Happy and Safe Holidays to All

...and best wishes for 2011....

Evil Henchgirls

Second only to my love of good damsels in distress is my love of bad girls in service of the villain. I know Vanessa Doofen-whatever (of Phineas and Ferb) is not really evil, blah blah blah, but work with me here. Since I enjoy damsels in the clutches of evil villainesses (villainesses get away with more torture of the damsel before it gets icky or creepy) what better than a sexy evil female minion to torment a damsel I have captured?

Sexy female accomplices were a staple of the old campfest 60s Batman series: characters like Lydia Limpet or Pauline were the perfect accompaniment to the ridiculous arch villains they served.

There is even a discussion of the hottest Batman evil sidekicks. I even like the idea of an unwitting female accomplice turning on her villainous boss, only to be captured and placed in peril herself!

I was living in a black and white world.... part 1

In an meandering search for silent movie peril scenes on Youtube (a thankless task) I came across a scene of sorts with silent star Olive Thomas. Now, I know a little about silent movies. Certainly Pearl White, Ruth Roland and Helen Gibson are names that last because of their famous serials. But I was a lot less aware of Olive Thomas -- mostly because she did more straight films than chapter plays.

My goodness, what a hottie! Seriously, look past the fashions of c.1920 - do you find her as remarkably pretty as I do? Folks at the time did - she won the "Prettiest Girl in New York" contest in 1917 or so, then got discovered by Ziegfield, and went on from there. She was also the first screen "flapper" -- before Clara Bow or Louise Brooks. Although you can't see it in a b&w photo, she apparently had violet eyes, just like Elizabeth Taylor (swoon).

Too bad she wasn't in peril more!

Found a cute video from yesteryear by accident: "The Mayor of Simpleton" by XTC (c. 1988?) I happen to like the group and the song, but what's of interest is their spoof of the Avengers video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Da9sc6YDBo&playnext=1&list=FLumd-rMlZsos



The Mrs Peel character even gets tied up! (Not in the catsuit, but still....) and she's quite cute in a 1960s Mary Quant way.

A Holy Grail I did not know even existed!

Since by now everybody interested in the topic has seen the photo of Taylor Swift tied to the tracks for the new single, I thought I'd put up some lovely themed photos sent by a very good friend.....

Madness

For a depressing view of the hypocrisy of today, look at this:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Connecticut-cheerleaders-want-uniforms-with-more?urn=highschool-274505

Here's enough of an excerpt to get the gist:

Earlier this year, cheerleaders in one Florida district had to get special permission to wear their skirts on game day, because the uniforms were too skimpy for a new dress code. In a fascinating twist, last week cheerleaders in Connecticut begged school officials to help make their uniforms less skimpy.

According to the Connecticut Post and NBC Connecticut, Heidi Medina, the captain of Bridgeport Central's cheerleading squad, stood before the Bridgeport Board of Education in her team's standard uniform, which bares athletes midriffs and uses either small shorts or baggy sweatpants as bottoms, to make a statement that it was inappropriate.

[Related: Team welcomes first cheerleaders since 1934 ]

Medina and fellow seniors insist that the Central uniforms do not meet regulations that require cheerleader uniforms to cover an athlete's midsection when they stand at attention.

"It really hurts our self esteem," Bridgeport Central senior Ariana Mesaros told the Board of Education, according to the Post. "I am embarrassed to stand up here dressed like this. Is this really how you want Bridgeport to be represented?"

As noted by NBC Connecticut, the Bridgeport cheerleaders' plea comes on the heels of a recent study of college cheerleaders, which found that college cheerleaders whose uniforms exposed midriffs faced a significantly higher risk of developing eating disorders.

etc....

Dear Miss Mesaros: your self esteem is hurt? You're a cheerleader for Chrissake! Not a Supreme Court Justice. That's why we have cute young girls in skimpy skirts and old ugly farts in black muu muus. As to your question, is this how we want Bridgeport represented: hell, yeah!

As for the "recent study" I hope my tax $ did not fund a study so blindingly obvious as this -- a "study" with a pre-ordained result. Now, repeat after me: correlation does not imply causality. Repeat as needed to get it into your head.

Studies show that repeated exposure to idiotic studies give higher IQ people ulcers. I think my health, and public health in general, are being attacked by these silly studies. Studies prove it! So what's more important, your self-esteem or my physical health?

Courtesy

I suppose my destiny is to post this every two years or so, admonishing random passersby like the old mariner at the start of Coleridge's famous poem.

I haven't bothered to go out looking for new RP partners since about 2007 or so not because I am hostile to the idea, but because it just all seems so pointless. And even those few who somehow come across me online can be -- well let's just say they often seem to have been raised by wolves.

So someone rattles the cage on my Yahell account about a week ago, and claims to want to RP. Sure! I spend a little time to find out what "she" wants -- and that is reasonable, no obvious signs of madness, or inbred imbecility. We start to Rp, and "she" wants to send some photos. OK - I accept, and much to my surprise they're not vile.

I continue to set up what I think will be a good intro RP just to break the ice. I get nothing back but a few one word lines like "no!" In mid-sentence "she" goes offline on me. Well, that can happen due to any number of reasons. I am still willing to give it a shot next time I see "her" online.

Next day, she's on. I show availability, and "she" almost immediately switches off. Right. I get the picture. "She" is banned.

Really, is a little courtesy going to kill you? Take up that much time? A simple "no, thanks" or "not what I'm looking for" while not exactly magnanimous, is at least flirting with politeness. Particularly when I am giving (in this case) more than I received, however briefly.

You think I'm an a**hole? Take a number. Smarter, prettier, more prominent people than you already think that. So try a little courtesy.

Spellbinder, O-girl and videos

Much of "non-mainstream" damsel in distress doesn't do much for me. Specially made superheroine DiD (a sort of eccentricity within an eccentricity) in particular is rarely to my tastes. Usually it's just girls beating each other up (um....not really hot for me) or having their cleavage exposed (um, too much silicon, usually) and very seldom about perils.

There are exceptions, of course - O-girl, over at B)ndage-Cafe, and Super-becca -- the latter all within a PG rating. But by an large any general purveyor of BDSM video usually finds a way to contaminate the aesthetics of overall BDSM into DiD -- and while that doesn't repel me, if there's too much of it it gets in the way.

One of the rare exceptions is/was Spellbinder -- as portrayed in the 90s/early 00s by first Darla Crane and then Kelsie Chambers. I am very grateful to Sasha over at Danger Theatre to have referenced two Darla Crane vids -- they were sort of a Holy Grail for me. Darla really gets into it -- and the cips have a nice sense of humor about them while taking the story seriously.

If the O-girl series is better, it's mostly because it's clearer -- none of that dying 90s video tape. Jim Weathers did an awesome buzzsaw scene -- and got Diana Knight (?) to play the villainess - and she did an amazing job. It just goes to show you -- a DiD video is immeasurably improved with a top-notch villain(ess). Let's face it -- a girl -- let alone a Supergirl - is not going to be too intimidated by a nasally guy named Larry as a villain. As Thurston Howell said to Gilligan when they were doing a movie of Mary-Ann tied at the stake, "Menace her, boy, menace her!"

Furries

I am not a furry -- I don't long to re-imagine myself as an animal. I don't own a velour suit shaped like a wolf, etc. However, as a kid I watched lots of cartoons and some anthropomorphic cartoon characters I think fueled my earliest inclinations to the damsel in distress fantasy. Here are three I can think of off the top of my head:

Gadget Hackwrench (from Chip n Dale's Rescue Rangers). Yeah, a mouse. She was drawn to be captured and imperilled. Love the overalls.

Polly Purebred (from Underdog). A sort of bizarrely drawn Lois Lane of the poodle world. Despite the weirdly big head, I always wished for Riff Raff or Simon Bar Sinister to use her as bait to catch Underdog. Sometimes it actually happened.....

Callie Briggs (SWAT Kats). I don't remember SWAT Kats. I have no idea what the premise was. But I remember Callie. I saw so few episodes of this I don't even know if she was ever a damsel in distress....

BTW, sorry I have not been posting. Partly it's RL, partly it's having nothing new to say for a while. But I am still around.....

Dream casting

Even though I now basically never have time to watch TV -- or go to the movies (not that many appeal to me these days), there are still series that I would love to see turned into movies. On the adaptation front, Hollywood need to atone for the atrocious Avengers it did a few years back (Uma Thurman as Mrs Peel? No way.) I also would love to see cartoons other than trash like GI Joe or the hideous Transformers turned into live action. And before you say, "but Transformers gave us Megan Fox!" I'll just add La Fox to the list requiring atonement. (Sorry, but I find her unbearable -- even more unbearale than Jessica Alba, and that says a lot.)

Anyway, I was originally going to post my own dream casts for a few live action movies that will probably never get made, but it would take me forever to do. So I am making a virtue of my laziness and lack of time by opening it up to all: How would you cast:

Kim Possible -- Kim and Dr Mom Possible?

Josie and the Pussycats -- Josie, Valerie, and Melody?

Totally Spies -- Clover, Alex, and Sam (and Brittany if you're industrious)

What is it about rope?

In most of my RPs and stories, no matter what the circumstances or heroine, I usually end up tyign the damsel up with rope, or something like it. Even superheroines, for whom chains or something less flimsy than rope might be called for, I usually deprive of their powers or else invent some form of rope that is stronger than their powers. In other words, I am a bit of a rope snob. Don't get me wrong -- handcuffs work, and on occasion chains are fun, but I tend to prefer ropes.

There has to be something aesthetically preferable about it. It's not like rope is more effective -- it's easier to escape from ropes than, say, handcuffs, assuming they aren't a size too big. Or maybe it's more that I like the bonds to really fit the form of the damsel -- tape is a runner up to rope. Ribbons and the like also do the trick.

Maybe chains just don't hug the damsel's limbs enough. I don't know. All I know is -- I am a rope snob....

Architecture

Sorry I haven't been around too much on this blog. Part of it is RL busy-ness, part of it is that, at a result, I often don't have too much new to say. I don't feel like I should just periodically signal hey, I'm alive, just for the sake of it. Anyone who really wants to know can just email me to find that, yes, I am still here, etc.

Anyway, now that the holidays are over I have a little more time to be in a peril mood, and I was struck in one particular daydream of how much an influence the actual architecture of the locale in which (indoor) perils has on me.

The actual thought process was: I really like the look of heroines tied up around poles, and I really like them reclining at an angle, but it's really kind of hard to imagine how you could combine those two likes in one situation. Then the idea struck me of the heroine being captured in some sort of contemporary architecture with exposed slanting rafters extending to the floor, and tied to one of them.

I really like moody spaces as locales to distress damsels, but they do not at all have to be old or particularly gothic to fill the bill. They should be distinctive, and menacing in context. The damsel doesn't have to always be in a dark cellar, although that is fine of course. Some of the curvy, swooping public architecture of the last decade (some of which I think is built just to show that it can be) also serves as locales from which a tied up heroine might slide down to her doom. The absurd escalators and tubes of Roissy (CDG Airport) seems to me to have been designed by someone who should have spent his time designing damsel traps. But that's just me...

Just occurred to me that my love of railroad track perils also has this in it -- the repetitive look fo the rails and the cross ties -- much like the stud and joist of a building.....