Ramblings and Musings of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

So a long time ago Dad wanted me to add a bunch of Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and Gary Cooper movies to the Netflix queue. Naturally he wanted dramas, not comedies, so I looked through what they had and tried to add every drama that sounded interesting. Unfortunately, they had an incorrect summary for the movie Only Angels Have Wings and I thought that brief summary sounded so interesting that I got the thing without looking up more in-depth information.

It was ... pretty lame, honestly. Not super terrible, but not great either. It was just kind of ... there. And while the summary made it sound like Cary Grant's character had made some terrible error and was spending the movie trying to regain respect from the other pilots, that ... wasn't how it was at all. It was some other dude who made the error, and honestly, it really was a super bad one. He bailed out of a malfunctioning plane and left his mechanic to die (which he did ... die, that is). Apparently he deliberately left the guy to die because he was a coward. That was the impression given, anyway, rather than that he bailed out thinking the mechanic was bailing out too. And his wife had acted really awful with Cary Grant's character in the past, and she was supposed to be acting really awful about her current husband, but they didn't do a good job of showing that. She wanted to know what he had done that was so horrible it was causing everyone to shun him, which is a normal reaction for anyone. Apparently she wanted to know for her sake and not because of his, but they didn't really bring that out very well. So instead the movie came off looking like it was bashing the idea of a wife wanting to know the skeleton in her husband's closet in general. Naturally she should respect his privacy if there are things he doesn't want to/feels he can't tell her (which was something Barbara Keane on Gotham couldn't seem to grasp and was one of the main things that ticked me off about her), but sometimes if you really love someone you want to know everything that's going on in their life, especially if it's something that's bringing sadness. And honestly, this character was coming off as just being worried about her husband. If Cary Grant's character hadn't gone off on a tangent insisting she was only concerned about herself, I wouldn't have realized that was what they were driving at. It was still hard to believe it after he said it, because the woman just wasn't being portrayed that way.

There were a few moments of humanity, mostly involving the best friend of Cary Grant's character, and I did like that they showed Cary Grant's character felt things deep down but just tried not to show it. That was moving on some level. But mostly the movie felt very cold and emotionless and macho, really. And it was supposed to have a lot of exciting scenes of planes flying, and there weren't that many, honestly. Most plane scenes were close-ups that were filmed on a soundstage. I find it hard to believe that such a blah movie could have actually been the inspiration for a TV series like Tales of the Golden Monkey (which was the inspiration for TaleSpin, according to Wikipedia). TaleSpin, with all of its heart and soul, couldn't be more different from this thing.

And I had a dream today about Charles Nelson Reilly being dead (which he has been for ten years) and them doing some kind of tribute with his All Dogs Go to Heaven character feeling sad about him being gone. Also, H. M. Wynant was in it for some reason. That was a nicely depressing thing to wake up from, especially considering how special Charles Nelson Reilly and that character are to me. I became obsessed with All Dogs Go to Heaven during a very discouraging time in my life and the movie and that character really helped to buoy me up. I really didn't need to have his death fresh in my mind again right now.

I hope tomorrow's Pony episodes are good. I wasn't that impressed by the trailer, but I am remaining ... cautiously hopeful. I'm also not that happy that the main characters and Spike get transformed into sea creatures in the upcoming movie, but hopefully it's just for a scene or so. I am excited that we're getting Sea-Ponies in general. And all the merchandise planned for the movie thrills me and makes me very nostalgic for the G1 era.

Also, now I've gotten so far into my Turtles timeline and Barney has improved himself and his relationship with Baxter so much, it's kind of depressing reading back on the older fics where they're still having problems. I still feel kind of weird about the fact that I created most of the details of their problems, albeit they definitely had some in canon judging from Barney's episode. At least I don't feel outright guilty about it anymore. That dark and depressing and twisted fic I read certainly cured me of that.

It's strange when I have one thing planned for a character and something totally different happens. Both with Baby Face and Snakes, I never intended for them to be anything other than bad guys. Then I got intrigued with various elements of how I was writing them and that's what caused me to flesh them out. With Barney, it was sort of the same thing, as I started out planning to make him like the 2003 Baxter, albeit with a little more humanity. Then I decided that wasn't fair to the character when we knew so little about him in canon and I wanted him to be better than the 2003 Baxter, who was basically sane but evil. So Barney became much more troubled instead, and unlike the 2003 Baxter's idiocy, he regretted being with Shredder and Krang more and more until he started working against them at times and finally turned against them altogether. Now he's actually turning his life around and it's lovely.

Ugh, I hope I feel happier later today. That dream really did bum me out and I was also feeling a little depressed from looking in one of the earlier Turtles stories, as mentioned. And then other unhappy memories came to the surface again that I would rather not talk about.

... not to avoid something that everyone and their dog hates.

Over and over, I find that if I avoid something because of negative reviews, I almost always end up loving it. It happened with season 3 of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., with season 9 of Perry Mason, with TMNT 1987, with Equestria Girls, and with many other things. I also in general love things everyone hates, regardless of whether I initially avoided it myself or not. The Batman series is a good example of that. I enjoyed it from the start, compared to everyone who tears their hair out over it.

I finally got around to buying/seeing Ghostbusters 2, mainly because of the two cartoon episodes it comes with. One of them is a favorite. (The other was WTH territory and I sincerely hope that it isn't typical of the later seasons.) Honestly, I ... ended up loving the movie much more than the original. I think there were only four instances of swearing and a couple of naughty comments, compared to swearing practically every two minutes in the original (or it felt like it, anyway). It was creepy but wacky, had many more character-developing scenes, and Winston had a lot of good screentime. It felt much more like the series, and that may have been the point. They probably knew a lot of kids would be watching it because the series was running right then. Also, the plot point I really wasn't crazy about before I saw it, them being discredited and having gone their separate ways at the beginning, ended up in practice feeling a lot like TMNT, especially Ray and Winston at that birthday party. LOL. So I actually ended up not being too bothered by that after all. I can see myself rewatching this movie and enjoying it, whereas I'm honestly not sure I would rewatch the first movie, at least not in full. I have rewatched my favorite scenes from it.

I can't remember if I mentioned, but Build-a-Bear had a 30% off deal the weekend before this one and I was able to get Michelangelo with that. We were finally going to be in the area and I couldn't pass up a chance to get that much off of him. Then I discovered that the big Slimer plush was on clearance at a Wal-Mart other than ours. I couldn't get him then, but the other day I was able to go back and get one. Our Wal-Mart still isn't clearancing them. It was awesome to get him for $7 instead of $15!

It felt so good to get my 31_days challenge done last week. Some pieces I really enjoyed writing, but others were puzzling, and it was definitely frustrating to have to worry about the day's piece each day when I really wanted to be writing my Turtles fic. But I kept on because I wanted to do the challenge too; it was a story I'd wanted to tell for some time. I still think I'll also write the original Snakes and Chita story I was going to tell, though, which was a third-person narrative oneshot involving one of the last times Snakes put up with looking all over town for Chita when she deliberately ran out to make him find her after an argument. I have a very distinctive image of the opening lines of that fic and they have never gone away, so I need to write it.

I tried to basically keep to the prior versions of the Snakes and Chita tale that Snakes related in two earlier fics. When I realized I had some details wrong in a couple of pieces, I went back and redid those parts. For a couple of other parts, however, I decided that I wanted to tell it slightly differently and that would either make more sense or be closer to what I wanted, so on a couple of points I deliberately made it different from the earlier accounts. Like, I didn't have Snakes and Chita go gambling all night long the first night they met. I mean, they'd been beat up in the first casino when Snakes tried to defend her. It seemed much more likely that they'd go try to take care of their battle wounds. And then at the end, I changed the point where Snakes lost track of Chita's trail in 1910. I wanted Chita to turn up again, but not decades older. I drew inspiration from both a role-play where I'd used her and from the fact that she was always intended to be characterized as sort of a flapper wannabe, and had Snakes lose track of her trail in the 1870s. She found a portal to the 1920s, where she fit in and was happily staying for the most part. (I will speculate that the portal was another result of Dr. Faustina's experiments.) But then she returned to the 1870s once, heard that Snakes was alive, and found the portal to the present-day to see him again. They were able to converse and have some closure at last.

Chita was very interesting to characterize in that last piece. Unlike other versions of her, including the role-play version, this Chita actually did mature a little bit. She wasn't as superficial, was willing to touch the scar that she had always avoided before, and felt badly for how her past cruelty had negatively impacted Snakes. But she wasn't ready to settle down and she recognized it; she had finally opted to stay single. She wants parties and material objects and yet she knows they're not what truly bring happiness. Still, she can't make herself not want them. I drew some inspiration from my own feelings regarding her love of material things and not feeling ready to settle down.

She was never meant to really be a likeable character, so I am amused that I kind of got fond of her and developed her a little. Even some of her superficialty is endearing to me. But since she has plenty of negative characteristics, I would totally understand anyone not liking her. What she did to Snakes was horrible. Not that it was worse than things Snakes did canonically, of course, and so there is definitely the possibility of redeeming her. That was kind of where I was going with the final piece.

I would never have her and Snakes get together again, but they parted on civil terms, and this past night I ended up drawing a cute picture meant to take place around that point where Snakes is standing watching her dance as she whips her boa around him. I sketched the whole thing out very quickly and I quite love it. I might ink it before I scan it, though.

Apparently I had Snakes on the brain after that themeset, because yesterday I had a weird dream involving him. It seemed to take place in the Old West, before The Poisonous Posey episode, even though some things ended up not making sense. Dr. Loveless was there too, and Snakes seemed to be working for/with him and there was some explosion planned for Jim West. Snakes seemed all into that, the little weasel (despite the fact that he seemed to not know Jim in the episode, so there's where it doesn't make sense). Then the tables were turned when Jim escaped and Dr. Loveless chained Snakes to a bomb that was set to go off in a couple of minutes. He was begging and pleading to be set free, and finally someone did. His characterization felt very similar to what's seen in the actual episode: pretty much a pathetic coward who likes to set bombs as ways out of his problems and ends up digging his own grave by doing so.

I never at all intended to become intrigued by him with that characterization, and yet it happened when I was fleshing out his character out of necessity in The Night of the Deadly Codename. And of course, that also led to Christopher rightfully taking his place as one of the darlings when I studied the episode more. I wonder if there's any chance at all that I could have seen that episode when I was very young. Mom insists that Dad used to watch WWW in reruns, so I wonder if there's any chance I saw it back then. That would be hilarious. And it would mean I did encounter Christopher years ago, just like all the other darlings. I want to say I have a vague memory of watching that episode in bits and pieces when I was a kid, but I'm probably just inventing something in my mind because I want so badly for there to be a time when I saw Christopher years ago. Still, wouldn't it be interesting? Snakes is one of my favorite characters to flesh out and develop, and if I actually saw him many years ago and just don't remember it now, that would be rather intriguing.

I also started thinking again about maybe making a Snakes plushie. I'd have to learn some basic embroidery so I could make the scar raised up, but that would be an interesting challenge. Now that the weather's cooled down, I feel like working on my other projects too. Maybe I can finish Barry's clothes at last and also make Mike's jacket!

I just love autumn so much. As always, I celebrate meteorological seasons and not calendar seasons, so for me Fall started on Thursday. It was a beautiful cloudy day too, perfect for the first day of Fall. When the sweltering heat of summer fades, my sewing creativity seems to wake up again. I am excited for what this autumn will bring and hope that it will be happy and enjoyable.

I think I'm almost done with the Turtles fic. I have the climax largely written, or all written, unless I add more to it. Then I just need the epilogue stuff. The story will definitely end where I decided it should. And I may or may not continue it in oneshots or other multi-chapters. We'll have to see. One thing I do know is that while I'm totally cool with watching the series in all its formulaic glory, I don't think I could make myself write stories that are all so formulaic like the series' nonsense, with Shredder's crazy plans failing, etc. I think I could only do a handful before it wouldn't feel believable to me any more. It's easy to watch nonsense; not so easy to create it yourself time and time again.

I kind of have a vague idea of the alien computer still being around after all and discovering that Baxter is finally human again. That would be kind of cute. And it would be interesting to see how Baxter would react to the computer while sane, and whether the computer would want to help him like before. That might be one of my oneshots. And if I do continue things, Baxter and Barney need to have a proper conversation again. Maybe Baxter can finally tell him that Krang was trying to murder him when the cross-fusion happened.

One problem I discovered while writing is trying to keep Barney from feeling too much like a Kylo Ren trope of wanting to go to the dark side/not caring if he has to kill a family member to do so. I fleshed out some of his scenes in chapters before I put them up and had him monologue and have doubts and wonder if he's just acting tough to impress Shredder when he appears as though it doesn't bother him, what he might have to do. I don't really want Barney to be sympathetic, exactly, because really, how much sympathy can you have for someone who willingly joins a megalomaniac while sane because he wants power and recognition? But when he's only in one episode and we just don't know much about him, I don't think it would be fair to paint him as irredeemably evil just to contrast him with Baxter being redeemable because of wanting to be honest at first and then having gone nuts. (Seriously, compare him in season 1 with the season 2 opener. He is sane in season 1 and just wants to invent something that would be helpful to the city's population. He really doesn't know what Shredder's up to. He thinks the guy just really hates rats in the city. He doesn't know Shredder is marketing the Mousers in order to murder someone, nor that Shredder is stamping Baxter's name on them so he'll take the blame. And Shredder is going to kill him just because he saw Shredder and could say that Shredder offered to market the Mousers and was using an old house as a hideout. By season 2, after he's been framed for attempted murder, blamed for the damage the Mousers caused, and thrown in the insane asylum for talking about the Turtles, Baxter is cackling madly about giant talking Turtles and is clearly insane. It is very sad, actually.)

So anyway, this story already inadvertently inverts pretty much all the angles of the other Baxter fix-it fic. I also hope to invert the Kylo Ren trope when it actually comes time for Barney to follow through on his vow to kill Baxter if he interferes. I really like how I've written the climax.

Then I drew Leonardo for the first time since my childhood, and this time he actually looks pretty good! I think I'll be able to draw those Turtles pictures for my "opening" clips that I wanted.

And I always meant to muse on this thought: Coming back to things I like that everyone hates, I actually liked when there was a girl who was part of The A-Team. She seemed to be a reporter if I recall correctly, so I kind of equated the situation as April O'Neil and the Turtles. Heh. The girl seemed to fit just fine into the A-Team's plans and it was nice to have someone around that I could more easily relate to.

Along those lines, I also tried comparing members of The A-Team to the Turtles, but that didn't go so well. Naturally I got B.A. and Raphael, but then I kind of stalled on drawing any other logical parallels. I guess Murdock could be equated with Michelangelo, since they're both the most out there members of their teams. But Hannibal and Leonardo and Face and Donatello don't seem to make very good parallels. And I keep wanting to equate Murdock with Donatello because of their mechanical know-how. So ... heh.

So I finally admitted in the U.N.C.L.E. comm that I don’t see Napoleon as a chronic bed-hopper even though he certainly loves a pretty face and is a serial dater. What I didn’t say was that if I really thought he was a bed-hopper like James Bond, I doubt I would be attracted to him or find him appealing at all. Part of the reason why Napoleon appeals to me is because I’ve always had the impression that he’s a more moral person than James Bond. I don’t like James Bond because he’s a chronic bed-hopper. I do like Roger Moore, and yet when it comes to Bond, there’s just an automatic turn-off. No attraction.

(Years ago, when I was experimenting with walking more on the wild side, probably because I liked how impressed someone seemed to be when I did it, I had a character who was kind of a bed-hopper and that continued even after he became seriously involved with one particular person. That was gross. We never wrote out any bedroom scenes or anything like that, but it was always known what he was doing. I couldn't do that now, especially the continuing with playing the field even after starting a serious relationship. I would be totally uncomfortable, especially if the character was very important to the story as he was in those role-plays. I would also be uncomfortable with the character having a big role since he was a big-time crime boss and very unrepentant. If I ever get my novel off the ground, he will either have a very reduced role, not be a bed-hopper, or possibly both.)

Speaking of Roger Moore, though, it’s interesting how I can be totally obsessed with him for a while and then it fades and while I still like the characters, there doesn’t seem to be much, if any, crushing. That’s happened more than once. I wonder if that means he’s more on the fringes of my darlings instead of smack-dab with them. With all the rest, there is constant crushing on the characters when I see them even if there isn’t a constant, serious obsession with them/the actors.

I think a lot of why it faded this time was because of Simon Templar, actually. I like the character, but I am one of the few who prefers the color episodes to the B&Ws. There were a lot of B&W episodes I hadn’t seen before and then they finally released the DVD sets of those seasons and I snapped them up. In the B&W episodes, Simon seems rather sexist sometimes. And I know that was likely largely a product of the times and has to be looked at in that way, but Simon by his very nature is an anachronistic person. I think that even in the present-day, Simon would probably have some sexist ideas and feel that women are silly worrying things that need to keep out of the men’s worlds and stick to their own place. The book Simon is a lot more that way, I think, but the TV version has some of it too. I hadn’t seen some of the worst offending episodes of that sort before and when I did, they were kind of a turn-off. The most sickening episode of all was the more humorous Luella. Everyone was unlikable there, from Simon to his friend to his friend's wife. I think those views aren't expressed as much in the color episodes. Or maybe possibly Simon matured beyond such views. I should have been watching the color episodes on MeTV once they came around to them again. I keep longing for a new DVD release of all the color episodes, but I’m not sure they’re going to release separately from the boxset. I'd better watch my scant few color episodes again; maybe that will cool things a bit and I'll like Simon more again.

I still love Beau Maverick and was thrilled to see a couple of his episodes I’ve never seen before when Cozi showed them. The Town That Wasn’t There was sooo good and establishes why Beau is my favorite Maverick. It starts out seeming that he’s being a selfish prick, but throughout the episode he grows to honestly be fond of the people he’s with and sincerely wants to help them. He even turns down $10,000 when accepting it would have hurt one of those people. He then comments to himself something like that his uncle would send him back to England if he knew.

(Honestly, I really don’t like Beau’s uncle. He treats Beau like crap and most of the sayings he gives sound really selfish. And yet when he actually appeared on-screen, he acted more like Bret and the others in that he seemed to try to help people, so I ended up torn on what to think of him. Although it also seemed like he mostly helped because he liked giving the finger to the bad guys rather than because he wanted to help the people who were being hurt. When I write about him in stories I try to be kind, since even when I don't like certain characters I try to examine them from all angles within the contexts of the stories unless they're meant to be out-and-out villains and don't need to be examined more closely. Part of me seriously wants him to just flat-out not care about Beau since he treats him so rotten, but I always try to instead stress that he's just worried about Beau doing something that will get him hurt or killed. Although the $10,000 thing makes me question that idea.)

I think Lord Sinclair may be my favorite Roger character. Part of me would like to say that my Roger Bond figure is Lord Sinclair, as I think he’s the one I want the figure to be the most, but I feel I can’t since I don’t have a Tony Curtis figure to be Danny. Sacrilege! If I had a Tony Curtis figure that’s around 6 inches, my Roger figure would totally be Lord Sinclair. I don’t suppose there is such a thing as a Tony Curtis figure? Sigh.

I believe I've mentioned my desire to have a website devoted to information on all my favorite character actors. Right now it's mostly vintage interviews with or about the darlings that I've dug up, with a few recent ones thrown in the mix as well. What excites me the most is the extended interview I had with Elen Carysfort, Christopher Cary's widow! Today is Christopher's birthday, so I am especially happy to be able to bring this interview to people right now. I am hoping others who knew Christopher and the other darlings will find the site and come forward with stories to share of their own.

https://sites.google.com/site/thepathofthestars/

And now Alan Young is dead, as of Thursday. I just learned this past day. He was 96 (!!) and still doing some acting and voice-work.

I think this death hits me the hardest this year. Such a good, full life, but he was so much a part of my childhood with DuckTales. I loved Scrooge McDuck so much. I wanted a plushie, but wasn't able to get one. I doubt I'll do much, if anything, with the reboot, but I'm really hoping it causes new plushies to be made so I can get one. I do have a couple of figures, a tiny one from Kellogg's mail-in thing and a bendable one.

Alan Young was also in The Cat From Outer Space as a veterinarian. That was probably the first time I ever saw what he looked like. It's a hilarious movie filled with wonderful character actors and an adorable cat. (And you get Harry Morgan and McLean Stevenson in the same place. It's a must for M*A*S*H fans!)

And then I discovered a whole new side of Alan Young several years ago when I watched Mister Ed. I honestly thought the horse was pretty mean sometimes, but I did love it whenever he showed that he really cared about Alan Young's character. And I totally ate it up when Alan played Wilbur's father in one episode and used his Scrooge McDuck voice. Epic.

I watched a couple of my favorite DuckTales episodes tonight in tribute. I don't think I've ever actually crushed on Alan Young or his characters, but I loved him and Scrooge McDuck about as much as I can love actors and characters without actually crushing on them, and that's a lot.

So William Schallert died this past day. He was 93. He had a good, full life and it was so awesome and inspiring how much he loved acting and refused to retire. He was working right up to when he died, as far as I know.

He is definitely one of my favorites. He was in the tier directly below the ones I crush on and I was always thrilled to see him in things. I should watch something with him tonight in his memory.

I also learned the other day that Joe Santos, who played Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files, died in March. I said "Oh no" out loud when I saw that. (And groaned in sadness when I read about William Schallert.)

This is not a good year for classic TV deaths. We had Patty Duke in March, too. I fear for the rest of the year....

So yesterday I did indeed buy season 1 of Little House to get that episode uncut. I was also finally able to get my Archery Applejack and Fluttershy dolls! Wal-Mart lowered the price to $7 each and I couldn't pass that up when I've been wanting them for months. I am so glad I didn't break and get that hippie Fluttershy doll at K-Mart. While Fluttershy would agree with some hippie ideas, I don't think she'd agree with everything and in any case, I just don't think hippie fashion works for her. I liked the Archery doll much better.

On the episode ... it certainly helped to already know that the character was going to die. He was a nice guy, but pretty cheeky (like, Dutch Ingram-level cheeky; I was a little surprised the show would have him say and do some of what he did) and a practical joker, so I didn't like him as much as the more serious Paul Gantry. Practical jokers are just never among my favorite character types. But I did like this character when he was serious and I liked how much you could see he loved his family and cared about people, including those who became his new friends.

I think it was just one reviewer's opinion that he made a stupid mistake and that got him killed. When I saw the episode, it looked to me like the explosion was just one of those freak accidents that happen with explosives that can't be prevented. He was too good with what he did to actually make a bizarre mistake, I think.

It seemed that there wasn't even a body to find. I had hoped that maybe I could have it that the explosion just blew him some distance away where he might not be found for a day or two, but watching the episode, it doesn't seem likely. I didn't see any place where he could have ended up that they wouldn't have found him. So as of right now, I don't know how to revive the character. I'll think about it, but I may have to leave this one dead and just write a ghost story. I do at least think that it was an almost entirely fiction story and not something Laura wrote about as having happened; I can't find anything like that in the books. There was a plotline where her father left to find work, but he ended up working in a wheat field and not a quarry.

As to whether I saw the episode before or not? I am almost certain that I did. Right now, the main part that stands out to me is the explosion itself. I remember how it lingered in the air and how final and shocking and chilling it was. I also kind of have a memory of giggling at one of the cheeky things he said while Mom was rather appalled, but that's not as strong a memory and might be of my own creation.

Also, I wonder which was Don Knight's natural hair state. In the 1960s, it seemed to be very straight. In the 1970s, it got very curly. I squee over the curly hair; I have a weakness for thick, wavy, curly hair. **headdesk.** I love how Christopher's hair got the same way in the 1970s and 1980s.

So I got plunnied hard for a Ginger and Lou piece when I watched the Hart to Hart pilot. I rarely ever like pilots as much as I like a series proper, and this was no exception; I really thought it was gross how Jonathan kept manipulating Jennifer into helping him solve cases and would also just decide to pick up more cases without even asking her first. It felt like he really thought more of other people than he did his wife's safety. It was honestly hard for me to believe that they were really in a healthy relationship in the pilot. I think that was dropped in the series proper, thank goodness, and they were equally into solving cases in the series. I also think a lot of the time the cases just dropped in their laps instead of them always being asked to look into things or deciding to look into things. But anyway, the pilot has them undercover and pretending to not know each other (and in Jennifer's case, to not like Jonathan). So my plunnie involved Ginger and Lou undercover and pretending to hate on each other. They have a reason for it, of course; it's not just randomly being done.

I wrote several pages of that since getting plunnied, and then I got another plunnie while watching Perry Mason and decided I could incorporate that one into the fic too. The plunnie was horrible, involving Lou being accused of killing Ginger after an argument. Unlike a story I did some time back, this time there would be a body and Ginger would really be dead. That was unacceptable, but I tweaked the plunnie into Lou getting accused of hurting Ginger and Ginger unable to back him up because he's unconscious from the attack. The fact that they had been pretending to hate each other didn't help, either.

The story altogether is twenty pages long and thirteen of those pages were written in the last 24 hours. As much as I love to write, things don't often flow quite that easily, so I'm thrilled. I think it's finished, unless I want a little more to go into the epilogue scene, so I will hopefully be posting it soon.

Meanwhile, my Big Valley story decided it refuses to be a oneshot. I have enough material for three chapters and more to come. I kept trying to think of it as a oneshot, but when I saw the direction it wanted to go in and how there are several clear chapter breaks in what I wrote, I gave up. (And I am so grateful again to one of my steady reviewers, who is apparently a Big Valley fan. He is once again the only one commenting. Oftentimes, he and a woman are the only commenters. What I'd like to know is, why is it that the people who actually frequent some of these story categories are rarely interested enough to comment?! They read; I can see it from the hit counts. But 99% of the time, they never want to say anything!)

Yesterday I was thinking that I had two frames of mind battling for control. One was an extreme desire for a hurt/comfort fix, specifically with Ginger as the victim. The second was an extreme desire to watch Don Knight in more stuff. I got to see him on Kojak, so that hyped me up, and then later that day we got a Hawaii 5-O disc with his first guest-spot.

That was an interesting experience. In the Kojak episode he is totally a secondary bad guy, but still pretty bad, really. The Hawaii 5-O episode was ... hmm. Actually, there didn't really seem to be any "Big Bad" in that episode. There were three jewel thieves, and in their own ways, each one was sympathetic.

The episode starts out with the police chasing Don's character, who has a girl next to him in his car. There's no indication of what's been happening that led up to that point. (And they're playing the musical cue from the car and helicopter chase in Christopher's episode. Heh.) Suddenly the girl wakes up and starts fighting Don's character Jack Larsen for the wheel. That goes about as well as can be expected, and she finally opts to fling herself out of the car instead of staying with him. The jump ends up being fatal, and one is left wondering what on Earth kind of a horrible person Larsen is that the girl would basically kill herself to get away from him.

It's not until the fourth act when things really start coming together and we see that perhaps things aren't what they seemed to be. Another of the thieves is totally in love with the girl and insists on believing that Larsen stole the jewels from their hiding spot and killed the girl because he didn't want to share. But Larsen doesn't have the jewels and is looking for them too. And he really hadn't killed the girl, even though he did apparently beat her trying to get her to talk (ugh). Larsen insists that the girl double-crossed them both. But the girl has left a coded message for her guy, revealing the new location of the jewels to him. The guy goes a bit hysterical, screaming again that Larsen double-crossed them and killed the girl, and shoots him down. Chin Ho later informs us that Larsen is still alive.

Anyway, there are two possibilities of what happened. 1, That Larsen did steal the jewels because he was trying to cut the others out, the girl found out and stole them back, and he beat her and tried to get her to tell the new location. 2, That the girl stole the jewels because she was trying to cut Larsen out, Larsen found her and beat her to get her to tell the new location. The first way seems messier and more confusing, so it seems more likely that they intended for it to be the second way.

The question remains as to why the girl wanted to cut Larsen out. Either she found out he was especially awful or else she just didn't want to share because she wanted bigger shares for herself and her guy. I'd be more inclined to believe the latter, because while Larsen definitely seems to be somewhat cowardly and was horrible to beat her, the other guy is prone to violence as well. He almost killed one guy before Steve stopped him, and Steve later had to intercede when he was beating up Larsen. And then he shot Larsen. But since he was so emotional because he actually really loved the girl, I did have some level of sympathy for him. I loved that the girl loved him too. It's not often that you find crooks in shows who genuinely care about each other. But I didn't like that she wanted to cut Larsen out of their deal. And I also didn't like that Larsen beat her. But he really didn't kill her; he was shocked when she leaped out of the car. There's no indication that he wanted her dead, although it's certainly possible that she leaped out because she figured he did. Or maybe she was just that determined to keep him from getting the jewels because she wanted her guy to get them even if she couldn't share in it.

So in the end, everything is just up in the air enough that I am mildly curious about Larsen and kind of like all three of the crooks, even though at the same time I of course do not condone stealing jewels or some of their other behavior.

I kind of wish I'd taken pictures from the Charlie's Angels disc. I had debated whether I'd want to, but it's so time-consuming that I opted not to. However, I really knew that I was well on my way to including Don among the darlings. He was already pretty close to it and the more I watch an actor on the cusp of it, the greater the guarantee that they'll make it in. I would definitely say he's in. I want to watch the Mannix episode again and I should really take pictures from that. Paul Gantry is still my favorite of his characters and I think I need an icon. Plus, Tumblr seems to have a deficiency of Don Knight content, so I need to correct that as I try to correct the deficiencies they have regarding the other darlings.

Also, I finally got my second gift card after two months, only to discover that Amazon has changed their policies regarding free shipping again. It wasn't that long ago that they changed to $35 as the minimum, and now they have two different options: buy $25 worth of books and they and anything else with them ship free, or buy $49 worth of non-book merchandise. AURGH! Seriously, WTH? When they switched to $35 I thought they were just greedy, but now I'm wondering if they're in financial trouble because maybe most people try to get free shipping and they're actually losing money by trying to fill all the free shipping orders. It costs so much money to ship things that I can't believe even a Prime member's yearly fee could cover all the shipping costs if, say, they're the type to order things left and right all through the year.

So I've been trying to decide what to do. Part of me wishes I hadn't bought some music a month ago with some of my first gift card. I had actually intended not to use the gift card, but for some reason, Amazon doesn't give me the option to not use an attached gift card to pay for digital music, like it does on regular orders. I really wanted those songs and I never get to buy digital music, so I can't fully regret it, but now I'm in a position where I have to either wait for a third gift card or else spend $13 in cash in addition to the gift card money, just to reach the new minimum free shipping amount. Or I could go the book route, since there was one book I really wanted, but I wanted several DVD sets right now too and if I get $25 of books, I can only get one other thing with them if I'm trying not to go over the gift card amount. So I feel like I'd really be happier getting the DVDs right now. Part of me keeps hoping for that third gift card, but I'm in a stretch where I'm not qualifying into too many surveys for that company right now, so it could be a while before I can even get the smidgen needed to get the gift card. And prices on Amazon fluctuate, as everyone knows, so I don't know whether waiting is a good idea. (And since I already had to wait so long for the second gift card, waiting even longer isn't really appealing.)

Then if I get the DVDs now, I need to fully decide what to get. I really decided on season 1 of Rockford (the only one I'm missing) and The Big Valley season 4, but then that leaves one slot that's difficult to fill. Everything I want most is slightly less that the needed amount, so I've been considering other things I wanted but not quite as much. I think I decided on Vega$ season 2, volume 1, but now part of me wishes I could get one or two Charlie's Angels sets. But season 2 is also slightly less than the needed amount and season 5 is outrageously priced compared to all the others. Sigh. It's so frustrating that normally I'd be thrilled for some of these DVD sets to have such low prices, but that right now I just wish one of them would be a dollar or two more so that they'd fit in the needed slot....

I had been going back and forth on whether to get The Big Valley or Cannon, since I want to support the new Cannon releases. And I don't think I have many season 1 Cannon episodes recorded. But I think Cannon does air uncut, whereas I know The Big Valley does not. And season 4 has so many episodes with darlings (1 Simon, 1 H.M., 2 Richard, 2 Don ...). So I kind of wanted The Big Valley right now, but I fully intend to get Cannon too.

And I really need to have a Hawaii 5-O tag. But going back and finding all the instances where I talk about that series to tag them is not going to be fun. So time-consuming....

Also, my Lalaloopsy order arrived from Build-a-Bear's website and they stuffed pretty firmly everywhere ... except where I specifically asked them to! I didn't want a floppy neck and they didn't stuff the neck firmly! Now I have to go into the store and fix that, in addition to getting something for her to wear. I'm hoping I'll get to do that right away; I can't even fully enjoy holding her and such when I'm worried about the extreme floppiness of the neck. If I buy from the website again, I think I'm just going to order unstuffed since I'd probably always have to go into the store anyway to have it done over right.

Patty Duke is dead at age 69. And from something apparently unexpected and sudden. That makes it even worse than ever. It's so sad to think of her being gone and so sad to think of her loved ones grieving. I was thinking how sad William Schallert must be, since he really ended up like a father figure to her, and then of course Sean Astin and her other kids must be so sad.... I should do some kind of a Tumblr tribute.... I wonder if I have any pictures of her already taken from my DVD sets.

I spent the afternoon filling out our Netflix queue.... I added a lot of Hawaii 5-O, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Hart to Hart, although Mom's probably already seen most of the latter episodes. They come on Monday evenings on Cozi and she watches them while Dad and I are getting groceries. I wish I could see the show more often because it's adorable and generally clean. I love cute 1980's series. I think that was the last decade when we really had a lot of nice and safe live-action TV shows, and of course even then, some of them were starting to get kind of bad sometimes.

Among the Scarecrow discs I added was the one with Luke. It's been years since I've seen it and since he was the main guest-star, I wanna see it again. I was thinking the other day about when I got my first Equestria Girls dolls, the original two-pack with Twilight and the Sunset with incorrect hair. That was in November of 2013. I had a big, fun de-boxing session that night and then set them on my desk while I watched that Scarecrow episode. Then I made a silly Tumblr post commenting that I was playing with dolls of Ponies as people and watching old shows with middle-aged men ... and loving it.

PAX TV used to air Scarecrow around 2000, right before Remington Steele. I hardly ever got to catch it, but weirdly enough, the one with Luke was one that I saw at least part of. I distinctly remember the epilogue. And that means I at least was introduced to Luke's name in the credits, even if I didn't see any of his scenes. Kind of eerie.

Wal-Mart currently has season 1 of Remington Steele available for $10 and I've been debating getting it. I loved that show back in the day and saw almost all of them repeatedly, but I wonder if I would still love it today. My only semi-recent experience with it was when I caught one episode on Halloween night on MeTV several years ago, the one about the stolen dog with Tom Baker guest-starring, and I loved it just as I had before. That was season 2, though (I think). I'm wondering if I'd like season 1 as much as the other seasons. Season 1 didn't have Doris Roberts, and one of the things I loved the most was her interaction with the others. Still, after reading over the season 1 episode summaries, it still sounds like a blast.

Among the stuff I added to the queue today were several things with Don Knight. I tried to weed out a few where he either might not be playing bad guys or where he at least wasn't playing the Big Bads. I'll get around to seeing everything I can with him eventually, but when possible I like to start with things where the actor plays nicer people. I didn't add the Little House disc, though, or even see if Netflix has it. I'm still displeased by the sound of his character's needless death. Anyway, I probably have the Little House thing around here somewhere, as I think my sister gave us all of her Little House tapes when she graduated to DVDs. Ten to one I actually saw that episode years and years ago, as I grew up often watching the show on our local PBS station (which lost the rights to it only a couple of years ago or so, after airing it for decades, gah). I liked it okay, especially as a kid, but I don't know if it would have the same appeal for me now since I really prefer shows with more action. I remember being surprised one time when I saw a Little House episode with bad guys invading the town and holding people hostage and somebody (Laura, I think) bonked one of them with a frying pan. Buwahaha.

I also tried adding The Apple Dumpling Gang and was told it's on Very Long Wait. **rolls eyes.** Not encouraging; that usually means it will end up lost. I wonder if the library might have it....

Also, this morning I decided to look for cheap copies of Interrupted Melody, a movie I want to see with Roger in it. I've been trying to get it for a couple of months and finally just decided to wait and get it with my next Amazon splurge. Only problem is, the survey company is taking forever about giving me my gift card. Uggggh. It's been almost two months now. That occasionally happens with them and it's really frustrating when it does. A while back I got Gold of the Seven Saints on eBay when its price came down, so now I decided that if I could find a cheap copy of Interrupted Melody I'd do the same with it.

I ended up finding a sealed VHS for only $6 and free shipping! I had really wanted a DVD copy, but oh man, it is hard to beat a price like that! I opted to grab it up. At the time I was stressed about stuff and worried that maybe getting a VHS wasn't a good idea, since that means I can only watch it in the living room. But after a good sleep and a dream involving the actors in it, I woke up ecstatic to have finally got a copy. I can hardly wait for it to get here. Also, I love the picture on the VHS copy, as it looks like it's probably Roger's character bending down to the leading lady. He plays her brother, so now I am hoping there will be some sibling squee.

In any case, I hope I will like this film way better than Gold of the Seven Saints. That was ... probably one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. I knew I shouldn't expect too much from it, but I was expecting a little more than I got. Still, Roger was cute and there was hurt/comfort and friendshippiness, so it was worth watching.

A couple of weeks ago in Wal-Mart I saw the most awesome playset: a Scooby-Doo haunted mansion! There were trapdoors and ghosties everywhere and a falling chandelier.... I don't have any place to put something like that, but I sure want it. That is epically awesome. It's one of the most creative playsets I've seen in a long time.

There's also a new line of Scooby-Doo figures. For some reason, there's two Scoobies in the line instead of there being a Fred. They'd better still make Fred! All the other original characters were there. Each one comes packaged with one of the supernatural creatures they unmasked on the show. And even though there's two figures and they're around 6 inches tall, they only cost around $7! I so want those, too. So do lots of others; there were three full pegs of those figures two weeks ago, and last week there were only two figures left.

So I had a very interesting and odd Once dream today. It was similar in nature to some LOTR dreams I had years ago, in which I and Mom and other people were acting out the character roles. And there was snow on the ground. I'm not sure why that's a feature of those dreams, but there you go.

I was playing Rumpel (and Regina, apparently, as there weren't enough people for each to take one character). It was around season 2, and the entire cast had been sent to some weird, snowy place with a huge castle. Rumpel was walking with Belle and they were talking about the problems in their relationship. They seemed to be at a rocky stage. One gave the other some kind of native little white flower before they separated. I was having a blast figuring out how to talk with a Scottish accent.

Belle was then walking with one of the girls, and I think I narrowed it down to Ruby. They were talking and seemed to be upset with Mary-Margaret about something, but the details of that conversation have faded. They were climbing up snowy hillsides that were like steps and heading for the castle. Everyone seemed to be going to a funeral, but I don't know who was dead. They walked along the outside of the castle, which weirdly seemed to have different entrances with numbers corresponding to season 2 episodes. Most were bizarre crooked stairs that were at unclimbable angles. They finally found a way up via the stairs marked for episode 2.

Regina was walking down the corridor, heading for the room with the funeral. For some reason, she ended up casting a spell on herself that made her appear as Rumpel to everyone else she passed in the corridor. It was not shape-shifting, like Cora could do, but it was expressly just a spell that warped how everyone else saw her. She got to the room and ... apparently laid down on a low table/slab in front of a row of people. Then she was ... either faking being unconscious or there was some other spell. Everyone thought it was Rumpel and was confused as to why they couldn't wake "him" up. Rumpel was supposed to appear in the doorway and be all "WTH is going on here," and I think he arrived and was trying and failing to get people's attention, and I woke up around then.

A very weird dream. But actually rather enjoyable while it was being had. I woke up missing the good times on Once before the writers decided that Rumpel wasn't allowed to continue his progress being a good guy. I should write some more in my vignette series again.

I wonder if another reason I'm worried about posting it on FF.net is that I'm afraid some people won't like that I'm unhappy with the direction the show took starting with 3B. But there's quite a lot of us who feel the same way, so that probably wouldn't really be much of a problem.

Recently I re-watched the season 3 Mannix episode with Don Knight, another British actor with lovely blond hair. He reminded me a little bit of Christopher, while at the same time definitely being his own person. He played the only survivor of a shipwreck, and he knew the truth about the wreck, that it had been hijacked and everyone else deliberately murdered by being thrown overboard to the sharks. He himself had been permanently mutilated; his left arm was gone and he had a limp. He was being sought after by the bad guys to kill him, but he refused to come forward and tell the police what he knew because they were threatening to kill a girl he loved. In the climax, he discovered that the girl was actually one of the bad guys. Heartbroken, in a moment of rage he started choking her, but Mannix rushed in and stopped him. When he calmed down, he insisted that the girl must have been coerced into being a part of things, because she was just too sweet to really be bad. The girl told him that she hadn't been coerced, that she wanted to be there because the Big Bad saw her as she really was instead of putting her on a pedestal. It was heartbreaking, gah. The guy didn't have anyone else in the world and he lost the one person he thought cared about him. Mom wondered if he might end up committing suicide, feeling like he had nothing left, but I hope not. Maybe I will write something about him and see what he's up to.

I remember liking that character and the actor before, but I didn't follow up on it. I wanted to this time, but I didn't get around to it until I discovered him in a Hawaii 5-O episode quite by accident over the weekend. That time the character was a bad guy, but he was in danger being kidnapped by the psycho Big Bad of the episode and I hoped the taskforce would save him in time. They did, and I decided to look up the actor. He had turned out an amazing performance and had broke down in hysteria because he was terrified of heights. So very different from the Mannix character. Like all good character actors, he really slips into whatever part he's got.

I found a list of credits and saw that I have one of his Virginian episodes, so I watched that this morning. He was a bad guy again, but he survived the episode. It was a pretty depressing episode, though, called The Mustangers. I don't think I want to get into it right now, but it seems like many season 7 Virginian episodes are depressing. I remember that while many season 6 episodes were high drama, they generally seemed to end well. I'm not sure what was up with the seeming change.

I also found a website run by Don Knight's son, which is awesome. I'm going to go back there and see if there's a way to contact the son. And I'll probably keep looking up his father's credits; I think one of his Charlie's Angels episodes is already on one of the discs I put on the queue.

Don Knight sounds like a sweet man in reality and I know I definitely loved his Mannix character. Apparently he also played a beloved character on Little House on the Prairie, so if I end up deciding I like him enough to make him one of my darlings, finally there will actually be one of them who has appeared on that show. Heh. I've always wondered why none of them ever guest-starred on that. Or at least if any have, IMDB doesn't have a record of it (which is possible).

His character on that has a very famous and tragic death. He works with dynamite, and he's watching some contest that includes his friends Charles and another guy. When they win, he's so excited for them that he doesn't remember he has a lit dynamite fuse that he was dealing with.

They invited Don Knight back for another episode as a different character, but when he got there they paid him and then fired him. They felt that his character's death had been so poignant that the audience would not accept him as another character.

...

Is it just me or was that a really lame and jerky thing to do? Once they hired him for the episode, they should have followed through with it. And isn't it just a little bit arrogant to think that their show's character death is so powerful that he could never return as someone else? I've watched lots of shows with powerful oneshot character deaths, and very often the actor will be allowed to return later as another character. I never see any problem with that.

Also, speaking of his character's death, it just sounds so pointless and needless that to me it almost seems like they killed off the character for the sheer shock and tragedy factor. Unless the episode was based on something Laura Ingalls Wilder really wrote about as having happened, it seems to me it should not have been done that way. I don't like character deaths that are pointless and needless and exist just so they can point to their show and say, "Look how dark and gritty we made it! It's some kind of artistic achievement!"

And as a closing note, eerily enough, Don Knight follows the pattern of being someone I saw in something many years ago. Apparently he was in The Apple Dumpling Gang. I actually wasn't crazy about that movie; I'd gone in looking for a hysterical comedy and it honestly didn't strike me as being very funny in most parts. The big funny scene seemed to be where Don Knotts' character was being accidentally choked by a rope up the side of a building, which ... really isn't very funny. But maybe if I go back to it and watch it not looking for anything specific, I'd like it.

I know it's stupid, but it still kind of troubles me that I can't think of anything I saw Christopher Cary in many years ago. He's the one darling that doesn't fit the pattern. I did see him on Rockford before I was interested in him, and I did like him, so I figure I've got to accept that as the time I saw him years ago. But it wasn't in the long-ago past, like all the others. I keep thinking there must be something I saw him in years ago and that someday I'll pinpoint what it was.