#like not saying it's better than stoker's original order but i just think it was neat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fangirlings-things · 3 years

Text

First Costumer

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

Pairing: Arthur Shelby x female reader

Summary: you just got hired to do the job you always wanted and your first costumer, is no other but a Peaky Blinder

Word count: 2.1K

This is based on the moodboard below, made by my friend. You can find the original post here

A/N: I wrote this for @flowers-in-your-hayr 650 followers celebration. congratulations, love!! you're amazing, thank you for understanding my brazilian jokes lol and I hope you like this 💖

TAG LIST: @sophieshelby ; @charmingvalkyrie ; @inglourious-imagines ; @fairyofvoid ; @locke-writes ; @regalbanshee ; @captainshazamerica ; @lotsoffandomrecs ; @flowers-in-your-hayr ; @too-spoopy-to-be-frukd

You heard the doorbell ring and the sound filled the bookshop. Finally, a costumer. Your very first costumer. How exciting!

You got down of the ladder you had previously climbed to fix some of the higher shelves and passed your hands through your brown simple dress, making sure it was proper and in order. Mr. Cuthbert had taken a long time to finally accept you as an employee in his establishment and now, you had to make him proud.

You had always loved books. Since you were just a little girl, you mother had given you novels to read and you grew up living in many different ones from the reality you actually found yourself in. Books were your passion, your refugee, your ideal spot. To be able to work around them and make people happy by buying books, well, it sounded like perfection!

The costumer took his time to walk through the shop, eyeing the shelves like they were unusual strangers in the street and then, he got to you at the back of the bookshop. Your first costumer was a man.

He was tall. Not too tall, but just enoguh to make him able to look at some of the upward shelves without having to raise his head too much. His skin was white, giving a nice contrast with the black coat he wore. He had a moustache and you could only see a few strings of his brown hair, due to the cap he wore.

Then, you realized. After taking notice of the cap, the fine clothing made sense. No ordinary man in Birmingham had such fine clothes to wear, especially not in the middle of the week, during the lunch break time of the factories. Oh no, that man absolutely did not work in a factory. That man was a Peaky Blinder. His only bosses were the Shelbys and the Shelbys only.

"May I help you, sir?" you asked him with a polite smile, pushing to the back of your mind the realization you had just come to. It didn't matter who he was outside Mr. Cuthbert's bookshop. He was a costumer. Who clearly, for the way his eyes were going from one shelf to the other, intended to buy a book.

He focused his eyes on you and you saw that his stare wasn't harsh or the one of a demon, as many people said the Peaky Blinders were. His eyes were kind, even though there was an agitation in them that you couldn't quite comprehend. Maybe not even he could. "Yes" he said simply and as you kept staring at him, waiting for further information, the man looked even a bit disconcerted, like he wasn't used to having such attention upon him. "It is my sister's birthday this week and Ada, well, she really likes books, has a great shelf of them at her house. So I thought it would be a good idea to you know, give her a new book as a gift"

You couldn't help but smile. That man, whomever he was, seemed so genuine in everything. You could see the care in his expression when he spoke of his sister. It was a nice thing to see. The stories you had heard about the Peaky Blinders seemed to be all wrong. He was a normal person. Not some crazy, openly violent man.

"Do you have any specific book in mind?" you asked him, hands joined in front of your body and excitement filling your body because that was apparently going to be a successful sell. The man just squeezed his lips on a thin line, eyes going to the floor as if he was embarrassed. It got to you. "Don't worry, I am sure we can work something out. What kind of books does she like?"

He watched as you moved around the place graciously. Clearly you knew every corner of that place, every shelf, every single book and where it was. You looked at a particular spot, frowned then moved on like there wasn't anything interesting for whatever you wanted him to take to Ada. "Well, she's a communist, so she does like politics"

"Very well" you walked towards the politics shelf, searched the titles, but nothing particularly got your attention or seemed fitting. You turned back to the man. "Does she like classics that have to do with politics?"

"I think so, what do you have?" he asked, seeming kinda excited for what you would come up with. He accompanied you as you went to shelf on the other side of the corridor and pulled out a book. "Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It's centered around the French Revolution"

The man looked down at the floor again as a quite nervous laugh escaped his mouth. "I don't think that is a good idea. France does not give my family the best memories, you see"

"You fought the war?" you asked, smile fading a bit because of the seriousness in his tone. Maybe that's where his agitation was from. Maybe, he never did get back from France at all. He only nodded in agreement, still not looking at you. "Thank you, for your service"

He gave out a little smile, but you knew by the way the corner of his lips didn't rise too much that he was anxious to change the subject. Honestly, see the obvious hurt in him made you want to change it either. "Alright, no France. What about Bram Stoker's Dracula?"

"Dracula?" he frowned, eyes meeting yours in utter confusion at such a strange name.

The fact that he didn't knew about it made you smile as you began to describe que novel's story to him with a mysterious tone in your voice to cause suspense. "It's about an old man, Count Dracula, who lives in a castle and feeds on the blood of young women to survive. Sometimes he kills them so they can join him in the after life and also drink blood from innocent people"

The man laughed due to your clearly forced misteirous tone and the way you raised your eyebrows at him while speaking, seeming to forget the previous sadness that had overwhelmed him with the memories of the war. You were glad for it. "That sounds bloody awful, love"

You could not help but also laugh, trying to ignore the heat that took a hold of your face when he apparently without thinking, called you love. "It is, actually" then you shrugged, passing your hand through the said novel's cover at the shelf. "But is a fine horror book" you crossed your arms over your chest and squeezed your eyes in his direction. "Be honest with me now, will your sister like this one?"

He squeezed his lips again, this time his features assumed a expression that clearly said 'sorry'. "I don't think so. Ada is a feminist. I think she would not like a story where a monster man kills women and faces no consequences"

"That is a very good point" you said with a sight and then turned around, biting your lower lip as you thought and thought about more options. The challenge on your very first sell was being quite exciting and you could say, interesting. Much of it of course, was because of that man. Suddenly, an idea popped into your head and you turned back to the Peaky Blinder with a smile. "What about On the Origin of Species? It's a book about pure knowledge, scientific one, about evolution. No France, no monster that slaughters women"

The man gave it a minute of thought and then returned your smile. "Knowledge and evolution. It does sounds like Ada" you both felt silent for a moment and then, he cleaned his throat and nodded towards the book you had just gotten into your hands. "I'll take it"

"Very well" you motioned for him to follow you and then made your way towards the back of the shop again, placing it in the cashier. "You want it wrapped up as a gift?" he quickly agreed and you raised two options of gift wrap in the air. A green and a blue one. He chose the green one. "You can also add a small card if you want"

"That is nice, thank you" he said and again, as you looked at him, the kindness in his eyes seemed to shine out from everything else.

You grabbed a gift card from the inside of a box where they were kept and placed a black pen upon it. "You can write it or if you want, I can write it for you"

"You should write it, I bet your handwriting is better than mine" he said and you chuckled, nodding as you agreed to his request.

"What do you want it to say?" you waited as he clearly thought about the question, looking unsure. With one of his hands, he took off his cap and then passed the other one through his hair. When he claned his throat, you were ready to start writing.

"Dear Ada, happy birthday" he looked at you as if that was it but then, seeing the expression on your face that clearly indicated you wished him to talk more, he thought for a second and then continued. " Since you like books so much, I hope you will like this one, that a very nice girl helped me pick" as you wrote with a smile on your face, you did your best not to raise your eyes to meet his. "I know I am not always a very good brother, but I love you. Happy birthday, Arthur"

"That was beautiful" you told him, letting go of the pen and starting to wrap up the gift carefully, slowly, in no rush to let the Peaky Blinder go away. Arthur. His name was Arthur. It was a beautiful name. Suited him just fine.

"Alright, then" his eyes went to the floor again, seeming now embarrassed because of your words.

You finished to wrap the gift in silence, then when it was done, you sighted and looked at the man. "If you want us to deliver the gift at your sister's house, in case you're busy, we have a delivery boy for such"

"That sounds good, I appreciate that" he replied.

You nodded in agreement and got a piece of paper, to then grab the pen again. "Can you tell me her adress, please?" he did so, and you wrote it down so the boy Mr. Cuthbert had hired a little while before you could do his part of the job later. "He is supposed to look for Ada...?" you left the question in the air, waiting for him to answer, eyes still on the paper.

"Ada Shelby"

Your eyes snapped up on the very same instant.

Shelby.

His sister was Ada Shelby.

He was Arthur Shelby.

"Something wrong, love?" he asked, and he didn't seem harsh like you expected him to, for the way you not in the slightly hid just how astonished you were to know his identity. His eyes were still kind, but a part of the previous sadness had come back.

"I'm sorry, that was rude of me" you wrote down Ada Shelby and then left the paper upon the gift, at the corner of the cashier.

"I'm used to that kind of reaction by now" he said with a nervous laugh, that carried absolutely no humor at all in it. Even if he was indeed used to the said kind of reaction, he clearly did not like it. You felt guilt consume you. "How much do I owe you?"

You told him the price, still lost in your thoughts and cursing yourself for being so stupid and rude. So rude. He gave you the money, you placed it in the due place. "Have a nice day" he told you and then turned around to leave, placing his cap back in his head and then his hands went to the pockets of his clothes.

You watched him leaving with a intense feeling of exasperation, tried to think fastly enough to say something and then before you could even really process what you were actually going to do, the words left your mouth. "Mr. Shelby?" he turned back around as he heard you calling, a bit of gentleness in his features. "If you ever need to buy another book, I am sure I can help you find something good"

His lips curled up in a smile, a pure one. A bit of the guilt you felt left your body like he had just taken it completely away, just by smiling again. "I'll remember that, love"

And then, Arthur Shelby left the bookshop.

#imagine #x reader #fanfic #imagines #peaky blinders #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fanfic #arthur shelby #arthur shelby x reader #arthur x reader #arthur shelby imagine #arthur shelby fanfic #650followers

198 notes · View notes

gerrydelano · 4 years

Note

Hey just gonna our myself as the original hoh!tim anon to say I really really liked your disability hc post!! And you have no idea how honored I am to have inadvertently kicked off that line of thinking. I went on anon for that original ask bc I felt like I wasn’t Allowed to make a hoh hc due to being “abled” but THEN I remembered that I literally have an audio processing disorder and due to multiple ear infections I can’t hear as well out of my right ear AND I’m probably going to lose 1/2

More of my hearing later in life thanks to bad body things (and my dad is going deaf so I’ve probably inherited some stuff) ANYWAY this is all to say that you’ve inspired me to look more into hoh resources and join an asl class once my community college is all opened back up again :) also I hc that Tim hears better out of one ear than the other (like me!) and turns his head a bit when listening to quieter people (like me!)

BLOGGER OF THE HOUR HERE YOU ARE!!!! i was so hoping that you’d come around and rip off your mask like a scooby doo villain so that instead of arresting you i could shake your hand.

g-d, WOW, okay first of all thank you so much for the inspo, i’m actively making new connections through talking about it and i’m super grateful for this particular floodgate being opened.

second, oh MAN. i’m so! glad you’re gonna join that class (once it’s safe to!) and looking into resources for yourself, you absolutely have a right to look into these things and acknowledge the stuff you already experience.

you are very much allowed to make a headcanon like that, i promise. like i’ve told other people, you don’t have to experience something to a “Major Extreme” or have a prof. dx in order to still have it going on, and if it’s close to your heart, it’s close to your heart! look at what your ask did! i think it’s really beautiful.

AND GOOD HC! tim stoker king of not hearing jack nor shit!

#hcs #reviews #i'm just!!!! really excited!#the-pastry-monsterrr #asks #disability gang!#deaf tim

99 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 3 years

Text

Hellsing Liveblog, Ch.11-13

This is the “Balance of Power” arc.

One of the things that frustrated me about the Hellsing TV anime (as opposed to the Hellsing Ultimate version) was that the TV series aired while the manga was still running, and it seemed to struggle between following the source material or just diverging into all new stories. I think if Gonzo had made up their minds one way or the other, it would have ended up a better show. Instead, there were all these filler scenes of Seras training with human soldiers, which seemed like an utter waste of the character’s time. Worse, this meant the human soldiers featured much more prominently than they ever did in the manga, where they all get killed off by Chapter 9 or something. And if you know that’s coming, like I did, it makes the human soldiers that much more insufferable, because you know dorks like Farguson aren’t going to matter, but they get tons of screen time anyway. Farguson is like every episode of Dragon Ball GT condensed into a single character.

Here, in the original manga, it’s pretty clear that the soldiers never mattered, because the only time you ever see them is when Jan Valentines’ ghoul army slaughters them all. They only existed so Integra would have something to be in charge of, but the only ones who actually matter here are herself, Alucard, Seras, and Walter. In this chapter, Walter practically admits as much, when he states that there were 96 staff members, and now we’re down to ten: Walter, Integra, and eight jabrones who weren’t at the base that day. Well, maybe those eight guys will show up later and do something important? Bullshit they will, they never get mentioned again. The Gonzoverse might have been able to break some new ground by focusing on those human characters more, but what they actually did was half-assed, and it looks all the more futile when you know how unimportant they are to the original work. Walter just hires a band of mercenaries to backfill all the vacant positions, and I’ll give you three guesses what happens to those guys.

Concerning “Millennium”, their mysterious new enemy, no one has any idea what they are. A bunch of people try to research it, because we didn’t have Google in 1999, or at least not Google as we now know it, so if you wanted to know something cryptic you just had to rummage through a card catalog in a library or whatever. But Integra just makes the logical leap that “Millennium” is a reference to the “Thousand Year Reich” dreamed of by Nazi Germany. This seems like a stretch, but I think Integra’s reasoning is that this is the only “Millennium” reference that could possibly be worth Hellsing’s attention.

Later, Integra meets the Wild Geese, the merc group Walter hired, and explains their assignment even referencing the Bram Stoker novel. So I guess Dracula is a real book in the Hellsing world, but it must be at least partially based on a true story, right? The Geese don’t buy any of this, so Integra introduces them to Seras to prove that vampires are real.

They all laugh at Seras until she starts flicking their leader, Pip Bernadotte, with her fingers. Then Alucard shows up, and that seems to be enough to convince them.

After this, Integra gets a letter from the Iscariot Organization, inviting her to a meeting with Enrico Maxwell at the Imperial War Museum. The whole thing introduces Bishop Maxwell very effectively. He tries to play this off as a peaceful, diplomatic conference, but he makes Integra wait, and she’s still sore about Anderson’s violation of their treaty back in Chapter 5-6. Maxwell takes all this in stride, then replies that he could care less about the deaths of even two billion Protestants, so the two guys Anderson killed mean nothing to him. He’s only here because the Pope ordered him to do this, and he calls Integra a “Protestant sow” for good measure.

At this, Alucard comes out to stand up for Integra’s honor, and then Maxwell responds by bringing out Anderson, except Anderson has a berzerker rage thing going, so it kind of ruins Maxwell’s posturing. For all his contempt, he really was ordered to London to talk to Integra, so he’d probably get in trouble with the Pope if Anderson starts a big superhero battle in a museum.

In Cross Fire, the unpublished manga that was sort of a precursor to Hellsing, Maxwell looked a lot like Sir Integra does now, so when Kouta Hirano brought him back for this arc, he slicked his hair back and removed his glasses. On the other hand, Integra doesn’t look much like the early Integra anymore either. By now, Hirano seems to have settled on her design, straightening her hair out and making her face longer and thinner. Anyway, Maxwell’s brinkmanship has backfired, and now even he can’t stop Anderson, so what can be done?

Luckily, Seras is here to provide a distraction, as she leads a tour group of elderly Japanese tourists through the gallery. For some reason this kills Anderson’s fighting mood completely, so he leaves. Alucard also leaves, because he hates being up during the day. Walter gives Seras a hearty thumbs up for defusing this tense situation. Good job, Seras. You’re doing amazing, sweetie.

All right, so what’s so blamed important that the Pope would send Maxwell to London? Well, he knows about Millennium’s attack on Hellsing’s base, and he has some juicy deets on them. After making Integra say “please”, he explains that “Millennium” was a Nazi military unit responsible for transferring resources and personnel for Nazi Germany. They relocated a ton of these resources and personnel to South America for safe keeping. Integra’s not too impressed with that, since “Nazis fleeing to South America after the war” isn’t exactly a shocking revelation.

The twist here, though, is that Millennium was smuggling Nazi stuff to South America during World War II.

Also, the Vatican helped Millennium do this? I never understood this part of the story, but I think it gets explained later. I mean, it explains how Maxwell would have this lead to share with Hellsing, but it raises more questions than answers.

Volume 2 ends with another chapter of Cross Fire, starring Heinkel Wolfe and Yumiko Takagi. In the first story, they saved hostages from Islamic terrorists. This one is them recovering stolen church money from radical communists, which I guess could have been a thing in 1998? It’s basically the same story, though, as they send Yumiko to infiltrate the bad guys, then they slaughter everyone in sight. Mostly, I want to focus on the part at the end, where Maxwell, the leader of Iscariot, justifies the use of extreme hyper-violence in the name of the Catholic Church. You sort of get the sense that the Iscariot Organization in Cross Fire was a concept in search of a villain. the idea of two girl-assassins dressed as a nun and a priest might have had some traction, but Hirano really seems to have had trouble coming up with worthy enemies for them to fight. But Hellsing brings vampires into the mix, which suits the Iscariots quite nicely.

Back to “Balance of Power”, the third part features Seras training with the Wild Geese in the middle of the night. For some reason, Seras expects them to shoot targets from over 4km away. She can do it, but only thanks to the vampiric senses Alucard showed her how to use. It’s like she doesn’t realize that this is an ability she only has because she’s a vampire or something.

Indoors, Alucard and Walter discuss the whole Nazi angle. Al isn’t terribly surprised, because he only knows three who have ever used undead warriors for combat.

1) Hellsing

2) Himself

3) The Nazis.

He knows #3 is legit, because he and Walter destroyed a Nazi research facility during the war. Supposedly that contained all their work on the undead, but now that we know Millennium was smuggling important stuff from Nazi Germany to South America, it only makes sense that they’re the ones who devised the Valentines’ ghoul attack. The bigger point of this scene is to reinforce that Walter used to be a big wheel in Hellsing, teaming up with Alucard to have Golden Age WWII adventures. And now, Hellsing will be sending Alucard and Seras to South America to investigate this new threat.

Here, Walter asks the big question: Why make Seras a vampire? I’ll have more to say about this later, but I dig this scene because it works as an exposition scene, but there’s more to it than that. Alucard’s only apparent motivations are over-the-top violence and doing his master’s bidding. Helping Seras doesn’t seem to fit either of those, so it does indeed feel out-of-character. You’d expect someone to ask this question, and by now there’s really only two people left who know Alucard well: Walter and Integra. So yeah, let’s have Walter ask the question. But later on, it becomes clear that the point is not the question itself, but the fact that Walter is the one asking it.

For what it’s worth, Alucard doesn’t seem to know, or maybe he just doesn’t want to spell it out. He keeps saying that it was her “choice”, except he had to make his own choice that night. He could have just let her die, regardless of any requests she might have made. Al remarks on her tremendous resilience on that night, since she was surrounded by death and hopelessness, but didn’t resign to her fate. That impresses him, so I guess we can say that he chose her because he found her to be such an impressive specimen, in spite of some of her goofier behavior. As it currently stands, Seras can’t even travel across rivers or oceans, a weakness for lesser vampires, but not a problem for Alucard himself. He seems to think that’ll all be resolved once she finally drinks blood, and he expects that it’ll just be a matter of time before she does. Ominous!

As far as transporting Seras to South America, Alucard figures the easiest thing to do is nail her shut in her own coffin. The Wild Geese know a smuggling operation that can fly them to Brazil without any messy customs. That works out, since they also have to transport Alucard’s coffin, and all the guns.

Integra asks why Alucard is dressed like this, and he says he can’t wear his usual stuff because he’d be too obvious to their enemies. Also, he doesn’t need to spend the whole trip in his coffin, because sunlight and traveling over water doesn’t bother him, I guess? I don’t really get the water thing. If Seras can’t travel over running water, what difference does it make if she’s in her coffin or not? I can accept that Alucard, who’s basically a super-vampire, would be immune to the whole water thing, but it becomes a plot point later on, so... aw, forget it

Integra gives Alucard only one order: Search and Destroy, which seems kind of vague when you think about it. Anyway, she’ll be saying this about a hundred times before the story is over, so we may as well appreciate the original.

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #alucard #sir integra hellsing #walter c dornez #seras victoria #enrico maxwell #pip bernadotte #did i forget anyone?#nah i guess that's it

21 notes · View notes

thenightling · 4 years

Text

Horror movie Tag Game

I got this survey from another page and copied and pasted it.

Favorite: This changes based on my mood. I’ll list ten right now. The order and titles are subject to change on my whim. Trick r Treat, Fright Night (1985) Fright Night: Part 2 (1988) Dracula (1979), Frankenstein (2004 version starring Luke Goss, not the other 2004 version), The Company of Wolves. The Raven (1963) Sleepy Hollow (1999) Crimson Peak Faust (1926)

Least favorite: Low budget: Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula. Mainstream: Frailty.

Scene(s) that scared you the most:

The first time I saw Lestat come back from the swamp in Interview with the vampire it made me jump even though I knew it was coming. When Louis hears the doorbell and thinks it’s the carriage. I knew it was not the carriage and when no one was there I knew the jump scare was coming, but I somehow still jumped.

While watching a documentary about Dracula on the History Channel many years ago they talked about how at the real castle Dracula (Poenari castle, not Bran) some priests were sent up to bless the place since the locals heard strange noises and claimed to see lights up there. But as the priests neared the castle a storm broke out so they had to do the blessing from a distance and I remember thinking “Conjuring storms is supposed to be one of the vampire Dracula’s powers.” and as I was thinking this, that’s when the door creaked open and I practically jumped out of my skin.

While watching Let the Right One In it was at the scene where Eli was climbing up the side of the hospital and I remember thinking “Ah, this isn’t so scary.” but then the power went out, and it just happened to be snowing heavily out side and it was the middle of the night so for a split second I thought “Oh, crap. Child vampire is coming for me!” I don’t really count gross-out as scary but I always used to have to look away at the face ripping scene in Night Breed.

When I was little I had a major fear of skeletons so anything with skeletons in it used to scare me when I was little, like that pool scene in Poltergeist. I once had a 1941 Wolf Man inspired Nightmare where I dreamt I woke up after having slaughtered people I care about as a werewolf. I couldn’t remember doing it but I knew I had done it and I remember the guilt I felt in the dream. Scene(s) that made you laugh hardest: I know it’s not really horror but the scene in Ghostbusters 2 when The Titanic comes to dock. “Well, better late than never...” Best soundtrack: Anything by Danny Elfman. Best plot twist: My favorite horror plot twist is actually from a TV show but my favorite plot twist is in Penny Dreadful when after you get used to the cliche, simple minded, child-like Frankenstein Monster with the shaved head suddenly the real Frankenstein Monster, based on the literary version with the long black hair and yellow eyes, turns up and rips apart the zeitgeist version. “Your first born has returned, Father.”

Legend of Hell House. I started watching Legend of Hell House because Roddy McDowell was in it. Roddy’s character was such a cliche sort of character to die in those sort of Haunted House movies. He had survived it before. He was timid. He was meek. He wore glasses. He was withdrawn. He was practically a check list of “dead character walking” but instead he became the hero. It was a pleasant surprise. Best directed: Anything by Guillermo del Toro.

Most unique characters: Human: Peter Vincent in Fright Night (1985). A loving homage to both Peter Cushing and Vincent Price you get to see the has-been actor evolve and grow into the hero he always pretended to be. Peter Vincent is the first character I can think of who fits this description. Non-human: Possibly the faun in Pan’s Labyrinth. Most underrated: The Company of Wolves.

Most stress-inducing: Pretty much every suspense thriller made by USA network or Lifetime. They got very frustrating.

Most overrated: Most H. P. Lovecraft related things.

Favorite to rewatch: Depends on my mood. See the top 10 list at the top.

Funniest: Gremlins 2.

Greatest inspiration: Really tough call. At the moment I’ll say Tales of Terror since that was inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and who hasn’t been inspired by Poe in some level?

Guilty pleasure: If it brings you pleasure it should never make you guilty. However... Films that I know to be bad but I watch anyway and like incude I, Frankenstein, Van Helsing, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I, Frankenstein is at the top of this list.

Fell asleep watching: Lust for a vampire. Somehow that film was very boring.

Deserves a sequel: The original Fright Night franchise (not remake.)

Coolest makeup: American werewolf in London, and pretty much anything Doug Jones has been made to wear by Guillermo del Toro.

Prohibited to watch growing up: My mother never forbid anything.

Left the biggest impression: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What 90s Goth teen wasn’t inspired, at least, somewhat, by this?

Tagging: @sorry-for-the-chocolate @endlessemptynight @lamb90 @treebrooke79 @thesaramonster @unnecessaryhorns @mrgoldsshopofhorrors @jr4cats @winterbirdybuddy @a-m-automaton @kaimaciel @drawing-down-th3-moon @good-times-bad-food @sunagirl @everthewildeone @syra-syara @theartofthecover @artwinsdraws @girl-with-cat-eyes @mentallydisturbedllama221b @thegreatvampirekiller @theimpossiblescheme @iknowwheremytowelis

If there’s anyone who wants to do this who I forgot to tag, by all means, feel free to do it.

Note: If you want to do this but feel unqualified because you don’t know enough horror, feel free to use Supernatural / Gothic fantasy / even PG spooky kid friendly Halloween films. You don’t have to do the survey if you don’t want to but know I am laid back on the criteria of what counts as horror.

10 notes · View notes

thebeethathums · 5 years

Text

Writing Question Tag Thing

Tagged by the always amazing @angryteapot and I stole their under the cut message because I am lazyyy.

Some of these answers are pretty long, so if you’re interested in learning a bit about me, then by all means, read under the cut!

Q: What is your coffee order?

Coffee isn’t really my jam. I’m more of tea drinker. I like most teas and I vary a lot but my current order is a London Fog... it’s like... Earl Grey tea with Milk and sweetener. Pretty good.

Q: What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

I don’t really consider myself cool thing kind of person but, to me, two things stand out. First, I’ve seen the Mona Lisa up close like behind the rope >:) My Grandmother was still spry enough at the time to travel with only minor accommodations but the Louvre is massive so they offered her a wheelchair. She graciously accepted and the guards let us go behind the rope so she could see. An amazing and serendipitous opportunity. Second, I cosplayed Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time at Comic-Con with a couple of friends dressed as Marceline and Finn and we met the voice actors for Marceline and her Dad! It was pretty awesome. YES, I’m a nerd. Deal with it.

Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?

Honestly, it was the lady my parents hired to help me with my college transfer application. She was a tough love kind of person (which I needed at the time) and one of the only people to tell me that what I could do art and writing wise HAD VALUE. That was kind of a turning point for me in a lot of ways. I will always ALWAYS be grateful to her for that.

Q: What has been your most memorable writing project?

OKAY. So fanfiction wise. Observers. Pretty obvi. Academically, my thesis for my English degree. I wrote about the idea of ‘the other’ in the Mass Effect video game series (ALL THREE OF THEM.) It was very long and involved lots of gameplay for research purposes. Personally, the most memorable for me out of them all would be the first short story I wrote. It had a really interesting concept and was well received by my peer reviewers and that made me happy which made it memorable *shrug*

Q: What does your writing path look like, from the earliest days until now?

I’ve always been a bit of a scribbler in a lot of ways. I had a poem published after some sort of school contest or something and I kept a sort of haphazard journal for years. To be completely honest, I didn’t start writing anything that wasn’t for school until fan fiction. That’s not to say I didn’t like writing. I just always channeled it into an academic setting. Which meant my teachers got A LOT of strange papers from me... to name a few: Aliens in Mystic anthropology vs. Aliens in modern media, Shakespeare's Effects on Science Fiction, Stage or Screen: How well do musicals translate into cinema, A Cinematic Analysis of Monsoon Wedding, Van Helsing the Hugh Jackman movie related Bram Stoker’s Dracula... among others. I think I also wrote an entire philosophy paper about unicorns at one point. I was that kid that always took a prompt somewhere the teacher never really intended. It wasn’t until I transferred to a different college that I felt like I had anything important to say story wise... and then fan fiction became an almost frantic outlet to get all of it out- followed quickly by some original work and more poetry. It’s been kind of a wild ride from there.

Q: What is your favorite part about writing?

Honestly, the control. I love being able to do whatever the heck I want with characters- mine or canon. Since I don’t really plan all that much when I write it starts out more of an idea like what if this person existed. What if they were all in this place. And then I get to run with it however I want and that is the best feeling. Soo... Control and details. I love world building.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

It depends on day. I’m not an early riser and thankfully my job doesn’t make be get up early at the moment. Work days I’m up by 8:30, work by ten, work either 7 or 9 hours. Then home and SLEEP. Front facing sales jobs for introverts are exhausting TBH. I hate it. Looking for something different ASAP. Off days are more relaxed but I’m a caregiver for my Grandma so mostly cooking and cleaning and then chilling with my puppers/writing/whatever else catches my fancy.

Q: What does your writing process look like?

Mostly staring at a google doc for an embarrassing amount of time. I only seem to have two writing modes. Staring or greatly inspired. When I’m actually writing good chunks it usually because I imagined some bits of how it will go over a day or so and then it just flows. Other times it’s staring and rewriting things a million times. I suppose that's pretty normal.

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten?

Letting go of toxic people in my life. I’m a big giver in a lot of ways and shy so I don’t make friends easily... unfortunately its led to a lot of situation where I’m taken advantage of or stomped on emotionally. It took me a long time to learn to be picky with who you surround yourself with.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

You can’t force other people to change. I’ve struggled with my relationship with my mother for ages and in an amazingly clear moment, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, if she doesn’t want to make a change to be a positive and more sensitive person toward me then she won't. I can’t force her to change her ways no matter how healthy it would be for both of us. Once I accepted this, things got easier to handle. I see her less but I know exactly what to expect when I do and let things roll off me a little better than I used to.

Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to start writing?

Writing anything, even if it's short and horrible in your mind, is better than writing nothing. Really. When I’m struggling I force myself to at least write something because a bad first draft can only improve whereas no draft can do absolutely squat.

Tagging: No tags. Don’t want to annoy anyone. BUT if anyone would like to answer them TAG me I would love to read your answers!

#personal #about BEE #tagged #writing

6 notes · View notes

rosalyn51 · 5 years

Link

'A Discovery of Witches': TV Review

by Daniel Fienberg, Jan 16, 2019

youtube

Bottom Line

Matthew Goode flairs his nostrils and Lindsay Duncan eats a fox.

Deborah Harkness' best-seller about vampires, witches and academic research into the field of alchemy comes to Sundance Now and Shudder with its interspecies swooning intact.

Early in the premiere of Sundance Now and Shudder's adaptation of Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, main character Diana Bishop gives a lecture on alchemy in front of an enraptured room of Oxford academics. As she is a visiting lecturer of some repute, the scene is designed to show her intelligence and her expertise and to introduce the alchemical fascination that's central to Harkness' books.

Except that for purposes of TV, A Discovery of Witches almost couldn't care less. The lecture is reduced to a montage, a series of half-observations that add up to nothing. Its purpose is sheer expediency, something that series adapter Kate Brooke knows audiences will expect on a fundamental level, but not one that the show wants to deal with on a utilitarian level.

In hasty fashion, it points to everything good and bad about the TV adaptation of A Discovery of Witches, which proves both better and worse than Harkness' book, already a piece of flawed supernatural romance occupying the breathless space somewhere between Twilight and Outlander.

Teresa Palmer plays Diana, an American scientific historian doing research in Oxford. Diana is also a witch, the reluctant heir to a legacy dating back to Salem and beyond. Other than performing menial tasks, Diana avoids using her magic, or at least she thinks she does. Working in the Bodleian Library one day, Diana discovers a previously unrecorded manuscript — drink every time a character says "Ashmole 782" and you will die — that may be tied to her work. It may be tied to far greater things, though. Soon, other mystical creatures begin to take an interest, including Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), an ancient vampire and professor of biochemistry. Matthew believes that Ashmole 782 may be the famous Book of Life, a text documenting the origins of witches, vampires and daemons, a tome that could offer secrets essential to all species.

Diana doesn't want anything to do with Matthew. He's a vampire. But he's also dreamy as heck, especially when he starts sniffing her. Matthew begins to look even better in comparison to ultra-ominous witch Peter Knox (Owen Teale), part of the shady Congregation, a Venice-based group taxed with maintaining balance between creatures and humans. Very quickly, Diana's life is in danger, as is her virtue since things with Matthew begin to get all hot-and-heavy in ways that may threaten that exact balance the Congregation is meant to keep. Oh, and Diana is also about to discover that that magic she's been keeping at bay is about to start exploding out of her every orifice. Like... literally!

There's an audience for tales of this nature. I doubt it's the audience that watches Shudder, since Discovery of Witches isn't even the slightest bit scary. And is it the Sundance Now audience? I'm not sure I fully grasp the Sundance Now brand. Qualitatively, the series also occupies that space between Twilight and Outlander.

Going back to that early lecture scene and the task of adapting entrusted to Brooke, whose credits include Mr. Selfridge and The Forsyte Saga.

On the page, Diana is a tough character. I don't love the online-friendly pejorative "Mary Sue," referring to generally female characters of disproportionate and unexplained proficiency, but Diana is dangerously close. She isn't just a witch. She is, despite absolute resistance to her powers, eventually the best darn witch in the world. The last half of the book is at least 10 percent characters telling Diana, "I didn't know you could do that!" and her replying "I didn't know either!" But what Diana has going for her is basically two things: She's the primary narrator of the book, so she almost always has a voice and perspective that steer the story, and she's brainy in ways that are frequently coming in handy and frequently astounding everybody around her.

In the series, Brooke has taken the focal perspective away. Matthew now gets the introductory voiceover that opens each episode and we're never allowed inside Diana's head for a second. Also, her alchemical training is virtually meaningless. Until her loins take over, it's work that drives both Diana and the narrative through much of the book. Here, she's really got nothing. I doubt viewers are going to suffer, but Palmer does. Diana has no voice and she's barely a character other than staring at Matthew first in terror, then in curiosity and then in boundless love. Throw in an accent that waxes and wanes with Diana's emotions and it's really not a decisive performance.

It becomes much more Goode's series and, if we're being perfectly honest, it's probably the better for it and surely the more satisfying to its target audience. In this series, vampires are ever flaring their nostrils at delectable passing human morsels, and Goode does it like a champ. He also drinks a lot of wine, albeit without Matthew Rhys. That's a The Wine Show joke. The series has Matthew drinking a lot of wine because it's something he does non-stop in the book. I can only assume this is meant as a burn on Bram "I Never Drink… Wine" Stoker and his version of vampirism.

If making Diana even more of a Mary Sue than she was on the page is a bad adaptive choice — don't get me started on Diana as a character only being activated by the sexual ritual known blushingly as "bundling" — Brooke smartly recognizes the dramatic structural flaws of Harkness' book, in which the first half alternates between Diana and Matthew going for tea, Diana doing her research, Matthew stalking Diana creepily and sometimes, for no reason, supernatural creature yoga. There are almost no other characters.

Brooke wisely pushes up the presence and prominence of supporting characters like Matthew's "son" Marcus (a very good Edward Bluemel), tormented Finnish witch Satu (a chilling Malin Buska), obsessive vampire Juliette (visually striking Elarica Johnson) and research-loving daemons Nathaniel (Daniel Ezra, sans All-American accent) and Sophie (Aisling Loftus). Some of these characters pop up for one or two scenes late in the book, with no context or value. Here they're actual characters. They aren't always successfully introduced, mind you. I defy anybody who hasn't read the book to watch the series and tell me what a "daemon" even is, much less what their powers might or might not be.

Teale, Castle Black dickhead Ser Alliser Thorne to Game of Thrones fans, benefits particularly from Knox's expanded screen time, giving probably the series' best performance. His closest rival is Lindsay Duncan as Matthew's vampire mama Ysabeau, who hasn't been given an expanded story, but does get to attack and eat a fox onscreen, making Discovery of Witches the first show of the Peak TV era to feature Tony winner Duncan, CBE, attacking and eating a fox.

Brooke also takes the series to Venice, not a part of the first book, and Venice looks spectacular. In fact, even if you aren't at all interested in forbidden supernatural romance, the directors — Juan Carlos Medina, Alice Troughton and Sarah Walker — make gorgeous use of filming locations in Oxford and Venice and Scotland. You might giggle hysterically at some of the limitedly realized supernatural stuff — Goode running in accelerated motion after a CGI stag is empirically hilarious and I defy anybody to tell me otherwise — and still enjoy the series as a photogenic travelogue. The shifting of locations and ability to tell stories in multiple locations makes the series feel less landlocked.

A Discovery of Witches picks up as it goes along through eight episodes. There's torture and foreplay and increasingly more magic. Only the finale is a bit of an anti-climax, setting the tables for two additional already ordered seasons, but I think the cliffhanger at the end of the finale will raise enough questions to keep viewers who make it that far curious.

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Matthew Goode, Edward Bluemel, Louise Brealey, Malin Buska, Aiysha Hart, Owen Teale Alex Kingston, Valarie Pettiford, Trevor Eve, Lindsay Duncan Creator: Kate Brooke, adapted from the book by Deborah Harkness Premieres: Thursday (Sundance Now and Shudder)

#matthew goode #matthew clairmont #teresa palmer #alex kingston #a discovery of witches

12 notes · View notes

mateushonrado · 6 years

Text

VLD sequel ideas (part 1)

Status Post #6021

After looking at sequel ideas from @aquaburst07 (link and link), @darkspellmaster (link), @sunset-spring (link and link), @godzillajuniorreborn (link), @nomadicism (link) and @voltronfandomhag (link), I've decided to have a go at doing my sequel series idea to Voltron: Legendary Defender, a four-part one with each part showing a different idea of a sequel.

Keep in mind that as at the time of this writing, VLD hasn't yet begun its third and possibly final story arc (possibly because there were some stuff that fans passed off as fact as in that the show would have eight 13-episode seasons and it could happen, even though it currently has a 78-episode commitment), so my ideas of a second animated reboot (once of which for such would have Lotor having a genuine redemption than a ruse like in VLD because come on, he can't always be the bad guy in every incarnation of Voltron and I was hoping that VLD would be different in terms for him) will be on hold.

Voltron: Next Gen

Here's how the first idea would go: I strongly doubt that Keith will rejoin BOM because let's face it, it just didn't work for him plus this would take place five years after the end of the 10,000 year Galra war. Basically the VLD version of Voltron Force but better, given that Daniel, Vince and Larmina are nowhere to be seen but they do appear in the third sequel idea.

Now on the main characters during the gap.

Keith stayed in space with Allura and co (which includes Merla [I do think that she'll appear in VLD plus JDS did say anything is possible for her to appear in the show], Krolia, Romelle and Coran) in order to repopulate the surviving Alteans.

Shiro, Lance, Hunk and Pidge returned to Earth, with Shiro becoming the new commander after Iverson's downfall.

Acxa became the new Empress of the Galra Empire and signed a treaty to end the war after the final battle in addition to remaining as an ally to Team Voltron (sorry guys, I'm not a fan of the idea of having Kolivan becoming the next ruler, given BOM's actions in "Kral Zera" aside from Keith, who actually did try to stop the bombs from activating).

New characters (Team Voltron Mark III)

Darrell Stoker (voiced by Joey Bragg) - Based on original series Pidge, in terms of his full name as his name was revealed in the Devil's Due series (even though it's set in a different continuity than the original series). Becomes the new Green Paladin.

Dorma (voiced by Lucy Hale) - The new Black Paladin.

Hazar (voiced by Jesse Plemons) - The new Blue Paladin and Dorma's older brother.

Twyla (voiced by Eliza Dushku) - The new Yellow Paladin.

Avok (voiced by Matt Lanter) - The new Red Paladin and is the half-brother of Romelle and Bandor.

Garrett Smythe (voiced by Sam Witwer) - A renegade Altean who is later revealed to be Coran's long-lost son. Becomes Dorma's co-pilot in the Black Lion.

TO BE EXPANDED...

#voltron legendary defender #vld sequel

4 notes · View notes

manuscripts-dontburn · 7 years

Text

October 2017 wrap up

I had an unexpectedly good reading month, considering both my work and university are slowly but surely becoming a crazy ride. I finished reading 12 books in a month, which is almost a double of what I manage to read usually! Furthermore I pretty much loved and enjoyed almost all of them! Let´s take them one by one in order I read them:

When Miss Emmie Was in Russia (Harvey Pitcher)

The first book I finished in October was a non-fiction about English Nannies and governesses who, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, ventured into Imperial Russia to take care of well-situated babies and children. While I did reach for the book mainly because it is directly related to my diploma thesis (on which I am currently working), I think it was a delightful and fascinating account! It is a very approachable book giving statement of some truly remarkable women in rather remarkable situations. While the topic may seem very specific, you don´t need to be a scholar to enjoy it. 4 stars!

Roverandom (J.R.R. Tolkien)

When a small dog angers an arrogant old wizard over a yellow ball, he is turned into a small toy by his spell. And that is just the beginning of a story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote for one of his sons, who had lost his favourite dog toy once on a beach. Few authors known for their epic words also understand fairy-tales and adventures. This may be a book for children, but it never feels infantile! Heart-warming, sweet and delightful. Also very short and ideal for readathons. I love Tolkien. 4 stars!

Peter the Great: His Life and World (R.K. Massie)

A work of truly mammoth proportions, so very detailed and thoroughly researched I can hardly imagine any other biography on Peter could give me more. The most famous of all Russian Tsars steps out of the pages vividly andone still feels both admiration and fear he had once inspired. It reads almost like a novel, both thanks to the skill of the author and because of Peter´s truly extraordinary existence and life. 5 stars!

Vampires in the Old Russia (Alexei Tolstoy)

I am quite sure the short stories included in this publications are translated and thus available in English as well, just not in a separate book like this one. In any case, this book surprised me - and pleasantly so! I had no idea what to expect, but I imaged a rather slow and boring style with ambiguous stories. Oh no! This reads really quickly, the author wastes no time and all the three stories included gave me chills! A very satisfying October read and perfect for anyone who likes the works of Bram Stoker! 4 stars!

The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón)

A stunning book. Mystery, family tragedy, historical fiction, thriller - it encompasses a whole lot of literary styles and perfectly shapes them into one impressive story decorated with wonderful writing. I find it difficult to review this book, it is definitely something you should read without any preconcieved notions. But read it you should! 4,5 stars!

Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy (Diana Preston)

One of those non-fictions which read like fiction, yet are even more haunting since they once truly were a reality. This was the second book on Lusitania I have read and I suspect will be the last. The story of the sinking and the aftermath is just so depressing - and makes you in comparison realize what an organized and fairly "glamorous" event the sinking of the Titanic was. Just the length (Titanic 2 hours, Lusitania 20 minutes) gives you an idea. (Naturally both the tragedies were equally painful and I am not saying one was worse than the other when it comes to loss of life). Diana Preston gives a lot of information on all the events surrounding the ship, not merely the tragedy itself, and I have to admit some of it I skimmed. Still, a vivid and touching book that made me rather depressed. 4 stars!

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

Being in a Halloween mood (though we do not celebrate Hallowen here) I picked up a venerated classic written by Mary Shelley. I loved the atmosphere and the writing was beautiful. I liked the idea and one has to take into account how original and new it was at the time. Unfortunatelly, the book could never hold my attention for too long. I had to remind myself to pick it up again and again, I felt it dragged for most of the time, and I was actually glad when I finished. 3 stars!

Children of Irena Sendler (Anna Mieszkowska)

Not available in English as far as I gather, but you could find more books about this remarkable woman to draw some information from. And maybe better books too. I felt this one was a bit disorganized and I wanted more of actual Irena, but that does not mean the information the publication carries are without value. On the contrary. More people need to read about Mrs. Sendler. You included. 3,75 stars!

ABBA: The Official photobook (Petter Karlsson)

ABBA was my most favourite music group when I was a kid and a teenager, and till this day I love them greatly. The day the book arrived I immediatelly sat down and went through every photo and every word that it contained. Not much information was new to me, a passionate ABBA buff, but a large number of the (HQ and beautiful) photos are commented upon by the ABBA themselves which makes the book a delightful and new experience. 5 stars!

A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience (Emerson W. Baker)

I ploughed and skimmed my was through this book which felt longer than it shold have. While I can appreciate the research the author did and can see his attempts and neat organization of facts, the truth remains that the writing is bland and I felt bored. Bored by something as interesting as Salem witch trials! Furthermore, aside from enjoyment I rate non-fiction books according to how much I have learned. Here, sadly, the book fails again. I retained very little information after reading it. There was too many names, too much repeated information.... one got lost quickly in all that. Perhaps the book would do me better service had I previously had some notion about the Salem events, but unfortunatelly this was my first venture into the topic and not an encouraging one. 2 stars!

The Muse (Jessie Burton)

Jessie Burton is an author full of promise. Her debut novel was good, The Muse is better still. I think a bit more mystery would have added a lot to the atmosphere, since everything is really explained almost the moment one is introduced to the mystery, but I also admit that as the book progressed it was more and more difficult to put it down. Well written, with an interesting story and also including a wonderfully "normal" diversity (meaning the diverse characters are simply diverse and .... not caricatures... and not "just" that one thing that makes them diverse.... urgh... just go and read it yourself to understand), The Muse is a commendable piece of work. Looking forward to more by this author. 4 stars!

Ben Hur (Lewis Wallace)

The first time I picked the book up I put it down after three pages. The descriptions were too much for me. The second time I pulled through those first three pages, and devoured the book in mere days, descriptions and all. Ben Hur has a strong story, and its descriptive nature (combined with the knowledge of WHEN the book was written) only ads to the captivating charm. The only thing I have to stress out is that the writing, at times, hobbles uncomfortably and awkwardly, and the treatement of two love interests of the hero is... well... pretty much just regular sexist and while I understand the society was like this in 1880s.... it still is not my favourite thing. Finally: I utterly love the film with Charlton Heston. It is a masterpiece. And the book added to my love for it even more. 4 stars!

So there you have it my dear fellow booklings! Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Do you agree with me or not? And what did you read last month? I would love to know!

#booklr #books #reading wrap up #October 2017 #bookish musings

7 notes · View notes

brokenmusicboxwolfe · 7 years

Text

I saw:

Bram Stoker’s Dracula- You know, this miss titled film that tosses in a reincarnated lost love. Please ignore all the stupid things the makers claimed about faithfulness to the nove. In fact, with vampire romance, the Dan Curtis tv movie from around twenty years before could have inspired it more than the original novel. Someone at the network that owned the tv movie must have thought so too because I remember them (CBS?) rerunning it when this came out, and they never reran such old stuff.

Anyway....

Once upon a time a dude name Vlad finds his beloved wife commits suicide when she mistakenly thinks he’s dead. Thanks to grief and a callous priest his throws a fit. Apparently god does have any patience with such overwhelming emotional outbursts, even if no one gets hurt. The super sensitive deity throws his own tizzy, and it’s blood, eternal life, and a few centuries to come of corpses lying around. You know, if god really did toss out ol’ Vlad it seems to have done more harm than good to the world. Maybe just ignoring the meltdown and letting him die eventually of a normal death would have been better?

So cut ahead to the end of the 19th century where Jonathan with a questionable accent leaves his fiancé Mina, also of a questionable accent, to go do a job involving a real estate off in Transylvania. The client named Dracula ...hmm, could he be a decendent of the sword slasher?....lives in a rickety castle, wears the most spectacular red robes, and had his wrinkled old head topped with one of the more unusual hair styles known to man. He also has a shadow with a mind of it’s own, but the visiting pencil pusher is too polite to mention it. Or secretly needs glasses but thought he was too cool to wear then? The counts twister champion gal pals do seem to take a fancy to Jonathan’s flesh, so maybe vanity was a bad idea. Dracula thinks a bride swap is on order, and he’s offering three for one.

Back home little Miss Mina is hanging with her rich and naughty bestie, but she is just a spectator as Lucy teases her suitors. But what do you know, she meets her own fella. And OMG it’s Dracula grown young who was Vlad all along! And Mina is the reincarnation of his dead wife! Mina may be engaged to a fella stuck away on business, but that won’t stop her from going out on dates. Bad Boy Drac chastely takes her out for dancing and intoxicated chats, but while he “loves her too much” to do the fang gang deed with her, he has no such quams about Lucy. He has dinners with Mina but finds time to sneak into her best friend’s bedroom on a regular basis for rape....wait...sex?....no,no,no....blood draining.

Now this gets the attention of Lucy’s three boyfriends and, in turn, an obnoxious blame the victim (”the devil’s concubine” indeed!) type designated smart guy. They set out to protect Lucy from her assaults, but they make a total hash of it. When Mina rushes off to be with Jonathan, what with him being all sick from weeks as a vampire milk cow followed through a crawling in the rain escape, Drac/Vlad doesn’t take it well. He and kills Lucy, vamping her, because that’s a nice healthy thing to do to best friend of the woman you say you love, just because she choses another guy!

So Lucy gets the gang rape metaphor staking/beheading, Mina gets a romance novel sex scene by way of bloodletting with her Vlady Bear, and the guys stomp around. Mina’s, like, totally into her boyfriend thanks to their toothy make out session, but stopping him will depend on her and twu wuv.

I mock, I mock. But you want to know something really shocking? I really like the movie and have probably seen it dozens of times!

Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe. I’m sure I’ve mentioned how when I was 9 my best friend and I both got copies, giggling and whispering over the “good bits”. I’ve read it many times since. I mention every year the 1970s BBC Count Dracula that is hands down my favorite adaptation, and possibly the most faithful. You might expect me to be a purist, or at least grumble about how it betrays characters or original intent. But dang it all, I like it anyway.

It isn’t like I can’t be critical. Tonight I launched into this whole thing with Mom about the way it was played as this great romance, despite Drac’s behavior. I mean, he stalks her manipulating her memory, drags her into a corner intending to assault her despite her pleas for him stop, dates her though she is engaged, repeatedly secretly attacks her friend in what might as well be rapes, responds to her dumping him by actually murdering her friend, gets the “sex” scene by sneaking into her bed while she’s sleeping.....oh, yeah. That’s all romantic! LOL Mom shook her head, saying I sure didn’t sound like I liked it!

I realize a lot of it is because it’s a beautiful movie. I mean aesthetically, with everything from music, sets, lovely old fashioned effects and, famously, wonderful costumes. (I have a book just of photos of those costumes!) Despite my pointing out that this is NOT a healthy romance, it does embrace the unabashedly over the top romantic in a way that’s enjoyable....and blood soaked. Bloody is good with vampires! LOL Hell no, it’s not my favorite version (not even close!), but sometimes just feel like this box of candy.

Oh, confession time: Growing up I did spend a little time imagining up a romance take on Dracula. But it was nothing like this, with no reincarnation or breaking up the Harkers. No, I paired Drac up with Lucy! Hey, he had three brides and she had three suitors! They were soul mates! LOL And I had the plan, before it’s foiled, to be for her to turn her three boy friends into vampire husbands. It would have been a crowded household if their intent had worked out, what with three vamp brides, three vamp husbands, and Drac and Lucy as the heads of this family......But then Lucy gets staked and the attack on Mina is all about vengence from a heartbroken vampire. Look, I was a weird kid.....

#movies #bram stoker's dracula #I hate to call it bram stoker's #but a title is a title

3 notes · View notes

centaurianthropology · 7 years

Text

Team Archive’s Roles

I’ve been thinking about the roles that Sims and Team Archives play, and why each of them is critical. Why each of them is irreplaceable in the eyes of the Archives. The below is going to contain both canon evidence and some massive speculation on my part, so yeah. Combo canon-analysis and fanon ponderings, anyone?

Jonathan Sims – THE ARCHIVIST

I think, in light of the increasing evidence that Sims was selected for this role by the Archive itself, and that he would be very hard to replace, that Sims is slowly becoming the embodiment of the archives. All others roles in the archives are ancillary to this goal, and to supporting him. Of course, how those roles get filled may well determine how much humanity and how much sanity Sims gets to keep, so they certainly aren’t any less important to us. They’re just less important to the Archive itself.

It’s interesting that the first urge Sims had upon assumption of his new job in early season 1 was to record. Not just to organize the archives which, while a daunting task, could go relatively quickly with his assistants helping carry and shelve. But instead of that direct and very archival job, he started trying to record his own voice reading out all the old statements. And when he couldn’t just put some of them onto his laptop, he dug out an old tape deck (almost like he knew without knowing that one would be there to find) and started recording himself that way. His own voice, amalgamating the words and experiences of others into a gestalt of information and fear and feeling. Into the Archivist.

Sims is becoming a repository of information himself, without even noticing he’s doing it. Even in the midst of his paranoia, he kept recording the statements. You could say that he was using that as the cover of his job, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think it’s a compulsion. His voice and his words MUST unify the information in order to turn it from separate stories into a single story. It’s a bizarrely meta approach to storytelling, if true (and good on Jonny Sims for it), that we are listening to a slowly evolving story, where it took us a while to realize there even was a large, evolving story, and as we’re doing that, as we’re realizing that there is a larger SOMETHING at play in the narrative, Sims himself (character, not writer), is creating a larger SOMETHING through the very reading of those statements.

Tim Stoker – THE OUTSIDER AND RATIONALIST

If we’re haring off the deep end into the uncharted waters of horror and madness, there has to be one person who tries to anchor everyone in sanity and rationality, no matter how futile that ultimately proves. Tim has slowly evolved to fill that role nicely. He always was the outsider looking at all these odd people, and finding the humor in the terrible events surrounding them. He was the one to keep it light, at first, to disbelieve and to work with people outside the Archives more than anyone else there. After the attack on the archives and Sims’ subsequent falling apart, Tim has become more and more blunt about being the voice of reason and about being the one who will tell Sims the unvarnished truth about how everyone is faring, whether or not Sims wants to or can hear it. He’s the first to express true doubt, and the one it’s hardest to convince that certain things are beyond their control.

Think about how shaken he was to realize that he couldn’t leave, and Sims couldn’t fire him. Tim is a person who is fundamentally about independence. He is someone who genuinely enjoys standing apart, and that was just ripped away from him. I really want to see Tim slowly figure out how to operate as an outsider while stuck inside, and I want to see him force the others repeatedly to remember how not-right things are. Part of staying sane in the archives, I think, is to remember that what happens there isn’t normal, to not get so immersed in the stories and the vast web that is the interconnected supernatural world that it becomes mundane. That way lies totally subsuming oneself in the Archivist’s role, so Tim is perhaps the most critical person in maintaining Sims’ humanity in the face of the archives. Tim’s greatest power in this situation is that he is stubbornly ordinary.

I also think that this shows us a bit about how much latitude a role can give its holder. Tim went from a relatively light and playful interpretation of his role of rationalist and outsider to a confrontational, angry one, but with the same basic drive and result: to force everyone around him to recognize how wrong the situation is, and to approach it rationally.

Sasha James – SEEKER OF TRUTH

Sasha’s original role throughout season 1 was to be the person who dug up information. She’s the one who continually provided context and elaborating details beyond the statements themselves. As powerful as those original stories were, it was Sasha more than either of the other assistants who had the technical ability, tenacity, and legal fluidity to dig up the threads that connected the stories, and the backgrounds that really sketched out the larger picture.

And I think this is critical to understanding why Not-Sasha is so fundamentally wrong. Because she’s obfuscating, rather than bringing new truths to light. She’s intrinsically more Closed Eye than Open Eye, and the Archives is far more Open Eye. While she lacks the technical acumen Sasha had, she also isn’t trying to make up for it in other ways. She isn’t hounding down old records in public works offices or talking to witnesses. In fact, whenever any of her colleagues attempt to say what it is she’s doing now, they draw a blank. It’s only her ability to make certain they don’t notice what’s wrong with her that’s letting her clear lack of work go unnoticed. If I’m right, that’s why the Archive is making Sims so paranoid, because the three-legged support he was meant to have is now missing a leg, and everything is in danger of tipping over.

I’ll be interested to see what happens to Not-Sasha should the real Sasha return and resume her role (or, if she doesn’t return, if someone like Melanie were to step in and take over that role). What happens to something the Archive rejects? We know Gertrude met a nasty end, but how much of that was the Archive's doing, or at least the Archive allowing it to happen within its own walls? How much control does the archive have over those under its sway? I feel like, with Not-Sasha, we might well get a far better elucidation of the nasty, dangerous side of the archive.

Martin Blackwood – THE PROTECTOR

Hear me out on this one. Martin has always seemed to be the carer of the group. He’s the one who makes sure everyone is fed, and tries to keep spirits up. He’s put himself in charge of Sims’ physical well-being earlier this season, and has attempted (with less success than he’d probably want) to help take care of Sims’ mental well-being as well. Not all of his efforts are actually good for people, but he does try.

But I’m not altogether certain that the Archive cares about the sanity or health of its Archivist. It cares about function, so he has to stay sane enough to remain rational (Tim’s job) and to link all the pieces together to form the gestalt (Sasha’s job). But as for personal well-being? I’m not sure that’s something that matters to the Archive at all.

Which leads me to conclude that what Martin is actually meant to be, and the reason he freaked out so much over accidentally leaving Jon and Tim to be eaten by worms, is that Martin is actually filling the role of a protector. He’s meant to keep Sims alive and sane enough to do his job. Everything beyond that is Martin’s own initiative and mother-hen instincts. But I have this funny feeling Martin is meant to be some sort of mystical bodyguard. Which is hysterical to me.

This also plays into the idea I’ve had for a long time (and I know a few of you share) that Martin’s mother is a runaway Lukas, and her difficulties have largely stemmed from her ties to that family. I think that Martin has old power in his blood, though his ability to tap that power is all but nonexistent. He’s got a little knowledge and a little aptitude, but far more than that, he has the will to protect Sims. We especially see it in his increasingly frustration this season, as Sims tears himself apart, and nothing Martin does seems to help. Martin is meant to protect Sims, but Martin himself has reinterpreted what it means to be the protector.

Gertrude Robinson – THE WOMAN ALONE

So what about Gertrude, who lacked assistants that we know of? First, I think she may well have had assistants in the past. I think Mary Kaey may well have been meant to fulfill either Sasha’s role or Martin’s, and maybe even did for a time. But Mary had the unique ability to remain unbound, and so she was one of the few people associated with the archive who managed to walk away from it.

Maybe it was Mary’s departure, or maybe it was the possible deaths of her other assistants that tipped Gertrude over to solitude, but whatever it was, Gertrude took on all four roles. She tried to keep herself somewhat grounded in rationality, wrapping herself in coldness and distance. She tried to tie all the threads together herself, flying all over the world and even purchasing Leitner’s books. She tried to protect herself.

And in the end, she failed in that last part. I don’t know if that was because she was never meant to do all those things alone, or if she broke with what being the Archivist was all about, or if her death had nothing whatsoever to do with the will of the Archive. But in the end, she died alone, without any support.

I don’t know what that means for our current intrepid team. I don’t know if it means that between the four of them, they could keep each other sane and safe, or if it just means that they’ll die with company. But I hope for their sakes they find a way to take the roles they apparently can’t leave, and make themselves as happy and sane as possible, for as long as possible.

#The Magnus Archives #it's a meta party!#I've been wanting to articulate this for a while

19 notes · View notes

themikeymonster · 7 years

Text

went in to halfprice books today, remembered the terrible theory of not being able to tolerate books because of the awful cliches - --- --------- the boring main male characters and regrettable plots --- ----------------- which i also saw a lot of ----------- and quickly fell into despair --------------

i defaulted to horror, because even if your protagonists are awful, you just cheer the monster on :3c

saw a lot of John Saul??? I don’t know authors very well. If fanfic didn’t let me immediately access all of an authors works, then I’d be even worse at following someone’s entire anthology. anyway.....

Picked up one of his books, Creature. Im screeching, because I just checked and apparently this is a book from 1990? nice. The back is like “A powerful high-tech company. A postcard-pretty company town. Families. Children. Sunshine. Happiness. A highschool football team that never-ever-loses. And something else. Something horrible ....” What made me buy the book was where it switched to italics. “Now, there’s a new family in town. A shy, nature-loving teenager. A new hometown. A new set of bullies. Maybe the team’s sports clinic can help him. Rebuild him. Then they won’t hurt him again. They won’t dare.”

If John Saul ends up being a tolerable writer, I’ll have lots of material to read. I mean, the shelves were full of all kinds of books - apparently he’s pretty prolific.

I also picked up a couple of werewolf books, because I’m always a slut for werewolves, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my original story which riffs off the standard horror tropes involving werewolves (but seems like it’s actually going to feature a lot of social commentary ............ a favorite default of mine, it seems. :\ )

One is Wolf’s Trap, the back of which reads like a hilariously bad cop/noir novel. “Nick Lupo is a good cop - a bit of a renegade at times, with the instincts of a great detective .... or maybe a wolf. Lupo has a lot in common with wolves, which is only natural considering he’s a werewolf. He’s battled the creature inside him for years, but now there’s another predator in the area. A bloodthirsty serial killeris leaving atrail of victims, and it’s up to Lupo to track him down and stop the slaughter. Will Lupo dare to unleash one beast to stop another?”

I’m going into that book with no expectations, because Lupo, are you serious? The cover art is also a bit ridiculous. This one is a bit harder to date, but apparently was a finalist for the Bram Stoker award in 2004.

The other book, I wasn’t initially certain was a werewolf book despite the title “Red Moon.” I found out when I cracked it open looking to avoid any first person pov, where someone is explicitly called a Lycan. This one reads, “When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she it. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge ... and the battle for humanity will begin.”

It’s got a rather minimalist cover and seems to have been published in 2013, so it’s probably the most recent of the books I picked up. It seems to be a more classic type of book that I enjoy reading from time to time - like the way Michael Crichton writes. The kind where the characters take second position to the plot. I find that’s the easiest original content to consume for me, where as with fanfiction, I have to have character exploration and focus on relationship dynamics to remain engaged.

Then I somehow came across a legit zombie heroine. I actually didn’t read the title until I got it home: “The Year of Eating Dangerously”. The back of this one reads, “As a lawyer, Mallory Caine considers it her duty to defend the innocent. As a flesheating zombie, she knows how to take a bite out of crime. So when a scared ten-year-old boy asks for her help - claiming that his mother wants to eat him - Mallory rises to the occasion. Unfortunately, the occasion is a Satanic Ritual, the mom is a monster, and the boy is a sacrifice. Before you can say ‘the devil made me do it,’ Mallory is caught dead center between a family of freaks, fire-breathing demons, and the final battle of good versus evil. If she doesn’t have enough on her plate, the brain-chomping lawyer has to defend her zombie-hunting father in court. And, oh yeah: her flesh-eating secret is about to be exposed by a sexy LAPD detective who’s good enough to eat. What’s a zombie girl to do ...?”

IT’S JUST SO DELIGHTFUL??? I HOPE THE STORY IS AT LEAST AS GOOD AS THAT BLURB. I was pretty bored until I discovered that book. Horror is entertaining and all, but few things are as delightful as the completely absurd. I’m only dismayed to discover it’s not the first in the series - i really prefer to read series in order - but if it follows the usual format of book series of this genre, then I can probably deal with it. It’ll probably be one of the last ones I read, because I always save the delightful for last =w= This one came out in 2012.

and the book that I picked up that I’m most excited to read, “Heart Sick” which actually wasn’t in the horror section but next door in the Mystery/Thriller section. This one reads: “Portland Detective Archie Sheridan spent years tracking Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful and brutal serial killer. In the end, she was the one who caught him .... and tortured him ... and then let him go. Why did Gretchen spare Archie’s life and then turn herself in? This is the question that keeps him up all night - and the reason why he has visited Gretchen in prison every week since. Meanwhile, another series of Portland murders has Archie working on a brand-new task force ... and heading straight into the line of fire. The local news is covering the case 24/7, and it’s not long before Archie enters a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the killer - and his former captor. But this time, it’s up to Archie to save himself ...”

I mean, aside from the fact that i’m always a slut for serial killers, EW LITERALLY DRAWS COMPARISONS TO HANNIBAL LECTOR ON THE COVER, IM CRYING!!!!! LIKE??? IS THIS NOT THE RED DRAGON??????? UM??? Only made extremely heterosexual lmaooooo

but it’s somewhat interesting for the man to be the victim, and also I was seduced by the bright red cover and crude heart shape and the title “heart sick”, I am predictable and weak. “Love hurts. Sometimes it’s torture.” COVER BLURB PLEASE, I ALREADY PICKED THE BOOK UP, IT IS PAID FOR.

It’s definitely taunting me lol

I mean, I’m 99.999999% sure already that whatever I’m dreaming up in my own head is better than this book, if only because I can cater to my own psychological quirks 100% and ahhh ahhh but i loVE some psychos in love ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

#also typos in the blurbs are completely mine since i just typed them down myself #it may have been easier to check and see if the blurbs existed on line for the newer books #but ........ in the end this somehow felt easier tbh #anyway I feel like this is a good and diverse sampling of the kind of thing i like #two really cheesy detective/lawyer novels #a plot driven thriller #and the old Goosebumps style horror type thing #and then ....... serial killers lmao #i really get into that kind of deep obsessive co-dependence thing #IM SO WEAK #give me that brutal murderous homicidal kind of love ❤#well my preference is that they don't hurt each other ......... everyone else yes but each other no

3 notes · View notes

nettlestonenell · 7 years

Link

Afterword

Here I am, five years to the day of when I posted the go-for-broke chapter of Don’t Give Out With Those Lips of Yours where Marion ‘dies’/is sent away to Germany, posting the final chapter of the entire Don’t series, as well as an afterword.

I have always thought of myself as a persuasive writer—certainly with regard to writing, that is what has most often drawn me to the process.

It might seem strange to say, a persuasive fiction writer, but it makes sense to me: getting the facts, figuring out the character, persuading a reader to buy into the fact that the story is genuine, [even though it is] set somewhere they’ve never been (time or place), and that the characters are believable and ring true.

Persuasion plays an even greater part in fan fiction. Can I, as an author, sell you on decisions this character—whom you may know quite intimately—will make? Do their words sound like them? How about the setting, the diction?

Not many know it, but I promised Glorious Clio that 2016 would see the conclusion of the Don’t Series. And I meant it when I said it. Well, 2016 proved a lot of things, a great many of them disappointing, and on this count I, too, failed 2016.

But here it is, February 9, 2017, and it’s DONE.

Funny, as Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree actually began in direct relation to my finishing the long work Death Would Be Simpler to Deal With—and fearing what came next.

What would I think about? What would I scribble notes about on random scraps of paper? What would I write?

It was 2010, the year of season one Sherlock in the US. The idea of an Alternate Timeline re-boot hung heavily in the air. And me? I couldn’t think about anything but Robin and Marian MOST OF THE TIME. Go to a concert—imagine every song through that lens, for example. I was still really, really burnt from the show killing Marian, and the failure to even follow through dealing with it on the scale it deserved. But mostly the show killing Marian. And Robin. And…[footage not found].

Look, Marian and Robin die OLD, their deeds accomplished, their lives fully LIVED. That’s how it works. It’s not JFK’s Camelot, a sort of short, limited run. It’s a lifetime. It’s-- Anyway…

I knew about AT or Uber-fiction from the Xena fandom, at the time the most famous of which was Melissa Good’s Dar and Kerry stories (Xena and Gabrielle’s dynamic transplanted into present day).

As for WWII? Anyone who examined my childhood would say that I was destined to create something about that era. Myself, I was raised in the post-war 50s. Yes, I am Older than Reblogginhood—but I’m not that old. But when one lives rurally, time does move slower, and despite my parents being born 1939 and 1941, they were raised more like turn-of-the-century babies. My mother recalls the installation of electricity in her home, a home that never saw running water. And so, despite living in a world with Original Madonna and Thriller, at my house we were listening more often than not to “Wonderful Songs and Inspiration” on Cincinnati’s WSAI (one of the program hosts was George Clooney’s dad/Rosemary Clooney’s brother). Big Band songs were often the standard, the soundtrack of a lot of our lives.

My father (more on him later) consumed WWII-centric film and television round-the-clock. From early days I saw war films (I may not know all their titles, but if Hollywood made it, chances are I saw it—multiple times), I went to bed at night to the sound of anti-aircraft guns, or submarines diving.

In the days of the big three networks, it was public television that most often showed my dad’s John Wayne films, Audie Murphy, documentaries, and (bless them) screwball comedies and serious dramas infused with pre-war or war time life of (often) civilians.

And that proved to be my jam. The lives of regular people, un-enlisted people, in the midst of war. Often, this means women. Sometimes, it means prisoners. And there’s simply not enough written or filmed about them for my taste. If the soldier’s role in WWII is well-documented (perhaps, even, in contrast with other wars, over-documented), the civilian/non-combatant story is nearly silent, with the exception of Holocaust literature.

So as Papa Nettlestone watched his war films, I was always like a research assistant, looking into the corners of frames, fixating on incredibly brief scenes and unnamed characters who seemed to fit into that class: ‘regular’ people and how they managed life during that war.

Shows like Jeeves and Wooster (and those period-filmed screwball comedies) showed me a pre-war lifestyle the wealthy in both America and Britain took part, or at least a facsimile of it.

And the timeline—the intersection of this period of human history: that a title-stripped Russian aristocrat raised in the opulent (and it could be said) out-of-touch Court of the Tsars could find himself in the war, become part of the new world following that war.

That an English lord born during the hoop skirts of the American Civil War, could see the colonization of India, women get the vote—and live to see the fashion of WWII, and the German’s plans to exterminate an entire people. Hot dog, that compelled me. Such drastic reorganization of the world, of society, of all European aristocracy. Still blows my mind.

But credit also must go to Clio, who stuck with me once she found Death, faithful in communication and reviewing. I knew she loved Hogan’s Heroes (at our house, also, required viewing), that team dynamic. I loved it, too, the soldiers now rendered non-combatants by virtue of the fact they are imprisoned—yet finding clever means of resistance. I loved The Great Escape (a film that has plenty for both me and my dad). Thomas Carter a definite character ‘descendant’ of Steve McQueen’s Cooler King, Hiltz.

I love stories about people hiding downed RAF pilots (Mary Lindell in One Against the Wind). Hiding Jews. Fusia Podgorska (Hidden in Silence) who hid thirteen people in her house’s attic for two and a half years, feeding and supporting them while she was still in her teens. Eight months of this time, German officers and their nurse girlfriends occupied the rooms directly below that attic. Charlotte-freaking-Gray (please, just the film version) getting stranded in France without a full cover story, unable to tell a soul who she really is, scheming to find a way to her crashed RAF lover, and living a constant knife’s-blade-edge away from being discovered.

Papa Nettlestone is a 1939 baby. He never really saw his father (that he would remember) until the man returned home after the war (Purple Heart, Battle of the Bulge). Papa N was six years old at the time. Their relationship was never less than damaged. So he’s that bridge between Then and Now, my dad, as is Zara--but he’s also quite strongly the story’s Carter.

Although what he would guaranteed say to me if he were ever to find and read these stories (which will never happen), is that they should contain battlefront action. And that it’s a great shame that they don’t.

Mind you, when I began writing this I had no thought to cultivating a series of stories. Apple Tree was meant to be a one-off as they say in television, not a back-door pilot.

It was just meant to get me over the hump of concluding Death. But, as with any good (I would say) short story, the final lines of it conveniently spiraled outward.

And then Clio said she would read the story forever in one of her reviews.

And that? That was clearly a challenge.

And Carter proved to be the necessary plot propulsion key.

I don’t know how long it took me to fully ‘break’ the story (obviously, via the series, certain plot beats were already there—but how to re-imagine them?), it happened over time.

I remember where I was standing in my house when I realized not only that Guy should burn down the barn, not the house, but that Marian wouldn’t die but would be sent away to a camp. (Originally, those two plot points happened more back-to-back in the narrative.)

I went with four stories primarily because that’s how many lines from the song I wanted to use. Purely dumb luck that it worked out so well.

I chose the Channel Islands after seeing an advertisement for the Island at War DVD series in a mail order catalog, and reading the small blurb saying the Nazis had occupied British islands, which left me suitably dumbstruck. I know A LOT about WWII for someone who has never studied it, as I said above. I’d never heard of these islands, much less their war-time past.

So, I looked them up.

Now, keep in mind: when I began this odyssey in November of 2010, the Internet was not what it is today. Today I can sit and watch YouTube video after YouTube video of Channel Islands travelogues. I can *see* Sark. Then, Google could find exactly ONE image to show me of Joe Kennedy (Carter). The Channel Islands had neither an official webpage nor a very good Wikipedia entry. I was largely flying blind. I wasn’t even certain the estate I’d imagined as Barnsdale (and its house) could feasibly be located on Guernsey.

The internet has vastly improved in Channel Island content in the intervening years. (Somewhat, likely, due to interest in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society published in 2008, but of which I was unaware until a reader brought it to my attention in the review section of-–I believe—Lover’s Lane.)

As I learned new information I tried to make use of it—without mucking up anything I’d shared in the narrative prior.

Finding Sark was, quite frankly, the kind of plot/setting gift any writer would endlessly thank her muse for. It is, and I say this as a person having never been there, the almost perfect 1:1 stand-in for Sherwood.

I do have regrets. I regret not better outlining how the Sheriff even caught wind that Stoker’s sub was coming to Sark in Lips (sylvi10 caught me out on that giant oops when it was far too late to fix).

I regret that fanfiction.net turns all my double dashes (--) into (-) single ones. That its cut and paste interface erases my (*,&,+)s that are meant to help me insert lines where breaks need to be.

I regret not allowing for more of a story between Mitch and Eva, that I didn’t get to make better, fuller use of Freyga Tuckmann and most particularly ReichKaptain Lamburg (at one point there was a whole side story during the break in Lips right after the wedding that focused on the unit and Lamburg, with R/M only in the deep background).

I regret misplacing the notes (I will find them someday!) that name Allen and Eleri’s two daughters.

As a (fan? is that the right word here?) of A Tale of Two Cities, I regret not having Robin reference Dr. Manette’s being ‘returned to life’ in the wake of his own ‘death’ and Marion’s ‘death’ and rediscovery. (I will not elaborate here on the Sidney Carton/Charles Darnay similarity to Marion/Magda, but I will recognize that I see it in the narrative, and that reading a lot of Dickens in my formative years is doubtless to blame.)

And while I don’t at all regret the format/design of ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home (I 100% believe that it is done in the right, and the only, way to best relate the stor(ies) at that point), I do recognize that it is a format not at all conducive to reading easily in choppily posted, stretched-out-over-time excerpts.

I do not regret, but will take a sentence or two to explain that if at times words for things or spellings alter, such as sometimes tire, others tyre—color or colour, it’s because I always thought of the original series as a sort of US/British hybrid. US in the sense that so much pop culture is from there, and a series as openly anachronistic as BBC Robin Hood is going to have that aspect to it, Hollywood sort of creeping in here and there, the word ‘Okay’ being thrown around. For that matter, though he’s become a German Kommandant, the Sheriff, to me, still pronounces his English the same as Keith Allen doing Vaisey. He still barks LEFT-tenant at Guy, though a German would say LOYT-nant. Robin still says ‘punch’ like Jonas.

I try not to regret that there’s a lot of Love in this story, a lot of couples. The BBC series is responsible for a lot of that, I think. Sometimes I wonder if it were to be placed in a bookstore (and not shelved as fanfiction) if it would get sorted into the ‘Romance’ section.

I did write it for myself—make no mistake, this is 5000% the story I Want to Read, and one of the reasons I wrote it down (that I write anything down) is because it started to become so immense I was having trouble keeping track of it all in my head.

I had gone to an October yard sale the year of the first story (some of you know this story), I bought a cassette tape of Time Life’s “Romantic Memories of the War Years”—filled with pre-war and war-era Big Band. A four tape series, they only had the first one. Because at that time I was doing a sort of Robin/Marian overlay to almost anything I thought about, I overlaid them on those songs, and it was a potent fit for me.

I had Glorious Clio on board, and soon enough sylvi10 joined in, and—much later—reblogginhood. I mention them in particular because while I was writing the story for myself, their comments—as do any comments—caused me to turn my attention to certain parts of plot and character, and the narrative changed in specific ways directly related to those reviews. (Which is a definite endorsement that readers should consider writing reviews.)

Allen Dale bloomed as fully as he did in the way that he did due to sylvi10, I’ve no doubt of that. Chatting with her about the stories, hearing her thoughts on Allen, her investment turned my brain to his corner, caused me to think more about him than I might otherwise have done. (Allan does tend to take over stories I write anyway, tbh.)

I had at least one reader caution me about putting Robin and Allen as the two main characters in the fanfiction description for Marchin’, saying it would make people think the story is about a romance between the two. But I couldn’t not list Allen as second-most-important in that story (and at times, first). For a great deal of Marchin’ is Allen’s story. He’s at a point in his grief and dealing with the war where he’s finally agreed after years of swallowing it down to become proactive. Where he’s realized that his path to handling what he did in the war is to pursue facing it, whatever the consequences.

Perhaps his personal life triumphs/finding the love of his life are his ‘reward’, then. The good that came to him from his agreeing to hunt down and conquer--face the bad. He would not have re-met Eleri, after all, had he not traveled back to put his memory of Annie to peace, and avenge and memorialize her death. And it is in Eleri, who is able finally to understand what he was during the war, to whom he needn’t hide any longer, that he needn’t be two-faced anymore.

There’s a definite Allen/Marion parallel (not 1:1 in any sense) in the series. From the first moment they meet when he, just, misunderstands 1000% about her, to the life that she leads (like him) where no one knows all the contradictory and self-transgressive it involves. And she misunderstands him, too, thinking he’s nothing more than a short grift con man.

But it’s Robin who, while he doesn’t see all about either, knows both for being more than is shown.

I wrote Edward/Miranda entirely for myself. I fell so HARD for them and their narrative. But some of the latter sections with them (particularly their backstory in Marchin’) is directly resultant of reblogginhood having commented that she would read about them if it were written. That made me feel okay (because by the time you’re that far in to writing a series of this scope you can find yourself TOTALLY distracted by audience expectations) to write those portions, which were, to me as a reader, a joy in every way. So, thank you for that.

I learned some things: I learned that if I, with the RL I have, with the lack of RL time-to-myself, can not only find time to write, but to finish, this is an accomplishable goal for anyone. If you want it.

There’s a lot of writing advice getting blogged around on tumblr, but being a writer can be boiled to the simplest terms: the thing about writers is, They Write.

You can go to school for writing for as many years as you like, and your instructors will tell you this, they will expect this of you, but until you embrace it yourself, you won’t really get it. Writers write.

Look at these ridiculous timelines:

Apple Tree – Nov. 1, 2010 - November 10, 2010 – completed in TEN DAYS!

Lover’s Lane – November 11, 2010 – January 18, 2011, it’s 67K words. In just two months’ plus one weeks’ time.

Lips – January 20, 2011 – March 24, 2012, 239K word count. Fourteen months. That is within spitting distance of the length of HP and the Order of the Phoenix, for reference, which has 257K.

The first stories are ridiculous because of how MUCH was accomplished, and how quickly.

I posted the final chapter of Lips from the hospital, after having a baby—largely because I knew from experience I wasn’t about to get many chances to work on Don’t anytime in the near future.

So, I came to Marchin’. Of which contemplating it is hysterical to me, because I had always expected it to be only just slightly longer than Apple Tree. [laughs maniacally]

Marchin’ – April 1, 2012 – February 9, 2017. (Completed, though not yet fully published on fanfiction.net) Final count will show it just over 220K words. 30K more than HP and the Goblet of Fire. [Yes, I realize the almost five-year timeline to finish this was really, really, not acceptable. Way tooooo long to expect anyone to still be hanging around. I am not Susanna Clarke. And not only because I never got close to the 308K final word count of JSAMN in a single one of the discreet stories.]

And please don’t forget the little bit of holiday side-fic of Zara and Carter, with gang-based Christmas flashbacks. Don’t: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, published January 2012, at 5K words.

And to be accurate, I was occasionally writing and posting other fic while also writing Don’t (including fic outside of BBCRH).

I learned that I can write to an epic length (an important discovery for a short story writer), I learned how to craft a chapter (feel free to tell me I failed if you disagree). I learned how to juggle 10K plot strings and tie them off in the ending.

I learned that in the beginning writing is easy, slick as soap in an empty-but-wet bathtub; words can pour onto the page. You’re building. But then something clicks over in your plot, and suddenly you’ve got a lot of things to juggle, a lot of stitches not to drop.

You have to navigate among and around what you’ve built. Writing speed slows, writing time can get eaten up referring back to what you’ve written before to make sure all your pieces fit. To make sure you’re still holding the strings of all your marionettes.

I learned (I already knew a little about this before) that sometimes, when the words are gross and sticky and not coming out onto your screen you must fight to put them there anyway. That 97% of scenes/writing is clumsy and workman-level rather than craftsman quality. But you have to put down the bones and sinew before you can go back and build on that and add the plump flesh, the other parts of it that add beauty and poetry.

You have to trudge at times before you can dance. And if you’re not willing to slog through, you’ll be done (but not finished), your work will stall—and you’ll never dance.

As for process, I wrote these straight through, beginning to end. Does that sound crazy? I don’t know. I got into the way of that due to posting updates online, I suppose. In the early days, I would always be posting something a little earlier in the narrative than what I was presently working on. But at some point that stalled out and I was publishing in tandem with what I had just done, having no other writing ‘banked’.

As for the ‘finale’, I will confess that portions of Carter’s journals used there were written—as many as five to six--years ago. And a lot of the reunion scene speeches were also conceived and written before the last chapters of Lover’s Lane were posted online (that was posted Feb 2012).

I don’t mean that as a brag, only, to say that the storyline has always been pretty closely orchestrated and set for some time. Not all the particulars, though.

Clio said something recently about it being difficult to get back into the swing of writing Don’t, but you know, I’ve never really been out of it all these years. I wrote the unconventional narrative format of Death as what I expected to be my way to work through Marian’s on-screen murder.

And I started Don’t even before I completed the ending of that story. And creatively and in any daydreaming, I have lived solidly in that world ever since. Spare time? Think about Don’t. Can’t sleep? Think about Don’t. People, that’s a long time. Am I over Marian’s death? Probably not, but that frustration point is more like background noise at this point. But Don’t’s been with me long enough that I don’t think it will ever leave.

I’ve been stalling a long time (telling myself to finish it first), not going back to Story 1 and reading straight-through sequentially to the end.

It’s startling to think I don’t have to put it off anymore.

Don’t has received its share of criticism—not necessarily hostile criticism (thankfully). A reviewer thinking Marion’s reaction to Robin upon seeing him in Story 1 is too stoic (yes, I may have been watching too many stone-cold Barbara Stanwyck films, but I stand by the characterization), LOTS of feedback on how Marion was not in ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home, the notion that all four stories are too sad/depressing, just to name a few.

It was always a deliberate intention to keep Marion absent for most of Marchin’. She is, after all, a ghost at that time. And readers should feel the Marion-shaped hole she left just as much as do the characters. Even saying her name is at times too much a trigger for them. And almost every side-flash scene of Marion when she appears post-war refrains from using her name in a familiar way. As though she no longer even thinks of herself as Marion.

I do believe her absence and the emotion of her post-war storyline is more bearable when all of Marchin’ can be read as a seamless whole rather than in parts and pieces and stops and starts.

As for sadness—well, okay. Maybe? I’ll say it’s hard for me to judge. If it is sad, to me it is an exquisite pain, a pain felt on the way to coming joy. But then, I always knew the end. I always knew the pain would not end in loss and futility.

And the end, frankly, may not satisfy all. [spoilers] Everything that happened (even, took place pre-series) to our beloved Robin and Marion can’t be fixed, simply, by mind-blowing sex following their reunion.

But their scars and insecurities still present shouldn’t be taken as unreclaimable. Only, the time it takes to regain such things in a relationship isn’t covered explicitly in the plot.

Real world studies have been done about those imprisoned in the camps. Contact me if you want some links. Everything from (obviously) PTSD to a myriad of health complications plagued those liberated, often for the rest of their lives. To pay true respect to what Marion is to have been subjected to, is to admit that there is no easy fix for it, not simply a ‘spunky’ disposition that can overcome it.

As for why Marion stayed away, when taken as a whole, pieces of that puzzle are (without direct mention of Marion) everywhere within Story 4’s narrative (and strong correlations exist to it in earlier stories), spoken about, by, or with regard to everyone tainted by the war, from Allen to Miranda to Djak to Carter (and others).

As for the long timeline between Marion’s ‘death’ and her being located alive, I respect cries of ‘too long!’, but as a person older than reblogginhood, I say: a decade, when life is at its most distracting (as with small children to care for), passes as less than two years’ time in one’s carefree singleton twenties. Time simply shortens later into life.

From Story 1, Don’t has always been about the conundrum of sexual loyalty, just as the song it was crafted around. A loyalty that goes (according to the original song’s lyric) both ways, just as the woman is asked not to sit under the apple tree, the man is later on admonished (*significantly, but curiously, this lyric is absent from The Andrews Sister’s most-famous version of the song) “Watch the girls on the foreign shores, you'll have to report to me, When you come marchin' home. Don't hold anyone on your knee, you better be true to me… you're gettin' the third degree, When you come marchin' home”

Clearly calling out the woman’s mate who is currently serving overseas.

So the sexual loyalty question in WWII goes both ways. Let me be clear: I don’t necessarily believe jealousy and compromised sexual loyalty are a 1:1.

I would, in fact, mount a defense of BBC series Robin as not necessarily motivated by jealousy toward Guy. At least not ‘simple’ jealousy. (ie: you have Marian! And I don’t!)

With as much in-series as is NOT said between Robin and Marian (recall: he tells her he loves her when she’s dying/dead/unconscious—and when she recovers he doesn’t bother to re-state it), a partial dynamic of Marian/Robin’s relationship is what goes unspoken between the two of them. Yet Guy is held back by no similar scruples. He may pursue BBC series Marian openly, speak with her openly, offer her safety, a home, financial and societal security. In short, as given, Guy represents a future for Marian. (And to most people/certainly her peers and her betters, an ACCEPTABLE future, as Guy is allied with the present power structure and law-in-place).

In this, BBC series Robin is frustrated (and Don’t series Robin even more so). What can he offer Marian? What can Don’t Robin offer Marion? Even less. He has nothing of stability, no home, no financial means he can access. He cannot even offer her (with any certainty) that he, himself, will remain alive and accessible to her.

I confess, I kept from placing Marion into a fait accompli sexual relationship with Guy primarily because that felt like more weight than the story was prepared to bear, and secondarily because I find the idea of Geis’ sexual frustration really enjoyable, and it drives him very particularly as a character. A Geis who agrees to be put off by Marion repeatedly, when nothing truly stands in the way of his forcing himself on her is far more interesting than Geis as Marion-rapist. (Now, Geis as Anya-rapist is interestingly fraught in its own way, and faithful to the BBC series, as well.)

Sexual loyalty through the lens of female characters whose agency is compromised by something like an Occupation exists as well. Marion and Eva (on the BBC series more of a contrast than a comparison) here become two versions of a similar story. Yet the chance arose to give Eva, the more sexually transgressive (for the era depicted) with a bastard child and a confirmed sexual relationship with the Kommandant, offered the chance to give that character a happy ending sooner than that of her former mistress.

Early on, in a world where so little can be counted on, the question of Marion’s loyalty is of paramount importance to Robin, more so one might argue, than whether, even, she reciprocates his love.

The sexual aspect of her loyalty early on in Apple Tree and Lover’s Lane is almost always their departure point for argument. Marion expects him to have faith in her. But Robin, as would any of us (like the rest of Guernsey), logically assumes she is sexually involved with Geis.

Robin believes that sleeping with Geis would equal a betrayal of English values, and therefore, of him.

He carries the wound of Marion, at the time of their break-up fight, attempting to (in his eyes) use sex to manipulate him before she intends to leave him behind for America. And he knows, historically in their relationship, that Marion has never viewed sex in the same light as he has (and was socially expected to do).

Which culminates in the argument on Sark before Marion is returned to Geis following her kidnapping, wherein she attempts to get him to see that on the Islands during occupation, believing her agency is uncomplicated and without consequences in any sexual liaison is merely an illusion.

Hopefully, the series is more than just this debate/discussion. Certainly, to me it’s about more than sexual jealousy, but certainly that was an inciting catalyst.

Then again, maybe the overriding issue of sexual loyalty is just a notion I contemplate to try and defend the large number of hook-ups in finalizing the series…

But Don’t is also about heroism. At its very core.

I have personally long been fascinated by certain ‘hero’ narratives that see the heroes returning to normal life, such as the man instrumental in the Warsaw ghetto uprising who survived the war, moved to Florida, and successfully opened a chain of grocery stores. Or the Daniel Craig character/ real-life figure of the Jewish commando, Tuvia Bielski, who hid people in large numbers in the Polish woods in Defiance and went on to live a life in New York, running a small trucking company for 30 years--where his own children were ignorant of what he had done during the war.

For a long time this kind of “post war information”/return to normalcy always bummed me out. But as I’ve aged, I’ve honestly come to believe that this is wherein true heroism lies.

To know when to stop fighting. To manage to reclaim something of a ‘normal’ life. To enjoy the accomplishment of what was being fought for, the fruits of your wartime labors—and particularly for the oppressed people groups in WWII (Jews, the Rom), to partake in the society, culture, and family life/continuation of your people, as that is exactly what your enemies were trying to prevent you from doing.

To thrive in the wake of your oppression.

And in my age, I think I’ve realized that even though these heroes, these people who accomplished remarkable things during the war, then stop behaving quite so obviously heroic (no longer action movie stars) the heroism that they then face is a quieter one, one of learning to cope and process what the war did to them.

And really, it’s not flashy, but it is no less compelling. No less transformational, and dramatic as can be.

Some readers may still wish to argue that twelve years is too long a time, that it is impractical that Carter’s grandson is not well-acquainted with all that took place in the narrative. Rest assured; I’ve read more than my share of war and post-war narratives, of combatants and non-combatants alike, and the thread of survivors never again speaking of what happened to them, or simply never coming back home (though they lived) are more common than not.

Sometimes they find a way to speak of what happened to them, they speak only to others who experienced it, they go on to help curate a memorial—that safe space where they can speak and share about their experiences; they write it down, they paint it.

I’ve had two feedback responses that I think are important enough to include here for the general reader.

The first involves the gang not attempting to canonize Marion as a hero during the time she is missing/a thought that Marion should not feel quite so awfully, or make such drastic decisions based upon her wartime life choices.

Historically, honestly, that would have been pretty unlikely. The taint of collaboration would have overwhelmed any ‘redeeming possibility’ of Marion's resistance work as the Nightwatch (which it would not be simple to convince anyone she 100% was; the wrong accent--the fact no one ever really saw the Nightwatch, the fact Vaiser put forth that it was really Joss Tyr just for starters), and the fact Marion was female, in the 1940s; the world at large would hold the likelihood of her having been Geis' lover (recall: the importance of sexual loyalty) far above the slim chance that she was also the Nightwatch. Such things as promiscuity (especially with the enemy) weren't taken lightly, nor forgiven in females. Robin’s connection to her would have been colored by the notion she had been a scarlet woman, and him, doubtless unable to resist being in her thrall. (Honestly, as backward a notion that man is defined by an inability to resist his private parts as that a woman is in all situations responsible for what befalls hers). In fact, into the 1980s and 90s, the Channels were still fighting over who collaborated and who didn't. (Jersey records account for at least 900 illegitimate babies born to Islander mothers and German soldiers during the Occupation. As recently as 20 years ago the Islands were still in denial of this, despite Public Records being released that proved the numbers.) It was very divisive, a true crisis of the islands, and remains so to this day. So while I think, in later decades, yes, the world could embrace Marion as a hero, could believe her tale--those alive during the war, living out those years and trying to survive the wake of its ending, would not have been in a state of mind to accept her. In that starkly black and white, right and wrong, mindset of the times, she would have been condemned on all accounts. She would have had to be dead for real for her to be lionized, or even thought acceptable in Britain. Additionally, the National Secrets Act, which kept Robin & Co., and likely Carter from speaking about their war work for DECADES (if ever) following the war's end would have prevented anyone from talking about the Nightwatch, their time on Sark, etc., under penalty of imprisonment, and/or threat of a charge of treason. Not to mention being socially ostracized.

And Marion is that great sort of pragmatist/realist that fully understands this. And she's right, really. At least in that she's right that collaboration was not at all tolerated in the wake of the war. The taint she fears for Robin would have been 125% a real thing. He would have been tainted.

And we all know how skeletons in the closet are found and often via spin made into skeletons when they may not really be—in the political (or as he calls it, public) world. In fact, despite the majority of Islanders alive during the Occupation having died (and some, emigrated elsewhere) the Channels are still trying to work through and figure out how to accept WWII collaborators among them, how to speak of them historically. As said, it is still a tremendously divisive issue. So Marion's right in her conclusion about what association to her would bring about (even if her Nightwatch identity were known), but she's wrong in her understand of Robin. She's always hoped for that public life of doing good and legislating for Robin (no doubt because Edward was her standard for how a good man behaves/takes action), and she's right that Robin would excel at it, but she has never been able to get her head around the idea that Robin doesn't have any interest in that, playing that game, being that person—no interest in matters of state and diplomacy. It is that tragic flaw of a mistake/miscalculation she makes over and over again.

It may seem to go without saying, but let me thank you (any of you, all of you) for reading. Let me shower laurels on those of you who reviewed. I did write this work for myself, no doubt about it, but the encouragement of hearing from others reading cannot be undercut. It is an immense support to know as an author that your words matter to someone else out there.

And if you’ve been reading and you’ve never commented or checked-in, by golly, you’ll never find a better time than now.

I made some promises to myself, for when I finished Don’t. To buy all four CDs of Time Life’s Romantic Memories of the War Years (digital files of the original versions of many of the songs on them not available). To commission some fan art. To work to get the entire series posted to AO3.

But right now, I’m learning something new. I’m learning how to deal with surviving in the wake of completing a long, long work. As I mentioned earlier, when the end of Death came, I was already working on Don’t.

But, what now? What next?

I will never be over Robin/Maria(on). Of that you can be sure. But will I write more BBCRH? It seems doubtful, unless I do so to conclude at least one unfinished story (hi, sylvi10!). Don’t is certainly my ‘last word’ on the BBC series (I think). While I’ve not ‘gotten over’ them killing Marian (etc.), I have at least worked through it.

There was a time I thought to play around with writing “Widow Hood”, wherein Robin is killed in S2 in the Holy Land, not Marian, and Marian is the one left to reassemble the gang (re-recruit Will and Djaq back to England) and we sort of see if she can accept Guy into the gang, as the show had Robin doing, if she can forgive Allan’s betrayal, and see if she can overcome Robin’s loss (as the show had Robin ALLEGEDLY doing in S3). But I think my pursing that (at least as a whole) is pretty unlikely at this point.

What I do know, is I feel confident I can write to a longer form now, and manage chapter breaks to my own satisfaction if not others’. And somewhere out there, the promise of The Perfect Hat is waiting for me.

#the don't series #afterword #neftzer #'til i come marchin' home #fanfiction

0 notes

thenightling · 5 years

Text

Daenerys is Dracula and this is not a bad thing...

Just as most of Game of Thrones is an allegory for War of the Roses I am convinced Daenerys Targaryen is Vlad the Impaler in allegory.

Vlad (born in 1428 or 1431 - the exact date is uncertain) and his younger brother were hostages of The Ottoman Turks when they were boys. Vlad’s brother ultimately sided with the Turks. Vlad was released at age seventeen and became the ruler of Wallachia (what is today Romania).

Daenerys was sixteen or seventeen when she lead her people (in the TV show version). That is the age Vlad AKA Vladislaus Dragulya (modernized to Dracula) was when he first took the throne of Wallachia.

It should be noted that when Vlad ruled Wallachia The War of The Roses was raging at the same time. Most of Game of Thrones is an allegory for The War of the Roses and while that was happening Vlad was dealing with his own troubles in Eastern Europe, this further suggests that I am right in my belief that Daenerys is based on Vlad the Impaler.

When the Turks demanded a tribute (which involved gold and five hundred slave boys, annually) Vlad responded brutally. Vlad was very against the idea of his people being taken as slaves. Especially knowing that the slaves they wanted were mostly children and many would be forcibly used as soldiers, and others turned into eunuchs (highly sought after type of slave in the Ottoman Empire, men whose male anatomy had been removed). Vlad was fiercely against this. (Much like Daenerys) And he had brutal punishments for his enemies including impalement, crucifixion, and... roasting alive.

These are similar punishments that Daenerys had for her enemies.

Also Vlad learned the art of impalement from the Turks when he was a child captive. Daenerys used crucifixion against those who used that as a form of punishment / execution for escaped slaves.

Like Daenerys, Vlad took a cruel punishment that had been used by his enemies against his own people and amplified it against them and as a scare tactic against those that might threaten him or his people.

Vlad’s brutality caused him to be mistrusted, feared, and resented in the West. Daenerys’ reputation in the North isn’t any better...

Vlad was known as Dracula (Son of the Dragon) where Daenerys was Mother of Dragons. Vlad even officially used it as his surname as a way to denounce his cousins (House Bassarb), whom he held accountable for his father and older brother’s death.

Khaleesi also sounds similar to the name the Turks called Vlad, Kaziklu bey (Meaning Impaler Lord).

Like Daenerys, Vlad made it a point to learn the language and customs of his enemies though he (again, like Daenerys) did not allow these practices in his own land. One story famously claimed Vlad asked some Ottoman emissaries to remove their hats in his court as he found it rude that they wore them in his castle. When they refused, saying that keeping their hats on was their custom, Vlad had their turbans and hats nailed to their heads to send a message to any other men sent by the Sultan to leave their customs (Mostly including enslaving his people) in their own land.

Like Daenerys, Vlad’s sense of justice was harsh but apparently effective such as the story that a golden, jeweled, goblet was placed in the village fountain at Targoviste (His capital) and all could use it. No one dared to try to steal it for fear of his severe punishments.

Unfortunately, also like Daenerys, it seemed he was more often feared rather than actually respected.

Vlad the Impaler tragically lost his first wife when their castle was attacked by Ottoman Turks. Her name has been lost to history but the river tributary that runs under Poenari castle in modern day Romania (formerly Wallachia) was named for her. Râul Doamnei (River Princess) is a tributary of the Argeș river.

Many people think Vlad lived in Bran Castle but the reality is Romania uses Bran Castle for tourists because it’s structurally safer and easier to reach on foot whereas Poenari has been crumbling for centuries and his high on a hill / cliff. Vlad’s first wife’s last words were apparently “It is better to be eaten by the fishes than to be a prisoner of the Turks.” before throwing herself into the river tributary under the castle.

Like Daenerys, Vlad was in an arranged marriage but unlike Daenerys his was with his second wife, not his first spouse. His arranged mariage wife was the relation (Cousin or sister... or both?) of the king of Hungary. When Vlad had been imprisoned by King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (under false charges of conspiring with the Ottoman Turks) he was only released after he married Justina Szilágyi de Horogszeg (Matthias’ relation) and converted to Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy.

Also both Vlad and Daenerys have a long stream of names.

Vlad III of Wallachia was known as Voivode (Warrior Prince), Țepeș (meaning Impale, a name given posthumously.) Kaziklu Bey (Impaler Lord), and Dracula (Son of the Dragon.) = Vlad, of House Bassarab, Third of his name, Warrior Prince, Impaler lord, son of the dragon. “Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons”

Also Vlad is technically first of his name when you consider he took Dragulya (Modern spelling and pronunciation: Dracula) as his surname. His father was Dracul. The A at the end is important as it indicates “Son of” or “little” dragon. Vlad, like his father before him, was a member of The order of The Dragon, a knightly order sworn to stand against the invading Ottoman Turks.

In modern Romanian Dracula means “Devil” but in the fifteenth century it meant Son of the Dragon. His father (Vlad II) answered to Dracul (Dragon). The root word was probably the Latin Draco (Dragon).

Historically Vlad was also rather short but fierce, much like Daenerys.

Notice any similarities?

Vlad was eventually assassinated by his enemies and his head delivered to the Ottoman Sultan. This was early in the year 1477.

LIke Daenerys there were rumors of Vlad dabbling in black magick and other strange things.

Despite how Vlad’s enemies remembered him, he is still known as a hero in Romania (formerly Wallachia).

Some legends say he’ll return when his land needs him the most (much like King Arthur). Other modern fictions like Dracula: the Company of Monsters and Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula book series claim loyalists retrieved his head and restored it to his body for proper burial. And eventual resurrection...

There’s also the popular Gothic novel that tells of him rising from his grave as an undead monster and posing as his own descendant and Count of Transylvania for centuries...

When Vlad’s supposed burial place was exhumed in 1931 (same year the first official film adaptation of the vampire novel was released, starring Bela Lugosi) all they found were animal bones, perpetuating the modern myth that Dracula rose from his grave as a strigoi (alternate name: Moroi) AKA A vampire. This was first suggested in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and later inferred in the film Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula).

Horror actor Christopher Lee (who famously played the vampire version of Vlad in the British Hammer horror franchise and several other adaptations of the character between the late 1950s and mid-1970s) suggested, in the documentary titled “In Search of Dracula” (The documentary is based on the book of the same name) that Vlad was possibly buried under the floor of a chapel near where he had been assassinated.

Further note: His head (which was supposed to have been delivered to the Ottoman Sultan) is also unaccounted for...

It should also be noted that the fictional vampire version of Dracula had a special kinship with wolves, whom he called “The Children of the Night” and said of their howling, “What sweet music they make!” He could also turn into a wolf at will and could communicate with them the way Daenerys talks with her dragons.

In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the vampire version of Dracula befriended a white wolf at the London Zoo. The wolf was named Berserker and bears a striking similarity to Jon Snow’s wolf, Ghost.

The fictional vampire version of Dracula could also turn into a bat and communicate with bats. I don’t know if anything in relation to weather control will come up with Daenerys but the fictional vampire version of Dracula could conjure storms.

And for those who doubt the fictional vampire was based on Vlad the Impaler, and think they just share a name merely because the name was chosen late in the writing of Bram Stoker’s novel I present this quote: “He must indeed be the Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk.” - Doctor Abraham Van Helsing in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897.

There are as many (if not more) parallels between Daenerys and the historic Dracula, as there are with the Lannisters and the Lancasters in the real War of the Roses (which was an admitted inspiration and loose basis for Game of Thrones and the original novels).

#Game of Thrones #Game of History #Vlad the Impaler #Dracula #daenerys targaryen #George R. R. Martin #War of the Roses

51 notes · View notes

hermanwatts · 5 years

Text

Sensor Sweep: Irish Horror Writers, Robert Jordan, E. C. Comics

Indie Fiction (Jon Mollison): Given that indy comics are shouting into the gale-force winds of multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns. It’s hard to get noticed, and every little of help that I can offer my fellow creatives is time well spent. These reviews aren’t just the writings of a fan, they are recommendations to help you choose the best works to fill your time.

Fiction (Matthew Hoskin): I was reminded of this poster recently, reading my Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ludovico Ariosto’s Italian Renaissance epic, Orlando Furioso. The cover depicts Ruggiero rescuing Angelica, mounted on a winged steed (bird? hippogriff? I don’t know yet), lancing a dragon from atop his mount. Angelica is nude. This led me to start thinking about Howard and Ariosto. Now, I’m not saying that Robert E. Howard ever read Ariosto (or Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato).

Gaming (Kraken Originals): Four more Mythical Mystics are ready to be released into the wild. Mermaid, SaberWolf, Unicorn, and Yeti will be available for sale at 6pm PDT on 10-24-19. The different ink options give each set a very unique and different look from their counterparts, and with our Naked sets the outcomes are endless! Don’t miss out on completing your collection with these 12 or 14 piece sets.

Currently there are no Naked Fairy sets available, but the other four sets are available in all ink options. 12pc Set is $19.95 and the 14pc set is $24.95, a $3 savings from buying the 30mm and 15mm alone.

Fiction (Goodman Games): So even when Joe Goodman suggested doing some Appendix N Archaeology articles, I had not thought of the Bard of Baltimore until he suggested revisiting Poe. And in retrospect, decades from those dreaded reading assignments, I can think back, remember stories like The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Telltale Heart and realize that he was, more than Hawthorne or Stoker, the father of modern horror fiction. Before Poe, there were horror stories and novels like Varney the Vampire or Geoffrey Lewis’ The Monk, but the majority were more morality stories than anything else or ended, Scooby-Doo-style, with the villains unmasked as mere charlatans.

Gaming (Nerd Stash): Destiny plays a major role in Call of Cthulhu as well. Your choices have a lasting impact on the world and Pierce and will make all the difference in the final moments of the game. Choose to betray a character’s trust and they may not assist you in a key point of the game. While helping them with something will earn you a reward later on that may get you to a different area or give you a new piece of lore. I’m a huge fan of pen and paper roleplaying games and Call of Cthulhu plays out exactly like one. That’s excellent seeing as it is based on the same mechanics as the RPG of the same name.

D&D (Skulls in the Stars): UK4: When a Star Falls (1984), by Graeme Morris. We start today with another of the UK-produced modules, which tend to have a very different flavor and welcome quirkiness when compared to their US counterparts. The fact that this module is written by Graeme Morris is a good sign: Morris was an author or co-author of many excellent modules from the TSR UK office, including Beyond the Crystal Cave, which I’ve written about before!

FIction (Cleveland.com): But it wasn’t “Star Wars” or Atari that made the biggest impression on the Cleveland author growing up. Thanks to his father, Bruening grew up reading the pulp fiction of the pre-World War II era, the noirs and adventure tales and Westerns and aviation tales that kept earlier generations rapt. “My father was born in 1929, six months before the stock market crash, his childhood was defined by the Great Depression and then war,” says Bruening. “He read all of the adventure classics, Kipling, Dumas, Edgar Rice Burroughs, cowboy stories. He was really enamored of that whole type of entertainment.

H. P. Lovecraft (DMR Books): Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett—better known as Lord Dunsany—passed beyond the Fields We Know on this date in 1957. H.P. Lovecraft, was, without a doubt, one of the foremost Dunsany fans to ever walk the earth. Below is the poem he wrote in tribute to that titan of fantasy literature. As far as I can ascertain, HPL’s ode to Dunsany was written in 1919. Lovecraft would precede his idol to the grave by two decades.

“To Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Eighteenth Baron Dunsany”

Fiction (From Dundee’s Desk): Back in the 1992 – 94 time period, under the pen name Adam Rutledge, James Reasoner wrote a six-volume series of books for Bantam entitled THE PATRIOTS. As the over-arcing title suggests, these stories are set during the Revolutionary War years when young America rose up and won independence from England.

Fiction (Don Herron): Far be it for me to sit on my beanbag when you guys are having all the fun with the Siege of Malta. This inscription is from The Knights of St. John (1932), a novel by Paul L. Anderson which — while I haven’t read it — undoubtedly deals with the siege. Just check out the Dedication. Anderson of course is well-known for his stories of prehistoric man which appeared in issues of Argosy during the early 1920s. These stories were obviously enjoyed by Robert E. Howard, and influenced him when he wrote tales such as “Spear and Fang.”

Culture Wars (Brian Niemeier): Merely mentioning a Disney/Marvel property, even to negatively contrast it with a superior indie work, just gives the Devil Mouse brand social proof as the one to beat.

Refusing to feed the beast doesn’t suffice by itself, though. We also need positive messaging that promotes superior alternatives. Freeing Gen Y fanboys from the nostalgia trap has also proven more of a challenge than even I anticipated. Studying methods professionals use to combat addiction and deprogram cultists may be in order.

Horror (Ireland XO): The people of Ireland have a reputation for their skill as storytellers with the nation producing some of the most lauded novelists, playwrights, and poets that the world has ever known. The genre of horror is no different, as three of the great early authors in the field had either immediate or very close connections with Ireland.

Horror (Digital Bibliophilia): There is a point while I was reading The Spirit by Thomas Page that I had flashbacks to the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I won’t spoil anything, but if you read the novel, or have already read the novel, it might happen to you too. I read the re-print version by Valancourt Books, which has come about via the enormous success of their coffee table reference book Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix with contributions from Will Errickson.

Comic Books (Goodman Games): In fact, it’s also fairly easy to see how Gary Gygax, the main co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons (and an entire gaming industry) would fess up to being influenced by the art and storytelling found within the comic books of his formative years. But they are not just any old comic books that he mentions; Gary took the time to single out the creative output of one particular company among the veritable sea of comic books being printed at the time. Yes dear readers, the creeping tendrils of Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, and Vault of Horror have been christened part of the root system beneath the mighty sequoia that is Dungeons and Dragons.

Westerns (Brandywine Books): The scene above, (involving lost luggage) near the beginning of Owen Wister’s novel, The Virginian, seems to me to foreshadow a major theme of the novel. This is a panorama painted on a canvas a thousand miles wide. The landscape itself is a character in it. It’s a slow book, episodic and discursive, but that’s because everyplace is a long way from everyplace else, and travel takes time.

Robert Jordan (Every Day Should be Tuesday): Decades ago James Oliver Rigney Jr. wrote a book. That book allowed him to break into the publishing industry. He sold it several times. It established his working relationship with Harriet McDougal, who would become his wife. It led to his first published book, The Fallon’s Blood (as Reagan O’Neal). It led to a gig writing (eventually seven) Conan pastiches for Tor, this time as Robert Jordan, the pseudonym he would make famous. It also heavily foreshadows themes and elements from The Wheel of Time, his landmark work of epic fantasy. It was not, however, published before his death.

Pulp Magazines (Mystery File): Have you ever received a book in the mail and immediately stopped what you were reading, stopped whatever you were doing and sat down and read the book? This is what happened when I received Queen of the Pulps. I had seen Laurie Powers work and do research on it for several years and finally here it is! She must of gotten sick and tired of me nagging her about the book and asking for progress reports.

Writing Philosophy (Rawle Nyanzi): The post — and the novel it reviews — asserts that good and evil are real, and that with great struggle, good can overcome evil. The novel in particular asserts that the Christian God is the source of this good, and that through Him, all things are possible. On the other hand, the tweet decries those who find the Joker film to be too nihilistic. Its writer asserts that the movie did well because heroism is dead. According to him, no one wants heroes anymore because society is corrupt and collapsing, with nothing to look forward to.

Sensor Sweep: Irish Horror Writers, Robert Jordan, E. C. Comics published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

0 notes

seniorbrief · 6 years

Text

This Is the Difference Between a Princess and a Duchess

Juliana LaBiancaOct 05

Is it possible to be both?

James Gourley/BPI/Shutterstock

If Disney movies taught us anything, it’s that when you marry a prince, you become a princess. So it was a bit of a shock that when Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle married into the royal family, we were all expected to call them duchesses. Obviously, Princess Kate and Princess Meghan sound much better. That got us thinking, how do you become a princess, anyway? And what makes them different from duchesses? Beginners should check out this chart that breaks down the royal family tree.

It turns out, there are two ways to become a British princess: to be born the daughter of a prince (which is why Princess Charlotte’s children won’t have royal status), or to marry one. On top of that, only those born into the royal family can use the title princess (or prince, for that matter) before their name.

It’s confusing, because while Kate Middleton is not Princess Kate—her title is Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge—she is a princess. On her wedding day, she took on her husband’s title, making her Princess William of Wales, in addition to Her Royal Highness, Duchess of Cambridge. Prince George’s birth certificate also lists her official occupation as Princess of the United Kingdom. Similarly, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, could be called Princess Henry of Wales.

This is also the reason why Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie are princesses, but the daughter of Princess Anne, Zara Phillips, is not. A child’s parents can also decide against bestowing the title upon their children, which is why Prince Edward’s daughter, Louise Windsor, is a lady instead of a princess. The BBC writes that Prince Edward and his wife decided against the title. Learn the 10 unusual royal ceremonies and traditions you’ve never heard of.

After the royal titles of king, queen, prince, and princess come the five noble ranks: duke and duchess (the members of nobility that rank right below the monarch), marquess and marchioness, earl and countess, viscount and viscountess, and baron and baroness. These nobles are referred to as lords and ladies (the exception being dukes and duchesses, who are referred to as “Your Grace”), according to Merriam-Webster. Princes and princesses often hold dukedoms.

Of course, the Queen has free reign over all of this. “The monarch may offer to bestow a royal title upon his or her daughter’s children,” says Lucy Hume, associate director of Debrett’s, to Town and Country. “For Peter and Zara Phillips, the Queen offered to give them a royal title when they were born, but Princess Anne and Captain Phillips opted to decline this offer.”

That said, befriending the queen isn’t likely to lead to being named a princess—although there’s got to be a first for everything. Here are 12 times the royal family broke its own protocol.

10 Myths About the Royal Family That Are Totally False

The Mall in London was intended as an emergency airstrip

Alex Segre/ShutterstockThe royal family takes its security seriously, but that doesn’t mean every landscaping feature has an ulterior use. According to this theory, the 0.58-mile road leading to Buckingham Palace was intended as an airstrip. That way, the royal family could be evacuated via plane in case of emergency. It’s an interesting idea, but unfortunately, the Mall would make a lousy runway. The road is about a mile too short for any modern aircraft, and is lined by lampposts and buildings that would make takeoff impossible. However, helicopters can, and do, land on the Palace’s lawn. Curious about the royal family’s other air adventures? This is how much the family spend on travel this year.

Queen Elizabeth I was a man

Historia/ShutterstockQueen Elizabeth I—also referred to as the Virgin Queen, due to the fact that she never married—is remembered as one of the greatest leaders of England. And because of her strong leadership qualities, some misogynists of the time decided the Virgin Queen must have been a man in disguise. The myth was first printed by Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, in his 1910 book Famous Imposters. Stoker believed that at some point in Elizabeth’s childhood, she was sent to the countryside to escape the plague. Unfortunately, the young princess fell ill and died. When the feared King Henry VIII came to visit her, Elizabeth’s caretakers decided to replace her with a similarly aged child, rather than anger the king. Because there were no girls to choose from, the governess found a young boy and dressed him in Elizabeth’s clothes. The king was never the wiser, and according to Stoker’s belief, the young farm boy went on to rule the country. And before you assume Stoker was just trying to stir the pot, History Answers notes that the novelist was totally certain he had the story right.

Kate Middleton loves almond milk

REX/ShutterstockThe Duchess of Cambridge shut this one down herself. At one afternoon tea event at a charity cafe, volunteers served Kate almond milk after hearing a rumor that’s what she liked. “Don’t believe everything you read,” said the duchess. “I don’t even like almond milk.” These are the nine bizarre eating habits of the royal family, according to their personal chef.

The queen has no actual power

WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockObviously, the United Kingdom operates as a parliamentary democracy—but that doesn’t mean the sovereign is a powerless figurehead. In times of crisis, it wouldn’t be out of bounds for the queen to declare war. Similarly, the queen creates orders of knighthood and appoints the prime minister after a general election or resignation.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stayed in London during WWII

Historia/ShutterstockIn order to show citizens that the royal family was taking on the same dangers and rations as the rest of the country, King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, officially spent World War II at Buckingham Palace in London, despite near-constant German bombings. In fact, the family spent the majority of their nights and weekends at Windsor Castle in Berkshire. Talk about a rough commute: the residences are about an hour and a half drive apart. The couple’s daughters, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, lived full-time at Windsor Castle during the war. These are the 17 secrets you never knew about Windsor Castle.

Prince Charles requires seven hard-boiled eggs for breakfast

REX/ShutterstockAccording to this rampant rumor, which was first published by Jeremy Paxman in his book On Royalty in 2006, Prince Charles has seven boiled eggs cooked for him each morning, but only eats one. That way, he can choose the precise level of cooked-ness he’d like that day. The Palace chose to set the record straight. In 2012, the Prince of Wales published an FAQ on his website. “Does The Prince of Wales have seven boiled eggs cooked for his breakfast but only eat one, as claimed in Jeremy Paxman’s book ‘On Royalty‘?” one question asks. The answer: “No, he doesn’t and never has done, at breakfast or any other time.”

The queen has four drinks a day

REX/ShutterstockIn the summer of 2017, Queen Elizabeth’s former personal chef Darren McGrady was misquoted as saying the queen drinks four cocktails each day. That means she’d be a binge drinker by government standards. When several other tabloids picked up the story, McGrady reached out to make a correction. It turns out, he had been listing the queen’s favorite drinks, not the ones she has each day. “I’m pretty confident she doesn’t have four drinks a day,” McGrady told Reader’s Digest. “She’d be pickled.” These are the nine foods Queen Elizabeth would never, ever eat.

There is an infestation of rare spiders under Windsor Castle

sloukam/ShutterstockIn 2001, British tabloids went wild over reports that engineers at Windsor Castle found swarms of spiders in the utility tunnels underneath the residence. According to some not-so-reliable sources, the spiders were thought to be either a new species or a species that had thought to have been extinct for thousands of years. The spiders were supposedly nine centimeters, venomous, and had jaws strong enough to penetrate human skin. Scary stuff! Fortunately for everyone who visits the castle, the rumor was quickly dispelled. The spiders were a totally ordinary species, harmless, and only about four centimeters.

If the Union flag is flying, the queen must be home

REX/ShutterstockWe understand the confusion on this one; flags are a confusing way to communicate. But it’s not the Union Jack that you’re looking for to signify the queen’s presence, it’s the Royal Standard. If the Union flag (the national flag of the United Kingdom) is flying, the queen is away. Instead, look for the Royal Standard. You can identify it by its red, gold, and blue colors. This is the one color you’ll almost never find on national flags.

Prince Charles will never be king

Tim Rooke/ShutterstockBecause Prince William (and his adorable family) are so popular, there’s a widespread belief that Queen Elizabeth could skip Prince Charles in the line of succession and name Prince William and Kate Middleton the next king and queen. According to People, this will never happen. The queen doesn’t have the power to choose her successor and Prince Charles is unlikely to abdicate—and if there’s one thing the royal family hates doing, it’s breaking with tradition. There are a few exceptions: here are 12 times the royal family has changed its protocol.

Original Source -> This Is the Difference Between a Princess and a Duchess

source https://www.seniorbrief.com/this-is-the-difference-between-a-princess-and-a-duchess/

#seniorbrief #seniors

0 notes