#Do not let the Star of David become a stolen symbol.

[bolt-x0]

When I’m gone i want every future American child on earth who goes to school to know that this place was ran by shitty people. Shitty people who were literally nicknamed named “genocide Joe”, you don’t get a fucking nickname like that by doing your job correctly. I hope that America changes in the future. I hope that people remember what our government has done wrong and vows not to let their government simply let almost 30,000 innocent men, women, and children die off in the most horrendous ways imaginable. These are just statistics man. These are people who were painters, bakers, musicians and more. People who were excited to go to their siblings baby shower, who were anxious that their school crush was gonna reject them, people who were violently grieving before this genocide, and found happiness in the mundane. These people went to schools and made plans for the future, made dreams to help their families, and so much fucking more. You cannot allow this. You cannot condone this. You cannot believe that a newborn child who lived miles upon miles across the ocean away from you was gonna grow up to be some super villain and deserved it. You cannot believe that. You’d have to be the stupidest most willfully ignorant person on earth to believe a five year old deserved to die in an air strike.

***this is not a place to promote antisemitism. I have seen many people use this genocide as an excuse to be antisemitic.

[artistic-writer]

Alii Dimidium Lunam (The Other Half of the Moon) - CS Werewolf AU - Ch 14 (NSFW)

Title: Alii Dimidium Lunam (The Other Half of the Moon) by @artistic-writer   artwork by @cocohook38 & @artistic-writer

Rating: E (overall rating) for explicit sexual content, language, and themes throughout. Trigger warnings will follow and be added as they are needed to avoid spoilers.

Art by @cocohook38 - Poster - Emma - David - Killian - James - Walsh - Graham - Liam

Chapter Art by @cocohook38 - Ch1 - Ch2 - Ch3 - Ch4 (NSFW)

Art by @artistic-writer - 1 - 2 - 3 -

Also on: AO3 - FF

A/N:  TRIGGER WARNINGS: Torture, Killian!Whump, chained to a tree, bound, forced change, electrocuted, cock and ball torture, scalpel, medieval device, blood, bruised, bloodied, broken bones, cries of agony, captor taunting, delirious dreaming, awoke with cold water

If you are, in any way worried about what this chapter may entail, please send me a message and we can chat about what worries you.  Alternatively, you may skip this chapter altogether, head straight to ch 15 when it is posted and you won’t miss any information.

Massive thanks to my wonderful betas, @hookedonapirate who is one of the best beta’s this fandom has to offer - I seriously love her guys, and she deserves all the good things <3 <3 and @kmomof4 to whom this fic is also gifted for her upcoming birthday, and creating the @cssns  Thank you to my crew, @hollyethecurious  @resident-of-storybrooke @courtorderedcake @doodlelolly0910 and special thanks to @killian-whump @killianmesmalls and @sherlockianwhovian for how they helped later on this fic. And to @flipperbrain  who drew THIS piece of art for this fic in December, before it was even written!

Taglist: @cssns @resident-of-storybrooke @hollyethecurious @kmomof4 @hookedonapirate @winterbaby89 @courtorderedcake @initiala @cocohook38 @branlovesouat  @teamhook @snidgetsafan @sherlockianwhovian @shireness-says @wingedlioness @lenfaz @therooksshiningknight@ilovemesomekillianjones @bmbbcs4evr@blowmiakisscolin @deathbycaptainswan @onceuponaprincessworld @chinawoodfan  @seriouslyhooked @snowbellewells @wordsmith-storyweaver  @jennjenn615 @delightfully-difficult-pirate @doodlelolly0910 @tiganasummertree @hookedmom @thejollyroger-writer @rachie1940 @unworried-corsair

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Killian wasn’t sure if it was the flow of Emma’s dress that made it look like she was moving in slow motion, or if she actually was. She wore a full length ballroom gown, the skirt held outwards by a stiff petticoat and a silken ribbon around her wrist to hold the trailing train aloft. It was the most brilliant white, covered in iridescent pearl beads that caught the lights as she descended the stairs.

Her hair was plaited into a circle that laid over the back of her head like a tiara, a slither of wire adorned with silver leaf shaped beads woven into the golden blonde locks. They were sparkling in the light, twinkling like the stars, and a similar pattern of beads was incorporated into the bouquet she was carrying. Blood red roses mixed with white, the human symbols for romance and a new beginning, were carried at her chest, a delicate charm bracelet fitting loosely around her wrist with opposing half moon shaped charms dangling from it.

When Emma reached the last step, Killian stepped forward and extended out his hand to her, which she took and finally stepped off the staircase. The heels of her shoes fell silently on the ultra plush cream coloured carpet which was laid out like a runner, the edges held to the floor by bright, shiny silver metal fixings. It was just one thing about the day Killian knew he would never forget, even if it distracted him from the beautiful creature in front of him.

Emma fit into her dress perfectly, almost as if she was sewn in. It rustled as she moved into his space, the scent of the roses between them invading his senses and making him smile. It was a joyful smile, almost one hundred percent happy, but as his eyes roamed up and down her glitzy figure, he couldn’t help but let a few sideways smirks slide over his lips as he imagined how Emma’s skin felt underneath the skirt.

“Down boy,” Emma warned him with a coy smile.

“Emma, you look…” he began, his cheeks flushed and his smile unwaning. Her beauty had stolen the air right out of his lungs and despite his wolf stamina, he couldn’t recover.

“I know.” She smiled at him, clutching his hand a little tighter.

“I never thought this day would come,” Killian admitted shyly, a hint of sadness tainting his words. Emma let her bare shoulders drop a little and Killian couldn’t help but reach out and trail his thumb over the jut of her collarbone.

“Didn’t I tell you it would be okay?” Emma smiled warmly. She reached up, her free hand cupping his cheek and she traced the outline of his scar with her soft, silky thumbpad.

“We’ve just been through so much,” Killian told her, turning his face so that he could kiss her palm. Her skin smelled sweet, more so than normal, and Killian couldn’t stop himself from inhaling the scent that wafted from her wrist.

“And we’ll go through so much more,” Emma told him with a nod. “But whatever happens, we will always have each other.” Emma smiled at him again, the skin around her eyes crinkling and her lightly blushed cheeks pushing her eyes closed a little.

“I promised you forever,” Killian reminded himself out loud. “Come what may.”

“You did,” Emma beamed.

“Will you still love me when we are old and grey?” Killian teased. He took her hand in his, running his thumb over the ridges of her knuckles and looking down, watching his fidgeting hand nervously.

“Killian Jones, are you nervous?” Emma teased back. “Stalling, maybe?”

“Stalling?” Killian laughed, aghast. “Never.”

“Good,” Emma told him as she slipped her hand from his and lifted it behind his head, lacing her fingers through the soft, downy hair at the back of his neck. It was a little bit prickly from his recent haircut for the day, already growing back at the edges of his collar. She pulled his face to hers, planting her brilliantly red lipstick coated lips to his tenderly for a quick kiss. “Because I really want to marry you.”

“Hmm,” Killian hummed, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning into her. “Conveniently, you are in a gown. And I’m in a tux. And look, you even have some flowers,” he smiled, nodding to the bouquet in her hand that was becoming increasingly squashed between them.

“Whilst I would love to do this right now,” Emma smirked, running a single finger down the side of his face and over the point of his elvish ear seductively. “I need you to do something for me first.”

“Anything,” Killian said earnestly, leaning forward and nipping at her exposed collarbone.

“You have to wake up,” Emma said softly.

“What?” Killian frowned, pulling back when Emma stepped out of his embrace. She walked backward a little, clutching the flowers with both hands and staring at him with pleading eyes. Killian’s heart took off in his chest, the scene behind Emma fading away and leaving her standing in the darkness, her dress the brightest beacon.

“Killian, you have to wake up,” she whispered again, her voice fading away as tiny fragments of her figure began to blow away as if they were dust. Panic washed over Killian and he reached out, clutching onto particles of his love that simply slipped through his fingers like dust in a beam of sunlight.

“You have to wake up!” A harsh voice invaded his ears, a sudden weight pressing down on his entire body as Killian’s entire vision faded to black and he felt the pull of reality once more. He hadn’t even opened his eyes when a sharp, stabbing sensation signalled the cold water hitting his entire body, his lungs gasping for much needed air and his eyes flying open. He shook his head a few times, flicking away the water as it dripped down his face and from the end of his nose, mixing with dried blood as it did and turning the droplets pink.

Killian’s delirium cleared and his vision eventually focused on Walsh standing in front of him, a now empty bucket swinging from one hand. He could barely lift his head, the shivering from the ice cold water setting into his bones and rendering his neck muscles useless with spasms. The tiny, now melting, cubes of ice littered the forest floor at Killian’s feet and he was completely naked, the rough bark of a huge oak tree digging into his bare back and his shoulders wrenched painfully backward because his arms were chained around the trunk.

“There you are,” Walsh spat, leaning forward, his face inches from Killian’s. Killian averted his gaze to watch the water running down through the hair on his legs, his jaw clenched tightly and the wounds on his face reopening from the force of the water hitting him. “I thought I’d killed you,” Walsh laughed. “We don’t want that just yet.”

“What...What do you want?” Killian stuttered, his skin rubbing the bark as he shivered. He gulped, the distaste for his captor evident in his words and leaving a disgusting taste in the back of his throat.

Walsh laughed a sadistic chuckle that left a crawling sensation over Killian’s skin. “Now isn’t that the million dollar question?” He snapped, moving around the tree a little and checking the chains. They were secure, padlocked together tightly at the back of the old tree, Killian’s hands wrapped up in them midway and holding his arms backward.

Killian shuddered when a new wave of shivering passed over him, tiny ice cold droplets of water dripping onto his body and making him twitch involuntarily. He pulled against the chains but they were not moving, not even an inch, and he casually tried to cast a look at his surroundings.

There was no noise of anything nearby. No road, not even the barest rustle of leaves from any wildlife and Killian knew Walsh had them somewhere secluded. There was a crude looking wooden table set up behind Walsh, a rickety chair barely big enough for an adult next to it and an assortment of what Killian could only describe as tools on its seat. Walsh began moving them, one by one, deliberately so Killian could see, and resting them on the table top. They seemed to be alone, the wolves from earlier nowhere to be seen or smelled, and Killian briefly wondered how he had come to be naked and chained to a tree.

“Trying to remember?” Walsh taunted, reading his mind. “Let me fill in some gaps for you. With a story.” He grabbed the chair and spun it in his hand, turning it backward and setting it down in front of Killian. He sat on it astride, leaning forward and resting his forearms over the aged wooden back. “Once upon a time, there were two wolves,” he began in a sing song voice.

Killian felt his anger rising, the tensed muscles in his jaw clenching his teeth together so tightly he thought he might crack a tooth. He flexed his fingers, balling his hands into fists on either side of the tree as Walsh continued.

“Brothers,” he clarified. “And when their father died, there was an epic battle for dominance.” He shifted his weight on the chair and it groaned a little, the wood creaking and wobbling to one side. Walsh sucked in a breath and rubbed a hand over his smooth chin. “When it was all done, and one son had come out superior, there was a quiet period. The other son didn’t mind because the new alpha had chosen a barren mate, so one day, his time to rule would arrive.”

“Just get to the point,” Killian spat, blood infused spittle dripping from his lip and falling to the leaves at his feet.

Walsh jumped to his feet and was on Killian in a flash, grabbing his hair and wrenching his head back painfully until he cracked his skull on the bark of the tree trunk. Killian cried out, pinching his eyes closed and holding his breath until Walsh released his hold and sighed. “Don’t interrupt me,” he said calmly, smoothing Killian’s hair flat and returning to his chair.

Killian’s head began to pound, his temples throbbing and the pain from the smack covering his scalp. He tried to shake it off again, but it just made his eyeballs hurt and his vision cloud at the edges of his periphery. He didn’t look up when he heard the creak of the chair once more, instead focusing all of his pain into staring at the ground.

“Now, where was I. Oh yes!” Walsh declared triumphantly, leaning back in the chair and waving a finger in Killian’s direction. “The brother knew his time would come, and if he wanted to rule sooner, all he had to do was kill his brother and make it look like an accident. Easy, right?” Walsh shrugged but Killian did not answer. “Wrong,” Walsh said darkly, pushing himself to his feet once more.

Killian lifted his head a little, ignoring the lights pulsing behind his eyes as he struggled to adjust to the new level of vision. More light invaded his pupils and made his head ache even more, but he watched with a furious fascination as Walsh made his way to the table nearby. “The one brother, let’s call him David, went and had a child,” he laughed to himself, running a finger over the sharp edge of a blade. “And now, with her unscheduled birth, the other brother, we’ll call him James, would never be king.” Walsh lifted up the implement he had been touching and held it in front of his face, the blade glinting in the sunlight that poked through the trees. “That is,” he began, his voice trailing off as he bit his bottom lip in anticipation of using the tool. “Unless she died.”

Killian eyed him suspiciously as he continued to inspect his table of torture tools. “Or was exiled,” Walsh shrugged, a sly smile spreading over his lips as he stroked over another of the tools. “Imagine if she got pregnant. David would have no choice but to exile her, right? Leaving him without an heir and, hopefully, distracted enough that James could overthrow him easily.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Killian growled, his limbs beginning to tingle from the lack of sensation.

Walsh turned to look at him, pressing his finger to the point of the blade. “I’m so glad you asked.” He sucked in a breath as he stalked towards the tree again and Killian tensed, flinching away a little. He turned his head to one side, involuntarily submitting in hopes he would be spared any more torment.

“I’ve tracked her, to here,” Walsh told him, waving the blade around in front of his face and motioning to the forest around them. “Divine taste she has, almost like the finest dining you have ever encountered. But she has this scent, like a blemish on her otherwise beautiful smell,” Walsh said with a smack of his lips, imagining Emma’s scent the first day he had smelled her at Misthaven, but then his face turned up with a grimace. “Tainting her. Ruining the way she smelled for me,” he growled angrily. He stepped impossibly closer to Killian, almost pressing his body against his and pinning him into the tree even harder.

“It’s you,” he spat, eyes flicking over the profile features of Killian’s face, his hot breath condensing against his cheek. Walsh’s eyes lingered on the scar in Killian’s face and he curled his lips, disgusted. “You reek of human, a half breed mongrel who isn’t worthy to walk the earth, let alone touch her, and yet you are all over her, because wouldn’t you know it? You’re the mongrel she has been fucking!”

Walsh’s evil cackle filled the forest as realisation dawned on Killian. The story sounded familiar, it was something Liam had told him about once, but at the time he had neglected to see the relevance. Werewolf culture wasn’t something he had taken the time to follow as intimately as Liam had, only stopping to briefly learn a few of the rules required of all werewolves. Don’t tell humans. That was about all Killian knew, but Walsh’s tale had triggered his memory of past bedtime stories and he audibly sighed.

“Now he gets it,” Walsh crouched over, levelling his gaze with Killian’s. He tapped the point of the blade against Killian’s unscarred cheek and ran his tongue over his teeth as he twisted it and watched the blade cut into his flesh. “You’ve been fucking Emma Nolan. The heir of Misthaven.”

Killian wrenched his head sideways again and Walsh’s fiendish laugh rang out in his ears. The mere mention of Emma made his blood boil, Killian’s rage building up beyond his control and before he had time to reason with himself, he tried to lunge forward and grab at Walsh, but his arms remained pinned to the huge trunk of the tree. He yelped in pain, relaxing back into his helpless position whilst Walsh laughed at him.

“What? You don’t want a scar to match on this side?” He tapped the blade against Killian’s cheek again and Killian flinched away with a growl. “No? Pity. Chicks dig scars,” Walsh laughed, the maniacal sound disappearing as he looked down Killian’s body. “See, the problem is,” Walsh began, sliding the back of the blade deliberately down Killian’s chest until it caught on the curled hair over his pubic bone. “I don’t think you should be. Fucking her, I mean.”

Killian kicked out his leg, trying to bat Walsh’s away with a knee, but Walsh simply grinned at him and replaced the blade to Killian’s groin. The cold steel pressed against the underside of his flaccid penis, the skin of his scrotum shrinking a little more from the contact with the cold and Killian visibly gulped. Walsh’s face lit up a little, his grip on the scalpel blade tightening. “I don’t think you should be fucking anyone, mongrel,” Walsh spat with revulsion. “Maybe we can change a few things, here and there, you know, to reduce the risk of you siring any filthy half breed progeny.”

Walsh slid the blade sideways, slicing through the skin on Killian’s sack. Killian ground his jaw tighter, the sound of squeaking teeth filling his ears. There was a cool sensation between his legs that was quickly replaced by a sting and then hotness, the stream of blood that spurted out of a nicked vein spraying onto his inner thigh. Killian hissed through his teeth, pressing his thighs together and flopping his head back against the tree trunk as Walsh laughed harder.

“Maybe the boys and I can show Emma what she is missing and then who knows, she might get the taste for pureblood,” Walsh threatened, running his tongue over his teeth, pausing to tap the tip against the point of his canine.

“She’s not a piece of meat,” Killian growled through clenched teeth, turning his head to face Walsh in a challenge of dominance he could never win in his current predicament.

“Funny, isn’t it? Her an heiress and you a mongrel. A real Lady and the Tramp situation,” he taunted once more, returning to the table and discarding the used blade back with the other implements. “I’m bored of this one now,” Walsh said idly. The scalpel hit the table with a clatter and another grabbed Walsh’s attention, his eyes lighting up when he spied the two-pronged tips of his heretic’s fork. He picked it up, turning to face Killian once more, tapping his fingertip against the spiked tip to test its sharpness. “Now this is more like it.”

“Please…” Killian implored with a fresh wave of unbearable pain shooting through his scrotum. Letting his head hang limp once more, the sting in his shoulders turning to a numbness that was just as painful, he tried to push through the throbbing in his groin.

“Oh, don’t beg,” Walsh told him firmly, stabbing the harsh points into the soft flesh under Killian’s jaw. It forced him to lift his head and it was then that he realised he was fitted with a thin strap of a collar. Walsh passed it through the middle of the device and refastened it, settling the other pointed end of the four-pronged device onto the skin covering Killian’s sternum. Killian winced at the new sensation, the prongs digging into his skin and causing a burning sensation each time he moved his head or lowered it too much through fatigue. The prongs were so sharp that Killian feared if he fell unconscious again he would surely pierce his chin, and as he was chained to the tree he had no way of shifting to wolf form to heal faster.

“What do you want?” Killian gulped, his words changed by the angle of his neck and the bob of his Adam’s apple passing painfully over the prongs of the fork.

“I want Emma!” Walsh shouted out, his voice echoing through the trees. He was panting hard, his eyes wide with a crazed stare that had Killian a little bit apprehensive. Walsh was unhinged, clearly obsessed with Emma too, and when he grabbed Killian’s face between his long, dirty fingers, the fork dug into his neck a little more. “But you are the wolf she wants, and it’s vile!”

Killian stared into the void of Walsh’s eyes for a second, the soulless windows reflecting nothing back but hate. He kept his breathing calm, the muscles in his jaw ticking evidently as he rearranged his head so that the heretic’s fork spikes were as comfortable as they possibly could be. “Why don’t you unchain me so we can settle this like real wolves?” Killian tried but Walsh snorted.

“What, so you can give me another scar?” he mocked.

“Death doesn’t leave a scar,” Killian said darkly.

“You know what was wrong with you?” Walsh smirked boyishly, continuing when Killian didn’t respond with anything but an angry stare. “You were nothing. You had no ambition, Killian, and a man who wants nothing has no price.”

“I’m a wolf,” Killian snapped, his words almost a gruff bark.

“Of course you are,” Walsh said sarcastically, tracing the outline of the scar on his neck again. “And luckily for me,” Walsh pointed to his own chest and began to grin. “But not so much for you,” he pointed to Killian, eyes lighting up again with a crazy look. “I’ve found something that you want more than life itself,” Walsh sneered. “Maybe hurting Emma will inspire you.”

“Don’t you hurt her,” Killian growled.

“Maybe I’ll let you watch,” Walsh mused, ignoring Killian’s pleas. “Emma will come for you, because she loves you, for whatever reason, and she will find your crossbred mongrel carcass instead. Then, when she is crying over your corpse, I can really have some fun.”

Killian pulled against his chains, ignoring the jab of the heretic's fork as he clenched his jaw. “I swear,” Killian threatened, his voice low and dark. “If you touch one hair on her pelt…”

“You think I care about your idle threats?” Walsh ran his tongue over his bottom lip with a smirk, wagging a finger accusingly at Killian as he returned to the table. “I knew you would be a fighter,” Walsh told him over his shoulder, his voice changed to a more normal tone and the rage in his eyes barely there. Walsh was a psychotic, there was no doubt about it, and the calmness in his tone made Killian a little fearful. When he turned around again and Killian spied the cattle prod in his hands, his fear turn to sheer terror as he pulled against the restraint of the chain once more. “Let’s see how long you can fight off your change.”

The crackle of electricity and blue spark between the tip of the prod made Killian panic. He wasn’t scared of the shock, he could handle that part of torture, but if his body succumbed to his change, his bones would be ripped from their sockets and he would be stuck in his wolf form until he healed. All werewolves had the ability to heal faster when in their canine state, but if the body was shocked into a change, it would enter a sort of safe mode where it wouldn’t change back to human until it felt the danger had passed.

Luckily for Killian, unless Walsh decided to end his torture and kill him, he would heal. Unluckily for him, he would shift whilst chained to a tree and it would all but kill him anyway.

“Please, you don’t…” Killian tried to reason but his words were halted by the spasming clench of his jaw when Walsh jabbed the tip of the cattle prod into his ribcage. His ribs were still broken from the alleyway assault and they crunched in his torso as he twisted away from the source of his pain. Killian’s entire body went stiff, the current passing through every ion in his muscles and tensing them all at the same time. Killian’s head snapped back, his skull hitting the tree again with a painful grunt and his words disappeared, turning into a long, monotonous cry as he shook and fought off the inner wolf.

“Now what did I tell you about begging,” Walsh said with mock sweetness, taking a deep breath to steady himself as he shut off the device and Killian’s body went limp.

Killian sucked in a breath, gulping in air hurriedly and ignoring the sting of the heretic’s fork against the fleshy underside of his chin and the sharp stabbing in his balls. His body ached, the tingle of electricity still thrumming through his arms and legs, his lungs burning as they desperately tried to fill with oxygen. Being electrocuted didn’t just send Killian’s lungs into a spasm, reducing their efficiency, but it also sent a jolt of excruciating pain through his nervous system and every hair molecule that covered his skin shrunk and pulled tight over his bones.

“Is..that…” Killian panted quietly through gritted teeth, eyes fluttering closed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Walsh mocked, stepping closer to Killian and cupping a hand around his ear. “What did the mongrel say?”

A new rage fuelled Killian’s hatred for the wolf in front of him and he wished his could end his life right then and there, if not to protect himself from the inevitable torture that was about to come, but to protect Emma. If Walsh managed to get him to change, Emma wouldn’t be safe, but despite Killian’s fears for the she-wolf he loved, he wouldn’t give in without a fight. Even if it was verbal.

“I said,” Killian panted a little louder, peeling his eyes open to catch Walsh’s gaze once more. “Is that all you got?” he spat, dark eyes boring into Walsh with a challenge the Neverland beta was shocked to see.

Walsh was taken aback for a second before his lips spread into another evil smile. “I know what you are doing,” he told Killian firmly, teasing the end of the electrical stick over his flesh without turning it on. Killian flinched away instinctively and Walsh stifled a laugh. “And know this, half breed,” he spat out the term against Killian’s face, the spray of his spittle landing on Killian’s cheek. “I’m in charge here!” He roared, igniting the electrical spark at the end of the pole once more and stabbing it into Killian’s pectoral muscles.

Killian began to cry out once more, but the current tore through his muscles and made every fibre contract again. Killian’s back arched off the tree trunk and he shook, the chain holding him still rattling when it slackened behind the tree. Walsh didn’t let up for a while longer this time, making sure Killian was almost out of breath, red faced and the smallest dribble of foaming spittle appearing at the corner of his mouth before he pulled the pole from his body again. Killian went limp again and the heretic's fork stabbed through his chin, the taste of blood invading his mouth mixed with the copper tang of rust that coated the medieval tool.

“Make no mistake,” Walsh threatened, turning on the current again and stabbing the cattle prod into Killian’s thigh. “I’m in control of you and your change,” he snarled, his face lighting up when Killian’s eyes rolled back in his head and it shook violently from side to side, his lips turning blue from lack of oxygen and the heretic's fork tearing even further into the flesh of his sternum.

Killian couldn’t hear Walsh’s voice, only the high pitched buzz of tinnitus that rang out in his ears and accompanied the crackle of electricity that surged through his body. Every muscle burned, stretched to their absolute limit, and the vicious movement of Killian’s body against the tree tore chunks of flesh from his back and shoulders. He pulled against his restraints, sure his shoulders were going to pop from their sockets and feared the huge, cast iron links that bound him would tear off his hands.

Finally he felt relief when Walsh stopped electrocuting him, the tingle in his limbs turning into a dead weight and his body sagging. The wetness of blood coated Killian’s back and ran down over his legs, pooling slowly at his feet. Bruises appeared at the sight of every electrical intrusion and his chest heaved, breath catching dryly in his throat, lips cracked and head lolling forward only to spring back when the heretic's fork stabbed further into the flesh of his jaw.

“You are resilient,” Walsh observed, almost impressed. “I’ve known purebred werewolves to have changed by now.”

“Must be my human side,” Killian snapped, his muscles twitching with aftershocks and thick, dark red blood dripping from his chin as he spat out a mouthful of the copper tainted liquid.

Walsh made a noise in his throat and then his gaze flicked down to the black, plastic coated pole his hand. Killian followed his eyes as best he could and noticed that the cattle prod came with a current setting and that it was currently on the lowest it could be. With a devilish grin, Walsh cranked it up to the maximum setting, a low buzz from the charge of electricity filling Killian’s ears.

“Let’s get rid of that then, shall we?” Walsh grinned. He flicked the switch and the lightning shaped blue light jumped between the two contacts at the end of the stick, the charge sizzling audibly. Before he had time to jab him again, Killian called out, the scent of Graham and Emma invading his nostrils from over Walsh’s shoulder. He peered into the thick forest behind Walsh and noticed the huge man beside his love, downwind and hidden from his attacker, a long finger pressed to pursed lips as they stalked their prey.

“Wait!” Killian stalled and Walsh froze. “You’re right,” he said flatly. “I don’t deserve Emma. If you let me go, you win. She’s yours.” The words felt foreign on his tongue, dirty, almost like he was giving up and Walsh cocked his head to the side as he regarded Killian’s sudden change of heart. Killian tried to ignore the sting of pain in his chest, the burn site of the previous electrocution having left its mark like a brand against his skin, hoping that Walsh wouldn’t turn around and smell his saviors.

“Just like that?” Walsh narrowed his eyes.

“Just like that,” Killian agreed. “I’ll leave town and never return.”

Walsh dropped his arm by his side, the sizzle of the cattle prod fading away as he turned it off. He rubbed his chin, the daily sprout of his stubble like velcro under his fingertips. “See, here is my problem,” Walsh told Killian honestly, stepping closer and reigniting the cattle prod. It was inches from Killian’s face, the blue spark lighting up his eyes. He swallowed hard and tried to ignore his body’s inner wolf fighting with him to come out and tear Walsh’s throat out. “You’re lying,” Walsh told him darkly. “I know you’re lying because your lips are moving.”

“I’m not,” Killian blurted, making his voice sound more desperate as he caught sight of Graham circling around behind Walsh.

“You must think I have a terrible memory,” Walsh said slowly, inspecting the tip of the cattle prod and watching the spark jump between the contacts with a morbid fascination. Killian looked confused and his expression just made Walsh revel in his power, even more, tilting his head sideways and running his fingers over the fleshy bump of his neck scar. Killian’s face paled. “I knew you’d remember too,” Walsh spat. “This is about you, and what you did to me. I don’t want Emma, although a taste wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Stay away from her,” Killian warned helplessly.

“Or what?” Walsh ground out. “You are hardly in a position to stop me.”

“Maybe not,” Killian growled. “But she has people. You’ll be sorry.”

Walsh took a small step back and inhaled deeply. “No, Killian, I think you’re the one who will be sorry.”

There was a split second before the charged rod hit his skin that Killian remembered seeing Graham emerge from the leafy shadows but after he was electrocuted at maximum voltage, he could no longer contain the wolf inside of him. Every nerve ending was stuck between pain and never ending tension, the blue spark of electricity licking at the skin covering his ribs just long enough before Graham reached Walsh that his body responded in the worst possible way. Killian’s cries mixed with a harrowing howl as he shifted, joints popping from their sockets and unable to fully find their place in his canine form because of the chain holding his arms apart.

He grew into his wolf form quickly and the heretics fork strap snapped almost instantly, falling to the forest floor, silently forgotten. The jut of Killian’s barrelled ribs made his back arch and his hind legs kicked out into the space in front of him as he struggled against the chain. His cries were pure anguish, his jaws snapping at nothing, desperately gnawing at his own fur as he fought to be free.

“Killian!” Emma screamed, rushing between Graham and Walsh as they fought over the cattle prod, both careful to avoid touching the live end. She raced over to the tree, horrified by what she saw, a huge black mess of fur and twisted limbs yowling in pain, begging her with his eyes for some sort of help. Emma searched around the tree, finding the padlock behind the huge trunk and pulling at it helplessly.

“Here!” Ruby called, rushing over as best she could with a pair of bolt cutters she had sourced from Walsh’s torture table. “Use these!”

Emma grabbed the long handled tools from her human companion and went to work on the chain, cutting through all three layers that wrapped themselves around Killian’s previously human wrists. Seeing him in such an unnatural state was scary, the adrenaline rushing through her body as he finally fell into a heap at the base of the tree and silence filled the clearing. Emma threw the bolt cutters aside and ran around the tree, ignoring the fleeing Walsh as he tore past her in wolf form and scurried from the woods.

“That bastard,” Graham ground out, turning off the cattle prod and then snapping the device over his knee. “He changed to get away faster. That coward!”

“Is he okay?” Ruby worried, throwing the bag off her shoulder and sinking down onto her knees next to Emma. Graham noticed the two women and joined them, helping to free Killian from the chain. “Why would he do this?”

“Killian?” Emma soothed, ignoring both of them. Killian cast her a sideways glance, his eyes watery and pupils blown. In a more natural position he tucked his legs under himself, trying to make himself smaller, and his tail tucked itself between his legs as he whimpered like a puppy. “It’s me,” Emma told him softly, reaching out and stroking her hand through the fur on the back of his neck. He flinched, kicking out some leaves and tensing which made him yelp out in pain.

“Easy, Killian,” Ruby added softly, pulling the plunger on a syringe. The needle end was stuck into a small vial of clear liquid and she was focused on the amount filling the syringe.

“What’s that?” Emma whispered.

“Ketamine,” Ruby told her in a business like voice. “For his pain.”

Emma watched Ruby lift Killian’s foreleg gently, the movement making him howl in pain. “I’m sorry,” Ruby soothed in a shaking voice, her own emotion getting the better of her. Her hands were steady as she found Killian’s vein, pressing her thumb into his leg to make it bulge through his fur. Once she was content she had found it, she slipped the needle through the coarse, black fur and into the skin, pulling the plunger until she could see blood in the drug, swirling through the clear, thick liquid like smoke. “This will make you feel better, I promise.” Ruby injected the entire syringe into Killian’s leg and he let out a groan.

“How long before it works?” Emma asked her quickly, eager to get Killian out of the forest. Emma rested her hand to Killian’s ribcage, feeling the beat of his heart under her fingertips slow to a steady, more normal rhythm. If only they had arrived earlier. If only they could have stopped this whole situation from happening.

“A few minutes,” Ruby told her honestly. She lifted Killian’s eyelids and watched his pupils grow even bigger as the drug took effect. “Where are you going to take him? Walsh already knows where Killian lives. You can’t go back there.”

“Ruby’s right,” Graham said sadly. “How about Liam’s place? He’s out of town anyway.”

“That’s right!” Ruby agreed excitedly. “His brother’s loft is empty.”

Killian exhaled hard and one leg twitched, almost as if he was asleep and Emma lifted a leg to test his pain threshold. He didn’t cry out this time, so she got to her feet and with the help of Graham, lifted him into her arms.

“Take me there,” Emma demanded quickly, striding past them with Killian in her arms and fury for Walsh in her soul.

[thelordismytreasure]

The Evidence of Friday, June 15, 2018

In the description of this blog, I state that I find that God defends me from this evil organization that has come to rule the land, the courts and officers that have abandoned the worthy traditions upon which our country was founded and now act with abandon to undermine our civil liberties, divide our country into factions, favor the religion of psychiatry, women over men, the rich over poor, those accused of crime over those accused of mental illness, and, in my case, the government has stolen twelve years of my service by the use of a trick: falsely promising me this reward: money sufficient to pursue a career as a singer or an actor.

And what have been the consequences upon me and my house that were engendered by their abandonment of the common sense guide that a man must be able to confront his accusers in court?

Here follows the tale of how I met my first, and most damaging, accuser.

When I was a young man just starting to make my way in the world, I chanced to meet a woman at a Halloween Dance in Minneapolis, Debbra Myers.  She was about five years older than me and not of the type that I would normally desire as a sexual partner, but I was loathe to make the long drive home after the party and She invited me to stay the night with her following the celebration; we slept together.  

The following day, I awoke in her bed to find that we were greeted by her three young sons.  After breakfast with her sons and her female partner in renting the house, a co-worker from the restaurant where she worked, I jumped in my white Nissan automobile and drove back to my mother’s house in Mankato.

Being young and not established in a career or with sufficient money to afford to rent a room when I traveled or to buy a home of my own, I would stay with Debbra in Minneapolis when I had the occasion to travel there.

After a time, she took the occasion to visit me at my mother’s house in Mankato. In this way she learned that what I had been telling her about myself was true. I was the only son of a doctor and surgeon, had graduated from Harvard, and that my father had left my mother, moving out of his big, fine house, leaving it to her.

She was allowed to stay with me in my bed that night, only this time, her birth control failed and she became pregnant.

She was distraught.  How could this have happened?  How could she support another child by herself?  Abortion seemed to be the right choice for her.

I, too, was distraught.  Debbra was my first sexual partner in a long time and the first since I had been tricked by Wendy Gross, a male to female transsexual I had met in New York City.  (I had expended my grandfather’s bequest to me to travel there and across the country, learning about the entertainment trade.

It was there, (and when I was on my last dime and most susceptible to an offer of employment,) that Stanley H. Holler III of the British American Petroleum Company made me an offer. I turned it down.  

Wendy was his companion.  She turned to me when Stanley threw her out of his room at the Hotel Chelsea, she said, and asked to stay with me for the night in room 100.

You can’t imagine the relief I felt when Debbra first took me as her lover.  

(The coincidence of the pairing of issues of gender identity with work roles in ’81 revived in me the issues I had discussed with David Swanson on March 3, 1965, and gave rise to my firm belief that “Wendy” was the transsexual reinvention of David, who must have acted on my putative offer of marriage in ’65 and been brought in with Stanley to reinforce the pressure on me to accept his offer.)

Nor could I agree to have my first conceived child aborted.

As Debbra was now seriously interested in me as a husband, partner and support; and I was interested in her as the future mother of my child, partner and support; we moved in together.

It became summer and she left her job on the West Bank area of the city, (also known as Cedar-Riverside,) to take a summer job as a cook for Outward Bound  school and camp in Ely, MN.  I traveled with her there and we shared a cabin on their grounds for a while.  It was in this cabin that the disagreement between us first became physical.

She had long been contemplating driving to Duluth for an abortion, but as she had no car, she needed my cooperation to do it.  I wouldn’t lend my cooperation to the arrangement and denied her the use of my car.  As she was leaving the cabin after discussing this with me, I saw her grab the keys from the table.  I followed her through the door and tackled her, retrieving my keys.  I was careful not to let her be injured, as she was carrying my baby, but she was incensed that I would lay hands on her.  

She insisted that I get counseling.  I maintained that I had acted properly and within my rights, refusing counseling.  Nonetheless, management would not countenance a feuding couple on their grounds and we were asked to cohabitate elsewhere.

We moved into a tiny house in town.  It was right across from the courthouse.  Debbra commuted the short distance to the Outward Bound camp and looked to me to find some kind of work in town to supplement her income.  

As for myself, I continued my series of messages to the President of the United States, looking to capitalize on the growing evidence that the Almighty supported me in my contention that the government had stolen twelve years of my service using means both forceful, (under the terms of Minnesota’s Compulsory School Attendance Act, and allowed by the federal government in violation of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing Due Process of Law before an individual’s rights are reduced,) and fraudulent, (under the terms of the instruction that I had received early in my education and presumed to continue throughout the school system, thereafter.)

Debbra had supported me in this endeavor when we lived together in Minneapolis:  She had driven with me to Victoria, MN to mail one of my letters from there. I felt that a postage cancelation mark with the Victoria name would symbolically invoke the memory of the recent Victor/Victoria movie, a tale of gender identity woes reminiscent of the issues in my story and related in earlier letters in my series.  

I used this tactic to help any one who may have been assigned to open and read my letters recall the foundation of the series without burdening myself or the reader with a re-telling of the entire tale.  

It was at this juncture that I sereptitiously took a $20 from Debbra’s wallet to pay for the extra postage required for Registered Mail.  I felt that this was justified for two reasons: 1. the information in my letter related to the security of the nation as well as that of the President, himself, justifying the use of the most secure method for sending a letter, and 2. when the Evidence became so great as to become irrefutable, the government would condescend to pay for the lengthy term of service I maintained it had solicited of me through the men and women it had placed over me, and Debbra, who’s interests were now intertwined with mine, would also benefit.  

When she discovered the missing bill, however, she was dismissive of my rationale for taking it and very angry.  

Not long after that blow-up, however, our entire family stopped at the DQ in Shakopee, for a treat.  A light wind was blowing and in it, a twenty dollar bill.

Debbra saw it without anyone else seeing it first and grabbed it.  She insisted that it was entirely her luck that had brought her the twenty.  I felt that I had used her twenty for God’s business as well as hers and mine, and that He had returned it to her, satisfying the grievance.  

She maintained that I still owed her money and required that I make good on the debt.  

What a pity that we didn’t see eye to eye on this mystery. It was a difference between us that would shape the rest of our time together and lead to our eventual parting of ways.

As for the Evidence of Friday, June 15th, 2018?

The preferential prosecution of men over women in cases of domestic abuse, the ability of a reporter to lambast a victim without being held to account in probate court, the preference of the courts to award custody of younger children to the mother and also to the stronger provider, combined with the resistance of the government to award me my just due after dozens of years of service to the government, all these have combined to deprive me of the affections of my daughter, felt most acutely this Father’s Day.

On this past Friday, leading into Father’s Day weekend, I spent the day texting my daughter, Cassie.  Inviting her to attend a concert at the Dakota Jazz Club that evening.  Telling her about how the owner had offered to give the two of us complimentary admission to any performance there, when I told him of how much sorrow I endured because of Cassie’s rejection.  Inviting her to call the club to ask the owner if he, indeed, had made that promise.  Calling the club to remind the owner of his promise.  Calling his sister to help me contact the owner when I couldn’t reach him at the club.  Reviewing my available cash to offer the owner as a bribe to let us in if the date was sold out and he didn’t remember his promise.  And generally pulling my last hair out in order to bring Cassie and myself together again, which I desire with all my heart.

This is the loss which the enemies of American liberty and justice endured on that day: As reported on page A6 on the Sunday, June 17th edition of the Star Tribune, “Inmate fatally shoots 2 deputies” (Kansas) and on page B3 of the same edition, “Blaine officer, wife killed in motorcycle crash.”

While you may argue that these losses are not extraordinary to the daily occurrence among law enforcement, please allow me to consider them the work of a Divine force of protection afflicting evil-doers.  

[aion-rsa]

Sean Connery and Michael Caine are Godlike in The Man Who Would Be King

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“I’ll stand one day before the Queen, not kneel, mind you, but stand like an equal, and she’ll say ‘I’d like you to accept the Order of the Garter as a mark of my esteem, cousin,’” Sean Connery’s ex-British soldier Daniel Dravot proclaims in the 1975 period adventure film, The Man Who Would Be King. And with those words, and the epic death scene which followed, Connery completed the saga of a long-germinating work from one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors. John Huston was Hollywood royalty. His father, Walter, was an acting icon, and his offspring have all gone on to distinguish themselves as part of the Huston Dynasty.

Connery was of course no stranger to acting royalty himself. Eventually knighted in 2000, he also got to play King Agamemnon in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits in 1981, King Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and King Arthur in First Knight (1995). James Bond was only a small part of Connery’s cinematic output. The Oscar-winning screen legend wasn’t always a suave, debonair, tuxedoed aficionado of the shaken martini.

He was already distancing himself from the immensely popular 007 role by the time he made Diamonds Are Forever in 1971. He wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty for parts, and he reveled in playing the occasional antihero and other less sympathetic roles.

Thus Connery got the chance to play a not-so-bright, morally flawed but timeless character in the 1975 film The Man Who Would Be King. He also fulfilled a lifelong dream for a Hollywood legend, and turned a myth into reality.

Huston had loved Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” since he was a child, according to the book The Hustons, by Lawrence Grobel. Kipling was 22 in 1888, when he wrote the short story, and had been shot at while exploring the setting. Huston’s adaptation was a dream project which had morphed into the purgatory of lost film masterpieces, like Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, Alejandro Jodorowski’s Dune, or Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness. Francis Ford Coppola wound up adapting the Joseph Conrad novel with a post-Vietnam War mentality. His Apocalypse Now is about a good man corrupted by absolute power. Huston took the lessons of the unpopular war in the opposite direction. The Man Who Would Be King is about bad men who are held accountable to the indigenous people they conquer.

The Man Who Would Be King is about power, greed and the manifest destiny of entitled Europeans. It lampoons the superiority of British colonialism. In a “Making of” documentary about the film, Huston says he found the “ideal” actors to capture his subversive intent. This movie was the only time Connery played with his lifelong friend Michael Caine, besides A Bridge Too Far, which had too many bridges and a platoon of stars between them. The pair met at a cast party for the first show Connery acted in, a touring company’s production of South Pacific in 1954. On July 9 of that year, Huston told Allied Artists’ Harold Mirish he wanted his next film to be the first and only on-screen pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable.

Huston originally had The Man Who Would Be King slated as his next production after he finished Moby Dick (1956). He planned to begin principal photography in India between November 1955 and January 1956 and was negotiating to film in the Todd-AO process. Huston had worked with Bogart on the very first film he directed, The Maltese Falcon in 1941, and the pair continued a string of successful and innovative films together. Though working fairly steadily, Bogart was battling esophageal cancer and ultimately succumbed to it on Jan. 14, 1957. Huston discussed the film with Gable while filming The Misfits, but the actor known as “The King of Hollywood” then also died in 1960. 

Richard Burton was set to play the role against Peter O’Toole, and Huston kept start dates ready from January 1966 to January 1967, waiting for the opportunity, but the year passed and it never came. The film almost reunited Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting’s Robert Redford and Paul Newman, who told Huston the film deserved English actors, and suggested Connery and Caine specifically.

Caine immediately jumped at the role just because his part had been written for Bogart. He’d chosen his stage name after seeing Bogart fidget with his ball-bearings as Commander Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. As for Connery, the Scottish actor captures the essence of Gable’s screen persona in the film. They both bring an amused cynicism toward their roles. Both actors furrow their brows and project a sensual gravitas.

You can imagine hearing Connery say, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” with a different accent but the same delivery as Gable’s in Gone with the Wind. Granted, it would probably be coming out of the mouth of Saturday Night Live’s Darrel Hammond as a bemused answer to Alex Trebek, but it rings true. Whether he liked it or not, Connery’s turn as Bond made him as recognizable in the public’s mind as Gable.

On screen, Caine and Connery interact easily and naturally, nailing the parts with their distinct charisma. Danny and Peachy laugh at their disasters, because there’s really nothing else to do, and they make it infectious. They really are the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of imperialist Great Britain. Caine’s Peachy Carnahan could have been a great-great-grandparent to his Jack Carter in Get Garter; Connery’s Daniel Dravot could imaginably give sage advice to his third-generation thief grandson Matthew Broderick in Family Business (1989), or even lead a son like Indiana Jones across unexplored ancient treasures.

Together, Connery and Caine are a powerhouse. One of the great cinema pairings. They bring authentic accents, real-life camaraderie, and regional humor to the roles. Caine also bought his wife, Shakira, who plays Roxanne, the Kafiristan wife of Connery’s Daniel Dravot in the film. Christopher Plummer played Rudyard Kipling, a correspondent for “The Northern Star” newspaper, and a Freemason, a central point in the film and its symbolism.

Huston wrote the new screenplay with his long-time secretary Gladys Hill. Shooting on the final version took place in Morocco, which traded rough terrain for rampant corruption as the producers had to bribe their way through much of the filming. The locations and local extras were important to Huston to evoke the British Raj period of the movie.

The director wanted Connery and Caine to brave the “mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers” Kipling described in his story. Huston exposed Bogart to the cruel elements of location filming in The Treasure of Sierra Madre and The African Queen, and had discussed parachuting the two Hollywood icons into the Himalayas during the initial production, according to The Hustons. The two British stars faced equal peril. For the climax of the completed version, Huston let Connery plummet hundreds of feet from a rope bridge suspended over a vast valley. 

In the film, two former British Army sergeants, now clumsy gunrunners and incompetent conmen, traverse the Khyber Pass to find the isolated area of Kafiristan, located in the Hindu Kush mountains northeast of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. This is where the descendants of Alexander the Great live. The Greek emperor had conquered Afghanistan and married a Kafir princess named Roxanne, according to Kipling’s story.

Peachy and Danny plan to become the first Europeans since the ancient Greeks to penetrate the region and “loot it six ways from Sunday.” They admit this to Kipling shortly after robbing him and returning his stolen item back to him.

“In any place where they fight, a man who knows how to drill men can always be a king,” Connery’s Danny explains to Plummer’s Kipling. “We shall go to those parts and say to any king we find: ‘Do you want to vanquish your foes?’ And we will show him how to drill men, for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that king and seize his throne and establish a dynasty.”

With this, Connery’s character captures the eternal dilemma of that region. No external power has ever permanently dominated Afghanistan. Britain lost control in 1919, which the country celebrates as the year of its independence. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, and continues its costly occupation with no end in sight. Kafiristan, which is now called Nuristan, is home to 15 ethnic groups speaking five different languages. No one man can be king. No single government can rule. Even O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia had to admit that. Connery’s authority, however, has a much deeper voice, and the conviction of a faithful pilgrim.

Peachy and Danny believe they can find a kingdom not yet touched by civilization which they can take over easily with their weapons, knowledge and contemporary expertise. “When we’re done with you, you’ll be able to stand up and slaughter your enemies like civilized men,” they tell their trainees. Huston allows the audience to enjoy the two soldiers of misfortune, in spite of their self-ascribed superiority and blatantly racist attitudes. When their translator asks whether to woo local high priests with claims of their divinity, Peachy says to tell them they are “not gods, [but] Englishmen. The next best thing.”

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Danny is nonplussed by how easy the locals are exploited. Connery lets him indulge his moral superiority, tossing harsh judgements on native customs like offering daughters and sons up to guests for sex. When he takes an arrow in the chest and keeps on fighting, he readily assumes his mantle as the son of Alexander the Great. Connery sells that assumption realistically and believably. Peachy assumes the huge rubies in the temple are good to go. 

Caine’s Peachy Carnahan remains a Cockney through and through. Connery’s Dravot gives in to temptation almost athletically. When he finds himself worshiped as a deity, he is happy to believe it. The scene where he convinces himself is hysterical, and performed completely organically. Connery is completely surprised by himself, and Caine literally falls over laughing as he does an internal pratfall. It is as much an acting free-for-all as it is a ballet of physical comedy. The gag is the same as C3P0 telling the Ewoks he’s a deity in Return of the Jedi, which happened to be shot on the same Panaflex camera as The Man Who Would Be King.

In a highly competitive Oscar race–which included One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Barry Lyndon, and Jaws—The Man Who Would Be King was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Art Direction, Best Writing, Best Costume Design, and Best Editing. Connery was also the lead performance in the Oscar-nominated film The Wind and The Lion that same year.

The Man Who Would Be King is an adventure film, and Connery and Caine make it a wild ride with perilous curves and a harrowing but hollow finish. Like so many of Huston’s movies, their scheme doesn’t turn out the way it’s planned, but the plot finds strength in the weakness of powerful characters. By the end of the movie, all these two characters have is each other, and even that promises to be fleeting. The performances endure though. It’s acting royalty. It’s like they were destined to do it, preordained. 

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[ahouseoflies]

Best Films of 2017, Part IV

We’re getting closer. Part I, Part II, Part III. GOOD MOVIES 42. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)- I think the biggest strength of this film, a pretty conventional one by Davies's standards, is a drive inward that is steady but not judgmental. Dickinson's retreat isn't treated as tragedy, but as a natural trajectory that was there in the first scene. (A lot of the heavy lifting is done by Emma Bell, the actress who plays young Emily with constancy.) The life of the mind is a lonely one, but there isn't much choice in the matter. The film moves along in a leisurely way, matching the long days of such privileged people, and it's funny until the bon mots drift into Frank Underwood territory that doesn't make sense. And the parts of the movie that don't work, the ones that succumb to the biopic mold, feel like that: told in the cadence of a joke but a bit empty. 41. Stronger (David Gordon Green)- For most of its running time, Stronger is a raw film bolstered by searing, sharply felt lead performances. It doesn't take the easy way out or succumb to cliche, suggesting that, gasp, maybe being a symbol for an entire city could be exhausting and frustrating. Then, quite quickly, it gives in to all of the cliches. The conversation with Carlos would have been an awesome deleted scene. 40. Split (M. Night Shyamalan)- Shyamalan flat-out knows how to make this kind of movie. It's not without its faults--can you even complain about his tendency to cast himself anymore?--but his cross-cutting game hasn't slipped a beat. The film is composed and patient, but it doesn't trespass the self-indulgent line the way that some of his earlier work does. Some of the abuse stuff is handled clumsily, but I suppose it has to match the touch of the psychology material, which can only be breezy and flippant. Here's what's different about the filmmaker's approach: Shyamalan hasn't guided many actors to great performances. (I guess Haley Joel Osment is still number one.) But this movie is James McAvoy's performance. He gets to have fun technically by switching back and forth among the personas, but the serious business is the fact that the whole thing's tone rests on his shoulders. Like many successful B movies, it has a fluidity that allows the audience to laugh at it, laugh with it, or be genuinely scared--sometimes in a span of minutes. If McAvoy hadn't gone all the way, the movie wouldn't have been able to.

39. Molly’s Game (Aaron Sorkin)- This movie has a lot of the things that make me love movies. A scene in which someone flushes drugs down the toilet and hides valuables because the feds are coming. Self-effacing but rousing speeches that reference classic literature. An "I'm good for it" sequence dedicated to someone's gambling downward spiral. Cleavage. But all of the things I'm describing are window dressing, and this is maybe the first Aaron Sorkin screenplay that has more fat than meat, as tasty as that fat may be. The film's thesis shines in Idris Elba's strangely-accented monologue, the one that starts with "Is this what a RICO suspect looks like?" It seems to suggest that the world is indeed rigged against women, but it might be because they have more integrity than men, which makes it more difficult for them to succeed. It's an interesting notion, and the figure at the center of the film might be perfect to prove it, but there are so many flashbacks and scenes that feel obligatory to get us there. 38. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)- Good, if micro-managed in the way that a film-as-shareholder-commodity has to be. It's interesting to me that, though there are only nine movies that take place in this universe, the storytelling is more codified than any other genre I can think of. Even though it's less clinical than The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi has to jump through an inordinate number of hoops to be "a Star Wars movie." No matter how these are sold, they all have the same beats. That history is a gift in some ways. Even though we haven't heard from him in thirty-plus years, Jedi Master Luke's personality tracks in every way. It makes total sense how he would hold people up as symbols instead of personalities, and the movie benefits from the archetypes its predecessors have created. On the other hand, I think we spend thirty minutes on a mission that fails, and the movie hangs Finn out to dry. It's a sort of Empire mandate that the characters have to be separated from one another for the majority of the running time, and that makes for a strained middle section. I get that people like these movies because they're engineered and manicured for maximum pleasure, and I cherish the goofy bits like the drunk creature thinking BB-8 is a slot machine. Maybe these just aren't for me. Until I cry at the end. 37. Win It All (Joe Swanberg)- It ends abruptly and doesn't get as psychological as it could, but Win It All is designed for maximum pleasure. There are a few inventive gestures that make for a jaunty hang--I loved the superimposed counter that showed how up or down Eddie's bankroll was. Jake Johnson, who co-wrote, has real rakish chops. 36. American Made (Doug Liman)- It's helpful to compare this movie to T.C.'s summer disaster The Mummy, which cast him as a static rake. Doug Liman presents the same smiling mug, but he punches a few holes into the persona, letting us see the shortcomings of T.C.'s Barry Seal if not the delusional quality that the actual man must have had. (The movie tries to sell us on boredom as the main motivation for a near-suicide mission, but it was probably more complex than that.) The actor is at his best when he lets himself seems slightly dumb, when the audience is a few steps ahead of him. Luckily, that's the whole film. It helps that this is the first Liman movie since the original Bourne Identity to have a vibrant "stolen" quality to its visuals. American Made careens through its beats at a breakneck pace, and the biggest flaw of the movie is that it remains that fast at the end, when we need more answers. 35. Mudbound (Dee Rees)- A true ensemble, Mudbound has a deft hand with its own emotional effects. Dee Rees knows the moments that matter--the reunion of father and son after the War is unforgettable--and she nails them. The ending is a poignant culmination of a lot of momentum. Much of the film's success comes from real Movie Stars, Jason Mitchell chief among them, elevating their characters past types though. And some of them don't get there all the way. Jason Clarke's Henry is pretty much Unfeeling Man's Man Farmer and Jonathan Banks is totally Racist Pappy. (Not a joke: His character is actually called Pappy.) In the end, I can't help but suspect that similar characters and situations--he drinks to forget what he's seen!--haven't been staged better elsewhere.

34. Raw (Julia Ducournau)- These types of movies--by that I mean late New French Extremity, I guess--have to go too far. If they didn't, they would lose the perverse aesthetic high ground that they're all so smug about. So it goes too far, but I would like to show Raw to someone making, say, an X-Men movie because Julia Ducournau crafts more immersive world-building in twenty minutes than some of those movies do in multiple entries. The beginning was jagged, but when the storytelling settled into itself, it reminded me of Repulsion because the taboo that guides Raw starts out as a metaphor, then becomes a device, then becomes literal, and then it circles back around to metaphor. Maybe that journey is the reason it exists.  33. Get Out (Jordan Peele)- I saw this movie twice. The first time I was kind of cavalier about it. The line I said at parties was: “I personally prefer genre movies that let you attach social commentary to them. The subtext is the text here.”  Knowing the film's secrets the second time around helped me to appreciate the performances better, especially in the powerhouse hypnotism scene. Kaluuya has to play an everyman but also, for obvious reasons, an everyman who stands out. The balance of vulnerability and heroism that he pulls off is impressive, armed with a fake-smile that is perfect for the micro-aggressions he has to stand and take. Chris embodies a civility that lets him stay in the house past his level of comfort, but he’s smart enough to insist on leaving when some horror protagonists would get illogical. I still think the film escalates a bit too quickly from suspicion to actual danger, and, man, I don't know what that TSA investigation tangent is doing at such a crucial moment. But I'll admit that I didn't give the film enough credit in February. Comedies of manners are common; horrors of manners are rare. 32. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh)- From a screenwriting perspective, there are probably two schools of thought for heist movies. Approach A outlines every detail of the plan; that way, when the characters overcome their challenges, we are more impressed because we were warned of the dangers in advance. Approach B leaves the viewer in suspense, and the hurdles pop up for the viewer in a way that mirrors the characters' surprise. I prefer Approach A, and I think there's a degree of difficulty that can't be discounted there. In fact, there's a sort of joy of exposition that is unique to the heist genre and jives with Approach A. Logan Lucky operates mostly on plane B, and it frustrated me at first in what seems like a sterile, straight first act. But then, as I try to avoid spoilers, it goes so far past what we thought the heist would be, and it branches out into Soderberghian "what was actually happening during that time" territory. I had to re-evaluate my prejudices as I joined in on the fun. Despite the inevitable "What It Did Wrong" YouTubes that some killjoy will make, I didn't notice any narrative cheating. Daniel Craig is the eye in the zany storm. 31. The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)- I feel slightly diminishing returns with each super-autobiographical portrait of a comedian. As heart-wrenching as this one gets, it follows the beats that we're used to, right down to the rock-bottom argument with a fast food cashier. Cue the twenty different endings and the uninspired visual style. But why be a sour-puss when faced with a movie so sincere and eager to please? Besides keeping all of the subplot plates spinning, besides being fair to the female character, the film offers original moments and ideas. The triangle that emerges among Nanjiani, Romano, and Hunter authentically captures the way decorum frost melts once two generations realize their common ground. And "the movie that a guy shows a girl to test her taste on a third date" is something that I myself am guilty of, but I haven't seen it portrayed in a film. What isn't unique in the big structural picture is completely unique in certain moments. 30. The Belko Experiment (Greg McLean)- Its ending is only "good enough," but The Belko Experiment is my kind of ultraviolent trash. I would be perfectly happy if we could get the White Stripes of Experiment movies on odd years and alternate them with The Strokes of Purge movies on even years. For one reason or another, empathy machine John Gallagher, Jr. is still in his Hi, Mom! or Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight phase. When he gets his Taxi Driver, watch out.

29. The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay)- I laughed twice during the opening production logos. Of course it devolves into everyone teaming up to save the city, as the straight versions of these movies do, but The Lego Batman Movie, especially in its lower stakes first half, was one of the funniest films of the year. I'm kind of thrilled that the satirizing of tropes I cherished from the margins in the '90s is now de rigeur, sponsored by the same studio that has shoved cliches down our throats. Will Arnett deserves special mention for inhabiting this specific version of Batman so well that he makes you rethink 70+ years of the character's make-up. It's no small feat. This movie, yes, probably counts as a slip-up of my superhero ban. I didn’t realize that until I was halfway through.

28. A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski)- This is a difficult film to recommend because, if the person you're talking to cares only about story, he won't like it. It's strained and sometimes illogical, a "you can never leave" story that has been around the block a few times. But look out for the Miami Viceans on here when this film gets reconsidered for its visuals because, I'm telling you now, A Cure for Wellness has the most stately and controlled images this side of Kubrick. It's a perfect reference Blu-Ray if you still care about such things. Verbinski is credited with the story, and I doubt he told the screenwriter much more than "water, wrinkled faces, the color white," but he does some things with that sandbox that I haven't seen before. 27. It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults)- It Comes at Night never completely explains its own horror conceit of encroaching "sickness"; even by the end, there's a lot that we don't know about the apparently apocalyptic event that has singled out the characters. That presence of an absence is the film's greatest strength--it allows us to attach to the human frailty at the center without distraction. However, it's the film's greatest weakness as well because it's what keeps the proceedings small, like a cost-cutting measure. In capturing bleak human frailty, Trey Edward Shults knows exactly what he's doing. He uses literal darkness to suggest emotional darkness, and his script guides the viewer along character arcs without holding anyone's hand. A character uses the word "brother-in-law" instead of "brother" and, because of the context, it produces as much of a gasp as a gunshot would. I didn't recognize Riley Keough at first, which is an excellent sign for a young actress. There's a moment when her character catches another character eyeing her breasts, and she tugs her shirt with a unique mixture of flattery and shame. I can't wait to see what she does next. 26. Wind River (Taylor Sheridan)- If a movie has a scene of #RennerSeason making his own bullets, then my fingers won't let me give it lower than three stars. He's amazing/hilarious in this as the know-it-all spirit warrior--basically Steven Seagal in a better actor's body. He's perfect for squinting and selling lines like, "You keep looking for clues...but you're missing all the signs." Taylor Sheridan's screenplay is tight and meticulous in a way that we used to get all the time but feels special now. The backstory is doled out with care, and every character is rich enough to get a moment to shine. He shoots his own material with less visceral impact than someone like Denis Villeneuve did, but he does lend a specific sense of place to the film.There's a crucial late scene that sort of solves the mystery for us, making everything that comes after seem like falling action baggage. Your mileage may vary, but I'm not sure there are other ways to get across the information. I was okay with it. 25. The Post (Steven Spielberg)- The Post is a great time at the movies, but it's ultimately a bit too much of a movie for me. It has a hand-held lightness to its look, an energy that belies how quickly it was made. Streep's Kate Graham has a satisfying arc that eschews a lot of the grandstanding that this type of picture would normally lend her. Her lesson in confidence is laid on thickly, but Streep doesn't play it that way. Unfortunately some of the brusqueness I like in the filmmaking carries over to the screenplay. It offers few of the laughs-in-crisis that make individual Spielberg scenes so good, and most of the conflicts resolve themselves just a little too easily. ("I wonder if the guy I think has the papers actually has them...yep, after a few calls, I found out he does.") The less said about the cartoonish Vietnam protestors and the CCR needle-drop, the better. Overall, do I prefer the lean, realistic version of this story over the more belabored, showy version? Sure.

24. The Work (Jairus McLeary, Gethin Aldous)- The Work is undeniably raw, pure, and effective in the emotion it documents and generates. The access given to the filmmakers as they capture a group therapy program in Folsom State Prison is unbelievable. But for that reason, there's something on the margins of the film that feels exploitative and violating to me. I'm interested in how Bloods and Aryans console each other, not to mention how the most damaged figure is not a prisoner at all. But I get the sense I shouldn't be watching any of this. 23. Marjorie Prime (Michael Almereyda)- I like everything that this chamber piece specifies and everything that it decides to leave vague. The film is unsentimental, considering how sentimental this premise could be. It seems bent on reminding us, sometimes tragically, about how we shape our own memories until the original moment is gone in every way. I'll admit that it seems a little slight by the end, despite the weight suggested by what I just described. Even when it's surprising you, the film never writes in capital letters, and part of that feeling comes from bland visuals. But that's a small complaint for a film that is grappling so palpably with the challenges of authenticity in modern life.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

The End of Avatar + Birth of the Alt-Weekly in Boston - PART TWO

Part One is here.

The shutting down of all Avatar publications in Boston represented a turning point, and a blurring of lines between commercial and underground newspapers. Why limit yourself to being to just an underground newspaper when an actual profit could to be made for going slightly above-ground? And with far less harassment, too. Most underground and student newspapers in Boston received visits from the FBI in 1968, and in at least one case, their meddling led to the dissolution of the paper. When feds visited the Avatar office at the 37 Rutland Street, editor Wayne Hansen let them search the location freely and they left soon after. Outside, Hansen found the agents trying to get into their own car with a coat hanger, their keys locked inside. He walked over to the scene with his camera, but the agents begged him not to take pictures, which he obliged. 

Below, TV host David Silver approaches 37 Rutland Street, office of Avatar. Underneath, the building as it stands today.

By the time the agents arrived at Boston University News, word had gotten out. Alex Jack, an editor at the paper and one of the founders of the New England Vietnam Resistance movement, had prepared some materials in preparation for their visit. “Thank you for coming. I just have a few questions,” Jack told the FBI agents, handing them a three page questionnaire. As they left in a huff, other students followed them to their car, pretending to take notes on their every move, muttering “Ah, yes, very interesting.” 

Alex Jack at a resistance rally, photo by Peter Simon.

It was perhaps this bold brand of non-cooperation and outright mocking that led the FBI to alter their tactics and start to play dirty in regards to underground newspapers. Under the FBI's COINTELPRO program, spooks created fake underground rags designed to undermine and chill the anti-war movement and its leaders. Armageddon News popped up in Bloomington, Indiana, The Longhorn Tale in Austin, Texas, both literally fake news. “The purpose of this program is to expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activities of this group and persons connected with it,” a memo written to Domestic Intelligence Director William C. Sullivan read in 1968. “It is hoped that with this new program their violent and illegal activities may be reduced if not curtailed." 

In Boston, in the case of Ray Mungo and Marshall Bloom's Liberation News Service this program worked fairly well. With less than a year of successful work under their belt, like Avatar, an internal rift developed inside the LNS. Founders Mungo and Bloom were accused of being “social democrats,”—aka not true revolutionaries—by their New York collaborators. Mungo boiled down the rift to a disagreement on how to operate the service: “Their method of running the news service was the Meeting and the Vote, ours was Magic. We lived on Magic, and still do, and I have to say it beats anything systematic.” Finding themselves at an impasse, Mungo took a cue directly from his friends at Avatar and hatched a plant to steal all of the LNS's equipment, empty the bank account, purchase a farm in Montague, MA and move the entire operation there. Surprisingly, this marijuana-soaked scheme somehow worked; the Village Voice subsequently described it a “daring daylight raid.” However, the New York LNS contingent materialized one night in Montague, held Mungo and Bloom's team team hostage, smashed up the farmhouse's furniture, and beat up some members with great vigor. “Marshall was bleeding, scarlet rivers running down from his face across his chest and down his legs,” Mungo recounted of the terrible evening. The captors left at dawn empty handed, the equipment hidden away in a barn down the street. The Collegiate Press Service called it “the most bizarre story out of the underground since Valerie shot Andy.”

Below, Ray Mungo and Marshall Bloom.

What no one knew at the time was that “the FBI had deeply penetrated our news service,” LNS contributor Harvey Wasserman wrote in 1990, “and may well have been at the root of the split.” According to the FBI's own documents, they had three inside informants at the LNS, but it's unclear just who these particular people were; it is possible that the violent farmhouse raid we instigated by one or more of these federal informants. Under J. Edgar Hoover's direction, a disturbing one-sheet titled “And Who Got the Cookie Jar?” was drafted using “the jargon of the New Left” and distributed widely to left organizations. It was purportedly written by “a former [LNS] staffer.” “Cookie Jar” was particularly brutal for Marshall Bloom, as it singled him out by name. “The establishment of a bastard LNS at 'Fortress Monague' is the most unrealistic bag of all,” the propaganda declared, “Bloom, you've left the scene of the action in exchange for assorted ducks and sheep.”

“The article was such a perfect mirror of the type of writing being done at the time it never occurred to me that it might be the product of the FBI,” Wasserman eerily noted in hindsight, “But it almost certainly helped kill Marshall Bloom.” In addition to the 'Cookie Jar' piece, rampant rumors of Bloom's closeted homosexuality were spread throughout both camps. Ray Mungo recalled, “Kids who'd never even met [Bloom] would approach me with questions like, 'Is it true Marshall Bloom is a thief? Sex pervert?'” On the first of November, 1969, Marshall Bloom drove a few miles away from the Montague farm, connected a vacuum tube to the exhaust pipe, snaked it into the car, and drifted off into death. Allen Young, a former friend who was on the opposite side of the LNS split, is certain that Bloom's closeted homosexuality played a factor in the tragedy. “Marshall has become a minor folk hero and symbol of 'the movement,'” Young wrote in 1990. “Although Marshall was indeed a Yippie, I find it rather incredible, if not stupid, that some of Marshall's friends, particularly Ray Mungo, treat his suicide as though it were some kind of ultimate Yippie stunt.”

“They make Marshall a mysterious magical figure, a shaman, which is not all that surprising as this is a traditional role for homosexuals in many cultures,” Young continued. “I knew Marshall Bloom not as a shaman but as a human being.”

Mungo acknowledges the FBI infiltration, but cites his own reasons for Bloom's tragic end. “Bloom often threatened suicide long before all that. He was floridly bipolar and never medicated for it.”

As the end of the FBI propaganda piece noted, “LNS seems dead. Long live, LNS.”

In the absence of Avatar's original political coverage and the lack of an LNS branch in town, another Boston underground newspaper titled The Old Mole sprouted up in September 1968, announcing itself as a “radical bi-weekly.” Mole's most popular recurring column, a page called Zaps, delivered short bursts of information, often pointing out a hypocrisy, like: “PEACE CORPS EXPELS 13 FOR ANTI-WAR ACTIVITY -- a real headline from the Washington Star.” In April of 1969, when approximately 500 Harvard students took over the campus's University Hall in protest of the Vietnam War, a few individuals managed to obtain some confidential papers that highlighted Harvard's participation with the CIA to quell anti-war movements. 

Police removed the protesters with billy clubs and mace, but the documents escaped with the students. The Boston Globe reported that “every file in the Dean's office” had been rifled through; The Old Mole reprinted these damning papers in their next issue, igniting a serious scandal. The private correspondence was published under the headline “Reading the Mail of the Ruling Class,” and shortly after the issue hit the streets, a box of the stolen papers appeared on a law professor's steps with a note attached reading, “Comrade: please return to [Dean] Franklin Ford.” “But how can we know these files are authentic?” Old Mole editor Dick Cluster recalled the straight-press asking him about the leaked documents. The Boston Globe reported that the paper's leaked documents and the editorial conclusions drawn by the Old Mole were “unfounded.” “Not only don't proper Bostonians read each other's mail,” The Boston Globe reported, “but also their theft and subsequent reprinting indicated, if nothing else had, that the SDS militants saw their own ends as justifying almost any means.” It would be years before the mainstream press acknowledged these documents' authenticity and implications.

Founder Dick Cluster had named the paper after a reference in an obscure speech by Karl Marx: “We recognize our old friend, our old mole, who knows so well how to work underground, suddenly to appear: the revolution.”In the years that followed, the “underground” transformed into something called the “alternative.” In an article detailing The Old Mole's 1970 collapse, The Boston Globe explained, “Part of the attrition undoubtedly could be attributed to the growth of more commercial, less self-consciously 'movement oriented' weeklies appealing to the Mole's youthful constituency. These include an expanded Boston After Dark, covering political events as well as entertainment, and The Phoenix, an eclectic weekly published by 'youth marketing' experts whose other interests include radio station WBCN-FM and the Boston Tea Party, both of which specialize in rock music.” By 1972, none of these media outlets were using the language of the “2nd American Revolution anymore,” and both of the two reigning alternative weeklies—The Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper—had inched further and further away from the underground as their circulation grew. “The dailies are getting more like us and we're getting more like the dailies,” The Real Paper news editor Joe Klein said in 1974.

The exact chronology and details of Boston's alternative weekly history is complex and serpentine, but in broad strokes it goes like this:

*1965 - A supplement to the Harvard Business School newspaper entitled Boston After Dark begins publication covering arts listings.

*1966 - Boston After Dark (B.A.D) breaks free from the Harvard paper, becoming its own independent publication.

*1969 - Modeled after The Village Voice, The Cambridge Phoenix begins incorporating both arts listings and news coverage.

*1970 - Boston After Dark follows The Phoenix's lead and begins to cover news as well. Both compete to be the voice of the counterculture in Boston.

*1972 - Steven Mindich, owner of Boston After Dark, buys The Cambridge Phoenix and combines the papers calling it: The Boston Phoenix. Boston Tea Party and WBCN owner Ray Riepen partners with Mindich. One of the paper’s innovations is to offer free personal classified ads and to sell copies on the street, a successful sales method gleaned from Avatar.

*1972 - The staff of the Cambridge Phoenix form a new paper called The Real Paper, in direct competition with The Boston Phoenix.

*1981 - The Real Paper ceases publication.

*2013 - The Boston Phoenix ceases publication.

“To start with, you must understand that they were never, ever, underground newspapers,” The Boston Globe reported in a 1974 piece headlined “The Alternative Press Goes Straight.” “The real underground papers were The Old Mole and Avatar.” A writer for The Real Paper told the Globe that it was naïve to believe that any of the city's current alternative newspapers were started without the expressed goal of making money. “There was no mission,” he said. “Let's face it,” a Phoenix staffer confessed, “when you're billing over a million dollars in advertising a year there's nothing underground about you.” Four years earlier, you might get called a 'commie' for merely carrying an issue down the street, now everyone from construction workers to college professors could be spotted reading an alternative weekly on the subway. Even as direct descendants of Avatar, it would be completely outrageous to imagine any of the Boston alt-weeklies ceding any page real estate to a cult of personality like Mel Lyman by the mid-seventies. But the differences were more subtle than that; for example, Avatar would publish pieces critical of The Bosstown Sound and still run ads for shows featuring Bosstown Sound bands. But with the budgets of these surviving alt-weeklies being primarily supported by advertising from the music industry, there were certain topics that, by 1974, considered off-limits. “Nobody at the Phoenix or The Real Paper is about to write the definitive payola piece,” an anonymous staffer told The Globe, “because, if it was written, neither nor The Phoenix nor The Real Paper would publish it.” Even as late as 1972, it was considered scandalous when Fusion Magazine published Paul Mills's expose on the financial goals of counterculture giant Rolling Stone Magazine. Just two years later, that same piece would've been met with a resounding, “Yeah, so what?”

“It might just be that there's no need for this type of thing anymore,” Cambridge Phoenix editor Harper Barnes conjectured about the underground moving into the role of the middle class as the youth culture moved into their thirties during the 1970's, “You can't keep trading in on the atmosphere of the the late 1960's.”

“The underground press was the place where each new movement could declare itself without having its beliefs strained through a mainstream filter” Abe Peck wrote in 1990 in his introduction to Voices from the Underground. But just a few years removed from the late sixties, through a shift in values and the growing need to support these endeavors with serious quantities of money, the same underground players would need to either depend on, or in some cases become, a mainstream filter of their own ideas. In this way, for all of its wild missteps, controversies, and reckless in-fighting, Avatar can still be seen as the one Boston underground publication that took advantage of the era's unique circumstances to its fullest potential; the one thing the paper lacked was certainly a filter. As Liberation News Service's Ray Mungo put it, “Avatar had always been the best and most truthful of the underground newspapers.”

Ray Riepen claims that when he got involved in the newspaper business by buying into The Phoenix, the Boston press turned against him, depicting him as a crass puppet master of the youth culture. This 1971 Boston Globe illustration literally illustrates this relationship between counterculture and commerce with Riepen shown holding the strings leading down to rock stars performing on a stage:

The sources of progress often fade quickly in the memory of youth culture. Avatar editor Wayne Hansen, after leaving the Fort Hill Community in the 1979, found himself unexpectedly living with some twenty-something roommates in Cambridge, MA. “They said, 'What was the big deal about the sixties anyways? Nothing really changed.' I said, 'Well, here we are there's two girls and two guys living in an apartment here together. Do you know that was illegal in the sixties?'” The risks were real, the rules were staunchly followed, Hansen recalls. “You know, so, we did have a revolution of sorts and it just...” he pauses trying to figure it out. “I don't know if it's still is still out there.”

When The Boston Phoenix finally closed up shop in 2013, it came as a shock to many. For those who looked at the long-view, this had been a long time coming. From Reuters’ “The long, slow decline of alt-weeklies” article published in 2013:

The alt-weekly collapse came in spurts over the last decade, as a market shift destroyed whole advertising sectors. Craigslist destroyed the classifieds — housing, for sale, services (sex and otherwise), et al. — and the lucrative personals and matches ads fled for the Web, too. Depending on the paper, classifieds had amounted to anywhere between 20 percent to 50 percent of revenues. Now, that money is mostly gone.

Mostly gone, too, is record-company advertising. Before that business was disrupted, the labels would give record stores — remember them? — big bags of “co-op” money to advertise the new releases, and even reissues! Video stores — remember them? — were big advertisers, too. Amazon has helped to clean out whole categories of retailing that once advertised in alt-weeklies, such as electronics, books, music and cameras. Big-box stores have displaced many of the indie retailers that long provided advertising backbone. And while Hollywood still places ads, it’s nothing compared to the heyday. To give you a sense of how precipitous the drop, the smallest edition Washington City Paper printed in 2006 contained 112 pages, with 128-pagers and 136-pagers being the most common. In 2012, the page counts ordinarily ranged between 56 and 72.

Today, the last alt-weekly standing in Boston is the DIG, founded in 1999. DIG Editor Chris Faraone told the Columbia School of Journalism in 2013, that he “couldn’t be prouder to be one of the last writers to hold down the long tradition of badass reporting at the Phoenix.”

All of the publications mentioned here in this brief history were, indeed, a beacon of “badass reporting.” When reporting is now geared towards “what’s going to get the most clicks” and, in turn, preserve your employment as a journalist, are we really getting the most important coverage, whether it be local or national? That’s a question worth pondering, especially in light of all the in-fighting, obscenity charges, COINTELPRO tampering, and pure madness that got us here to the present day.

Or, to slightly alter a sentiment expressed by a piece of FBI propaganda mentioned earlier in this piece, “The alt-weekly seems dead. Long live, the alt-weekly.”

Get the book at AstralWeeks.net