So did y’ hear the story
Of the Johnstone twins?
As like each other as two new pins
Of one womb born, on the self same day
How one was kept and one given away?
An’ did you never hear how the Johnstones died
Never knowing that they shared one name,
Till the day they died, when a mother cried
My own dear sons lay slain.

Blood Brothers was originally presented in 1981, and written by Willy Russell. The play focuses on themes such as class, and how we are affected by it, love, and family.

The first scene shows us two men lying dead on the floor, with many people gathered around, mourning them. The two paragraphs above are spoken by the narrator, and we go back in time roughly twenty years to see the start of the story.

Mrs. Johnstone is in quite a state. She works all day to make ends meet for herself and her seven children. Her husband walked out on her after the third. As if this wasn’t bad enough, she’s pregnant again, with an eighth child! Luckily, she lands herself a good job in a rich lady’s house, as a cleaner, and reckons she’ll manage.

…Until the doctor says she’s expecting twins.

“Only for a time,
I must not learn,
To call you mine
Familiarise
That face, those eyes
Make future plans
That cannot be confirmed
On borrowed time,
On easy terms.”

She could manage with one more mouth to feed, but two? No way. She explains her dilemma to Mrs. Lyons, the woman she works for. Mrs. Lyons gives her a solution: she’ll take one of the babies and raise it as her own. He’ll have anything he needs and wants, an education, food, clothes, toys, it’s the only logical solution. Mrs Johnstone agrees, eventually, and the deal is done is secret.

“They say that if either twin learns that he was one of a pair, they shall both immediately die.
It means, Mrs Johnstone that these brothers shall grow up, unaware of the other’s existence,
they shall be raised apart and never, ever told what was once the truth. You
won’t tell anyone about this, Mrs Johnstone.
Because if you do, you will kill them”

The rest of the play shows events in the boys’ lives: how they meet and become friends without knowing the truth, for one, and how both of them end up moving away to the countryside, at different times and without the other’s knowledge, and meeting again. All the while, the parents try desperately to keep the secret.

Fast forward. The boys are in their twenties. Edward is studying at university, and Mickey is doing a low-wage job and planning to marry his childhood friend Linda. This is sometime in November/December. As New Year’s approaches, Mickey despairs that he doesn’t have enough money to take Linda somewhere nice for the day. A shady-looking character, one of his oldest brother Sammy’s friends, asks him to help him rob a bank, promising he’ll get a cut of the loot (“Oi, y’ can take y’ tart somewhere nice for New Year’s, a’ite?”). Mickey unwillingly agrees.

The robbery goes well until the police show up. Sammy and the rest of the gang manage to get away, but Mickey is caught and sentenced to seven years in prison. While there, he becomes chronically depressed, and is given pills to combat this. Eventually, when he is released, he finds himself addicted to the pills, still depressed, and unable to function normally. His wife Linda is in despair, as she doesn’t recognise him as the man she loved. She turns to Edward, who has always been her close friend. They have a small romantic fling, and Mrs. Lyons sees. She tells Mickey, who, in his depressed state, goes wild, gets a gun and hunts Edward down, believing that he’s trying to steal his wife, the only thing Mickey has that Ed doesn’t.

“It’s just a light romance
It’s nothing cruel
They had no plans
How it came
Who can explain?
They just said “Hello”
And foolishly gazed
They should have gone
Their separate ways.”

Mickey bursts into Edwards workplace, holding the gun and accusing him of cheating with Linda. As Edward tries to defend himself, the police turn up, along with Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons. Mickey’s mother pleads with him, finally telling him about their relationship and confessing everything. Mickey is shocked, and asks his mother why he wasn’t the one given away. (“Why him? Why not me? I could have had everything he has!”) He gestures carelessly with the gun towards Edward, and accidentally shoots him. As he does so, the police shoot Mickey and they both fall to the ground.

“Tell me it’s not true,
Say I only dreamed it,
And morning will come soon.
Say you didn’t mean it,
Tell me it’s not true,
Say it’s just pretend,
Say it’s just the end,
Of an old movie from years ago.”

The play ends with the narrator questioning the cause:

“And do we blame superstition for what came to pass?
Or could it be what we have come to know as class?
Did you ever hear the story of the Johnstone twins,
As like each other as two new pins
How one was kept and one given away,
How they were born, and they died,
On the self same day?”

Some song links:
This playlist has all the songs from the musical. ^^

.

Herro again. Today I’ll be discussing a bunch of random things, and I’ll start with a rant.

I hate my computer.

Why? IT ATE MY NANO. Admittedly, it sucked so hard it makes a vacuum cleaner look weak, but still. After flailing around wildly and reaching 35k-ish words, it randomly jumped back to ~12k. No idea why. Yeah, I did back up, but on a USB memory stick which I lost. I wrote like a crazy writing machine on crack, but with around a week to go, there was no way I could get to 50k. I just wrote as much as I could, and thankfully, in total I did write 50k, I just didn’t have that amount saved. I will be finishing it, and possibly posting snippets when it doesn’t fail so hard.

In other news, my life is now complete. I just read (well, about a week ago, actually) in an awesome, awesome, awesome series of books. Said series is called the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, written by Michelle Paver. I won’t say too much, as I herd Dyl was planning to review the series at a later date, but I will say this: GO READ IT NOW. I’d say it was suitable for pretty much any age, since I have several friends my age who love the series, and I’ve read a bunch of reviews by adults who loved it, too.

What else am I gonna write about? Oh, right. Sky told me to say something about teh football. In the 2010 World Cup, England and the USA are in the same group, Group C. This should be interesting, since apparently, the US team needs to get even with Beckham. XD Also, Portugal and Brazil in the same group? language rivalry amirite. England coach Fabio Capello said that the USA is a good team, and Algeria and Slovenia are tricky, too. Brazil player Kaka says that his group, the supposedly hugely dangerous Group G, consisting of Brazil, Korea DPR, Cote d’Ivoire and Portugal is “probably the most difficult of all the sections”. Group info can be found here.

What else have I been up to? Listening to songs about hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice etc. eating food, of course. This is one of my favourite videos by Parry Gripp, who is a singer/songwriter for punk-pop band Nerf Herder. On the tubes, he is more well-known for creating little ditties about random memes or videos. You may have heard of Spaghetti Cat. You may have also heard Gripp’s song Spaghetti Cat (I Weep For You), a song about said cat. Some of my other favourites are Wiener Dog Riding Skateboard and Cat Flushing a Toilet. Most of the songs make no sense at all, which is why they’re awesome.

In other news, I’ve just played a game called Love+, which is a platformer game. It was made by some random guy who hangs out on 4chan’s /v/ (that’s the video games board, for the uninitiated). Before you go “OMG 4CHAN I RUN AWAY LOL” I’ve just tested it, it’s safe. Would I lie to you? o: There are ten levels. You start with 100 lives. It sounds excessive, but seriously, I was down to around 70 lives after the first level. Others have said that they spent like sixty lives on a single level. It just reminds me of how much I fail at platformers. Anyway, the game is awesome. The music is epic, and also it’s simple in terms of graphics, it’s actually cool. Download link is here, it’s a .zip file which contains a .txt readme with instructions, and a .exe for the actual game. Do eet.

omo

.

Begging is usually frowned upon, but there’s one day when most people accept it: Halloween, also spelled Hallowe’en. On this day, 31st October, it’s perfectly normal for kids of all ages (and sometimes adults, too) to go around asking for treats, usually sweets, money or small fruit. Modern-day Halloween sees people dressed up as all sorts of ghouls, from witches to devils and zombies to ghosts. Even the odd pumpkin. And if you’re my sister, she wanted to be a pizza.

Halloween has roots in many cultures and religions. Although it is mostly a secular state celebration, it has many religious overtones. Some people emphasise on the Christian traditions of All Saints’ Day, and some celebrate in it remembrance of the Protestant Reformation. It has its origins in the “Festival of the Dead”, held in many ways by different cultures of the world to celebrate and honour deceased loved ones and relatives. It also has many connections to the Celtic festival of Samhain/Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in, roughly meaning “Summer’s End”). Some folklorists say it also has roots in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess or fruits and seeds. Ancient Britons held a similar feast, called Calan Gaeaf (pronounced kalan geyf).

The Celts thought that the world of the living and the world of the dead was separated by a barrier, and that this barrier became weak on Samhain, allowing spirits to pass through, both harmful and harmless. The harmless spirits, especially those of friends and family members who had died, were welcomed and celebrated, while measures were taken to ward off the harmful spirits. People would disguise themselves as harmful spirits and therefore avoid the real ones, traditionally by dressing in white with a dark mask or a dark-painted face. This is also thought to be the origin of the dressing-up part of Halloween.

Symbols of Halloween include generic witches/ghosts/spooks etc., and pumpkins which are carved into lanterns. This is derived from the British tradition of carving lanterns from turnips and rutabagas. Pumpkins were adopted because they were more readily available and larger, making them easier to carve. Modern Halloween imagery also includes evil, the occult, magic and mythical monsters. More traditional symbols include the Devil, witches, vampires (cover yourself in glitter and go as a random Cullen, you know you want to), werewolves, black cats, bats and more. Classic horror films and books are also incorporated, such as Frankenstein’s Monster. Elements of the autumn season are also seen.

Trick-or-treating now plays a large part in the celebration, and for some people, it is often the only reason they go to the trouble of buying/making a costume! Children in costume go from house to house, asking the question “Trick or treat?” Generally, sweets or money is given. In some parts of Scotland and Ireland, children go guising, which is where they sing, play an instrument or tell a ghost story in order to earn their treats. The “trick” part refers to the many pranks played on people during Halloween, including throwing eggs or tomatoes at houses, knocking on doors and running away, throwing toilet paper at houses, and scaring people by jumping out and screaming at ‘em. Other activities include bobbing for apples, where some apples are placed in a basin of water, and one must try to lift the apple from the water using only their teeth, no hands allowed. A traditional version of this is where you have an equal amount of men and women in a room, each woman marks a mark on an apple and puts it in the water. The men bob for apples and it is said that they will marry the owner of that apple. Another activity is where a scone or other small cake is covered in syrup or honey and hung from a string. The cake* must be eaten without using the hands, which obviously leads to a very messy, sticky, syrup-covered face.

Some games played at Halloween are forms of divination. It is said that if you peel and apple, keeping the peel in one long spiral, and toss the peel over your shoulder, the peel will land in the shape of the first initial of your future lover or spouse. Unmarried women used to be told that if they sat in a darkened room combing their hair whilst looking into a mirror, they would see the face of their future husband watching over their shoulder.

Halloween foods often include apples and pumpkins, because it is in the harvest season (and because pumpkins are also symbols of Halloween). Other traditional foods are:
Bonfire toffee
Toffee/candy apples
Candy corn
Barmbracks – fruited yeast bread; small silver charms or small items like coins, peas, etc. The items would give a meaning to the person who had it in their slice. A ring would mean marriage, a coin would mean wealth, and a pea would mean they would not marry that year.
Pumpkin bread/pumpkin pie
Sweets shaped like bats, ghosts, etc.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my article, and if you were considering doing something… DO IT! Do it for the candy, if nothing else. I do it for the lulz and laughs. I don’t even eat most of the sweets. And I really want to blast Thriller out on my phone and have everyone dance, but someone would call the fuzz on us for making too much noise, I bet. ¬_¬

THIS IS SO AWESOME.

On an unrelated note: NANOWRomo NANOWRIMO STARTS TOMORROW BOOYAH

.

I’m going to share a few of my favourite clicky websites. Some are based around a specific species, others have a variety of animals to pick from.

DragCave

DragCave is a site where you adopt dragon pets. Never would’ve guessed, huh? It’s easy to use and the sprites are amazing, with many, if not all of them being made by the site users themselves, and submitted on their forums.

You enter the cave and see many large dragons scattered about, some with hatchlings, sleeping on piles of gold. Near the entrance to the cave, there are three eggs. You don’t want to disturb the dragons by touching their gold, but the eggs in front are far enough away that you could steal one. Which do you take?

Then it shows you a choice of three eggs and their descriptions. The only catch is, you can’t tell which kind of egg is which. Let me explain further. What it shows you is three black eggs with a red question mark. They are mystery eggs, and you’ll only find out what dragon you’ve caught when you choose an egg. Fortunately, most descriptions are fairly easy to remember or are obvious. For example, the pink egg’s description is “It’s bright. And pink.”

There is also an Abandoned page, or AP. In the AP, you’ll find eggs and dragon hatchlings which have been abandoned by the users of the site. Perhaps they picked up a green egg, when they meant to pick up a stone one. Maybe their orange magi hatchling turned out to be male, but they really needed a female to breed with the male they already had. Or they might have just grown tired of having the egg and abandoned it in search of getting a rarer egg. After all, you can only have four eggs at a time.

Whether you’re in the AP or the cave page (eggs from the cave are referred to as CB – Cave Born), you’ll have to be fast, especially if you are trying to catch a rare egg. Eggs like pinks, purples and mints are currently extremely common, if you want one of these, I suggest taking one from the overpopulated AP. Others, like golds, silvers, dinos and the elusive alts, are extremely rare and are hard to find on both the AP and the cave page. While you’re there, stop by the DC forums. Many lulz are had and you can even look at some possible future dragons. If you’re an artist type, you might try your hand at spriting.

You can make your dragons mature by putting them in forum sigs and getting people to click them and view them. You can also use a hatchery such as JadeDestiny to get more clicks. Too many views can make your dragon sick, though. Also, they have a time limit – after seven days, if the egg/hatchling does not have enough clicks, it will die.

Example creatures: , Stone egg; , Cheese dragon; , Silver dragon (female); , Split hatchling (female). Oh, and here’s my scroll if you wanted to check out my dragons.

MagiStream

MagiStream is a site I stumbled upon a few days ago. In this site, you can catch a variety of creatures, from real-life ones such as koi fish and narwhals to mythical creatures like phoenixes and pegasi.

You find yourself at a mysterious stream. Floating down it are beautiful eggs, unlike any you’ve ever seen or heard of, decorated with odd scales and extraordinary colors. Some are already hatching, and you can see hints of what they might become. The water glows, almost beckoning you forward, and the trees seem to lean inward, as if by some enchantment. You have made an amazing discovery, and wish you could take an egg or two. These rare eggs can be raised into adults, if nurtured and raised well. If grown to adulthood, they can become beautiful and potent allies for any magi.
Magi are magic wielders, students and teachers from all corners of the world, who spend their time traveling to distant lands, learning and experimenting in all forms of sorcery. Rare eggs help greatly in their travel, both in wizard wars and as steeds. Will you join the ranks of these wizards, and take on the responsibility and adventure these creatures promise to bring? Choose your own egg, and begin the journey.

Site description from the front page. On the front page, the first thing you’ll notice is the animation of the river. There are many eggs floating down the river, some are purple with scales, some are gold with wings, some are white and brown with a funny horn sticking out. Like in DragCave, there are rare eggs and common eggs. Some rare eggs can be caught from the strem, but others must be bought using gold at Remy’s Inn. Gold is attained by posting in the forums. The longer the post, the more gold you will get.

I have never been beaten to an egg on MagiStream. Whether that is because I have not been on the site for that long or because I was clicking on a common, I don’t know. When an egg IS taken, though, a new one immediately replaces it, saving you the timewasting pageload and “Sorry, this egg has already been taken”, like DragCave.

You are not allowed to use a click exchange or anything of the sort with MagiStream, however, they do not have a time limit as far as I know and will not die if left unclicked for a long time. Forum sigs should suffice.

Example creatures: , Adult koi; Adult narwhal (I love the facial expression o_o); Dark pegasus egg; Leviathan egg. Mah MagiStream be here.

Global PokédeX Plus

GPX, as the name suggests, is a pokémanz-themed adoptables site.  Sign up is kinda annoying, you have to take some quiz to see if you understand the rules, but it’s pretty easy to guess the answers. Once you’ve validated your account, you’re gonna want to get eggs. Click on “Lab” on the bar near the top of the screen.

Allow me to introduce myself – I am Professor Cypress!
I am here to help you with helping me gather as much information as I can about all the different Pokémon species that there are.
How will you be able to help me? Easily!
You have been given a Poké Dex. With it, you will try to record as much information to it as you can. You will do this by getting a variety of different eggs and hatching them. You then level your Pokémon up so you can evolve them and record the changes!

It’s similar to the Pokémon games in the way that you have to collect, evolve, record stuff in the Poké Dex, etc. On this page, you’ll find more info about Professor Cypress. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a DragCave-esque bunch of mystery eggs, complete with description. You might be able to figure out what some eggs are just by looking at the description. Funny thing is, after you’ve adopted the egg, it doesn’t tell you what it is. You see a picture, but unless you can tell the type of pokéman from the pic, it’s still a mystery egg. For instance, I assumed that “A pale yellow egg with two pale red spots. It’s supposed to be part of a pair.” was Plusle, and when I clicked on it, the “pale red dots” were plus signs, yes. By visiting the shelter I could see a lot more eggs I recognised, including a bunch that I recognised but didn’t know the actual names of/couldn’t remember. YOU KNOW THAT SQUIRREL THING WITH A CIRCLE ON ITS STOMACH OR WHATEVER YEAH THAT. I forgot the name. o_o

There’s also a shelter, where users can take eggs that other users have abandoned. Here, you see the picture of the egg, but not the description. You can have a limit of six eggs taken from the shelter a day. You can have six eggs/Pokémon in your party. Once your party is full, you can transfer Pokémon to a PC (not eggs), much like the games. (The Game btw)

Example creatures: And my party link be here.

Well, that’s pretty much it from me. There are heaps more, some of which I will link you to at the end of the article, but I won’t review them in depth ’cause the article will be tl;dr.

Valenth

Unicreatures

Dragonadopters

Babydow (I actually find this one creepy as anything O_O)

Okay, I’ll stop my frenzied pix-induced rambling. And don’t blame me if you get booted off forums because you have too many sigpics. I know that some of mine are image intensive enough to stop a small broadband connection in its tracks. xD

.

Recently, I’ve been bumping into a few awesome flash games on the tubes so I thought I’d share a few of them here. ^^ These are some of the choose-your-own-ending type.

Right, okay. I first heard about this game in a newspaper that does a column on stuff from the tubes. I… well, to be honest, I wtf’d at the name. It sounds so emo! And when I loaded up the page and saw the three-lined poem the game starts with:

I was fairly creeped out. Not knowing what else to do, I randomly moved my mouse around. Oh, hey! It turned into that hand symbol! *Clicks on a jellyfish* Is the jellyfish glowing? o_0 Oh shi- that black fish ate it. I wonder if I can keep it away from the fish…

Right, that should be a big enough hint to get you started. The game involves moving stuff around and the goal is to replace the coloured words in the poem with other words to make it sound happy. It’s a puzzle game of sorts, and it has multiple possible endings. Designed by Daniel Benmergui with (creepy) music by Hernan Rozenwasser.

ffffffff the official title of the game is “colors”, not “colours”, damnit. Y’all Americans corrupting our language! T_T
…Okay, now that that’s over with, let’s move on. I don’t really know how to describe this game very well, so here’s the description that is on Kongregate:

That’s basically it. It is actually a very novel game, as is Today I Die and Storyteller. They’re all very cute, though, and good for when you’re bored. You control a giant sea monster thing near a beach and you interact with humans in various ways. You control the tentacles using the mouse.

This is another of Benmergui’s games. The art is pixelly, the storyline is basic… but it is ridiculously fun and time-wasting, just like the others! Once again, this is a multiple ending game. You start with three characters, two boys and a girl. In the first panel, whichever piece of land they stand on determines whether they are good or evil when they grow up. In the second panel, someone will be trapped in a cage (you can change who) and the other two will either be fighting or on the same side. If you put them close together and they are on opposite sides, one will die. In the last panel it shows the outcome, using gravestones for dead characters and hearts for the ones in love.
…I managed to get the gravestone fall in love with another gravestone. ‘Twas sad. ;_; And I also managed to get the two dudes to fall in love… No comment. o_0

And while we’re on the subject of games, let’s not forget The Game. Which you just lost.

8D

PS: ARGH I DID ALL OF THIS IN BBC CODE AND THEN REALISED IT SHOULD’VE BEEN IN HTML RAAAWWRGH >(

PPS: STRAY SPACES CAUSING MY ARTICLE TO BLOW UP WTF.
omo

.