Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
I didn't think of Oswald the rabbit. I thought rabbit might have been a reference to the play "My friend Harvey" and its movie adaptation "Harvey" with Jimmy Stewart.
Oswald being called Rabbit is a very obscure reference because Disney lost control of the character in 1928 to Universal and very few shorts were made afterwards.
So ITTL Universal keeps making more shorts or Disney being more valuable was able to buy the rights to Oswald.
The Harvey part is added gravy to this.
It's weirder for me if I realise that I'd exist in a timeline. It makes it more personal. Not only would I exist in "Arose from out The Azure Main", but the chain of events that led to my mother's death would have been prevented. My nephew and niece would never exist, though.
Part 90, Chapter 1407
Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Seven
1st October 1960
Tempelhof, Berlin
The cartoon was pretty brainless on the level that its intended audience would see it at. However, after a mind-numbing week of classes and the added pressure of Ben’s presence in half of them, Kiki didn’t want to think. Her mind didn’t want to cooperate though. She tried to focus on watching the slapstick cartoon penguins conducting guerilla operations from their hidden base within their enclosure in the Tiergarten Zoo interplanetary invaders that only the animals were aware of without a whole lot of success. Then the penguins were confronted with the tigress who lived in a different part of the Zoo and strongly disliked their constant intrusions into her space. Every attempt to bring their overwhelming firepower against the tigress always backfired badly and they learned once again that nothing ever went wrong with her claws when she decided to use them. The only companions of the Tigress were the eagle who roosted in the tree within her enclosure and her three cubs. The eagle believed that he was a monarch and ruled everything that he could see when he obviously didn’t. The tiger cubs were cute but terribly naïve, falling in with the convoluted plans of the penguins even at the risk of angering their mother. Today the baboons were in a debate over who they would elect to be their new leader and it was spilling out into the rest of the zoo. Kiki wondered how the studio was getting away with this cartoon. It was obvious which people that they were lampooning, and the entire thing was extremely political with jokes making fun of the Reichstag and the Military.
As the scene concluded with the penguins retreating back to their base and their leader seemingly fine until he fell into a dozen pieces in a delayed reaction to the Tigress connecting with her claws, her mind kept going back to her present situation. Doctor Berg’s idea that Zella had always disliked Ben because she was secretly jealous. What did that even mean? Berg had alluded to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to make her point. Roseline, Juliet’s cousin who was also Romeo’s original love interest chasing Romeo away from the balcony was easy enough to understand, but that implied that Zella had a thing for Ben. Then there was that other suggestion, Mercutio chasing off Juliet. That cast Kiki as Romeo in that scenario and many critics over the years had suggested that Mercutio was secretly in love with his best friend. That dynamic playing out in Kiki’s situation seemed rather farfetched. Kiki had known Zella since they were children and they had few secrets from each other, so she knew what her best friend’s leanings were.
The next time Kiki had seen Doctor Berg she had asked her opinion about what that all meant. Berg had just smiled and said that there was more than one type of love. What she and Zella shared was a close friendship, almost familial in nature. Berg thought that Zella was jealous because she thought that Ben or someone like him might steal away her sister of sorts. Later that week the subject had come up when Kiki had been talking to Aurora and Aurora had laughed about it. She said that Kiki needed to be a bit more observant because there were few things that aggravated her friends more than having to deal with her Highness, Princess Kristina once she had made up her mind and wouldn’t listen to anyone else about what she was doing. Then Aurora had pointed out something that Kiki had never cared enough to notice before. How many friends did Zella really have besides them? Sure, there were the acquaintances, the Rock & Rollers and people she had met along the way, but none of them ever got to see who Zella was when she let her guard down. Before she had met Kiki and Aurora, Zella’s tendency towards rash actions had caused her to be boxed out by her classmates in primary school.
Santa Rosa, California
After catching up with work in Washington DC, Gloria had decided that spending a few days in California with Jonny not thinking about a whole lot of anything was just what she needed. Jonny had seen it as a great opportunity to show her one of the regional treasures that few outside of that corner of California knew about.
The Harvest Fair was not at all what Gloria had been expecting when Jonny had invited her to come to it with him. She had been expecting a whole lot of the sorts of things that involved falling off a turnip truck, or something equally hokey. Instead, the expanse of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds was filled with halls packed with every sort of produce imaginable. Then there were the showcases of the artistic products of vintners, brewers, cheese makers and who knew what else. A glass of wine, a live chicken and as many apples as one could carry were all easy to find. Presently, Gloria was sipping a glass of wine and had a bag of apples. She had passed on the chicken. Sitting in the shade of a covered picnic area they were eating apple slices with fresh baked sour-dough bread and white cheddar cheese.
The wine was surprisingly good, rivaling anything she had tasted in Italy or France. Looking at the label the bottle Gloria asked, “Where is Kenwood?”
“Over towards Sonoma” Jonny replied, “Just an intersection, a few houses, a school and a church.”
“I saw a lot of places like that in the south-eastern corner of Germany when I was there last week” Gloria said.
“What took you out there?”
“The same story I’ve been working on for the last couple years” Gloria said, “The updates to the biography of the Countess have gotten a lot more interesting now that I have her cooperation.”
“I would be careful though” Jonny said, “She is probably feeding you a lot of self-serving information.”
“Do you really think she is doing that?” Gloria asked.
“It’s what I would do” Jonny replied.
1st October 1960
Tempelhof, Berlin
The cartoon was pretty brainless on the level that its intended audience would see it at. However, after a mind-numbing week of classes and the added pressure of Ben’s presence in half of them, Kiki didn’t want to think. Her mind didn’t want to cooperate though. She tried to focus on watching the slapstick cartoon penguins conducting guerilla operations from their hidden base within their enclosure in the Tiergarten Zoo interplanetary invaders that only the animals were aware of without a whole lot of success. Then the penguins were confronted with the tigress who lived in a different part of the Zoo and strongly disliked their constant intrusions into her space. Every attempt to bring their overwhelming firepower against the tigress always backfired badly and they learned once again that nothing ever went wrong with her claws when she decided to use them. The only companions of the Tigress were the eagle who roosted in the tree within her enclosure and her three cubs. The eagle believed that he was a monarch and ruled everything that he could see when he obviously didn’t. The tiger cubs were cute but terribly naïve, falling in with the convoluted plans of the penguins even at the risk of angering their mother. Today the baboons were in a debate over who they would elect to be their new leader and it was spilling out into the rest of the zoo. Kiki wondered how the studio was getting away with this cartoon. It was obvious which people that they were lampooning, and the entire thing was extremely political with jokes making fun of the Reichstag and the Military.
As the scene concluded with the penguins retreating back to their base and their leader seemingly fine until he fell into a dozen pieces in a delayed reaction to the Tigress connecting with her claws, her mind kept going back to her present situation. Doctor Berg’s idea that Zella had always disliked Ben because she was secretly jealous. What did that even mean? Berg had alluded to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to make her point. Roseline, Juliet’s cousin who was also Romeo’s original love interest chasing Romeo away from the balcony was easy enough to understand, but that implied that Zella had a thing for Ben. Then there was that other suggestion, Mercutio chasing off Juliet. That cast Kiki as Romeo in that scenario and many critics over the years had suggested that Mercutio was secretly in love with his best friend. That dynamic playing out in Kiki’s situation seemed rather farfetched. Kiki had known Zella since they were children and they had few secrets from each other, so she knew what her best friend’s leanings were.
The next time Kiki had seen Doctor Berg she had asked her opinion about what that all meant. Berg had just smiled and said that there was more than one type of love. What she and Zella shared was a close friendship, almost familial in nature. Berg thought that Zella was jealous because she thought that Ben or someone like him might steal away her sister of sorts. Later that week the subject had come up when Kiki had been talking to Aurora and Aurora had laughed about it. She said that Kiki needed to be a bit more observant because there were few things that aggravated her friends more than having to deal with her Highness, Princess Kristina once she had made up her mind and wouldn’t listen to anyone else about what she was doing. Then Aurora had pointed out something that Kiki had never cared enough to notice before. How many friends did Zella really have besides them? Sure, there were the acquaintances, the Rock & Rollers and people she had met along the way, but none of them ever got to see who Zella was when she let her guard down. Before she had met Kiki and Aurora, Zella’s tendency towards rash actions had caused her to be boxed out by her classmates in primary school.
Santa Rosa, California
After catching up with work in Washington DC, Gloria had decided that spending a few days in California with Jonny not thinking about a whole lot of anything was just what she needed. Jonny had seen it as a great opportunity to show her one of the regional treasures that few outside of that corner of California knew about.
The Harvest Fair was not at all what Gloria had been expecting when Jonny had invited her to come to it with him. She had been expecting a whole lot of the sorts of things that involved falling off a turnip truck, or something equally hokey. Instead, the expanse of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds was filled with halls packed with every sort of produce imaginable. Then there were the showcases of the artistic products of vintners, brewers, cheese makers and who knew what else. A glass of wine, a live chicken and as many apples as one could carry were all easy to find. Presently, Gloria was sipping a glass of wine and had a bag of apples. She had passed on the chicken. Sitting in the shade of a covered picnic area they were eating apple slices with fresh baked sour-dough bread and white cheddar cheese.
The wine was surprisingly good, rivaling anything she had tasted in Italy or France. Looking at the label the bottle Gloria asked, “Where is Kenwood?”
“Over towards Sonoma” Jonny replied, “Just an intersection, a few houses, a school and a church.”
“I saw a lot of places like that in the south-eastern corner of Germany when I was there last week” Gloria said.
“What took you out there?”
“The same story I’ve been working on for the last couple years” Gloria said, “The updates to the biography of the Countess have gotten a lot more interesting now that I have her cooperation.”
“I would be careful though” Jonny said, “She is probably feeding you a lot of self-serving information.”
“Do you really think she is doing that?” Gloria asked.
“It’s what I would do” Jonny replied.
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It also sounds like some Shirt Tales from the 80s and Kung Fu Panda mixed in
Random Thoughts from Stayvacationland:
The German Desks in various nations intelligence agencies are going to be watching and rewatching the film that Kiki saw, they are going to parse every scene, breakdown every bit of dialogue, and search for every hidden meaning.
There are probably a Katherine von Mischner subsections at each agency that has one of two people keeping a loose eye on her until something happens out of the ordinary, like when she went to Canada then it gets real active with more people involved.
Gloria should heed Jonny's concerns about her involvement with Kat, while Jonny does not have the academic achievement of Gloria and Parker, he is very intelligent and has generally the right instincts.
California wine industry must be one of two generations ahead of itself ITTL or because of no OTL WW II there is no German occupation of France and no US involvement has allowed California vintners to improve their technical knowledge, this is going to have serious implications as the difference between vintage French wine and cheap California wine becomes smaller every year.
If Zella acts the same way to a hypothetical boyfriend of Aurora as she does to Ben, then we can eliminate several theories about Zella, if not then things get more complicated, and then several more possibilities must be evaluated before they can be eliminated.
The German Desks in various nations intelligence agencies are going to be watching and rewatching the film that Kiki saw, they are going to parse every scene, breakdown every bit of dialogue, and search for every hidden meaning.
There are probably a Katherine von Mischner subsections at each agency that has one of two people keeping a loose eye on her until something happens out of the ordinary, like when she went to Canada then it gets real active with more people involved.
Gloria should heed Jonny's concerns about her involvement with Kat, while Jonny does not have the academic achievement of Gloria and Parker, he is very intelligent and has generally the right instincts.
California wine industry must be one of two generations ahead of itself ITTL or because of no OTL WW II there is no German occupation of France and no US involvement has allowed California vintners to improve their technical knowledge, this is going to have serious implications as the difference between vintage French wine and cheap California wine becomes smaller every year.
If Zella acts the same way to a hypothetical boyfriend of Aurora as she does to Ben, then we can eliminate several theories about Zella, if not then things get more complicated, and then several more possibilities must be evaluated before they can be eliminated.
Maybe the Judgement of Paris happens in 1966 in this timeline. For additional fun, have both German AND American wines outrank the French.
Right, Gloria's either surprisingly naive, or just bigoted (A woman would never have her own agenda, right?) with regards to what she gets told.
The most direct answer is usually the best; people change, times change, and some people just never quite are able to handle that. Zella seems determined to stay where she is in life, Kiki at least is definitely moving on. I've seen that happen myself
I've not watched any of those but instead based it on Warner Bros. cartoons from the 30s and 40s. Not a whole lot new under the sun it seems.
The other thing is that if you watch those old Bugs Bunny cartoons now with an understanding of the context it is amazing just how many jokes in those related to politics and what was happening in the world during the time period that they were made. This was also in the days before "Family Entertainment" was made by people who love to sadistically torture parents or anyone else above the age of ten who gets forced to watch one of their cartoons.
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My dad still gives me and my brother shit for dragging him to the first pokemon movie. I remember within 10 minutes all the parents in the cinema were fast asleep while the kids watched enraptured!
Johnny in this case hasn't a bloody idea of HOW it's Kat, no?
Because odds are that if anything she did the VERY opposite, and Gloria saw that during the visit.....
AIUI, Johnny and Kat have "met", but they have not really met.
Kat's reputation is well known, but I still think she will run rings around everyone.....in a very blunt manner.
The term Stupid Luck and Happenstance can be applied to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, first Lee Harvey Oswald gets a job with the Texas Schoolbook Depository with another person and there were two buildings that they could have been sent and the foreman sent Oswald to the Dealy Plaza site.
Second there were three sites considered for the luncheon and only the site that was selected the Trade Mart is where the motorcade had to pass the Texas Schoolbook Depository building to get to the luncheon.
Third the route of the motorcade was published in the papers a couple of days before and there was extensive television coverage of the Presidential visit the night before and again the route was publicized and in testimony before the Warren Commission both Oswald's wife Marina and the friend she was staying with said that Oswald watched the news reports.
I have always thought that Oswald acted impulsively because he did no real planning, there was no escape plan, he did not have enough money on him to go anywhere after the assassination and that is why he went to the boarding house he was staying in to get some money and the gun that he used to kill the Dallas Police Officer.
So what happens IOTL history can be a series of improbable events by the most unlikely people that many would say that if it was fiction it would be unbelievable and reading this timeline just reinforces that belief for me.
Second there were three sites considered for the luncheon and only the site that was selected the Trade Mart is where the motorcade had to pass the Texas Schoolbook Depository building to get to the luncheon.
Third the route of the motorcade was published in the papers a couple of days before and there was extensive television coverage of the Presidential visit the night before and again the route was publicized and in testimony before the Warren Commission both Oswald's wife Marina and the friend she was staying with said that Oswald watched the news reports.
I have always thought that Oswald acted impulsively because he did no real planning, there was no escape plan, he did not have enough money on him to go anywhere after the assassination and that is why he went to the boarding house he was staying in to get some money and the gun that he used to kill the Dallas Police Officer.
So what happens IOTL history can be a series of improbable events by the most unlikely people that many would say that if it was fiction it would be unbelievable and reading this timeline just reinforces that belief for me.
And then you have those who assume that anything animated MUST be for children under 10. I still remember the horror of being taken to see the 'latest cartoon movie for the kiddies', a simple, entertaining cartoon about cute, adorable bunnies. A movie called 'Watership Down'.
Cue an entire movie theatre full of hysterical, crying kids ranging in age from 5 to 10. Cue weeks, if not months (years?) of nightmares. All because our elders took us to see an animated bunny snuff film...
As an teenager and then adult, I could see the political commentary and imagery that both the book and film were, but unlike Bugs Bunny this was NOT a cartoon for all ages.