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joons · 2 months

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This may be a prickly subject, and I'm sorry if so. But I'm trying to learn more about Elvis, and every time I bring him up to people I know, they try to tell me he was this terrible person, and point me toward Priscilla's book, the movie made on it, and the discourse. Idk if you've talked about it on here (I tried searching your blog but couldn't find anything on it). If you're willing, I'd love to hear your take on it so I can see a more nuanced view.

The film Priscilla was greenlit roughly a month after Priscilla herself was informed that she was close to becoming financially insolvent in 2022. With a business partner, Brigitte Kruse, who allegedly helped broker the film deal, she established a limited liability company called Priscilla Presley Partners that was supposed to use her image and likeness to create several lines of merchandise to coincide with the film's release. That business partner is now suing Priscilla because she did not have the rights to her image or likeness, or any ability to use the Presley name, because she had already sold all of those rights and was no longer considered in good standing with Graceland or Elvis Presley Enterprises. The entire business deal, then, according to the lawsuit, was built on her misrepresentation of how much her image was worth.

The deal between the two of them fell apart after Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's daughter and Priscilla's granddaughter, settled with Priscilla to give her a lump sum of $1 million from Lisa Marie's estate and yearly amounts of $100,000. Priscilla sued very shortly after Lisa Marie's death because she thought Lisa Marie's signature on a will had been forged because Priscilla was not included in it. All of the assets were supposed to go directly to Lisa Marie's son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020, and her three daughters, two of whom are still teenagers. Now, part of those assets have been claimed by Priscilla and her other son, Navarone, who has no connection to the Presley family and has stated he is glad Lisa died.

Four months before Lisa's death, Lisa wrote to Sofia Coppola and made it clear she had strong concerns about the Priscilla film and was suspicious of the intentions behind it:

"As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. ... I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly."

Lisa was enormously grateful for efforts put into 2022's Elvis to find her father's soul and to restore his dignity in a world that often turns him and his family into a joke:

"You can feel and witness Baz’s pure love, care, and respect for my father throughout this beautiful film, and it is finally something that myself and my children and their children can be proud of forever."

It is such a strong and powerful statement, to see how much Lisa valued family, not just her father but her own children and their legacy, and how willing she was to speak up no matter what was going on in her personal life to say what was right. On this and many other things, Lisa and Priscilla's values have rarely been in alignment. A friend and EPE business associate, Joel Weinshanker, said of her, "Lisa couldn't be bought, she couldn't be pushed. If she felt that something wasn't in Elvis' best interest, it was never about money. And she really is the only Presley that you could say that about."

Priscilla, though, has adjusted her stories about her time with Elvis almost every time she discusses it. For a quick example, she said in her book, which was released in 1985, that Elvis insisted she do her hair and makeup a certain way, that he had control over her look and would get upset if she didn't dress how he wanted. But in an interview with Ladies' Home Journal in 1973, she said that she made a deliberate choice to attend makeup school so that she could learn how to style herself, and that it was her idea to wear big, black hair and big, black eyeliner. She said she was embarrassed for going overboard. She said, "I wish that Elvis had said something, but he must have liked it because he never commented." This lines up with recollections from Patti Parry, a platonic friend of Elvis' and a hairstylist, who said Priscilla always wanted Patti to do her hair in a "big boombah," but that Priscilla would then get upset when Elvis didn't notice or didn't like it.

These changes are impossible not to notice if you follow her for any length of time. At the film premiere, she said it felt just like watching her life and said she was consulted on everything, since she was an executive producer. After the film came out, she said she couldn't understand why Coppola had changed so much about the story and misrepresented events. In the '70s, she said she and Elvis lived almost totally separate lives, that she came and went as she pleased, and that she loved this freedom. Later, she said she felt completely stifled and trapped and never left the house, even though she had friends she went out with all the time. In 2019, she tweeted a forceful denial about a National Enquirer story: "This is the Enquirer folks... please don't believe everything you read. ... Never planned on being buried next to Elvis. What will they come up with next?" But part of her settlement demands in her lawsuit against Riley in 2023 asked "to be buried next to Elvis." This year, she said in two separate interviews that Lisa was with her when Elvis died and that Priscilla had to break the news to her, despite the fact that Lisa was at Graceland when it happened. She has said she gave Elvis the idea to wear belts on his jumpsuits, to have a lightning bolt as his logo, to sing "An American Trilogy," though none of that is true. She retells the story about forcing Elvis to burn all of his spiritual books to prove he loved her as an almost funny anecdote about debrainwashing him, while Elvis later said it was the worst thing he ever agreed to, a desperate attempt to make her happy by giving up the things he valued the most. (For the record, this is my opinion about their relationship on both sides: thinking they could change themselves and each other to make it work. It never did.)

Every secondhand Elvis account has to be treated lightly and only valued for its consistency with known facts and other witnesses. I try to give enormous benefit of the doubt to anyone in the Elvis world because they often only have partial knowledge of what Elvis may have been thinking at any given time, and there are numerous examples of people who were taken advantage of by unscrupulous journalists who changed the story they wanted to tell. But Priscilla's stories sometimes are not even consistent with her own statements, which makes them very poor options indeed to base anything on. However careful we are about noting potential biases and inaccuracies in other memoirs, we have to be triply, quadruply careful with anything in which Priscilla involves herself because she has a vested interest in generating discourse today in order to make money. Unfortunately, Priscilla has a habit of stifling other accounts or making sensationalized statements each time there is a possibility that she will lose some of the cachet that comes with being an Elvis Source—after Elvis' death, when she believed she was going to inherit his airplane and disinvited everyone that Vernon said could fly in it to his funeral; when she sued the parents of one of Elvis' ex-girlfriends after he died because he had allowed them to live rent-free in a house he bought for them; when she claimed that Elvis wanted to reunite with her before his death, despite the fact that he was engaged to someone else and told many people he couldn't see a reunion ever happening with her; before Vernon's death, when she convinced him to make her an executor of the Presley estate until Lisa came of age; after Lisa came of age, when she convinced Lisa to let her stay on as partner; when Lisa accused Priscilla of misspending Lisa's money, during which time anonymous sources cropped up to say Lisa was in debt and drug-addled; when Priscilla was removed from her position as an EPE spokesperson but kept collecting $900,000 a year from the company; when Lisa died, and Priscilla sued once she learned she wasn't in the will; when Priscilla was no longer associated with EPE and decided to do another adaptation of a book that she has since recanted parts of and has contradicted before and after its release.

When Priscilla thinks there is a threat to her image and position, she does new interviews and projects to muddy the waters and stir public interest, whether it is true or false, positive or negative, laudatory or defamatory. She gets corrected by Elvis' surviving family members, girlfriends, friends, and fans, but these stories do not get the same reach no matter how much they are backed by contemporaneous documents and witnesses, or how many resources there are to educate the public on how Elvis' and Priscilla's attitudes about marriage and relationships changed—along with the rest of society—between 1960 and 1970.

I think almost any single-source project is not going to advance our understanding of Elvis in any way because no one individual can speak for him, and we are kind of obligated to include all the context we can in order to appreciate his character, his successes and failures, flaws and virtues—and to treat both himself and those around him as fully three-dimensional people who have their own blind spots. Priscilla is far too aware of her own image, and far too willing to change it to suit the audience, to be particularly valuable here.

She is next scheduled to appear at the Lexington (Kentucky) Comic & Toy Con.

#please know that for each of these stories i have tried to see things from her perspective #and then something happens again #and again and again #so i have simply stopped trying and accepted that i don't like her or find her credible as far as these things go #i don't imagine i should be privy to all their family drama so of course some of this may change over time #but there are far far far better sources for learning about elvis!#an easy gateway would be ashley's adventures and elvis fans matter on youtube!#ashley does a lot of fun documentation of graceland and efm is the family channel of billy and jo smith #they are elvis' cousin and his wife who were with elvis a lot and they have good human stories #same caveat goes for them: they might not know everything #but i just like the format better than books

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notmoreflippingelves · 3 months

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Robbing the Royal Treasury

↳ Esteban in "King of the Carnaval" vs. Elena in "Royal Treasury Escape Room" (Scepter Training with Zuzo)

#elena of avalor #elena castillo flores #esteban flores #chancellor esteban #i've been thinking about this parallel ever since i watched this short #surprisingly there aren't as many direct parallels as you might think #but that's cause “something i would never do” is like twice the runtime of the short #and esteban is so both much more efficient and much more extra than elena #and elena only has to steal one thing as opposed to all the things #and she does so without having an existential crisis the way her cousin did #honestly elena may have hated ballet but it clearly paid off cause she's very graceful in this #not as graceful as esteban but still elena did some lovely chainé turns to avoid the purple smoke #of course it doesn't last and she makes a big old mess #but still elena did a better job than i remembered and she should be recognized for that #ngl i think a lot about the fact that the characters who have canonically stolen elena's mother's crown from the treasury are:#1. esteban ; 2. elena; 3. shuriki; 4. flo (in a different short)#'one of these things is not like the others; one of these things doesn't belong. can you tell which thing is not like the others?'#and flo had the easiest time of it (but left the biggest mess)#mygifs #disneyedit #eoaedit

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mamawasatesttube · 2 months

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an excerpt of chapter 3 of "the courage of stars" :3c

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says earnestly, and Kon believes her. “I missed you.”

That comes as a bit of a surprise. Kon cocks his head to the side. “You did?” He blinks. “I mean—that sounded mean. I meant, like—you know, we barely got the chance to hang out, before… you know. I died.”

Kara lets out a slow breath. “Kon, I barely have anyone left. And you’re family.” She looks a little hurt, a little uncertain. “I mean… I thought you—if you don’t feel that way about me, that’s—”

“No no no, I do, I do!” Kon hastily reassures her. “I just—I guess I didn’t realize, um…” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. It’s a habit he picked up from Pa. That thought hurts, so he quickly pushes it away. “Aw, man, there’s like, no good way to phrase this. Uh…”

Kara laughs, at least. Score. “It’s okay. Just say it.”

Kon rakes his hand through his hair. “Okay, fine. It’s been—kind of a lot? Coming back and, y’know. Seeing that me dying, like… impacted people.”

Kara reels back with a look of shock. “What?! Of course it impacted people! You died, Kon! Everyone who cares about you—you’ve lost people before, haven’t you? You know it hurts!”

Kon winces. “See, this is what I meant about not knowing how to put it.” He chews at his lower lip for a moment, staring out at the horizon. Kara’s hand tightens over his. “I do know it hurts. I do. I just—I got this weird disconnect in my head, about it being different when it’s me.”

Because he was made to die. He was made to die saving the world, and he did. That was his purpose… or at least, he really thought it was. But after how badly his success—his death— tore apart so many people he loves, he can’t quite reconcile the thought.

There’s a tiny voice in his head that says maybe Kal was right. Maybe it really is that simple—he’s here just to live. But it’s hard to let go of a truth he’s known his whole life, especially for a new one that sounds way too good to be true.

Kara softens next to him. The wind blows her hair into her eyes, and she tosses her head, scrunching up her face.

“I guess that makes sense,” she says, squeezing his hand. “…You wanna know something, though?”

“What?”

She lets go of his hand to dig through one of the pockets on her skirt and pulls out a glasses case. She opens it, turns it around to show him, and ducks her head a little shyly. “I’ve been wearing these, in my civilian identity.”

Kon blinks down at the glasses. They’re a familiar oval shape, with simple silver wire frames. His breath catches in his throat. “Are those…”

“Yours,” Kara confirms, her voice so soft the wind almost drowns it out.

#rimi writes #kon #kara #the cousins of all time........#did you know. she was wearing his glasses. did you know i feel insane about this #i know ive definitely Never mentioned that on this blog before or anything so it may come as a shock. but it's true #okay now im gonna go do dishes for realsies

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feluka · 20 days

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i can't stop thinking that the horrible stories we hear about what happens in prison are only a fraction because there's so many we don't know about because theh got disappeared completely

[TW for police brutality and ableism under the cut]

my family and i will never forget when one of my cousins got grabbed with his group of friends and gave confusing reasons for it, and kept them locked in awful conditions. one of the boys was diabetic and was in need of an injection and worsened due to neglect. he needed medical intervention and was not given any.

they were all finally released after the boy died.

#this is one of the scariest stories because we don't KNOW what could've been done to avoid it!#they weren't part of any political activism of any sort! just a bunch of kids!#like what was the reason??#cousin and several of the kids in the group (including the boy who died) are copts so that may have something to do with it #but then again there were muslims in the group and the police didn't seem to know information about any of them before arresting them #it's very confusing and scary.

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moeblob · 2 months

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Karen: LMAO every guy I meet reminds me of my big brothers that's so funny except if Paul is already my brother and you're also a brother that's a bit awkward, huh Hot bartender: THATS MOVING REALLY FAST AND I LIKE YOU AS A PERSON BUT - Karen: having my brothers date would be SO WEIRD Hot bartender: Well on the bright side I literally cannot speak more than five words to him so we aren't dating because he's so cute

(Everyone else: that is somehow the most depressing bright side we never want to hear)

#my characters #oops i fell in love #I just think its really funny how i view so many of the cast as either the only child or #somehow still the only child but with twin cousins that he grew up with somewhat like siblings but is older than them #and then THESE TWO LOSERS (beloveds) are definitely younger siblings #there is no way Karen developed her personality without the help of older brothers #there is also a very funny and agonizing thing where she is super single cause she can't view a guy as more than a brother #she meets an asshole and is like wow just getting huge brother vibes from him wtf #and meets the nicest man possible and is like HOW IS HE ALSO LIKE A BROTHER I WILL NEVER LOVE ROMANTICALLY #and she has all of the guy friends and its very clear if they were interested she has long since friendzoned them #but its fine because they all are also convinced that shes exactly what it would be like to have a brother #so its fine its all good no one really agonizes over not romancing her and she just as a found family in everyone #hi my name is salmon and you may recall my feheroes experience where i want to give a certain male all of the siblings #the sibling adopter extraordinaire ? yeah thats basically karen now that i think about it #you know one time at work at my first job there was a girl who had a crush on a guy and we all worked the same shift a lot #and one day she was whining because he was so friendly to me and he looks at the girl straight faced and says #ITS BROS BEFORE HOES aint that right and im like uh huh sure thats exactly right #and later i told him i really wanted to know where she went wrong because i had a crush on him in school until he opened his mouth #and hes like yeah sucks to wanna date me you made the right choice #and i just ..... will never forget that weird guy #he saw me in a hoodie once and goes NO WAY I HAVE THE SAME ONE and then makes sure he brings it in next time we work together to prove it #he was like an annoying younger brother to me and i thought it was very funny that apparently i too am a sibling to him #i might be adopted and i might be biased but i think everyone could use an adopted sibling that they dont live with #thats a special bond ok im just sayin #also sorry its so late tonight i had some uhhhhhh problems haha

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sailforvalinor · 1 year

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Mac Campbell, AKA Alcott's Most Delightfully Unhinged Love Interest Ever

Nearly made himself blind (literally) by reading too much at an overcrowded family gathering

Once tried to study romantic love as if it were an illness and went around asking anyone who would give him the time of day what being in love was like. When it was suggested to him that he might have to come down with the "illness" to know, he asked how one would go about catching it.

Played escort to Rose (his eventual love interest) at a party, danced with her once (horribly), ran into a geology professor and proceeded to get so distracted talking shop that he accidentally ignored Rose for the rest of the party, walked part of the way home with the aforementioned professor STILL talking about geology and forgot Rose, leaving her to be escorted home by her friend’s mom, and when he got home and suddenly remembered Rose he freaked out and ran the three miles to the party to see if she was there, then ran three miles her house—all at midnight in January, no less—without a coat to make sure she was alright. He was so conscience-stricken that when Rose, perfectly safe and sound, offered him hot chocolate, he asked if she had any hemlock lying around.

Once accidentally implied that he would rather parade the streets as an organ grinder than dance with Rose. Proceeded to flee the premises dramatically quoting Cassandra when the error was realized.

Broke three chairs learning to dance properly to make up for the escort incident

Knocked his brother’s wineglass out of his hand and halfway across the room at a party for trying to coerce their cousin, who was struggling with alcoholism, into drinking; then proceeded to explode at the room of 20-something men for peer-pressuring his cousin and called them all cowards for leading him into temptation that he’s trying to avoid. And then apologized for the mess and left.

Adopted a child in fulfillment of a dying woman’s last request that he was caring for while working at a hospital, succeeded in rescuing the girl from horrifically destitute circumstances—but then abruptly realized that he had no idea how to take care of a child. Showed up on his mother’s doorstep with a distraught three-year-old like “MOM HELP”

Turns out, when he catches the “illness,” he becomes both shockingly romantically eloquent AND fond of really terrible puns in equal measure.

When he was rejected, completely undeterred, he declared he would go make himself worthy of Rose’s love, if he could. Proceeded to become a famous poet in six months. Still thought he hadn’t done enough.

#I will never shut up about him #mac campbell #eight cousins #rose in bloom #louisa may alcott

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mrtequilasunset · 8 months

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I actually got the opposite impression. I thought Kim would be a very picky eater but would not admit that to save his life. Like the kinda guy who’ll eat anything if he has to but there’s very little he actually enjoys and so he grew up thinking that food sucks and rarely tastes good cause children tend not to have the autonomy to eat things they actually like or even figure out what they like unless they have incredibly patient and understanding caregivers

Okay but I actually love this interpretation too your brain is so massive and meaty

#fuckin makes me think if Harry finds out that Kim thinks food is gross most of the time he'd probably #make it his goal to find more things for Kim to like #it becomes a mind project AND a full task with (this may take a while) on the side but he cares so much #and kim is a bit resistant to it (bc hes picky and nonsafe foods are kinda scary) but harry is so patient and enthusiastic about it #and and sighs listen i just want them to make eachother happy #they find out he really likes pancakes and also cannot stand the texture of most things similar to cream of wheat or pudding #i have a cousin who was adopted from a really terrible orphanage and he refuses to eat oatmeal to this day because its all they ever fed hi #hes given me a lot of inspo for kims eating habits in regards to how being an orphan affected him tbh #he'll eat anything except that

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prototypelq · 26 days

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youtube

this speech is a must-listen for any 'father figure Dante' trope fan

(why you should listen: a daughter of a rockstar roasts her dad at his own award receiving ceremony about him not wearing any shirts when he was picking her up from middle-school)

#tbh i am too uncultured swine to know who this guy exactly is #but i heard a little about him on the radio today and his music was good!#but the trivia about this speech his daughter gave was funnier #i know the 'dante is allergic to shirts' thing is a meme and i agree with it being a meme completely #however it is fun to joke about #and dante really is the guy who does Not care about his looks so he would #mutuals you know me and i hope you think that patty would absolutely roast dante like that too #hopefully she was spared his shirtless phase xD #the overall vibe here is the main thing i adore about this #this is a fun alternate universe scene to thing about #dante sparda #patty lowell #oh i am pushing the propganada with this one for sure #patty propaganda #patty adopted dante as her father figure #patty and nero are cousins #vergil is patty's classy uncle #nero would absolutely find something embarassing to say about vergil in this situation too #twins make great father figures and they should be roasted as per norm which just means extensively #dmc #devil may cry #Youtube

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symbiotic-slime · 1 year

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guys i want to make a best translator situation poll but i need to know if there’s more situations out there that I haven’t heard about. so far I’ve got

-destiel “i love you” in Spanish

-symbrock “we’re soulmates after all” in Polish

-tomgreg “fuck brothers” in German

plz let me know if there’s other ones out there bc there for sure is but I just haven’t heard of them

#shout out to @fist-of-venegence for telling me about the ‘fuck brothers’ situation #i have never seen a single episode of succession but d a m n that shit hilarious #also I realize the results may be a bit biased coming from a venom blog but I’m too lazy to like make a whole bracket acc #this would just be one massive poll #venom #supernatural #succession #symbrock #destiel #tomgreg #eddie brock #venom symbiote #castiel #dean winchester #tom wambsgans #greg hirsch #cousin greg

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ichayalovesyou · 2 years

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Rutherford is NOT Okie Dokie (losing my shit)

Lower Decks coming in with that left hook and some MAJOR LEAGUE Rutherford lore last night holy shit!

What HAPPENED to you baby bear?!

He used to be so different?? I mean at least he’s happier with who he is now than he was then? But also why was he so angry at the world in the first place? Why was he like that?

How far do those memory problems go??? I imagine he probably remembers most of his past otherwise I feel like there’d be more of an issue? Are his parents alive, family, hobbies, inner life? I mean he obviously knows he’s Philippino but like, how much does Rutherford know about himself other than loving his friends and loving engineering? What else does he do/like other than his job and vibing with them?

A high up Starfleet admiral doing a cover up?! Voiced by Fred Tastascoire (who is also SHAXS 👀)

THEN there was the point in the fake alien trial episode?! Where he kept blacking in and out due to “system updates” and the commanding officers who were with him at the time were Shaxs and Billups?! He’s close with both of them and Shaxs and Billups are pretty close so like AAA???

Why doesn’t he ask them about what happened now that the mission is done? Unless something WEIRD is going on?!

Do they know he didn’t volunteer for the implant and were just told he’d be useful for the mission?? How far does this even go? How much do the superior officers in his immediate circle know vs. the people who did this to him?!

Shaxs also straight up DIED to save Rutherford and in doing so ripped his implant out of his head instead of just like, the cord or something?? Shaxs probably knows more than Billups

Also what is Badgy a representation of if Rutherford clearly has a second (possibly programmed) nature? Holograms don’t usually become sentient and incredibly violent of their own volition. He’s buggy and resentful and confused and angry, not entirely unlike like his creator. Or at least not his creator’s former persona.

Also did they do the whole “is Mariner a secret sec 31 super soldier sleeper agent?” to throw us off the scent of the non-zero possibility that RUTHERFORD might be literally exactly that?!

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

DUDE. What happened to Samanthan g-dang Rutherford?!?!

This is so INCREDIBLY not Okie dokie!

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