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lorei-writes · 3 years

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Lost Letters

Masamune x MC Fluff Parts of this work include suggestive content. [To avoid suggestive content, skip the following months: May, January.] Word Estimate: 2k

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We are pleased to inform You all the lost letters were successfully delivered.

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Content Warnings: war mention, injury mention, suggestive content, food mention, anxiety mention

To my beloved Masamune. It is March now, and the frost has begun its retreat from the air. You are not here, and I do not expect to send this letter… Yet I miss you so much the words seem to be writing themselves without much help. In this very moment, I wish I could ask how your day was. It is one of those rare instances where I miss modern technology – my helplessness is simply disarming me completely. I console myself with the thought that you will be back tonight. I missed seeing your face so bad. There are so many things I want to tell you, my heart is overflowing. I don’t think I should let any of them spill, yet I cannot hold all either. So, even if just on this paper, I must confess: I love you, Masamune. I love you so much it hurts. I could not focus on anything but your return the entire day. I cannot let you see this letter. You will never let me forget it. Although maybe... Maybe I should.

To my beloved Masamune.

It is March now, and the frost has begun its retreat from the air. You are not here, and I do not expect to send this letter… Yet I miss you so much the words seem to be writing themselves without much help.

In this very moment, I wish I could ask how your day was. It is one of those rare instances where I miss modern technology – my helplessness is simply disarming me completely. I console myself with the thought that you will be back tonight. I missed seeing your face so bad. There are so many things I want to tell you, my heart is overflowing.

I don’t think I should let any of them spill, yet I cannot hold all either. So, even if just on this paper, I must confess: I love you, Masamune. I love you so much it hurts. I could not focus on anything but your return the entire day.

I cannot let you see this letter. You will never let me forget it. Although maybe... Maybe I should.

To my courageous Masamune.

It is April now, and you came back all beaten and tattered. Your muscles tensed whenever I touched your skin. The disinfectant seeping into your cuts did not help either, I suppose… But you hugged me tight all the same, and did not let go for long. Your breath tickled my neck as you held your ear pressed against my pulse. I wonder, how bad was it this time? But do not get me wrong. I do not mind, I can stay in your arms for however long you desire.

This time, however, it was different. I cannot describe the feeling that I felt when you looked up at me and simply said you feel terrible and need rest. You… Appeared so vulnerable? And I know it never comes easy to you to be in this state.

I love you so much. Thanks for coming back yet once again. I am writing this as you sleep only a few meters away. Please, rest well – and thank you for trusting me yet once again.

To my flirtatious Masamune.

It is May now, and the weather has got quite warm already. However, my dear tiger, treat this as a note of complaint! Although… You will never see it, hopefully. You would see all the other ones then.

Never mind that! How dare you! You big, unruly, sneaky…!!! You know my knees get weak when you kiss me, and yet…! In the middle of the crowd, at that! Truly, my “knees were not a problem” as you put it after lifting me up, but my face surely was! I was red like a crab, Masamune!

How dare you uphold that air of coolness! If it were not for what you whispered… Curse that too, argh! Surely, nobody realised, and you always walk this fast, but… But it is the next morning, and I still am a mess after all the things you did to me the last night!

How dare you stay on my mind even now. Well, you did leave some marks, so surely, it is hard not to think of it, but… ! I want to lay in your arms a little longer, but alas. You had to start work early today of all days…

To my caring Masamune.

It is June now, and somehow, I managed to catch a cold. It is nothing much, really, but you insist I don’t leave bed today… Honestly, I feel a little guilty, but I am enjoying myself. You’re spoiling me quite a lot, my love, and I can hardly oppose it…

You brought some of your work here, so that you could watch over me while I napped. You checked my fever, brought me more covers when I was cold, even got Shogetsu to cuddle me up. When I woke up, you cooked me porridge, and I don’t know what rituals you did in the kitchen, but it was beyond delicious. Or perhaps I’m getting better?

My eyelids are heavier and heavier… And you’re insisting I stop writing and cuddle with you now. You didn’t want to move to sleep in a separate bed either… How could I refuse? I swear, tiger, some may say you hardly care, but whenever I see you acting like this, my heart beats faster.

To my curious Masamune.

It is July now, and this is both a letter of praise, and of complaint. For somebody who learns so fast, you surely never learnt not to get taken away by challenges. However, here end my complaints, as it… Surely is quite entertaining.

We are still running away from our own allies now. We have just settled for the night, and you are calling for me to come eat and sit with you by the fire. Have I ever told you you are the most beautiful when you are free and wild? No? Because your eye sparkles so gorgeously now.

You’ve made me appreciate so many new sides of life. I love sharing it with you, both the good and the bad. I don’t know what you’ve made, but let’s be honest, there are only starts above us and I couldn’t care any less about food right now.

Yes, yes, I’m coming, you impatient cat…

To my hardworking Masamune.

It is August now, and you are swarmed with work. I do not know how you manage to stay on top of it… But truly, you seem tired now. You set off early, and come back late, and it takes little before you fall asleep.

You… You cannot know it, but each night, you return my embrace quite strongly, even if deep slumber has already claimed you. You are adorable – your nose crinkles slightly whenever I kiss your forehead. I started telling you I love you, and you usually mumble back that you love me too… Then you generally get a little upset and nuzzle into my neck, and sometimes scoff about some pillows or radishes, whichever one it is this time around.

I must never reveal the fact that you talk in your sleep if you are tired enough. What if you forbid me from ever indulging in it ever again? I don’t think I could live without it anymore.

Signed,

Your Beautiful Futon

To my joyous Masamune.

It is September now! I want to go celebrate with you, so this letter will be brief:

Thank you for having been born, Masamune.

Please, live a long life. I want to love you plenty more. I need to love you plenty more. To hear you laugh, to see your smile… Your happiness is infectious, and I want for it to last for as long as it can.

To my resilient Masamune.

It is October now, and it came in sour, as if to balance the joy of the previous month. This battle was harsh. You emerged victorious, but at what price? So many were lost… Although I think you would care even for a single person just as much. War is a dreadful thing, to say the least. You know it better than I will ever be able to. That is why you protect me from it, is it not? I wish I could carry half your burden...

When you returned, you only latched onto my wrist. Your hands were cold, and you looked almost lost. Were you scared that I would be gone too? My love, my heart… You held yourself together bravely the entire time, but I am glad you let yourself unwind once in our quarters. I needed to feel that you were alive too.

I helped you wash, and you seemed to relax when I ran my fingers through your wet hair. Perhaps the bath was a good idea in the end. I hope no nightmares come your way today – but if any do, I will do my best to chase them all away. I know you would do great by yourself… But I love you, so please, do share some of your concerns.

To my grumpy Masamune.

It is November now, and oh my, I got to pay you back for how sweetly you cared for me when I was ill. It appears it was your time, my love. I did not expect you to resist so much! “Sleep in a different room”?! As if I would even consider that much! But… You were quite sweet once you caved in. If we were in the future, I would give you a good patient badge!

Kojuro came in later too. You were so adorable when he started telling stories from your childhood! Ah, and you were locked in bed, so for once, I got a chance to actually listen to them too! A shy little Masamune… I wish cameras were a thing in this time.

It was a good day, but please, do not fall ill much. I will always care for you, it is only that… As much as your pouts were a sight to behold, I love your content smile even more. I will have to make some of today up to you.

To my thoughtful Masamune.

It is December now, and you surprised me yet once again. I do know we celebrated Christmas together once, but I did not expect for you to hold onto the idea. This time, you organised everything by yourself, with your own twists to everything.

The party was great – the music, the food, the gifts, I loved every single moment of it. You dressed well too, and I swear, you look even more handsome in the more so festive clothes. It was just cool enough for me to shamelessly cuddle into your side as well… Did you plan that as well?

I must thank you for the gift tomorrow. You must have had ordered this fabric months in advance. It… It really feels amazing knowing that you truly listen to what I say. I love you, Masamune. Somehow, you have this way of making me feel loved even without using any words.

To my adventurous Masamune.

It is January now, and winters in this part of the country tend to grow rather harsh. The snow is thick, and it seemingly keeps on falling, and falling… I did not expect for you to suggest taking a trip, much less one to the hot springs.

I do not know what heated me up more – your kisses or the water. Good thing we retreated to our room fast, otherwise we could be thrown out of the estate. I am quite relaxed after we have made love… Perhaps my initial fear of you suggesting doing it in the snow was completely unfounded. Well, you would not force me to go forward with it anyway, but your drive for novelty is infectious at times.

You went out to get some food for us to share, and I am still lying in bed. The pillow smells of you, and the covers are pleasantly warm from our shared heat. I think you will want to slide right next to me once you are back, will you not? I know you do better with cold than the heat, but is it not too tempting? Ah, I think I can hear your steps… I wonder, what are those plans for tomorrow you have made.

To my calm Masamune.

It is February now. You seem to be at home plenty, and I welcome the change. We cook together nearly everyday, and I am enjoying it a lot. At first, those were more of classes than anything else, but now… We recreated some of the future dishes I told you about. Is that not amazing? You truly could be a chef in my original time.

However! Today I shall take my revenge! Just you wait and see, Masamune Date! I will pay you back for all those hugs from behind, and “sampled dishes”, and for all those “you seem to have a bit of the sauce over your lips”! I prepared something you did not expect yourself, and you have made me this devil!

I hope I can get this surprised face out of you. It should be tasty enough for that? I should carry it to you before it gets cold…

To my beloved Masamune.

It is March again, and I love you all the same.

Tag list: @datenoriko, @nad-zeta, @tsubaki3192, @missjudge-me, @ikemencrossedmyth, @nuttytani, @thesirenwashere, @milas-imaginarium, @kisara-16, @yukas-clover, @alerialumina , @cheese-ception , @iamryxx, @cottonfluffballofdoom, @ozziegrl71, @rikumorimachisgirl, @bestbryn, @kink-rabbithole @ikesenfangirl @themysticalbeing If you want to be tagged under my future works, let me know (any way works)! ^^ Also, do remember to specify fandoms (and characters, if you are interested only in some) :D If it ever happens that you wish to be removed from my taglist, for any reason, do let me know. I will not ask why, it’s all fine ^^

#masamune date #ikesen masamune #ikemen sengoku masamune #ikesen #ikemen sengoku #ikemen series #my ff #my writing

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sinsbymanka · 3 years

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Hey. I'm sorry. So. Your post about sunseekerknight is really long and it seems out of date. I thought everything had been resolved and she promised to make amends but this all started back around again and it sounds like your issue isn't solved. Can you update me real quick? Sorry.

Thanks for being polite and coming to me. I’ll try to summarize things to the best of ability while also noting this is kinda a clusterfuck. It got long, so it’s under a cut.

In March 2020, I commissioned @sunseekerknight (I’m blocked so I can’t actually @ her) to do a Tarot Card commission of my Inquisitor for $80. I sent the money via PayPal friends and family as she requested which is something I no longer do for artists, even though I’d done it before with no problems.

The main post goes over my initial experience really well - the repeated attempts at contact and missed deadlines. This post was made on June 18, 2020 and blew up. I informed Ada that day I was making the post and she told me she’d be doing so as well.

I’d already filed the PayPal claim which was ultimately denied because I’d sent the money via friends and family, despite SSK’s assurances she’d help me resolve it in my favor.

I didn’t hear from SSK after this and I didn’t contact her. My father passed away on June 20th and I was busy dealing with the personal fallout of that (he’d been in the hospital the whole month of June as it was) so my priorities swung towards processing my own grief and planning what happens next.

On July 10th, my PayPal claim was denied. I forwarded the claim to SSK with the following message:

I want to inform you that PayPal has indicated, due to the way you asked me to send the funds (friends and family), they are unable to provide any sort of refund based on their policies. It is your responsibility to make the refund.

Because of the history of fraud I've uncovered, I will be pursuing this further. I am, in particular, asking PayPal to mark this account as one used for fraudulent transactions and scamming money before closing it. My hope is that this account is in your real name and that getting this account marked for fraud has real consequences you have to live with.

I honestly didn’t expect to hear from SSK again, but I did on July 12th:

Oh, I see. Now the difficult situation has become even more difficult. I'm sorry to say this, but, as I said earlier, I had only two offers for people affected by my actions - a PayPal dispute or finished art. And since PayPal is useless in this situation, all I can offer you - is art. I’m still ready to finish your commission because I don't want you to be left with nothing. I would like to return the money, really, but it will take time and I don't know how much, considering the current situation on Tumblr. I still want to resolve this issue peacefully, despite what is happening now. I know that you don't trust me, and I understand this, as well as the fact that you are disappointed, angry, etc., but still I want to do at least something so as not to leave the situation as it is now. But if this is your final decision, then okay, I understand and accept it.

This message struck me as victim blaming. I am, after all, responsible for the situation on Tumblr which means she can’t get commissions. I reacted with some venom and my tone is not great here, but I do ask you to understand the frame of mind I was in here on July 13th:

I don't think it's fair to claim that PayPal is being unhelpful in this situation when it is you who are refusing to refund money for a service that was purchased and not completed. I think it would make me feel better if you started phrasing the "situation" in a way that took responsibility for it. Such as: "I cannot refund the money to you myself, because I spent it before delivering what you paid for, and I cannot get your dispute resolved through PayPal because I asked you to send the payment a specific way that precludes disputes."

I also feel hurt that immediately after I sent my email on Friday, you blocked me from Tumblr and turned all your social media accounts private. I can't think of why you would do this when you claim to still want to resolve this and when I have been more than kind. I find it difficult to believe that you didn't know what my review would cause - it sounds to me like this is something that has been brewing for awhile. Frankly, I'm amazed it took three years. I would also appreciate if, instead of blaming the "situation" on Tumblr for your inability to receive new commissions, you began taking responsibility for that as well. May I suggest: "My actions in the past three years have harmed many people and they are angry about it with good cause. Because I have damaged my reputation to a great extent, I will probably not receive many, if any, people willing to pay me money for commissions."

I fully expect to receive nothing from you: art or my money returned. When speaking with PayPal on Friday, they advised the only way to shut your PayPal account down is if I file a criminal complaint with the IC3, which is the US's Internet Crimes division of the FBI. I did so and sent them the screenshots I have of all our conversations, your posts on Tumblr, and links to the posts of other people who publicly came out regarding the same behavior they experienced. I'm uncertain I can withdraw my complaints from both PayPal and the IC3, and if I could I don't think I would. I'm sure this isn't something that is high priority for them, but I assume eventually they will contact you to discuss your actions. The way I see it, you have three options at this point in time:

Find some way to issue a refund to me, and any other customers you've wronged. If I am contacted by investigators, I will say a refund was eventually issued in my case.

Deliver the art you promised to me, and any other customers. If I am contacted by investigators, I will say a product was eventually delivered in my case.

Continue to ignore what you've done and hope that no real consequences come of it.

As to the art, I don't want it anymore. It has been tainted by this awful experience and I will not enjoy it. I will, however, accept it if you choose to do it to lessen whatever consequences you may end up facing because, truly, I'd rather you learn from this than end up with financial or legal consequences that are even more burdensome.

Honestly. I never expected to hear from SSK again. But I did because this is the drama that never ends. On July 20th:

I must apologize for the long silence. Sorry, I just got home from an unexpected vacation with my family, and I followed the advice of my parents and friends - spend these days away from work and the Internet to feel better. As I said, I understand you. You sound reasonable and you are totally right - it is my responsibility for that. And I'm trying to work it out, even if these are rather strange ways. And it wasn't about you personally. This was part of another problem with a friend I was trying to protect, and I followed the advice to keep the accounts private during the "war" and block some people on the tumblr during this time to avoid any collisions. But still, I was available for correspondence via email, and now all my accounts are again freely available. I know how it looks like, especially for you, when you have really been more than kind to me, and I cannot apologize enough to somehow change and improve this situation. I just fucked up on all fronts and I admit it. And I see, yes. I don't mind returning your art or money, it's just a matter of time. These are not days, these are weeks or months, and it is solely a matter of your patience. If you do not mind waiting, then I will try to return the money to you, since you no longer want art for obvious reasons. I understand and accept it, and it's okay. If you're willing to wait, I'll keep you informed of the refund situation and will do it as soon as I can.

You’ll note earlier I told you I can’t tag SSK cause I’m blocked. I’ve never been unblocked since July despite her saying she would. This is also the last email I got from SSK. I’ve had no communication since to my knowledge.

At this point in time I was tired. Really tired. It was bad news I got this email exactly a month after my father passed because I just didn’t want to do it anymore. This is my second to last email to SSK in response also on July 20th:

Please feel free to do what you need to do to manage the situation. For my part, I have said and done all I can. I have asked for a refund for a service you have been unable to provide in a reasonable time frame, and thus you are legally obligated to return my money in the same reasonable time frame. That time frame has passed already.

When I am contacted by authorities about this matter in response to my complaints, I will tell them you have promised refunds but have not delivered. The only thing you could do to change this answer is to issue a refund before I am contacted.

This exchange is draining and unhelpful for me. I ask that you please do not contact me again until you are ready to issue a refund.

On September 25th, I was informed SSK had successfully opened commissions on Twitter and Instagram. This spurred me to send one final email:

I've been informed you recently reopened commissions to buy yourself something and met your goal, even though you only advertised on Twitter and Instagram.

I would like to remind you that I'm still owed a refund AND you shouldn't spend that commission money until you deliver on that art. Please do not rip and entire new group of people off.

There are other people, in the notes of the original post, who can attest to terrible experiences similar to mine. In particular, @starsandskies, @vorchagirl, and @charlatron have all come forward to talk about what she’s done and their experiences. Her pattern seems to be to open commissions, deliver a few, have the rest dragged out of her, and then to not do other ones. I drew the short straw this time.

I don’t know if she’s reading this - if she is, at this point all I really want is an apology, a list of people who are waiting for art/refunds from her, and a plan as to how she’s going to make it right. If she doesn’t do those things, I suspect I’m going to keep getting dragged back into this cluster for awhile to talk about my experiences.

If you’re waiting for artwork Non, open PayPal disputes and file complaints if you need to. The sooner the better.

#manka answers asks #sunseekerknight #this again #I'm tired of it again #sorry guys

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emma-what-son · 3 years

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(Echee post) Did Emma Watson actually graduate from Brown University? Special treatment at college?

Posted on November 8, 2015

*PS this is a work in progress, will take a few days to get it in order...so apologies if it is incomplete Intro Emma has been talking about how important education is to her since she was 10. Even during the first interviews for Harry Potter promotion, back in 2001 for Philosopher's Stone, she was adamant about going to college. She's continuously said how important college/education is throughout the Harry Potter promotion years, but does what she say match up with what she actually did? She was playing along with that bullshit "Classy, educated" image she and her PR team (like her publicist Luke) have crafted for her, the one where she claims she is exactly the same as Hermione, the beloved character from the Harry Potter franchise. Course though, she's contradicted herself on that multiple, multiple times - sometimes saying she's exactly like Hermione, and other times claiming they're extremely different. There was some extremely strange stuff going down with Emma's Brown University Education though....as will be revealed below. And you'll have to start wondering if she actually did graduate or how much, how extensive and enormous, was the amount of special, unequal treatment she got for being a celebrity and a feminist (College campuses love pandering to social justice warriors/feminists - part of it is a natural love for them and another part is Obama forcing them to through the OCR and Title IX) Emma's Education Emma entered Brown University the Fall of 2009. Brown is a private, 4 year university/college in America. Emma entered Brown as an international student studying on an F-1 Visa. Okay Emma didn't do much BS during her first 3 semester (Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010) at Brown and seemed to study there like most normal students, but it's after the first three semesters that things started getting extremely strange and Emma started telling a whole bunch of lies. Emma constantly raved about how awesome college is and gave every single impression she was going back to Brown in Spring 2011. getSurrey November 2010: getSurrey: Will you carry on acting? Emma: I will keep on acting. I’ve just been in a film called My Week With Marilyn. I’ve just finished shooting that. But finishing university is a priority. But I hope I do lots more things. I don’t really want to be put in a box – just yet. I’m not exactly sure. University Magazine Interview by Colin Turner (November 2010?): (Okay just note that this interview came out in June/July 2011 for Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2 Promotion, but Emma mentions in the interview she just finished filming My Week with Marilyn, which happened in November 2010. Uni magazine is this student run magazine, so I'm assuming they don't do monthly issues (don't have the money/people for that) so it takes them several months to release an issue.) Colin Turner: You’ve gone to university, obviously, do you imagine taking up acting in the future or are you just seeing what happens? Emma: I just did a movie, finished something last week, “My week with Marilyn”, which is exciting. No, I think I’ll just keep doing things. But my education is my number one priority at the moment and everything else comes around that really. Parade Magazine Interview November 2010 (Emma Watson's Campus Confidential, interviewed by Jeanne Wolf): "I get some amazing offers to act, and sometimes it’s hard to say, “No, I’m going to stay here and do my homework.” People are like, “What do you mean she’s not available?” I may do some theater next summer, but this college experience is really important to me, and I won’t give it up for anything. I’m not going to school just for the academics–I wanted to share ideas, to be around people who are passionate about learning."

Echee says: Okay, notice how in November 2010 and even right up until January 17, Emma claims/gives the strong impression she's definitely going back to Brown University for the Spring 2011 semester. Big lol at the "this college experience is really important to me, and I won’t give it up for anything" two months before she did. By the way I have to mention the whole "Sorry for long absence from here - so much to do and so little time to do it in before I go back to school! Hope you're all ok x" was originally a tweet from Emma's @EmWatson twitter account but after she left university she deleted it lol. The picture I posted is from the official (that's why there's the blue check mark) Emma Watson Facebook page run by both Emma and her team. I guess she forgot to delete the facebook post after she deleted her tweet. For Spring 2011, the first day of classes was January 26 (per the academic calendar). Yet even at January 17, Emma stated she was getting ready to go back to school, hence her "so little time to do it in before I go back to school!" How the fuck can she be confused 1 week before classes start whether she's taking a personal leave of absence or not? Brown University Personal Leave of Absence Deadline

Brown University 3 types of leaves of absence

Okay, so of Brown University's three types of leaves of absence, Emma took personal. The deadline to declare you're taking next semester off is December 1, hence the Brown policy "If you are planning to take leave for the spring semester (Semester 2), you must declare by Dec. 1st." Either Emma was lying and trying to delay revealing she was taking time off to do her Perks of Being a Wallflower filming and BS Lancôme makeup and perfume work (very possible since she lies so much), or she was honestly undecided until right before, and thus requested special, unequal treatment that despite her missing the deadline, she should be allowed to take a leave of absence. Anyway I think it was special treatment from Brown allowing their publicity cow to get what she wanted. That means she was clearly lying in her January 17 tweet about going back to school.

This from Amanda Foreman, Emma's interviewer, for Emma's Vogue Magazine July 2011 interview: Emma struggled valiantly to fit everything into her life, becoming increasingly exhausted, until over Christmas advisors at Brown suggested that she take a leave of absence, a turn of events Yates was not surprised by. Notice how the Vogue article says it was "over Christmas"....Christmas Break for Brown starts after December 1, the deadline. First off, unless Emma's doctor signed off on it, then it was NOT a medical leave of absence, and her advisors gave her special treatment since she missed the personal leave of absence deadline already. And You know December 25 is over 3 weeks after the December 1st deadline, so that's an amazingly long extension despite the severe, absolute terms of "You must declare by December 1". Anyway, wowza, off to a bad start....getting special treatment when you're quitting school temporarily. Well, whatever, it's equality feminist Emma Watson that we are talking about here. She runs her mouth off talking about feminism and equality and whatever but like most Western (usually Caucasian) privileged feminists, have no idea what she's talking about. Despite Brown's Spring 2011 semester starting at the end of January, Emma kept quiet about all this until March 7, 2011. She announced it on her website EmmaWatson.com (which is now defunct and shut down): Here's her statement on March 7, 2011: As you know, I love Brown and I love studying pretty much more than anything. But recently I've had so much to juggle that being a student AND fulfilling my other commitments has become a little impossible. I've decided to take a bit of time off to completely finish my work on Harry Potter (the last one comes out this summer) and to focus on my other professional and acting projects. I will still be working towards my degree … it's just going to take me a semester or two longer than I thought : ) Hope you are all well! Thank you for all your continuing support. Emma xx.

On February 10, 2011 (well after the Brown semester had started), Emma confirms on twitter that she will be filming Perks of Being a Wallflower, which interfered with Brown (Brown school date ends May 20, Perks started filming May 9) and she had also already had various talks and was close to finalizing a deal with Lancôme. And she knew she would have to do some filming work for Lancôme commercials in the coming months. At this point clearly she was taking the semester off and yet she didn't announce it until March 7, 2011. Why'd she wait an entire month??? Why be so secretive of it? Just like how a week before classes started she was claiming she was getting ready to go back to school. And then why wait another month before she and Harry Potter publicist Vanessa Davies, release more details of this leave of absence? April 23, 2011 Press Release to Associated Press: LONDON (AP) — A spokeswoman for Harry Potter star Emma Watson says she will be transferring from Brown University to another university in the autumn. Vanessa Davies denied reports that the 21-year-old actress was "bullied out" of the Rhode Island university, saying there was no truth in reports by a number of online publications who cited classmates and "insiders". Davies said Saturday that Watson, who plays Hermione in the wizard movie series, has decided to pursue a different course not offered at Brown. She added that the star "has absolutely loved her time at Brown" and made many good friends there. Watson has recently taken time out of her studies to focus on her movie career. She has said that her first days in college were difficult. Davies did not identify the university Watson will be transferring to. Emma releases a statement April 30, 2011 on her website EmmaWatson.com (now defunct): I felt the need to let you all know the reason I took a semester off from Brown had nothing to do with bullying as the media have been suggesting recently. I have never been bullied in my life and certainly never at Brown. This "10 points to Gryffindor" incident never even happened. I feel the need to say this because accusing Brown students of something as serious as bullying and this causing me to leave seems beyond unfair. Please don't try and speculate about what I might do in September - no one can possibly know because I don't even know yet! Like my other fellow Brown students I am trying to figure out my third year and whether or not I will spend it abroad (this is common).

If you wondered why Emma let Vanessa Davies announce the transferring information, instead of Emma just announcing it on her website a week later, it's because Davies is head of publicity at Harry Potter, so they were working out how best to frame the narrative that Emma is still a hardworking student. Don't forget, ~200 million is spent on Harry Potter marketing for HP Deathly Hallows and Davies is part of that team and one of the heads. Warner Brothers had to protect their little cash cow until the movies were over and Emma couldn't damage their profits. Also, the Harry Potter spokesperson, Vanessa Davies, says Emma will be "transferring" but from Emma's own message (and it's later revealed), she was actually only just studying abroad, not transferring. Weird. April 2011 Associated Press Interview: I just knew I was going to be beating myself up because I wasn't going to be able to be doing the best that I knew that I could at school or in my job. If I'd been getting B's or C's I would've been really upset. Wonderland Magazine February 2014: You realize you can't do everything. I really did think I could do it all - commute back to the UK for Potter filming and press, then go to Brown for finals, and keep up with my friends and family. You can't do it by the way. You do have to take breaks. It's how I became interested in meditation and yoga. I developed bedtime rituals. Elle Magazine UK November 2011: Of course Harry Potter got in the way, with its relentless round of reshoots and promotion, meaning that Emma had to temporarily halt her studies at the start of this year. "I was basically commuting across the Atlantic. Taking a semester out wasn't what I wanted to do, but I am still enrolled at Brown." Collider.com Interview with Steve Weintraub November 14, 2010: Well, I keep trying to but she keeps finding her way back into my life. I still have two movies left to promote, and they’re still cutting and editing Part 2 so I might have to do some more voice recording and other stuff for it, so it’s a very gradual goodbye. I’m being eased out of it gently........I mean we are special, it is Harry Potter. But we only had two days—I was being sarcastic (laughs). Sorry, I have to like fill that in because otherwise it will be written, “we are special!” (laughs). But yeah we only had two days to shoot it and we needed so much more time than that. So yeah, we have reshoots at Christmas. So it’s not over. It’s not over yet guys! Echee says: Okay, what? Notice how in Wonderland Emma claims she was busy filming for Harry Potter and her Elle Magazine interviewer claims the same. Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2 filming ended in June 2010, and then for less than a week they had to reshoot the epilogue in December 2010 (they reshot around Christmas time, so Emma had already finished her Brown Semester). They re-shot the epilogue because the makeup/CGI made the actors look elderly instead of middle aged. Also, HP and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiere was July 15, 2011. Generally press begins one month in advance (though you might do some magazine interviews 3-4 months in advance). Emma was not seen at any events/doing press until beginning of July 2011. She was stuck in Pittsburgh doing Perks of Being a Wallflower filming (which took place from May 9 to June 29, 2011) Emma was also filming for and doing work on her Lancôme stuff in March/April. How can she claim she was too busy during the Spring 2011 school year (which was from January 26 - May 20) with Potter filming and promotion? She did none of that. The overlap she had with school and non-school stuff was Perks filming and Lancôme filming/promotion. It had NOTHING to do with taking time off for Potter. Plus she was negotiating those deals for Perks in January 2011 and for Lancôme in December-ish. There was ZERO reason for her to take time off from school, but she did, because she was desperate for fame/money, and she blamed it on Potter to hide the truth. PopSugar On-Set May/June 2011 Interview with

Shannon Vestal Robson: Shannon: Have you read the book, and do you feel pressure to live up to it? Emma: I read the script first and then I read the book. It was so funny because I read the script and I came back to Brown and I told my roommates that I've just read this amazing script, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and my friends were like, "Oh, that's my favorite book. So jealous that you get to play Sam. If I was ever going to be in a movie, if I was ever going to play any character ever, it would be Sam. Notice how Emma mentions going back to Brown and asking her Brown roommates (Scout Willis, Madison Utendahl, etc.) about the book. So even during the Fall 2010 Semester, she was secretly thinking of filming Perks next year. And remember the interviews I posted above (from November 2010) where she claimed education and university came first? BS. She was already planning back in September 2010 (when she went back to Brown) about leaving next year. Also, remember this. Emma is claiming she was overworked with Brown and Potter stuff.....why in September 2010 was she looking at possible filming projects that would coincide with Spring 2011 Semester and Summer? If you claim you are overworked, why are you looking to add on more, extra, unnecessary work. She was also negotiating her Lancôme deal in December 2010 as well. Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2 New York City Press Conference July 2011 (Listen at 17:30): "I'm going to Oxford, in the fall, to study English for a year. Just to explain, I haven't left Brown. I'm still enrolled at Brown, but I'm doing my third year abroad. Studying at home, abroad, for me. So I'll go back to the States to do my last year. I took a semester off but my A-Level credits actually count as an advance-place-me-out-a-semester so I'm no further behind, I'm still technically going into my third year. So, yeah, that's that." Something to remember is how Vanessa Davies (when the Harry Potter spokeswoman announced Emma was transferring from Brown in April)says "Watson, who plays Hermione in the wizard movie series, has decided to pursue a different course not offered at Brown". On Emma's EmmaWatson.com website in the FAQ section (undated), she says this: I was seriously torn as to whether to stay in the UK or go to the States as let's face it the UK has some of the best universities in the world. But, ultimately, I loved the course at Brown and really liked the idea of experiencing a different country and culture - and I must say I've never been happier, I absolutely love Brown. So strange how Emma + her Harry Potter spokesperson contradict each other. Emma claims she purposefully chose Brown (instead of staying in the UK for university) because she loved Brown's course, but then the spokesperson said the reason Emma is transferring is because Emma was sad that Brown didn't have the course she wanted to take. Emma reveals in the press conference that she will be studying English a Oxford. The thing is, Emma was and did graduate as an English Literature major. So Brown did have the course she wanted to take (which is what she earlier said). Okay so Watson claims here that despite taking an entire semester (3-5 classes) off, she's no further behind than the rest of her classmates. Damn, this girl must be such a hard worker to not fall behind. Still, is she telling the truth, lying as usual, or begging/threatening Brown University to give her special, unequal treatment? Fact checking Watson's "advance-place-me-out-a-semester" claim Brown University Office of the Registrar - The College, Advanced Standing Guidelines

Anyway, there's a lot of information and I only parsed out a bit of it, but here's a quick summary. Basically, to graduate from Brown University, you need to take a minimum of 30 classes during your college years (can be at Brown or other approved colleges) and also a minimum of 8 semesters. Just to mention, A-Levels are the UK equivalent of American Advanced Placement (A.P.) courses or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. Also, when Brown says "credits" they mean courses/classes. So, yes, Emma told the truth in that her semester standing is no further behind because her A-Levels counted as an extra semester. However! Emma is still behind in total number of classes taken because A-Levels do not count towards your degree requirement of 30 classes/courses. So she needs to take more classes per semester than the average person since she's behind.

Vanity Fair May 2010 Interview: After shopping classes, she settled on European women's history, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and acting. “I think actually I'm the worst person in the class,” says Watson cheerily. So in Emma's first semester (that's the time period they're talking about), Emma took 3 classes - women's history (lol at this feminist class), Ovid, and acting. Brown requires students to take 3-5 classes a semester and so Emma took the bare minimum....kind of super lazy for someone so excited to get to college and start learning and whatever else she's been spouting for years. Okay, Brown's most basic, elementary requirement that ALL students have to fulfill to graduate is to take 30 classes. Since Emma only took 3 classes her first semester, that means 30 - 3 = 27 classes left to take over 7 semesters. Since Emma took a semester off but claims advanced standing, meaning she wants to graduate in May 2013 (September 2009 - May 2013), that means...... 27 classes over 6 total semesters. 27 / 6 = 4.5 classes per semester This I will go into detail in below, later, but just a heads up, Emma also took the Fall 2012 Semester off in order to film Noah. Because Emma had enough A-Levels, she did indeed get 2 semesters of advanced standing, but to graduate in 6 semesters means...... 30 minimum classes to graduate / 6 semesters = 5 classes a semester every semester Brown only allows you to take a max of 5 classes a semester and since Emma only took 3 classes her very first semester at Brown, it means it's impossible for Emma to graduate by May 2013 without special, unequal treatment....special treatment being either lowering the required 30 classes or allowing her to take 6 classes a semester, but come on, Emma is super lazy and unprofessional. Can you honestly see this girl doing 6 classes a semester when she lazily only took 3 classes her first semester? Freshman year is the easiest you know.... And their 30 classes requirement is their most basic requirement - to let her worm her way out of it would be absolutely disgusting.

#echee #echee's posts #brown

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otherworldhq · 4 years

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Oh, its a glorious tradition, frequently enjoyed and invoked by the fair folk. There are a great number of prey worthy of a gathering such as this –– but this wild hunt will be a prolonged and unusual thing for those who take up their part as midnight riders. You aren’t hunting a mythical beast, you aren’t hunting souls or children to steal away. You’re tracking and hunting a murderer. Whatever creature it is that plagues the fair folk and their kin will find a bloody end at your hands, you vow this before all the creatures of the Otherworld. It won’t end in a night, it won’t end in a week, but you vow that one way or another it will be finished.

More unusual still is the synergy and synchronistic achieved in the organisation of the hunt. Two courts, working together in apparent harmony. Allies, at the very least until the sun rises on a new era of peace. Humanity, too, has thrown its hat in the ring. Seer’s with their keen eyes are just as involved as the rest, planning and working in an effort to save those they hold dear. Quick as hunters, they may prove their might to those who considered them weak before now.

This hunt may last for weeks, it may be brutal and exhausting and drawn out. You may have to fight harder than you ever have before. Those who choose to pick up arms and defend their people may not come out the other side alive.

Danger lurks in other ways, as well. Detective Colm Ó Conchobhair of the Garda Síochána is an ever present spectre on the streets of Dublin now. He lurks outside of Cafe Flux, he questions drunk humans outside of Loophole. He catches your gaze across a crowded room, and you realise that he must be a person who always saw more than he was meant to. Part of the Otherworld, yet outside it. Gifted with the sight, yet he never embraced it. He sees, but he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t comprehend. You’ll have to be careful, lest he take more notice of you than you hoped.

IC INFO:

Welcome to our second plot drop of our reopening! I’m sure you’ll find this one to be much more detailed and offer a very wide expanse of things for your character to do. Please feel free to take any of the minor plots bellow and run with it. You can decide to have your character investigate certain aspects of the plot, write self para’s about it or pair up and explore the story together! 2-3 people are allowed to pick up each plot point and explore it either on their own or with one another! Just let me know what you want your character to do and I’ll mark your name down next to it.

All of the following will take place between the dates of June 22nd –– July 5th.

* TRACKS IN THE WILDS (June 22nd – onwards) –– Poisoned blood and scuffed footprints, the tracks of a wounded thing or a vicious killer? They were found near the stone circle, the morning after your midsummer feast. Yet no one was wounded. Yet no one died. Who do they belong to? Is the killer you hunt the type who likes to lurk and watch and wait for the golden moment of opportunity? Has it picked its next victim and is stalking their every move? The tracks are haphazard, nonsensical, built to confuse. Perhaps they’re calling you in to a trap, perhaps they’re a siren song that promises you glory but will only lead you to your doom. ( Keiran / Nathair / Thorne )

* THE ARMORER AND THE ENCHANTER (June 23rd onwards)–– They’re a legend in these parts, written of in myths and legends. All the fair folk know of them, in their far off and solitary home. They belong to neither court, they survive on their own. The earth is their domain, magic runs through their veins. They can craft you weapons and tools that will make you the most formidable warriors in the land, if the price is right. Sometimes they ask you for a dream, or for your fondness memories. Sometimes they ask you to trade your purest love. Sometimes they ask you for your weight in emerald or ruby. The courts will pay any price now, for weapons to aid them in the fight. One must only go and ask for it. ( Fiadh / Mordred / Open )

* THE DAGDA INSTITUTE (June 25th onwards ) –– Zion de Paor first heard their name almost a month ago, when the murders started to ramp up and the police got more and more involved. The Dagda Institute. They want to learn to live forever. They deal in iron and genetics, and it’s very possible they’re linked to the killings. Still –– you’ll never know unless you learn more. The investigation will need many hands, people to keep an eye on them, people to infiltrate and find out as much information as they can. ( Afric / Open / Open )

* WHAT SARAH KNOWS (June 25th onwards) –– Sarah O’Neill runs cafe flux with her wife. Sarah O’Neill is a changeling. Detective Colm Ó Conchobhair believes that Sarah O’Neill is connected to the Dagda Institute by a maternal Uncle. She’s the only person you know of that might be aware of what’s going on, that might be able to ferret out some information about the Dagda Institute and what they really want. She might be able to point you toward her Uncle. Problem is, Sarah doesn’t seem willing to talk. This has all scared her, so badly. She haunts her cafe now, offers shadows of smiles and tries to dodge any more reasons for the Detectives to want to speak with her. ( Dáiríne / Open / Open )

* SURVIVOR STORIES (June 29th onwards)–– As the hunt unfolds and you meet more and more people, you realise this: some people have come close to death yet managed to escape it. The fae named Fiadh escaped from those who hunted her and fled to court. Another solitary fae passed trough as he moved to the mountains, seeking shelter in further seclusion. A girl who lives at Hotel Titan swears that a spectre followed her home night after night before it attacked, she can’t even remember how she got away, only that she did. How they describe the spectre that hunts them may be useful, endlessly so. Any details you can follow back to the source have to be a priority, now. ( Ailis / Katurian / Oz )

* DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES (June 27th + July 2nd respectively) –– You almost hoped that the killings had died down. No, not at all. In the weeks after the midsummer festivities, two people are found dead. A changeling named Christopher O’Mara and a solitary fae who went by the name of Willow. Their crime scenes match the others, yet there may be some chance of finding clues if your eyes are sharp enough. ( Ailis / Zion / Open )

* THE WALLS HAVE EYES –– The Seelie and Unseelie Court are working together in perfect harmony, or so it seems. They’ve had to mix and mingle more than they’re comfortable with, more than they have in years. Happiness, prosperity, harmony. But there are snakes in the grass on both sides, keeping their eyes keen and seeking out any signs of weakness from the opposite court. Spies, in a way. Ready to gather information and use it, eventually, to bring the court they hate to their knees. Secrets hold so much value, lets see how many you can find. ( Maeve / Canaan / Open )

* THE DARLINGTON ESTATE (June 26th onwards) –– Ever since word of a hunter stalking residents of Hotel Titan, many members of the otherworld have grown wary of staying there. They’re scared, fucking terrified, and they wish they had somewhere safer to stay in the wilds. Prince Brín of the Seelie Court has offered a new home. The old Darlington Estate, a place reclaimed by the wilds and the otherworld, impossible to find for any human without guidance. It has been reshaped into a safe-house for those who need it, and a gathering place for members of the Wild Hunt.

OOC INFO:

This event will run until MAY 1ST, after which all threads should be finishing up! Please tag all your posts with some indicator of the event it belongs to.

#ow: event

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dansnaturepictures · 4 years

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27/07/2020-Millyford Bridge in the New Forest on my day off

I had another Monday off to ensure I was using enough leave over the summer period today and was not working through it all at home and having copious amounts left next spring ahead of the 31st March allowance reset and just making sure I’m having breaks whilst working from home for the good of me physically and mentally. With a very wet morning and early afternoon it looked as though I wouldn’t quite be able to put it to as good use as last Monday which I had off also where I had a butterfly bonanza seeing hundreds of them at Peartree Green and West Wood in perfect conditions on one of my best ever days for insects. I wrote about it here: https://dansnaturepictures.tumblr.com/post/624185138938609664/20072020-insect-day-off-part-1-at-peartree-green and https://dansnaturepictures.tumblr.com/post/624187031642308608/200720-my-insect-day-off-part-2-west-wood

But I had a big morning inside this morning with a lot to sort out, and I just felt like all of this weekend and last weekend it was so nice to do things at a more relaxed pace knowing I had so much time and these extra hours of freedom to enjoy a variety of things in my interests and life. It felt very holiday like in a bank holiday way and it did take me back once more to days within school holidays really and therefore it felt summery at this time of year.

Usually I find myself feeling a little sad into the Monday of a three day weekend for whatever reason as it feels so close to the end after looking forward to it for so long or a little time in most cases. A lot of it has to do with the fact that my Mum usually works on a bank holiday Monday or Monday I have off she normally works on Monday so we go out early leaving in the morning compared to our usual weekend afternoon trips which is great too. But then I have the afternoon alone in my room which I mostly fill with doing my photos and blogs for the day. And in other bits of time I perhaps get to have time I don’t usually to do other things etc. But whist I will never knock such time and having a head start for doing photos is worth it’s weight in gold with the amount of photos I take these days I burned my latest folder to a disk this morning and when recording how many I produced in the current folder I realised I’ve passed the 2000 mark for photos I’ve produced in 2020 already and 19th March remains the last day I didn’t produce one photo, there are some connotations for me of these Monday afternoons alone and at home. One being the last day I saw my Nan alive before we lost her was on a bank holiday Monday one my Mum had off actually but I was feeling down for another reason that day I think. And the afternoons alone take me back to days in 2016 before I worked and after my short stint at University and twice between jobs in 2017. Dark days at times whilst in a way comforting where maybe I wasn’t as occupied as I am used to now.

But today my Mum was off too and I just tapped into that childlike feeling of being off for a day and really appreciated the extra time and packed a lot in whist being aware it wouldn’t last forever and feeling in company in more ways than one which is quite important. As a family we had a lovely day and a great takeaway meal in the evening. Having time with precious people for me felt very lockdown like too and took me back to the strict days of lockdown and the positive product from this horrid situation with the pandemic of us feeling more together at home and generally in the world.

My next leave I have by the way is what I would have had to go to the Bird Fair in August a Monday to recover and Friday when the fair starts that annual Rutland Water event has rightly been cancelled this year and moved to a digital form due to the unpredictable nature around the pandemic and safety having to come first for all concerned. So instead we have booked to go to Devon unless restrictions here or there go backwards prevents this. It’s around the Fingle Bridge area near Dartmoor where we saw Dippers before in 2015 a bird I wrote off in my mind and therefore on here and Twitter as one I would not see this year as soon as it was clear we had to postpone our North Wales trip in June when we did the mega social distancing day trip week instead mostly to surrounding counties this year. Dipper is not guaranteed there but I hope we can try for it if we get to go here. Then again as planned if the situation allows we go to Norfolk for a week in September late on mostly bird related. But I sit in a place now where birds have quietened down but I do have a few more species to see this year, I also have a few still to aim for as perhaps my butterfly and dragonfly seasons reach the conclusions of their peaks. So the weekends including that August bank holiday the next couple of months will still be packed with social distancing wildlife and photography walks. Thanks for all your support everyone and stay safe and well.

We went to Millyford Bridge for the second time in July today to look for a Golden-ringed Dragonfly one I am yet to see this year. We did not see one but if there’s one dragonfly within my slightly lesser interest to birds and butterflies I am happy to throw many walks at trying to see one its this the dragonfly that got me into dragonflies really after seeing one 10 years ago at Bolderwood in the New Forest and we managed to identify it an exciting moment that made dragonflies more graspable with it stopping and us seeing it and making it out and I’ve been so lucky to see them again and again since in the forest a real specialty of the area.

When at Millyford Bridge this afternoon it was great to see a cow and calf as we drove in and Robin with young. Robin and some delightful Grey Wagtails we saw in the delicious river habitat we enjoyed again today here like we did earlier in the month dominated my wildlife sightings today so lovely to see the delightful Grey Wagtails a key work lunch time bird along the River Itchen in the city I work and elsewhere in Winchester for me which I am missing a bit so it was good to see them. I took the nine pictures in this photoset on the walk today, a landscape, a very atmospheric landscape as the rain was still falling a bit, water, two more landscapes, mushrooms as the curtain raiser to autumn continues with a few more of them I saw today there are a lot of autumn leaves out I am noting lately too interesting feelings about that and three more landscapes.

Many little moths, some Fallow Deers running through, New Forest ponies as we left, a Blackbird and one of my favourite damselflies the Large Red Damselfly completed the wildlife sightings on our walk today. Very nice to get good chances to see birds in the binoculars today and see what they were which perhaps I haven’t done a lot of lately as it dried up and the sun even came out this afternoon.

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southernsageco · 4 years

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Double New Moon In Cancer // July 2020 // Zodiac Predictions

We’ve just made our way through eclipse season; two in June and one in July. These eclipses represent ending energies and starting new cycles (and a clean slate!!) Nevertheless, with great new chances, comes also intense energy. It can be a quite challenging time, while we feel lost in a new paradigm arriving and another one to leave behind. Some people will feel stronger than others, but everyone will find their challenges.

The double new moon in Cancer in July 2020, will give you some comfort and time to integrate everything. A double New Moon is a phenomenon that doesn’t happen that often. It consists of a second New Moon in the same zodiac sign. In this case, the first New Moon in Cancer happens on June 21st, and the second on July 20th. The second one is therefore named as a double New Moon. A double New Moon is a time to review the goals that were set up in the previous cycle and adjust according to the progress of the situations. With a similar energy input, but with more maturity and knowledge, is a moment of reflexion and adaption.

The double New Moon in Cancer in July 2020 is connected to all the previous astrological happenings, but especially to the annular solar eclipse June 21, also in the sign of Cancer. This solar eclipse marks an especially intense moment, that can turn out to be confusing for many people. Its energy is of a new karmic cycle that requires you to stand for yourself, while most likely confronting an authoritative figure or situation. Summarizing, chaos as an opportunity to reborn.

So, what does this mean for you and your zodiac sign? Keep reading to find out!! 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Aries:: Aries, focus on your house and everything related to it. If you have been facing familiar challenges, pay close attention to the structures and patterns that are transforming. Take advantage of the energy to connect with your feminine energy and to solve any problems related to your nuclear family.

Taurus:: You have probably been under critics from close people, like siblings or cousins. That forced you to stand up for yourself, but also to review your actions and the messages you have been sending to the world. Taurus, if you notice you need to make changes in these patterns, during the double New Moon, reaffirm your goals.

Gemini:: You got the finances subject this time. Don’t panic, Gemini! If you have been readjusting your life in aspects related to money, closely analyze the messages you have been receiving during the eclipse season. These messages will help you see the best direction for your future. Be patient and cautious, but not afraid.

Cancer:: Sometimes the people we love or once loved are the hardest ones on you, right? Most likely your personality is under attack. The key is to stand up for yourself, stay strong. Which doesn’t mean to be stubborn, ok? Nor your extreme sensitivity will help (sorry for that one!). Cancer, you need to be honest about yourself. What things you need to change, what things you don’t. Once you know your truth, everything will start coming together.

Leo:: Dear Leo, in case you have a tendency for depression and you, are reading this, we want to give you precious advice. Not only for the double new moon but for the entire season of eclipses. Although everyone feels it in different proportions, it can be pretty intense for you. Don’t panic! Close your eyes and be honest with yourself if you need to ask for that help or not.Hidden things, secrets, deep beliefs are under transformation. In any case, you need to stay with yourself, to meditate, to search in you for peace!!

Virgo:: Virgo, you love your friends, but you need to establish a more independent self. It doesn’t mean you are going to abandon your group of close ones, but you need to be more sure of yourself alone. Your friends will always be your source of inspiration, and nothing will change that!

Libra:: Dear Libra, you need to own it! Own it! Life’s asking you to lead? Take the lead. It’s asking you to manage? Manage! It’s the moment to left fears behind. Write that down, strengthen your intentions. The world is yours.

Scorpio:: You are full of good intentions, Scorpio, but you show it in the worst way sometimes. We know you only want to share with the world your brilliant ideas, and we also know you probably spent so much time analyzing it deeply. Despite that, consider others’ opinions and perspectives. Especially, in your travels or studies, or about travels or studies.

Sagittarius:: You love to take life playing and daydreaming, but this time it’s not working for you, right? The deep transformation has been taking place, and if you don’t pay attention, if you don’t give energy to it, it will be a problem for you. The universe is showing you what you need to do, Sagittarius, where you need to go, and you must focus for once.

Capricorn:: From breakups to agreements on things that need to change, Capricorn, you have seen your relationship with lovers (or economics partners) going through changes. Give another boost to the decisions you have been making relating to that or adjust the ones that need to be reviewed.

Aquarius:: Keep paying attention to your health and daily routines, Aquarius. You have now one of the best moments to take care of yourself, to look inside, and to create new patterns. Don’t give up, keep on the track.

Pisces:: Keep focused on feeding your true passions, Pisces. Although this energy might bring some attention to crushes, gambling and partying, remember that you need to put a true intention that can lead this new cycle. Don’t waste your energy. It’s not always that the universe gives you a second chance to boost your intentions and plans. You have all the tools, remember to use it!

The Tarot Card for Cancer is the Chariot and is the theme of this New Moon! What does this mean?? 👇🏼

The Chariot is a card of willpower, determination and strength. You have discovered how to make decisions in alignment with your values with the Lovers card, and now you are taking action on those decisions. When the Chariot appears in a Tarot reading, take it as a sign of encouragement. You have set your objectives and are now channelling your inner power with a fierce dedication to bring them to fruition. When you apply discipline, commitment and willpower to achieve your goals, you will succeed. Now isn’t the time to be passive in the hope that things will work out in your favour. Take focused action and stick to the course, no matter what challenges may come your way – because, believe me, there will be challenges. You may be pulled in opposite directions and find your strength and conviction tested. Others may try to block you, distract you, or drag down the pursuit of your goal. But the Chariot is an invitation to draw upon your willpower and home in on what’s essential to you, so you can push past the obstacles in your way. If you are curious about whether you have what it takes to achieve your aim or complete an important project, the Chariot is a sign you will be successful so long as you keep your focus and remain confident in your abilities. You need to use your willpower and self-discipline to concentrate on the task at hand. You can’t cut corners or take the easy route, or you will fail. Instead, see this endeavour as a test of your strength and conviction, and recognise that victory is within reach, but it’s up to you to follow through.The Chariot calls you to assert yourself and be courageous. Be bold in expressing your desires and laying down your boundaries; otherwise, you will not get your way. You need to have faith in yourself and know fundamentally who you are and what you stand for (thus building off the personal belief systems and values established through the Lovers card).In a very literal sense, the Chariot can represent travel, especially driving or taking a road trip. You may even be considering selling your home and buying an RV so you can head off and roam the country!

Book A Reading Today!! 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 Tarot, Oracle, Pendulum & Birth Chart Interpretion.

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lulahstudies · 5 years

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disclaimer: so obviously these are just the methods and ways of doing things that work for me personally, but feel free to change and adapt them to suit you :)

STEP ONE: MAKE A REVISION TIMETABLE

planning is key, and it’s best not to stumble blindly into revision without having any clue what or when you’re revising. my exams are from the 20th of june to the 1st of july, so i decided to start my revision a month before my first exam. i drew out a calendar in my bullet journal, wrote when all my exams were and then began to schedule in my revision. i wrote out all the subjects i’m being examined in (english lit, english language, maths, chemistry, physics, biology, history, drama and spanish) in order of how difficult i find them, allotting revision time accordingly. so, for the subjects i find harder i do 3 hours a week, and the easier subjects only get 1 or 2 hours.

STEP TWO: FIGURE OUT EXACTLY WHAT AND HOW YOU’RE GOING TO REVISE THINGS

so my school was pretty nice and gave us out syllabuses for each subjects, which made the next step a lot easier for me. i’m pretty sure other schools do something similar (?), but if not, ask your teachers if they have anything like that. then i wrote out a list of each subject, the content that’s in them and how to revise them. for example, for maths i do a lot of practise question from my textbook, for english i write out key quotes for each character/theme and for history i write out timelines and add 3 bits of exact knowledge for each event.

STEP THREE: ACTUALLY REVISE

this is the hard bit. when it comes to revision, it’s super hard to be disciplined and actually do the work you’ve assigned yourself without having a teacher there to tell you to do it, or a proper deadline like with homework. i like to use the pomodoro method (if you’ve never heard of it, i’d recommend looking it up, it’s a lifesaver) to do an hours worth of work for each subject, and if i feel my concentration waning too much i’ll go and do something else, like clean my room or read a book. that way, you’re giving yourself a break but still being vaguely productive so you don’t feel as guilty about it.

STEP FOUR: BEFORE THE EXAM

so the night before i always make sure i have everything i need for the next day. i pack my pencil case, making sure to have fully working pens, my calculator and anything else i might need for various subjects. i also pack my water bottle (stay hydrated kids) and a snack (i try to be healthy but like, chocolate). depending on how confident i feel with the subject, i might do some last minute revision before i go to sleep to really get the content into my head, but i also make sure i’m relaxed and get a good nights sleep beforehand. on the morning of the exam i make sure to have a good breakfast, drink some water and try to avoid anything that’s stressing me out too much (anxious friends, angsty books etc). just before i go into the exam i like to take a moment to breathe and try and clear my mind of anything but the content of the exam.

STEP FIVE: DURING AND AFTER THE EXAM

there are few things more terrifying than being in an exam and realising you have no idea how to answer a question. but, unless it’s an essay based exam and you really need to answer everything, spend a couple seconds checking you definitely don’t know how to do it, and then move on. carry on with the rest of the paper, and the odds are, you’ll remember how to answer it at some point. when you get towards the end, and i cannot stress this enough, for gods sake CHECK. i know it sounds like basic common sense, but i’m as guilty as the next person for finishing an exam with just a minute left, thinking it’s gone awful and there’s no point trying to redeem myself and just not checked. even if you only have 10 seconds left in the exam, check as much as you can. even if you only correct one answer, that one mark could be the difference between a B and an A. after the exam’s over, however tempting it is, do not spend 10 minutes shrieking with your friends about the test. i know it seems comforting at the time, but in the long term it’s only going to make you more anxious when you realise you got a question wrong, or you don’t know whether you or your friend got it right. instead, take some time to relax and treat yourself for getting it over and done with.

i hope this helped some of you, and if you have any questions, my ask box is always open :)

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booknerdphd · 5 years

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Aims for the Summer!

As I’ve mentioned in some other posts, June marks the end of my 2 year stint with the ecommerce company I work with. It was my first job and had so many ups and downs, but I have to say that I’ve learnt a lot from it.

In these 2 years, I don’t think I ever had a proper vacation- the most number of days I took off in a row in two years might be around 3-5 days? Including the weekend.

Since, during my MBA, all out holidays were used for internships, I no longer remember what its like to enjoy a vacation. Or what it is even like to not have something to do.

To be honest, it has been something really eating at me and making me anxious, so I figured I would sit and plan out this July and August. I head off to Uni in September so I want to do a whole bunch of things I have been avoiding and procrastinating for the past two years, using the excuse of time (tbh, I would go to office by 9 and only come back by 8, so I really did have no time, but whatever).

And by plan out, I mean just decide what my aims for these two months are- I’ve been working really hard at not pushing myself and setting unrealistic goals. I’m not including learning to cook and working on the research paper I’m working on because those are assumed things. My aim this summer can be summarised like this- Learn to enjoy things that you need but hated and Learn to enjoy the things that used to bring you joy.

1) Get Back to Reading!

A lot of you were really nice and gave me some good books to read in my earlier post! I’ve taken note of them and I am currently trying to decide which one to read. Fingers crossed, I’m going to start getting back in the habit! When I was younger, and didn’t have much to do in life other than homework and playing, I used to read a book a day. I remember reading the Harry Potter books the day they launched, after waiting in line from 4 am, because I was terrified of spoilers. As I got older, I started de-prioritizing it, even though it brought me joy. My aim for these two months is to get back to reading both fiction and non-fiction, without needing to actually motivate myself. I want it to be something I enjoy, and I hope to do that by making it a habit and reading once a day by the end of these two months!

2) Learn a Language- Korean Edition

There are two languages I have been meaning to learn for the past few years- Korean and Japanese- I wanted to watch dramas and anime without needing the translation (and maybe get into light novels in their original form?). I used to love learning new languages when I was younger and was pretty good at it. Given that Japanese has 3 scripts, I decided I would start with the language with the “easier” alphabet- Korean. I’m using duolingo, but I’ve not made it a habit to work on it regularly. So, this summer, I’m going to work on making this another habit, by dedicating half an hour a day to learning this. Bases on my schedule at Uni, I might increase this time, but the minimum I want to aim at is half an hour.

3) Get Back to Exercising

Another habit I really need to get around to actually making a habit is working out. I have a pretty bad relationship with my body, which I have been trying really hard to work on. My aim these two months isn’t to lose weight, per say (though, to be honest, I kind of do need to lose some weight), as I would rather that be a by product of this than the aim. I want to make myself enjoy working out- so many people have told me that I need to reach this threshold, post which I will automatically start enjoying myself or just naturally start needing it. Fingers crossed on this one!

#self care #my posts #helpful

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elizadoolittlethings · 5 years

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MARK GATISS writer/performer

The League of Gentlemen 1994-present Doctor Who (writer 2005/6) Nebulous (performer, Radio4, 2005) The Quatermass Experiment (actor, BBC4, 2005) The Vesuvius Club (author, 2004)

conducted 30th June 2005

Mark Gatiss is hot property these days, currently riding on a wave of success following the publication of his novel The Vesuvius Club in 2004, along with the big-screen debut of the comedy troupe he's been a quarter of for over a decade, in The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, and his own penned, and popular episode of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who - The Unquiet Dead.

I've been looking to interview Mark for a year now, and had originally hoped to catch him when the League were filming in Dublin. Then earlier this year when I was hoping to get over to London for a chat, things got very hectic, Nebulous was on the radio, publicity was in full swing for the League movie (before the release date was put back by two months), and the live version of The Quatermass Experiment in which Mark played Patterson (alongside Jason Flemying and David Tennant) came up.

Just after the release of the film, as things died down a little Mark graciously found time in his schedule for a chat. Pencilled in for a twenty minute slot on a July afternoon, this ended up as our lengthiest interview so far, finishing an hour later. In that time we managed to discuss most of his recent career, with no holds barred. A delight to interview - I don't think I've ever laughed so much with one of my interviewees.

As the clock strikes three, I dial the number I have been given for Mark's agent, only to find myself speaking to an answer machine, as the woman in question is off today. As I struggle online to find an alternate phone number (didn't foresee this, so haven't left the general number sitting out), I receive a call on my mobile from the agency. Details are exchanged, and they are due to call me back. Five more minutes of silence. Oh dear. Another call to my mobile, and I'm given an extension number to try.

I think its going to be one of those days. Stupidly, I left it until just an hour beforehand to go out and purchase some new equipment for this interview. I have barely had time to do any testing, and I'm having to use an old, and shoddy microphone. Typical.

Note on the interview format:- In a bid to preserve the flavour of the interview, this is presented as a fairly straight transcript, reproducing most of the conversation as it was. Some minor edits have been made to the text for purposes of flow, though in a few instances I have left the hesitations and Mark's affirmations in. This is what its like when talking to Mark Gatiss…

Mark Gatiss: Its one of those days all round. Nothing's getting through today. I'll do my best.

Robert Simpson: I'm not actually sure what would be an appropriate topic to start the interview on. You seem to have had a very busy year.

It carries on. I've just been on holiday actually, which is something I've been meaning to do since February and it was much appreciated. You go on, you dive in. This for Nebulousity is it?

When I started off wanting to do this interview, it was the time of Nebulous and The Quatermass Experiment. And then the film. And then I think I thought you were probably far to busy so I thought I'll leave it for a bit, until things had calmed down again.

Well they have, they've kind of calmed down a bit; we're planning the tour now, and its weirdly kind of full on. We did the commentary for the film before it came out, which was a bizarre situation, 'cus you normally want a bit of time for it to settle down, I think you'll probably hear when you hear it, its very particular to its time, everything's sort of "well I wonder what happened?" [laughs]

That's a bit of a shame,' cus I remember on the third series commentary there's obviously the knowledge of the response from the critics and the public…[the third series of The League of Gentlemen had a very mixed reception, dividing many of the fans and attracting many derogatory reviews. The film seems to have split opinions too]

I think that's bad thing though. Reece was in a terrible mood that day. I don't know, a lot of people have said to me we sound really, really bitter on that and its not true. I don't know, it was just interestingly different. This particular commentary is all based around having been talking to journalists for the last ten days or something [laughs]. It has its own particular flavour.

Yeah, because the film was pushed back as well wasn't it? The release date…

Yeah. We were going to go with April 23rd - I think that's St. George's Day - and because of Hitchhiker's [the long awaited big-screen adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which features Mark and the rest of the League as Vogon voices] moving up we put back to June. But it's a funny thing, its kind of all swings and roundabouts because obviously the thing there was we were going to be up against, as it were, Sin City, Star Wars, whatever, but at the same time by having a little longer we were able to show a completely finished film to the reviewers. If we'd gone in April we would only have been able to show them the film with the temporary soundtrack, which wasn't graded. You never know really which one's the better one to go for.

How did you find the response to the film yourselves?

It has been wonderful to be honest, particularly from the fans, very very good. We've had… I suppose mixed reviews is the best way to put it. We've had fantastic reviews, some grudging ones, some, I mean not very many absolutely bad ones, but it's kind of exactly what we expected. No one really gives you any credit for trying to do something with a bit of ambition. And of course, again its on the [commentary], when making it we knew we would get this sort of typical voice going that we were clever clever to make jokes about how bad British spin-off comedies tend to be, and of course then they'd say "How I wish they had done one where they've all gone to Spain" and of course, as expected that's exactly what some of them did say!

But the weird thing about it all, in a funny way, you've got to take the good ones with as much a pinch of salt as the bad ones because in the end its just someone's opinion, and although obviously you print all the good reviews on your poster, its just someone's opinion… I mean, no word of a lie, there were three reviews in The Times [British national newspaper]over a period of like two weeks, in different aspects of The Times. They were saying in the Times Eye, or the Times Review… three different people reviewed it and there were three entirely different reviews, ranging from one, a guy who liked the series and hated the film, someone who quite liked the film, and then an absolute rave. Now, what do you do? You put all three of them on the poster? No, obviously you put the best, but at the same time even within a paper its just someone else's opinion so… the only thing that ultimately tells if whether people have enjoyed it, is whether they go to see it and eventually how it stands up - if you can still watch the film in ten years time, and I strongly believe you will be able to because we worked very hard to make sure it wasn't just a, just a spin-off.

It interesting just how many reviews said, "You'll be baffled if you don't know the series" and without exception, our experience has been that people who don't know the show at all and have gone to see it have completely got it because it is very gettable. Its only if you know the series, you might think "Well I understand this but nobody else does", you know what I mean? But if you have no knowledge of it, you go and watch it and it is explained to you quite swiftly that, you know, here is a murderer on the loose from prison, here is a businessman, here is a pederastic German teacher, and then they discover their characters are a fictional series, its very gettable indeed, its just… it's kind of the curse of the spin-off, you can't get away from the fact that it is actually based on a tv series. But as I say, we did work very hard to make sure that it would be accessible, really by crediting people with some intelligence. You don't actually have to spoon-feed them every step of the way, a lot of the stuff we took out was too much exposition.

I thought it was quite a brilliant film. I know that one of the main papers here, at the press show I went to…

You're in Belfast?

In Belfast, the guy from the Belfast Telegraph, he didn't understand why the audience liked the film, he found it quite unusual. I don't think he wanted to like it but…

Yeah. I think that's very true as well, you know there's a lot of meanness in the island of ours.

I think what I liked was that it was so different from the tv version; as different from series three as series three was from the first two series of the television version.

Well you know what we've always tried to do, is not just take the easy option, and not just being perverse. We're not trying to annoy people who like our show but it's what keeps us interested. We really couldn't have made a cheap spin-off… we could have done, but we wouldn't have wanted to, it would have been pointless. We spent a long time writing it and coming up with the idea, because it made us laugh because it was interesting, and not just an obvious thing where you know… Somebody, we were in Dublin actually for the first Dublin screening, and at the party afterwards, there were these two guys who were pointed out to me as being big fans, and I was sort of pushed over towards them, and said "So what did you think?" and this guy said [adopts quiet Dublin accent] "I didn't like it." And we were like, "Right, oh!", and actually what he wanted was for it all to be in Royston Vasey [the fictional northern-English town in which the television series is set] and its interesting how, you know, if we'd actually done that film we'd have been crucified for being lazy, if we'd just done like a big-screen version as it were. So you really can't win, that's the problem.

I was actually more surprised that you hadn't done something completely different.

Well, you see this is the process we went through: from the very first stage we always thought we'd have to do something, a total stand alone, something like The Life of Brian, you know. And we did, we wrote some stuff and we talked around it but it was… in the end it was… it just wasn't catching fire in the same way. I think we wrote some funny stuff but it was suddenly like starting absolutely from scratch, and then Steve had this idea about being watched by Pauline in the supermarket and it was just suddenly very fertile, it was like "what if…?"

And then of course, you get in a situation where you're trying to raise the money, where actually if you'd gone to them and said "Look, we have this very successful tv show but we're going to totally ignore it…" [laughs]. So in a way our idea fed into the commercial realities of it which were to some extent they did want a spin-off, but as I say it was much more to do with the fact that that was the idea that made us laugh. I'd like to think if we were able to do another one, we'd kind of established cinematic ground that we're able to do something sort of stand alone, but its very hard to say really because it just depends on what the idea eventually becomes.

Its certainly very different. Its a very literate film I think.

Bless you, again.

It was on a certain intellectual level - an appeal to the "arty" people [the pseudo-intellectual cinephiles and critics] as well as the average person on the street.

Well the strange thing is - its not as cynically contrived as it might sound, but you know that we put the giraffe up front because it's a kind of huge laugh that actually makes… my brother actually loves that bit, and he's my template for all these things - but you can smuggle an awful lot of quite interesting stuff underneath the giraffe semen as it were. I think its very moving film, and Herr Lipp's journey particularly is rather affecting. I think the big thing to remember for us is our series has always been like that, its not just Little and Large, its not a BBC1 show, and it would have been very odd if suddenly the movie totally failed to reflect our own styles and personalities. We knew we wanted to do something that had a bit of weight to it, and was actually quite literate in that sort of way, its just a very different world. Getting a film made is very hard and it all sorts of different pressures had come into it, you know.

You do tease us at the end of the film with that whole credit "The League of Gentlemen will return in The Windmills Of Your Bum"

That's right.

Will there be that film?

Not The Windmills Of Your Bum, but… the thing about tv is you get ratings which are a kind of ludicrous concept as you know because its based on the thousand people that have those things in their tv [in the UK at least a certain number of homes are fitted with devices which monitor what they are watching, and the ratings for the whole country are based on the average of this select portion of the viewing population], and then they scale it from that, a kind of Gallop Poll. The weird thing is we live and die by them, and yet they're ludicrously unrepresentative, they don't take account of second tvs or videos very much, and that sort of thing, so… The thing about film is you can't argue with the figures. If people don't go and see it, they don't go to see it. So its done okay, we're still in the top ten after almost a month which for a British film is not bad at all. But ultimately it will be decided by the dvd sales, and increasingly that's how it is. The few weeks of actual theatrical release are not where its at, I know for a fact Austin Powers wasn't a big hit on its theatrical release but the dvd sales were fantastic, and that's why it became a franchise you know. So we'll have to see. We won't know until after the figures have come in for the dvd, whether there is an appetite to make a sequel.

I imagine with the sales of the dvds of television series, and Live At Drury Lane, it should do quite well.

No, again, talking about the cold light of day, the reason there was an enthusiasm to back the movie is because our dvd sales are very good. So, touch wood. Encourage everyone to buy it three times. But it is a different world. We would love to make another movie, it would be very challenging to try and come up with a follow-up rather than just a sequel. We'll have to see, we've got a lot of possibilities we're… we've been asked to do a new series, and there's another tour, so there's a lot still going on.

I was going to ask about the tour. Apart from asking, why aren't you coming to Ireland.

We might be, the thing is it's an initial run, the first leg, its exactly the same as we did the first time. We booked through from October to December. And it did sufficiently well that we did another few months in the New Year, so what we've done is a similar pattern. So… we had a meeting yesterday and Ireland wasn't on the initial, but I think if we carry on into the New Year then we will.

I might just have to come over to England to see it.

Yes. We did like three or four nights in Dublin, and we did one night in Belfast.

Yeah. I actually missed that last time round. How different is the stage show this year?

Oh, I've no idea because…

…you haven't written it….

…we haven't been writing it. It's a panto-style. Its called The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You. Not, its not a panto in the sense that you could go and see us or Cinderella. It will be our sort of version of it, but that's what we're basing it around. It will be fun for all the family… I hope.

But eh, I dunno. Its interesting. We're kind of… Its like a second tour is a different animal in that you can't, we're not going to do the same sketches as last time or anything like that, but to some extent we did some of the most famous sketches the first time. And the other thing to bear in mind of course is that its eh… when you go and see a show, like going to see a band, you don't want to be presented with their experimental new album.

There's a strong element of catchphrase and familiarity, because that's what you want. You get this response from when people see their favourite characters and familiar situations so that's very helpful of course, because we can put some stuff in that they've seen on the telly, but obviously we can't just do that. There's a lot to be decided yet.

I suppose it's a bit like Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Any live comedy show, I think the way you do it to keep yourself interested is put maybe familiar characters in a new situation, but also there are a lot of popular sketches people like to see re-enacted. I know I do when I go and see things, you kind of get a buzz hearing a familiar song or seeing a familiar sketch.

Congratulations on your Doctor Who episode [The Unquiet Dead - episode 3].

Thank you very much.

I really enjoyed it. I think it was probably my favourite of the series [honestly, I've said that all along, I wasn't just trying to be nice to Mark - The Unquiet Dead felt like old Doctor Who, the Victoriana is like Pyramids of Mars or Talons of Weng-Chiang - simply brilliant]

Everyone says so. [laughs heartily] Its been an amazing experience. We all had our fingers crossed for it, but its been beyond anyone's expectations of success. I mean I cried real tears throughout the series watching other episodes, I was absolutely in pieces.

David Tennant told me the other day that the most he cried was watching an episode of Doctor Who Confidential filmed at the new exhibition in Brighton, with these seven year old kids saying [adopts childish voice] "I like the Sliveen, and the Daleks -they're my favourite." And it is incredibly moving, because it's like us when we were kids. It's just incredible, its happened again.

It's just amazing. It's not a cult programme. It's family viewing. In fact you can sense the ripples of panic going through tv networks because what's happened is Russell [T. Davies, executive producer] and the rest of us have discovered there is a family audience, which everyone had said had vanished forever. So as I say, it's been a privilege and a thrill to be involved with it and I'm doing another one at the minute for it.

I was going to ask any… [attempting to lure secret information out during a formal interview] what's it about?

Any clues?

Any clues, yes.

Not really, it's another historical. It's historical. That's all I can say.

[When I was at school I ran a Doctor Who Society and got ridiculed regularly for it. Back then Doctor Who was only on tv in the form of repeats - at least until the Paul McGann tv movie in 1996. As part of the regular screening schedules, I used to screen the new spin-offs from BBV, like The Airzone Solution, and the PROBE series - written by Mark, billed on their commercial video release as "The British X-Files", and featuring Caroline John reprising her role as former companion, Liz Shaw]

Takes me back. I'm frightened by the fact that my PROBE films came out when you were still at school I think.

I was in my teens then [Mark laughs] '94 [the PROBE series came out in 1994] It was a long time ago. I've had a couple of moments when I've seen kids in shops - there was one last week in HMV, a boy, he must have been about eight, he was wanting to buy the new Doctor Who dvd and his sister, who can't have been any older than him was lending him the money.

Oh! Fantastic! My only regret in the whole thing, is that they're not doing Target novelisations [for those not familiar with Doctor Who, the Target novels started in the 1970s and were adaptations of Doctor Who serials for a youngish market. The mainstay of many Who fans youth].

I would love… I want Terrence Dicks to do The Unquiet Dead [Terrence Dicks, former script editor on the series, and author of many of the Target novels]. That would make me very happy. Its just brilliant isn't it. I mean a lot of my friends who watched it when they were kids, they know that I'm a fan but that's as far as it goes. I went to a gig yesterday in Hyde Park, and then afterwards I was on the tube with my friend and we just talked about the last episode as if we were talking about Desperate Housewives. There was no shame. It was just great tv. And she'd been, you know, in floods of tears at the end, it's just extraordinary isn't it?

Yeah.

God, it's amazing.

Were you frustrated at all by not being so involved in the pitch - because I know a couple of years ago you did a pitch to the BBC for a new series with, who was it, Gareth Roberts? And Russell?

No, I wasn't. I mean to be honest, when I heard, I got a call from Clayton[Hickman - editor of Doctor Who Magazine] actually at midnight saying "Russell's bringing back Doctor Who" it was like "Oh My God!" But the brilliant thing was, I really mean this, was Russell's idea of bringing it back and our idea of bringing it back are so in tune.

That there's no, I mean I suppose apart from a couple of stylistic differences which were inevitable, I couldn't be more pleased. Its not, its not like its come back and I don't agree with the way its been brought back. You know we were absolutely of a mind. It seems bleeding obvious and it always did, that in order to bring it back you have to reinvent it, and that's exactly what Russell's done.

I've lost count of the amount of times that people have been saying "Is Paul McGann coming back to do a regeneration?" and its like, obviously not because you're trying to get the audience you've actually got, which is a kid who'd never heard of it. And the first thing you're going to get confused about is if [one Doctor changes into another], well why's this happening?

Uh huh.

And that's what I think Russell has done so brilliantly, is parcel out necessary information throughout the thirteen episodes so you don't have to swallow six impossible things before breakfast. You only have to look at the tv movie to see, although it does have its merits obviously, to see that - how not to do it.

It starts inside the TARDIS, so you don't know its bigger on the inside [oh how we laughed here]. It has the Daleks, the Master and the Time Lords mentioned in the first three minutes, and its incredibly excluding. And exactly what did happen, happened - the general audience just went "What's this about?"

Now whereas the way Russell engineered this, is from Rose's point of view, that you meet this stranger, and then you kind of go with him on this journey… its exactly, its just absolutely right, you know…

Yes

…Given that, you couldn't ask for anything more… wonderful.

[Star of the 2005 revival, Christopher Ecceleston's surprise departure was leaked to the British press just days after the first episode aired. The BBC issued a statement claiming that Ecceleston had cited a concern over being typecast and the gruelling schedule as his reasons for leaving. They later retracted the statement when it emerged that Eccleston had not said anything. There is some speculation that Eccleston's final decision to leave after just the one season was spurred on by the BBC's statement and handling of the incident. David Tennant was formally announced as replacement a few weeks later - having been tipped on BBC online as the forerunner from the off]

Presumably you knew that Christopher was leaving after a year?

I didn't, no. I mean, I knew before it broke, but erm, but not for a long time. I don't know, I don't know what anybody knew to be honest.

Right.

It's all kind of shrouded in secrecy. I mean that, I think that it's a great shame, because you only have to look at how effecting that finale was to realise what an impact he's actually made in one season.

It felt like he'd been the Doctor for three years, because it was so well done. It was unbearable he was going. I think particularly the, the moment where the hologram turns to Rose and says "Have a fantastic life" I just went to pieces.

But I think it's a terrible shame because he's just been really brilliant and so yeah, he's absolutely proved the reason why he did it, which is his versatility and his light touch and his ability to do something very, very family orientated and sort of Saturday night friendly. But David is a brilliant choice and a very good friend of mine and I'm really so thrilled for him.

It's just bizarre though. We keep… we were just doing the commentary for Quatermass the other day and its so strange. [Mark and David Tennant co-starred in the live remake of The Quatermass Experiment for BBC4 in April 2005].Every now and then just look at each other and its like "What?!" What? He came over to my house to watch Quatermass and he just ending up staying the whole day, and we had a costume fitting [Laughs] Its just ridiculous. He said to me the other day, someone asked him "Is it true you're a Doctor Who fan?" and he went "Yes" and he said "I'm trying to play it down a bit now" Very odd. But he will be wonderful.

Now that you've seen Quatermass, is that the first time you've seen it since doing it?

Well, we watched it the next day. [after broadcast]

Right.

Yeah, the first time we've seen it since, yeah.

How do you find it went? Watching it as a viewer rather than as a performer?

We were doing a commentary so we weren't listening to it in the same way. I mean, I've said this, I say this on the disc, but without being unfair to everybody, I think it was more exciting to be in than to watch. In our head - in our heads, it was so thrilling… live, it felt like it was really taut and everything. Watching it back I think… the aerial shots of London and everything which are held for far too long. I did, we both thought, that it kind of, the first half was extremely good and it's a bit more… it just sort of falls apart a bit in the second half. That's my personal feeling but it's a lot to do with the problem of telescoping six half-hours episodes into one ninty mintueish sort of slot, you know. A lot of the comic relief had to go, and it becomes quite relentless at the end, I mean it's a grim sort of story, but it looses a bit of its - a bit of its shading I think.

Yeah. I was maybe a little bit disappointed with the absolute climax - that it became a cerebral thing rather than…

Well I don't know, you know I was saying again on the [dvd commentary] that I, its a weird thing in retrospect to think that there actually is a rubber monster in [the original] Quatermass…

In fact if anything you'd expect that ending [the implied monster of the 2005 version] to be done in the original and in fact it wasn't, it was a rubber monster, I mean I personally would have been happier if we had been able to suggest more. The first thing we talked about was… because it was always that Quatermass was going to see Caroon again, which was very nice, very ghostly, and in fact the other two astronauts were added, it was added later the thought that you see all three, the original idea was that kind of, as it were, behind him you would see all these things thrashing about. So there was a suggestion that in fact he had become this huge creature… it was an awful lot to do genuinely with the fact that it was a live broadcast from one place.

And there were just certain things really it would have been almost impossible to achieve, it would have been nice to have the suggestion of something I know, we all felt that, but in a way I think it does sort of suit the stripped down nature of this version and its worth bearing in mind that its an exp… it wasn't just a recreation, if we wanted to fill in the archival gap…

…uh huh…

…We would have done it full-on fifties and probably it would have been filmed and all that sort of thing, but it was an experiment on The Quatermass Experiment. It was an experiment in live television so it, all those things kind of fed in to the mix you know.

I thought it was very successful. I was actually quite gripped through it.

We were, I have to say as a performer it was the most wonderful exciting thing. We had a lovely time. Everybody had a great laugh doing it, but it was also an amazing bonding experience, simply because it doesn't happen very often - ever really. And there is an amazing camaraderie came out of the whole live experience.

You can see the relief, I think, on everyone's face during the close as the credits…

Well that's the hysterical thing again, because when we were doing the commentary, I was dead by that point. I was in the green room watching it, and the captions were rolling, and I was going "Look they think its finished, they think we're off air" Everybody, David goes and kisses Isla Blair who's like the Home Secretary, who he never met and they're… Aidrian Dunbar just looks right down the camera and winks. Hysterical! But in a funny kind of way it makes, it helps you realise [its] a live event rather than…

Well, there was the Pope went and died in the middle of it.

Yeah. Right over my face! I knew he'd do that. You know the Pope's going to die at any minute, just to spoil it. I think he was hanging on just to see the end of Quatermass, but couldn't quite make it…

Quite probably. I know a lot of the complaints that I heard about it were I think informed by over-familiarity with the Hammer film version rather than the original television version. It was only that I'd seen the new dvd ahead of schedule a couple of weeks beforehand that I was, you know, familiar with the original style. And I think it adopted that very well…

…yeah….

…and as a recreation of even the feel, I think it was superb.

One of the things that you can't get away from really is they were dealing, we were dealing with the same problems they were, and there are only so many ways in a live environment you can frame a shot. It's like fifty years later you've still got one or two cameras….

…uh huh…

…and you're not going to be able to suddenly do something suddenly radically different. So a lot of the time the flavour and the feel of it comes out of the fact that it is the - its same set up, really. Just we have slightly less upper-class accents.

Right. Let's talk about something else. I guess we should talk about Nebulous.

Mmmm.

Which I thoroughly enjoyed. Nebulous was I think the funniest thing I've heard on the radio in years.

Bless you.

I'd just been listening to Hitchhiker's [Guide to the Galaxy] again as well, and you know it was a bit Douglas Adams-y, but I thought it was more in tune with…my head I guess!

We've been working on it really for years. I met Graham doing Dr Terrible [Dr Terrible's House of Horrible, a BBC2 production from 2001, written by Graham Duff]. Initially it was planned as a tv series, as a sort-of spoof Quatermass. It was going to be shot in black and white and all kinds of things, and we, I persuaded everyone that it actually should be a sit-com. We learnt an awful lot on Dr Terrible in terms of spoof and how much legs they have….

Yeah.

Not very much. Especially when you're dealing in slightly heightened territory anyway. The things that lend themselves best to spoofs have been very po-faced, as opposed to Hammer which obviously has a fantastical element anyway.

I think the League do Hammer better than Dr Terrible did. You know, there is that kind of Hammer element in….

Yes, very much, yes. I was very keen if Nebulous would be… it would first and foremost work as a situation comedy and we worked very hard on the format, on K.E.N.T., the hyper-laundry idea, Nebulous having this clown-fixation thing, and then the individual team members and stuff like that, and I think its really paid off because it feels that it is a situation comedy. You get to know these people very well and you have the fun of just putting them in different adventures, you know…

Is that how you knew David Warner then, from doing that?

From doing?...

Nebulous?

No! Oh God, I met him…I met him through David Tennant about three years ago… David got to know him through a friend of his in Oxford, I don't know how that happened but…. I was asked to do a Doctor Who for Big Finish, one of the Unbounds with a new Doctor, they asked me to play the Master which I was very excited about, which I did, and they didn't have a Doctor and I was just talking to David about it and he said "I've just got to know David Warner", and he was very keen - he'd just moved back from America so he ended up playing Doctor Who opposite my Master for Big Finish. And then we wrote the part for him in the film and I've kind of worked with him ever since [laughs]. So then we did the Nebulous pilot not long after that, so obviously we got him in to play Doctor Klench.

I think he's very good in that.

Oh, he's fantastic. There are things in it, actually there are things in it where erm, 'cus we remade the pilot…

Oh yeah. I've heard the pilot as well. So…

Yeah, but we actually took several of David's lines from the pilot because they were never the same again and they were so brilliant…. There were things like "Wasthereanythingelse!" [shouted and slurred] and oh, I think the line "What if all the chickens dried up", he's just got this genius for that kind of line, he can just make an ordinary line really hysterical with aggression, and this strangely sort of classless voice he has where he just suddenly sounds sort of common. It was just so brilliant, so we just used a lot of those. They were perfect.

So you're doing another series, is it, November or September ?

Actually I think, touch wood, we're going to do it next month.

Really?

Because, we had to put it back slightly, but I think everyone's come free in August. We're going to hopefully do it next month.

Graham's written I think five or six. We had such a wonderful time doing it, Graham Crowden was an absolute delight. It was just such a lovely job to do. And I just, I mean I said at the time, if we'd had twelve written, we just would have carried on we were just having such a good time. I'd love to carry on doing it.

Do you have much creative input into the scripts then?

What we did, 'cus we formatted it together, I came up with KENT and stuff like that I think - we very much worked it up from the tv idea and tried to make the personalities very… we've got a lot of work in it together, but once that was done I was very keen that Graham authored it, you know. Obviously it's his project…

Yeah.

And I did want to do a lot of work on making these characters right and memorable, particularly Nebulous, I wanted to do something different to what I've usually done, you know. So after that what we've gone for, and what we're going to do again, in fact we're going to have a meeting about it, Graham's done early drafts of these things but we always talk them through and maybe suggest some changes, and some additions and then even when it gets to recording it…

What we discovered last time was lots of catch-phrases were developing, which we hadn't actually thought about. And once you feel them coming you start to sort of write them in a bit more you know. Its more stuff like that. And also suggesting story ideas I suppose we've had a lot of - I don't know if we're going to do it this time but, we drew up a big list of stuff we'd brainstormed together including one about, [which] I think we might be doing, where everyone's journey to work is starting to take slightly longer and it turns out the world is expanding because of the success of anti-global warming. Actually, I think Nebulous has to solve it by burning down the rainforest!

The great thing is, I think having got a very adaptable, flexible and good format, you can kind of chuck all your favourite sci-fi clichés at it, you know, and do big Doctor Who-y monster stories and kind of time-travel stories and moonbase stories, and things like that. They all feel like it adapts very well to it.

I loved that Claws of Axos parody one, with the…

Yeah, that was one of the first ideas we had, 'cus of course it was going to be tv and I was very keen it had very beautiful men in it. But I said the one we should do a spaceship crashes, and a yokel - it was going to be like a farmer with a pitchfork - he goes over the brow of the hill, and there's this crashed spaceship and three incredibly beautiful men, naked men come out, and he just goes "Pwoar!"

That would be fun, and everybody falls in love with them. I really love the way that came out, and then it sort of evolved more into the boy band idea, Graham's idea of that, and I love the way they all have individual sort of "talents".

Yes!

Quiet one, and the sporty one. Yeah, I think its really funny that one. My favourite is The Coincidence Machine. I think that's terrific.

Yeah. I think they were so well written. I'm really looking forward to the next series.

Hopefully we'll have some more guest stars as well this time, but it was just a joy to do. We had such a good time and it's a lovely thing just to feel that, and also now getting back together it's got a sort of old school feel. Its lovely to reconvene, and Graham Crowden was so… it was his birthday on the last day of recording last time and he just said "I can't tell you what this has meant to me," you know, 'cus he's 82… And it was just wonderful. He just loved it, he was just kind of in it, his bits tend to be sort-of isolated as it were within the episode. But he was a delight to have around, and we just sat at his feet and gazed into his majesty. He was hysterical and had the most brilliant stories and he just loved doing it. And everyday we'd say "How are you Graham?" and he'd say [adopts gruff theatrical voice] "Hanging on, dear boy! Hanging on!"

Do you prefer writing or performing then?

I love 'em both. I mean, what is that line in Kind Hearts and Coronets, "How happy could I be with either were t'other dear charmer away." I always miss writing when performing, and exactly the other way round. I find writing very satisfying because of the amount of control you're able to have of your own thing and your own vision as it were. I love appearing in things, actually to be honest the kind of acting I tend to like the most is when I've nothing to do with the writing. It's simply because you don't have the same pressures.

I've just done, I'm doing some more, but I've just done the first episode of Funland which Jeremy wrote with Simon Ashdown, and my first day of filming was the day after the premiere of the movie, and I was very tired and had been talking for like three days non-stop to press and that. And I'd just got the train up to Manchester and I just thought "Oh I wish this was another day I'm just not in the mood, you know". But actually it was really refreshing, liberating, I put the costume on, it was a totally new set of people, and I had a really great time and I felt reinvigorated by it you know and that's something I really love about acting in other people's stuff - you go into it with just that hat on, rather than two. The League - we're across the whole production, its very difficult sometimes to keep everything on the ball and in the air at the same time.

So something like the Lucifer Box series [Mark's new series of novels, starting with The Vesuvius Club] you're doing must be quite different again, from all of that.

Yeah, I mean its very lonely 'cus its just me, and its very different really. And of course if - I've forgotten this lesson from writing Doctor Who books - but the reason that books take so long is because you've got to write so many more words. It's not like writing a script. But I've just started the sequel which I'm not putting a finite date on 'cus I'm sure a lot of things will intervene, but I'm very excited about it….

The second one?

The second one, yeah.

I thought that was due out later on this year originally.

You may actually see that on Amazon it's supposed to be out this year, but it isn't, believe me. I'm afraid not, it's not ready yet.

I read last night in another interview, that you're moving it twenty years into the future?

That's right yeah.

Is that still the case?

Yes. Its set about 1928/29, because I became very interested with, originally it was going to be three Edwardian sort-of stories and when I was finishing The Vesuvius Club I thought, I think I've done Edwardian-pastiche and I just suddenly thought, wouldn't it be great to do one set, like a sort of Thirty-Nine Steps, and then I thought "Oh my God!" and then I could do one when he's very old, like Fleming [Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond books].

You were saying about Casino Royale.

Exactly, not even, not like a big You Only Live Twice Fleming, but a very kind of early spy Fleming. So that's what I'm hoping to do. The Devil In Amber is set in the late 20s early 30s when Box is middle age, and feeling his age, and is sort of being challenged by younger agents and then the last, the third one will be when he's elderly, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle the sex scenes with that.

Then I'll go back and do some prequels. I'll do a full-on Conan Doyle 1890s one and a First World War one. You can go on forever!

No sign of you doing anything else like… I read your James Whale book..

Oh God!

Yeah. That was a bit of a surprise when I came across it.

That was a long time ago.

I thought, what's Mark Gatiss writing a James Whale book for? [and perhaps more pertinent, how come I haven't heard of it before!]

Well I love his stuff and I mean… I'm not very proud of that book I can tell you that.

Really?

No, not a lot of it is my own work I have to tell you, but I was very young - much younger. And I was commissioned to do it and then I kind of panicked because it was difficult to find any new information so it was just a bit of a pointless exercise really but… I love those movies and I think Whale was a genuine, genuine auteur, extraordinary talent. So well done for finding it, wherever it is.

Its sitting beside me actually. I mean I guess….

…It's a great story, a very interesting story, a lot of people have told it a lot better.

Uh huh. I was just surprised kind of you never did any more criticism like that.

Well I mean the part of it I had the most problem with was critiquing the films because I don't know whether you can sort of learn how to do it but I didn't feel very qualified, I can give my opinion of them, I didn't go to a sort of film-criticising school; I just felt I was sort of giving my version of events rather than I suppose giving a genuine critique of the movies. Its funny, I've thought occasionally over the years that I might like to do something like that again but it's a very different thing, a very different way of working.

I think I'd have to find someone that no-one had ever done, in order to… I love biographies, I always read biographies. I just read a book about the Mitford Girls which is just fantastic. I think I'd have to find someone who is slightly lost to history in order for the research to be very interesting, to be an interesting thing where you felt that you were just discovering someone that the story was worth telling and of being a bit forgotten rather than doing the fifth book about Dickens or Peeps or something - that doesn't really get me going the same way. That's what I might [do some day].

That's always the hassle I have trying to write to write anything about Hammer.

Exactly. The problem there is it's been done very badly a lot of the time. And it's a shame because if you feel you have something brand new to say its difficult to get it off the ground because people say "That's been done".

Yeah. I always want to say they were rubbish by the end [I was being a little harsh here. I do feel that the last thirty years haven't been properly evaluated, ever though, and the quality had dropped].

You can say that.

But its one of those things, you try and argue it with people, somebody needs to be objective here.

But don't you find, I find the funny thing about Hammer is when I was a kid they used to show horror double bills, I couldn't wait to get through the black and white ones to get to the Hammer, and my opinion is totally reversed now. I love the black and white Universals, and a lot of my favourite Hammers.

What I've started to do recently is watching horror films on a Friday night again, and you'll be pleased to know, unless you do the same thing, that it feels the same as it ever did. Something about Friday nights deserve to be Horror Night. So I've been buying an awful lot of old horror films on dvd. And things, Dracula Has Risen From The Gravewhich I loved as a kid is just terrible.

Yeah.

It's so boring, It's so slow. It does of course have him impaled on a cross but that's it! And yet something like Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde which I kind of routinely dismissed, I loved it when I saw it again. I thought it was a really funny, clever pastiche by Brian Clemens. All the Jack the Ripper, the stuff on Burke and Hare, it's that sort of giddy mixture of Victorian clichés. I loved it. That tends to be, that seems to be the pattern, it's almost like, without being perverse, the less celebrated ones are much more fun. Plague of the Zombies is a fucking masterpiece.

That's my personal favourite.

Brilliant film. And The Reptile as well. Dracula: Prince of Darkness is quite ponderous, it's got lovely things in it, but it takes its time. Satanic Rites of Dracula, I really enjoyed. It has no reputation at all. Its better than 72[Dracula A.D. 1972] I thought. Maybe something to do with I didn't know it very well, but I thought it was really refreshing. Actually kind of maybe they could have updated this you know. Yeah, its funny how your opinions shift isn't it?

I think I've had a similar experience. I mean my first Hammer was Scars of Dracula.

Wow!

And I think that was also where I discovered Patrick Troughton.

Ah ha!

You know, so it had that dual effect.

Yeah.

People were saying to me, "He was Doctor Who", and I was like "Was he?"

Yeah, God how strange.

'Cus I remember getting Box of Delights on video when I was a kid and people telling me he was Doctor Who …

Ahh.

… and it didn't register.

I can imagine the magic of that. I have similar stories, I suppose about Target books really.

Yeah.

I can, I can remember where I was when I got the novelisation still, they kind of trigger something Proustian. The cool blue spine of The Abominable Snowmen has a flavour to me that I can identify, you know what I mean? I remember going to get it, and I was reading The Daemons at the time and I couldn't wait to finish it so I could start The Abominable Snowmen.

My sister particularly always used to laud it over me because she had seen it since the beginning, and she'd say "Oh yeah, I remember that one". You'd go "Oh God!"

Yeah… the Target ones are something I think we all go through as fans. My brother and I both used to scour the bookshops for them. We'd take a batch of them and devour them in an hour and a half each volume.

Yeah, I mean they're so… I never read, I've never gone back to one. Not since I was a kid, but I can remember - the first one I got was The Three Doctors, I remember everything about it, the beautiful orange cover, the Chris Achelios drawing and everything and I… it was magic. That story has such a special place for me in my heart. Mostly because of the book, because of what it meant to me.

Yeah.

Oh, its funny isn't it...

page posted 29 August 2005 reformatted and reposted 23 August 2006

#MG #mark gatiss #unofficial hammer films.com #doctor who #vesuvius club #interview #The Unquiet Dead #The League Of Gentlemen #apocalypse #the man behind the genius #all things MG #doctorwho

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paralleljulieverse · 6 years

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It is common knowledge that Star! –– the spectacular 1968 Julie Andrews musical currently celebrating its 50th anniversary –– underwent substantial editing in the wake of its ill-fated US release. Dismayed by the film’s poor box-office and panicked by the rapid downturn in the domestic movie market, Fox executives ordered a series of increasingly drastic cuts to Star!, culminating in the film’s ignominious withdrawal from distribution in June 1969 and subsequent re-release four months later in a radically shortened, re-titled version as Those Were The Happy Times (formerly known as Star!) (Edwards 1993; Holston: 220-21). This sorry tale of post-release hatcheting is part of the historical legend of Star! and also part of its unjust reputation as “the H-bomb of musicals” (Kanfer: 78).

What is possibly less well-known is that Star! underwent select trimming before its release, as well. At the end of the film’s post-production in April 1968, director Robert Wise had assembled a working rough cut that was shown to studio personnel and test-screened with two preview audiences in Cleveland and Denver in early-May. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Of the 814 preview cards received, 633 rated the film “excellent”, 146 “good” and only 3 marked it “bad” (Edwards). Nevertheless, Wise and editor, William Reynolds, went back to make a number of further adjustments to the film ahead of its global premiere in London in July 1968. Much of this late-stage editing work was relatively minor –– pruning a shot here and there in order to tighten pacing –– but several short narrative scenes were also cut in their entirety.

None of this material was particularly significant and, given that the final roadshow release of Star! ended up with a marathon running time of 176 minutes –– enough to “test the patience of even those of us enamored with Andrews, musicals, and showbiz dramas” (Betancourt, 2014) –– the cuts were possibly all-to-the-good. Still, it is not difficult to see what these excised scenes were designed to achieve and, in some respects, their loss exacerbated problematic aspects of the film’s narrative complexion.

What follows is a brief catalogue of the major scenes dropped from Star! They are presented in order of where they originally occurred in narrative sequence. For the most part, details are taken from the final shooting version of the screenplay by William Fairchild, dated 25 January 1967, and augmented where possible with archival material.

A further sense of where and how these “lost scenes” functioned narratively is provided by the paperback novelization of Star! by Bob Thomas (1968). As discussed in a previous post, novelizations were a popular feature of film culture in the 1960s and 70s. Because they had to be written well in advance of a film’s release, novelizations were typically adapted from shooting scripts and rough cuts and, as with Bob Thomas’s adaptation of Star!, they frequently include narrative material that didn’t always make the final cut.

______________________________

Lost Scene 1: Gertie and the Singing Doughboys

Screenplay Scenes 35-36, 38 (filmed 19 September 1967, Stage 22, 20th Century-Fox Studios) This short sequence occurred immediately after Gertie makes her stagedoor flight from the disastrous Daffodil Girls music-hall performance in Swansea (“In My Garden of Joy”). In it, Gertie is shown hitching a ride with a military supplies lorry back to London in search of better opportunities. An establishing external shot (35) shows the lorry rumbling down a country road past a “London 34 miles” signpost, followed by an internal shot (36) of the driver’s cabin with Gertie sandwiched between two young soldiers in uniform, all singing a lively chorus of “Oh, It’s a Lovely War” (Fairchild: 25; Thomas: 26). In earlier versions of the screenplay, this short sequence was preceded by a number of additional scenes (33-34) showing Gertie working odd jobs and sleeping in a train station but these were dropped prior to production and never filmed. A further shot (38) that was filmed but subsequently cut during postproduction occurred in the ensuing scene where Gertie arrives in London and sneaks her way into the Lumley Court Theatre in the hope of auditioning for André Charlot. As she stops in the theatre alleyway, Gertie looks up at the poster advertising the new Charlot revue and whispers to herself “quietly but with complete confidence, ’…With Gertrude Lawrence!’” (Fairchild: 28).

While minor, this cut material clearly worked to underscore Gertie’s driving ambition and her determination to do whatever it takes to realise her dreams of stardom.

______________________________

Lost Scene 2: Gertie and Billie Carleton

Screenplay Scene 53 (filmed 29 April 1967, Stage 14, 20th Century-Fox Studios) This scene followed Gertie’s triumphant ‘understudy’ performance of “Burlington Bertie”. After the narrational newsreel footage detailing Armistice Day celebrations and the return of star Billie Carleton to the theatre, Billie is seen backstage surrounded by well-wishers from the troupe. Gertie appears from one of the dressing rooms and comes up to greet Billie with ‘star’ and ‘understudy’ indulging in affectionately bitchy repartee. Played with camp theatricality and lashings of “dahhhlings” and air kisses, the scene highlighted Gertie’s growing sense of hauteur and theatrical confidence, while emphasising her thwarted ambitions. It thus helped preface the later confrontation scene (55) between Gertie and first husband, Jack Roper where he complains, “ever since you’ve been put back in the chorus, it’s been nothing but belly-aching!” (Fairchild: 52).

Interestingly, this sequence between Gertie and Billie was the only sustained dialogue scene to feature Lynley Laurence, the actress who plays Billie Carleton in Star!. With its excision, Laurence’s role was reduced to a handful of mostly non-speaking scenes, though she would still receive a special featured screen credit in the final film.

As another interesting aside, the dialogue for the cut scene has Billie Carleton joke that Gertie likely wishes “I’d broken my neck”. The real-life Carleton did in fact die not long after the events depicted here. Following a gala ball at the Albert Hall to celebrate Armistice on 27 November 1918, Carleton returned to her suite at the Savoy Hotel where she was found dead the next day from a cocaine overdose. It was a huge scandal at the time that subsequently formed the basis for Noël Coward’s first hit play, The Vortex (1924) about drug abuse and sexual impropriety in English high society (Hoare: 37-39).

______________________________

Lost Scene 3: Gertie and Sir Anthony Go Boating

Screenplay Scene 61 (filmed 29 June, Regent’s Park, London; and 23-24 August 1967, Stage 21, and 8 September, Stage 22, 20th Century-Fox Studios) This was the first of several cut scenes detailing Gertie’s blossoming romance with Sir Anthony ‘Tony’ Spencer (Michael Craig) and, with it, her rise in social status. Immediately following their first dinner date where Gertie alternately titillates and shocks the assembled society guests with ribald theatre stories, Gertie and Tony go on a ‘date’ to the boating lake at Regent’s Park (Fairchild: 60-61). As the pair sit in the rowboat, Tony explains the history of the Park in florid detail as Gertie looks glum and distracted. “Words!”, she says dejectedly, “I look at things and all I can say is –– they’re nice!…You’ve got to teach me more words”, thus highlighting her recognition of the need for increased social sophistication. After a further exchange, Gertie moves in to give Tony a kiss when the rocking of the boat throws her into his arms.

The allusion in this scene to linguistic training sets up a marked Pygamalion / My Fair Lady dynamic with Tony cast as a Professor Higgins-type figure –– albeit, more “patient and kind and wonderful” –– who helps mentor Gertie in the ways of aristocratic high society. There is even a pointed reference in the dialogue to Gertie’s background as a Cockney. Traces of this dynamic remain in the final film, notably in the scene where Gertie arrives at Cesare’s in her new gown and, responding to a compliment about the dress, starts to say “It is rather nice…” when she catches Tony’s eye and quickly corrects herself, “…er…divine, isn’t it?” (Fairchild: 64).

This scene on the lake involved considerable strategic planning during filming. At the end of a one week period of location shooting in the south of France in June 1967, the production crew proceeded to London for the next stage of filming. Julie, however, flew back to Hollywood, ostensibly to start rehearsals for the big musical numbers, though there is some suggestion she needed to avoid entering the UK for tax purposes (Craig: 151; Land: 296). As a result, location shots on the lake at Regent’s Park had to be filmed using a double to stand in for Julie who sat in the boat with actor Michael Craig. London’s notoriously capricious weather added to the woes with the crew having to wait hours on the day of shooting till 5:00pm when “the sun burst forth long enough to permit the photographing of a brilliant scene”. All the while, “property master, Dennis Parrish, had to toss bread to ducks…to keep them within camera range ready when the time came” (Land: 334-35; also Heffernan: 30). This location footage was then intercut with later process shots of Julie and Michael Craig filmed in front of a blue-screen at Fox studios. Production accounts detail that studio filming for the scene occupied two full days on August 23 and 24 on Stage 21 (Edwards). Despite the work and effort, the dialogue component of the sequence was cut in its entirety and all that remained in the final release print is a few brief insert shots of Gertie and Tony in the rowboat.

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Lost Scene 4: Gertie Gets a Make-Over

Screenplay Scene 63 (filmed 11-13 and 18 September 1967, Stage 16, 20th Century-Fox Studios) Continuing the Pygmalion theme from the previous cut scene, this sequence detailed Gertie’s ongoing social metamorphosis as Tony takes her to the salon of couturier, Julian Brooke-Taylor (Fairchild: 63-64). Of all the cut scenes, this one was possibly the longest with an estimated running time of several minutes.

Here Gertie is introduced to the grand world of haute couture and the even grander character of Julian Brooke-Taylor. Described in the screenplay as “[t]hin, fortyish…not a homosexual, but rather asexual, always appearing elegantly weary but in fact full of creative energy” (Fairchild: 63), Brooke-Taylor was played by Scottish-born character actor, Monty (Monte) Landis. Today, Landis is best remembered for his cavalcade of cameo villains in the cult TV series The Monkees (1968) but he had a long career as a comic actor in theatre and film in both the UK and the US. Prior to Star!, Landis had a string of minor but memorable character cameos in films such as The Mouse That Roared (1959), Charade (1963) and Double Trouble (1967), as well as several popular TV series of the era including The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), Get Smart (1967) and Batman (1967). The latter series was filmed at 20th Century Fox studios at more or less the same time as Star! which is possibly how Landis secured his brief role in the film.

As detailed in the Fairchild screenplay (63-64) and Thomas novelization (50-51), the lengthy sequence starts with a mid-shot of Brooke-Taylor sitting on a Louis Quinze settee, “an expression of well-bred resignation on his face” (Fairchild: 63). As he spouts a humorously imperious monologue about being “the best couturier in London..many would say the whole of Europe”, the film cuts to a long shot of Gertie and Tony combing through hundreds of glamorous gowns in the gilt and marble salon, “dresses are everywhere –– in a large open wardrobe, draped on chairs and settees” (Fairchild: 63). Gertie picks up dress after dress, “considering it and then, as Tony shakes his head, rejecting it and adding it to the growing discard pile beside Julian” (ibid). All the while, Brooke-Taylor continues his waspish spiel:

“So who am I to complain, my dear Tony, when you invade my salon two hours after it is officially closed in order not to buy but merely to borrow. Please, please, do not for a moment imagine that you are imposing –– just feel completely free to treat me as you would any small, overworked dressmaker around the corner who runs up clever little numbers in her spare time after high tea…” (Fairchild: 63-64).

Finally, Tony finds the perfect dress –– the brilliant black and ruby beaded décolleté gown that Gertie wears to Cesare’s in the next scene. As he holds it up to Gertie, Brooke-Taylor stops mid-breath, “[h]is face lightens, [t]he artist in him beams whole-hearted approval and admiration,” “Ah!,” he purrs, “Yes!” (Fairchild: 64; Thomas: 51).

Other than highlighting Gertie’s continued social transformation, this scene also served to establish the context for Gertie’s subsequent employment as a salon model for Brooke-Taylor in the later fashion show sequence. Its omission from the final print of the film doesn’t cause a major logical inconsistency but it does weaken some of the backstory. From the way it is written, and given Landis’s theatrical comic style, one imagines that the scene would likely have had a ‘comic relief’ tenor not unlike that of the later fashion show where Cathleen Cordell provides such wonderfully humorous flourish as the affected salon vendeuse.

It’s unclear why the Brooke-Taylor sequence was dropped in its entirety. Production accounts show that more than two full days were spent shooting material for it from 11-13 September 1967 on Stage 16 at Fox Studios, with the fashion show filmed immediately after on the same set from 13-14 September (Edwards). Further retakes were ordered for 18 September which possibly suggests that Wise was unhappy with aspects of the scene as originally filmed/played. Maybe he remained unhappy, maybe the sequence felt out of keeping with surrounding material, or maybe Wise just wanted to reduce an already overlong first half? Either way, the visit to Julian Brooke-Taylor was consigned to the cutting room floor.

Monte Landis, the actor playing Brooke-Taylor, had a bit of an unfortunate run in 1967. At about the same time he filmed his dropped cameo for Star!, Landis also appeared as part of the original line-up for the TV pilot of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, but when the series was subsequently picked up by NBC for what would prove to be a six season run, Landis was let go and replaced by another British comedian (Erickson:108). There was some compensation for the actor when he secured his semi-recurring role as the resident villain in the second season of The Monkees (1968), which as suggested earlier remains his most famous work to this day. As detailed in his iMDB profile, Landis continued to secure intermittent TV work throughout the 70s with cameos in shows such as Hawaii Five-O (1971), Columbo (1971) and Police Woman (1973), as well as the odd big screen film like Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Young Frankenstein (1974). As late as the 80s and early 90s, Landis could still be seen popping up in the occasional episode of The Golden Girls (1987) or comedy film like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and Heart Condition (1990).

In between these screen assignments, Landis seems to have done a good deal of live theatre. In an interesting “six degrees” moment, just a few months prior to his work on Star!, Landis appeared in a revival of Lady in the Dark at the Pasadena Playhouse –––– opposite Marni Nixon in the Gertrude Lawrence role, what’s more –– where he reportedly stopped the show with the comic “Tchaikovsky” number (“Monty Landis Draws”: 35). Landis also found something of a second career as a spiritualist in the 1970s hosting a weekly programme on a Southern California radio station devoted to the occult (Martin: S8). This interest in all things spiritual must have continued as the last press mention we’ve been able to find about Landis reports that, in 2007, he had retired to Palm Springs where he was teaching Kabbalah (Salkin: E1).

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Lost Scene 5: Gertie at St James Palace

Screenplay Scene 69 (filmed 29 May 1967, Lotos Club, New York City; and 1 July 1967, Westminster School, London ) This brief scene was the third of the excised episodes depicting Gertie’s social metamorphosis courtesy of Sir Anthony Spencer. Immediately following the newsreel insert profiling Gertie’s embrace of “the fads and the fashions of crazy postwar England of the early 20′s” –– doing the Charleston, hot air ballooning, awarding the prize at an auto car race –– and her ascent to royal social circles, this scene showed Gertie and Tony arriving at St James Palace. Resplendent in a fur-trimmed gold brocade cape, Gertie enters the Palace on the arm of Sir Tony looking every inch the princess when, falling back into mock Cockney, she whispers: “D’you think his Royal Highness would mind if I loosened me stays? They’re killing me” (Fairchild: 71).

The scene was clearly designed to highlight Gertie’s triumph in her new “role” as “the glittering darling of society” while remaining true to her irreverent working-class spirit. This theme –– along with the whole Pygmalion-esque subtext –– is explicit in Bob Thomas’s novelization:

“Under Tony’s tutelage, the girl from Clapham was becoming a lady. The metamorphosis was not always easy. Sometimes in the middle of a formal dinner Gertie uttered a cockneyism that sent the table into a roar of laughter. But she always laughed with the other guests –– Gertie never pretended to be anything she wasn’t. And she always listened carefully to Tony’s coaching afterward. He would point out where she said the wrong thing or used the wrong fork. As in the theatre, she learned her cues quickly and never repeated an error” (Thomas: 56).

Like the earlier rowboat scene, this one required a strategic blend of location and studio shooting. The bulk of the interior was filmed with Julie and Michael Craig on 29 May 1967 at the Lotos Club in New York City. Craig was still appearing on Broadway at the time in Pinter’s The Homecoming and this shoot was his very first piece of work for Star!. Additional footage of Gertie and Tony arriving at St James was filmed a few weeks later on 1 July at the Westminster School in London with Craig and a double to stand in for Julie (Edwards).

______________________________

Lost Scene 6: Cavalry to the Rescue

Screenplay Scene 86-88 (filmed 3 July 1967, Guards’ Parade, Whitehall, London) This bridging sequence occurred when Sir Anthony Spencer arrives to visit Gertie with his surprise proposal of marriage. Following a series of establishing shots of Tony riding with the Guards on ceremonial parade –– shots which remain in the final release print of the film –– the original sequence continued to show Tony arriving at Gertie’s London mews house. He dismounts from his horse and passes the bridle to his personal equerry, Corporal of Horse Cooper (Max Faulkner). As he walks towards the rear of the house, still in full regalia “his accoutrements clanking”, Tony passes Gertie’s maid Mary (Barbara Ogilvie) who is carrying a tray of tea and sugar to the guardsmen. The camera stays on Mary as she goes to the guardsmen and chats amicably with Cooper, telling him to feed sugar to the horses “[t]hen you can have your tea” (Fairchild: 82).

Other than the opportunity to further showcase the colourful pomp of the Royal Life Guards –– which, as detailed in an earlier post, had been strategically selected by Wise for the visual impact of their uniforms –– this scene also helped underscore the established intimacy of Gertie and Tony’s relationship. That Gertie’s maid should greet Sir Tony and his Corporal by name and come out prepared with a tray of tea for the brigade indicates that this not-so clandestine morning visit to Gertie via her back door was a routine arrangement for the two lovers.

The actor who appears as Corporal Cooper, Max Faulkner had a long career as a character player and stuntman in British film and TV, possibly best remembered for his work on the cult TV show, Doctor Who. The cutting of the sequence meant that Faulkner lost what little dialogue he had in the film, though he can still be seen riding alongside Michael Craig in the opening shot and reacting to Tony’s sneeze. He can also be seen later in the film in reprise footage of the Life Guards on parade, immediately prior to Gertie and Tony’s visit to the Lord Chamberlain. In this scene, which was filmed on location at the same time as the earlier sequence, Faulkner’s character is front and centre on screen bellowing a series of commands to the mounted Guardsmen. In the original screenplay this establishing shot is followed by an additional brief dialogue scene where Gertie passes the Guards on her way into the Lord Chamberlain’s office and greets Cooper by name (Scene 118). “Good morning Miss Lawrence. Nice to see you back,” the corporal says (Fairchild: 123). When Noel shoots Gertie a questioning look, she explains, “Well, I have been to St James Palace before.” “For heaven’s sake,” gasps Noel, “don’t mention that!” (Fairchild: 123).

While Max Faulkner at least made it into the final release print of Star!, Barbara Ogilvie in the part of Mary was less fortunate. With the excision of the dialogue portion of Sir Tony’s arrival at Gertie’s house, her role disappeared completely. A native Londoner, Ogilvie carved out a solid career playing character parts on UK TV, including a regular stint in the mid-70s on the long-running soap opera, Emmerdale. Possibly due to production logistics or possibly to help denote the passage of time, Gertie is given a different maid later in the film, Dorothy who is played by Matilda Canan.

______________________________

As stated at the outset, it is not difficult to understand why these various scenes were cut from Star! Their excision reduced an already over-long running time and arguably helped tighten pacing. Nevertheless, one can equally appreciate the intent behind these scenes and their role in furthering character and plot.

One of the most common criticisms made of Star! is that its episodic revue format works against optimal narrative development and, with it, audience identification. Squeezed into brief segments between the film’s mammoth musical performances, Gertie’s life is rendered via a series of epigrammatic highlights with a surfeit of information and dazzle, but not a lot of emotional depth. As Richard Schickel (1968) writes in a characteristic example of this critical complaint:

“William Fairchild’s Star! script, ranging over a [long] period of Gertrude Lawrence’s career, deals in types rather than people, romances rather than loves. It is always at a documentary distance from its subject and her world. Maybe she was unknowable, in the full biographical sense, but we must have the illusion of knowledge, a sense of motives more subtle and complex than we receive” (10).

Moreover, the fact that Star! is a theatrical revue style musical where the numbers are staged as semi-realist replications of Gertie’s theatrical performances, and not as organic expressions of character and narrative as is the case in an integrated ‘book’ musical, means that whatever sense we get of Gertie and her story can only really come from the bridging moments in-between. As director Robert Wise reflected in later years:

“People often ask me why [Star!] didn’t work…It’s hard to find answers. Maybe [audiences] just weren’t prepared to like Julie in the kind of character Gertie Lawrence was. Maybe we spent too much time on musical numbers and didn’t spend enough time digging into her character, getting the kind of contact of the audience with what made her tick. With The Sound of Music, we certainly made contact with the audience in terms of the relationship between Maria and the children and the Captain. The audience knew where everybody was coming from basically” (Leeman, 195).

It’s doubtful that the excised material profiled here would have made much of an appreciable difference in this regard. Like applying a band-aid to a gaping wound, the film’s narrative deficiencies required more substantial revisions than the inclusion of a couple of minor book scenes. Still, these scenes do at least gesture towards expanded character development and suggest several lines that might have been profitably mined in a more carefully structured narrative treatment.

Finally, it is not known if any of this edited material from Star! still exists. If it does, the chance of it seeing light of day is sadly remote. Cut footage from the Fox-Wise-Andrews megahit, The Sound of Music has never surfaced, suggesting a studio history of either outright junking or public embargo. Moreover, if the material were available, it would surely have been included as part of the comprehensively packaged laserdisc release that accompanied the film’s 25th anniversary in 1993. Still, hope springs eternal and maybe the ‘lost scenes of Star!’ will finally appear as part of that deluxe 50th Anniversary Blu-Ray release that we know just has to be round the corner!

Sources:

Betancourt, Manuel. “Robert Wise Centenary: Star! (1968).” The Film Experience. <http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/9/9/robert-wise-centenary-star-1968.html>. 2014.

Craig, Michael. The Smallest Giant: An Actor’s Life. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005.

Edwards, T.J. “The Saga of ‘Star!’”. Star! Special Edition LaserDisc. Beverley Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1993.

Erickson, Hal. ‘From Beautiful Downtown Burbank’: A Critical History of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 2000.

Fairchild, William. Star! Screenplay. Final version. 25 January, 1967.

Heffernan, Harold. “Squeaky Sound Stage Troubles ‘Star’.” Philadelphia Daily News. 18 August 1967: 30.

Hoare, Philip. Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997.

Holston, Kim R. Movie Roadshows: A History and Filmography of Reserved-Seat Limited Showing, 1911-1973. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co, 2013.

Kanfer, Stefan. “Cinema: Quarter Chance.” Time. 96: 4. 27 July 1970: 78.

Land, Kevin. “Recreating Four Decades of Modern History for Star!”. American Cinematographer. 50: 3, March 1969: 294-266, 332-336.

Leeman, Sergio. Robert Wise on His Films: From Editing Room to Director’s Chair. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1995.

Martin, Bob. “TeleVues: They Have the Spirit, It Says.” Independent Press-Telegram. 5 August 1973: S8.

“Monty Landis Draws Many Laughs in ‘Lady’”. Independent Star News. 15 January 1967: 35.

Salkin, Judith. “Building One’s Character.” The Desert Sun. 18 November 2007: E1.

Schickel, Richard. “Two Stars: One Glowing One Dim.” Life. 65: 19. 8 November 1968: 19.

Thomas, Bob. Star! New York: Bantam, 1968.

Images:

“70 mm cinema film strip” by Zigmej, CC BY-SA 3.0 [Adapted].

STAR!, 1968 [Laserdisc], R. Wise, Fox Video, 1993.

St Hilaire, Al. Photographic Contact Sheets for STAR! [Unpublished], 1967.

Twentieth Century Fox, STAR! Press Kit and Publicity Materials, 1968.

Special thanks to Hanne.

#julie andrews #Star!#star!50 #Robert Wise #gertrude lawrence #classic film #musical #lost scenes #film history #old hollywood #lynley laurence #monte landis #Twentieth Century Fox #William Fairchild #michael craig #max faulkner #barbara ogilvie

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lunebinnie · 5 years

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(1/11)Oh my gosh yesss I'm glad that you like long messages too because I talk way too much 😂 (And yeah about my friend and just hanging out w/ her more that's exactly what I was thinking 😂) It's actually kind of funny bc just yesterday I was hanging out at her house and her younger brother needed to go to Walmart and I was like 'I've been meaning to go to Walmart, I'll take you' and ofc since I have a bluetooth radio adapter the whole drive I had my Spotify going with some quality k-bops, lol

2)And as we were driving I noticed him kind of jamming and I was like 'Oh my god Mickey do you actually like this???' And he was Like 'yeah, these are some good bops 👍' I was shooketh. I had to go home before I had the chance to show him any music videos but he says he's open to watching some with me next time I see him. One way or another I'm going to turn someone in my social circle into a kpop fan you mark my words ☝ and then maybe we can team up and try to work on his sister some more 😂

3)I only started first getting into kpop last June so I'm still very new, but it's definitely super frustrating how so many ppl act like it's an inherently bad or cringey genre of music just bc it's kpop! The stigma is ridiculous! I also started out with BTS (lol) and since they're pretty popular in the US at least I was able to be like 'See, this isn't just a niche thing, lots of people know abt and like this group' but of course my dad still says 'Just cause it's popular doesn't make it good'

4)And I'm like? You're a band teacher, you of all people should understand that music doesn't have to be in your native language (or even have lyrics) in order for you to enjoy it, but go off I guess... It's the same with one of my college friends. They make fun of me for liking kpop but this is coming from some who still treats March 22nd (the day My Chemical Romance broke up) as a day of mourning. Like, no tea no shade no pink lemonade, MCR was a good band nothing wrong with liking them.

5)But like if you're 22 and you still haven't grown out of your emo phase do you really have room to pick on other people for their music taste? 🤷 Anyway that's the person who follows my main that I didn't want to know I had a kpop sb. I think I made it around July. Tbh it was pretty dead for most of 2018. But like I said I've started using it way more since I recently revealed that it exists, lol. Especially since that good good Astro cb 👏💗😩 But honestly Astro is such a blessing

6)Idk how I lived so long w/o them. When I first got into kpop I was planning on just sticking to BTS since the reaction to me being into kpop was so volatile. I was like 'I'm only into one group, ppl already are negative about me liking kpop so I'm just gonna stick to this and not become a full on multifandom fan' and then in Nov I accidentally let myself fall in love with Monsta X and that plan was foiled. And realizing I wasn't gonna be able to stick to just one anymore opened the floodgates

7)And I was like okay in that case, let's just start getting into *all groups* Lol. My story of getting into Astro was actually bc of my best friend's roommate (can you tell I have like one friend and my whole social circle kinda revolves around her? Lol) so this roommate when she heard me being sad about having no kpop friends was like 'oh hey, I'm kinda into kpop' and it turns out she didn't like very many groups and was one of the ppl who blah blah BTS is overrated, which ya know isn't ideal8)But I was just really desperate to have someone to talk about kpop with. And Astro was her favorite so I was like, okay I'll get into them so that I have something to talk about with her! So I started watching some videos and I fell in love with them pretty much instantly! And I was real excited bc #1 now I can talk about kpop with someone! And #2 this group is actually amazing? Bonus! ... And then they got in a big fight about their living conditions and the roommate ended up moving out RIP

9)So that didn't work out, lol (Your story about finding them during that internship sounds amazing though! Haha) But yeah, so this is my first cb too! And although I love them w/ my whole heart and would have loved to have them in my life even sooner what an amazing cb to be your first! The concept was wonderful, the album was excellent, the visuals were to *die* for. They worked so hard and I'm so proud of them and I'm so happy we got to see their work come to fruition and get them a win 🤧🤧

10)The dance practices though? You're so right omg 💗 Me and my Rocky bias *fully* understand 😂 All of them are such good dancers?? I never fail to be impressed. Of course you know who I always end up watching tho 👀 lol (̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶l̶f̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶R̶o̶c̶k̶y̶'̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶t̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶I̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶e̶y̶e̶s̶.̶.̶.̶)̶ ̶ I also love how at the end they always pause all dramatic for a minute and then start screaming 😂

11)It's like? Amazing talent *and* dorky personalities? What more could you ask for? Lol. In regard to your last question though Unfortunately I also won't be able to see them 😔 I live in the smack middle of the US and since they're only going to coasts all of the venues are way too far away to get to. Esp since it's the school year and I can't skip class to drive cross country for a concert much as I'd like to (Holy lord I talked over twice as much?? Why am I like this?) Talk again soon! -ASA

Okay SO I’m very sorry I haven’t had the time to answer everything until now bc I’ve been busy studying for midterms and also I was a lil trashy today since my uni closed bc of freezing rain so I slept in but I’m glad that FINALLY everything got sent like damn tumblr you really don’t want us making friends huh.

Yessssss I love the feeling of seeing someone else also get into the same interests! I’ve been pretty lucky in the sense that I grew up around mostly other asian americans, so kpop was never something that was considered super “weird,” like some people were into it and some weren’t but even if you weren’t you still would’ve been familiar with the more popular groups from when you were younger. Even now, I have a bunch of friends also into kpop (one of them is even my roommate) so tbh I was definitely the one in my friend group late to the party aha. Even my university hosts kpop nights at our bar and I’m pretty sure we have a kpop dance team as well? So tbh if I met someone new there’s probably like a 50% chance they’re into kpop or at least listen casually.

Tbh I used to be a little bit judgy too but moreso because of the obscene amount of money I’ve seen some of my friends spend (no joke one of my friends has spent probably like $500+ on Loona stuff in the past month and a half and another friend bought like 5 copies of the same album for herself like damn idk how do you have that much money).

I also really don’t like it when people bash other people’s music tastes, since I feel like it’s something so personal? Idk but for a long time I used to be really self conscious about sharing my music with other people and even now I feel like that sometimes. For me after getting into BTS I kind of expected to get really into other groups since I was in Korea anyway and I was already listening to a lot of other artists casually. For me it started with NU’EST (fell for them immediately at the same concert that I saw Astro at) and then after was Astro, and then I just started slowly getting into other groups after that (even though I haven’t totally been able to get into Got7′s music they’re SO funny and I just kinda fell for their personalities you know).

I honestly think that they did such a wonderful job with this comeback too! I like seeing their concept evolve and mature but they’re not straying too far from their original cute concept so I feel like it’s a nice middle ground that’s very unique to them, you feel? Also I feel like the visuals especially and the execution of the whole plant concept was just done so well?? Even my friend who’s not in kpop was like “k idk who they are but that was the prettiest music video I’ve ever seen”. What are your favourite eras and songs? For me I’d have to say either the Spring Up or Baby era BUT right now my favourite song is probably Again/Should’ve Held On though tbh my mood and my tastes change like every few weeks loool.

I have no idea why I tend to be most attracted to the dances rather than vocals or rap (maybe has to do with the fact that it’s something I’ve always wished I could do but have always been bad at lmao). But Astro’s stood out to me for the exact same reason! I just thought it was so funny seeing them all break character at the end because you really get to see how hard their choreos are and you get a glimpse of their personalities like damn, how can you not stan these dummies?

That’s really unfortunate that you won’t get to see them either :/ They’re also coming to the closest city to me but it’s on a Tuesday, but I *hypothetically* looked up flight prices and tried to see if I could get away with just missing a day of classes if I flew back in the middle of the night since I have some friends who did the same thing and drove down to Buffalo but I seem to have underestimated the size of New York State LMAO. But apparently my university’s too far from the airport so it’s “not realistic” (and also I’m hella broke from travelling to Taiwan and Japan while I was in Korea but that’s a minor issue ig). I hope we do both get a chance to see them live though! Who knows, after the success of this comeback I’m expecting a lot more cbs and world tours out of them ;)

#asa #Anonymous

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nehawriter16 · 6 years

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7th October, 2018 23:05 pm Average, Mediocre, Loser

For the longest time, I had myself fooled. I was on a secret mission – to study for all 8 papers even though I hadn’t done classes for 4 of them (the really tough ones) and there was hardly any time to prepare for them without sacrificing my marks in the others. I didn’t tell any of my friends or the senior who was mentoring me this. I just picked up the books and began to try to figure things out myself, going into panic and frustration when I couldn’t understand something.

I’d spent time drawing up timetables that required studying 300 pages a day, which was obviously impossible, even if I sat for 16 hours a day with barely any breaks. All of my friends were appearing for only 4 papers, which was the sensible thing to do because it meant passing with good marks and a part of me wanted to do the same, to make things easy for myself, because it meant I wasn’t going to have to resort to extremely unhealthy sleep/eat/social patterns such as alienating every single person I know, completely switching off from social media, and most importantly, sacrificing my creativity in terms of writing. Giving up everything else seemed like a small price to pay – and I have endured years of mental, emotional and social sacrifice for this course already, so I’m used to it – but writing is in my blood. Writing is the one thing that brings me immense happiness. I can’t give it up. Even if it’s not monetarily viable, even if nobody is reading what I have to say, it is as important to me as breathing.

But I wanted nothing more than to somehow pass. To wake up one morning in January close to my 23rd birthday and find that I was a Chartered Accountant. I knew that seeing that four letter word on my marksheet wouldn’t mean pride for having “made it.” It would mean giddy happiness for finally being DONE. Done with this course that I never wanted, would never be good at, would never enjoy no matter how hard I tried.

I just wanted to slap the degree in my parents’ hands, pack a bag, move to Bombay as soon as my articleship ended in March. I had so much to do – my unfulfilled creativity, a half written book to finish, a part time job in poetry waiting for me, and most importantly – the new-found freedom of being a young, single, self sufficient wild thing in a city where nobody knew who I was. It was a new beginning and when I was falling asleep every night, when I woke up every morning, and when I couldn’t force myself to keep going – it was all I would think about. I associated Bombay with the first breath of fresh air after being in jail for 5 years, because that’s how sickening this city, the course, and the people had become for me.

I knew I would never fit in the minute I walked through the doors on the first day of class for the first level. These people weren’t like me, and I wasn’t willing to change what I enjoyed for the sake of a 5 year period, or even for a single day. Words would always be my poison. Not law, not numbers, not the robotic ways in which the students around me seemed to be able to sit in one place for hours, learn things I couldn’t get myself interested in despite trying so hard.

But from the first day, I forced myself to study, because what choice did I have? I’d shunned science when my parents offered it to me, and arts was not a choice. I passed, faltered once, but landed a big four articleship and kept going. On the surface, everything seemed to be working out. Inside, I felt suffocated. The artist in me was screaming for release, which is how I started to get more involved in my Instagram account. For 2 years I spent all day at work, trying to excel in a field I was starting to dislike more and more by the day, but convinced that quitting so close to the finish line was stupid and out of the question.

There were only 2 things that kept me happy – a boy I was in love with, and narrating stories for my Instagram account. I relied on them heavily and hopelessly as reasons to wake up every morning and go to work, or class. I watched the girls I call friends do much better than me and began to develop a serious inferiority complex. They loved what they were getting to learn and wanted to be better. I was trying to chameleon their behaviour, and failing miserably.

In June of 2017 I lost the boy. But like Nikita Gill and Rupi Kaur would remind me in numerous poems, he lost me, not the other way around. Either way, it was a loss, and my happiness took a monumental blow. I held on hopelessly to hope till my hands turned to scabs. I did things I’m not proud of. I resorted to reckless behaviour to replace the big, gaping hole that seemed to have opened up in my heart. But heartbreak was not a new concept to me, so I gritted my teeth, wrote some poems, and pretty much managed to put it in the past. I still had the writing, after all.

Still, emotional loss can leave you marinating in nostalgia forever, especially if you have the tendency to feel things deeply. As Pablo Neruda so beautifully put it, love is so short and forgetting so long.

Writing kept me alive in those months. I began to compile a collection of poetry and stories that I would someday turn into a book. That people were excited to buy.

Work was getting worse and worse because I had been allotted to a team that was not welcoming at all. I travelled for almost 4 hours every single day. I got into several fights with my seniors, who were rude and callous and made me feel worse while I was already dealing with coming out of emotional trauma. The deadlines we were asked to meet were insane. I began to fall sick a lot. I would look out of the window and sob in silence every single day.

But I decided to put my health first and left. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. Because even though I didn’t realise it then, work, no matter how bad, kept me distracted from the terrible thoughts that were forming in my head every time I let it be idle for a few minutes. I moved into a smaller firm and suddenly had a lot of free time. The jobs I was assigned there were much more mundane, and the people working around me had no ambition at all. I stopped making the small but relevant amount of money that was guaranteeing my financial independence of sorts, and brought a completely self-dependent girl back to her parent’s allowance.

All in all, it’s safe to say that in the beginning of 2018, I walked myself into a mental trap. On one hand, my heart was broken and it was extremely hard to get over the fact that even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, somebody I was convinced would stick by my side chose to hurt me when I was least expecting it. I began to distrust people and alienate them as an impact. Lots of good, kind friends were lost. Romantic and platonic connections that could have been beautiful if I had allowed someone past my suddenly very high walls never got a chance.

Second, my workplace and academic environment was choking me with monotony. There was no incentive – earlier, at least the ping of money credited into my bank account made me show up and put on a show, but now I didn’t even have that.

Third, and most disheartening of all, was nothing to look forward to for the rest of the year but this endless tunnel of having to stay home and study for exams that were in November. I felt handcuffed all times of every day. The only momentary happiness I felt was when I was well sedated with alcohol or hanging out with two of my best friends, one of whom moved to London for the last year of his university and our conversations became limited to Facetime calls.

Writing got spotty because every time I opened a word document, this voice in my head would remind me that I needed to study. When I tried to study, I could never get enough done because I simply hated it. I fucking hated it all.

In April of 2018 I decided that if I kept going this way, I would send myself into chronic depression. I already felt like I was there – what with the self-imposed ban on writing. It made more sense to space out the papers, even if it took 6 months more than I had originally planned. At that point in my life, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Giving 4 papers in November and 4 in May of 2019 meant I wouldn’t be pulling 16 hour days for 6 months. This way, I could balance my dislike for the subjects with allotting enough time for social outings and just being a normal 22 year old. But on 20th July, the results for everyone else’s exams came out.

I found a seething jealousy begin to build in my heart because the girls and boys who were my age were now done and would be embarking on the life that I would have to wait a year for. It consumed me. I couldn’t sleep at night. I screenshotted their marksheets and stared at them. I would check their facebook pages and compare every little detail of their lives to mine, causing my already fuelled inferiority complex to grow. I completely forgot that CA was not my gift, art was.

It felt as though I was standing in a room of overachievers holding bulky files of their accomplishments, and the only thing I had was a knack for poetry. Except, nobody CARES about your knack for poetry in the Chartered Accountancy world. No one gives a fuck if you can write. And so I felt like the biggest loser in the room.

I still do. It is October now, just days away from the exam, and even though my secret mission was always impossible, I was unwilling to accept it. Even if I was able to sit for 16 hours, even if I was able to study for all this time like everyone else probably had, I would never have been able to complete the course by January. This is not because I am dumb. It’s because I put myself into the wrong race and I’m trying to compete with people who are in love with what they do. Put me in a room of poets and I will outshine most of the room (or so I like to think).

But all these 5 years – and especially these last 5 months – have done for me is cause my brain to believe its inferiority. Everyone else my age has either graduated from university, or is months away from getting a well paying job. Their lives are starting to bloom, while mine just looks dark till May of 2019. Till July, in fact, because that’s when results come out.

I am handcuffed to my identity, to this city, to my mediocrity, to my parent’s supporting me financially for the next 8 months, with absolutely no way out. I have no space for writing. I have nobody to call my own that doesn’t live oceans away.

I wanted to be great at something. I wanted to be doing well in at least one thing, you know? But it seems impossible now. I am not good at anything. I feel mediocre at best.

The voice in my head does not fail to remind me that I am standing in a room where nobody sees me as competition or a threat. That they never will. Accept it, she says to me incessantly, you are average. You will always be average.

What do you do when your self belief in your own failure is so deep rooted, your brain is mocking you constantly? How do you fight your own mind?

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