingly graceless planet, and while we were always lucky to have her, she seems even more precious now, when we are really in the soup.

Marsha Hunt in 2007, radiant at 90. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Miss Hunt is legendary among serious classic movie fans, but is largely unknown beyond our geeky precincts. Why is that, do you suppose? There are so many reasons that one artist is beloved, even iconic, while another with the same amount of talent and accomplishment is known only to the most devout movie lovers. Why is Bogart the most recognizable star of the classic movie era, while James Cagney, whose career was longer than Bogart’s and equally lustrous, is not equally venerated? Why do fantastic actors like, say, Eleanor Parker or Richard Widmark, who were big stars in their day, now languish in relative obscurity?

The most obvious answer in Miss Hunt’s case is the blacklist. Her career was thriving, and not just in film: In the summer of 1950 she had an offer to host a TV talk show and was starring in a hit on Broadway when she returned from France, where she had dined with Eleanor Roosevelt (they had met in January, 1937, when Hunt, along with Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor, visited the White House). She called her agent to check in, and the offers had dried up. That was it—poof! All gone.

While Marsha Hunt is more than worthy of celebrating for her acting, beauty and impeccable style, it’s bigger than that—that doesn’t get at the unique person she is. Hollywood has always been awash in talent and beauty. It’s the totality of her being being and her generous life that are so compelling.

The Human Comedy (1943), here with James Craig and Mickey Rooney.

That life, she acknowledges, has been extremely lucky, and I am inclined to agree with her despite the fact that her career got trampled along with so many others during the Red Scare that began in the late 1940s and spiraled into a crisis that took a sledgehammer to the American values she believed in. McCarthyism stained virtually everything it touched, with a few notable exceptions. Marsha Hunt is one of these. Her long, beautiful life is a refutation of the industry’s moral collapse under the pressure of the fear and betrayal that roiled America starting about 70 years ago, when she was 30.

All she did was refuse to compromise her ideals to save her career. All she did was let go of what she could not hold onto. After her film work dried up, she and Presnell did some international travel, and Hunt found a new focus. What she saw of hunger and homelessness challenged her to become active with the United Nations, and she became an activist. The commitment to making things better, which had not been gratified in her time at SAG as it sank into political madness, found expression in her new work. And she continued to find ways to help, not just internationally but in her own community of Sherman Oaks, California. She had never been interested in communism, and was not accused of being a member of the Communist Party. But that wasn’t a prerequisite for blacklisting. In that paranoid time, the zealous began demanding loyalty oaths and denunciations, and anything short of a blanket condemnation of communism—not just current or previous Communist Party members but anyone who had ever gone to a meeting or signed a petition that had now come under scrutiny—and loud vows to oppose it to the death were insufficient to clear oneself of suspicion.

Hunt’s great luck includes an excellent gene pool, a happy childhood with loving parents, as well as striking beauty and natural elegance, a keen mind, a good sense of humor, a long, devoted second marriage, and a deep love of and great gift for acting. And that’s not all: her passion for helping others, which found expression in the activism that absorbed her abundant energy when she could no longer work in movies, is a gift to the world. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches, and she has squandered nothing, made the most of everything. It’s no wonder that, at 100, she is still winning new fans and friends.

Hunt’s figure was perfect for fashion—her waist was 22 inches.

In the summer of 1950, Hunt’s name appeared on the infamous Red Channels list of 150 people in broadcasting who supposedly had dangerous political sympathies. Decades later the actor George Murphy, who started his career in politics as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and eventually served as U.S. Senator for California, said that there was no such thing as the blacklist. Murphy had been a passionate commie hunter during the HUAC years. Poison of this sort grows stronger when it’s denied. What did Murphy’s denial even mean, and what was he saying—was he denying his own role in this disastrous chapter in American history?

  Miss Hunt does something for hats…

  Whispering campaigns by their nature grow in darkness, which makes them difficult to counter—there’s nobody on the record who can be challenged on the facts. In the years after Red Channels, Hunt continued to work on the stage, and eventually she was again able to find sporadic film work, but she had lost the momentum built over 15 years in the business, and there was no way to regain it.

She’s actually better known now than she was 20 years ago thanks to TCM, which shows her films occasionally, as well as to her continuing presence on the classic movie scene, and to strong advocacy by the Film Noir Foundation. Just this past April she turned up unannounced at a TCM Film Festival screening, to the delight of everyone lucky enough to be in the theater. She’s still doing interviews, telling stories about the Hollywood she knew, the blacklist era, and her wonderful, lucky life. I would be thrilled to be as lucid at 60 as she is at 100, but you can’t have everything.

Marsha Hunt entertaining soldiers.

Hunt had made more than 50 movies in 15 years, and while she was not a top star, she was in demand and had appeared in some prestige pictures like Pride and Prejudice (1940), Cry Havoc (1943), and The Human Comedy (1943), as well as a number of less prominent movies well worth discovering, like Kid Glove Killer (1942) and Seven Sweethearts (1942), both with her friend Van Heflin (sigh),  A Letter for Evie (1944), Carnegie Hall (194?), Lost Angel (1943), The Affairs of Martha (1941), and more famously Raw Deal (1947), considered one of the greatest of noirs. In Raw Deal she has the unenviable task of playing the good girl, a particular challenge playing opposite the great Claire Trevor’s vulnerable bad girl. But Hunt makes the good girl believable and attractive. She says, “All I want is a little decency!” And when she witnesses Dennis O’Keefe being savagely beaten by two thugs, she has to make an agonizing choice: Shoot one of them, or watch O’Keefe being murdered. We see her face that conflict, in those few seconds. She shows it all to us without being obvious or looking contrived.

From what I’ve seen, she is never less than excellent. She is a pleasure to watch; her sensitivity to tone and nuance are always evident. As Mary Bennet, the bookish daughter whose inability to hit the high note in “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton” is a running gag in Pride and Prejudice, she spends most of her screen time in the back of group shots, but even there her reactions are perfectly calibrated to add to the sum of the dramatic effect without distracting from the more prominent characters. And her few scenes showcase her flair for comedy. If you know Hunt for other movies it takes a few seconds to register that gawky, geeky Mary is the same impeccably turned out Miss Hunt who was a costume designer’s dream. But Hunt’s ambition was never to be the biggest star, but the very best actress. She took pride in being called “Hollywood’s youngest character actress,” and did her best to live up to it.

Pride and Prejudice (1940): Maureen O’Sullivan, Hunt, Mary Boland

Marsha Hunt had been 17, already a successful New York fashion model with her sights set on becoming an actress, when her film career began in 1935. That’s when Paramount  signed her to a seven-year contract, followed by a long, happy period at MGM in the 1940s that produced most of her best-known work.

in 1947, Hunt and her husband, writer Robert Presnell Jr., didn’t think twice about joining the Committee for the First Amendment in support of the Hollywood Ten, the group of prominent writers and directors who defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities and refused to answer the infamous question “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Today, Dalton Trumbo is the best known of the Ten, but Hunt didn’t know him until decades later when he hired her to play the mother in his film adaptation of his book Johnny Got His Gun. In 1947, Hunt only knew one of the Ten: screenwriter/producer Adrian Scott, who she says is one of the finest people she has ever known. Standing in support of Scott was a no-brainer for Hunt.

Raw Deal (1947)

She recalls, in her interview in Patrick McGilligan’s and Paul Buhle’s Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, that when she served on the Screen Actors Guild’s board in 1946-47, she was a political innocent. Her father was an extremely conservative Republican, and at first she had been uncertain about even the idea of labor unions because he so disliked them. But her interest and concern in the lives of others was stirred by the meetings, where at first she just listened, but then she began to speak up. She wanted to address the serious issues affecting the membership, including Olivia de Havilland’s suspension by Warner Bros, and stereotyping in casting—not just the very narrow restrictions on the kinds of roles offered to minorities, but how those all-too-rare characters were written. But increasingly, the union’s leadership was focused not on these issues but on what they believed to be the threat of communist infiltration of the industry.

“Flow Gently, Sweet Afton”: Hunt’s dodgy intonation is the movie’s running gag.

Director Sam Wood was among those who in 1944 founded the Motion Picture Alliance [for the Preservation of American Ideals], a single-issue organization dedicated to rooting out supposed industry infiltration by communists. The politically conservative membership included Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, Clarence Brown, Leo McCarey, Irene Dunne, Laraine Day, Dick Powell, and Ginger Rogers, and many of HUAC’s friendly witnesses were drawn from its ranks. These were the people eager to “name names,” though given their political sympathies, the idea that they would know who was batting for the other side seems ridiculous.

Their eagerness to protect America from what they perceived as a real danger was evident, and despite a paucity of evidence regarding communist messages being smuggled into Hollywood movies, the advent of the Cold War provided fertile soil for what it’s now clear was their paranoia. The relationship between HUAC and Hollywood—the studios, the unions, and the Motion Picture Alliance—further confused issues for those accused of being commies. How could you find out who had named you, and how did you fight back? Who did you see to restore your reputation, to regain your position in the industry and community?

Pride and Prejudice (1940): She finally hits that high note when she meets her match.

But that was a few years later. In 1947, nobody could yet see where things were headed. Hunt and Presnell joined other prominent Hollywood liberals like John Huston, William Wyler, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Henreid, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall who formed an organization of their own, the Committee for the First Amendment. They only knew that American values, starting with the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, were under siege, and they believed that standing in support of the Constitution, as well as their friends and colleagues, was the right thing to do.

The group chartered a plane and flew to Washington in support of the Ten, to attend the HUAC hearings where their testimony had been subpoenaed. Hunt recalls the overnight flight from Los Angeles as cheerful and optimistic, with friendly groups greeting them at the airports they stopped at on the way. Nobody on that flight, and none of the Ten, had any idea what they were about to face. They were about to get their first taste of the ferocity, power, and intractability of the forces arrayed against them, and the mood was altogether different on the flight back home—the contagion of fear had infected them, and their group dissolved soon after.

Marsha Hunt (at front) with the Committee for the First Amendment, on their way to Washington to attend HUAC hearings in 1947. They were confident and optimistic on the way to Washington; the mood was very different on the way home.

Hunt says that they faced immediate hostility, including from the press. Some sources  quoted her as saying things she not only did not but would never say, just as her listing in Red Channels a few years later would list political affiliations she never had. Where did the damning information come from? We will probably never know.

Hunt believes she fell under suspicion from her SAG work, from her attempts to refocus the union on what she saw as its core issues, but more specifically because she contradicted previous SAG president Robert Montgomery’s account of an attempt to merge SAG with the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Writers Guild. He was the venerated insider; she was the earnest newbie who lacked political sophistication. And, though she doesn’t say this, perhaps misogyny also played a part—that is, perhaps her account was discounted before she opened her mouth.

Raw Deal (1947): Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton shoot Hunt with great delicacy

In any case, after their Washington excursion, those who defended freedom of speech were told they needed to distance themselves from their now-tainted colleagues. Hunt heard that Bogart and Bacall had been called on the carpet at Warner Bros and told in no uncertain terms that their careers were on the line, which shows you how out of whack things already were—usually if you’re making money for the company, they will allow you some leeway in these matters, and Bogart and Bacall were huge stars. But what had been concern over eroding civil rights began to bleed into panic, and Bogart released a statement to square himself with his bosses and the suspicious minds of the Motion Picture Alliance. He was among the first of what would become a flood of artists who would fold under the pressure and compromise their ideals to avoid ruin. It’s hard to overstate the power of seeing the Ten lose everything—not just their power and lucrative careers, but their houses, their marriages. And some of them did prison time. The chilling effect on Hollywood’s liberals permeated everything. Hunt says she waved hi to a friend at the supermarket, and the friend looked away. As she says, it was a cowardly time in Hollywood.

As Victor Navasky writes in Naming Names, his study of the political and ethical disaster that was taking shape:

“The talent blamed their agents, and the agents blamed the studios, and the studios blamed HUAC, and HUAC blamed the pressure groups. The pressure groups blamed their members, said their hands were tied. (However, when the national commander of the American Legion told Martin Gang that the Legion helped to circulate the names of subversives only because their members insisted on it, his fellow attorney Milton Rudin made a tour of Legion posts across the country, only to find that few of the members really cared.) Lawyers blamed their clients, and clients blamed their lawyers. Blacks blamed The Man.

Thirty years after the documented fact, George Murphy asserts that there never was a blacklist. Denial of fact can always be disproved by evidence; not so denial of responsibility.”

 *     *    *

  Marsha was lucky again, among the victims of the blacklist: Her husband, bafflingly but fortunately, was not blacklisted, so he continued to work, and they were able to keep their home. While movies, TV, and radio were closed to her, she was able to work in stock and on Broadway. The money was in no way comparable to what she had made in movies—and she says that while she was never among the high earners, she did well enough—but she got to keep doing the work she loved and contributing something to the family coffers.

Raw Deal (1947), with Dennis O’Keefe

In the plague time of the blacklist, panic drove out decency—that word that finally struck at Joseph McCarthy, the Grand Inquisitor, when Joseph Welch spoke for the nation and denounced the great denouncer, saying “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” (And remember Marsha Hunt’s character in Raw Deal saying, “All I want is a little decency!”) Those with a will to power, as they always do, exploited the situation to become judges and executioners as well as fixers who could save you if you’d just follow their instructions and say what they told you to say, denounce who they told you to, condemn your own past, your own ideals, your friends and colleagues.

So there is something particularly surprising and lovely about Marsha Hunt being pretty much the last (wo)man standing from the blacklist era. Miss Hunt somehow evaded the taint. She sold no one out, including herself. She suffered the loss of a career that was developing solidly, and that she loved with all her heart. We lost all the movies she would have made had her life in the movies not been cut off suddenly and irrevocably. It is a serious loss because she was an excellent actress with a unique screen presence and a look all her own, suffused with inner radiance. But in the end it is the radiance that has prevailed. Perhaps Marsha Hunt is still here to remind us that, no matter how dark things may be, in the long run, decency will prevail.

This post was written for the CMBA 2017 fall blogathon. Head on over to see the other entries; you’ll be glad you did…

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[danielkingx16]

New Petition

Create a Roger Rabbit Sequel Movie or TV Series

he story follows Eddie Valiant, a private detective who must exonerate "Toon" Roger Rabbit, who is accused of murdering a wealthy businessman.

I watch This film long time Ago and That Film inspired me to make my own Live Action /Animation Films in the Near and I would Love it if they can make a sequel or a TV Series.

With the film's critical and financial success, Disney and Spielberg felt it was obviously time to plan a second installment. J. J. Abrams says that he met Spielberg in 1989 to discuss working on a sequel, to the extent of preparing an outline and storyboards.[70] More substantial work was done by Nat Mauldin, who wrote a prequel titled Roger Rabbit: The Toon Platoon, set in 1941. Similar to the previous film, Toon Platoon featured many cameo appearances by characters from the golden Age of American animation. It began with Roger Rabbit's early years, living on a farm in the Midwestern United States.[57] With human Richie Davenport, Roger travels west to seek his mother, in the process meeting Jessica Krupnick (his future wife), a struggling Hollywood actress. While Roger and Ritchie are enlisting in the Army, Jessica is kidnapped and forced to make pro-Nazi Germany broadcasts. Roger and Ritchie must save her by going into Nazi-occupied Europe accompanied by several other toons in their Army platoon. After their triumph, Roger and Ritchie are given a Hollywood Boulevard parade, and Roger is finally reunited with his mother, and father: Bugs Bunny.[57][71]

Mauldin later re-titled his script Who Discovered Roger Rabbit. Spielberg left the project when deciding he could not satirize Nazis after directing Schindler's List.[72][73] Eisner commissioned a rewrite in 1997 with Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver. Although they kept Roger's search for his mother, Stoner and Oliver replaced the WWII subplot with Roger's inadvertent rise to stardom on Broadway and Hollywood. Disney was impressed and Alan Menken was hired to write five songs for the film and offered his services as executive producer.[73] One of the songs, "This Only Happens in the Movies", was recorded in 2008 on the debut album of Broadway actress Kerry Butler.[74] Eric Goldberg was set to be the new animation director, and began to redesign Roger's new character appearance.[73]

Spielberg had no interest in the project because he was establishing DreamWorks, although Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy decided to stay on as producers. Test footage for Who Discovered Roger Rabbit was shot sometime in 1998 at the Disney animation unit in Lake Buena Vista, Florida; the results were a mix of CGI, traditional animation and live-action that did not please Disney. A second test had the toons completely converted to CGI; but this was dropped as the film's projected budget escalated well past $100 million. Eisner felt it was best to cancel the film.[73] In March 2003, producer Don Hahn was doubtful about a sequel being made, arguing that public tastes had changed since the 1990s with the rise of computer animation. "There was something very special about that time when animation was not as much in the forefront as it is now."[75]

In December 2007, Marshall stated that he was still "open" to the idea,[76] and in April 2009, Zemeckis revealed he was still interested.[77] According to a 2009 MTV News story, Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman were writing a new script for the project, and the animated characters would be in traditional 2D, while the rest would be in motion capture.[78]However, in 2010, Zemeckis said that the sequel would remain hand-drawn animated and live-action sequences will be filmed, just like in the original film, but the lighting effects on the cartoon characters and some of the props that the toons handle will be done digitally.[79] Also in 2010, Don Hahn, who was the film's original associate producer, confirmed the sequel's development in an interview with Empire. He stated, "Yeah, I couldn't possibly comment. I deny completely, but yeah... if you're a fan, pretty soon you're going to be very, very, very happy."[80] In 2010, Bob Hoskins stated he was interested in the project, reprising his role as Eddie Valiant.[81] However, he retired from acting in 2012 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a year earlier, and died from those complications in 2014.[82] Marshall has confirmed that the film is a prequel, similar to earlier drafts, and that the writing was almost complete.[83] During an interview at the premiere of Flight, Zemeckis stated that the sequel was still possible, despite Hoskins' absence, and the script for the sequel was sent to Disney for approval from studio executives.[84]

In February 2013, Gary K. Wolf, writer of the original novel, said that he, as well as Erik Von Wodtke were working on a development proposal for an animated Disney buddy comedy starring Mickey Mouse and Roger Rabbit called The Stooge, based on the 1952 film of the same name. The proposed film is set to a prequel, taking place five years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit and part of the story is about how Roger met Jessica, his future wife. Wolf has stated the film is currently wending its way through Disney.[85]

In November 2016, while promoting his latest film, Allied, in England, Zemeckis took some time to have an interview with Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph. As the conversation shifted focus to the Roger Rabbit sequel, Zemeckis stated that the sequel "moves the story of Roger and Jessica Rabbit into the next few years of period film, moving on from film noir to the world of the 1950s". He also stated that the sequel would feature a "digital Bob Hoskins", as Eddie Valiant would return in "ghost form". While the director went on to state that the script is "terrific" and the film would still utilize hand-drawn animation, Zemeckis thinks that the chances of Disney green-lighting the sequel are "slim". As he explained more in detail, "The current corporate Disney culture [the current studio management of The Walt Disney Company] has no interest in Roger, and they certainly don't like Jessica at all."[86]

I was thinking for A Pitch of Roger Rabbit Tv Series Project of Roger Rabbit met his Future Wife and Have Some Crazy Adventures in Toon Town

So Help Me Convince Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Company to Make a Roger Rabbit Sequel or a TV Series

Spread the word

https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-create-a-roger-rabbit-sequel-movie-or-tv-series

#roger rabbit #petition #change

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Desiree Akhavan: 'The only mainstream queer female stories have been directed by men – it disgusts me'

New Post has been published on http://funnythingshere.xyz/desiree-akhavan-the-only-mainstream-queer-female-stories-have-been-directed-by-men-it-disgusts-me/

Desiree Akhavan: 'The only mainstream queer female stories have been directed by men – it disgusts me'

Saturday morning, Shoreditch House. Desiree Akhavan sits in a comfy corner of east London’s media darling hangout, and does not seem out of place. Her hair is shaggy and rockstar-esque, her red lipstick sharp. Slim gold chains dangle from her neck. She looks like she belongs.

This might seem trivial, but it’s not. What writer/actor/director Akhavan is interested in – what she examines, unpicks, takes seriously and takes the mickey out of – is fitting in. “A lot of life is about identity, and comfort within that,” she says. She admits to feeling odd if she’s in the wrong clothes. “Even something as stupid as that – what I’m wearing – needs to feel like it represents me. If doesn’t, I feel… off.”

Identity can seem a daft thing to worry about, until you consider how much trouble it can cause. (Do you identify as British? Or European? We’ll stop there.) And everyone sends out signals about who they are; Akhavan is brilliant on how those signals affect how you’re treated by others, particularly if you’re a young gay woman. Plus, she makes you laugh. “I see where the funny lies and where the story is, and I chase the story wherever it leads me,” she told the New York Times recently.

If you haven’t yet seen her work, she has two new pieces landing in August and September: her second feature film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance film festival in January; and a Channel 4 series, The Bisexual. Cameron Post is a moving chronicle of a teenage lesbian sent to gay conversion camp in the 1990s; The Bisexual is a comedy about a contemporary gay woman who decides to date men. They’re very different, but both, at their heart, reveal how life can be when you’re young and don’t have an easy path within straight culture.

Akhavan made a splash in 2014 with her first feature, Appropriate Behaviour, which saw her playing Shirin, a raw, self-obsessed, coulda-shoulda gay woman emerging from a live-in relationship. We followed Shirin around Brooklyn, New York, as she experimented with hookups (an excruciating threesome was a dubious highlight) and worried about hiding her sexuality from her Iranian family, and learned the story of her just-finished love affair. Appropriate Behaviour was explicit, hilarious and bang-up-to-the-minute. Comparisons were drawn with Lena Dunham (who cast Akhavan in Girls after seeing Appropriate Behaviour), and also with Akhavan’s own life. Born to parents who moved to New York following the Iranian revolution in 1979, she, too, is bisexual and found it hard to come out to her family. Still, it wouldn’t be right to view her work as documentary. “It’s my world,” she says, “but it’s not me.”

There’s something toxic in the industry, a place where women are paid a quarter of what men are paid for the same job

Desire Akhavan

Let’s begin with The Bisexual. Set in east London, where Akhavan now lives (“I felt my humour had a home in London. Also, I don’t know the hierarchies here. I’m sure they exist, but I don’t know them like I do in New York”), the cast includes Maxine Peake and Brendon Gleeson, and explores some of the same themes as Appropriate Behaviour. Akhavan plays Leila, who splits up with her girlfriend of 10 years (Peake) and starts dating men as well as women.

“The elevator pitch was always: ‘What if a lesbian did the worst thing in the world a lesbian could do, and became interested in men?’” she says. “I wanted to write the show because I hated coming out as bisexual. I came out as that from the get-go, but that word always felt uncomfortable. Bisexual sounds gauche and tacky… Disingenuous. Whereas there’s only pride when I say lesbian, there’s only coolness to say queer. Bisexual didn’t feel like it represented me and I wanted to know why, when technically it very much represents who I am.”

It’s not just about the label. Akhavan knows first-hand how the world changes when your partner does. “If I’m walking down the street with a woman, I’m a lesbian; if I’m holding hands with a man, I’m straight,” she says. “And you see the world through that lens, and everyone treats you accordingly. Your lifestyle is completely different, the people you hang around with are different, and when you fight so hard to be openly gay, and claim that space – then having to reverse engineer it, and notice the world change around you, and the perspective change around you, that is a real head-fuck.”

Akhavan describes a couple of scenes to me; The Bisexual sounds funny. I can’t be sure, though, as the series isn’t finished when we meet; so before we do, I email Maxine Peake. Peake, who seems to have had a great time on set, admires the way Akhavan made her co-writer/director/lead actor multi-tasking seem “effortless”. “She always felt like a team member,” writes Peake.

Akhavan is embarrassed when I read this out to her, even more so when I read Peake’s payoff line: “I appoint Desiree the new ambassador of cool.” Akhavan squirms because she’s not always been cool, by any means. Actually, she spent much of her younger life as a very uncool person. “Not even uncool. Just invisible,” she says. But before we get to that, we should consider The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

John Gallagher Jr and Chlöe Grace Moretz in The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Photograph: Jeong Park

Adapted from Emily M Danforth’s 2012 book, the film tells the tale of Cameron Post, played by Chlöe Grace Moretz, who’s outed as a lesbian when she’s caught by her male prom date making out with a girl. She’s immediately packed off to God’s Promise, a Christian teen camp, in order to be “cured” of her sexuality. The cure consists of living among other teens who feel SSA – same sex attraction – and who are, mostly, working hard to overcome this through talking therapy, physical exercise (“blessercise” workout videos), loving Gahd and having no contact with the outside world (Post has her Breeders cassette confiscated). It’s a funny and gut-wrenching film, with moments of poignancy and some excellent performances.

Interestingly, for such an emotive subject, none of the characters are portrayed as completely evil. “I didn’t want it to be propaganda,” says Akhavan. “Though I think that would be a more commercially successful film. I wanted the tone to be right… Every film about teens is really about the moment they realise that none of the adults know what they’re doing.”

On the surface, Cameron Post is a move away from Akhavan’s other work, less obviously tied to her own life experience. But when we talk about her background, it becomes clear that this film, too, is a way of her exploring her own past.

Born in 1984 (she has one brother, who’s a paediatric urologist), Akhavan grew up in New York State, some distance from the upmarket Manhattan high school that she attended. Like many girls, she covered the wall of her room in magazine cutouts: “Pretty girls in pretty dresses, like a how-to guide on how to be a normal teenager.” But she wasn’t deemed normal – she was tall and overweight, with big feet – and school was tough. “I was the girl who made birthday cakes on your birthday,” she says, “that had tissues if you needed them. You know? The one that tried to kill people with niceness. Because niceness was all I had.”

When she was 14, Akhavan received an anonymous email, with a website link. “There was a website for the hottest person at school,” she says, “and it was very popular, and the link was to the opposite, the ugliest person at school. I had 40-something votes, and everyone else had two or three.” She pauses. “That’ll shape you.” Her nickname at school was the Beast.

She understands why she didn’t fit in – “there was one aesthetic, and it was: very thin, very petite, straight hair, straight nose, Petit Bateau T-shirt, 7 For All Mankind jeans, North Face fleece” – but these things take their toll. Still, she now thinks she was lucky: “I know those girls who fit in at that age, and it was through a sexual power that they couldn’t handle. Power is a really tricky thing, it’s overwhelming. If men had paid attention to me at that age, I would have gotten in trouble.”

Back then, however, she had no self-comforting theories. She was unhappy. She made it through school, and then went to film school, where she spent most of her time being lonely, eating a lot and smoking weed. She sank all her energies into her graduation work, a short movie she shot in very expensive Super 16 film, then sent to 30 film festivals. It was rejected by all of them. By this time, she had full-on bulimia.

“I was trying so hard and failing so miserably,” she says. “I’d got to the point where I had no idea if my graduation film was any good or not. I had no idea what my taste was… the same way I didn’t know if I was hungry or full, because I was making myself sick all the time.”

Akhavan as Chandra in Girls, with Lena Dunham. Photograph: HBO

So, aged 25, she went into rehab, at a place called the Renfrew Center in New York, where she was given a programme for eating (“diet, nutritionist, meal plan”), plus various forms of intense therapy. It was this time that she drew on for Cameron Post. “Really, it’s my film about rehab,” she says. “In rehab, there was always this question of: ‘OK, what if overeating is actually my personality? What if it’s part of me, the way my sexuality is?’ That became the question that I wanted to explore. We all wanted to be better, but what if we wanted to be better from something we could never get better from?”

In the film, Akhavan identifies most with Cameron’s room-mate Erin (Emily Skeggs), a relentlessly upbeat girl who never stops trying to not be gay. “She really wants it to work,” she says. “That’s like me. I remember my first few weeks in rehab, and I was like: ‘What am I doing here, I hate every single person here, and I don’t want to listen to their problems.’ And then, as you stay a little longer, you realise that you’re staring at 12 different versions of yourself, and what you hate in them is everything you hate in yourself. That was something I wanted to make a film about, and I wasn’t ready to make a film about eating disorders.”

When I wonder if there are any films about eating disorders, Akhavan points to Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet. “I love that film. That sequence where she binges and purges, it’s terrifying, and it’s exactly how it felt! No other film deals with it quite as horrifyingly.”

In addition to going into rehab, Akhavan fell in love with a woman and came out to her parents. This was not easy. “No,” she says. “It’s just a really, really horrifying, shameful, awful thing to say. It took all the guts in the world to say it. And also, coming out as bisexual. I mean, everyone was heartbroken, and really worried. My family was like: ‘Well, if you could choose, why would you choose something that makes everyone so unhappy and that makes your life worse?’ And I understood their point.”

Now, her family is completely supportive; so much so that Akhavan’s dad worried that if she started dating men again, she might alienate her audience. Akhavan laughs about this. It’s almost impossible, when confronted with the confident, clever woman that she is today, to imagine that she blossomed from such a dark time.

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Watch a trailer for The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

But she did, and, even as a success, she still needs to draw on that confidence. Cameron Post, despite winning Sundance, struggled to find a distributor. “Very few women have won the Sundance award, and it’s not escaping me that the one film that’s about female sexuality, directed by a woman, is having a harder time getting out there,” she says. “I mean, other than our film, I can’t think of a [Sundance grand jury-winning] film of the recent past that hasn’t been a major player and been nominated for an Oscar… Things are changing in the industry, but female-driven stories, specifically sexually driven female stories, are very difficult. If there is sex in the film, it has to be a man’s pleasure.” (Chlöe Grace Moretz has recently pointed out that another forthcoming film about gay conversion therapy, Boy Erasedcorr, made by Joel Edgerton, has had no such distribution problems.)

Which brings us to the inevitable Harvey Weinstein question. “I think it can only be good, what’s happening,” says Akhavan of the #MeToo movement. “I want people to be afraid and I want people to check their behaviour. I’ve had to. Not in a Weinstein way, but because I’m so direct on a shoot, I got feedback that how I talk could be seen as insulting. And I learned from that. I think you should learn, as an adult, how to be yourself, and not be aggressive to other people. It is totally good to have a healthy sense of awareness. There’s clearly something toxic in this industry, a place where women are paid a quarter of what the men are paid for the exact same job. Clearly there’s something diseased here. And now maybe we’ll see that the work won’t suffer because of this, that it will become exciting and diverse and tell stories we haven’t heard before. The fact that the only mainstream queer female stories we’ve heard have been directed by men – that disgusts me.”

She goes back to her rehab time, the six months that totally changed her. It is not as though she doesn’t still have problems, she says – “at all times in life, even when you reach success, the dust settles and there are new sets of problems, new identity crises” – but after that, “I was fearless. It wasn’t rebellion, it was just: ‘I want to make the calls. I want to do things on my terms, and I don’t want fear to drive anything I do.’ I truly became fearless. And that’s what the change was.”

Not fitting in can feel terrible, but outsiders make the best art, I say. Akhavan thinks it’s more than that.

“Before rehab, I had the feeling that I’d rather be dead than fat,” she says. “But then I started thinking: ‘What kind of power could I have as a woman who wasn’t beautiful?’ This is the superpower of the late bloomer. Time proves you wrong, and something that you think will handicap your life ends up becoming your superpower. All my handicaps became my superpowers.”

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is in cinemas 7 September

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/12/desiree-akhavan-miseducation-of-cameron-post-mainstream-queer-female-stories