@skulldeaded / skulldeaded.tumblr.com
another comic for class! we were given a list of paintings and told to pick one to use in a story. i used 6 paintings here, and these are all the artists in order of their works’ appearances:
Telemaco Signorini, Piagentina; Winslow Homer, A Shady Spot; James Bingham; James Bingham; Walter Langley; W. David Shaw (very small on the last page, not the portrait)
Also, can we for a second realise that both best Male and Female winners won by portraying a lgbt character because, holy shit
Who are William and Ellen Craft?
Oh boy, here we go. One of my all-time favorite stories. William and Ellen Craft were both born into slavery in Georgia in the 1820s. They looked like this. You’ll note, just by looking at her, that Ellen was very light skinned. That would be because her parents were an enslaved woman and her master…and Ellen’s mother was also the child of an enslaved woman and her master. You can only imagine what had happened. Slavery is disgusting. Anyway.
William and Ellen met, fell in love, and got married so far as they were allowed (enslaved people were forbidden by law to actually get married in any legally binding fashion; since being sold away from each other forever happened so often, slave marriage vows often included the phrase “til death or separation do you part”–again, slavery is disgusting). As you can imagine, William and Ellen didn’t want to have any children born into the system of slavery. In December of 1848, they decided to escape to the North. And that’s when the Crafts got crafty and came up with a brilliant plan to escape in style.
As we established, Ellen was white passing, and they decided to use this fact to their advantage. William was able to keep a small portion of his earnings from being contracted out as a carpenter, and he saved up that money to buy Ellen some really fancy clothes. Once disguised, Ellen looked like this:
Dashing, right? So Ellen was disguised as a wealthy, white man, someone nobody would think to question, and William would be playing the part of her enslaved manservant. Their story was that they were traveling north because Ellen was in poor health and wanted the expertise of northern doctors. This poor health story was for a few different reasons:
It was still a nerve-wracking experience, to be sure, with the threat of discovery at every turn, but William and Ellen Craft managed to escape from slavery by riding first class trains and staying in the nicest hotels along the way. There was even one point where Ellen got to have dinner with the captain of the steamboat they were riding. They arrived in Philadelphia, safe and sound, on Christmas Day, 1848. The Crafts then settled in Boston, fitting in nicely with the free black community in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and making friends with prominent abolitionists. These abolitionist friends, which included the likes of Theodore Parker and Lewis Hayden among many others, encouraged William and Ellen to make their escape story public. They did, and soon the two were celebrities.
Their celebrity status turned out to not be such a good thing less than two years later, when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Their master back in Georgia had, of course, read all about how the Crafts outwitted all the white people and made a home for themselves in Boston, so he hired two slave catchers to go up to Boston and retrieve his “property.” What the slave catchers didn’t bargain for was that Boston was ready for them.
Up in Boston, the Vigilance Committee consisting of both black and white abolitionists was hard at work coming up with a plan to prevent the Crafts from being captured. William Craft and Theodore Parker even thought of legal loopholes to get William arrested in Massachusetts, if it came to that, because he couldn’t be taken out of Massachusetts jail to be taken South. Loophole 1: since Ellen and William still hadn’t gotten married, a friend could report William for fornication and get him arrested for that. Loophole 2: William could carry various weapons on him, fight back against the slave catchers if they caught him, and get arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. They thought of everything.
When the slave catchers arrived, the Vigilance Committee sprang into action, getting the two slave catchers arrested like six separate times in quick succession, for petty crimes both real and imagined. They had Vigilance Committee member Samuel Gridley Howe doing his Sam thing and making very scary threats. All of this was done to make these slave catchers so sick of Boston that they’d give up and go home to Georgia. All the while, William and Ellen were being shuffled, often separately, between safe houses. Eventually it came to pass that Ellen was staying with Theodore Parker, while William stayed with Lewis Hayden. And that’s when yet another dramatic episode happened.
Lewis Hayden had himself been born into slavery in Kentucky, and he had made his escape up to Boston just a couple years before William and Ellen Craft did. Once William got to his house, Hayden put his own plan into action. One day, the slave catchers, who had already been put through hell by like the entire city of Boston, arrived at Lewis Hayden’s doorstep and demanded that he turn over the fugitive William Craft. Hayden calmly opened the door a little further, not to let them inside, but to reveal the two kegs of gunpowder he had waiting just inside. He told them that he would prefer to blow them all sky high if they took one more step, rather than see himself or William Craft return to slavery. The two slave catchers took the hint and left.
William and Ellen were reunited at Theodore Parker’s house shortly thereafter, and plans were made to smuggle the Crafts up to Canada and then across the Atlantic to England. Before they left, however, there was something Parker wanted to do for them. Since they were heading to safety at last and no longer needed to be able to go to jail for fornication, Parker offered to legally marry them. William and Ellen agreed, and Parker, their minister, did the honors right in his own living room, with a Bible in one hand and–I’m not kidding–a sword in the other. Parker escorted them as far as Maine himself, with a variety of swords and guns on his person so he was basically that trope where a character takes an absurd amount of weapons out of their clothes. When they parted, he gave William and Ellen the Bible and sword he had been holding as he officiated their marriage.
William and Ellen made a home for themselves in England for the next nineteen years. They got to go to school, and they fulfilled their goal of raising their children in freedom. They had five children, as a matter of fact. In 1859, they were paid a visit by their old friend, Theodore Parker, who got to meet their children and see that they still had the Bible he gave them. Parker was on his way to Italy, where he hoped the warm climate would improve his tuberculosis, but he would die in Florence the following spring, at just 49 years of age. After the Civil War, Ellen was miraculously able to figure out where her mother was in Georgia and have her brought over to England to stay with them. They hadn’t seen each other in almost twenty years, so you can only imagine the reunion. In 1868, once slavery was abolished, citizenship was granted to African Americans, and the right to vote was granted to African American men, the Crafts felt like they had work to do. Twenty years after they escaped from it, William and Ellen moved back to Georgia, back to where they began. William and Ellen tried to establish a school for freedmen as well as a farm, but white supremacist violence and laws led to the failure of both after Reconstruction ended.
William and Ellen Craft spent their twilight years living in Charleston, South Carolina with their daughter and son-in-law. Ellen Craft died in 1891, at the age of 65. William Craft died in 1900, at the age of 75.
via weheartit
so when i was 7 or 8 i’d “write letters to hermione granger” and set them out on the piano in the living room every night with my stuffed toy owl and every morning i’d have a letter from hermione back, sitting at the foot of my bed, and hermione and i corresponded like that for months and i’d just like to thank my mom for writing out a “letter from hermione” for me every single night
That is the cutest thing I’ve ever read oh my god
so when i was about the same age i got really into both ciphers and james madison (idk don’t ask) so i just randomly started writing these letters like i was james madison writing to my own spy ring, using all kinds of ciphers. constantly writing that WE MUST SWITCH CIPHERS THE BRITISH ARE ON TO US. and it wasn’t every night because the ciphers kept getting more complex, but it was about one every week for six months and my mother always responded. and she always found the letters, because i took to hiding them in increasingly more obscure locations because spies, obviously.
i didn’t realize how much work this was until i snuck down late one night for a cookie. and saw my mother bent over my giant book of ciphers and muttering to the dog “is this another code or can she not spell?” (i could not and still can not spell) and i was a bit angry at first but i kept watching and she KEPT AT IT. checking everything in that book against my letter and i never felt so loved. my mom with a full time job sitting up to figure out my silly letters said just because i enjoyed the game.
i got her this bio of james madison a few years ago for xmas with a simple number substitution cipher on the inside saying “In thanks for your dedicated years of service, your daughter and occasional President.” She still has it pride of place on her desk next to the obligatory kid pics
so yeah cute mom story for the day.
These are some of the best secret mom stories I’ve ever read, omg.
SJAHDHSJSBSBS
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night: Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
I was in Twelfth Night during high school and we were lucky enough to have identical twin girls playing Viola and Sebastian. Due to the blocking in the first half of the play, their characters didn’t appear on stage together but rather almost consecutively one after the other for a majority of the first act.
It was awesome because when people saw the play and didn’t know the girls were identical twins, it literally looked like it was one actor doing multiple, uber fast costume changes.
One of our first performances was for our peers and it was a big school so lots of people didn’t know the twins. This - for some reason - was also the performance they chose to record.
Listening to the confusion of the audience during the playback was fantastic and completely topped by the moment Viola walked off stage left just as Sebastian walked on stage right and someone right beside the camera goes “OH WHAT THE FUCK” so loudly it drowned out everything else.
The best thing? That was the copy of the play that was made available for purchase by family and parents. Haha.
Oh my god. I went to one of the Spiderman shows where he flew out above the audience and then got stuck and had to awkwardly hang there for about 10 minutes, but these stories are brilliant.
okay so, my senior year of high school and I’m part of the stage crew for Peter Pan. There’s a scene where Hook and Smee are searching for Peter and the Lost Boys. Now the theater department at my high school isn’t very well funded (in the southern USA, football is king), so the sets we managed to make were pretty kickass for the money we had. We had a structure painted like a big tree stump for the entrance to the Lost Boys’ hideout. You could climb to the top of it, but also go inside it through a trap door that we kept locked up during most of the play.
It’s like our third show and everything has been going surprisingly well. Hook and Smee climb to the top of the “tree trunk”, supposedly looking for Peter and not knowing they’re standing above his hiding spot the whole time.
Turns out someone didn’t close the trapdoor properly, because the second Hook steps on it, he plunges through the thing. He’s able to catch himself, but he’s got his ass and one leg dangling through this hole where it’s like a ten foot drop to the ground. All of us stage crew are literally two feet away from him offstage, just gaping at him because???? Y'all this fall looked BAD. Looked like my dude did the splits in mid air. The whiplash caused his fucking wig to come off. The audience is dead silent, all of us backstage are dead silent, the director is like already looking up how to treat a broken groin.
The kid who was playing Hook was like a fuckin sophomore and he KILLED it. He gave himself a second to catch his breath, never broke character, just looked up at his castmate and growled “Smee, you fool, help me up!”. He ended up playing off the wig thing as an embarrassing comedic bit for Hook, and the play went on. He was completely fine. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.
There was an infamous performance of the opera Don Giovanni where in the last act Giovanni was suppose to be dragged into hell via trapdoor but the overweight actor got stuck, leading someone from the audience to shout: “Hey everyone, Hell’s full!!”
I’m pretty sure I’ve reblogged this before but the Lefou story has me in tears every time.
As someone who did Tech stuff in High school for 4 years, Lefou!
I was a costumer on a stage version of Titanic, and in the scene where the women and children are getting in the lifeboats, one of the men (who was supposed to be saying goodbye to his wife he knows he will never see again because his is about to die), realized his fake mustache was falling off and instead of playing it cool… he rips it off his face, and hands it to his wife with the line “Something to remember me by”…it was the funniest thing that I have ever seen in my 8 years in theatre, the entire cast lost their shit laughing at the most dramatic moment possible
I have seen this post multiple times and I giggle at each story and I have *just now* remembered that I once witnessed such a gaffe. It was a high school production of Romeo & Juliet. (Because of course it was.) I don’t even recall if it was *my* high school because my memory is shit, but anyway.
The dramatic ending - Juliet is laid out on her bier, Romeo orates before knocking back his vial of death, and collapses on the ground. But lo! Juliet awakens! She sees the crumpled body of her lover and flings herself down on top of him. Her knee connects quite soundly with the unfortunate boy’s codpiece. Like, WHAMMO.
But this was apparently a professional in the making, because beyond an involuntary spasm that lifted both legs straight up a few inches, this kid remained utterly motionless. Juliet’s hair had conveniently fallen so it was covering both of their faces, and you could just tell that she was like, ‘omgomgomgareyouokayomg…’ before continuing on.
I can’t remember if he was present for the curtain call.
“Milord,” Hidetaka said with a formal tone. He knelt before his lord, the renowned Light of Honor Akechi Mitsuhide, while holding up in reverence an ornately adorned box. It was of the richest wood gilded with gold. Neatly polished it was to the smallest crevice. A shine rose off of the luxurious thing, giving it an ethereal glow.
For sure, Hidetaka thought with wonder, the contents of this box must be even more expensive than the container itself!
“As requested by Lord Oda Nobunaga, the luxury of the west, milord.”
He slowly lifted the lid of the rich box and it seemed as if a light shone from the depths. Or rather he thought there was, considering the light gleaming off Lord Akechi’s eyes at the sight of the treasure.
He could have sworn he heard celestial maidens’ voices singing from the heavens once the box opened.
What could it be?
What could it be?! He cried out mentally in curious frustration.
“Ah yes, the purity of this is absolutely breath-taking,” Lord Akechi said with a smile on his face.
It was amazing.
It was tea leaves.
One story, two men.
Or: What happened that fateful night.
(Based on a Reddit writing prompt: Write a poem/story wherein read forward it is from the perspective of a murder victim. Read backward, it is from the perspective of the killer.)
The night I left Mexico city for good, I knew where I was going.
It took me a long time to figure out we wanted different things. My dream and his dream weren't the same. Not anymore.
What I truly wanted lies elsewhere.
I packed up my clothes, the guitar, and the songs of love and hope; songs written for the family and for the world. A lifetime's worth forever etched. To have all of these within my possession cost me more than I could ever imagine. I didn't know how much but even then, I knew I do not belong here.
He tried to stop me. He did. So I held my ground.
He was my best friend. But I made up my mind.
I could not allow him to get in the way, not anymore. He could hate me all he wants but I could never hate him.
Things didn't have to end this way. If only he would listen. But things changed. He changed.
Not all is lost. We toasted to our friendship. Heaven and Earth will be moved. Drinks are poured. Shots are emptied. It is done.
We walked together one last time. I was so close.
My throat burned. Guilt? No, I made my choice.
Somewhere distant, a train to Sta. Cecilia bellowed.
Finally. I could see my world, my family.
Everything happened so fast.
There was a great pain in the stomach. A reassuring hand. A friendly suggestion. Heaviness. Cracked pavement. Then, darkness.
He left me alone with the moonless night.
Me: I don’t think Sense8 could get any queerer.
Riley: Have you met my French ex-girlfriend?
Rajan: Don’t talk to me, my wife, or our German killer boyfriend.
Me: … I have never been happier to be proven wrong.
true
the cluster: how close are you with your friends?
nomi marks: are you lgbtq? have you ever attended pride before?
sun bak: are you athletic?
riley blue: how many languages do you speak?
kala dandekar: what is/was your favorite school subject?
wolfgang bogdanow: if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
capheus onyango: what’s your guilty pleasure?
will gorski: what is one thing you feel guilty about?
lito rodriguez: what’s your favorite genre of film?
hernando fuentes: do you want to get married?
daniela velasquez: do people often underestimate you?
amanita caplan: what’s your favorite book?
bug: how much trust do you put in people?
felix berner: what is the worst injury you’ve had? how did you obtain said injury?
zakia asalache: do you consider yourself a person who strives for equality?
jela: what is the funniest memory you can remember?
deigo morales: are you the ride or die type of friend?
rajan rasal: what is the most embarrassing thing to happen to you?
detective mun: do you believe in love at first sight? or perhaps, love at first fight?
angelica turing: is there anyone you would risk your life for?
jonas maliki: do you believe loyalty is a necessary trait to have in a relationship?
whispers: if you had the chance to live forever, would you take it?
this is so accurate it hurts
thank the powers that be that the Sense8 crew was like “oh what do we do with the classic “who will she pick” question? Oh I know. Polyamory. That’s the answer” I am so immensely pleased with how that turned out
this!!!
But
Who
Is
The
Real
Mom
Of
The
Cluster?
Yep. true. def Will
Stressed Héctor.. xD
(No actual titel.. Just what I have been calling it.)
- No Dante. (Duh.)
- Nobody has heard Miguel play before.
- Imelda’s picture doesn’t get knocked down.
- Miguel never makes the connection that Ernesto de la Cruz is his great great grandfather.
- But Ernesto is his idol - and you better believe he wanna seize his moment!
- No talk about how the music is in his blood - but he wanna follow his heart and play
.- He still gets himself cursed - Ernesto would understand that he had to do anything to seize his moment.. Right?
- He doesn’t run into his ancestors - seeing how Imelda isn’t stuck on the other side, and there’s no Dante to lead him straight to them.
- Of course Miguel freaks out.. People can’t see him and there’s skeletons everywhere!
- He’s gonna cross the marigold bridge, seeing how there’s nothing else for him to do. The skeletons freaks out when they see him - and the living can’t see him.
- He doesn’t know where to go - seeing how his ancestors aren’t there to guide him.
- He doesn’t run into Héctor - no Dante to lead Miguel to him.
- He never learns about how to return to the Land of the living.
- His living family looks for him - but seeing how he’s in the Land of the dead.. Yeaaah.
- His ancestors doesn’t have a reason to think he’s in trouble. ( Or in the Land of the dead for that matter.)
- Miguel is wandering around alone - trying not to bring too much attention to himself. Totally sightseeing though.
- Maybe he even ends up at the talent show - not to enter, seeing how he doesn’t have anything to play on - but to watch. For once there’s nobody to stop him!
- Probably freaking out about the whole ‘turning into a skeleton’ thing. But then again.. He doesn’t know that it’s permanent. Nobody told him.
- He never meets Frida - no encouraging words from her..
- He doesn’t meet Ernesto and he doesn’t know about his party either.
- He never learns the truth about his great great grandfather.
- When his ancestors returns, it’s already too late for him.
- Nobody learns the truth about Ernesto either.. (Wow, this Ernesto is living the life, eh?)
- Héctor spends his last day trying to cross the bridge - and gets himself into trouble for it.
- His ancestors tries to find a way to send Miguel back - but they can’t.
- Nothing to help Coco remember her papá.
- This. (It’s so well written! c’: )
- The music ban is still very much a thing.
- They’re shoemakers to the bone - and he’s not happy about it. (He didn’t die so that he could shine/make shoes in afterlife too.. )
- I can imagine him agreeing to shine shoes (just like he did in the Land of the living) and use it as an excuse to listen/play music.
- He gets to spend more time with Mamá Coco once she joins them.
Now that i think about it, if avengers and the mcu took place in the 90s who would eddie murphy play? like there is no way he’d play a supporting character esp to a white guy in the 90s….hmmm he’d probably audition and try hard for t’challa, but they’d probably give him blue marvel…but that character didn’t exist in the 90s…and there is no way he’d play Hiemdall lmao.
I literally just passed this when I was on imgur
I’m dumbfounded by how on point this is?
