Michael singing in Nye :) ❤

Michael Sheen singing in the play Nye. You can watch the play for free until 11.11.2024 at the National Theatre youtube channel and Michael is reprising the role in 2025 :).

Michael singing in Nye :) ❤

Michael Sheen singing in the play Nye. You can watch the play for free until 11.11.2024 at the National Theatre youtube channel and Michael is reprising the role in 2025 :).

Cosplayers at a Star Trek Convention, 1976

in this house we have endless respect for cosplayers from the days before VCRs.

You couldn’t just rewatch the episode to look at all the details of the costume. You got lucky with press photos showing up in magazines or you just watched the episode/movie while sketching furiously

thinking about that one woman who made a Star Wars flight suit in 1977 entirely from trading cards and sketching details in the theater. or stories I’ve heard about old school Trek cosplayers getting the bizarre seam placements right by photocopying magazines onto overhead transparencies and projecting them onto butcher paper.

I’m a semi old school cosplayer (started in 2001) so some of the old school techniques are still things I learned on (I’ve sketched from stuttering VHS tapes on pause and used the overhead transparency trick)… what we have access to now for costume recreation blows what they had out of the water just in terms of reference material, let alone specialty costume supplies like thermoplastics and cosplay wigs.

That Star Wars fan who made the flight suit from trading cards and movie sketches is TJ Burnside and she is still with us. In fact, I am adding to her Fanlore page with info about the flight suit (and how it went viral on Twitter and Redditt a few years back). Fanlore.org, is a fan run fandom history wiki. Stay tuned.

Her (sadly) barebones Fanlore page is here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/T.J._Burnside

Ghost Stories Are Gay Stories

Or, what you need to know before the special.

I’ve been developing the concept for this essay for months, slowly collecting bits and pieces from far-flung resource materials. The release of the trailer for the special finally lit a fire under my ass to get this thing released to the world, and in a minute, I’m sure you’ll see why. Originally this was going to be a much, much, longer, multi-chaptered series. But instead I think I’m opting to just go for the big take home points so that you all can read it before the special is released. I reserve the right to come back later and write on these topics in more depth if the whim strikes.

Here’s what awaits you below the jumpcut. First, I’m going to introduce you to queer coding in Victorian horror and ghost stories. There’s a lot of it. There’s a shit ton of it, honestly. Next, I’m going to show you how queer coding in ghost and horror stories made the jump from novels to movies. After that I’m going to show you just how aware the showrunners are about the concept of the queer Victorian horror story (and honestly guys, the amount of stuff I found here, you will not believe), and lay out how they’ve already used this stuff in previous episodes. Lastly, I’m going to tie it all together by laying out how we can expect queer horror story tropes to show up in the upcoming Sherlock special, and what we should be watching for in terms of metaphor, narrative, and subtext. Because it will show up, I can guarantee you that. The material we’ve already seen so far, along with the utterly tantalizing hint word “ghosts”, just about confirms it. And as a fandom, I want us to be ready.

With that, let’s start at the beginning.

Keep reading

no high effort art post for today

Aneh is sick www

David Tennant about Crowley ❤ 🐍😊

'bear in mind' well yes there are bears in my mind. hibernating and eating berries and hunting for salmon and such, etc etc

Goodbye. A grizzly bear can strip a deer’s carcass in six minutes.

#goodbye a female bear is called a sow

bear don't actually hibernate.

i'm sorry to inform you that your grade school textbook got this wrong.

hibernation is a state of almost no metabolic activity that is not practically feasible for animals as large as bears. some animals do hibernate. most of them are reptiles or small mammals like rodents.

not bears.

bears in winter enter into a state called "torpor." it's a period of slower metabolic activity during which they are sleepier and move around less

but they are not hibernating. they can and do wake up and emerge, sometimes daily, to hunt and forage.

David Tennant about Crowley at the Angels, Demons and Doctors con in Germany, 5.5.2024 (x)

Fan question: Do you think you'd get along with Crowley in real life if you were to meet him at, for example, a bar or somewhere? Do you think you'd get along with him? Or do you think you'd hate him and think he's pretentious or something?

David: I think he would be quite a good fun to hang out with, really.

Int: I wouldn't want to live with him.

David: The thing is, he's actually got a heart of gold. All that sort of pretending to be a demon, he's a rubbish demon, he's absolutely awful at following what hell has inscribed. And of course, now he's not part of that anyway, so he's a freelance agent now. And actually he's... I mean, he's... I think he would be quite fun. Yeah. Whereas Aziraphale would be, well, keep the place clean. But I think you could have areally good night out with Crowley. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'd rely on him for very much, but I think you'd be good fun. Yes.

CUTENESS OVERLOAD!!!❤❤❤

[Mabli on Michael Sheen's lap and in front of them dolls of Aziraphale and Crowley]

Mabli: Daddy.

[Michael points at Aziraphale] Daddy. [and then he points at Crowley] Who's that?

Mabli: Mmmmmm. Uncle David.

That's my 15 minutes of fame, I peaked in my life, I made those dolls and gave them to Michael yesterday evening at the stage door, I'm so happy they liked them and I'm also absolutely out of my mind. 😱

They are 2 sets, actually, for the two girlies ❣️

The "Special" Tennant family saga continues :D ❤

Loïs Mailou Jones painting in her Paris studio in 1937 or 1938, with kitten supervising from her shoulder

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

Crow update

My crow friends were in very good spirits this morning. I had a friend flying with me very jauntily, and of course I rightly showered him in compliments, and peanuts were enjoyed by all. A pedestrian witness to this joy marvelled at my flight companions and asked if they actually recognize me, and oh heck yeah they do, friend. They sure do. She was delighted, she said we made her day. My crow friends make my day every day.

It's very clear that there's a range of confidence and trust levels among my crow friends. A few of them do not care at all how close I am to them, and others wait until I've moved away a bit to go after the peanuts. I bet there's a relationship between willingness to fly right next to me and willingness to start eating peanuts at my feet. But I don't mind earning trust, it takes as long as it takes.

No one is talking back to me yet, but I'm confident that it's just a matter of time.

Tumblr won’t let me add this tiktok to another post about Jack & Jill dances but I’m full of spite and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen so have it anyway, the amazing impromptu Mamma Mia dance 💃🏼

Here is the link to the full dance on Youtube which I've watched several times just for Nicole's sheer joy in dancing.