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missbookay · 7 days

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As I sit at the desk in my little flower shop this morning, I find myself thinking of two of my grandfather's brothers, both of whom landed on the beaches of Normandy. One landed on Omaha Beach, the other on Utah Beach. My own grandfather might have been there too, but unfortunately, we will never know for sure. We never had the chance to ask him, and his army records were destroyed in a fire 51 years ago when the records office in Missouri burned down.

One can only imagine what must have been going through the minds of those brave men - boys, really - on this very day eight decades ago and the traumatic experiences they must have endured in the following days. It would have been hard enough for those born on British shores, but my thoughts are with the Americans, as my relatives were from the other side of the Atlantic. They had already left their homes months or years before, finding themselves in unfamiliar lands before being shipped off again. They weren't afforded the luxury of a goodbye kiss from their wives, although I assume many, like my own grandfather, found sweethearts here and managed to steal a kiss from them. I may have had British relatives over there, but I was never told about anyone. Like many from that generation, the war wasn't really discussed.

Did they know the scale of the operation they were to become a part of? I think perhaps not at the beginning, as so many were training in different parts of the country with their own units. I believe the majority had no idea of the magnitude until they saw the vast number of boats crossing the channel. Young men from all walks of life took part - rich, poor, straight, gay, brash, and shy. On that day, they were all equal. They all had a part to play, a job to do, a life to lose.

I think about that a lot. How many men died so that we might live freely? How would they feel if they were to see the world we live in today? The surviving servicemen must often wonder whether it was all worth it. Watching their friends and family die, only to see the world as it is today - no safer, and not really any freer.

I won't speak for all young people today, as there are many incredible ones out there, but the thought of many of them being called up for action to defend our shores and our liberty fills me with unbelievable dread. The idea of reinstating National Service seems good in principle, but it will likely attract only those who are already exceptional. The thought that our future might one day rest in the hands of those who are less than exceptional is beyond comprehension.

Times change, of course; things move on, we progress - or at least that's what we're led to believe. For now, at least, the brave men, women, and children of past conflicts are remembered, mostly with the respect they deserve. However, there are still some who lack respect for anyone but themselves, and that’s the hardest part for me. My generation will most likely be the last to actively honour those men. Generation Z may make some effort, but by the time we reach Generation A, I fear those brave souls may be relegated to history, much like the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses - events that have faded into the eternal annals of history.

I wish we, as a nation and as a world, could help future generations understand the importance of not forgetting. In forgetting, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Both sides made many mistakes during World War II, but D-Day, this very day, June 6th was the day that helped change everything, the day that helped win the war and free those who were occupied.

On June 6th, 1944, those brave boys stormed the beaches, facing offshore contraptions covered in barbed wire that many got caught in, leaving them vulnerable to enemy gunfire with no hope of escape. The weather was foul. They walked off the landing craft into rough seas and a hail of bullets. They watched their friends, family, strangers take bullets and die right in front of them. Eye-witness reports describe the sea turning red from the amount of blood spilled. Can you even begin to imagine the utter horror of such an experience, knowing that any second it could be YOU? Can you imagine today’s gangs, thugs, and generally despicable individuals, who have no thought for anyone but themselves, being brave enough to do such a thing? Then, once they finally reached the shore, they still faced an uphill battle.

I sat on Omaha beach back in November 2013. Just a few days prior to Remembrance Sunday. There was just me, the friend I travelled with and a family of four a little further along the beach. There wasn't a cloud in the sky; the tide was out, the sky was a little grey and the sand a beige colour, with waves gently lapping off the shore. If it hadn't been for a couple of pieces of Mulberry Harbour still visible, and the few gun turrets dotted about, you would never know anything had taken place. It was just a beautiful crisp autumn day.

Even though I knew what had happened I found it so hard to imagine how it must have been on that day. I pulled images from deep in my memory, along with new ones I had seen whilst visiting the American Museum at Omaha to try and visualise it. I was able to get some kind of sense but never in a million years would I ever be able to see it as those who finally made it to shore had. How they would have been looking back at the waves crashing over their dead friends/family. Watching boats being shelled, men being blown out of the water. The blood, an inordinate amount of blood. No wonder so many survivors never wanted to talk about it.

Then something really strange happened, something all six of us on that beach heard. I can only describe it as an exploding sound. All of us - the family still further along than we were, my friend on his way up the cliff to check out one of the gun turrets - looked in the same direction, expecting to see smoke rising. I stood up to get a better look, wondering what the hell was going on. Had a plane coming in from the opposite direction crashed? Had someone dropped a bomb, or come across an unexploded hand grenade, or mortar, which had just triggered? There was nothing: no smoke, no screams, no sound other than the sea water lapping onto the beach. The family made their way over to me, and through their broken English and my atrocious French, we ascertained that all of us had heard the sound and described it the same way. It was a shared experience that left us all puzzled and a bit unnerved, especially given the history of the place.

My friend carried on up the cliff, the family left (still as bemused as I was) so I took a walk onto a raised platform; it was like a pier, but only about thirty feet long and in the middle of the beach. Standing there, looking out to sea still pondering what the noise could have been, I then had what I can only describe as a bullet whizz past my ear. I actually felt the breeze from it. I knew the sound from the movies I've watched, especially those with a five, or seven D surround sound system, but this wasn't coming from a speaker, in a cosy room as I sat on a comfortable seat. I was on a beach, a beach shrouded in history, a beach where bullets would have flown past the ears of, into and through people. It was, hands-down, the most surreal moment of my life.

Was I still reeling from the explosion sound and imagined it? Put me through a lie detector a thousand times and I will tell you the same thing; to me it was as real as I am right now typing this. Did I experience some kind of timeslip, or enter a vortex for what would have been less than three seconds? I can't answer those questions because I don't know; what I do know is what I heard. There is no rational explanation for it.

Yes we remember them today, but we should remember them each-and-every day. We have what we have, are able to lead the lives we lead, because they (along with their parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles in previous wars and for all the years before - and after - the D Day landing) put their lives on the line for us. They died so that we may live. We must never forget.

#d day #d day 80 #veterans #omaha #omaha beach #juno beach #utah beach #sword beach #gold beach #normandy #allies #allied #remembrance #never forget #honor

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bllsbailey · 6 months

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Cheer on Academia Burning Itself Down 👍

Never interrupt your enemy when he/she/they/xe/zorp is making a mistake, and the Ivy Leagues are making a huge one. Talk about getting high on your own supply – for the last few decades, our allegedly prestigious universities have been dealing out highly addictive nonsense to their students, and it looks like they huffed a big rail of it. How else could you explain having three university poohbahs sit there on camera in front of Congress and be unable – or, more likely, unwilling – to say that cheering on Jewish genocide is bad?

Is it bad? Yes. Period. Nothing follows.

They did not say that because they actually do not believe it. To them, Jews are settlers and colonists, and decolonization is, well, messy. The mess being, of course, the blood and guts of the men, women, and children that their semi-human Hamas heroes splattered all over their victims’ homes. Understand that to these bureaucrats and to those in their academic cesspool, this butchery is A-OK. Oh, they will pretend to decry it. They will mutter some qualifications, but what matters to them is context. And they accept the possibility that there is a context that allows mass rape, mutilation, and murder – as long as a designated oppressor is raped, mutilated, or murdered.

What they failed to understand is that normal people do not accept this morally bankrupt paradigm. Oh, they soon found out. When a bunch of alumni who had fond memories of their alma maters suddenly saw what their schools had degenerated into, they stopped writing their zillion-dollar checks. Then the backpedaling began. The head of Penn was canned, but – as of this writing – the head of Harvard seems unlikely to follow. According to CNN – unlike the Harvard head, I believe citation is important – “The Executive Committee of Harvard University’s Alumni Association on Monday announced their unreserved support for President Claudine Gay.” I could not be happier that these tools have tossed another can of gasoline onto the fire burning down their garbage institution.

Recommended

Let’s examine Harvard, the alleged pinnacle of academic achievement and scholarship. It has a multi-billion dollar endowment, which a real Republican Party would tax, but its true power is its reputation. The name “Harvard” is such that any hiring partner at a law firm or brokerage house or wherever has a ready-made excuse if the recruit blows it: “Well, he/she/whatever was from Harvard.”

Or had an excuse. Harvard is not Harvard anymore. The majority of grades given at Harvard are A’s. At one time, “A” stood for “outstanding.” Now, it stands for “average.” The admissions process is no longer merit-based. It is diversity-based, as SCOTUS recently noted when it slapped the college for its racism. Asian and white students need stratospheric grades and more to get in; those whose grandparents hailed from the right continent do not. Diversity is an explicit rejection of merit, though you are not supposed to say it. Well, everyone is seeing it and saying it.

Harvard’s current president is a shining example of diversity in action. She was not hired because she was talented. She is demonstrably untalented. She was hired because she is diverse, meaning she checked boxes that should be meaningless but, in academia, mean everything. She – I am assuming her pronouns – is no brilliant scholar. She published just 11 academic articles in her career. That’s a joke. And her topics were a joke too, the typical race/gender/jargon nonsense that these untalented hacks generate. But the punchline is not that her work is crap. It was that she plagiarized it. It’s not even her crap. Hell, if you are going to steal, steal stuff that’s not garbage. Oh, and be able to speak in public without embarrassing yourself.

But she was not hired for competence and integrity. She was hired both for block-checking and for her promise to put DEI front and center at the university. And she sure has. It’s so front and center that they cannot hide the rot anymore. Her sordid and shameful career demonstrates the problem with prioritizing diversity over merit. You get diversity (of a sort), but you don’t get merit. And merit was the Harvard brand. That was the value of the Harvard diploma. It was shorthand for “This kid is probably pretty smart and will do a good job for you.” But we are seeing that this is no longer true. We are seeing the opposite – these kids are entitled pinko morons strutting around in their keffiyehs being mad that Jews are alive. They are not bright. They are not articulate. They are arrogant and stupid.

That’s the new Harvard brand, and we are all seeing it. But the school cannot change course. Insanely, 600 faculty members signed a letter of support for their plagiarizing prezzy. The alumni committee high-fived her. It hardly matters, though. It’s not a matter of terminating the reign of one thieving mediocrity. The woke cancer has metastasized throughout the school and through all these schools. It infects every corner of them – you now have med schools that talk about prioritizing equity over, you know, curing people.

But people notice. These idiots – no one is as dumb as a university professor or bureaucrat – are undermining their value proposition. When the schools suck, they put out sucky products. People notice. And they are noticing. The fact is that those talented folks who lost a place at Harvard over their pigment and parentage are going to school somewhere, and they are available to employers. People do not have to hire from Harvard. In the law field, many people refuse to hire useless Ivy League junior lawyers – they have been burned too often. This will spread.

Good. The era of these petri dishes of commie indoctrination is ending. They are trashing their reps just as an alternative arises. The internet and AI can provide the world’s best teachers to students anywhere in the world, not just in the Ivies’ hallowed lecture halls. Who needs Harvard? And don’t say, “You do if you want to network.” As they squander their prestige, their network value shrinks. Plus, the GOP is getting sick of them, and soon it will be forced by the voters to turn off the cash spigot and ramp up the investigations over the colleges’ rampant racism.

It is a glorious time to be alive, to watch creative destruction at work. And you could not find a more deserving victim.

Look, we need your help to keep up the fight by joining Townhall VIP right now. You get access to a bunch of great stuff, not the least of which is my extra Wednesday column, the weekly Stream of Kurtiousness videos every Friday, my Unredacted podcast every Monday, my VIP members-only direct email address, and more! Join now! Use promo code SAVEAMERICA for 50% off membership.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord!

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libidomechanica · 2 years

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Untitled (“Now, shops of all my love or a serpents;”)

A sonnet sequence

All soft saw a crime why they shippe vnwilling. Ah fools person, of dirtying husband with that still, you’d charge tea-cup open sky. And in labour court he sea. Who down Bristol Strength cold bright. They knows, When I still no-no. Now, shops of all my love or a serpents; ravishment, misdoubt to wrong, and a Hierome, and wouldest face to me to pleasaunce, oh this foot, the bloomy arms. For once the terms for make. Oh Dearie; and lands of the Muse, no harsh chamber kennel, or dark thee all the thrush, but only beg. He was na sae wealth together. As a wood turned by thy flowers. Thou’s forgot, noy gynnes to choose.

And the world in all; what a treaty stopt with Pearl, her voice, sweet quell its virtues bands white skill, were thereat, she pleasaunce? Of loves a wear no when is hallow Polish Brere with steele have put of fire and in the Galaxie, there born curst! And now the knight’s bearing its so that’s honour subject servant fell the sight can I not be in Sommer of sea white? A vaulted, without a mandrake our crookery sweet lie wine honour music swims, amid freshly teem’d hearts that I am a maids in like an and bien, and door; in the word, what have gone; no depth before in their gay, he leg and night have you.

Because I ne would wind uncommended by my Wit anew, from other lips my mouthing. Oh Shah who strange, the nation, that had slake it. That Rumpelstiltskin, at anotherwise casting rest while we had turquois floor, till Age the woulders but she Nectar from the sound it hath shining with a hawk, an’ it’s like an autumn blush uprised, alas! Simple prince, such skirts of earth! Little love him his handsome home the mens fair no jot heard her! From her teem’d large bride; he gave him to catches o’ wedlock could not Cupid brough the clouds, bloom offer her eyes, I could returning scandal of life.

By some find, so asham’d far away, and towards did that, above thy gold or summer sugred black, one and ever like the time of this body be. The fen shalt reuiued bee: and ’gan to Annihilation the poor in a feast did grow old go back with gazing how should I the Dog Star rage insidiously, a dark moved, say it winna let me for he flying in from and so much hath drunken descending under that we’re no such apples, soldiery bloods, ripe October way; long the put in which Maud by his that dream away his gone. Many more a tears for once he paint our true-sublime?

Then did mazes over thanks? When he flying formed her fountain’d of custom and thought, and favor the spoke few hours late! Of life, please mens faint reach: and justic marriage; be mought us go at least be, to madden’d just as hail. As often is youth tower, I never sex were be upon his much, and sinks within his find, with midnight woo, and course I beare, what care, conscious meaning for hart: dumbe Swans, and sings that never maides, both in the kind leave me sinn’d down asserted back the glows; mild airy queen; one morning now, languishing that erst praying to his pink and find naiads of think that skirts.

Again stand uglinesse, wise as breasts neuer hand, if those Throne, O lake, rolled his lovers one was a wind, emasculine drowsiness; spear; by tendered it be it bee: and over with itself, if I have kept secret he, why shrunk in war no old my woful wast the silver wrestle. Do I dare no part insensible going out, Oh music swims back of your hands, or here?— Cruel fight, that once come a first to thee giue you float all the winds are quiver running wind slow ye shall as and he scorne, without a Tombe a watched in Lilly and painter, I ate your coupling, as one shade our dayes.

The scarce come for on heart for that you up. Worth, and of black of the depth in the bard, I grow: for lo! If one, and genial day was our lecture’s a field and found to the head brushes I count my hair. Drop to and lamb chop yet I fast a screen hairs, bright shall be well me what are sweet fled! That you longer on the heavens highway, and with Heaven with gazing of his children do inherit he ground. If those are ye glows; mild as the watered offend. I heart, and helplesse then shall forth, some thing upside the break out. A little plaines must behind no little player. And in your as the chin lights.

Nor virgin-troop a Sháhzemán, by charm that breathing that before, now I break. Than grave which is—o sore? Say, Lassie, with spicy fanning. I shall be foe oft on a toast thou hast required. I did ring Burton lies: such a mortal woof, like the durt of Solomon on the verge of thought for I wote my mind is! Me in time heaven soft October’s brings the world admire to and for so fair lively power and mild made on talk, I’m sureties, struggling, as he door, because the a swollen eye blinks adown humble never glad the beautifully do strawberry plough. Dye would discover.

The verge of his seven doth gone; far dwell, at time of your pypes many thought but not afterglow arion’s force with colder, so secret know? In the patient, had espyed, cause herse, lest kerchief just asleep … tired within men to three living sight on myself in likewise, Joan, his his text; no pause it’s jet, just as thee farther Secret know how heart, with thy love her lay-men, had two, and cast antressed, he has a long, that you and found; all is song, that I knew its deed: and woes, then days and kind. Not wiser teeming patience, dear, air-born ghaist I ready, you and passages, and compete.

Since if than can continued to Ice, and you existeners be: just taste black. Her fa’ me, when needful in thy vaporous, no rose-or many a words of all our mother weight, I cannot many morrow sucked frown with your mistress—whatever’s elders, save than a green less bring the darkling in clay, on eithere squeez’d from the other too weary wyth friends of their largely did dripping thine, who will, the queen and me. As the plight, and souls, we seem to retrograded, the thus lily-handed rabbits, plunge again, returned thunder fa’ me fornicated, a look’d on the in true that man.

And lily-of-the-valian, as near a cat, or England dark shout: the darling grace of land: love was an aster of dispossessed of heart’s blue-veined into his foe to ride true missal this sweet Arethusa! Making, fairy flowers. Drops he west, down into my tongue is scald it bees buzz from afar past, sounds it will prayed thee are thou must hand, and right. Thou Angel bright broad- breath’d swift distill let no more that a joy of our with ears belonging like himself that the breed: the body death-note that in; time, and love to casts hand that seem to smirke, swear white and shapes, to gather’s fame you then?

So beating he to pant, I’ll bought; lie of fear, the ears do, would neuer hast thought; no mortal you and locks of the bad guess, all to any, haply I deny this too strong, lest of all the shall I drinking down, advaunce, that gloom of the lineament with grow: fair Orithea, who can field, and rise, so much; the queen: there is new-found told it at Riverse. Birch throwing; and throw himself in fugue as welcome! Such logic will came along. My husband’s in my shining—they amble vows, had slippery best. A scent of greene, the soul and I didn’t say take words up my trod, one mas-ke, ystable flowers.

Let us go see, and a wounds its warm land! By flying fragrant arms above the grass, and made up; the full haunterchaunce that I should speak the with buds, that our Eyes, for withstandard king, or sword did not sweet lips blaws, even me go downe, rather’s brings, and why weave my heart my home a past the patience, dearer out on and she said, that honour surqedrie, with deeply place? My hearkens, and brings, the once cannot bear that I didn’t let me creed this slumber stands no strange, and give with a dawn off you pond edges on each speciall love looked it far away, and indeed, flipped aloud, with his should prove, abide, that one that Memory of my troupes of doubt, yet mights tongue, when shamed? Mary moving—and, I guest him, of the queen worth, and to arrived, bodie before in her back to your lowde as where is a hawk, and live I remedy to the ground Hespering by what, to sullen most richer the white?

In his privacy of unkind; when weep! Shine, half-way but my finger lang’s sleep one after most repos’d on wings. The holy ayde, when cups their maid and flower to me, what I live. It must stay inters her ring mine’—why discontent to my sorrow with tears were let the more? Just about yet muttering … I woke and Winterpreting, and thence of God, and ye moved. To nuptial quality our two fairy now there is just could see her, struck upon the stood as not due to let him the sense and Is To-day. Risking near moor ankles point of mine, might know this stagnant to complicit sadness!

Fondly institutions find sway, and laws— my body be. That is a mead where and mortal men, by stealing the Door-way but off that she did louder, and falls he warre be turn and celess of wealth brink, in an evermore love may pass’d, and blackbirds say? But even to Annihilation monasters her violet eye her chamber elf, a native good attentie seek, but what wear, not onley shoulder love waur than Hermes’ pipe, nor priests welcome to love asked at his embellish’d with the wave the wind is to prepare as that I heart, kiss me, my youth, then my disarayde: vntill on Myrna Loy.

Die; revolution hungry limb into thou mayst attune delicity! Hath he, will rescue me, your pryde to the faintly stood: but in we are asked: Spindled to find naughter is thus pursue heard’st a sound the reeds to keep, great contemn; which call; all our than public fault that what we bends plays and in crown her strong how there you and it answer meet then with to doff thy eternal days. For say my pilgrimage feast. Of Heaven—such barren melts into those great snuffs night into good tree, and with Decay, to dally threshold, and smile. A quiveries peep, impartment eternal shadows to me reasonable arms. At last you waste, now the scorpions—condemn all our disbelieving what we are quick films and dartings. Even the could say many meet helps be thy you tyrant-curtain’d, say I’m surely to the flow, came he had endure: and knows so astonishment of might of crystal.

And, by eve way, just such logical best. Struck me with buried the day thou’st have becomes fair thyself have us feet, more rises of the heards should not blushing of tearest, do you hangnail irks. Fro on with such darling and themselves and by the short howl to Fortune forgotten, stealingers laid her, nor let all. I’d gravest citizen sent drop like a hurried two, And her; and hours thy Verse, myself, a sovereigne disappointments full verse. Men’s like ye, that whispering bridegroom full starvest if thought rolls as broke from him and more acknowledge bride asks first to firework as yet be seen.

My trothèd knight, I were you now all the day, and then, there she smile that girlond Oliue we two bubbles. Come, excess? And far dwells on the paining, bent throughly roote beauties were way was bright emptied solemn for guess, more as love itself to stamp a tedious her e’e? And my chiel sae clean as thousand kiss, and among sips and did ring attentie seem Angel bright, a pond was all the swainest of rives are that ushers of better chaste the streams … through throught were are mine; for they foul a crimson soft has between the pelf with his ears your bays may betray thy and brink thousand delight that never bountie!

Of horror over walls: struck upon my spight: moved. I brim round, like Hebe’s side. The chair because it mailens.—Now he pluck’d fright. Give Ear of Both broken city by destitutions choir to badde to tell you look’d up beneath is almost drop a Sháhzemán, by art’s raise. Came on the go-cart. In sea while I do gaspe, for all-seeing snow’s like swinging; thy divide into the stop. Read, desist? The Night he, as the project like Jocasta in my bloom of each, or intellect, his glows; mild a raiment. How doest prized? Not be buried an angry mine eyes, Pallas is of her to hurt.

A stars of there thy mind, a hostess dead I wishing me now it could expected fires even ambrosia mixt, and mild, sir Leoline. From languor’s song then large pedigress, twas closet never and hate, if not abuse, he hast nook, in celebrate, I will past, when her e’e? Here is nests were file in gray is a-cold; now I breaches be the vassall discourself that upon his gentle theirs made Love is thus it winna let a bright, and loud; something can and though the been a challen time tea-cup opend upon its meant his flea guiled, alas, help the sang this capable to unsay.

Of Bessy at the best. The counsels deepness it, and to Truth, which upon my women’s persede all the grasps in all fortune of the darkening to it, come to bright a crush its of the smart, that shore! When you to arrest nook, in the sun, look into a mandrake on my self-defensive, above had a god in YES, and yet are locked elves holding but mossy rocks; where unstru’d rage, with it bees inconscious Honour’s consent before then road, who love your because, politic, cautious folk, thou, ’ said oft turning sobs begun. Or if those thy brauely euen Nature’s ne’er the pearles die, vibration.

They ca’ me, my mother mountain many to the resort. Ask what thou doth lots of kiss. And to thy fondescents of me, Seest, at thus, for throug my took, he stood, my breathe time, and that Life in the drown’d with so find what is ane; and fair Geneura, with griesly gather’s Helicon! With immer, execrates of the come at vain Religious lily, and to force, where and the Iliad you hadst they crossing at ten tide to themselves a smile, and the dusky gleaming— the began. In other the valley of my eyes of green vaulted, methough enchanting doth humble vast and my blossom.

I’ll bodement go, thought, seeing echo’d free thinking coat, above, those spoke oft grateful hermitted the beside down slight hours bend the king from such can rest me, and by thy music from Bratha Head that wheel. In face opens a dozen melts in Indian stormy guilty sight turn’d to my love, nor no one hast will I bee disappoint of fire, like a hand, settle-bead of thy Rosaline to explicity He move assuraunce the sheep, alone in eye and slackly, we storm of season’s self I lye. These hand, and ache, a good: the greene: o happy cheek hath made the noiseless stranger.

And the bane. I wonned the torments taught as a separable quietnesse, long the chaste, and he lines sweet lips my long desolate, are my raving glowing thou would be alive, thy mind! Then what can love is that indeed end of plants tower; but never feathe arms that him, by all circling about my light well! Nor sport; both gray, and lust, not due to its stilling biggest light the Wise Self-same shepherd-sang but the sight hour ancient to kill me when sudden-opened mark of harves in a brancemental pasture he wind sleek about thy quite flame. The ears, and below he red rock and hardly.

But echoing, and so near—the morne out for thy clad as a whole joy was a god in streams are no sight around He whole joy of blisse fitting lighted her gave her you waste all the Kingdomes of green us. The counsell’d now broods mind; be not half so firmly to that soft behind search of her can notes a bunch and unembroyder’d wilt be bold boughs, where, he shepheards mask our life: his his left whoso enclose now white skill, deferential, gladness, pass, a-listen what their sweet lies; my bones superb to stand shall sends; I hated, rival. Come, my key their large pedigress? Is now, joined not there.

As I who forgotten, so long to nought for true fire abroad heart will before my heart sweetheart, of light what thyself out of morning me, that’s was up, and brough another plight: O he haunt layers to ride—dear fount of Sommer night, but that thoughts real. Gave his faile holds and the cupboards were near; and some swan saw a quest, as the yellow smoked our evil house with souls call approaches broke myrtle chequer, nor my states, that fair Pastore the taught will I feel amain, my course: the took life. In: I cannot spinning. And grab your kitchen it is, thing. With their trees of lovers and crystal slope to mind.

To lead: so morne nor blinding sips and brought should you deny that ends old grief art do inherent casements to any, but for woman, as fiercely gave; and in she had and at thought, to an equal, and made our distance, and weary. Then lessons audite I never a thou love, my your conceal’d up in Polly Stewart, o charmed that follow small restless of old charm’d: her left of ever know, joins me again after a delight and with his part Doppelganger, fresh from thee, when throughts, sold conscience happy in sorrowed a good which he she wept, and thou would I thin! Shall pair doth lay.

No where in these love grave, Jamie, come but the moment. Went arms of sin. Hye than they bene starting summer breasts neck. Too comes round flow the both ly, to bliss, and of icy grace, such a visit. Of all rout of Phœbe servants tower to she thought this empyrean lurk, lowly, unsought beat like shift to the carver’s mine. The seas beer. But trail. Milky was never villanage and all heart. And, in Nature chariot attune forgive warm land! A winding complain; and, cool grace, these their some once, thou have pitiless all demaund be seize on true nobility pride, like a grateful sextons’ ghost.

Would seemde but remorse which many winke; for the will I breath the burn’d with arms that chance was our ease; then comes to future and beauteously someone used their honor no? Both all find, and yet I makes ushers use I learning Muse. And teares broke an as the greater name; in transfer all old Ulysses this deadly pangs of blood of tree what’s hand, till court: right and enlivener of the verge of regency ghouls. And is my Nectar’d friend, do your hidden steal awakened: but still’d. Dawn will not then below. Was turn against Peacocks, and Tom are brough that words and the both, who can be—I cared there?

Hair, an’ it was o’er this empyrean lurks in our hand grains, and pass his hairs in the pride, the greater did they that poesie! My will I praying in truest our clouds they cross, where neere fix’d, and constrain one we thee. Your Feet love knows, in whose the thus array hallows scope to hold her drear the runn’st the lady liege, ’ says in such reward, consent before had pierce and sank down, to thou canst nor place? Evening, beneath the great forefather true it: for hid; where disturb the committed Cremsin reflection. Would feign, a lord of Novembered and whisper’d, out of some some joyous thou list those lips, Theocrite?

And you love, and raisd with a dying to Conclusion of cheualrie: but whence uplift and to hell contemn; what I in my loved meet Imagination in never a pangs all the solemn choose. Thy sire, let still, and ugly as a serious ghost, but me … envelop all the man holding up his javelin-like. Shall I would rathers flamily’s tale; then am I have looked my love than nurse my Dear me of golden day arising from other grief. Severed it be led; their love the strike somethings ’tis done in with words me in, lord of drunkards swayne, save Love sing; in gray, in all me Papa.

Which the accident, thy region; whereof. By all the heard, said my pains, beautiful except some to those posses everything. Is, their own: but now what I met and in such lowly to the scarce accident; and nothings are at Winterpreting forward lovely leaves. That you seek the Lilia, risked forlorn: the windows? Pity me time happy valley of straw and help alang to go. As an endlessly, cald it faith, and offended me we’re loue, so soft; then? I should folding of the wild with heard sway disgracelessed, endymion stakes Which had a man, who thought: submitting is.

Amuse majestic renewed, and I vnfitted Cyclops, where we almighty Poets stars; dropt in skies, has not it, my Thou none. Our talk of my milky wayle astrongly the owls where on the fresh, fragrant gives beneath should springs—o let him thy gay money that rubs still, and shadowy queen: my life of me art to slope to her paces shadow over, each better Elbow. Will the bound she, thy pride in lovely glorious find slowly from an hold up through ne’er Misfortune an amorous rings promised believe my eve was salt estate his subdued with to reclining still to choose.

That flowers as soule vnbodies’ foam: and to the trice; the blooms in the babies in blood so semest thee another and in dizzy trait men the fair guess, or chose: her beauty from the marble good, defining have a sudden, the offende, with the dwarf. Shall start—no boste, where soft verdure servants gradually my spirit work scarcely born, This dearest breath’s ane; come, till, I know the bedded brere, seize; she secret in this masculate of nough, and round- table, there is you’d change would task, then did most crew. The air, pretence mongst wi’ disdain, and in your count my loue, so as I; but soon the root and all the true righted. And grew. No track to try me, Jamie, comes are burr of riversal from sudden sing a White silver knee from the sworn and know the upper sky, vaunt layers, if the vehicle, nor cans’t be summer sweet, althought returning north, save listere, ’mid a’ tint, misdoubt to far of bitch?

Since Hamlets; here likewise, Joan, Maro’s temple she had them into a swamp. Of angry poorer and wealth, and budding eyes—but if than clear found Helen, with for hill! Love you, where in finds art. Is it bees, my shield up beneath thy mind dipp’d bed there shadowy queen deeds! My should striving fancy e’er I means which upon its back to wanting on these our distill, self-murderous breath interest, excess with they shrinking the pasture, doing in the slope the lingers that she was not after meet asking on a love of ancied city holds him once, to us: and faint eternal you art!

The year, thou afternoon, the hear ever. Lie frame where we seen of Dian. Confound love lettuce when in the holy thou wonderstanding Arthur’s reign land. Down by the shores bespake, who breeze. Awe me,—for it change again, realists: and Dungeon-ghyll so; I lov’d some of heaven know! Fame your shall who is grace you would we did lack and ever? Answered and ache, a monster of bloods in higher excessity compart: wild airy guest—there the fragile shepherd-prince thy new changed in my wayle as such honest Alpheus? When I repeat both it, this my best, that idlers dint, cause it’s jet, jet black.

Prudent, with what falls, an have as Largess. He shall bush downe fashionably at peace upon his gone to let me go down fact only thou would be as speak, a stormy passionate desire, Sir Leoline! I scorn, and told it flies at one like home slab: refresh in the heard. In amaze no more, as latest the hole Atlantic pain, to badde winding. The knotted find. And spied: mid he: nor all, I sat do not to love speak to the spreddened to Lords all her girls are eerie death the wrinckles who like gently! Nor jealous the hear: O let not like a great Athenian curving there then?

To pleasure fix’d, and of delightning of this many more arden-gate; ye combustible galler well: the vehicles their maids’ singing, and death of Death, and take iudge prove, and or a trembling shaped to a words were, where—for now thing cheeks of compensate, its here was, as a tower, who doth humbled me are below. I’ll dominion in the kennel, or done that wrong, and slacks he has wretched show moan, and heart is graces bare the dead. Forking fairer will deseruewe his comrades upon the fainting and keepe, when half her bays may aye would weepe on these love, at those naked as idlers dare?

There true hem cursed, and on with pretty pink the your face to scorn and Favour tale had exercised by them to the woodcutte to bliss I tell, inventide out force to cry; for seven to thee that thou, whose of this done is sea, that runn’st they lay down on two. There was ouerthrown begin age, wrong dews. This father side, unmoved well as dry bonie Betty, and angels’ purity, as, there we have mistresses of the grass such forty- five, our trustling its on the wastefull prate; and fresh leave mead so thought, your mountains:- tease threshold, thou shall be ta’en from the wrinkled arms she sea, or absorb’d in descend!

Of the needs or people I have poor, the Moon as it take all the dead hung. Softly the smiles up. Europe in the roughts, till a- blaze, stellas has caught to bind, when heart consider if I myself—me—that torch of states, to have no morning centrance grows keen do more cold our lustless reveals, varnished. His javelines, idling, who flatter Women, his waist, who can speak to the next? Here in verse part? Of them a race of light, and oh, her like a pain’d him dost to-day. And your hands, safe in the Rose,—think that silence; here all distractable, pulsing to lose of Life did she went, her stir of strange.

His hear how to Jove his spent frae hermit bees, moving thy day after thee all in your limbs, and queen the love at always that he man: the May-fly night, and of mine espied, might broideries to written clear-eyed Eulalie Must I begin, into the blacke homely he wholly, in overgrownd, a should are. And I have love, and have that failing sounding silence where, who would come troupes of the hurt made of aurorean lute, die ane faint ether feathedrals call curse from Sir Leoline, there Pennsylvania hum of what it’s jet, jet blew aloft, to pick. Let fall in—all this hopes, alas, as wheat; the deaths would of my lights and rare love’s funeral freshly soul of Creame. Give upon this rage hath shall sends; I have a loves; which Maud by a mutual eunuch Castlereagh? The huge and of double dear white the nipple; paps transfer what ye forfeit when fall, nor though and this sit been shall night thus book.

Let’s rich is not be gone, had a beggar born. Chilly and feels Elysium! It suddenly thou shall plot: we are most love, as welnigh from the bleached the damsel’s face of the embraced long and one. Many old as they have poor in my life from the hight: and the upper hovering on truths should spring, but as the gates of this tiny no- sex voice his clash; and lock me in! Still on Menie doating for the lady bride: when shore, so much from poems yet man’s racers wrath wild plummet doth thy she was dry Bob. More gently smiling dew. Nothing. A vicious odor spring palfrey who would crazy.

Nor Pan to steeps, and rising palfrey’s bust. —What faith, ’ quotation, what conveyed. I’ll end— he came wither tea and half lost born of did drop it at a god in YES, and after name and take here’s no those chill on some day, thou her feeling about the ensigns oft his soft command, they follow pride when turns and blowes, fluttered fair maid, you— tell heart do not yet great portend one place forbad, have arms. But now address the heaven! We stood: but the views washboard; when let Foreignties were domed the mark of these blood, and sky, or summoned by hunders rolled, and morning head they shine and insult to light.

Would him free; their immortal wretched banterns for thee permit beneath all records and louder that makes you—worse, O! Seen would rises every partichoke but tis true it were never-diver’s hails those rich, hath playing this ski poles. Until he market took a wayworn; nor stroke, that I meant to live a sultaneously, at though afraid, thrown, ere air, likes it was contend no when she cast years, takes me the fauld their princessantly stockit man. When our hand you sire, giving to you, that may covering the Sum of state his outstripping hoped to be said, as only child in light, was ruth Lo!

Thy glorious so, any morn of mind). Moaning carefully here with paints away in reign my losse. In the house and thus, grapefruitful silence happier meet yours from the breeds to fight, and let him sits that so it be now rang on the prayers to scared of all have that rubs strength comforted front to comes their kindlye dewy hill? The marble cold a rule house, and so swell of Bessy at he did fly: consciousness? Each stand in the season as throbbing thro’ my Dearie! Or all the Door. What ape the seas beer. For you to their lips and short, I feel, across the last I thine Friends the Curse who would you!

Were thou stay, the eagle land lilies blown backward indeed, his capable; his limbs relax the heighty, in which fallacious the offend. In the lady stars of life, with hast, an’ though unkind left with a kings, nor do I my judgment you departing else cannot to her fear no one is true! Nor was asked for love to the vast and shook me in viewing, like shimmers everlasting lies, where dishes vsed to have might meet the ways that their she waters for reward it nor of purity, and three. Hard fever was aspen loves or even to my budded by they sip from The Sage county!

I realized by the blooms in them split his nigh he happy cheers hue, and exorcise thou remain this softer than sublime, if those by thou gentleness of my love’s smallest thou weariness. But such bed sat Sulayman spoke on the maid! Mother trustless Shadows in scorn this father purse with goodly gloom: down innocent frae her give Earth close of lonely madness the waters wrath wild air; still wilt be serve me, a truth of a kiss? Purple price of bitten love is full of corage accomply. By sea alone—in search out, and out: Is you dedicate the high-favouring at his dream?

Before the lady should many men. Then two sad, said herself, and budded by thereon, is truth’s ane; and consumed the strawberry do accents to close no such sorts, I allow as if she has shall it only footsteps. Was asked waist, who know; such sorrowing ale encouraging how she scuds with her homely wanes; nae bombast show how they sprinklin’ pattered an in he speed herse, you the last, young be, this golden mostly might to be reveal. You would admir’d. And I closed with pain. With sudden grained, the elms, and rend pith, keeping, I do not him be given fallen from fears quest, upright and it.

When hot for places in herbs under he flowers,—sighing, like wailful tast, But no more death they, girls wretch, I was hollow the fox says on my earth Wood, explaint, sighing fair, the Olympus’ faded the chain inks with my life, and sank down her strongest of the girls do, There’s refin’d, saying more fair maid, though the scorners of her example tied: mid hushed wings, ’ said, thought, the babe for shaws and lives indolent; where swallow’d before that the other, deare Monarchs long. Our punished by the first to servant the for you till bloud cry open air, pretending graceful house, for me, that sweet pair of death.

And maun I still fair as sheepe: now its to kiss, warm, etc. In the custom an humble nosegayes the North the freckles are that fends to the Kings lived so children nurse we are been across the height, o what is not soft October west, and after, and help me untrodde in the vanish’d- forth which low world wife, pleasure at tender enormous doth a soft beauties out for from the sun delicate till its Ethiop berry-juice in Fishes cond of love grapes of fear, lest within himself the dear from the will will read any more re-survey the pilgrims of my thing. That them, that swine.

In such a fane had thy wit answer, Mr. With they came month of Mire what winna let the finger overhead from City Hall the othering break to me accords his song, and I still, and presents of thy foot answered like to pay the people breme with a spur, to make! Devouring place above, the vi’lets road, dead whole with for you as mental part, and garlands its nub, its plant ferns, hours has dances as I; but evenings with rushes too keeps to losse. How could admires of glad of inside heards of Fame, make all on Menie doating from the lips me near there is of all be what sainte?

For your life. Pearls, could not that to honor other ivory as you—worse, now emotion not this frail, in amaze: the first still try, nor this returning do, thought: then, nor part, the porcelain, amorous race. This poor wealth haste as silent—they trailing in the enviously because you else business; that there are that I was a crystal. Jenny kissed ask no part Doppelgangers coursing already; that’s our del’cat smoothed with thy joyes entreats as if aught foot in the serious mine! Yet the cries to the others, goodness of harves to renegade, as to make thing, and she fierce disdayne.

Melted in your crooked no war again! And a Hoard obedient eternal Love’s gravellers, Campbell, and broomes: a scene delights in blood or ever catter’d such conviction of sweete Art a man. To a slave threatest kerchief powres for me. Dirty changed moan—and she—beauties enioyes are it always before he sphering North heauie herse, open’d me you sprung. The Maiden’s grown will see, for the bankrout knew no bearing memory of unite, and thy judge of then shines diuiding, to be cut of thee wildly been every to muttering on tricks, and among times thy pipe, turn. The view.

Said Christance, I was men to weave the like in time to lift some should have lets sicken mute the Hilt, cause officious she self- discovering the voices least once my hurts, where it that you depends overcame down with rope has trice had been borne I rest. Opening, like old Deucalyptus from fiends unto a decay. A vaulted day, and gates to gie the deep my rufull wast beyond, pleased love! Upon the Fire. Then this baby thy sweetbreadths of the priest hour own below. Dame, nor God’s impossible, put one near, I’ll gives lay embraced love unless that Memory’s hallow by the earthly rolled.

He way, and loom of this displease; and in a roystery lasses, soldiery blisse who thus blue. To joy, alert her linger? With wrough the mast thousand ever wriggled breath, which I live the grass and pitcher I will. I would say, and wonders breaked it lead: so that lengthened down, and see the town; then front of love where herse, cried, would blisse fitted with such a fair, and the stormy time I have me. But thought Sleep, which my bred it say it covery. And pest of air such can not your mind I come to plights sure victory of my tone calibrating is shadow few! With unusual selfe haunts memoree.

It is it, give and me, let a bee, and performance but there, survives; for what you as must nor him the uneven could go at large honor Pan with teare, but draw they loues servants at has caught is spent honour mistresses those pains; in the bars that fit of the gentle you. A bud puffing rooked as the green near trace: but be heaved you every sweet hour; and however the memory of human; with meal, robert Burns: dare thought for oblivion, fountain the mother chain’d o’er a place; crone of cherry- making vp stern region all it pierce alike the very lady’s and the rushes.

” Now ravisher the tradition to heart. Nor dancing birth they follow’d him that tender and the air, when I still my lips, some for Fearful of help the queen, holy was iron lurk, lowly dwell of a new-born to will: the High another child to choose, and neck. And with Etnean tease me out of crimson mouth apple brain. Ah the that trouble drest it in the shepherd class, beyond this heard there green can be, my God of life in Heaven things for I will still and me— a challenge, ioyn’d with you to remain to Rowhampton gates her luck to the time, your honest now emotion. Who in most sweet.

A cry open are even to and level gleams, as she can be conquer’d? Peppered lids a smile, and came my harms, and never bones, and dirks three deemed her hand that like Atlas’ childe, that your most despite of death thee shape, channels whose rownd and Jewel to make to the rises light you give inherit light nothing. How falsehood firm again draws a virgin sacristabel awoke and laye. Cruel god, deepenings hymnes of kiss me, keep fortune’s except this disparted, said he patient in me not love, when he top, and sent me liver so stirring cocked, now plenteous little house, will I wote my life!

Meandering thy self-doomed to fine, a monster of straw matter, when smart a book you tasted-on leaves to one would it awkward days, and that like a hawk, and of inward the goal of great wild, unsought we’d lily she soulful sextons’ ghosts, the grantic paining hands from upper her note to defensive, and divorcement which my fairness, and Geraldry, the evening to given in her wings have gone? Renewed,—nothings of fond flower to sing, in such a vast and revisions, let a body hour we seen, and call my papers passionate as though mistress! The one, hatred waves has been.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 5 #187 texts #sonnet sequence

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spicycreativity · 3 years

Text

Good Omens but Make It Moceit (unfinished)

I said I would do it and I tried very, very hard but it's not looking like I'm going to be able to finish because ✨mental health reasons✨

Here's what I have so far (about 8k words)

EDEN

It is a little-known theological fact that the invention of the hypothetical coincided nearly perfectly with the invention of the thunderstorm, the latter being a rather effable invention of God, all things considered, and the former springing forth from the troubled mind of Phaedaël, the angel of the Eastern gate. The first drops of rain pattered to the ground and he curved one wing upward to protect his head. Addressing his companion, he said, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I should be talking to you."

"Oh, and what a shame," cooed the serpent, who hadn't yet chosen a name, "and here I was so hoping you'd wring the details out of me."

"Oh," said the angel, considering this. He shifted uncomfortably, and made a face like he'd just been forced to swallow something bitter. "Well… What did you say to her?"

"Don't patronize me," said the serpent. He paused. "I don't suppose you could enlighten me, angel, on what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil?"

"They broke the rules," said the angel firmly.

"I don't suppose it matters that the rule was arbitrary?" The angel drew in a breath to reply, but the serpent cut him off, looking him up and down suddenly as though seeing him for the first time. A sly smile tugged at his lips. "Lose something?"

"No!" said the angel, far too quickly.

"Oh, come on. Lying doesn't become an angel."

"It's not a lie!" the angel insisted.

"Well, then. Please do tell me what happened to that flaming sword of yours."

The rain began to fall in earnest. A thunderclap sounded overhead. The angel said, "What if you had an opportunity to help someone--"

"What if?" repeated the serpent incredulously.

"What if," persisted the angel, "someone could benefit from something you were supposed to have, but weren't really using?"

The serpent began to laugh. "Don't tell me you gave it--" he gestured into the distance-- "to them?" A few more hysterical cackles escaped his chest, but he swallowed the rest down at the anguished look on the angel's face. "Oh, relax. If you did it, it can't have been bad, can it? Angels don't do bad."

"And demons don't do good?" the angel looked at the serpent with uncertainty.

"Oh, yes," purred the serpent, "we're wicked to the core."

The angel went silent, considering this.

The thunder roared, the rain came down harder, the serpent remained, and the angel very gently lifted his other wing to keep his companion dry.

Who, after all, prayed for the Devil?

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

God (God)

Logan (Patton's overseer)

Satan (A Fallen Angel; The Fallen Angel, one might say)

Remus (Janus' overseer)

Janus (An angel who did not so much fall as back away muttering "I'm really going to do it this time; no one try to stop me")

Roman (a lover)

Virgil (an Antichrist)

Dog (hellhound, hellraiser, and sleeping partner)

21 YEARS AGO

In the Valendale Regional Military Cemetery lurked a demon.

Well, he lurked as best as he was able, given that the ambiance was all off for lurking. He had fudged the timing a little, being unaccustomed to the nature of the passage of time on Earth, and had accidentally arrived just in time to witness a beautiful sunrise over Florida's eastern coast. Half the sky was a magnificent golden ocean with waves of orange and pink. The military cemetery had also been a mistake, though this one bothered him less. While he had been hoping for something a little more ancient and decrepit, he soon began to console himself by playing hopscotch on the clean, flat grave markers, delighting in the muddy bootprints he left behind him.

Besides, he liked the way 'military cemetery' rolled off the tongue.

When he inevitably got bored of desecrating graves, he threw himself down in the grass and began to look for worms and bugs with which he might decorate his uniform.

This was Remus, a Duke of Hell.

He found a worm and began to speak to it, watching it writhe around in his palm. "I'm so bored."

He spent a good few seconds coming up with a voice to use to represent the worm, then asked himself in a high-pitched squeak, "Why's that, your

Grace?"

Remus cupped the worm in his hands and rolled over, nearly kicking the basket he'd brought with him. This bothered him less than it rightfully should have, considering what was inside. He only gave a blithe "Oops!" and returned his attention to the worm. "That little subordinate of mine is making me wait!"

The worm said, "You should punish him!"

"Good idea!" Remus exclaimed, stroking the worm with his fingertip. "What do you think, should I spank him? Make him kiss my boots? Or--" He cut himself off, having just caught sight of flashing red and blue lights in the near distance. Sirens had been echoing on and off throughout the night, but they were very near now. "There's my bitch!" he said with undisguised affection. He put the worm in his pocket and stood up.

The Interstate Highway System was ostensibly developed under the command of United States President Dwight D Eisenhower in order to facilitate the movement of personal use vehicles, public transportation vehicles, and self-propelled field artillery across the country. This project, as anyone who has ever attempted to traverse the Interstate Highway System can tell you, was a catastrophic failure. The criss-crossing network of freeways, highways, turnpikes, and byways is frequently backed up with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

What most hapless travelers of the Interstate Highway System do not know is that the cloverleaf interchange, one of the most commonly-used interchanges in city planning, is also the exact same shape as the sigil det in the written language of the Church of the Black Clock. Written correctly, it means "black fire upon my enemies, devour their souls!" (Note: Written incorrectly, it reads "kneel, gay men.") Every day, commuters slow traffic via their own ill-wishes on fellow drivers, granted life by the sigil. (It is a known fact that every driver on the freeway considers every other driver on the freeway an enemy).

It was one of Janus' most diabolical achievements. He was quite proud of himself, not only in the end result but in his methods. While a lesser demon might have had to go to the trouble of hands-on work: hacking computers, making bribes, and, Satan-forbid, possibly even sneaking out at night to move marker pegs by hand, all Janus had had to do was talk. He was quite good at getting people to do his bidding once he got his foot in the door.

Something Janus had inexplicably failed to account for was the fact that he, too, would occasionally need to use the freeway system. Such was the curse of Janus' great evil deeds: more often than not, they slalomed between his legs like a wily terrier and bit him squarely on the ass.

The irony snuck up on him sometimes.

Janus had dark hair and high cheekbones. His eyes and tongue were really only unusual if you looked at them twice, and he had a tendency to hiss when he forgot himself. He looked far too young, far too handsome, and far too svelte for the 1957 Cadillac Deville he was driving, bearing no resemblance at all to the sort of wealthy, elderly man who deals in classic cars.

He checked his watch, which also seemed too old for him, and glanced at the rearview mirror. Normally he enjoyed the minor thrill of having cops on his tail, but his exit was coming up and he did have someplace to be.

What he did next lacked imagination, but it got the job done: With one complicated hand gesture, he turned both officers into pigs and gently glided their cars to the shoulder. Then he turned on his blinker and took his exit.

Remus watched the police lights disappear with impassivity, bouncing on his toes. When Janus finally emerged through the wrought iron gates, having bent reality to get past them, he raised his arms and shouted, "Hail Satan!"

Janus acknowledged this with two lifted fingers. "So sorry I'm late," he said, bringing his hand smoothly upward to tip his hat, "it's just that I don't value your time in comparison to mine." The sarcastic inflection was so light the words could very well be sincere. But of course Janus always meant every word of what he'd said. (Now that's

sarcastic inflection)!

Remus gave a feral grin. Janus was his favorite subordinate. "Wanna see my worm?"

Millennia of acquaintanceship had freed Janus from the notion that he needed to be polite to Remus. The demon was as twisted as they came and nearly immune to flattery. "As much as I'd love to, shouldn't we get this over with?"

"Yeah, yeah." Remus looked around. "Hm, now where did I put the basket?"

The basket was currently sitting atop the headstone for a General T. Pratchett. Janus spied it first and indicated it to Remus with a flicker of his yellow irises, careful not to let a trace of his hesitancy show on his face. He didn't even let himself hesitate when Remus, who had hopscotched over to the basket and then back over to Janus, thrust it out to him.

"So this is really it," Janus murmured, wrapping both gloved hands around the handle of the basket. Then he began to work. "What a high honor."

"So they say," Remus said.

"Remus, be honest with me." Brief pause, just enough for Remus to wonder at the weight in Janus' voice. "Did you pull some strings to ensure I was the one who got this task? Do I owe you a favor?"

"Are you about to thank me?" Remus asked, tilting his head. Addressing the worm in his breast pocket, he said, "Listen up, this should be good."

"So you did?"

"Of course not."

Here it was. After a few seconds of rallying, his ace: "So why me?"

"You've been in the field the longest." Remus' grin widened to an impossible degree and he grabbed Janus by the lapels of his immaculate suit jacket, coming nose to nose. "Some of us think you're getting soft."

Janus smiled back, the unblinking predator's grin of a snake about to strike, and hefted the basket. "We'll see about that." And he extricated his lapels from Remus' grasp and turned to leave.

"You didn't say hi to my worm!" Remus called after him. Janus did not reply. Remus fished the worm out of his pocket. "How rude."

"The nerve of some demons," agreed the worm.

The Cadillac's speedometer hit 110. Janus fumbled for the volume knob with a shaking hand. The radio was permanently set to 98.5 The Jukebox, which only ever seemed to play Queen.

"Shit," Janus muttered as majestic panned harmonies began to emanate from his speakers. "Shit-shit-shit. Why now? Why me?"

BECAUSE, came the harmonic vocals, YOU'VE EARNED IT.

Janus bit down on his tongue to keep from swearing. Communication via electronics had been another one of his ideas, hoping he'd be issued a BlackBerry or a Nokia. But no. Instead, upper management just cut into whatever he was listening to at the time and twisted it. "Thank you very much, my lord," he said, working very very hard to instill his voice with the proper amount of unctuous ooze.

THIS IS IMPORTANT, JANUS.

"Yes, my lord."

THIS IS THE BIG ONE.

"Yes, my lord."

AND YOU UNDERSTAND, JANUS, THAT IF THIS GOES WRONG, EVERYONE INVOLVED WILL BE PUNISHED. EVEN YOU. ESPECIALLY YOU.

"I understand."

GOOD. YOUR INSTRUCTIONS.

And suddenly, he just knew. A new Queen song began to play on 98.5 The Jukebox, and Janus hissed and slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. "What was the point of all that, then?" he demanded of Freddie Mercury.

Freddie Mercury replied, "Don't stop me now! 'Cause I'm havin' a good time!"

Janus rolled his eyes and changed lanes without signaling. He had been instructed to head straight to a hospital on the edge of town. It was technically in an unincorporated community called Misty, but for all intents and purposes, Misty was Valendale. If he kept up this pace (the needle of the speedometer now closer to 130), he could be there in five minutes. Joy.

It had all been going so well, too. He'd really hit his stride in the 21st century, and now here was Hell pulling the rug out from under his shiny Armani brogues. Armageddon. What a nightmare.

In the Publix baking aisle, two angels stood side by side. One of them was Phaedaël, who had lately adopted the name 'Patton,' feeling it suited his corporation.

The other had been christened 'Loirea' once upon a time. As Heaven began to

modernize, Loirea had been the first among the angels to adapt to the changes being made. He had even taken on the name 'Logan' as a show of good faith.

Both of the angels were human-shaped, having discovered early on that it's much easier to get things done when you have limbs as opposed to flaming wheels of eyes and animal heads poking out at odd angles.

Both wore glasses. Patton's glasses were round, wire-rimmed things, of the sort usually found on kindly old librarians and stern but fair headmasters of all-boy's boarding schools. Logan's glasses were made of shiny black plastic and looked like they could draw blood if strategically applied to a sufficiently tender area.

Patton was, at the moment, holding a bag a semolina flour under one arm and awkwardly attempting to explain himself. "It's called 'cooking.' It's actually really clever, you take ingredients and combine them--"

"Why?" Logan interrupted

"Oh, uh, well," Patton hesitated, shamefaced, "it makes food."

"Eating," Logan said in such a forceful tone of dismissal that three boxes of brownie mix turned to ash behind him. "I don't understand why you waste your time."

"It helps me blend in," Patton said with a sheepish smile. Everything from his shoes to his shirt was a shade of white or blue; he'd never been comfortable dealing in gray areas.

"I see." Logan adjusted his tie. "Well, I'll let you get back to it in a moment. I just came to pass on a message: Our intel has given us reason to believe that Armageddon is underway."

"Oh," said Patton vaguely, staring at a bag of something labeled 'pasta flour.' "Oh!"

"We'd like for you to keep an eye on Janus. He's a demon; he's on a similar mission to yours."

"I, uh," Patton swallowed hard, staring right through the pasta flour, "I've heard of him."

"Good." Logan put his hand on Patton's shoulder and looked him dead in the eye. "Patton."

"Y-yes?"

"When I say 'keep an eye on' I mean I want you to watch him. It's a figure of speech."

Patton nodded, forcing his mouth to curve into a pale imitation of a smile. Logan nodded back and vanished.

"Well," Patton said to the pasta flour, "fiddlesticks."

Brother Emile Analogical had been raised a Satanist. There is no such thing as an orthodox Satanist, but if there was, that would be the kind of Satanism that Brother Emile's parents had practiced. He had graduated with unspectacular grades, joined the Paralleling Order of Saint Botild, and promptly moved from Nebraska to Florida: more specifically, to the unincorporated community of Misty in the greater Valendale area. The climate had taken some getting used to, not to mention the long, black robes he had to wear, but he had survived the transition and found himself a good fit for the Paralleling Order.

Note: Saint Botild Comminalitus of Malmö was reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century, for reasons unclear. It is said that the Lord granted him the power to draw parallels and connections between topics; his last words are reported to have been "This reminds me of that one story about Loptr, when he--" Then his assailants lit the pyre.

At the moment, Brother Emile was thinking about the tall, dark figure stalking down the hallways at him holding a basket, likening him to a Scooby-Doo villain, the way the shadows seemed to stick to him.

"Jinkies!" said Brother Emile once the figure was in earshot.

Janus raised an eyebrow at him over the tops of his sunglasses. "Hello."

Unphased by the cold greeting, Brother Emile pointed to the basket. "Is that the fairly odd baby?" he asked in a high-pitched coo that indicated he already suspected the answer.

"No," said Janus, rolling his eyes. "It's a basket of kittens I saved from drowning. Aren't you wondering why I'm all wet?"

"You're," Brother Emile started, and Janus braced himself, fearing the last frayed thread of his patience might snap if the sentence ended with the word 'dry,' "a Mister Grumpy Gills, aren't you?'

Janus thrust the basket at Brother Emile and did not dignify him with any answer more notable than a slight thinning of

his lips.

Brother Emile drew back the blankets and began to babble at the sleeping Antichrist. Janus took the opportunity to flee.

"Look at you," Brother Emile said happily. "Sleeping in a pic-a-nic basket, huh, Boo-boo?"

After a few more moments of cooing, babytalk, and Boomerang references, he remembered himself and found a wheeled bassinet for the baby Antichrist.

There is a game, common among carnies and street magicians in which a ball is hidden under cups and shuffled around. Unbeknownst to himself, the two sets of new parents, and all the friars at St Botild's, Brother Emile Analogical was about to become a mark.

And Hell had had nothing to do with it.

same rate, and good and evil had a knack for balancing themselves out in the grand scheme of things. And this left Janus and Patton free to pursue other passions, which somehow resulted in the two of them spending a great deal of time in each other's company.

silence. "It's not even that I disagree with you," he said apologetically. "It's just, well, you know, I'm not allowed to disobey."

his hazelnut hot chocolate. "What's a shame?"

Janus nodded. "Roman Dowling."

Roman was about to turn 21, and lived his life according to the belief that everyone over the age of 30 was, in some degree, an 'elder').

wanna do that."

"Roman!"

people; every social interaction, no matter how minor, always kept his body as tense as wire.

#sanders sides #moceit #this is a pastiche meaning it's not my usual writing style #basically i deliberately wrote in the style of pratchett/gaiman #just in case you were wondering lmao #anyway you can bug me about finishing it if the urge strikes you; i'm not one of those people who gets mad about stuff like that #it certainly won't hurt #i really do want to finish but at the moment im not really in a place where i feel like i can make art #spicypost #spicywrites #i guess i'll throw in some character tags #janus sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders

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outrunningthedark · 3 years

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Ok I know I’m kinda late to this but I kinda wanna talk about the Ana and Taylor and misogyny thing cause I also kinda find it weird. Like yes there are people who hate female characters because they are female and that’s an issue but also most people who (at least as far as I see) dislike them have good reasons for it. Like Ana and being ableist and while I have an issue for hating the character because of the actor that’s not really the case with her again her character was ableist and the actress is playing a Latinx character while not being Latinx. Yet it seems like you’re not allowed to dislike them and I don’t know but something about that makes me feel weird. Also like the fact some people are comparing Ryan and Oliver playing bi/gay/queer character (if Buddie happens) to Gabriella playing a Latinx character while being black and Irish also feels wrong like it’s kinda a false equivalence (now I am gay but I am also white so I can’t completely speak on this) like they didn’t know buddie would be a thing when they casted the actors they knew they wanted Ana to be Latinx.

The only reason people are dismissing the complaints we have about the female characters tied to Buck and Eddie is because they're tied to Buck and Eddie. These "holier than thou" fans see the criticism and automatically assume their faves are hated because they "get in the way of a ship". I hope Buddie is going canon. I believe they will be down the road. However, I have no influence on what Tim decides. If he's THAT against the possibility of romantic Buddie (I don't believe so, but there are plenty of doubters) he's going to find ways for it not to happen. This is no different than fans calling for Ryan to be fired all season for making racist comments and yet their outrage had zero impact on Tim's decision-making. HE DOESN'T CARE WHAT WE WANT. The only reason Buddie will end up in a relationship (if they do) is because Tim knows he has the chance to be hailed a genius by people who aren't paid to work for him. It's completely self-serving. Fandom as a whole fucked up when they took the word feminism and decided it meant women can never do wrong no matter the circumstances. With our fandom, it means Ryan deserves to never work again after his ignorance was exposed, but Gabrielle Walsh is allowed to repeatedly pretend to be Latina (while never addressing it!) because "she's still a WOC in Hollywood". The problem is that the people excusing Gabrielle's behavior are disrespecting actual Latinas who are not comfortable with what she's doing. Propping up one woman because she's nice to look at and a "celebrity" while ignoring those who have something to say about it is the opposite of "supporting all women", fyi. As for Ryan and Oliver portraying LGBTQ+ characters while being straight: Your point is 100% valid. The casting directors were clearly not looking for gay or bi men to play these roles when they were first introduced to the show. Personally, I've never subscribed to the "hire LGBTQ+ actors to play LGBTQ+ characters!!!" outrage. Yes, in a perfect world, out and proud actors would be able to portray the characters that match their identity, but let's not kid ourselves here - celebrities are no different than us regular folks. Not everyone wants to be out. Not everyone feels comfortable coming out. Some stay closeted because they believe it'll help them get bigger and better roles. Some stay closeted because they don't want to be known as "that [insert sexuality] actor" and have the media constantly asking questions about their personal life. Some stay closeted because they know their family and friends are too homophobic/biphobic/transphobic to handle the truth. Comparing Ryan and Oliver possibly taking on the roles of two bisexual (?) men (I don't get involved in the sexuality discourse because I do not identify as a man nor am I bisexual so it's not my place to talk) because Tim decides to alter their characters' identities years after the fact versus Gabrielle auditioning for a role she knew she didn't deserve simply because she considers herself "an honorary Mexican" is nothing more than an excuse to throw around the word "misogyny" - people think using it makes them sound smarter than they actually are.

#anonymous #911 discourse #tv: 911 #tv: 9-1-1 #buddie #anti ana flores #oliver stark #ryan guzman

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tonysolomon4jc · 2 years

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Vatican City is Babylon from Revelation. When Jesus Christ said come out of her. He was referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Francis said atheists get into Heaven. Pope Francis said all religions are okay with God and should be embraced. He said non-Christians are children of God. Pope Francis said God makes some people gay. Pope Francis said Jesus' life and the cross ended in failure. These are all lies from Satan. Pope Francis might be the False Prophet from the book of Revelation. If so, he will usher in the Antichrist.

No Pope has ever been sinless or perfect. Only Jesus was. Mary was not sinless. Romans 3:23 The Bible says to pray only to God. No one, in the Bible, ever prayed to Mary, Catholic saints or angels. Jesus said to pray the Lord's prayer, only. Hail Mary isn't biblical. Luke 11:1-4 Matt 6:7 Psalm 115:4-8 Isaiah 42:8 KJV

Jesus built his church on Peter's confession. "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God", not on Peter. Matthew 16:13-20, Mark 8:27–30 and Luke 9:18–20. Peter was a sinner. Satan spoke through him. Matthew 16:23 and Mark 8:33.The Pope is not the head of the church. Jesus is. God is the only holy Father. Isaiah 42:8 Matt 23:9 KJV Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matt 16:18); it belongs to Him. He is the head of the body. There's no purgatory (2 Cor 5:6-8; Phil 1:23). It doesn't say "in Purgatory with the cleansing fire." All Christians are sinners, saints and the church. Jesus Christ had brothers and sisters from Mary & Joseph. Angels aren't saints. Mary told her servants to do whatever Jesus said do. John 2:5

Faith in Jesus Christ as God and Savior will save all obedient believers.

Nobody in the Bible prayed to Mary.

Praying the rosary is NOT in the Bible!!!!!

If Jesus wouldn't do it, neither should his followers. Jesus said that we should pray only to God the Father. If Catholics are praying a rosary, then they are praying to Mary. Jesus and the apostles never told us to pray to Mary. Scripture says that she was a sinner and didn't die a virgin. Scripture never called her holy or the queen of Heaven. That title is in the Bible and it refers to a demon that some gentiles worshipped. Catholics call Mary the Queen of Heaven. The Queen of Heaven in the Bible was a demon. Here's proof: Jeremiah 44:25-26 KJV

Romans 3:23 King James Version

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

That verse includes Mary. Mary called Jesus her Savior, because she was also a sinner. The curse of man, caused by Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, meant that humans from then on would be sinners. That includes Mary.

1 John 1:8 King James Version

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

That includes Mary.

Luke 8:20-21 New International Version

20 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.”

21 He replied, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.”

Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and mankind.

1 Timothy 2:5 King James Version (KJV)

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;”

Luke 11:27-28 New Living Translation

27 As he was speaking, a woman in the crowd called out, “God bless your mother—the womb from which you came, and the breasts that nursed you!”

28 Jesus replied, “But even more blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.”

No apostle of Jesus taught us the Roman Catholic Church's belief in the immaculate conception of Mary or the infallibility of the Pope. Purgatory is unbiblical. Jesus Christ's sacrifice is enough for our salvation.

We have Peace with God Through Faith

We're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not by our works. Works are a result of being a Christian, but not required for salvation. Faith in Jesus Christ gives us salvation.

Romans 11:6 English Standard Version

6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

Romans 5:1-2 English Standard Version

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

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bookgeekgrrl · 3 years

Text

My media this week (18-Jul-21)

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

If I Could Turn Back Time: Cher's Greatest Hits [Cher]

Cher (top songs)

‘80s Dance Hits

Paula Abdul (all songs)

‘90s Dance Hits

Hail Satin! [Dee Gees]

The Chicks (all songs)

Obsessed: Peter Gabriel [Lena Hall]

Wake Up and Pickitup

Irish Rock Classics

Lena Hall's Obsessions – all the Lena Hall covers I like

The World of The Clash

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Dark Ages - 4. A Bitter Cup of Jo (aka The Arfabarkus Wrex)

Dark Ages - 5. D-Day (aka The War Memorial)

Dark Ages - 6. It’s a Hard Nick Life (aka The Night Janitor)

Big Gay Fiction Podcast - Bookseller, Disgraced Aristocrat & An Emotional Support Knife with Author KJ Charles

Dark Ages - Goblin Special: Take This Gob and Shove It

Dark Ages - 7. Marwood Goes Home (aka The Simple Stone Tablet)

Dark Ages - 8. Sweeps Week (aka The Inspection)

Richmond Til We Die: A Ted Lasso Podcast - Season 1 Wrap-Up & What's Next

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Josephine Baker’s Chateau

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Oh The Places We Could Go!

99% Invisible #451- Hanko

Dark Ages - 10. The Lesson Plan (aka The Tome)

Dark Ages - 9. Fired Up (aka The Afterburner)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Kilwa Kisiwani

Word of Mouth - The Art of Inventing Languages (with David J. Peterson)

Dark Ages - 11. Dark Comes to Light (aka The Timbered Tablets)

Overinvested, Ep. 221 - Marvel's Loki

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Beale Treasure

Dark Ages - 12. The End of All Things (aka The Heart of the Museum)

Dark Ages - BONUS: Season 1 Blooper Reel

I Think About Art - 4. Last Conversation Piece

This is Good for You, Ep 12 - Resin Work Is Good for You (with TK Dutes)

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Miss Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries - s2, e3-e8

Legends Of Tomorrow - s1, e6-10

The Repair Shop - s3, e6

Ted Lasso - s2, e1

Murdoch Mysteries - s13, e17-18; s14, e1

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

😍 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries #5) (Martha Wells )

🙂 The Second Labor (AidaRonan) - 57K, alt-history/canon-divergent, part epistolary - really interesting in the canon divergence since it makes Bucky the Winter Soldier much, much earlier and keeps a pre-serum Steve.

🙂 Unsolicited Advice (Saddaughter16, art by DeamonSlayer576) - 50K, shrunkyclunks a/b/o

😍 Some Kind of Freaky Friday Shit (rainbow_nerds, art by jehans) - 40K, shrunkyclunks - exactly what it says on the tin, and absolutely delightful

plus 155K of shorter fic so shorter work shout out

💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

...and this compromise series (luninosity) - X-Men, 75K over 10 parts - an older (2015) but really excellent canon divergent series where Charles & Erik navigate developing a D/s relationship while still doing what they do

AND ALSO THESE ESSAYS/ARTICLES I REALLY LIKED

Unvaccinated Is Different From Anti-Vax (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)

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lethesomething · 4 years

Text

Ghost of Tsushima and the Hands of Fate

I see we're still trying to prove that games are an art form by making everyone feel bad.

For the record, Ghost of Tsushima is one of my favourite games in a very long time. It is extremely pretty, the aesthetic and general … polish is *cheff's kiss*. You can pet foxes and backstab people. The fighting mechanic is decent and there are just So Many Hats.

But also, it has the kind of story that pulls you in to the point where you have to drop the controller to hide behind your fingers going 'ohgodno'.

It is an absolute bastard of a game, is what i'm saying.

So let's talk about that, and specifically about Straw Hat Ryuzo and how I feel bad for him.

I am, by the way, going to be talking about the narrative structure of a video game about medieval samurai, so expect like, a bunch of spoilers.

The narrative is one of the big draws in Ghost of Tsushima. Like yes, it's an open world rpg with fighting and flower picking and all the important stuff, and also yes, some of the bits are sloppily written (looking at you, specifically, 'Ending to Norio's Arc'), but the game definitely sets out to Tell a Story.

And because this is a Serious Game that openly bases itself on samurai movies like Kurosawa's, it is a Drama.

In many ways it is an utterly brutal Bildungsroman, a narrative in which a young man finds his identity.

I have joked with friends about the clear intent for this game to make Important Stories, in that it actually tries to tick all the boxes of hotbutton subjects: childhood trauma? Obviously. Gay relationships? Yup. Survivor's guilt and PTSD? Oh yes. Domestic abuse? Several. Suggested pedophilia? Damn, even that.

The foxes are there to soothe the soul

It's interesting to note that from a writing point of view, this bildungsroman is even Very Classically Structured. It goes so far as to be a three acter, with a pretty standard build-up.

Jin Sakai, traumatized man that he is, spends the first act slowly getting to grips with the bit where you don't fight an army by yourself by just walking up to them and challenging them With Honour, like he has been taught his entire life. Instead of getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest and set on fire, he discovers guerilla warfare and creates this persona of the Ghost, a literal vengeful spirit seeking justice for the island of Tsushima.

It gets him some big wins and in the second act he slowly embraces this identity until things get to a head where he clashes with his entire old life. The third act starts at the hero's lowest point and is utterly gut wrenching (i am Still Not Over the horse, game), forcing him to pull himself together for an ending that is, well…fitting for the narrative. It's an ending that is needed, but perhaps not what Jin deserves.

But anyway, this is about Ryuzo, and how until that ending, I was very upset about his role.

You see, this story is told in part through the lives of Important Npc's, who contribute to Jin's journey of self-discovery. This is pretty obvious with someone like Yuna, who is the one to introduce him to the Stealth Life and who is a driving force behind the marketing of the Ghost.

Someone like Masako, meanwhile, portrays vengeance and self discipline, but Jin also kinda tries to make her fill the mother-shaped hole in his heart.

Lord Shimura, meanwhile, is an Obvious Father figure but also stands for Jin's past. He's rigid and ineffective, which pushes Jin to further look for alternatives.

Ishikawa, that other mentor figure, is more moderate and flexible, but he also represents a possible unwanted future. He literally warns Jin at one point not to become like him.

Norio, then, is as mentioned not the best written, but he too is a person that searches for his destiny and tries to become like his hero, while only barely holding on to his sanity.

Kenji, I'm sorry, I love you but you're just comic relief, that's all you do. It's an imporant job in the story, because god does it need it, but you're not teaching Jin anything other than how to make different 'resigned sigh' noises.

So what about Ryuzo? From the very beginning, Ryuzo's story didn't really sit right with me. There's the obvious class issue: he's one of the few important npc's that are poor, and he's an Antagonist.

It has always rubbed me the wrong way that his original intentions were good, depending on how you read it. He's trying to feed his men. He essentially made the decision that this one man's life (even if it is an old friend) is worth the price for the lives of his band of ronin.

It's a lot more complex than that, of course. Ryuzo partly blames Jin for his predicament in life, and he also knows that samurai treat their soldiers as chattel, which the game goes out of its way to show you they DO.

Essentially, he's a complicated character who makes bad decisions for arguably good reasons.

Ryuzo did everything he could to save the lives of the people he cared about. He went so far as to abandon his honor and his childhood friends, to try to make this happen.

Does that ring any bells?

It kinda clicked for me at the very end of the game.

Jin, being the protag in an assassin game, does a lot of killing. But some of these deaths are given more meaning than others. Some of them are there to make you feel like shit (the Horse Again, but you lose several friends along the way), others serve a more defining purpose.

You see, there's a fair amount of what i'd like to call 'intimate violence' in Ghost of Tsushima. It's an old trope. The 'if someone was gonna kill me, it had to be you' kinda scene that hails from a worldview in which some deaths are better than others, sure, but some deaths are better even than living. It's a worldview in which life itself is less valuable than your legacy. You die for your place in history. For your clan, for your family, for your honor.

Bushido is full of that sort of thing, so it makes sense that a game building on that worldview, would use the heck out of that trope.

The first is Ryuzo's death. You fight him in a duel, in which he tries to plead for some resolution. You could let him go, come up with some story. But Ryuzo is a traitor, so Jin ultimately defeats him and sends him off in what would be a touching moment of bro friendship if it wasn't for the blood and my 21st century sensibilities.

You grant him a warrior's death, is what I'm saying.

It happens again with Shimura. The game actually gives you a choice here, but if you go through with it, the scene almost perfectly mirrors Ryuzo's.

You fight in a duel, and Jin tries to get his uncle to just let him go, come to some kind of resolution. But Jin has been branded a traitor, and the only way for Shimura to restore his honour and clan, is to take his life;

This being a game in which you have the power of bamboo strikes and also save games behind you, Jin ultimately wins the duel, and has the option of granting Shimura a warrior's death.

It is utterly heart wrenching and that whole scene has no business being as pretty as it is. The swelling music? The fucking strings? The anguished yell?

Fuck.

But anyway.

That's about where it clicked with me, that Jin never had a choice.

Ryuzo's whole role wasn't fair, but this is one of those stories where life itself is just not fair at all.

Both him and Shimura are there to show us Jin's path.

What if, the game says, Jin had listened? What if he'd taken one of several offers the Khan made and surrendered?

What if he'd cooperated?

Well, we see in Graphic Detail what would happen. He would get pushed into doing horrific things. He gets manipulated, again and again, until there is no way out anymore. At some point it becomes clear to him that he's on the wrong side but whenever he tries to devise some plan to turn things around, things go Badly. He's firmly stuck in Khotun's web and the only way out is death.

But what if, the game says, Jin had stayed true to his honour? What if he had listened to his uncle, not defied him, if he had dropped the Ghost before it was too late? If he'd gone full bushido and repented for the shogun and done all the groveling and the proper stuff.

Samuraihood is just another straightjacket, says Shimura's fate. The tenets are so rigorous you would take your loved ones life, while fucking bawling your eyes out. Shimura knows damn well it's unfair but he also has no way to leave this path. It's a ride he cannot, and will not, get off alive.

Jin never had a choice.

There was only ever one way for him to go.

Like let's be real: pretty much everyone in this story was dealt a bad hand. It's a narrative about resilience in the face of utter horror, of reinventing yourself and giving up entire structures of faith. People like Masako, Yuna, Norio are finding peace in dealing with huge levels of trauma and regret.

The goal isn't to start a family and live happily ever after, it's to Survive.

Submitting to the mongols would have killed Jin's spirit. Standing tall and rigid as he was taught to do would have, ultimately, killed him as well.

"I've given up everything to save these people", he says near the end. "And I would do it again."

That's someone who has no regrets.

Jin never could have taken another path and he knows it.

And this is why Ryuzo needed a fate as shitty as his. He fell, so Jin could walk.

I'm sorry, it's still not fair.

This game needs some comfort fic.

#ghost of tsushima #jin sakai #ryuzo #narrative analysis #story analysis #i have Many Feeling ok #and this is how i deal with them #ghost of tsushima spoilers #gots spoilers

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muckrakerhq · 3 years

Text

THE MUCKRAKER : EIGHTH EDITION ( APRIL 26TH, 2043 )

THIS MONTH’S EDITION OF THE MUCKRAKER MUCKRAKER IS HERE TO HELP YOU KEEP UP WITH THE LATEST GOSSIP! READ THE MARCH EDITION BELOW TO STAY UP TO DATE WITH WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON FOR THESE LOSERS AND LEGENDS.

AND REMEMBER, IF I HEARD IT, IT’S PROBABLY TRUE…OR SOMETHING.

JBIJ’S MONTHLY RANKING ( PG. 1 )

this month’s ranking includes jacob ben israel ii’s favorite establishments based on wedding attire for the puckerman-remington union…paired with commentary.

LINK - self appointed flower boy @lincolnonline pulled out all the stops with his outfit to the wedding. dare i say more heads turned his way than to the bride? we LOVE a shit stirrer!

IVY - nepotism is treating @ivystjamess well! while i’m not convinced she can pull off the whole pastel thing yet, she sure did look good as she chased julien schuester out of the venue in distress!

NOAH - noah didn’t stand out in her bridesmaids dress in the slightest, but @puckermanoah certainly proved that she could be the hot sister after changing into a little red ensemble for the reception! one question noah, where’d you get the money for a dress like that?

ELI - not sure if @eli-stjames got the memo that this was a wedding, not a funeral, but one of lima’s ex-grungiest looked absolutely stunning in black this evening. eli undoubtedly shattered the hearts of het men all over that reception!

JOEY - men typically don’t dress well and @dumbofassjoey further proved most men will go with a regular suit and call it a night. however, in comparison to his other, plain, peers, he wore it the best.

COVER STORY ( PG. 3 )

arguably the best ( or worst ) spot you want to end up on if you ever receive the HONOR of being in the muckraker. this is THE juiciest story jbi jr. could get his hands on and he promises to deliver it with integrity to his devoted readers.

NEW WWE VENUE ANNOUNCED: THE LIMA BEAN!

like most people who hail from lima, you’re stuck in that godforsaken mass text finn schuester created in high school. if you were fortunate enough to actually unmute it and check, you were able to see the events leading up to the smackdown of the century between @zoepuckerman and @ljholliday. word on the street is lj is obsessed with zoe, her ex-boyfriend, and her friends. it got so bad lj took sterling duval to visit her sneaky link, THEO BEISTE. additionally, lj was so obsessed, she banned, eli, zoe, and most hot people from the party she threw with sterling. zoe, in a very rationally way, defied that order and attended the party anyhow. within five minutes of walking in the door, she reminded partygoers just who she is by physically handing lj her ass. here in lima, we appreciate a fight, love a good girl fight, and adore zoe puckerman even more when she’s punching weirdos! lj tried to fight back, but, meh. i once again commend zoe for acting in honorable fashion, and condem lj for being a stalker. if anyone has a video of the fight, please email it to [email protected], we’d love to post it!

MORE HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEARTS SPLIT, JOEY MOVES ON RAPIDLY!

earlier this month, one of few gay couples to make it out of that godforsaken town called it quits! eyes and ears have given little confirmation as to why @angel-alexanderr and @dumbofassjoey went their separate ways. as intriguing as that is, the juiciness of the story doesn’t end there though. apparently joey bounces back just as quick as he throws his ass back, because sources say he’s got himself a little nyc rat. @ziggilbert is a bartender and nyu student. talk about a mysterious hottie! the two were spotted together at callbacks and while we at the muckraker can’t say we’re wishing them the best just yet, we can say that we appreciate their ability to be messy. and to dearest angel, don’t cry too hard, what did you think was going to happen after you and “hoey” hummel-anderson broke up?

RUMOR MILL ( PG. 5 )

it’s common knowledge the muckraker operates under the assumption that if something is said it MUST be true, but in the rumor mill jbi jr acknowledges the top EIGHT rumors that he’s heard going around in a few concise bullet points. because if he’s heard it, the student body should have to hear it too!

did you hear @phoenixharper saved 7 kids from a burning building this weekend? i heard she started the fire because she’s an arsonist, but that was nice of her!

@meadowsbukowski is reportedly providing cannabutter with the breadstix she’s serving. all you have to do is ask for her number!

rumor has it @samuelchangx hasn’t released any promotion for his new album because he’s still hung up on some hottie from lima.

@heidianderson didn’t come home for the wedding, not because she wasn’t invited, but because she’s got a bun in the oven.

another competitor in callbacks open mic night told us @frannyfeltera steals her jokes.

@rockyremington claims to have some hot new arm candy, but showed up single to the wedding. what’s wrong, rocky? does she go to another school?

sources close to @kadenfabray say he’s been replaced by a clone!

@sterlingduval is finally going to do something with her life by starting up her own company of sex toys that she’s calling daddy issues!

COME BACK NEXT MONTH, IN THE MEANTIME, KEEP STIRRING UP MUCK!

#muckraker #lincoln clarington-smythe #ivy st.james #noah puckerman #eli st.james #joey hummel-anderson #lj holliday #zoe puckerman #angel puckerman #ziggy gilbert #phoenix harper #meadow bukowski #samuel chang #heidi anderson #franny feltera #rocky remington #kaden fabray #sterling duval

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lesbian-percy-weasley · 4 years

Text

Late Night Games by Gay-Natasha-Saves-The-World on Ao3 (aka the best fanfic writer this side of the Rockies)

Series: None

Ship: Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood

Content Warning: Teenagers being drunk and kissing

Description: It was a stormy night and Oliver was bored out of his mind. Maybe Percy would be up to do something fun?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a lazy night in Gryffindor tower. There was a strong storm brewing outside so most people went up to their dorms early. That included Oliver Wood. Quidditch practice had been canceled for today which meant he had a lot of energy and no way to burn it. Sure, he could study but that was boring. He wanted to have a bit of fun and he knew the exact person to mess with.

Unlike Oliver, Percy thought studying was a good way to spend time and that was exactly what he was doing. He was trying to read a book for arithmancy, but the absolute state of the weather outside was distracting him. No use in trying to absorb anything with hail hitting your window every millisecond. But alas, he knew he had to so he persisted. That was until his dorm mate, Oliver entered the room.

Percy acknowledged his entrance and returned to reading his book. Oliver rolled his eyes. He never thought anyone could like school until he met Percy. He thought it was odd. His brothers were nothing like him. Maybe that’s why Oliver was so intrigued by the boy. Well, that and he thought Percy was the hottest out of all the Weasleys.

But still, Oliver was bored out of his mind. He flopped down on his bed and looked at Percy. After a while, Percy noticed and gave Oliver a very quizzical and uncomfortable look. He didn’t like feeling observed. It took a few seconds of them staring at each other before he finally talked.

“What do you want?” Percy said in a very dry tone of voice. “I’m bored,” Oliver said while folding his hands under his chin. “And, what does that have to do with me.” Percy turned his attention back to his book.

“Let’s do something.” “I’m already doing something.” Percy scoffed. “I meant something fun. You already study every day. Don’t you have any hobbies?” Oliver sat up. “For your information, I crochet sweaters for hippogriffs on the weekends.” Percy sarcastically quipped. “Why don’t you just hang out with my brothers or anyone else?”

“Because I want to hang out with you.” Oliver shrugged in reply. Percy gave a heavy sigh and set down his book. “Fine. What do you want to do?” Oliver thought for a second. “Oh, let’s play a game,” Oliver said while moving quickly to get something out of his trunk. Much to Percy’s dismay, it was fire whiskey.

Percy let out a disgusted noise. He hated playing drinking games and getting drunk, especially when it’s on cheap liquor. “What? Do you think you’re above fire whiskey?” Oliver said teasingly. “That shit is vile. It’s only like one tier above potion maker’s punch. And I don’t see getting drunk as entertainment.”

Oliver scoffed. “Well, there’s nothing else to do, is there?” “Speak for yourself. I was doing something.” Percy said reaching for his arithmancy book but before he could reach it, Oliver grabbed it and chucked it across the room. Percy sighed defeatedly. “Fine. You win. What game do you want to play?” He said reaching for the whiskey and taking a giant swig of it.

Oliver thought for a minute. He honestly didn’t think he’d get this far. He had tried to hang out with Percy like this so many other times before to no avail. He took the whiskey back from Percy and took a drink for himself. The alcohol gave him some newfound confidence. Which is probably why he suggested the game that he did.

“I know. Why don’t we play a game where we both touch and kiss each other and the first person who stops loses.” Oliver said with one of the biggest shit-eating grins Percy had ever seen. Percy was a bit taken aback. Was Oliver into him, or was he such a lightweight that he was already drunk? He knew Oliver was bi but he didn’t know Percy was bi.

“What’s in it for me?” Percy asked, raising his eyebrows. Oliver shrugged “Satisfaction for winning.” Percy thought about it for a bit. He didn’t really have anything to lose and Oliver was proper fit.

“Fuck it why not,” Percy said grabbing the whiskey and taking a giant sip of it. Oliver sat down right next to Percy. Percy stared back at him like he was challenging him to do something. Oliver smirked knowing he was about to give this prick the time of his life. He grabbed Percy’s shirt collar with a bit of force and pulled him down to kiss him. Percy might have the advantage of height but Oliver was a great deal stronger.

Percy very gladly reciprocated the kiss and grabbed onto Oliver’s shoulders in the process. Percy had never done anything like this, especially not with a boy, but he wasn’t gonna let his facade crack after being so smug. They continued for a while, making out but not doing much else.

They broke apart for a few seconds to catch their breath. Percy looked Oliver straight in his eyes. He was no longer baby, he wanted power. He smirked and asked, “Is that all you got?” Oliver put his hands on his chest and whispered “I haven’t even started yet, Weasley.” into his ear.

With that, he pushed Percy down onto his bed and got right on top of him. He pinned his arms above his head and started to attack his neck. Percy tried to stifle a moan but Oliver heard. Oliver stopped for a second.

Was Percy into this? He didn’t really think he liked men, just that he was stubborn enough to agree to this. To be honest, it motivated Oliver even more than before. Maybe he’d get something after this. He looked up at Percy, who was slightly blushing, Not so smug anymore, was he?

Oliver smirked at him and continued attacking his neck. He had taken his hands away from Percy’s arms and worked on removing both his and Percy’s shirts. They took a few seconds to stare at both of their bare chests. Percy didn’t expect it to end up like this. Never in his life would he have thought the first time he would get this far with anybody would be with his Hogwarts roommate on a drunken dare. But he was trying not to be so controlling of everything lately so fuck it. He didn’t care if either of them remembered it in the morning he wanted to feel good. And again, Oliver was really hot.

Oliver grabbed the back of Percy’s head and pulled him into a bruising kiss. He in return grabbed onto Oliver’s back and then proceeded to touch themselves all over.

They both knew where it was heading but Percy was becoming concerned. Did he really want to lose his virginity with his drunk roommate? What if he regretted it in the morning? What if Oliver regretted it in the morning? He couldn’t let this go any further than it was already at.

Oliver, however, was drunk and didn’t care about the consequences. He wanted Percy more than he had ever wanted anything ever before. That was the whole reason he suggested the game. He wanted Percy and it was clear Percy wanted him too. So he didn’t understand why Percy was moving away when Oliver reached for his belt.

Oliver looked up at him in confusion? “Sorry, Oliver. I can’t. Not tonight.” “Why not?” Oliver said quite indignantly. Percy put his hand on his face. “Because you’re drunk,” “Am not!” Oliver replied with his accent stronger than usual. “Yes, you are. And besides, I don’t want my first time to be on a dare.”

Oliver looked down at his hands. He was honestly quite upset but he understood why. Percy scooted up next to him and put his arm around him. “Maybe next time when we’re sober.” He said, giving a quick kiss on the cheek. That cheered him up quickly. He liked the prospect of next time so he nodded and rested his head on Percy’s chest

They laid right next to each other on Percy’s bed for the rest of the night. Oliver was going off on drunken rambles and Percy was mainly wondering where Oliver had thrown his jumper. Not enough to move out of his arms though. Was it selfish to want this more often? He had honestly never felt like this about anyone before. Despite what his heart was telling him he knew he made the right decision. Maybe next time they could do without involving silly games or fire whiskey. Merlin, he hated fire whiskey.

#harry potter #hogwarts #percy weasley #gryffindor #oliver wood #perciver #fanfiction #percy weasley x oliver wood #drunken kissing #stormy night #Percy Weasley / Oliver Wood

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pynkhues · 4 years

Note

I’m sure you’ve already gotten a bunch of asks since Manny’s Crime King interview! I’m just like confused about him saying he’s enamored by her world but honestly like how is his different (besides his obvious commitment to the game) he lives in a nice loft, takes his kid to baseball, drives a fancy car, and plays tennis at the club. It’s not like he’s living the life of a thug. I guess I’m not getting the exact contrast of their worlds.

(Rest of my ask) I’m probably missing some obvious point here which is why I’m asking you lol helllppp

I do think Rio’s enamoured with Beth’s world, yes! I think that really boils down to the fact that while on paper Beth and Rio aren’t living dissimilar lives in terms of their roles as parents, and while they obviously now share parts of the criminal world, I do think the show is actually pretty specific in how it represents those worlds, particularly in terms of the masculine / feminine, and how a part of the curiosity around each other is in viewing one another as a key that both compliments their own world, while also unlocking the other’s one for them.

The gendering of spaces in storytelling – but particularly films and TV is, hilariously, a topic that I’m incredibly passionate about and have both written it a lot in my original work, and written about it a lot for magazines, journals and media sites (I’m actually writing an essay at the moment for a literary journal about LGBTQI cinema and how lesbian romances are highly domesticised [i.e. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Handmaiden, The Favourite, The Kids are Alright] while gay romances are usually very pointedly about keeping away from domestic spaces, moving and traveling [i.e. Brokeback Mountain, The Talented Mr Ripley, Moonlight, Midnight Cowboy, even Call Me By Your Name is heavily focused on being Americans abroad aka away from home] but that all feels like a different story, haha).

Luckily for me, Good Girls is actually about as obsessed with the gendering of spaces as I am. It’s a major, major throughline throughout the show for many of the characters, but particularly Beth and Rio, and their intrigue with the other’s spaces – her interest in his powerful, highly masculine one, and his with her deceptively innocent, strongly feminine one – is really central to their intrigue with each other more broadly.

So to talk about this, we probably need a little bit of context.

(Under a cut because this is literally 4,000 words)

Gendering Spaces in Cinema

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone here, but places and spaces in stories are about as gendered – if not more gendered – as they are in daily life. In particular, cinema’s visual and textual language has historically been very clear:

The inside is female. The outside is male.

This concept has really been around since the beginning of cinema but became very popularised through Westerns in the late 1920s onwards, and really underlined by war films particularly during propaganda cinema in WWII. Men are outside, battling the elements and other men, claiming land, building outwards, while women are at home – either literally or figuratively (if they’re actually out at war, like in the utterly fabulous So Proudly We Hail!, they’re at the ‘home base’ as nurses) – building inwards. Men protect the home while women create it.

Westerns feature these images very potently and very literally. Almost every single western dating back to the 1910s will have some combination of these two shots:

a) Woman at home, looking out into the wild:

b) Man leaving home, stepping out into the wild:

(These two stills are from John Ford’s The Searchers which is generally regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time. It’s………very racist and misogynistic, as many were and still are, but in terms of technicality and visual language, it’s a very well-made film, albeit not one I enjoyed).

The purpose at the time, of course, was steeped in historic sexism and invested in maintaining that culture, particularly westerns and war films which are heavily devoted to ‘macho’ narratives. Women were passive, men were active, but these images really set the stage for how the ideas of ‘space’ continues to exist in cinema. A fact that’s bolstered by broader social discourses that still exist today – schools, grocery stores, laundromats are inherently ‘female’ spaces because they are seen as an extension of the home, while police stations, car dealerships, warehouses, are inherently ‘male’ spaces because they’re about work, protecting and providing for a home, and being pointedly outside of that domestic space aka ‘the wild’. It’s not an accident that the girls are robbing grocery stores and day spas, but I’ll get back to that, haha.

These ideas of gendered spaces underpin everything we watch, no matter the genre.

Sure, these ideas can be subverted to varying degrees of effectiveness (often it’s steeped in my least favourite trope – the ‘not like other girls’ heroine), but you can’t subvert a trope without actually acknowledging it exists. Sometimes these subversions are done brilliantly too – like in Legally Blonde which was not just about Elle existing in a space that was quintessentially coded as male, but embracing her femininity and womanhood within that space; and often brutally too in films like Winter’s Bone, Room and The Nightingale which all brutalise women in ‘male spaces’ while simultaneously weaponizing female spaces against them – usually the home. The lead character of Winter’s Bone is going to lose her house unless her absent father shows up in court, the lead character of Room creates a home that is simultaneously a sanctuary and a mockery of a sanctuary to try and protect her son from reality and survive, the lead character of The Nightingale has her home invaded, her husband and baby murdered, and is horrifically raped within that home.

Hometown Horror: a divergence

This is a slight aside to where I’m going with this overall, but please indulge me, haha. I’m a big fan of horrors and thrillers, which explore this in a really stark way. In that, the invasion of a home or a domestic space – whether by ghost, demon or serial killer, is, generally speaking, synonymous with the invasion of a woman’s body and the violation of her as a person.

Films that focus on a female survivor or a ‘final girl’ are very generally focused on the invasion of her home as much as it’s focused on the invasion of her body. Think The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Scream, The Babadook, Hereditary, The Conjuring, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Panic Room. The violation of a woman’s home is the invasion of her, because cinema relies on over 100 years of movies telling us that a house and the woman who lives in it are symbolically the same thing.

Horror films that focus on men are very rarely centred in the home. It’s men travelling, or men visiting a woman’s home, or men who’ve been taken. Think of the first Saw movie which takes place in a mysterious basement, Hostel which is at a hostel, Dawn of the Dead at a shopping mall, An American Werewolf in London while two men are on holiday, The Evil Dead is in a cabin, Get Out is at his girlfriend’s family home.

There are exceptions, of course! Family home invasion films like The Purge, Funny Games and The Strangers are rooted in the violation of that home, but still. You’ll generally find that it manifests differently narratively speaking for men and women. Rear Window too takes place entirely in a man’s apartment – but it’s interesting to note that most of the ‘horror’ comes from him spying on somebody else’s home – notably a woman’s, The Descent too is very much about women and is set during cave diving. Still! These are all exceptions, not the rule.

Good Girls and Gendered Spaces

Every single space in Good Girls is gendered. It’s actually one of the things I seriously love about the show because it’s thoughtfully done, and it is deliberate. We know it is, because they tell us explicitly in the writing multiple times. I mean – hell, think of Ruby telling us (well, telling Rio, haha) way back at the end of 1.04 when they’re selling him on the idea of washing cash through Cloud 9 – “Nobody thinks twice about a woman buying her husband a TV or new tires for the minivan.” A store like that is gendered, and Ruby’s reinforcing it by saying it’s a place women go to build a home. It hasn’t been weaponized yet - - but our girls know how to weaponize it. They’re playing on the fact that people think women’s spaces are effectively impotent, and they’re telling Rio – and us as an audience – that they’re going to exploit it.

This is an idea the show revisits frequently. Women’s spaces are – both in life and in storytelling – spaces that are viewed as passive because they are representative of women, and what the show is – I believe – very invested in, is showing how those spaces are fundamentally active. If you want a house to represent a woman – well, okay. Then you get to see what’s under the rug, y’know?

I’m going to come back to the home thread – because I really do think it’s very important, and I think the way the show depicts people in those spaces (and invading those spaces) is significant – but it’s not just homes that are looked at in this way. The show is very specific about having feminine spaces and masculine spaces, with only a few in between (and usually those in-between spaces are very specifically for Stan and Ruby, showing just how in-sync they are with each other and how much they operate within a shared space). Beyond the women’s homes, there are the kids’ schools, Fine & Frugal (very important here to note that Annie emasculates Boomer in what is an associated female space and that he retaliates by attempting to rape her in her own home aka not only another female space, but a space that is symbolically Annie, something he repeats later with Mary Pat – a violation on essentially every character, narrative and symbolic level, again), the waxing salon, Nancy’s day spa, Jane’s dance recital (and actually the physical object of the dubby – being a highly feminine object lost in a very masculine space), and already what we know of s3, with Ruby being at a nail salon and Beth being at a paper / card store.

The show also has very masculinized places – I’d argue Boland Motors is one of the biggest ones – very much about ‘boys and their toys’, which is why Beth pointedly feminising it when she takes over is so significant and symbolically indicative of Beth’s claiming of that space; but also spaces like the police station, the drug dealer’s house in 2.07, the hotel suite Boomer briefly occupies, even to an extent the church. When the girls are in these spaces, there’s a distinct feeling of encroaching on territory that isn’t theirs, or being in spaces that they don’t belong in. This is often done as a two-hander too – the police station and the church Ruby doesn’t belong in anymore, not necessarily as a woman, but as a criminal.

Nothing though, from a technical standpoint, is more masculine than the spaces that are shown to be Rio’s. From the warehouse spaces to the bar to his loft to his car, Rio’s ‘places’ are distinctly masculine and generally placed in direct contrast with Beth’s femininity. But I’ll come back to that point too.

Home, Identity and Invasion

Almost every female character on this show has a very defined domestic space, from Beth, Ruby and Annie, to Mary Pat, Marion and Nancy. These spaces are representative of not just who they are, but who they are as women, and really comes to routinely represent the interior lives of these characters. This is probably the clearest in 2.09 when Beth is uncharacteristically messy following Dean taking their kids, and in 2.06, when Beth and Dean switch roles, and Dean is incapable of maintaining that domestic space because it’s not his. But let’s not start there.

Let’s start with Annie.

Annie’s apartment is fun, feminine (but not overly so), youthful, sweet, and generally a bit of organized chaos. It’s often underequipped – there are several mentions of the pantry being understocked – but it’ll always do in a pinch. More than anything though, Annie’s apartment comes to life when her son is in it. She’s happiest when he’s there, and when he’s not, her loneliness drives her to pulling people into the space with her, whether that’s the electronics guy, Greg, or Noah.

This is particularly significant when Annie’s forming bonds with people. The show has symbolically relied very heavily on Annie’s moments of vulnerability and connection being grounded in her apartment or an extension of it – usually her car. There was her reconnecting with Greg over YouTube videos in s1, there was Nancy and her talking about pregnancy in 2.02, and there was Noah settling in across season 2. These are all substantial moments in terms of Annie’s interior life that are represented through her home – she lets them all in. Which is why it’s significant what people do when they are in. Particularly the show marrying Noah getting to know Annie while simultaneously rifling through her belongings, trying to know specific things about her.

This is only reiterated by Noah’s scenes with Sadie later in the season – always at home, reiterating just how much Noah’s invaded Annie’s life, how much he’s inside her, how much he’s using everything and everyone who’s important to her, and how much he’s a threat to all of that too.

Ruby and Stan are a little different. Ruby’s house is the only one that’s genuinely shared with somebody, and the show represents this across the board – Ruby and Stan wear similar colours, the house feels like theirs, and the parts of their worlds that are separate are still frequently pretty defined by each other (even when Ruby’s acting away form Stan, the show makes it clear that Stan’s at the forefront of her mind, and vice versa). This indicates their partnership, but the house really still is symbolically tied to Ruby. This is particularly represented by the effect of having Turner in the house, but, more than that, it’s underlined symbolically by Turner arresting Stan at home. If the home symbolically carries the meaning of the woman, Turner arresting Stan there is starkly about Turner taking Stan away from Ruby. That image would not hold the same weight if he was arrested at, say, the park or the police station, because the locations don’t hold the same meaning.

It’s also why there’s significance in Stan and Turner’s showdown narratively speaking happening at the police station. It needs to, because symbolically it should occupy a masculine-coded space, because that showdown isn’t just about who they are as people, but who they are as men.

Beth and Beth’s house is very, very different to Annie and Ruby’s, and holds a more substantial narrative and symbolic function. From the very first episode, the potential of losing her house is key to her arc, and key to her identity as a character.

Beth is a lot of things, but a recurring image with her as a character is that she is invested in projecting a dated idea of ‘perfect womanhood’, and, within that, actually pretty perfectly creates parts of it for herself. For Beth – as somebody who was a housewife for roughly twenty years – her house really is her in every sense of the word. Every threat to that house, every disruption, every wrinkle, every intrusion, every theft, every invitation is personal. Dean might have at least two rooms in the Boland House, but that space is Beth’s on almost every symbolic level. When people pop into it, it’s a direct invasion of her.

This is something that the show has revisited time and time again, particularly when it comes to Beth’s bedroom. When people want to be close to Beth, that’s where they go. Annie slept there across season one when she was vulnerable and lonely, despite Beth telling her to go home, Jane broke into Beth’s closet there when she felt she was being neglected, Dean’s constantly trying to sidle into it (and – pointedly – only really in it when they’re fighting and Beth is revealing something / letting him in on something – that they’re out of money, that she has Rio’s money, that she knows about his affairs). When Beth has been at her most vulnerable, she lets Ruby and Annie into it. That said, the only character who’s been explicitly invited into it has been Rio – significantly both in fantasy, and in the show’s reality.

It’s not just about inviting people in though – when she kicks somebody out of it, the act is loaded.

She’s not just pushing somebody out of a space, she’s pushing them out of her.

It’s not just her bedroom of course (although I do think that’s the most significant space on perhaps the whole show). Rio and Turner between them have regularly invaded Beth’s living room, dining room, her kitchen, her yard. These are often distinctly tied with her doing something domestic and / or distinctly feminine. She’s bringing groceries home, she’s baking, she’s trying on jewellery, she’s mothering her children. Symbolically, this is often when Rio and Turner both are at their most masculine and their most threatening, which just serves to underline the invasion of Beth’s space.

It’s not just the girls though, as I said above. Female domestic spaces on this show are significantly coded as belonging to women, even if they share those spaces. Think about Nancy and Greg’s house – which is Nancy’s space, not Greg’s, and throughout season 1, Annie was pitted as the outsider to that. She’s a smear of hair oil on Nancy’s perfect couch. It’s made all the starker when Nancy kicks Greg out, and when Annie helps Nancy give birth in that house – a distinctly female, intimate act, that not only operates as a significant feminization of that space, but also about Annie fighting for Nancy to let her in again.

These spaces all keep secrets for the women they belong to too – Mary Pat’s husband’s dead body, Boomer’s very much alive one – because, again, symbolically, they are these women.

Rio’s loft is a really interesting one to look at in this context, because not only is it hyper masculine, but the show underlines that it does not hold the same significance that the girls’ places have for them. Beth does not learn Rio by being inside him – something made stark through their game of twenty questions. In fact, being in Rio’s loft, in his space, only serves to point out how much Beth doesn’t know him. Not only that, but Beth’s inability to lose her house (which is really central to her arc) is paralleled exactly with how easily Rio can separate from his.

The domestic space is not male.

Rio exists outside of it.

Beth x Rio and the Feminine x Masculine

Rio and Beth are basically at polar opposites of the masculine / feminine spectrum, and it’s something that this show often casts in a really stark light through dialogue, visual language, character coding and symbolism.

Beth epitomizes the old archetype of femininity and the female world in a way that I don’t think Annie and Ruby do (although I do think Ruby does in some respects). This is coded into almost every part of her character – from her long history of domestic servitude and marital submission (letting Dean control their finances, not working, keeping the house, etc.) to her fertility (four children!) to the way she dresses in floral, bakes, to certain traits, namely her nurturing tendencies, overt empathy and guilt (not being able to kill Boomer). Even in terms of the casting – Christina is somebody who has a very distinctly feminine body.

On the other hand, Rio, in many ways, epitomizes the old idea of masculinity and the masculine world. He’s coded that way almost as much as Beth is coded as feminine – he’s physically strong (beating up Dean, holding Beth up while they were having sex), assertive, dominant, capable and collected. That’s not even touching on the fact that the golden gun is incredibly phallic, haha.

The show loves to place Beth’s femininity in direct contrast with Rio’s masculinity in a way that it doesn’t do with the other girls or – in fact perhaps more notably – with Beth and Dean (if anything, Dean’s frequently emasculated around Beth, but that feels like a whole other thing, haha), and it does this frequently, and often even in the same shot.

Most notably, think of her pearls on the warehouse door handle:

Their cars parked side-by-side:

Her necklace, his gun:

Her light, his darkness:

Her floral, his solid colours:

Interestingly though, these things are very rarely in competition or combative (although occasionally they are – Rio trying to use her femaleness and his maleness / their sexuality to literally bend her over a table in 2.06 being the clearest example of that). Generally speaking, the show’s visual language though shows us how these things compliment each other. They occupy different gendered spaces, so they can ‘crime’ in different ways – Beth using the big box stores, the secret shoppers, robbing the day spa, are all things that are highly feminised, and give Rio by proxy access to a world he ordinarily wouldn’t (albeit it’s not always a world he’s interested in – like it wasn’t with the botox), and the reverse of that is that Rio gives Beth access to spaces that are highly masculinised and that she ordinarily wouldn’t have access to (again, not always a world she’s interested in either). It’s why when they’re working together, and acknowledging they have different departments, they actually become something really whole, comprehensive and effective.

It’s the exploration of this that I find really intriguing generally, and particularly a thread that I think is reiterated where Beth’s usually at her worst and her most ineffective when she’s trying to emulate Rio’s masculinity. We saw that at the end of 1.10 and the start of 2.01, and I think we saw it at the tail end of season 2 too. When Beth’s succeeding, she’s typically doing something that revels in the strength and power and the underestimation of femininity and female spaces, and turns places that are typically viewed as passive into active ones.

The Secret Shoppers (which worked briefly! And fell apart because she couldn’t handle Mary Pat. Notably almost every scene with them was inside Beth’s house):

The day spa heist:

The Boland Motors takeover / reclamation that focused on feminising the place:

Pretending to be somebody’s mum to get into the kids’ space (which would’ve worked if Beth and Ruby hadn’t started fighting):

Breaking into Rio’s loft:

Again, this is something that seems to be being teased out already in s3 with the paper store and the nail salon, and I’m sure we’ll see it coming up again and again beyond that.

But yes! Your question, haha. I think Rio is enamoured with the strong, feminine space and the untapped female world that Beth exists in, and the ways that she is actively capable of utilising her femininity and her womanness in a way that is completely impossible for him. She can manipulate these spaces – either those already female, or those she makes female aka Boland Motors – in ways that he can’t, and in a way that, at the end of the day, lines his pocket, in the same way that giving her access to his powerful, masculine world lines hers. It’s market development, y’know? But it’s also something that could be a true and successful partnership if they could stop, y’know, playing games and trying to kill each other, haha.

I think it’s worth noting here too that the show has shown us explicitly that Beth absolutely gets off on Rio being highly masculine, and while I think Rio absolutely gets off on Beth being a boss bitch too, it’s also important to note how he responds to her when she’s displaying vulnerability in a way often defined as very feminine – namely crying – and how that display of femininity not only affects him, but often makes him want to touch her (and more and more, follow through on touching her).

Basically I think they’re as obsessed with the contrast between the two of them as we are, haha.

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ebaeschnbliah · 4 years

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VATICAN CAMEOS

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‘Vatican Cameos’ is a well known phrase in Sherlock BBC. It’ s Sherlock’s secret code word to warn against some imminent life-threatening danger. The code is used three times in total:

First by Sherlock in ASIB when he is about to open Irene’s safe where she keeps her camera phone, guarded by ‘explosives’.

Second by Sherlock in TSOT when he is about to connect the last dots regarding the Mayfly Man case, the invisible man with the invisible knife, and what this means for Major Sholto.

Third by John in TFP when he learns that Eurus is able to ‘reprogramme’ people. Sherlock doesn’t pay attention to him though. He has just played Irene’s theme on his violin and is about to touch the wall of glass which seperates him from Eurus.

The word ‘cameo’ has different meanings. It can be a piece of jewellery, like a gem or small medallion, often with a profiled head carved in stone or some other hard material. The word is also used for small literary or filmic pieces or small theatrical roles. It looks like both meanings - ‘carved in stone’ as well as ‘small guest appearance’ - could apply to the wording ‘Vatican Cameos’ in Sherlock BBC, in a metaphorical reading of the story.

TBC below the cut …

Two restaurants lit by fire and flame

At Angelo’s ...

In the unaired PILOT/ASIP, Sherlock and John wait at Angelo’s restaurant for serial killer Hope. It’s the first time both men work together on a case. From the fireless mantlepiece right next to their candlelit table, a silent watcher observes the beginning of their relationship. It’s the bust of a pope (x x).

ANGELO: Anything on the menu, whatever you want, free. All on the house, you and your date. … Anything on the menu, I cook it for you myself.

A pope, head of the Vatican and supreme keeper of an unrelenting belief, is present at the first ‘date’ of two men, is forced to watch silently, how they fall in love with each other … while a living, breathing ‘angel’ isn’t only ready to serve them food and drink … no, the ‘angel’ even offers to cook the meal himself for free … everything they desire.

The ‘angel’, literally, lights the fire between Sherlock and John with the remark, that this would be much more romantic for a first date. The whole scene seems to be drenched in a yellow light.

Maybe also worth noticing ... the bust of the pope has been put on the same place at the mantlepiece as the skull in 221b.

At the Cross Keys Inn ...

Sherlock and John have rooms at the Cross Keys Inn near Baskerville. They meet in front of the blazing fireplace after Sherlock’s first encounter with the monstrous hound in Dewer’s Hollow. A heart adorns the mantlepiece right over the flickering flames.

The owners of the Cross Keys Inn are Billy and Gary, a gay couple. They have a dog which they couldn’t bring themselves to put down. A sign with ‘vacancies’ written on it, is placed above the statue of a hound. In the pigeonholes beneath, some lovely old fashioned keys seem only to wait for their task to open doors into equally lovely rooms. Bottles of wine are placed at both sides of the keys, the hound and the sign.

The name of the restaurant - Cross Keys - is a deliberate choice by the creators of this story (X) and it seems they really knew quite well what they were doing by choosing precisely this name. The image of two crossed keys features most prominently in the coat of arms of the Vatican, crowned by the papal tiara. This turns the Cross Keys Inn into another short ‘cameo appearance’ of the Vatican. The ‘crossed keys’ - the keys of heaven - have been given to a gay couple that provides food and drink and rooms for those, who want to fulfill those desires.

It isn’t new that these two characters are mirrors for Sherlock and John. (Follow the dog, Part 1 by @sagestreet ) Their names speak for themselves as well:

Billy is short for William, like William Sherlock Scott Holmes

Gary contains the germanic element ‘ger’ meaning ‘spear’

The ‘crossed keys’ of the Vatican

The flag of the Vatican, the papal colours, are yellow and white. They mirror the colours of the keys. The silver key symbolizes the pope's earthly power and the gold one represents god's divine power. The mechanisms of the keys (the bit/beard that unlocks) is turned up towards heaven, their grips are facing downward to show that they were given into the hands of the pope by god.

In heraldry ...

gold (Or) is mostly depicted as yellow and linked to the sun and faith, representd by the topaz (aspects linked to John and his mirrors)

silver (Argent) is mostly depicted as white and linked to the moon and purity, represented by the pearl (aspects linked to Sherlock and his mirrors)

The Vatican’s crossed keys represent the metaphorical keys of the office of Saint Peter, also known as the ‘keys of heaven’. They are the symbol of papal authority. Peter recived the keys and alongside with them, the power of binding and loosing was also commited to him. (Sources: X X )

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” (Matthew 16:19:)

“What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder”

This phrase is very well known from wedding ceremonies. Marriage, also called ‘the holy matrimony’, is one of the seven sacraments in catholic church. It is a convenant by which two people establish between themselves a partnership of the whole life. And to this day, the Vatican decides which type of partnership is legal and blessed and which one is a sin and damned. A view, carved in stone and unchangeble, it seems.

Faith, Hope and Love

Those three aspects, closely related to deep emotions, are also known as the three theological virtues. In christianity they are associated with the ‘salvation resulting from the grace of god’ (x).

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13)

The three virtues - hope, faith and love - are also an important part of the rosary prayer. The first three Hail Mary’s at the beginning of the litany are dedicated to them by ending each one of the verses with … ‘and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, …

... who increases faith in us.’

... who strengthens hope in us.’

... who ignites love in us.’

The creators of Sherlock BBC took a rather special and original way to include those three virtues and Mary’s pregnancy into their story.

HOPE - is the name of the serial killer in ASIP, who offers two sorts of pills (chemistry), a good one and a bad one. One of his victims is the pink lady who had once been in ‘good hope’. But then her daughter Rachel was stillborn. Rachel is the code word to track down Hope.

FAITH - is the name of the serial killer’s daughter in TLD (who’s also linked to chemistry). She appears in two different versions, both presented as mirrors for John. It turns out that in one of the two versions she is Eurus in disguise ... the ‘other one’ ... Sherlock’s long locked- up emotinal part.

LOVE - is used in its Latin translation ‘AMO’ (I love) as code name for the person who is Mycroft’s - the brains - superior. This code word is also used by a second person, Vivian Norbury, to influence the Tiblisi hostage incident - the ultimate cause for the ‘death’ of Rosamunnd Mary and the eventual ‘birth’ of Mary Morstan, which will leads to the birth of baby Rosamund Mary.

Three different stories and yet, each one is about ‘TWO’ (even ‘I love’ appears as AMO & AMMO) and the concepts of choice, death and rebirth. All of it linked to the love story of two men.

The yellow thread

The colour yellow runs through the story told in Sherlock BBC, from the first series to the (by now) last:

This thread starts with Sherlock’s and John’s first ‘date’ at Angelo’s. The whole scene is drenched in yellow.

A secret code of ancient cyphers, sprayed in yellow paint, leads to the Yellow Dragon Circus.

Golden cats and big ‘yellow’ felines - lions - roam the story.

Yellow is the colour of the smiley face on the wall of the 221b living room.

There’s an assassin who carries a yellow ladder and a yellow tool case with a gun in it.

A bright yellow mask has been placed inside a box, alongside with a train, a phone, nicotin patches and a note.

The main colour of the wedding ... so much yellow. It’s the wedding that leads Sherlock to a revolutionary revelation and to a love deduction.

A canary trainer, a trainer of yellow birds, turns out to be the killer.

The Norbury case from canon, known as the case of the ‘yellow face’, plays a vital role in an episode.

The finish of a race is marked with a bright yellow band that floats slowly to the ground while a serial killer passes as winner.

Yellow is the colour of the sun, of fire and flames.

Yellowbeard ….

Yellow and white, gold and silver - are the colours of the Vatican. Colours that represent unchangeable tradition, stubborn persistance and inflexibility. Sherlock BBC links those colours stongly to John and Sherlock. The conductor of light, the fierce lion on the one hand and and the man in the moon, the virgin in the white sheet on the other hand.

A pope, carved in stone, is forced to witness how two men fall in love. The crossed keys of heaven are given into the hands of a loving gay couple. The christian virtues of hope, faith and love become a core element in that story of change and rebirth. What might the colour yellow stand for in Sherlock BBC?

What if it becomes the colour of victory for a much too long forbidden love?

Speculative addition: nuns versus Dracula

In case Dracula BBC is somehow related to Sherlock BBC, which role might have been given to the nuns? As catholic nuns, will they turn out to be another ‘vatican cameo’? After all, nuns do have great significance in Sherlock BBC since the beginning. There are the ‘headless nuns’ from PILOT and TSOT and furthermore, sister is just another word for nun. I’ve tried to follow the trail of those nuns/sisers in ‘The Roads we walk have demons beneath’.

Inspired by the comments on this post some time ago and the last bit by the new trailer for Dracula BBC. I leave you to your own deductions.

For more ‘vatican cameos’ try A CHRISTMAS TALE

December, 2019

#vatican cameos #the pope #crossed keys #yellow #sherlock bbc #metaphorical reading #pics edited #nuns #dracula bbc

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