#Radical Dame

[ladiesandgems]

it’s me, your favorite little drag doll, Radical Dame! follow me on Insta @ radicaldames ✨

[redlyriumidol]

THEDAS; a fanmix collection for the settings of dragon age: the veilguard. listen on spotify: TEVINTER / ANTIVA / ANDERFELS / RIVAIN TEVINTER / opulent, magnificent, but creepy, sinister... corrupt city of darkness and hedonism. immense gothic cathedrals of dark stone tower above the downtrodden masses that scurry beneath. so much history, so much culture, but the blood will never wash out. ANTIVA / italian, with hints of spain. neighbours sit around in the streets to play guitars or lutes and sing and clap together. beautiful twisting spires, refinement, but there's a seedy underbelly, the stink of leather and the risk of murder- the people are joyful nevertheless- wine, food, song flows from every open window. ANDERFELS / vast, open, nothingness. a feeling of pervasive doom, a searching for some sign of the maker in the unforgiving wastelands under an expanse of empty sky. grim soldiers clad in grey march across the dusty landscape, the king has long abandoned his people who must fend for themselves against the constant threat of darkspawn. RIVAIN / their lives are intertwined with the sea. fishing nets, the smell of salt. pirates and sailors come and go, drinking spiced rum at the taverns. and there's an old magic there which sits on the skin, it's as natural to them as breathing. respected seeresses with wrinkled, weather-beaten faces ply their trade under the smoke of burning herbs and cured fish. women sell branches of rosemary on street corners. hints of spanish romani culture and music, north african and al-andalus.

[letterful]

Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, life, the exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, fever, disease, decadence, the maladie de siècle, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself. It is Shelley's dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance of eternity. It is the confused teeming fullness and richness of life, Fülle des Lebens, inexhaustible multiplicity, turbulence, violence, conflict, chaos, but also it is peace, oneness with the great `I Am', harmony with the natural order, the music of the spheres, dissolution in the eternal all-containing spirit. It is the strange, the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the irrational, the unutterable.

Also it is the familiar, the sense of one's unique tradition, joy in the smiling aspect of everyday nature, and the accustomed sights and sounds of contented, simple, rural folk — the sane and happy wisdom of rosy-checked sons of the soil. It is the ancient, the historic, it is Gothic cathedrals, mists of antiquity, ancient roots and the old order with its unanalysable qualities, its profound but inexpressible loyalties, the impalpable, the imponderable.

Also it is the pursuit of novelty, revolutionary change, concern with the fleeting present, desire to live in the moment, rejection of knowledge, past and future, the pastoral idyll of happy innocence, joy in the passing instant, a sense of timelessness. It is nostalgia, it is reverie, it is intoxicating dreams, it is sweet melancholy and bitter melancholy, solitude, the sufferings of exile, the sense of alienation, roaming in remote places, especially the East, and in remote times, especially the Middle Ages.

But also it is happy co-operation in a common creative effort, the sense of forming part of a Church, a class, a party, a tradition, a great and all-containing symmetrical hierarchy, knights and retainers, the ranks of the Church, organic social ties, mystic unity, one faith, one land, one blood, `la terre et les morts', as Barrès said, the great society of the dead and the living and the yet unborn. It is the Toryism of Scott and Southey and Wordsworth, and it is the radicalism of Shelley, Büchner and Stendhal. It is Chateaubriand's aesthetic medievalism, and it is Michelet's loathing of the Middle Ages. It is Carlyle's worship of authority, and Hugo's hatred of authority. It is extreme nature mysticism, and extreme anti-naturalist aestheticism. It is energy, force, will, youth, life, étalage du moi; it is also self-torture, self-annihilation, suicide. It is the primitive, the unsophisticated, the bosom of nature, green fields, cow-bells, murmuring brooks, the infinite blue sky.

No less, however, it is also dandyism, the desire to dress up, red waistcoats, green wigs, blue hair, which the followers of people like Gérard de Nerval wore in Paris at a certain period. It is the lobster which Nerval led about on a string in the streets of Paris. It is wild exhibitionism, eccentricity, it is the battle of Ernani, it is ennui, it is taedium vitae, it is the death of Sardanopolis, whether painted by Delacroix, or written about by Berlioz or Byron. It is the convulsion of great empires, wars, slaughter and the crashing of worlds. It is the romantic hero — the rebel, l'homme fatale, the damned soul, the Corsairs, Manfreds, Giaours, Laras, Cains, all the population of Byron's heroic poems. It is Melmoth, it is Jean Sbogar, all the outcasts and Ishmaels as well as the golden-hearted courtesans and the noble-hearted convicts of nineteenth-century fiction. It is drinking out of the human skull, it is Berlioz who said he wanted to climb Vesuvius in order to commune with a kindred soul. It is Satanic revels, cynical irony, diabolical laughter, black heroes, but also Blake's vision of God and his angels, the great Christian society, the eternal order, and `the starry heavens which can scarce express the infinite and eternal of the Christian soul'.

It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is fidelity to the particular, in the paintings of nature for example, and also mysterious tantalising vagueness of outline. It is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art's sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death.

— from Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

This #WorldKeffiyehDay I finally got to visit the last active #GazaSolidarityEncampment in the greater Boston area at my alma mater, Harvard. All the rest have been violently attacked by their administrators who have weaponized the police. Interim President Garber was recently spotted on campus with the ADL’s president Jonathan Greenblatt, and the ADL is basically an anti-Palestinian hate group at this point, so who knows how long until he uses police violence against these bright, brave young people, too.

Visiting the Refaat Alareer Memorial Library felt, quite honestly, like visiting Notre Dame Cathedral or a great museum - except this holy place is a humble monument built with love and reverence in memory of a man of exceptional warmth and grace is far more moving.

The peaceful camp demonstrated a focus on community care, honoring the intersectional nature of our fight for liberation. These students are showing us what is possible when we act out of radical solidarity. They were even making screen-printed shirts and tote bags, one of which I am now a proud owner of!

This is the first time since I learned about Harvard’s investments in Israel that I’ve been a proud alum.

[sgiandubh]

Dear 'Hi, darling' Anon

You are so polite and I am so sorry. But I am not going to publish your ask here. The question has been asked before, in many different ways, which tells me a lot about this fandom's - maybe understandable - impatience. The reason I will not answer it in here is simple: as tempted as I might be, I will not write the damn script.

I am an optimist and I believe these two are good people. It is as simple as that.

However, what I can and will do for you, is to tell you a real French story I will try to sum up as best as possible. You take out of it whatever you want. I am just the narrator, here.

I suppose you are not very familiar with this guy, are you?

His name was François Mitterrand, and from 1981 to 1995 he was the President of the French Republic. A cunning, even ruthless politician, he managed the feat of uniting a French Left in shambles and leading it back to power after more than twenty years on the opposition benches. He truly was the master of all combinations, with an almost diabolic sense of human nature and a cult for secrecy and privacy. So much so, that even in a country like France (where people are rather fond of gossip and backstage gaming, provided all of this is masterfully executed) he was nicknamed both 'The Florentine', in an expected parallel to Machiavelli, by politicos & pundits, and 'Tonton' (Uncle), by all the rest of the nation.

His only weakness was to have led a double life for 30 years.

A scion of a deeply Catholic bourgeois family of vinegar distillers from Jarnac, Mitterrand married the atheist and radical Danielle Gouze in 1944. They met in harsh times, while he was one of the chiefs of the French Résistance, after being an underling of Marshal Pétain's Nazi collaborating puppet regime, based in Vichy. They never divorced, even if the couple became increasingly estranged after the birth of three sons, in rapid succession. She found solace in the arms of a Corsican sports instructor and he, by now a rising star of French politics, went his merry way with probably hundreds of affairs. I bet you couldn't tell, by simply looking at his official portrait, but hey - never judge a book by its cover.

By the autumn of 1965, Mitterrand started his lifelong affair with Anne Pingeot, an Art History student at the fabulous Ecole du Louvre, hailing from a well-heeled family in Clermont-Ferrand. She met him in 1957, while vacationing with her parents in Hossegor, a posh summer resort on the Atlantic coast. Both families stroke up a polite holiday friendship, so when Anne went to study in Paris, Madame Pingeot naturally asked 'François' to keep an eye on her daughter. It took him two years to seduce her, with flowers, daily letters, books, midnight walks, art exhibitions, concerts, lies, stories, restaurants and drama - Frenchmen really, really are unparalleled at this cat and mouse game. They never broke up and if Mitterrand never was exclusively attached to her, she remained the love of his life until his very last day on Earth.

The only real crisis moment in this stars aligned story came in 1973, when Anne really wanted out of the whole charade. She wanted a younger partner, an easier plot and (of course) a child. He relented. Mazarine was born in December 1974, in the deepest possible secrecy, somewhere in Southern France (this is a well-known plot device in any good French Nineteenth century novel, by the way). Her father legally recognized her only in 1984, via a simple notary statement. From 1981 to 1995, the second family shared an apartment in a building reserved for the Elysée Palace top level public servants, on Quai Branly, in Paris. At the same time, Mitterrand kept his usual home on rue de Bièvre, steps away from Notre Dame cathedral, on the Left Bank and made sure he was regularly seen there by the press, the paparazzi and the odd passerby. Anne and Mazarine were always monitored by the President's security detail, of course.

Did people know? Many did and at least as many didn't have a clue. Mitterrand was a master at separating his social life into concentric zones, but even as such, lots of people in his intimate circle had no idea he was a new father to that little girl whose toys they sometimes saw in the trunk of his official car, or who happened to be around at political gatherings. They simply assumed the toys belonged to his grand-daughters, the fugitive appearance was a relative and in general, they knew better than asking questions. Sometimes, he joked in interviews, as in 1986, when he told, on a very relaxed tone, to French TV star journalist Yves Mourousi "a certain little miss of my acquaintance told me I have to be more chébran (slang for also slang branché - trendy) and as you see, I am doing my best". Nobody batted an eyelid. When Mazarine dutifully wrote on her first day at school, sometime around 1983, "President of the French Republic" under the Father's job entry on the yearly data sheet every pupil must fill in, the headmistress thought she was joking and never brought it up again. Some of her school friends were even invited for pajama parties at Souzy-la-Briche, at the time the week-end residence of the French President, and even met Mitterrand. Nobody ever spoke.

But some people did know and could not exactly remain silent. When Françoise Giroud, a legend of French journalism, published, in 1983, at the Mazarine publishing house (!), her roman à clef (novel with a key), Le bon plaisir (As He Saw Fit), heavily alluding to the Mitterrand situation, she was forced by her editor to write a very clear frontpage disclaimer. She also had to tinker a bit with details: it was a boy, not a girl, etc. But when venomous polemist Jean-Edern Hallier, disgruntled that his support efforts were left unrewarded, wrote a tell-all pamphlet  L'Honneur perdu de François Mitterrand (François Mitterrand's Lost Honor), in 1984, the manuscript mysteriously vanished without a trace (the book appeared, however, after Mitterand's death, in 1996).

All was revealed in 1995, by a paparazzi photograph being published by the reliable people's magazine Paris Match, with no intervention of the French Presidency administration to stop it. On its cover, a by now terminally ill with cancer Mitterrand was seen standing with Mazarine in front of the (wonderful) fish restaurant Le Divellec, in Paris, under the caption (I will never forget it): La fille cachée du Président (The President's Hidden Daughter). Body language was very clear (another caption: The tender gesture of a father):

And the good people of France could finally see Anne and Mazarine mourning him, on January 11, 1996, after he let himself die upon finding out that the disease attacked his brain:

First row, near the official family.

As I said, draw your own conclusions, Anon. I am not implying anything and I do not think, by any means, this is a copycat scenario. Two fifi la plume (= scoundrel, but also naïve) B-listers are not a powerful French politician, with a decisive influence on the country's society, media and secret services. The UK or the US are not France, never will be. The Eighties had no Facebook, no Twitter, no Internet and no cell phones, able and willing to turn just about anybody into a paparazzo. Mitterrand's fandom, if you want, was the Socialist Party and its army of ambitious technocrats, not the considerable mess that is the OL circus.

What I am implying, is that no secret, no matter how deeply buried, stays forever in the shadows. Have a little more patience and, damn it, faith.

I rest my case.

PS: Anne Pingeot is a Taurus. Don't mind me. I am just babbling, as usually. ;)

[tomorrowusa]

J.D. Vance is even worse than you think.

[H]is worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy. Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.

Being "evidence-free" is fairly normal for Republicans theses days, but let's continue.

This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law. “You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares. The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears. For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration.

Implicitly, Vance favors the persecution of Native Americans. He's a fan of ethnic cleansing.

Vance apparently alters his views simply to further his ambitions.

Ultimately, whether Vance truly believes what he’s saying is secondary to the public persona he’s chosen to adopt. Politicians are not defined by their inner lives, but the decisions that they make in public — the ones that actually affect law and policy. Those choices are deeply shaped by the constituencies they depend on and the allies they court. And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.

A favorite abbreviation of mine for "national conservative" is Nat-C.

Yes, Vance actually follows a monarchist blogger. What would the signers of the Declaration of Independence think?

Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.

Those pushing the odious Project 2025, which we should think of as „Mein Trumpf“, are big fans of J.D..

Top Trump advisor (and current federal inmate) Steve Bannon told Ward that Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “he is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.” He would be a direct conduit from the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Yarvin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán a role model, straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Viktor Orbán is not somebody any American leader should emulate. Orbán is essentially a goulash Putin.

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as hailing from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” If the GOP under Trump has indeed evolved into an authoritarian party, then Vance hails from its authoritarian wing.

So Vance is from the authoritarian wing of the authoritarian party.

Dictatorships are much easier to prevent than to remove. What are you doing in real life to work for the defeat of the Trump-Vance ticket? If you like democracy, you can't take it for granted.

NOTE: Zack Beauchamp who wrote the highlighted article above at Vox has a related book out this month.

[ekman]

– Je vais vous le dire. Une fois pour toutes. Ce qui nous arrive à nous autres Français descendants de Français, c’est tout à fait dans l’ordre des choses.

– Une baisse de moral, Monsieur le Comte ?

– Tsss tsss. J’irai même plus loin, mon cher : ce qui risque d’arriver à l’humanité entière se justifie pleinement. Les Occidentaux ont complètement perdu le goût de vivre en crucifiant tout ce qui les retenait au sacré. Partout ils exhibent leurs tares et leurs vices. Ils se disent “fiers”. Tristes cloportes, incapables de réagir à la disparition programmée de leur vieille nation. Mais si ça se trouve, le processus va s’accélérer et prendre un chemin bien plus radical que l’asservissement à coups d’impôts, de normes, de flicage et de surinades. Les probabilités d’une guerre étendue à l’Est se confirment chaque jour. Décidément, ces Américains sont d’immondes salopards, et leurs vassaux ne valent pas mieux.

– Ah, vous aussi êtes inquiet de cette situation... Le fils du filleul de mon épouse qui est dans les transmissions, à un niveau que je ne puis divulguer, a prévenu ses parents d’un départ imminent à l’étranger, et pas besoin d’être grand clerc pour savoir de quelle région il parle.

– Vous voyez... Cent dix ans après la plus épouvantable catastrophe de l’histoire de ce continent, les veules crétins qui prétendent nous gouverner sont disposés à remettre le couvert. À cela près que la grosse Bertha d’aujourd’hui, si elle devait cesser de dissuader ces malades mentaux, cracherait des gigatonnes de souffle radioactif sur nos têtes de linottes. Et là, même si nos caves sont profondes, je crains que nous n’ayons le temps de vider tous les cols qui s’y trouvent.

– Ce serait fâcheux, Monsieur le Comte. Quand je pense que Monsieur le Comte votre père était parvenu à les soustraire à la connaissance de l’occupant d’avant... 

– Oh, vous savez, l’occupant d’aujourd’hui prétend ne pas boire d’alcool. Mais ça ne compte plus. Si tout cela doit péter, ils seront caramélisés ou cancérisés de la même façon. L’égalité par l’atome, quelle méchante farce !

– Vous avez raison d’en rire, Monsieur le Comte. De toutes les manières, nous n’aurions pas longtemps à pleurer.

– Je me demande qui portera le chapeau, cette fois. Les Danois, ces socialistes qui se prennent pour des vikings ? Les Polonais, ces abrutis de boutefeux ? Les Estoniens, ces acariatres acariens ? Le flamboyant inverti de l’Élysée, les fesses au chaud au dix-septième sous-sol du palais, en compagnie de son messieurs-dames ?

– Ha ha ! Quelle galerie ! C’est la magie de l’UE, Monsieur le Comte ! – Ce qui me contrarie le plus, c’est que l’atome n’a rien de sélectif. Cela nous condamne à périr avec ces ploucs. Vous rendez-vous compte ? Quel embarras que cette ultime promiscuité !

J.-M. M.

[junkyard-gifs]

have you heard about this ballroom-style production happening in nyc this summer? i'm so intrigued!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6EnK7xuf8_/

Yes! It's been on my radar for a while though I don't think I've posted anything about it yet - at least, I haven't decided on a tag for the production.

Honestly, going by my usual tagging system it should probably be '2024 pac' or '2024 nyc' but. For these guys. I sort of want to name it after its most prominent attribute which is. '2024 ballroom' 😌

Anyway have a promo clip, from their official insta, and some random cast photos out of costume.

(We don't have a lot of costume photos yet but we do know that these Jellicles will be fully humans, not feline: they are people existing within the ballroom cultural milieu of the period and 'jellicle cats' is just the pride name they use for themselves and each other. So if you strongly prefer your cats as cats, this might not be the show for you—but it's certainly a show that speaks to somebody else!)

(Also I'm just really enjoying the flurry of excitement from former Jellicles in comments on this production's posts.)

Dudney Joseph: Munkustrap (Emcee) (he/him).

Dava Huesca: Rumpelteazer (she/her)

Jonathan Burke: Mungojerrie (he/him)

Andre Deshields: Deuteronomy

Sydney Harcourt: Rum Tum Tugger

Baby: Victoria

Choreographers Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles. (Obvs we're not going with Dame Gilly's choreo here.)

"A radical reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic musical based on T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Inspired by the Ballroom culture that roared out of New York City over 50 years ago and still rages around the world. Staged as a spectacularly immersive competition by Zhailon Levingston (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Chicken & Biscuits) and PAC NYC Artistic Director Bill Rauch (All the Way), with all-new Ballroom and club beats, runway-ready choreography, and an edgy eleganza makeover that moves the action from junkyard to catwalk.  Come one, come all, and celebrate the joyous transformation of self at the heart of Cats and Ballroom culture itself." (X)

[cer-rata]

Coffee and Tea

Lois: So. In-laws.

Talia: In-laws.

Lois: Don't expect us to start hanging out and gossiping.

Talia: Not your thing? Here I thought you ran a gossip rag.

Lois: Considering you run the most inept spy organization on earth, bad intel doesn't surprise me.

Talia: Funny, I'm fairly certain I could have figured out who your husband really was without resorting to throwing myself out of a window.

Lois:

Lois: Why do you know about that.

Talia: He tells everyone that story, Bruce thinks it's hilarious.

Lois, rubbing her eyes: I'm going to kill him.

Talia: If you require a methodology--

Lois: Don't--

Talia: I'm joking! I'm joking.

Lois: ...You know, Damian really does sound like you. Especially when you're both being unhinged.

Talia: Fortunately, Jonathan sounds like you. Especially when he won't stop talking.

Lois:

Talia:

Lois: Radical idea: what if instead of being catty with each other, we use this opportunity to become more effective nuisances to the men in our lives?

Talia: I'd like that. Do you wish to still be able to look Bruce in the eye afterwards? Because this conversation can go in two wildly different directions, depending.

Lois: If I can look him in the eye and he can tell that I know something, I think that's a bonus

Talia: Oh I can absolutely help you reach that goal.

Minutes later and several blocks away...

Damian: Well? How's it going? Are they both still alive? I think Mother has my bug jammed, I can't hear anything.

Jon, wincing: ...Uh. They're actually getting along better than I expected. It's...so great. So great. Great and normal and fine and legal.

Damian: ...Why are you talking like that?

Jon: I know things now.

Jon: Terrible, terrible things.

Damian: What--

Jon: Your folks are nasty.

Damian, closing his eyes and shaking his head: ...I'm aware. But you do live in a bit of a glass barn there, farmboy.

Jon: What? No I--

Damian: Do I really need to bring up the chain harness with your family crest on it?

Jon:

Jon: I should have never told you about that.

Damian: I mean, it did lead to a pretty interesting evening--

Jon: Dame!!!

[actualmermaid]

Dame Julian of Norwich: patron saint of operational security, goths, hackers, and cat people.

Julian has a little bit of a "cottagecore" image among her devotees, but like a lot of Christian saints, her story is a lot darker and more radical than people tend to realize, which also makes it more interesting and beautiful.

Julian of Norwich left almost no details about her life beyond what can be gleaned from her writings and her social context. When she was about six years old, the Black Death tore through England. Julian survived, but we do not know how the plague might have affected her or her family. When she was thirty, she prayed to receive a physical illness so that she could share in the suffering of Christ. She received her illness, and with it, a series of visions. These visions were radical and potentially dangerous. English society was wracked with plague outbreaks, economic upheaval, popular revolts, and heresy trials. In her vision accounts, Julian is careful to say that she obeys the Church and does not understand everything she is seeing--especially the divine reassurance that all would eventually work out, and no one would be permanently condemned to Hell.

After her visions, Julian became an anchoress. An anchoress was a special kind of solitary nun who was permanently walled up in a small cell attached to a parish church. The enclosure ritual was basically a funeral, and once she was enclosed, the anchoress became "dead to the world" but alive in Christ. She would spend her days digging her own grave into the floor of her cell, and she would eventually be buried there.

Anchoresses were, however, beloved and active members of their communities. They had windows through which they could speak to visitors and participate in church life. Some anchorites were men, but the majority were women. They served as spiritual advisors and heard many secrets. Julian wrote (or dictated) in Middle English, not Latin. Her writings were eventually smuggled out of England to the Low Countries, where they survived the Reformation and were preserved by other communities of religious women. They fell into obscurity until they were rediscovered in the 1930s, and since then, Julian has exploded in popularity as a patron saint of "interesting times." During COVID lockdowns, many people turned to her revelations for reassurance that "alle shalle be wele."

Popular mythology says that she had a cat for company, but as far as I can tell, this isn't historically-attested. Still, it's nice to think that she may have had one.

[bossmodeplus]

I think it's super interesting how 'The Star' Marceline is a direct parallel to the episode 'Henchman' as well as 'Stakes.' From the purple wardrobe to the fearsome presentation of some of her powers. Henchman goes from a fakeout where she makes a meal of a guy (Eberhart, who can also be seen in the black tie party in Fionna and Cake's actual universe). But it's actually his bow because she drinks red. In this newest universe Marceline actually drains and kills Martin. There's another reference she makes to Henchman about how she rips out a guy's throat. But this time she's not talking about it through song....

She's a radical dame who likes to play games murder as a little treat.

[apenitentialprayer]

detail of an image of Guillaume de Machaut, from a 14th century manuscript. Notice the musical notation. (x)

In the 13th century, music underwent a radical revolution, both in theory and in practice. A new musical notation system made it possible for the first time to indicate the precise duration of sounds. This was the result of efforts begun in the Carolingian period to forge tools that would enable composers to notate their music with increasing precision. Music manuscripts from the 9th and 10th centuries indicate only the articulation and ornamentation of the melody, since a system for analyzing and notating intervals was not developed until the early 11th century. In the late 13th century, musicians finally succeeded in devising a notation that also indicated every possible note-length. When these new models of notation were proposed, they began to radically alter our relationship with time. Music, a phenomenon that could previously be properly grasped only through action, became an object of contemplation. Its unfolding in time could be perceived as a mathematical or geometrical object, independent of its manifestation in sound. This "freezing" of sound made it possible to scrutinize and structure the deployment of the sound material, creating a temporal object outside of time. Musicians embraced this concept eagerly, and toward the middle of the 14th century an even more complex and sophisticated movement, later known as the Ars Subtilior, began to explore the temporal combinations that notation permitted to their furthest extreme. A far-reaching transformation took place. The mastery of numbers in the sphere of time gave men the impression that they had become something greater than mere cogs in a greater cosmic order. Thanks to the mathematical mastery of durations, music had become geometry of time. With this new ability to conceive music outside of time, musicians began to regard themselves as creators, building structures that did not exist before their intervention in the sound material. This is probably why the 14th century gave rise to the gradual emergence of named composers.

Marcel Pérès (Machaut: Messe de Nostre Dame)

[rebirth-eliphas]

All About Baby Doll

Baby Doll was formed in 1999, by Mirano Midorikawa. (I am absolutely obessed with this woman. She’s insane.)  Baby Doll had a store in harajuku that was popular with punk people! The brand’s style is very glamorous, sexy and rebellious. It’s common to see Baby Doll’s pieces in street snaps.

Baby Doll’s website

All of the information I have on this brand comes from their website, so here is Baby Doll’s concept according to their website, “based on the concept of "avant-garde classical/opera that can be enjoyed casually and formally," we have created a fusion of "formal fashion" that makes women shine at their most beautiful and beautiful "opera/classical" that touches the heart in a luxurious space. , so that you can enjoy the intermission time, bewitching hostesses will be placed at the seats, and you can enjoy conversation with them while drinking alcohol.”

Baby Doll’s site also includes a biography of the owner and one for her apprentice. Here is the bio of Mirano Midorikawa, the owner, designer and founder of Baby Doll,

“Born on January 15th, Born on the same planet as Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr., and the mysterious great revolutionary. With the birth of Baby Doll, she appeared like a comet and now provides advice on Japan's first unique corsets and counseling on gothic, fetish, and gorgeous fashion.

Her popular corset shows are held on a guerrilla basis at events such as Kawasaki Club Citta and Gothic Lolita Bible. Her bewitching and oriental BLK beauty visuals are sure to please! Excellent!” 

Here is the biography of Midorikawa’s apprentice, her name is Asami Miyazawa.

　”Born on October 10, After graduating from lolita fashion, she discovered a fashion style that was more her own, radical, and more typical of Asami.

A good advisor for Bith, Lolita mix style, and Goth mix style. She also has a dark side, and sometimes DJs at goth events in Tokyo depending on her mood.”

Photo from Baby Doll’s website

The brand collaborated with the illustrator Trevor Brown and cartoonist Dame Darcy in the early 2000s. There are photos from the Dame Darcy collaboration but, sadly, the photos from the collaboration with Trevor Brown are lost.

Baby Doll x Dame Darcy

That’s all the information I have on this brand! My new dream job is to work for Mirano Midorikawa, I love her. If I got anything wrong please tell me!  Like I said before I got all my info on this brand from their site which you can find here, https://web.archive.org/web/20041213010104/http://earth.endless.ne.jp/users/idea/babydoll/bd-menu.html 

[invisibleicewands]

Michael Sheen is portraying Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan - the man who spearheaded the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) - in the National Theatre's latest play, aptly named Nye.

Written by Tim Price, the production, according to the National Theatre, takes the audience on a "surreal and spectacular journey through the life and legacy of the man who transformed Britain's welfare state".

But, as the Welshman tells ITV News, the timeliness of the show's release has taken on extra importance given the modern-day pressures felt by the NHS and, what he feels, is the need for radical change.

Sheen said: "I think the NHS has to be reimagined I suppose in many ways.

"The kind of audacity of Bevan's vision and the drive and the determination to bring those fundamental beliefs about: you shouldn't be denied basic healthcare because of your lack of means."

He added: "We really don't want it to go back to the way it was.

"We talk about people having surgery without anaesthetic because they couldn't afford it, I mean just awful, awful stories and we cannot let things go back to that."

Audiences can enjoy performances of the play at the National Theatre, in London, up until Saturday May 11, before it moves to the Wales Millennium Centre, in Cardiff, for several weeks.

And, in a quirk organisers hope will entice greater viewing interest, the production is also available to watch in selected cinemas.

Dame Helen Mirren starred in the 2009 production of Phedre, which was then the first play to be broadcast in cinemas across the UK.

She explained to ITV News the importance of bringing such shows to the big screen, enabling future generations to watch what she hailed as "incredible performances".

"Having spent a lot of my career in theatre, having seen incredible performances you know witnessed them on stage, acted with the person or sitting in the audience and thinking future generations will never know how brilliant this performance was, was always very heartbreaking for me.

"Of course, theatre and film are two completely different disciplines and it's a strange marrying of the two, but at least to save great performances, great plays, great productions for future generations is one very important element."

Asked about the play's importance in highlighting work done by the NHS, Sheen recounted how an early performance demonstrated a real-life example of the healthcare provided by staff.

He said: "Funnily enough on one of the earlier performances someone, unfortunately, got taken quite ill in the theatre and it was towards the end of the play and we had to bring the lights up and everything and stop the play. 

"And someone said 'Is there a doctor in the house?' and there was about fifty of them!

"So, yes, it's well attended anyway. And I meet people outside of the stage door you know saying 'I've been working in the NHS for thirty years or more' and they're so moved by the production and they just want to say 'thank you for doing it'.

"But I mean it's just an opportunity to say 'thank you' to them for their service."

[littlefankingdom]

Playing Assassin's Creed Unity as a French with a bachelor degree in history and a passion for revolutions wasn't that much of a good idea...

Like, the radical revolutionaries are with the Templars? Yeah, no, they were very against religions, especially catholicism because of its connection to the French monarchy (the crown and the Church had a pact to maintain each other's power). They literally decapitated statues of saints on churches, like Notre-Dame (the heads we have now are new heads because we lost them for centuries). They hated catholicism, they would not have been with the Templars.

And that's only one of the issues I have. But at least, it seems we have Alexandre Dumas' father, the General Dumas, which is nice. (I think it's him, they didn't present him yet, but it could another black generals they had at the time)

[nevermoretoleave]

dead, and dying, and dead again. — on doru donavich.

12.3.21, silas denver melvin / dead air, chvrches / save a prayer, duran duran / icarus, the crane wives / murder song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1), aurora / the lion in winter / space dog, alan shapiro / baldur's gate 3 / @ inkskinned / personal inventory: fearless (temporis fila), kaveh akbar / all the king's horses, karmina / decode, paramore / sunlit lovers, m. j. pearl / a life worthy of our breath, ocean vuong / @ roach-works / is it okay to say this?, trista masteer / courtney love prays to oregon, clementine von radics / fallen debris from the burnt out roof structure sits near the high altar inside notre dame cathedral in paris, christophe morin / @ rbhvleo / rapture, m. j. pearl