I agree john mulaney is probably an immortal akin to beings such as keanu reeves and jeff goldblum but he’s like a new born baby immortal who is looking at the long long expanse of a lifetime he has in front of him and is already tired
jeff golblum is thousands of years old and loving it. john mulaney was born in 1901 and ever since 1924 it’s gone downhill for him
So to be clear, the immortal timeline seems to be:
John Mulaney – early 20th century
Eric Andre – Probably 17th century or so.
Taika Waititi – Elizabethan age, probably hung out with Shakespeare
Keanu Reeves – We think sometime around Alexander the Great, but he seems to have just sprung up fully formed.
Jeff Goldblum – 100% Biblical times, may or may not be King Solomon.
Tommy Wiseau – Indeterminate, may be the first Homo Sapiens.
this is david lynch erasure
Who are the female immortals?
Jenny Slate – Jazz Age Darling, bffs with Alice Roosevelt
Helena Bonham Carter – Refused an invitation to dine with Queen Victoria based on her treatment of the Irish
Lucy Liu – ran away from home to join Ching Shih, 19th century Pirate Queen’s crew. Was considered too soft for fighting and was given an accordion
Bjork – 14th century Icelandic healer accused of witchcraft, also possibly a selkie
Whoopie Goldberg – present during the Conquest of Constantinople but don’t bring it up around her, it’s too fresh in her mind
Tilda Swinton – found sleeping in a peat bog. Carbon dating inconclusive
bc of this they opened with a bit making fun of his absence, reading letters he’d *supposedly* sent to each of them, some of which he talked about supporting trump/the gop 🤔 and asked melissa for $500…(all jokes ofc)
next the cast performed 2 scenes (in character) written by chelsea peretti
the first one was promoting chelseaperetti.com and all the characters were super one dimensional. notable quotes include:
“I LOVE JAKE…AND FOOD…SEASON 1″ (charles)
“I LOVE TO DANCE…SEASON 1″ (gina)
“i love chelseaperetti.com. there are only 3 other things i love in life: guns, dick, and pussy.” (rosa)
jake and amy exit walking COMPLETELY IN SYNC, EACH STEP SYNCHRONIZED.
the second one had the cast SWEARING EVERY 5 SECONDS since they can do bleeps and blurs now on nbc. notable quotes include:
“HELL FUCKING YEAH” (rosa and amy in sync)
“NINE-NINE, ASSHOLES!!!” (terry)
then they got a REAL writer on stage: phil jackson
he had them perform a scene that he said was ~CURRENTLY IN THE WORKS IN THE WRITER’S ROOM FOR THE S6 FINALE~
spoiler: the scene took place in the deep south circa 1928. charles found out from the doctor that he was apparently dying…as did terry, rosa, amy, and gina. scully revealed he was already dead. jake just wanted to solve the big crime but then HITCHCOCK REVEALED: HE is actually the doctor and he POISONED the other characters, bc he’s actually JAKE’S FATHER!!!
(none of this is canon obvi but i highkey wish it was lkdfnsblnkbfds)
afterward, they opened it up to audience q&a which i only remember a few highlights from:
someone asked what big crimes their characters would most want to solve. chelsea peretti said “disband ice”
5 seconds later, she asked, “WHEN WILL A WHITE GIRL COME UP AND TELL ME I’M HER HERO????” (since mel and steph always get latinx ppl saying they’re their heroes lndfsbljnblfdsn)
andy: “i’m glad you said that AFTER the ice thing”
someone asked what tv show the cast would want their characters to appear on an episode of
steph said the bachlorette
andy said queer eye
melissa couldn’t think of one so she initially just piggybacked off of andy since amy would be with jake on queer eye. andy asked what one of her favorite tv shows was. melissa said game of thrones.
SO EVERYONE NOW IMAGINE: AMY SANTIAGO ON GAME OF THRONES
someone pointed out a similarity in one of amy’s lines in 202 and a line from a song in hamilton….andy freaked out, “WE WROTE HAMILTON!!!!!!!!!!!”
someone asked andy if he actually loves boats. he revealed he actually gets nauseous on boats
the cast revealed some running gags they have behind the scenes
andy will walk around set with his script pretending to be a dumb actor
when they get stuck doing 1000000 takes for the same scene over and over, they’ll start saying “CAW-CAW” and/or flapping their arms like bird wings to indicate that they wish to cut and move on (bc only the director calls “cut-cut”). andre even does it, sometimes just wordlessly flapping his arms
whenever chelsea and terry have to act in the bg of a scene (basically go through some wordless motions) terry will kinda try to make it look real, pretending to hand chelsea something for gina to look at or whatever, but chelsea will just slyly flip him off and mouth “FUCK YOU” to him over and over
THE CAST DOES A LOT OF IMPROV THAT DOESN’T MAKE THE FINAL CUT!
in “stakeout”, andy and joe would come out of terry’s duffel bag and flap their arms like butterflies to be like butterflies emerging from a cocoon
some “17″ odd times, andy and joe have done a “flu season high-five” where they go in for a high-five, then stop before their hands touch to prevent spreading germs. this has yet to make the final cut lndsbflkndfb
in the jimmy jab games ep, andy and mel did a long improv bit on the roof of the precinct when andy had the fake pregnancy belly on and said it was amy’s baby
terry laughed so hard watching “halloveen” when jake and amy woke up in the middle of the night and holt was in their bedroom; he rewound and rewatched the scene a few times bc it was so funny to him
chelsea peretti had to go pee RLY BAD. she kept making jokes about it (”what other show would you want your character to be on?” “ONE WHERE SHE GOES PEE!!!!”) and andy was just like “YOU ORGANIZED THIS SHOW” and she just gave up and got up and was like “nO ONE TALK BAD ABOUT ME WHILE I’M GONE” and just. fuckin took a bathroom break in the middle of her own benefit show
she came back from the bathroom with toilet paper hanging out of her pants btw
mel talked for a bit about how rare it is for a cast to click as well and as quickly as the b99 squad; she knew she’d found something special when she started working on the show, but knew it was up in the air whether or not tv viewers would be able to feel that “special-ness” through watching the show. when the show was canceled and the internet lost its mind and threw a 24-hour long temper tantrum, she texted dan basically saying OMG PPL CAN FEEL THE SPECIALNESS IN OUR SHOW THAT I THOUGHT ONLY WE COULD FEEL BUT THE VIEWERS CAN FEEL IT TOO
someone asked if dirk and joel are as close as scully and hitchcock. mel said they carpool to table reads together sometimes!!!
andy started to look tired toward the end. chelsea said it was past his bedtime
someone asked what future plots the cast would want for their characters. steph wants to play rosa’s evil twin who’s basically the polar opposite of rosa but is the evil twin.
cue chelsea: “ROSA IS THE NICE ONE????”
chelsea closed out the night with, “go reunite with your families!!!” and everyone groaned
chelsea lost her mind at these 2 sisters in the audience named hansel and gretel
marvel is cowardly and homophobic, and will continue to be cowardly and homophobic until they use an ABBA song for a fight sequence.
like i said…..
LUKE THIS IS THE BEST THING LITERALLY EVER, watching this literally felt like i was going through a museum full of my most favourite paintings while ABBA was playing in the background. so literally prefect
#tbt that time two brothers bought their own planes, learnt to fly them and disguised them as soviet planes so they wouldn’t be questioned and then flew into east germany to rescue their third brother from a park and recorded the entire operation and got away with it
no but legit this is one of my favourite stories from the 20th century it just sums up human ingenuity and how walls just don’t fucking work when people will do anything to cross them
the first brother and a friend paddled over the Elbe on inflatable mattresses in the middle of the night to escape the east. they got picked up by a Wessi police officer, who said something like “bit cold for swimming, ey boys?” and the brother says “not when you’re trying to leave the East.” because all East Germans were automatically citizens of the West too, they were taken into town and established themselves there.
the second brother scoped out a particularly dark stretch of the wall. He escaped over it to the west by getting into a high building and shooting an arrow with a steel cable attached over to another building in the west. He then ziplined over. In response to his escape, the Stasi and the Wall designers built another guard tower in the middle of the stretch so no one else could pull the same stunt.
the two brothers met up and heard that their who was still in East Germany also wanted out. So, they learnt to fly planes and disguised them as soviet planes. This was so, if the border guards saw them, they wouldn’t fire on them – they’d have to ring up the Kremlin and ascertain whether they were actual soviet planes on an organised fly-by. they flew into East Germany at dawn (recording it all on camera because you’ve got to do it for the vine even before vine exists), landed in a park where their brother was hiding in the bushes, loaded him onto one of the planes and flew out of East Germany, laughing all the way.
other great moments include – the guy who broke out of the GDR by driving a very low-slung sportscar under a barrier, the family who built two hot air balloons with their bare hands, the guy who managed to windsurf out of East Germany, the man who stole a tank (my hero), the people who removed the petrol tanks from cars so people could squeeze into the gap where the tank should have been, and of course, one of the most famous photos of the 20th century, with Eastern border guard, conrad schumann noping the fuck out of there when he was meant to be on duty guarding the wall when it was under construction in 1961
the fact that Loki’s death scene in Thor 2 was originally intended to be real & retconned later and the end where he’s alive was filmed during pickups has me SO fucked up because now I can’t choose between which headcanon I prefer re: his behavior in Ragnarok. like listen, okay, either:
1. loki was planning on playing dead the whole time and so his very sad death scene & everything he said therein was a calculated move and he was practically writing the theatrical version of it (starring matt damon as himself) as he went along
OR
2. loki really thought he was dying and every melodramatic word of his death scene was 100% heartfelt and then after he realized he wasn’t dead he fucking… woke up peaced out to go take over asgard (lol?) and several months later he was sitting on the throne and could remember every word of what he said to thor on that day and was like “wow im so fucking poetic. that should be a play. starring matt damon as Me perhaps”
actually the best part of the lotr cast commentary is getting to hear about sir ian mckellen’s gay agenda
i phrased this as a joke because it is pretty funny but its also worth reading what he said:
IAN: When I suggested to Sean that he took Elijah’s hand it was because I thought anyone who knew the book would care about the deep friendship, often of an innocently physical nature, and that might’ve been missed by two resolutely heterosexual actors who mightn’t appreciate that gay people like myself saw in a touch something perhaps more meaningful than others might. So to persuade him to touch Elijah, I’d say, “Well look, it’s in the book.”
[Sean & Elijah in a separate recording]
SEAN: Ian brought the book to me right before we shot it and he said, “Now look here, it says that Sam runs over and grabs Frodo’s hand,” he said. “The fans of the book are going to want to see that.” I sort of—I believed it, and I got a fan letter the other day that a neighbor friend handed to me, and it said how much it meant to her that Sam holds Frodo’s hand at that moment because it was something that she—it was one of the most important moments to her in the book. ELIJAH: Oh, that’s fantastic. It’s those subtle little nuances, man. SEAN: So thank you Ian. ELIJAH: That’s unbelievable.
I went to see a stage version of Les Mis (not the musical, an original theatre production) done by a little community theatre company so they only had 6 actors total, which meant that a whole bunch of roles had to be doubled up. They only could have Grantaire in one scene since the same actor played Javert and his only line was after Courfeyrac and Enjolras finished their inspiring speech to the amis,
“Wait friends I have just one more thing to add–I’m hungry, I’m going to lunch”.
This sounds amazing?? Do you remember any other specifics? I want to hear all of it:D
Yes I do! I loved the adaptation a lot, really faithful to the book and the BEST Marius I have ever seen he was such a dweeb. When he was “flirting” (see: staring from a distance) with Cosette, Cosette eventually went up to him and was like “why do you look but never speak to me? Why do you turn away?” and then she ran back to Valjean and Marius DRAMATICALLY fell on the ground and was like “OH MY HEART, OUR FIRST QUARREL” even though he literally didn’t say a word.
Other highlights: -Valjean and the Bishop were played by the same dude stepping either to the left or to the right when he had to be the other character -The guy who played Thenardier was also Tholomyes and Courfeyrac, and for bows he changed out of his ridiculous Thenardier disguise and back into Courf -Fantine, Cosette, and Enjolras were all the same actress -During that scene where Marius looks through the hole in the wall, Claquesous got punched offstage and came back two seconds later as Valjean it was great -During the scene where the barricade falls there was only like four actors able to be on stage so they just had to keep dying over and over again for effect -Eponine was PERFECT she was just the right amount of crass/innocent and I swear all of her lines were straight out of the book
Wait wait one more thing: -the barricade was literally a bunch of ikea chairs stacked on top of each other
FANTINE AND ENOLRAS (and Cosette??) WERE THE SAME ACTRESS, I NEED A DVD
if you see them again please give them all my applause that I can’t be there to give, wow
how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
oh my GOD
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus – his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” – Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
Man I love this post.
And to add my personal favourite story: after reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa in the 18th century, Elizabeth Echlin decided that she was NOT HAPPY with the ending and basically wrote her own fix-it fic. No-one dies and Lovelace (the villain) was totally reformed and became a super nice guy. It’s completely OOC and incredibly poorly written and it’s beautiful.
Also, so many women fell in love with the villain, Lovelace, and wrote to Richardson about it, that he kept adding new bits with each edition to highlight what a hideous person Lovelace was. So it’s almost unsurprising that reading novels in this period was actually considered dangerous because it gave women unrealistic ideas about men and made them easier prey for rakes.
Basically, “I want my own Christian Grey” has been a thing for hundreds of years.
Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.
Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.
Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.
According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone.
In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of.
(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)
the beauty of archival research *sigh*
Don’t even get me started on the Don Quixote fandom. Long story short, the first volume was published 10 years before the second. What do you think happened between those years? There was fanfic. Duh.
I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that there was a little more out there than we’re aware of, but one unofficial sequel pissed off Cervantes so much that it probably prompted him to write his own. At the very least, he spends a couple of chapters in volume two blasting the author. It’s so meta. Especially since that sequel was written under a screename pseudonym and no one knows who was really behind it.
I want you to write more on this topic plz.
I’m so glad someone wrote about Dream of Red Mansions / Story of the Stone because if they didn’t, I would.
For the record, those last forty chapters, essentially one of the most famous fanfics ever written, was only “decanonized” by the Chinese government in the past few years, leaving the book tragically, if accurately, incomplete. (The story I heard about their history was very different than the above post, but they exist one way or another so I’m not going to complain.)
The shipping for that book was absurd, too. The editor of my copy talks about records of men duelling on the street over their OTPs.
backup from Tumblr 