#Darvey magic: one million!

Almost exactly five years ago I made a Suits fan video called Bomb. It is set to Aloe Blacc’s song Ticking Bomb, a song that was also once used on the show and that I immediately liked. I made this video after the tenth episode of season 7 aired and Donna kissed Harvey out of the blue, surprising herself, Harvey and all the Suits viewers! We were left with that bombshell as a midseason finale and had to wait I think around two months, if not more, for that situation to be resolved.

All of my impatience and fangirl energy went into making a few ‘Darvey’ videos during that time of uncertainty (videos are all up on my Suits video page). Somehow this specific video must have gotten into some sort of YouTube algorithm and has become quite popular. I saw the numbers steadily rising when I logged in to YouTube Studio on occasion and recently the numbers have been rising so much, that I have now been following the progress of the views a little more closely. Today, the video hit one million (!!!!) views! (Click om image for larger view).

Here is the video itself:

That number is simply incredible to me, especially considering that it is blocked in the US and Canada, where I originally assumed most viewers would be. It is also viewable on Vimeo but gets nowhere near the high amount of views there (stuck on 241 there!):

There is no way that I could claim that this video has gone viral. After all, it’s taken almost exactly 5 years to get to a million views (and all my other videos are nowhere near those viewing numbers) but, by golly, it does give me a little tingle to know that so many people have apparently viewed at least some of it. I make no money whatsoever off these videos (I don’t have any copyright to the original materials used, after all) so I guess I’m helping make the copyright holders get richer. 🙂

A few more statistics about the video that I found in the video analytics, as averaged over the whole five years that it has been up on YouTube:

• 47% of the viewers are female, 53% are male
• The top 10 viewing countries: India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Peru and UK
• 40.3% of viewers are between 25 en 34 years old
• 79,2% of viewers watch the video on a mobile phone

Donna and Harvey, i.e. #Darvey, sure are magic all over the world, these numbers show it. Thank goodness they ended up together before the series ended.

I’m glad Darvey gets so much love. Gabriel Macht and Sarah Rafferty sure knew how to bring those characters to life. Thank you to everyone who has ever viewed this video! Oh, and best thing for me personally? As much as I really appreciate them, it’s not necessarily the 1.000.000 views that make me happiest but rather the fact that on rewatching it, I still like the video and think it is one of my better efforts.

The fling list

The German blogger Die Singende Lehrerin has called for another blog challenge. I already participated in her Marry Me challenge a few months ago and figured this one would be fun as well. This time the challenge is to name 6 sexy fictional characters you wouldn’t mind diving into bed with. They aren’t supposed to be serious relationship material, just a bit o’ fun. This whole challenge is a little ‘thought expermiment’ as she calls it. So, it’s all about the character, not the actor, but for me the actor also very much helps with this thought experiment which means my thoughts mostly turn to characters portrayed by some of my favourite actors.

Before I get to my list, let me tell you that this is at the edge of my comfort zone as I am not a one-night-stand fling kinda girl in real life and so I never really think in those terms. In real life, if I’d want to dive into bed with someone, I’d want some longer-term potential attached to it and that transfers to my fangirl life as well. This doesn’t take away from the fact that there are some very sexy, fling-material characters out there that can also get into my head. So, here goes:

1- The first (and initially only) character that immediately sprang to mind was John Porter (Richard Armitage) in Strike Back series one, because well, someone so desperate for a lay to release some tension may be fun for a night and look at those arms – strong but not too much.

2- I really like but somehow don’t particularly fancy the actor Tom Ellis. However, his character Lucifer Morningstar in the TV series Lucifer might be a lot of fun to have a fling with, wings and all. He’s the king of flings and shows countless women a good time in bed, I suspect I could really learn something from him and have fun too…

3- Speaking of Lucifer, Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt) might be educational and fun as well for a little fling! I find her very beautiful, intense and sexy.

4- Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) in Suits before he finally came to his senses and chose Donna, just because he oozes sexy, and self-assuredness and knows how to show a woman a good time.

5- Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie) from Labyrinth, because of reasons I once posted about before. It’s the gaze and the…erm…long legs that would make me curious.

6- Last but not least: I watched this older series called Single Ladies a while back because D.B. Woodside was in it. It’s a bit like Sex and the City, which was OK but not a fave of mine and neither was this series. However, D.B. Woodside as Malcolm Franks, a rich playboy business guy with some shady deals but a good heart underneath, was very sexy. So, yeah, I’d pick him as well for a little fling-fun…

That’s it, that’s my (not really surprising if you read here regularly) list. If you, dear reader, have any suggestions/additions of your own, feel free to let me know in the comments or on your own blogs.

On an end note: the Marry Me challenge was far easier for me than coming up with this list of flings without longer-term potential. Maybe if I considered it more, I could come up with more, but for now, I’m quite happy and comfortable with my six flings.

The not complaining post

Just a short but sweet post today, not in the mood anymore for the complaining I was going to do about tendentious (e.g. about the British royal family) and/or navel-gazing (e.g. Dutch news) journalism or hating doing chores around the house (I swear, if I win the lottery, I will invest in a housekeeper) or the zero motivation I have for my job. Instead, I decided to finish another Suits video yesterday evening and today that I started weeks ago but then left alone for a while. I set the video to Pearl Jam’s Just Breathe, just because I like the song so much and images of Harvey (Gabriel Macht) and Donna (Sarah Rafferty) popped up in my head when I listened to it again about a month ago when I was finishing my favourite Suits scenes re-watch. This is the end result which I think is not my best, nor my worst..

This afternoon, Mr Esther and I went on a little bike ride. It’s chilly but the sun was shining, so it was nice to be out like that.

Sunday evening now and I hate that the weekend is almost over. Picking up my son from a friend’s house in 30 minutes, then time for a relaxing hot shower and a feelgood movie to counteract the I-don’t-want-to-work-tomorrow blues…

I love Audrey, but…

… there is this beatification of her happening that doesn’t sit so well with me. Let me start with a Netflix documentary on Audrey Hepburn that is not available yet in The Netherlands but that I do intend to watch.

When they say in the trailer that the biggest secret to Audrey is that she wanted to be loved, I roll my eyes because that is hardly a secret (and doesn’t everybody?). Also, those dramatized little interludes in the trailer of a little girl dancing already annoy me. And yet, I won’t be able to help myself and I will watch this, I just hope it won’t be too gushy.

Apparently, there’s also a TV series coming about her and I am already tensing up at the thought of that as well. There was a TV movie made in 2000 called The Audrey Hepburn Story that I watched at the time and remembered as cringe-worthy. I recently watched part of it again because I now realize that a young Gabriel Macht was in it, playing the actor William Holden whom Audrey had briefly been smitten with (and he with her).

I wasn’t able to actually watch the whole thing again as it still is cringe-worthy; it is really difficult to portray a good Audrey Hepburn after all. She had a unique way of moving and diction that Jennifer Love Hewitt tried to capture but she ended up giving her a really strange accent and a pinched way of speaking. Brave attempt but she doesn’t capture Audrey at all for me, she’s too focussed on getting looks and mannerisms down and the characterization (also due to the writing) is very flat. Audrey didn’t feel real in that and I really wonder whether they will be able to ‘capture’ her in this new planned TV series.

I also read that Robert Matzen has written another book about Audrey, this time about her final years working for Unicef. I am still annoyed by his embellishments and the holes in his research of the first book (Dutch Girl) that he wrote about Audrey’s childhood and I fear the second book won’t fare any better. Already the term ‘battle-hardened badass’ that is used for Audrey suggests something more mythical than real. I don’t think I will be spending any money on that.

Yes, Audrey was awesome and yes, I love her, but this hero-worship of her annoys me. She is this adored icon but somehow, despite of all the thousands of words written about her and almost as many images shown of her, she feels illusory. I’m not interested in a scandal or her being brought down or anything, I’m just interested in a realistic portrayal. I know her sons cooperate on these things and want to protect her image (rightly so) but I just wish all the things written and shown about her felt more real and less ethereal. Even her ‘faults’ and her hurt seem glorified. Someone once made a spoofy Audrey flipping the finger gif…

… and I think I want to see more of that.

I love my acting (and music) heroes such as Richard Armitage and Gregory Peck and Colin Firth and David Bowie and Audrey Hepburn and many more men and women but I don’t like the hero-worship for any of them. None of them are ‘perfection’, what would a perfect human being even be like? I feel that even Audrey herself in interviews resisted the idea of perfection, not seeing herself as that either. She was a woman of flesh and blood, like any one of us, I just wish for people who write about her and make films and documentaries about her to make her more real. I wonder if that will ever happen in my lifetime.

My first film class

It’s no secret that I like Gabriel Macht and he in turn is the son of actor Stephen Macht. Stephen Macht used to star on Cagney and Lacey, which I used to really enjoy watching back in the 1980s…

Gabriel was promoting a lecture series on Instagram that his dad will be doing called “How dramatic analysis informs art and life” about applying dramatic tools to plays, film and life and I thought that sounded interesting. Gabriel says, “Not only is Professor Gerard from #Suits my #father but he’s also one of the very few if any PhD’s in Hollywood. Yup! A true #Professor.” I checked and according to Stephen Macht’s LinkedIn profile, he indeed has a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from Indiana University, so I figured he must know what he’s talking about. I’m trying to get out of my work rut, exploring other options, so I figured $15,- is quite cheap for a lecture series of 7 classes (this is the programme) and I decided to sign up. Two of the movies he’ll be using as homework (Coming to America 2 and Mad Max Thunder Road) don’t particularly interest me but for the sake of academics I’ll give them a go.

I am thinking more and more about writing and have been trying things here and there, but have never had any real in depth training on structure and storylines and drama and such. I don’t want to go to film school or writing school, but getting some tools on analysis won’t hurt and I figured this could be a nice low-key, low investment opportunity for me to see if I even want to go deeper with this or not. First class starts this evening, I hope I like it and I hope I have the stamina to do the rest of the classes as well.