#and the number of times thus has happened its bloody ridiculous

[definitelyuseless]

that said, it actually is really annoying how literally every time there's a franchise or book series or anything that was made a while ago and then theres new instalments people are always invariably whingeing about how the new stuff is shit compared to the absolutely brilliant perfect old stuff when the only real difference is that the new stuffs new and not exactly the same as the old stuff

[my-writings-and-musings]

hello! if you are taking requests, can you please do the oxygen loss prompt with megatron and whirl?

I did Whirl in part two, so I have Megatron here with a ridiculously long one and I hope that's okay! I added Thunderclash as well so I can keep my pattern of two because... I like patterns. I might be getting super into this prompt...

Part One: Here!

Part Two: Here!

Part Three: You're Here!

Part Four: Here!

Part Five: Here!

Part Six: Here!

Part Seven: Here!

Part Eight: Here!

Part Nine: Here!

Part Ten: Here!

Part Eleven: Here!

Part Twelve: Here!

Megatron

·You're in the ship's recently finished classroom organizing lesson plans on your own, having been working with Megatron to try and set up more structured class schedules on the growing list of topics he's begun to cover. You're thrilled he's found a kind of calling on the ship, especially one that seems to be allowing bots to see the side of him you know best. He's made it quite clear in his own way that your assistance in this endeavor means the world to him.

·He's on the bridge, scouting out potential locations for refueling on the next leg of the journey with the rest of the commanding officers. For once there's mostly cohesion in their efforts, and his insistence on choosing planets hospitable to humans is met with agreement, if not surprise. They're on schedule to finish early for a quiet afternoon off when everything turns to a level of chaos even the experienced crewmembers have to call extreme. The rumble that shakes the entire ship is one Megatron and experienced space travelers know well; they've been ambushed.

·You're nearly knocked off the desk you're standing on by the unexpected tremors. While you're trying to figure out what could possibly have caused the disturbance, a message is appearing up on the bridge, where alerts of failing systems and corrupted codes almost make it impossible to hear an alien captain decree an intent to storm the ship. Megatron attempts diplomacy before lives are lost, but the enemy makes it clear; this ship and its contents are more valuable than anything they could offer. While the captain notes their species has heard of the famed Lost Light and its crew, their hack of the security systems proved embarrassingly simple, and they look forward to the easy payoff from selling the scraps of the Cybertronians onboard!

·With communications down and systems struggling through an ongoing sabotage, Megatron still prepares to coordinate a defense, but is stopped before he can begin by a final taunt from their enemy. Their hack of the security cameras showed his fondness for his new pet, a homo sapien of all things, and thus his current concern should be for the atmospheric regulation instead of battle plans. But considering how many dead organics he's left in his wake, surely one more shouldn't perturb him too deeply, yes?

·The line goes dead just as the ship's alarm attempts to sound, signaling an impending attack before it too crashes with everything else. His fellow officers are moving to get defenses up however they can, preparing to get the resident tech experts on the job of restoring key systems while trying to plan a counterattack with no way to reach anyone. He's near to frozen as he tries to message you to no avail, the cruel mockery of the enemy cutting deep in ways words rarely do for him, if only because the implication terrifies him like nothing ever has; he's all but helpless to save you.

·Only experience and an undying determination allow him to break through the fog. Without asking for guidance or permission, he states his one intent; to rescue you however he can. If there are any objections, he does not hear them, and soon his pedes are tearing down the hallway to where he last saw you and prays he'll find you; the classroom. Oblivious to his rush, the only thing you're aware of is the fact that something is amiss, but you don't have a clue as to what. Between the tremor, the brief blare of the alarm and your inability to get your communicator running, you only know there's danger inbound.

·Not having much information to work with, you surmise that the classroom is probably not the safest place to hunker down, and recall that the medical and scientific wings aren't far. As the doctors on the ship have added human medicine to their repertoire, and are hardly defenseless, trying to get to them seems your greatest hope for securing yourself. Not wanting to panic, you push your supplies into a somewhat neat pile and climb down the small ladder that's been added to the desk for your sake. Somehow you don't find yourself at the top of your worries at all. Your thoughts center almost entirely on Megatron, who will undoubtedly be forced into whatever conflict might erupt, and even an unexpected staleness in the air around you hardly registers amidst your anxiety.

·Megatron is still too logical of a bot not to stop every crewmember he sees to give them a brief list of orders. He knows that, without a united defense and victory, there won't be any way you can be saved at all. So he takes the hindrance, though bots hardly take long to move when he issues a command. But his growing fear gnaws at him with a simple truth; without communication, he can't even be sure of your location, let alone your condition. Perhaps he's going the wrong way. Perhaps you're already beyond help. Perhaps you've already been discovered by the enemy. All he can do in the face of blinding terror is keep moving, keep coordinating, and keep hoping beyond reason that he'll be fortunate for once.

·You can't remember the classroom ever taking so long to cross, but that's hardly important, especially with your communicator still failing to function. Reaching Megatron would give you incredible comfort right now, if only to hear he's alright, yet that's obviously not going to happen. Honestly, it sounds silly to really think about it, the human worrying for the Cybertronian... But your anxiety isn't comforted merely to remember he's a gigantic combat veteran, not knowing anything about his current status is all it needs to wander to scary places...

·Closing in on your position, the mech in question echoes your worry, but his knowledge of the current danger puts his feelings closer to panic. All he knows is that he's coordinated a not insignificant number of bots for a better defense on his way through the ship. With better resistance on their side, he knows they can win, because they must. The alternative won't come to pass while his spark still flickers within him. That promise comes to an early test when he overhears enemies moving on the path ahead, and he takes the charge without hesitation, his terror converting quite easily to rage for extra assistance.

·By the time you're at the door you know something is wrong with you. Each step comes with a wobble you can't explain, and soon the dizziness you thought was worry has grown to almost debilitating levels. Why is the room spinning? Why does your body feel so heavy? It doesn't worry you as much as it probably should, but you know it needs to be fixed, especially with the ship potentially in jeopardy. Faint activity from the hallway outside spurs you to finally trigger the door to open, which thankfully appears to be one of the few systems still working. Heavy footsteps not too far away register in your ears just as you're forced to lean against a wall for support.

·The aliens that come into view before you quite unexpectedly are large, tough, and well armed. Most races would have found them an insurmountable challenge, and even an experienced Cybertronian combatant couldn't expect an easy victory against a single fighter, leaving you quite hopeless as you stare upwards in confusion. Megatron is not the norm, and his drive to win is fuelled by far more than just survival, so he feels little more than irritation when he finally arrives to the hallway you're pinned within. More than a dozen mark his path to you, their forms clustered around the helpless human in sick curiosity, and as a result they're heedless to his appearance.

·Hulking forms most definitely not of Cybertronian make tower over your body as it struggles to keep upright, the ceiling spinning overhead as you try to connect thoughts and move your legs to flee. A language you don't understand precedes a slow swipe in your direction, one that you stumble away from more than dodge, resulting in you roughly collapsing to the floor. Something like cruel laughter greets your painful tumble. You should be angry, being mocked like a bug skittering from its inevitable squishing, but God you're so exhausted. It's not even in you to be afraid when the barrel of an alien gun is pointed at your head and the scent of ozone fills your nose while the barrel fills with light.

·A second tremor shakes the ship, but this one proves to be far more deadly than the last. Your would be killers are obliterated by a blur of gunmetal gray that pummels them into the floor, and before you can blink the carnage begins and seems to escalate to unimaginable levels of ferocity. Only your familiarity with Megatron allows you to discern him amidst the flurry of quickly diminishing combatants, but he's nothing like the mech you know in this instant, going for sheer brute force over strategy as he tears aliens apart with his bare servos. In the bloody chaos you can't tell if he's taking damage or not despite the sheer numbers he was initially facing.

·The end of it all is somehow more startling than the beggining. In one final attack he ends the last soldier, quieting the cacophony of battle to leave only the steady drip of alien blood down the wall and his own haggard ventilations. There's a dash of bright energon amongst the mess, glowing in rivulets down his side, and somehow that's what gets your cloudy brain moving again. Pushing exhausted legs against the floor, you try to rise as you cry out in concern, reaching for him before you collapse right back against the solid ground.

·Heedless to his own injuries, Megatron is over you in a single instant, no longer blinded by the fury he'd experienced at the sight of you in peril. All he'd known was that your attackers had needed to die, no hesitation, and tearing them apart had come easily from there. Now things are once again far from simple. The blood on his hands doesn't stop him from picking you up as gingerly as he can, though your impossibly tiny body appears more delicate than ever in his massive palms. Though it makes him sick to realize, he does indeed know a struggling organic when he sees one, making the captain's words burn in his audials once more.

·Guilt is forced down to a minimum so he can focus on what matters; you. He needs to get you somewhere safe but with access to oxygen, and the only place that can happen is the medical bay or the laboratory, and he knows both are quite close. He couldn't care less about his own gashed side, so even if the medics and scientists are elsewhere he should likely be able to rig something up before energon loss impacts him. Holding you close, in a way that will permit him to shield you with his body, he starts moving while he speaks to you. It's obvious even to him his words aren't motivating, but at least they seem to get your attention.

·Looking up at him, feeling like you're tiny beyond belief thanks to his incredible size, you wonder how much of this could be real. Megatron had just hurled himself into battle for you, enduring agonizing wounds in the process, and beaten back what should have been impossible odds... If he wasn't so close you could touch him, you'd certainly think he was just a figment of your imagination emerging from the spinning hallways around you. His deep baritone rumbles reassurances to you as your eyes slowly drift shut, your perception fading around the edges until he's all you can see, and you can feel sleep beckoning like never before.

·He truly has seen enough organics dying to recognize that you're fading in his arms, and seeing the connection between such atrocities and you is slowly starting to tear into him with guilt that refuses to be ignored. How many lives just like yours has he snuffed out? How recently was it that he could have ended your life amongst the billions of others, unaware of what a gift you are to the universe? More specifically, because of this, what right does he have to so much as look at you? The thoughts are a dark and unmanageable tangle by the time he arrives at his destination, where an already overwhelmed medical crew is tending to the injured from an apparently victorious battle. He's near to shock when he hands you over to a frantically rushing Ratchet and simply explains you need oxygen, his hand gingerly cupping his injury before he firmly insists on being the last to be repaired. If he's spoken to afterwards, he doesn't remember any of what is said.

·The medical bay is dim when you awaken, and you see that you've been placed in your own private room when you look about, oxygen mask holding secure to your face as you do so. A massive shape against the wall would have startled you if you didn't immediately recognize Megatron. He smiles almost sadly when you awaken, and while you initially attribute his uncharacteristic weariness to the welded injury on his side, he quickly makes it clear that isn't the case. Whispering a simple wish for your recovery, he excuses himself and makes to leave, and you know that something is amiss m

·When you merely call for him to stop, he breaks, confessing that his relief to see you alive is equal only to his certainty that he's not worthy of you and can no longer pretend otherwise. It takes all of your strength to sit up and demand he stay; you refuse to let the bot who just saved you walk out, especially when you've made it abundantly clear his past is something you've accepted, and your firm reminder is cut short only by dizziness forcing you to lay back. The sight stirs him to return to your side, concern in his optics, and you lay a hand on the tip of his digit in a breathless and wordless reminder; he's more than his past to you, and you made that decision knowing the struggles ahead. He smiles as his digit gently strokes your forehead, recalling that he too had made a decision that day; to trust you meant yours.

Thunderclash

·The two of you are in the hangar practicing sparring, which for your benefit mostly consists of him holding up a training dummy against his palm while you whack at it, and as is often the case you've become sidetracked by conversation over actual work. He's laying on his front to keep the two of you closer to eye level, leaning his chin against his spare hand for comfort, talking about all the little things that come to mind as opposed to the grand topics he's used to being asked about. Frankly, this freedom a big part of what he likes about these moments with you. He gets to just be a bot with interests like any other.

·Your casual chat is interrupted by a communication from the command team on the bridge, who summon him for assistance tracing where a series of small anomalies across the ship might be coming from. Systems are glitching in ways that can't be explained, the defensive radar can't seem to decide if there's something in the apparently empty space around them, and in an ironic twist the message goes dead just as communication problems are mentioned. It's quickly apparent something needs to be done.

·Apologizing for having to cut things short, the massive bot offers to give you a ride to the heart of the ship, which he'll have to pass on his way to the bridge. Always eager to spend more time together, you happily oblige, taking the place of the training dummy in his palm as he lifts you to rest beside his spark. While his shoulder is arguably a more dignified location, you take more than a little comfort feeling the hum of his energy at your back, and thus have chosen this as your travel spot. Between his wound and the many setbacks it's taken to get him back in shape, it's just nice to feel his spark going strong.

·Not long after setting off, he gets the sense there's more to these troubles than technical error, and that something less than desirable may be the culprit. It's not something he can explain, but being more attuned to the subtler things in his environment just gives him a feeling. When he voices this to you, along with the thought you should probably be left somewhere safe, you ask what he believes might be coming. Not because you don't believe him, but you know he only drops his smile when he is preparing for something bad, and you haven't seen proof of any concrete threat.

·With almost comedic timing, the ship lurches at that very moment, nearly knocking the big bot off balance. Only his firm but careful hold saves you from a twenty foot fall. The rumble fades off with something like a great dragging sensation through the ship, which you'd compare to a Manhattan sized car grinding to a halt. Now cupping you in both hands, Thunderclash asks earnestly if you're alright, to which you reassuringly reply that a little turbulence isn't enough to do any damage.

·Smiling at the fortitude of your tiny body, he begins walking straight away, shifting to strategy as his red optics narrow in contemplation. He explains that the particular nature of that shake confirmed his suspicions something is planning an attack. Rather, they're initiating an attack. The sensation of a ship being locked to another and anchored is a particular one, and combined with their systems crashing it's obvious an enemy has come prepared to strike for a well planned ambush.

·You see that he's worrying, but you say nothing of it, taking hold of his thumb to communicate support. Being with him in private has made it clear his existence as a perpetual source of strength for others exhausts him, so you've since committed to acting as his well of certainty in difficult times. Not letting your fear bleed in to your words, you instead ask what the two of you should do, confirming your own communicator is uselessly jammed as you do so.

·Moving through the ship at considerable speed with his long legs, he decides that you'll still need to be secured rather quickly, as enemy combatants are probably already storming the ship or preparing to do so. You'd debate him if you weren't well aware of the logic in his plan. No matter what the enemy is, you won't stand much of a chance in a full on brawl, as anything confident enough to attack a Cybertronian starship is likely to have the firepower to back itself up. Still, it's impossible not to be dissapointed by your inability to offer aid, though it's probably for the best as you're rather exhausted from sparring anyway.

·It happens in a blur, but that's partly because of the shocking reaction time of the bot carrying you, something few would expect due to his size. Thunderclash registers the threat as soon as he turns the corner, a feat aided by the very much not Cybertronian appearance of the figures he sees, and then made far easier by the multiple clicks of weapons preparing to fire. Your presence in his hands became his central point of focus in that instant. Turning on the spot, he allowed the first hail of bullets to strike his armored back, keeping you well out of the line of fire before ducking behind an opposite corner for cover. The sting of the gunfire matters little when he sees you safe in his hands, and less when he instructs you to stay low after setting you down and charging in to fight.

·In the heat of it all, you're embarrassed to be caught so frazzled, as this is hardly your first exposure to alien combat. But there's little time to admonish yourself when chaos unfolds just around the corner, and your tiny size permits a small peek... Thunderclash is the gentlest giant in the world to you, but in just a few blinks the hulking aliens are on the losing front, and while his fighting style is far from gratuitous it is effective. You're still trembling from the rush of the initial shock when the last enemy of the group is on the floor, but even with your shaky vision you can see your bot is unharmed. For a moment that little burst of relief supersedes everything else.

·In usual fashion though, he expresses worry for you when he returns to pick you up from where he left you, drawing an affectionate chuckle from you at how impossibly selfless this mech can be. But he doesn't back down from the question like he usually does. His expression of concern intensifies as he starts moving again, and his sharp optics find ample to worry about on your seemingly unharmed body, with particular attention being paid to your face. Those brilliant eyes of yours are well known to him, and so he can tell something is... off in their beautiful depths. Even if his medical studies focus very little on organics, he's able to recognize the signs of a body struggling, and your paleness combined with the way you labor for each breath tells him something is very wrong.

·Now in a race against time, he has no choice but to move, gunning it towards the ship's tech wing where the laboratories and medical bay are located. He doesn't yet know what's wrong with you for certain, but aid will be there if it's anywhere to be found. There's no time to be wasted in securing you somewhere either, he's going to have to face any threats as they come in the moment whilst ensuring your protection in the process. It's a set of circumstances he's encountered before in his long and eventful time as a soldier, but there's an entirely new variable this time around; you. He adores you, like no one he's ever met before, and perhaps it's selfish but the very thought of losing you... he's not sure his spark could take it.

·The soothing tone of his voice and the rhythmic thumping of his footsteps make it surprisingly difficult for you to heed his requests to stay as awake as possible. Even though your breaths are coming in with difficulty, it seems like sleep would be a fantastic idea at the moment, even if only to rest your eyes. His cupped hands just support your body so nicely, and are so warm, and his voice is so delightfully melodic. Why does he seem so intent on keeping you conscious? Why does he look so incredibly upset to see you struggling to keep your eyes open?

·The pathway he chooses is mercifully free of conflict at first, but that matters little due to your rate of deterioration, as you may not make it even at his full speed. Driving isn't an option due to his need to be combat ready, and the lack of options and hope is absolutely tearing him apart. He hasn't had someone like you in his life before, and the desperation in his voice begins to show that, cracking as he loses his steadfast control of his usually impervious wall of confidence. The selfishness of his desire kills him; how dare he put his own feelings on you due to his weakness? Begging you to survive for his sake?

·No amount of haze can prevent you from startling at his pain. There are tears in his optics, though he doesn't even seem to notice them, letting them fall down his face as he pleads. In the warm fog clouding your brain, you feel a surge of worry, and your hand instinctively grabs at his nearest digit to give it a squeeze. Before you can even offer a breathless reasurance, he ceases running and dives from gunfire that seems to erupt from nowhere, laying you in a tiny maintenance crevice before hurling himself at the second delay he knows you don't have time for. The last thing you see before drifting off is the grief in his optics that you wish you'd been able to comfort...

·While his combat skills always make things quick, in this blur of pain and rage he's downright brutal, ending each foe swiftly but with absolute contempt for their existence clear in every torn limb. Hits to his own frame don't register at all. Bullets and blades mean nothing in the face of what he's about to lose, and the vengeance fueling his strength turns foes into scattered body parts more effectively than any grenade ever could. By the end of it all he's likely set a record for the swiftness of his takedown, but it matters as little as his multitude of bleeding wounds. All he can see is your now limp body as he pulls it from the hiding spot, and his vision narrows to only your faintly moving chest and his pedes moving one past the other through the carnage.

·There's a mass of activity in the technology wing, likely due to injuries as well as the many bots ordered to stand guard in the event of battle, but he doesn't hear the reaction his arrival triggers in the slightest. His sharp processor is reduced to one goal, and anything unrelated doesn't exist. At the sight of the crowded medical bay he starts to strategize. Ratchet appears in his vision, first focusing only on his obvious injuries and the alien blood he didn't know was spattered across his frame, before well trained optics catch sight of the tiny human limp in his hands.

·There's a rush of an explanation; they think one of the systems downed was the atmospheric generators, resulting in a loss of the oxygen the ship maintains for your needs. It's all the information Thunderclash needs to act. Brushing off any help for himself and encouraging the more egregiously wounded to be tended first, he requests only to be provided what you need. Busy tending the injured, medics still assist him getting a supply of oxygen going where they can, with Ratchet using his particular knowledge of human anatomy to ensure the ratio is correct for your biology while Thunderclash prepares it all. Dexterous hands set you on a medical slab where an oxygen mask and scanner are used to return your blood oxygen to normal, and just like that, he knows you'll eventually be okay...

·By the time you wake up your tiny frame has been moved to a private room, both to keep you from the chaos of crammed in bots and to give the two of you privacy from adoring admirers. He's beside you, his wounds patched but his frame still dirtied with blood, a sight that shocks you enough to force a gasp into your mask. Perking up the instant he hears you, the hulking mech is as close as the berth allows in a flash. A stream of questions about your wellbeing passes his lips before you can get a word in. Between the dried blood, the patched wounds, and the faint discoloration of his optics that suggests recent weeping... It's hard to know what to ask him, so you vaguely request a rundown of what happened.

·His face falls, and in between recounts of alien attacks and near death experiences there's overwhelming self depreciation. To hear him tell it the entire affair might as well be his fault. You've always known him to be humble, even critical of his actions, but this borders on self destructive. Worse, the crux of his crisis seems to be that he was motivated to save you not just by duty, but by his selfish desire to protect the one he loved so dearly and can't bare to lose. His own desires are inexcusable in these things, as he puts it, and could have hindered him at your expense. Shaky arms rise so that you can grab the nearest part of him, a digit once again, as you encourage him to stop tormenting himself. You owed him your life, several times over just for today alone, and there wasn't a bot in existence less selfish than he. The kindness of his spark was what you'd fallen in love with, and what you still loved now, because he was more than a legend to you. You loved Thunderclash the bot, not the expectation everyone else had built around him, and thus he'd always be enough just by being himself. Finally relaxing after everything, and his spark singing at your ability to become his rock when he needs one, he allows himself to just rest and exist as he is. Laying his helm on the berth beside you, he nuzzles close, allowing himself to feel simple gratitude to have and love you as you do him.

[thegeekyzoologist]

My opinion on Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (SPOILERS)

Like many people interested in the Jurassic franchise, I binge-watched that show back in september and here are my thoughts.  First of all, I precise that I had no expectations for the series as the combo Jurassic World + kid show didn’t attracted me at all, and the trailers have done nothing but confirm my fears.

Let’s start by the positive: - Amidst the cringefest that the first episodes were, the scenes with Darius back home stand out from the rest by their quality as they are centred more on drama and character development and not on clumsy comedy like the scenes on Nublar. The idea of getting an access to Jurassic World and Camp Cretaceous as a reward for beating that virtual reality game reminded me the recruitment of Eli Wallace by the SGC at the very beginning of Stargate Universe. - Starting from the beginning of the season’s second half, the series gets better and a little more mature in its unfolding and writing, up to the point where it doesn’t seem targeted for young children but rather young teens. Some dumb scenes remain however (like the one of the geneticist Eddie, abandoned in the lab with the sole company of his birthday cake). - There is a few action and suspenseful scenes that aren’t bad in the second half with, among other things, a hide-and-seek game with the Indominus amidst the containers, a part in the tunnels that can remind some people of Telltale’s game, a monorail attack by the pteranodons which should have deserved a live-action treatment, and a climax in a storage area where the protagonists have to use their wits in order to defeat the carnotaur and escape from the underground network. On the matter of the carnotaur, one can note a nice paleontological reference with its difficulty to turn when it is chasing prey. - Of all of the characters, Roxie is the most realistic, responsible and reasonable one (and the only tolerable one in the first episodes). And let’s bring now the negative aspects: - On the matter of the original soundtrack, I don’t remember any of the original themes sadly. As I had the same problem when I viewed The Witcher though (I didn’t liked its first season but I rather well appreciated its soundtrack following a separated listening), I will wait for the release of the soundtrack before criticizing it further. - The first episodes are a total farce with a succession of all kinds of nonsenses with the bunch of stereotypical buffoons that the kids are that are involved in stupid acts by the night of their first day, acts that fall under Reversed Darwinism (the survival of the most idiotic like Grant would say in Jurassic Park 3) and that gave me the desire to give some slaps and send those Kennys to a firing squad (for the crimes of property destruction and, above all, endangering dinosaurs and employees); the infringements during the activities of hygiene and security rules that are applied in many theme parks and laboratories around the world (with the kids wandering around in the lab and touching to everything in a total dissidence; running down a zipline and brushing past brachiosaurs...); the counsellor Dave which talks to Wu like if he was an old pal of his while Wu is one of the highest corporate executive around and someone famous and respected in-universe; Wu being depicted with the subtlety of a fat beer-drunk sea lion (with his mannerisms and attitude worthy of a James Bond villain, we know right away that he is bad); cartoony action scenes (I mean bloody hell. Look at that Parasaurolophus that jumps off the jeep’s roof like he was a fookin’ kangaroo while the jeep itself wasn’t miraculously crushed under the hadrosaur’s weight); the employees and the park’s security being shitty (one enter so easily in the underground network that Biosyn could organise rave parties there right under InGen’s nose; Darius and Kenji being left with no supervision in the middle of the jungle while they are supposed to shovel shit as a punishment); the dinosaurs that passes too as incompetent for failing to kill the kids while such situations in real-life or in the first films would have unforgiving or barely forgiving but only at a certain cost. - Despite the ordeals they are going through, the kids seems to be never traumatised or at least shaken like the Murphys, Kelly Malcolm or Maisie were respectively in JP, TLW and FK since here, they seems to be in shock for a moment or two before starting again to squabble or quipping once they are away from danger. - At the end of the monorail attack scene, I thought that the writers had the balls to kill off Ben  and I would have tipped my hat to this narrative decision and give more credit to this kid show if we didn’t had the reveal at the end that he was still alive. At the end, we just got another Billy Brennan situation. - Bumby is useless in this season, aside from encouraging toy sales and being the show’s cute caution and still, it’s relative as her closeups along with Brooklynn’s rapy face in episode 2 have scared me more than the predators’ attacks in the season’s second half. And her growth rate is so fucked up as she hatch in episode 2 before reappearing in episode 5 I think which is supposed to be set two days later, where she is already the size of a bulldog. And the scene where she cries while the kids are being kicked off the lab (for understandable reasons) is so ridiculous... - Aside from in the action and suspenseful scenes mentioned above in the positive aspects, the use and depicting of dinosaurs is either anecdotal, either WTF with the Sinoceratops being almost as gentle as a lamb (try to do with a hippo or a rhino what the Kennys did with the sino, I wouldn’t mind some funny antics...). I’m not a fan of the bioluminescent Parasaurolophus and their scene either. It seems like they wanted to copy the Na’vi River Journey’s attraction from Animal Kingdom in Orlando, with semi-aquatic parasaurs worthy of some outdated depictions from the last century.   - Visually speaking, the universe and the artistic direction are poor. The jungle has the same look everywhere on the island (with trees of average height being relatively spaced from one another while the ground is covered with grass) and its scenery never seem foreboding or ominous while Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna were, in some way, entire characters in the films that sometimes aroused an eerie sense of mystery and danger, at east in the original trilogy and Fallen Kingdom. The park itself is quite empty too, even before the evacuation. There is only scene with a large amount of people and the latter seems to all share the same model and the same animation in addition of being blurred (probably as a camouflage for the lack of budget) and we don’t believe in this world as nothing grand comes out of the visited locations (aside from maybe the eponymous Camp Cretaceous) and that everything seems so bland, with even the employees being of the same corpulence, age group and behaviour except for a few exceptions. - Finally, let’s discuss about the coherence with the Jurassic World film, of which this show is supposed be a canon interquel. Even though if there is several nods to some of the latter’s events (Masrani’s helicopter is seen a couple of times; the Kennys take the ACU’s van; they walk past Zach and Gray’s destroyed gyrosphere and the killed ankylosaur’s body...)  as well as other materials of the franchise, including JP3 and Masrani Global website, like if the show wanted to tell us “Hey look! I did my homework!” in order to please the fans. It’s one thing to make references to the rest of the saga and it’s easy actually, but it’s another to use them for something else than just fan-service. Despite all this, Camp Cretaceous has its share of inconsistencies with Jurassic World. I won’t list them all since it wouldn’t be that interesting but among other things, we have the mention of fences falling apart across the entire island while nothing like this happened in JW (it seems they mixed up the JP and JW incidents) or at least not on this scale; the kids visit a lab somewhere north of the park whose existence seems a bit off as the Innovation Center’s lab can do everything that lab does, in addition of housing Wu’s secret lab; the surroundings of the mosasaur lagoon which seems empty by the end of the afternoon while chronologically speaking, the scene is supposed to happen just after the pterosaurs attack (and thus the area should be crawling with employees that are looking for eventual late visitors, or the still running security cameras could have spotted the kids) and why did those foolish Kennys didn’t thought of going to the nearby hotels right after the ordeal with the mosasaur instead of hanging around in the bleachers up until sunset, hotels where a large number of visitors are supposed to be found up until quite late in the night according to the Jurassic World film? Anyway, Camp Cretaceous might have got a kick up the backside halfway through and the quality of the episodes did increased little by little but the whole season stays nevertheless mediocre and the viewing of the series is honestly quite dispensable, especially if you were disappointed by the Jurassic World films. Some will probably tell me that I’m being too hard with a kids show but actually, the fact that it is targeted for kids is no excuse for some flaws like a lack of ambition in the artistic direction, the shitty humour or the wtf scenes. Whether a work is for adults, for all audiences, or for kids, the creative investment and the work quality should stay the same.

[rohobi]

Serendipity (Snack) | 07

pairing— jeon jungkook x reader, friendwithbenefitsAU  genre/warnings— smut, fluff, humour words—1540 .: just a sneakpeak ↳ CHAPTERS → CHAPTER 7

It's the tail end of summer in Seoul, and you hate it. Why? Because it's 30 degrees out and the massacre of "love bruises" all over your body from Jungkook's strange adventure last night has your body purple, blue and yellow. 

Jungkook calls them love bruises; aka hickies above all over hickies.

You personally think it's just the combination of anemia and JUNGKOOK PINNING YOU DOWN AND CONNECTING THE HICKIES. He said it would help with your cramps ...and you stupidly believed him.

Goddamn shark week, got you doing and thinking stupidly.

What would Jungkook know about cramps?

And what do you wear to cover up suspicious-looking bruises? His bloody jumper. The black one with the big white tick in the middle that smells like his shampoo. It's oddly reassuring to have his scent around you but wildly infuriating. The only reason why you're wearing it anyway is because you had fallen asleep at his house watching that new Netflix film to 'to all the boys who I've loved before' and you HAD TO COVER YOUR BODY WITH SOMETHING.

You wish he was as gentle as Peter.

Everyone deserves a Peter Kavinsky.

He, however, had thought differently.

Sulking under the sheets next to you, Jungkook grabs your chin, pulling your attention from the computer to him. "What do you even love about him? He's literally so average and he plays lacrosse, a game for pussies."

Slapping his hand away, you turn on your side to face him. "He writes love letters, posts cute pictures of Lara Jean on his Instagram, they talk and understand each other. Their chemistry is amazing and they hang out on Saturdays watching movies together!"

"WE DO THAT TOO?" Looking at you incredulously, he grabs the pillow from his side and smacks you with it. "What do you think we're doing right now too?"

You look at him and then at the computer over your shoulder. "You are no Peter Kavinsky, Jungkook. He's wholesome and romantic. You're sexual and perverted."

His face darkens before he shuffles under the sheets. Pushing you onto your back, he hovers above you, the candles on his bookshelf flicker a soft orange glow across his cute pouty face. "Am I not romantic? How am I not a Peter Carvan?"

"Its Kavinsky," Raising your hands to his waist, you rub the soft exposed skin. "He's cute and he radiates big dick energy at the same time. It's a possible impossible. You're you, a poo."

Slumping his complete weight on you, he wraps his arms around you. "You're mean to me, I'm cute, come on! I'd out romance Peter any day!"

Sinking into his duvet covers, you spread your legs so he can lay between them. "Jungkook, get off me, I can feel your dick."

He goes stiff for the tiniest of seconds before lifting his face from your chest to smirk at you. "And that is one thing I'll always have over Peter big dick Carvanisky."

You cock an eyebrow at him. "What? That I can feel your penis and not his? Why don't you believe in me? I could make it happen! We're the same age in real life."

"No, not happening," Pushing his hips against yours, he bites his bottom lip. "Not while I'm still breathing."

Looking at his face, you sigh. "Peter Kavinsky has set the bar for my non-existent love life. You can't look at me like that and tell me that the movie thus far, doesn't want to make you love again."

Jungkook growls, shifting his face into the crook of your neck to kiss your neck. "What do you mean non-existent love life? You have one with me Y/N and come on, the movie hasn't even finished yet. For all we know, they could break up after he cheats on her with Gen."

Gasping, you push him completely off you. "In that case, get under the blankets and stop kissing me. We're finishing it. I don't give a shit if it's 3 AM," Shifting beside you, he pulls you against his chest and moves the computer in front of you. "We're watching this, okay?"

"As you wish."

Nuzzling his nose into the nape of your neck, your heart softly hums as you try to watch the rest of the movie without falling into a comfortable sleep.

And you hate how you never got to see if he did cheat on Lara Jean with Gen because Jungkook's warmth and comfort had lulled you to sleep anyway, and in the morning, you were LIVID AT THE COLOUR OF YOUR NECK AND YOUR COLLARBONE and the empty space where his stupid face should be beside you.

He had escaped.

And with his escape, your alarm on his phone never went off.

You're running across campus in Jungkook's nike jumper when you're accosted by a group of girls out of the blue for the first time since Jungkook had publicly kissed you in class. You hadn't had time to even put on perfume or brush your hair, afraid you'd be late to your lecture.

"Who do we have here?" a girl chuckles, stepping close to you.

It's been days of going the long and less populated route to avoid these confrontations but you knew this was bound to happen, how could it not?

"Y/N." Their ring linger says. "Where have you been? It's like you've disappeared off the face of the planet!"

You step back. "Nope, I've been w-where I usually am. W-why?"

They're red lipstick devils as they surround you with their various types of luxury handbags and pointed gazes. Is this the campus mafia? Are they going to beat me up? How may I help you on this beautiful day-

"-cut the shit Y/N, we only want to know one thing from you," Claudia Kim says, stepping forward. Her short black hair and knife-sharp eyeliner make you feel intimidated as you stare at anything but her eyes. "I don't want to hear anything else."

"Don't stand too close, I haven't brushed my teeth," You stammer, putting your hands up to cover your chest. She watches you do it, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness. "What do you need to know? Are you here to steal my lunch money because I don't have any."

"No, what are you 5?"

You gasp. "You steal from 5-year-olds?!"

"No, god. Stop. You weren't responding to our messages, so..." She steps forward until you can feel her breath against your face. "I just want to know one damn thing. What are you dressing up as for Jungkook's September Halloween party?"

Expecting the worst, you immediately beg for mercy. "Don't hurt me, I'm too sensitive and I'm anemic so the bruises will last longer and ...wait," you look back up at her. "Wait, what? Party? Costume? No beatdown?"

"Do you want one?" another girl giggles.

"Of course not," you whisper.

"We want to know what your costume is so we don't dress up the same, silly," Claudia pats your hair. You aren't sure if she's being genuine at the moment, so you falter, sinking into yourself under her touch. "We're all going in our lingerie as sexy kittens."

Your mouth falls open. The image is wonderful. "Oh right, damn. I thought you were going to beat me up. I don't know yet, I was thinking of going as something stupid like a slice of cheese."

The girls all stare at you. "Are you kidding?"

"...it's dress up ...is it not? Plus, it's not even Halloween so who cares," feeling awkward, you rub the back of your head. "So, you aren't going to beat me up?"

"Why did you think we'd beat you up?" Claudia giggles, wrapping her around yours as she pulls you towards the campus cafe. You reluctantly let her drag you away from the general direction of your classes. "Why would we do that?"

"I don't know because of Jungkook?"

She snorts, pulling you to face her. "You are someone special to him, if we want him, we'll treat you well. What is this? The 90's? Girl, we don't fight girls, we fight stupid."

"Damn, didn't expect that one. Serena is not going to believe this."

Walking you in the direction of the cafe, they all excitingly tell you their costume plans for the party. You're confused the entire time. The way they communicate with each other is so interesting. Their lips move but nothing with depth falls out. It's all incredibly superficial and you're so into it.

Feeling included, you ask. "Should I come as a sexy kitten too?" and the girls giggle looking you up and down.

"You got any sexy lingerie?"

One of the girls snickers. "I doubt it, look at her."

"No way, would she have any."

"Who would find a mono boob sexy?"

Listening to their shallow blows, you smirk at the girls. "Not sure if I have any sexy lingerie, I'd have to ask Jungkook. He finds me sexy in everYTHING I WEAR. So, anyway, I gotta run. Lovely running into you girls. See you at the party tonight or whenever it is!"

Claudia laughs loudly. "If you need any, I'm a phone call away! You have my number."

You smile awkwardly at Claudia.

"Um yeah, thanks!"

[anniviech]

‘Tis the Season

Characters: Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Shaun Temple Rating: G Summary: {"And then sometimes I see this look on her face, like she's so sad, but she can't remember why." - Wilfred, The End of Time.} Sometimes even the most ordinary of everyday occurrences throw Donna Noble off balance. [AO3]

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

Donna blinked, looking at the cashier in front of her in momentary confusion. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Will that be all?" the cashier asked, obviously repeating herself.

"Oh. Yes, thank you," the redhead replied absentmindedly with a weak smile.

Right. She'd been buying a bottle of wine on the occasion of her six month anniversary with Shaun, deciding to treat them to a finer wine than their budget usually allowed, before apparently spacing out again while listening to the faint Christmas music playing in the background.

Getting her wallet out, she paid for the wine and made to leave the shop, trying not not to feel too awkward about the incident as she fished the car keys out of her jacket pocket.

Last night's dream must've caught up with her again. She'd already been a bit lost in thought when entering the shop, the day overshadowed by the brooding and hollow feeling the vague images from it had left her with. (Something about a wedding dress made out of spiderweb, before losing something?)

So Donna Noble once again found herself thrown off balance by a dream she couldn't even really recall – how stupid was that?

And if it wasn't by some strange, vague dream of things she couldn't quite put her finger on after waking, then she'd react to something she'd hear in passing on the telly or radio, or an unassuming sight catching her eye, spacing out and making her feel things she couldn't explain. Fear. Sadness. Loss. Mostly loss, spotlighting a gaping hole inside her soul that nothing seemed to be able to fill, and smothering the fiery attitude people liked to tell her she had in its wake.

It was ridiculous sometimes, really.

Like seriously, who tore up over the sight of a silly old Police Box standing on the side of a street? She'd never forget the embarrassment from the moment she'd spotted one of those after existing the tube station on Earl's Court during an errand for her temping agency, unable to take her mum's car that day; when for some barmy reason she'd been mesmerised by the sight of the tall blue box, finding her feet taking her towards it and her shaking hand reaching out for the door – just to find it locked, of course, and bursting into tears after she'd tried knocking on it, a wave of unimaginable loss crashing over her and threatening to swallow her whole when no reaction had come and the door remained closed.

In the middle of the flipping street! With dozens of people giving her funny looks.

Just thinking back to it made her head throb in a reminder of the splitting headache that had accompanied her for the remainder of the day back then, as if the embarrassment hadn't already been bad enough. (Why the idea to knock on the thing had even crossed her mind in the first place was forever going to be a mystery to her.)

Things had seemed to get better for a while, especially after meeting Shaun, but lately Donna found those odd little moments increasingly occurring again.

Maybe it was the season. A lack of sunlight and more sleep - and thus more chances to dream - due to the shorter days, or something along those lines? Silly how a season that was supposed to create a joyful atmosphere made her melancholic, without any apparent reason.

Getting into the car, she decided to push those thoughts aside and made her way home. A nice hot bath and a cup of that calming tea Mum had given her ought to relax her again; there'd be plenty of time for that before Shaun came home from work.

Entering their small two-room flat, Donna turned on the lights in the living room and placed her handbag and a bag containing some groceries and the wine on the couch, before making her way to the bathroom where she turned on the tap to run a bath and the heating up. Once that was taken care of, she got the grocery bag and took it to the tiny kitchen, putting most of the contents into the fridge, before finally preparing a mug with the desired tea. But as soon as she turned the kettle on, the kitchen went dark, with the sound of the fridge turning off.

Great. Looked like she'd tripped a fuse.

They'd already tripped one not too long ago, after some of their neighbours had put up holiday lights in their windows and likely on trees inside. Looked like the old building they lived in couldn't quite handle the additional strain of the Christmas spirit - something they seemed to have in common, she thought wryly.

Heaving a great sigh, feeling her mood spiralling further downwards, Donna turned the water in the bathroom off before going to the fuse box in the narrow hallway. But once she'd opened the small panel in the wall covering it, she found herself at a loss. Last time Shaun had taken care of it, so she'd never before looked inside the fuse box herself until now, not having any reason to. Which was why she now found herself at a loss as she stared numbly at an unlabelled row of round knobs instead of the tiny switches she had been expecting.

What the hell was she supposed to do with those?

Flicking switches that were on the opposite direction of the other ones was easy enough, but this? She couldn't see any real difference in the knobs, so she couldn't even tell which was the wonky one – and even if she knew, what would she do with it, anyway?

She cautiously tried pulling one of the knobs, but it wouldn't move. Trying to curb rising frustration, she tried pulling at another one, but it it didn't move either. Nor could she press them in, or anything.

Letting her hand fall back down, Donna let out a hollow scoff.

Here she was, not even able to check a fuse.

She had to do something about it, though, because the food in the freezer might start to defreeze before Shaun came home, and then they'd have to throw it away, and they couldn't really afford such a waste with Christmas coming up. And wouldn't that make a lovely anniversary gift.

Swallowing down her pride, Donna went to get her phone out of her handbag, looking through the contacts until she found the number she was looking for.

"Donna! How are you, love?"

"Hey Gramps."

Something in her voice seemed to give her away, because Gramps’ own voice instantly went from joyful to worried.

"Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, just... A stupid fuse at home went off, and I can't seem to fix the bloody thing. I mean, it's not the usual kind, so I don't know what to do with it. And I can't leave it like that until Shaun returns, because the fridge and freezer are without power, and today of all days I really can't afford that. I just–"

A sob cut her off, surprising herself, and she covered her mouth with her free hand as she felt a new load of emotions overcome her.

"Donna, slow down, love, it's all right."

"No it's not all right, Gramps," she retorted in a wobbly voice, feeling an overwhelming urge to let it all out, her mouth running ahead of her. "We can barely afford planning on any presents this year because I can't find a proper job, and the one time I decide to indulge a little to celebrate our anniversary and to cheer myself up because I had a bad day, this happens. And it just–" Cutting herself off to take a breath, she finally added more quietly, "I'm useless, Gramps."

"No, Donna, don't say that."

"I am. I can't even check a fuse. And it makes me angry, because I feel like I should be so past such a little thing, and I don't even understand why! I've never seen these things before, so why do I feel like it should not even be a problem at all, like I'm disappointing myself?!"

"Donna..."

"I don't even feel quite like myself anymore... Like, why is everything about the season making me sad now? There was this song on the radio in the shop today, you know, the one they play every year, what's it called again... 'Merry Xmas Everybody', I think. And I totally spaced out on it? Felt like I should be somewhere else, doing something else, like there should be... more than this. Why can't I be happy with what I have, Gramps?" she asked, voice wavering again. "I have Shaun. We have our own flat, and things are going so well between us – so why do I feel like I'm still missing something important...?"

"Oh sweetheart..."

Her granddad's voice sounded as hollow as she felt, and Donna felt instantly bad for bringing this up and bothering him with her problems.

After a second, he added quietly, "We have to do something about that..."

Frowning in confusion while wiping a tear away, Donna asked, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, just, you know..." Gramps replied, sounding like he hadn't meant to speak out loud, before trailing off into silence.

That happened often lately; he'd start saying something just to change his mind midway and change topics. Or she'd catch him giving her those long and odd looks. Maybe her mood swings had been more obvious than she'd thought.

"You shouldn't feel sad on Christmas," he finally said.

"I know, and I didn't mean to worry you, sorry. It was just a long day and I'm exhausted, my mood ran off with me. I just need that stupid fuse fixed, and then I'll be all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Well then, tell me what has you so mystified."

Donna went on to describe the fuse box to him, learning that it contained an old type of fuses, and agreed to pick Gramps up and have him show her how to fix it as they'd likely have to replace a blown one, kissing the idea of having a bath before Shaun came home goodbye.

By the time she arrived at her old home Donna felt a lot calmer, and she quickly picked her granddad up who'd been waiting basically ready to leave so they could cut down the time her mum had to nag. Once they replaced the fuse in her flat with one of several he'd kept at home, he stayed until Shaun arrived, talking with her over a cuppa and some telly, successfully keeping her mind off more brooding.

After driving Gramps back home while Shaun had gone for a quick shower and hugging him goodbye at the door, her granddad's hands lingered on her arms as he looked her over.

"Things are going to be fine, sweetheart."

"I know," she replied, not sure she really believed the sentiment but still appreciating his caring.

"We'll make it fine."

Donna smiled in reply, before getting back into the car. She gave her granddad a small wave from behind the window, watching him return the gesture, before driving off.

Maybe he had the right idea and she just had to make things fine.

She'd start by making sure she and Shaun had a great night celebrating their anniversary – and maybe consider some plans for their shared future.

[schmidtchristmasmarket]

106 years ago this Christmas something happened near the beginning of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war.

The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.

“Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the war of 1914 – 1918, the so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years of exhausting trench warfare, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupt.

British, Scottish, French, Belgian, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian clergymen from church pulpits in those Christian nations were doing their part in creating a decidedly un-Christ-like patriotic fervor that would result in a holocaust that destroyed four empires, killed upwards of 20 million soldiers and civilians, physically wounded hundreds of millions more and caused the psychological and spiritual decimation of an entire generation of young men whose spiritual care was supposed to be the responsibility of those clergymen.

Christianity, it should be remembered, began as a highly ethical pacifist religion based on the teachings and actions of the nonviolent Jesus of Nazareth (and his pacifist apostles and followers). Christianity survived and thrived despite persecutions until it became the largest religion in the Roman Empire by the time Constantine the Great became emperor (in 313 CE) and usurped the religion’s leaders into becoming OK with the homicidal violence of warfare. Ever since then, the nations that professed Christianity as their state religion have never allowed the mainline churches to truly exercise the radical peacemaking of the original form of Christianity as Jesus had taught.

So, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, most modern Christian churches have refused to become active resisters to its particular nation’s militarist or imperial aspirations, its nation’s aggressive wars, its nation’s war-makers or its nation’s war profiteers. Instead, the church has, by and large, become a bloody instrument of the satanic in support of whatever sociopathic warmongers and sociopathic corporations are in power.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see that the religious leaders on both sides of World War I were convinced that God was on their particular side and therefore not on the side of those professed followers of Jesus that had been fingered as enemies by their nation’s political leaders. The incongruity of believing that the same god was blessing the lethal weapons and protecting the doomed sons on both sides of No-Man’s Land) failed to register with the vast majority of combatants and their spiritual counselors.

So, early in the war, pulpits and pews all over Europe reverberated with flag-waving fervor, sending clear messages to the millions of doomed warrior-sons that it was their Christian duty to march off to kill the equally doomed Christian soldiers on the other side of the line. And for the civilians back home, it was their Christian duty to “support the troops” who were destined to return home dead or wounded, psychologically and spiritually broken, disillusioned – and faithless.

A mere five months into this frustrating war (featuring trench warfare, artillery barrages, withering machine gun fire, and, soon to come, unstoppable armored tanks, aerial bombardment and poison gas), the first Christmas of the war on the Western Front offered a respite to the exhausted, freezing and demoralized troops.

Christmas was the holiest of Christian holidays and every soldier in the frozen trenches was slowly coming to the abrupt realization that war was NOT glorious (as they had been led to believe). After experiencing death, dying, hunger, frostbite, sleep deprivation, shell shock, traumatic brain injuries and homesickness, the traditional spirit of Christmas and its expectations of peace and love, had a special meaning for the troops.

Christmas reminded the soldiers of the good food, warm homes and beloved families and friends that they had left behind and which – they now suspected – they might never see again. The soldiers in the trenches desperately sought some respite from the misery of the rat, lice and corpse-infested trenches.

Some of the more thoughtful troops had begun to suspect that even if they survived the war physically, they might not survive it psychically or spiritually.

Trench Warfare in 1914

In the excitement leading up to the war, the frontline soldiers on either side had been convinced that God was on their particular side, that their nation was pre-destined to be victorious and that they would be “home before Christmas” where they would be celebrated as conquering heroes.

Instead, each frontline soldier found himself at the end of his emotional rope because of the unrelenting artillery barrages against which they were defenseless. If they weren’t killed or physically maimed by the artillery shells and bombs, they would eventually be emotionally destroyed by “shell-shock” (now known as combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder – PTSD).

The soldier-victims that witnessed a multitude of examples of battlefield cruelty logically suffered various depths of depression, anxiety, suicidality, hyper-alertness, horrifying nightmares and flashbacks (which was usually misdiagnosed as a “hallucination of unknown cause”, a reality that would condemn millions of future soldiers to be mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia and thus mistakenly treated with addictive, brain-altering psych drugs).

Many World War I soldiers suffered any number of traumatic mental and/or neurological abnormalities, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), which only became a diagnosable affliction several wars later.

Among the other common war-induced “killers of the soul” were the starvation, the malnutrition, the dehydration, the infections (such as typhus and dysentery), the louse infestations, the trench foot, the frostbite and the gangrenous toes and fingers. If any of the tormented survivors got back home in one piece, they would not really appreciate being treated as military heroes in memorial day parades staged in their honor. They knew – if they were being totally honest with themselves – that they were not actual heroes, but rather they were victims of a sick, delusional, greedy, militarized culture that glorified war and killing and then abandoned the deceived, wounded survivors that made it home alive. Standard operating procedure in every war.

Poison gas attacks from both sides, albeit begun by the scientifically-superior Germans, began early in 1915, and Allied tank warfare – which was a humiliating disaster for the British innovators of that new technology – wouldn’t be operational until the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

One of the most stressful and lethal realities for the frontline soldiers was the suicidal, misbegotten, “over the top” infantry assaults against the opposition’s machine gun nests. Such assaults were complicated by the presence of shell holes and the rows of coiled barbed wire that often made them sitting ducks. Artillery barrages from both sides commonly resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in a single day.

The “over the top” infantry assaults sacrificed hundreds of thousands of obedient lower-echelon soldiers in the futile efforts to gain ground. Those assaults were stupidly and repeatedly ordered by senior officers such as Sir John French and his replacement as British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. Most of the old-timer generals who had fought wars in the previous century refused to admit that their outdated “horse and sabre” cavalry charges across the muck of No-Man’s Land were both hopeless and suicidal.

The general staff planners of the various disastrous attempts to end the war quickly (or at least end the stalemate) were safely out of the range of enemy artillery barrages. The national war-planners were safely back in Parliament or hiding in their castles, and their aristocratic generals were comfortably billeted in warm and dry headquarters far from the hot war, eating well, being dressed by their orderlies, drinking their tea and claret – none of them at any risk of suffering the lethal consequences of war.

Screams of pain often came from the wounded soldiers who were helplessly hanging on the barbed wire or trapped and perhaps bleeding to death in the bomb craters between the trenches. Often the dying of the wounded would linger for days, and the effect on the troops in the trenches, who had to listen to the desperate, unanswerable cries for help was always psychologically distressing. By the time Christmas came and winter hit, troop morale on both sides of No Man’s Land had hit rock bottom.

Christmas in the Trenches

So on December 24, 1914, the exhausted troops settled down to their meager Christmas meal with, for the lucky ones, gifts from home, special food, special liquor, special chocolate bars and the hope for peace, if even for one night.

On the German side, a magnanimous (and deluded) Kaiser Wilhelm sent 100,000 Christmas trees with millions of ornamental candles to the front, expecting that such an act would boost German troop morale. Using the precious supply lines for such militarily unnecessary items was ridiculed by most of the hardened officers, and nobody suspected that the Kaiser’s Christmas tree idea would backfire – instead becoming a catalyst for an unplanned-for and unauthorized cease-fire, orchestrated by non-officers and unheard of in the history of warfare. The mutiny was censored out of mainstream history books for most of the next century.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous, unauthorized event that happened at a number of locations all along the 600 miles of triple trenches that stretched across Belgium and France, and it was an event that would never again be duplicated, thanks to the war-profiteers, professional militarists and saber-rattling wannabes in the media, parliament and Congress who glory in their nation’s “pseudo-patriotic” wars.

Joyeux Noel

Twelve years ago, the movie Joyeux Noel (French for “Merry Christmas”) received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for best foreign film of 2005. Joyeux Noel is the moving story that was adapted from the many surviving stories that had been told in letters from soldiers who had participated in the truce. It was almost a miracle that the truth of that remarkable event survived the powerful censorship.

As told in the movie, in the darkened battlefield, a German soldier started singing the beloved Christmas hymn “Stille Nacht”. Soon the British, French and Scots on the other side of No Man’s Land joined in with their versions of “Silent Night”. Other Christmas songs were sung, often as duets in two tongues. Before long, the spirit of peace and “goodwill towards men” prevailed over the demonic spirit of war, and the troops on both sides began to sense their common humanity. The natural human aversion to killing other humans broke through to consciousness and overcame the fear, patriotic fervor and pro-war brain-washing to which they had all been subjected.

Soldiers on both sides courageously dropped their weapons, came “over the top” in peace to meet their former foes face-to-face. To get to the neutral zone, they had to climb over barbed wire, walk around shell holes and over frozen corpses (which were later to be given respectful burials during an extension of the truce, with soldiers from both sides helping one another with the gruesome task of burying their comrades).

The spirit of retaliation had been replaced by a spirit of reconciliation and the desire for real peace. New friends shared chocolate bars, cigarettes, wine, schnapps, soccer games and pictures from home. Addresses were exchanged, photos were taken and every soldier who genuinely experienced the emotional drama was forever changed. Suddenly there was an aversion to killing young men who deserved to be treated as they had been taught in Sunday School: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And the generals and the politicians back home were appalled at the unexpected Christ-like behavior of the front-soldiers.

Fostering Peace on Earth in Times of War is an Act of Treason for Conscientious Soldiers

Fraternization with the enemy (as well as refusing to obey orders in time of war) is universally regarded by military commanders as an act of treason and a serious crime deserving of severe punishment. In most wars throughout history, such “crimes” were often dealt with by severe beatings and often firing squad. In the case of the Christmas Truce of 1914, most commanding officers feared mutiny if severe punishments were carried out so, instead, not wanting to draw public attention to an incident that was potentially contagious and could stop the war, they censored letters home and tried to ignore the episode.

War correspondents were forbidden to report the incident to their papers. Some commanding officers threatened courts martial if fraternization persisted. They understood that getting to know and befriend a supposed enemy was bad for the carefully-orchestrated killing spirit of war.

There were punishments that were carried out against some of the most conscientious soldiers who refused to fire their rifles. The troops of French Catholic and United Kingdom Protestant persuasion naturally began questioning the moral legitimacy of the decidedly un-Christlike war and so those troops were often re-assigned to different – and less desirable – regiments.

German troops were either Lutheran or Catholic, and the consciences of many of them had been revived by the truce. Refusing to obey their orders to kill, many of them were sent to the Eastern Front where there were much harsher conditions. Separated from their Western Front comrades who had also experienced the true spirit of Christmas, they had no choice but to fight and die in the equally suicidal battles against their Russian Orthodox Christian co-religionists. Very few Allied or German soldiers who experienced the Christmas Truce of 1914 survived the war.

If humanity is truly concerned with the barbaric nature of militarism, and if our modern-era false flag-generated wars of empire are to be effectively derailed, the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 needs to be retold over and over again – and taken to heart.

The satanic nature of war became obvious to the ones who experienced the Christmas Truce in 1914, but war-mongers and war profiteers have been trying to cover it up ever since. Flag-waving patriotism and telling exaggerated stories of military heroism have worked well to glorify what is blatantly inglorious.

Both ancient and modern wars have been glorified in every nation’s history textbooks but, if civilization is to survive, war needs to be exposed as demonic. Violence begets violence. Wars are contagious, universally futile, and never truly end; and their extremely high costs always results in a very poor return on investment – except for the banks and the weapons-manufacturers.

Modern American wars are now being fought by thoroughly indoctrinated, post-adolescent, Call of Duty-type first person shooter gamers who liked the adrenaline high of killing virtual “bad guys” in a video game. Sadly, unbeknownst to them, they are at high risk of having their emotional and spiritual lives negatively and permanently altered by the physical, mental and spiritual damage that always comes from participating in actual homicidal violence.

Combat war can easily doom its participants to a life overwhelmed by the wounds of war (PTSD, sociopathic personality disorder, suicidality, homicidality, loss of religious faith, traumatic brain injury, malnutrition from the highly processed military food, autoimmune disorders because of the military’s over-vaccination programs with neurotoxic aluminum-containing vaccines (especially the anthrax series) and addictive drug use [either legal or illegal]). What is most important to realize is that all those lethal effects are totally preventable.

Christian Church Leadership has an Ethical Duty to Warn it’s Prospective Cannon Fodder Soldiers About the Potential for Spiritual Suicide if They Participate in Combat

It seems to me that it would be helpful if moral leadership in America, especially its church leaders and its Christian parents, would discharge their duty to thoroughly warn the children and adolescents in their sphere of influence about all of the serious consequences of being in the killing professions. Jesus, who commanded his followers to “love your enemies”, would surely approve.

Without such countervailing truths being told by a nation’s moral leadership, war planners have an easy time keeping potential soldiers from recognizing the humanity of those that are accused of being enemies, whether they are Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Russians, Vietnamese, Chinese or North Koreans. I have been repeatedly told by military veteran friends of mine that military chaplains – who are supposed to be nurturers of the souls of the soldiers that are in their “care” – never bring up, in their counseling sessions, the Golden Rule, Jesus’ clear “love your enemies” commands, his many ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount or the biblical commandments that say “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oil”.

The Church’s Theological Blind Spots When the Pro-War Flag-waving Begins

One theological blind spot about war was nicely illustrated near the end of Joyeux Noel in a powerful scene depicting a confrontation between the Christ-like, altruistic, antiwar, lowly Scottish chaplain and his pro-war over-privileged Anglican bishop. As the humble chaplain was mercifully administering the “last rites” to a dying soldier, he was approached by the bishop, who had come to chastise the chaplain for fraternizing with the enemy during the Christmas Truce. The bishop summarily relieved the simple pastor of his chaplaincy duties because of his “treasonous and shameful” Christ-like behavior on the battlefield.

The authoritarian bishop refused to listen to the chaplain’s story about his having performed “the most important mass of my life” (with enemy troops participating in the celebration) or the fact that he wished to stay with the soldiers that needed him because they were losing their faith in God. The bishop angrily denied the chaplain’s request to remain with his men.

The bishop then delivered a rousing pro-war, jingoistic sermon (which was taken word-for-word from a homily that had actually been delivered by an Anglican bishop later in the war). The sermon was addressed to the fresh troops that had to be brought in to replace the veteran soldiers who had suddenly become averse to killing, and were refusing to fire on the “enemy”.

The image of the dramatic but subtle response of the chaplain to his sacking should be a clarion call to the Christian church leadership – both clergy and lay – of every militarized, so-called “Christian” nation. This chaplain, after listening to the bishop’s sermon, simply hung up his cross and walked out of the door of the field hospital.

Joyeux Noel is an important film that deserves to be an annual holiday viewing. It has ethical lessons far more powerful than the traditional fare of It’s A Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol.

One of the lessons of the story is summarized in the concluding verse of John McCutcheon’s famous song about the event: “Christmas in the Trenches”:

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell.

Each Christmas come since World War One, I’ve learned its lessons well:

That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame

And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.

Read more of A Christmas Blog or Shop Now at Schmidt Christmas Market

Licensed from https://brewminate.com/world-war-i-and-the-christmas-truce-of-1914/

[the-desolated-quill]

The Time Of The Doctor - Doctor Who blog (So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish Fingers And Custard)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Remember way back when I reviewed The End Of Time Part 2, I said I was afraid that Russell T Davies may have set a precedent for overly sentimental, ridiculously OTT, and utterly self indulgent regenerations that are more about the showrunner than the Doctor? Well if you thought David Tennant’s Lord Of The Ring’s style farewell tour complete with stupid choir music and oh so poetic tears trickling down the cheeks was unbearable, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The Time Of The Doctor is fucking dreadful for the most part. Moffat takes everything that may have annoyed you about the RTD finale and then multiplies it by a factor of 10 before dolloping on a few more ladles of pretentious stupidity for good measure. Combine that with the usual Christmas special bollocks, and it becomes truly nauseating to sit through.

A mysterious signal from a backwater planet attracts an army of Doctor Who villains into its orbit, but before we can ponder on how similar this is to The Pandorica Opens, we’re whisked off back to present day Earth for Christmas dinner with Clara’s family. Clara needs the Doctor to pretend to be her boyfriend (do women still do that? I haven’t seen a TV show try that joke since the 90s), but there’s a complication. The Doctor is naked! Oh how awkward and embarrassing! Why is he naked?

The Doctor: “Because I’m going to church!”

Of course he is.

You know at this point I’ve become so accustomed to Steven Moffat and Matt Smith’s obnoxious bullshit that i don’t think anything will phase me anymore. The Doctor could walk in wearing a bunny girl outfit and I honestly wouldn’t bat an eyelid. It wouldn’t be funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised neither. Because that’s the problem with doing a random, wacky Doctor. After a while the randomness gets to a point where it paradoxically starts to become boringly predictable. I mean it’s not as if there’s any reason for the Papel Mainframe to have a nudity policy, and the characters wear holographic clothes anyway, so if it’s not funny and it doesn’t serve a purpose, what’s the point?

So off we go to church to meet Tasha Yem, played by Orla Brady. A sassy, flirty dominatrix type character who has a thing for the Doctor. Well gee. haven’t seen that before in a Moffat episode. What’s even weirder is not only is Tasha Yem virtually identical to every female character Moffat has ever written, but she also has a lot in common with one specific female character Moffat has written. She can fly the TARDIS, has absolute authority over the Doctor and there’s a reference to her inner psychopath. Was River Song originally supposed to be in this episode? Either way, it shows how unimaginative Moffat is when it comes to writing women.

At this point the thing that’s irritating me the most (apart from Matt Smith) is the whole greatest hits remix. We’ve had cameos from the Daleks and Cybermen, the Silence show up for no reason, and now the Weeping Angels are back. It seems Moffat is determined to squeeze all the scary out of them completely and it’s just bloody irritating. There’s no reason for any of them to be there really and it’s completely self indulgent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Regeneration episodes should be about the Doctor. Never the showrunner.

And just when you thought Moffat was done mining through his back catalogue of crap, the bloody crack of doom shows up again. Turns out this is Trenzalore and on the other side of the crack is Gallifrey. The Time Lords want back in and need the Doctor to answer a simple question so they know they’ve got the right universe. Doctor who? Which leads to the main crux of the narrative. The Doctor having to protect Trenzalore from comedy Sontarans, Daleks that all of a sudden remember who the Doctor is now thus rendering Asylum of The Daleks completely pointless, and a wooden Cyberman with a flamethrower (I’m not even going to dignify that with a response). Armed only with his magic wand/sonic screwdriver, he must prevent another Time War from occurring. Oh boy. Where do we start with this bullshit? Let’s start with the Question itself. Why do the Time Lords need the Doctor’s name for verification? They have no problem listening to Clara’s pleas at the end. Why doesn’t the Doctor just tell them to stop broadcasting the signal and wait a bit while he deals with the mess they’ve caused? And what’s the point of the truth field? Either the Doctor wants to reveal his name or he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to lie about it. Plus Moffat ends up contradicting this by having the Doctor lie to someone about having a plan. So what’s the point?

At a push, this could have worked if the story focused on the people of Trenzalore. Get us to care for them and have the Doctor form a strong emotional connection with them, thus giving this siege some dramatic weight. At least put some effort into trying to justify why the Doctor stays so long (at one point he says he’s finally found somewhere that needs him to stay, but that’s bollocks. I can think of several places that could have benefitted from an extended stay from the Doctor). Instead Moffat seems more preoccupied with other matters. Like how many regenerations the Doctor has left and tying up the loose ends of his bullshit arcs. So the exploding TARDIS was the result of some rogue chapter of the Paper Mainframe trying to kill the Doctor. So they planned to save the universe from another Time War... by destroying the universe? 

And the Silence are genetically engineered priests that make you forget your own confessions?... Doesn’t that make confessing your sins somewhat redundant once you’ve forgotten them?

And then there’s the whole Doctor dying crap. If the BBC had any balls at all, they would have made this the last ever Doctor Who story. The reason Robert Holmes introduced the 12 regeneration limit way back in The Deadly Assassin was in order to impose a limitation on the show. It would still have some longevity, but at the same time it wouldn’t be infinite and threaten to outstay its welcome. After the Thirteenth Doctor, that’s it. Now thanks to the retroactive inclusion of the War Doctor and the Ten clone we got in Journey’s End, Eleven is to all intents and purposes the last ever Doctor. And yeah. Why not? 50 years is a good solid number to end a show on, right? 

But the BBC clearly have other plans.

A more naive member of the audience might think all the Doctor’s speeches about how all things must come to end might be setting us up for the grand finale to the whole thing, but naturally that’s not what happens. Of course Moffat finds some contrived way to extend the regeneration limit indefinitely. Doctor Who is the BBC’s biggest cash cow. They’re not going to let it go quite so readily. So Clara demands that the Time Lords save the Doctor like the spoilt, arrogant, entitled little prat that she is and hey presto, the Doctor can now blow up spaceships with his laser hands (God knows what’s going to happen when Peter Capaldi regenerates. He’s probably going to end up blowing up a small moon).

And don’t get me started on the avalanche of plot holes this opens up. So if the Doctor never died at Trenzalore, how did Clara jump into the wound in time to save the Doctor? Without the wound in time, there’s no Oswin or Clara in Asylum Of The Daleks and The Snowmen. Without Oswin and Clara, the Doctor would never have tried to find present day Clara in the first place. Without Oswin and Clara, the First Doctor would never have picked the right TARDIS back on Gallifrey (ugh). Good luck trying to work out the Eleventh Doctor’s canon now because Moffat has become so liberal with the timey wimeys that the whole thing has just descended into a mindless mess.

And even after all that, The Time Of The Doctor still isn’t finished yet. Oh no. Instead of Peter Capaldi walking down from the tower and into the TARDIS, we get another sappy monologue from Matt Smith about how change is good and how he’ll always remember when the Doctor was him, Murray Gold goes into overdrive with his violins in an attempt to drown us in slush, Clara starts crying her eyes out for no bloody reason (seriously, why the fuck is she crying? She knows what’s going to happen. Hell, she was the one that made sure it would happen. Dozy cow), and just when you thought this couldn’t possibly get any worse, fucking Amy shows up! For God’s sake! No doubt the Moffat fans were crying gallons of tears over this. I was too busy sticking a cushion over my face and trying to pretend this wasn’t happening. Honestly, I have never seen such cringeworthy, self-indulgent drivel in all my life. They should have replaced this with Steven Moffat giving himself a self congratulatory blowjob. It would have had the same effect.

So after all that bollocks, is there ANYTHING I liked about The Time Of The Doctor?... At all? Well... I did quite like Handles. He did make me laugh a few times and I was genuinely choked up when he died. Yeah, when you’re more upset over the death of a fucking Cyberman head than the Doctor’s, something has gone spectacularly wrong. I fucking hated this episode! It’s infuriating, self indulgent, utterly moronic and extremely dull. I was so fucking bored by this episode. I didn’t care about anything that was going on. I didn’t care about Trenzalore. I didn’t care about the Time Lords potentially returning. I didn’t care about the Doctor’s impending death. I didn’t care because Moffat never gave me a reason to care. As usual he’s more concerned about his convoluted series arcs and showing everyone how clever he is rather than telling an engaging story. And the most exasperating thing of all is this isn’t even Moffat’s last series. He’s still got the Peter Capaldi era to ruin yet. So why is he bombarding us with this fanwank tribute to himself? Are we going to have to go through all of this again when Capaldi regenerates this Christmas? Jesus Christ!

I suppose I should end with my final thoughts on the Eleventh Doctor in general. I think I’ve made my views on him pretty clear over the course of these reviews. I’ve got nothing against Matt Smith. I’m sure he’s a great actor and a lovely guy. I did kind of like him in his first series. It was a nice blend of quirky and serious. What really got up my nose was when they started to ramp up the goofiness to the point where I just wanted to hurl something large and heavy at his head in a desperate attempt to shut him up. He got so annoying and so irritating that by the time we got to The Time Of The Doctor, I was more than ready to see the back of him. And look, if you like Matt Smith’s Doctor, that’s fine. More power to you. I’m genuinely glad you got more enjoyment out of his Doctor than I did. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

[mst3kproject]

1102: Cry Wilderness

Cry Wilderness is, in my humble, unprofessional opinion, the worst movie of Season 11.  Every other film on the list had some kind of redeeming quality.  Avalanche had nice scenery.  The Christmas that Almost Wasn't took a look at the weird relationship between generosity and greed during the holiday season.  At the Earth's Core had Peter Cushing filling the caverns of Pellucidar with the fucks he did not give.  The Beast of Hollow Mountain proved that dinosaurs really do make everything better, even boring cowboy movies.  The only serious competition comes from Carnival Magic, but I'm giving the Garbage Crown to Cry Wilderness on the grounds that Carnival Magic was a bit less racist.

Last summer a boy named Paul met Bigfoot, and they became best friends – or at least, Paul became Bigfoot's coke dealer.  In the autumn when Paul has returned to boarding school, he wakes up in the middle of the night to see Bigfoot standing outside his window, telling him to go find his father immediately.  You don't just ignore a message like that, so Paul hitchhikes across the country to the national park where his dad works.  There he learns that the park rangers have been ordered to hunt down a mysterious predator that's decimated the local wildlife.  Could that be Bigfoot?  Paul certainly seems to think so, and he does everything in his power to thwart the hunters' quest.

This movie's Bigfoot looks really, really stupid.  Remember that episode of The Simpsons when Homer got covered in mud and moss and mistaken for Bigfoot?  If you've ever wondered what that would look like in real life, this is the movie for you.

It's tempting to compare Cry Wilderness to Pod People. Both are set in the woods, have weirdly irrelevant titles, and are about a lonely child's sugar-based friendship with a furry humanoid that doesn't talk.  I find, however, that Cry Wilderness reminds me more of Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, in that it's just uncomfortable to watch.  The movie feels forced, as if the actors are doing all that awkward laughing at gunpoint.  The best metaphor I can think of to describe this is to draw your attention to the skin tones the makeup people used for Red Hawk and Jim – these don't look so much 'Native American' as they do 'nasty sunburn'.  The whole movie is like that. Everything it aims for, it misses its marks in ways that are gross and kind of painful-looking.

Yet for all Cry Wilderness is tremendously, tooth-grindingly terrible in every possible respect, I have to say that it actually does one thing pretty well.  It is better than Boggy Creek 2 at making us wonder about Bigfoot's status within the animal kingdom.

If you'll recall, in Boggy Creek 2 Lockhart spent a lot of time wondering if Bigfoot were man or beast, while events completely failed to back him up.  The Bigfoot of that film stole food, defended its territory and its young, investigated new objects, and feared fire.  The audience got the impression that Bigfoot was probably about as intelligent as a bear, which really isn't bad – any zookeeper will tell you bears are bright, curious animals that learn quickly.  What Boggy Creek's Bigfoot was not was especially human-like, not even in the ridiculous way sometimes presented in killer animal movies, like when the creatures of Bats somehow know that attacking power lines will leave humans unable to see in the dark (more on this when I get around to Phase IV).

Cry Wilderness, on the other hand, sets Bigfoot up as an ambiguous figure right from the opening scene.  When Paul describes his friendship with Bigfoot, he mentions two things the creature really likes: Coca-Cola and a radio.  A lot of animals, from insects on up to great apes, like soft drinks, and for exactly the same reason humans do – namely, soda pop is full of delicious diabetes and since sugars are the easiest source of calories the brain is programmed to seek them out.  One can imagine a monkey or raccoon learning to open a pop-tab can to get at the contents.  That doesn't really require a lot of higher cognitive ability, just dextrous fingers.  The radio, however, tells us that Bigfoot likes music.  A lot of science has been done about how animals react to music, but we still tend to think of it as characteristically human and that is how it is used in Cry Wilderness.  The suggestion is that a Bigfoot who enjoys listening to the chart-topping hits of 1987 can't be all beast.

Having thus established Bigfoot in this netherworld of 'neither man nor beast', the movie then goes to some trouble to keep him there. As the hunters close in, Bigfoot tries to evade them but leaves tracks and traces they can follow and makes no attempt to outsmart them, suggesting that he possesses no more than an animal's cunning. At the climax, however, he turns back to save Paul's father in an act of human-like altruism.  If this movie had Lockhart narrating at us about The Creature being More Man Than Animal, it would... well, Lockhart himself would still be an insufferable jackass, but he would at least seem to have a point.

But you guys have all seen the movie, so you're just waiting for me to get to the part where Bigfoot fucking talks.

There are two scenes in which Cry Wilderness presents Bigfoot as more of a supernatural entity than the mere undiscovered primate that the History Channel has sought so long and so fruitlessly.  The first is early in the movie, when Bigfoot appears outside Paul's window in the middle of the night to deliver his message in spoken, colloquial English.  This is very uncomfortable, as it makes Bigfoot just a little too human.  If he can talk, it becomes incredibly creepy that he's tracked a little boy down to where he sleeps.  The school principal argues that this sequence was nothing but a dream and I want to agree with him.  I feel better about it that way.

The second scene is at the end of the movie, when the formerly strict and skeptical principal gets a complete personality transplant and Bigfoot reappears, surrounded by deer and raccoons, to the delight of all.  I want to say this is a dream, too.  It seems like a piece of wish-fulfillment for Paul – he gets to prove that he's right, and the principal turns out to be not so bad after all. Unlike the previous dream sequence, however, it doesn't begin and end with Paul in bed.  It is presented as something that happened in the movie's real world, as if Bigfoot appears like Bloody Mary when you say his name.

If this is so, we seem to have a third possible identity for Bigfoot, which would make him neither man nor beast, but some kind of forest spirit.  This is actually not at all unprecedented as an interpretation.  Folklore is full of creatures that look like furry humans and act as guardians of the woods – there's the European woodwose, the Russian leszi, and the Chinese yeren, and of course the tales told by many Salish-speaking peoples of the American west coast, which are generally treated as Bigfoot stories.  Even the gorillai of Hanno the Navigator may be a version of this archetype, rather than a reference to what we now call gorillas. Such creatures are often described as tricksters or shapeshifters, and sometimes said to abduct or even eat misbehaving children.

Bigfoot as a sort of tutelary forest spirit, however, would seem to be very much at odds with Cry Wilderness' opening scene.  Here we see a Bigfoot-like humanoid in a museum, labeled as a species of primitive man.  This seems to offer a Bigfoot much more like the type cryptozoologists hunt for, a flesh-and-blood creature that could have its hair analyzed and its genome mapped and be placed firmly on a branch of the primate family tree.  Then again, maybe this, too, is intentionally ambiguous.  Maybe Cry Wilderness is telling us that we are simply not meant to know whether Bigfoot is man or beast, spirit or flesh, legend or reality, or that it can indeed be all of them at the same time.  The fact that we can't tell if Paul's school encounters are dreams or not may tie into this theme.

And that is one hundred percent of what's interesting about Cry Wilderness.  The rest of the movie is a lot of pointless bullshit, animal abuse, forced laughter, and boring Noble Savage stereotypes that will have your eyes rolling so hard you'll be staring yourself in the frontal lobe.  Looking around tumblr, it seems that a number of MSTies with Native American ancestry were very uncomfortable with its inclusion in the new series.  I kind of understand why.  Some things just don't deserve a wider audience, even if that audience is going to make fun of them.  A movie in which a child tells a man he's “just a dumb old Indian” and is never even reprimanded for it is arguably one of those things.

In closing, I would like to say that as a resident of the Rocky Mountain foothills, I do not believe in Bigfoot and I've never met anybody who does.  I've found evidence of bears, bobcats, cougars, and porcupines in my back yard, but nary a sign of Sasquatch.  Besides which, we live in an age when almost everybody has a camera on them constantly, and a near-unlimited capacity for sharing the photographs they take – if Bigfoot existed, we'd be slapping puppy ears on him in snapchat. You know we would.

[turtle-paced]

GoT Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Just in time for the next season, here are my notes for 6.10! I can’t believe I actually did this project. I’ll have the numbers for the season and the series thus far up before season seven premiers, along with my favourite and least favourite seasons (and episodes therein).

6.10 - The Winds of Winter

This episode has a previously on. It concludes at 2:19, and unfortunately informs us that the Dornish plot continues to be a thing. On the funny ha-ha side, it also all but gives away R+L=J. Spoilers!

Miguel Sapochnik, save us!

(4:18) From a nice shot of the Sept of Baelor to pffffffffthahahahahaha oh my god, what is Cersei wearing? This is every bit as ridiculous as Sansa’s extremely empowered costume change at the end of season four, and Ellaria Sand’s extremely evil costume switch between seasons four and five. Female power is a black dress with bizarre shoulderpads, apparently. Swing and a miss, costume department. Swing and a miss.

(4:34) That said, I like this sequence of everyone getting ready. Better still, I like that we see that Cersei’s already dressed while the other major actors are still preparing. If this trial had been built up to better, this would be a kickass way of creating tension. (It’s still pretty good.) The show’s inattention to time and space, however, undermines all build-up, simply because we have no idea when disparate plots occur in relation to each other. The trial stops being a looming deadline, and becomes instead a thing that hasn’t happened yet.

(5:17) Ah, the first notes of a bit of music that really stands out. I’m not sure how I feel about this bit of musical direction. On the one hand, it’s so distinctive within the show, it’s used well with what’s on screen, and as a piece of music I rather like it. On the other hand, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the score.

(5:39) It’s Loras! He’s the heir to Highgarden, his sister the Queen made a deal for his safety, and he’s still unwashed and shaking in a corner, same as he’s presumably been for half the season. Plotwise, Margaery’s deal continues to be amazingly bad. Ethicswise, I do appreciate how this anti-homophobia storyline has just the one gay character and his role in it is to suffer and die.

(6:40) “Your grace? The trial will be getting under way soon.” Right, so, Tommen got prepared for this occasion, then sat down in a chair and did nothing. While we’re talking characters as objects, by the way.

(6:46) Apparently Cersei decided her outfit wasn’t ridiculous enough already and decided to add more shiny. I’d kill to know what this handmaid thinks of this costume change in-universe.

(7:16) Sex workers: 1. Female butts: 1.

(7:19) Boobs: 1. Theft of services jokes: 1.

(8:20) The best establishing shot of the sept thus far gives me a count of 112 people present.

(8:48) This makes me so mad. This didn’t have to be written like this. The writers could have had the fucking decency to instead have Loras say “you know what? Screw you all. I loved Renly. I’m not ashamed to say it.” It’s not out of book canon, given Loras’ “when the sun has set, no candle can replace it.” Show!Brienne is more true to Renly than show!Loras is. As for plot effects, they’re planning to blow up every character who hears this speech. Fuck it. Let him have his dying moment of awesome. Shell game this shit, keep everyone focused on how Margaery’s deal just fell apart, before blowing the place up.

(9:43) On the upside, I love how the iconography of the Seven is kept in view.

(10:20) While the idea of Margaery’s driving motivation being to protect Loras is a good one, this plot is yet another victim of authorial laziness. You’re telling me that the best that politically astute and highly intelligent Margaery could do, given the resources of her family on hand and the relatively small potatoes crime Loras is accused of, was to have Loras forfeit his inheritance? Really?

(10:31) Not to mention “I will never marry and I will never father children” is one hell of a nonsensical plea bargain term. Given the depiction of the Sparrows thus far, and their none too subtle analogue to modern conservative Christianity, you’d think the High Sparrow would order Loras to marry at the first opportunity, get him into the heteronormative box. Failing that, get him into the Kingsguard or the Night’s Watch, somewhere where everyone knows he can’t get married, obviously (and with that “no marrying” clause, Loras’ status can still be reconciled with the heteronormative agenda of the Sparrows). The writers don’t understand religion or politics, news at eleven.

(11:21) Yep, this show is going there. We get to see a religious symbol carved into a gay man’s forehead for the crime of being gay. There was no reason to write this. We got the point that the Sparrows are evil and homophobic ages ago. The fact of the proceedings gets that point across. We got the point that Loras was suffering ages ago too. And in a few minutes, every character here will be blown up, rendering these events entirely pointless for the ongoing plot. Why show us the utterly gratuitous torture of a gay character, explicitly linked to their sexuality? What about this specifically is worth the screen time?

(11:34) I mean, it’s in detail and everything. We get to see Loras flinching in pain, we get closeups of the blood. What is the point. What is even the point.

(11:53) Tommen is still sitting in his room being a living prop for the stories of other people.

(12:35) “And where is the Queen Mother?” Hey, good question! Why wasn’t anyone asking this a while back, like maybe a quarter hour ago when she was supposed to rock up to the venue, especially considering that she killed a member of the last team sent to take her to meet the High Sparrow?

I will tell you why: because plot.

Unlike the books, the show is currently a plot-driven story - and a bad example thereof. Everything that has been done in this storyline has been to herd these half dozen named characters into this sept to get blown up. And if the High Sparrow, Margaery, and Olenna all have to lose their political acumen (and Jaime forget about the King) to accomplish this, so be it. On the flip side, we’ve seen Tommen consistently attempt to take action to protect Margaery, but in order to keep him out of the sept (and make his death somehow Cersei’s fault, as if Margaery hadn’t raped and abused him) today he has decided he doesn’t want to.

(12:42) “It appears the Queen Mother does not wish to attend her own trial.” Noooooo, what tipped you off? Was it the way she ordered her guard to kill one of the last people sent to fetch her somewhere? Can’t be, because if so, you’d’ve compelled her attendance beforehand and taken precautions against Frankengregor!

This is the final reason why “I choose violence” was a nonsense scene. Everyone forgets it happened and proceeds as if it hadn’t.

(12:49) The High Sparrow even sends his key witness to go get Cersei. If I had a desk I would be beating my head against it right about now. Why? Why would you do this? Why would anyone with an ounce of common sense do this, much less a character established to be intelligent?

I spot two Sparrows leaving with Lancel, making it 109 people in the sept.

(13:10) Lancel spots a suspicious small child existing. What about this has aroused his suspicion? It’s a kid. There are many in King’s Landing. What about this kid is worth blowing off his task of seeing the Queen Mother to her regicide trial?

This is just so freakin’ lazy on multiple levels.

(14:11) “What is the meaning of this?” Hey, another good question! Why did Qyburn lure Pycelle down here? Fortunately, we soon get an answer.

(15:03) And the answer is “sheer bloody laziness, again!” The writers did a copy/paste from ADWD, because its epilogue kicks ass, without trying to make it fit in their own story. Why does Pycelle have to die in such a cold dark place, when he was literally going to the trial before Qyburn intercepted him? I’ll give “ushering in the new” a pass because he’s supporting a ruling queen and that actually is new.

(15:27) Deaths: 1. Pycelle, murdered on Qyburn’s orders. By children established to be quite ordinary children working for Qyburn for sugar plums, by the way, rather than Varys’ trained “little birds.”

(16:03) Wow, lucky stab, to get Lancel right in the spine! If the kid had missed, what then?

(16:20) “What are you doing?” Wow, people are just full of good questions right now. What is this kid doing? The implication is that this kid lured Lancel down here, but why? The best explanation I can think of is that it was a last-ditch, poorly thought out means of keeping Lancel in the sept to get exploded. Speaking of. 110 people in the sept, overwhelmingly nobles rather than Sparrows.

(17:00) I want so badly to like this show for what it is. This sequence in particular is so well done, switching back and forth between Cersei patiently staring out over the Sept from a distance, Margaery waiting and trying to work out what’s wrong, and Lancel crawling towards the wildfire in a desperate attempt to stop disaster. The direction has earned the tension it generates here.

And note how knowing when these events are occurring relative to each other makes the tension work! Even when we don’t know what the deadline is, we can see there’s a deadline, and that Lancel and Margaery are both racing against it.

(17:40) Margaery gets her moment of awesome, working out the problem (specifically noting that the threat must be to the whole sept because Tommen is not present, something that indicates to her that he’d be at risk if he was). The High Sparrow switched his brain off for the duration. One smart person per scene!

(18:02) But the leap to “we all need to leave” was a bit out of nowhere. I’d be expecting crossbows before wildfire, which should get a “send your men to search the building.” That would also mean you can stop the High Sparrow looking like more of a fool than he already does for not securing Cersei, spotting the same thing Margaery does and trying to prevent it.

(18:51) Instead of at this last minute, having the Sparrows prevent people from leaving. Because um reasons.

(19:49) Deaths: 113. Cersei blows up the 110 people I counted in the sept, including Margaery, Loras, the High Sparrow, Lancel, Mace Tyrell, and Kevan Lannister. Two more Sparrows die outside the sept.

(19:55) Deaths: 115. Two more people die getting hit by debris. So that’s 114 kills for Cersei. It’s implied to be more.

(20:05) And Cersei, who until now has killed a grand total of three people all series, smirks over the carnage. I find this horribly inconsistent with her characterisation thus far. This is in large part because of decisions made to “soften” Cersei, especially in earlier seasons. Book!Cersei continually demonstrated her incompetence in her failure to rein in Joffrey - and in her inability to see how what Joffrey was doing was a cause of many political problems. That also showed her own lack of empathy. Whereas with show!Cersei, we see her confiding to Margaery, with palpable grief and disgust, that Joffrey’s violence shocked her.

But character development? That reflection on violence comes after the character turning point that is Joffrey’s death. And while Myrcella’s death and Cersei’s (slight) escalation of violence coincide, they don’t seem to be linked well in the narrative, especially as season six makes no mention of Cersei’s hunt for Tyrion, nor includes any real effort on Cersei’s part to get rid of the Tyrells or Martells. I’ll get back to Cersei’s characterisation in a second.

(20:09) Cersei drinks: 1.

(20:30) Meanwhile, Tommen is left completely alone. Because this happens to kings on the regular.

(20:41) Septa Unella is now here and being tortured. How did she get here? Not a clue. Why is this happening? No in-universe reason, but the writers wanted a villain monologue, so here we are anyway.

(21:25) “I do things because they feel good.” Thus far, no. No, Cersei has not. She has, for the most part, been restrained and temperate, often putting aside her hatred of the Tyrells in the best interests of her family, without being browbeaten or overruled. This she was doing to the mid-season mark. Her affair with Lancel is one of the few things she’s done purely because it felt good to her and damn the consequences, but that affair ended four seasons ago. Her relationship with Jaime in the show also lacks (an intentional depiction of) the deeply embedded unhealthiness of its book counterpart. There is every indication that Cersei and Jaime are sincerely in love with each other and engaged in a healthy relationship that just so happens to be incestuous.

Show!Cersei’s overriding motivation has instead been the welfare of her children, to whom she has been a far better parent than her book counterpart. Crucially, show!Cersei has been able to see that her children are independent beings whose needs and desires differ from her own. Her threats to burn cities to the ground have been linked to the welfare of her children, and she hasn’t done it, because burning cities to the ground isn’t what’s best for her children. Until season six, she used violence directly only to protect her children, not to gratify herself, and in season six, her use of violence was directly linked to the sexual abuse and humiliation she suffered at the hands of the Sparrows. And so we now have a weird double standard where Sansa lashing out at her abuser = good, Dany burning down a patriarchal church = good, Cersei lashing out at her abusers (and her son’s abuser) by burning down a patriarchal church = bad.

(21:36) “I killed my husband because it felt good to be rid of him.”

We closed the previous episode on Sansa murdering her abusive husband in a situation where it was clearly apparent that he posed no threat to her any more and never would again. Cersei, meanwhile, murdered her abusive husband while they were still living in the same household as man and wife, he was still king, and he’d hit her across the face the episode before. One of these women killed her abusive husband purely because it felt good to be rid of him, and therefore one of these women is bad.

Just want to keep that double standard firmly in view here.

I mean, aside from the double standard where Cersei blowing up a church is bad, but Dany burning down a church is good.

(22:02) There is no way in hell that Cersei killed every Sparrow in King’s Landing. As I said, there were only about a hundred people in that sept, and most of them were nobles. She killed maybe twenty, twenty-five Sparrows max.

(22:31) Cersei says here that even confessing feels good under the right circumstances. So I’m taking this “feels good” explanation as a retcon. All those times Cersei says that she’s motivated by love for her boyfriend and children, they’re lies and/or denial. All the times she demonstrates by word, deed, or lack thereof that this is the case - that must be some sort of coincidence.

(24:13) There are certainly implications here, but Septa Unella’s exact fate is left somewhat ambiguous.

(24:31) This guy has just been popping in and out to check on Tommen.

(24:48) I like the detail of Tommen taking off his crown. Hell, I like the framing of this. It’s a stunning shot of the burning sept and Tommen’s removal from it.

(25:11) I even like how unceremonious Tommen’s suicide is. After the very dramatic sept explosion, this quiet death in the aftermath I think actually gets the despair.

That said, I loathe the writers’ statements outside the episode that this was all Cersei’s fault. They wrote a story in which Tommen was manipulated and exploited by everyone around him. In particular, we got a good look at how Margaery fostered in him a sense of dependence on her. There’s a strong case to be made that in the show, Cersei manipulated and exploited him least, and was the person most concerned with his welfare and wellbeing. The only reason she’s not here right now is because of sloppy character writing.

Tommen’s arc is a consistent story of the effects of emotional manipulation and abuse perpetrated on a young and vulnerable boy, culminating in his suicide when he cannot handle the sudden violent loss of his foremost abuser, his rapist of a wife. If the writers had the slightest clue that this was the story they were telling, it would have been a worthy and affecting use of screentime. Deaths: 116.

(25:28) All this cheering of “We send our regards!” In-universe failed meme.

(26:10) Arya Stark, world’s worst assassin, stares conspicuously at someone she’s thinking about killing. She’s terrible at this, she really is.

(26:25) Man called ‘cunt’: 1. Bronn’s vocabulary is slightly less limited than that of Karl fuckin’ Tanner, but not much.

(27:12) “Can’t go killing my son-by-law, it wouldn’t be right.” While this is supposed to be ironic, it’s also a pretty weak admission that the plot will be needing Edmure later. Presumably. I think he’s got a good shot of surviving the books, anyway, and wouldn’t be shocked if he was needed for something in the meantime. Re-retaking Riverrun, perhaps, or is that re-re-retaking Riverrun?

(28:28) A rare sign of book!Jaime in his visible discomfort with being compared to Walder Frey.

(29:03) Bookending the season with Cersei burying her children is in theory a very good idea.

(30:12) Ah, a peaceful, sunny green field. Sam and Gilly have arrived near Oldtown at last. What does this mean? Well, it means that Sam, while a guest in his father’s castle, stole a Valyrian steel sword from one of the most powerful men in Westeros and got away scot free.

(30:26) That’s a really nice view of Oldtown.

(30:39) And a nice view of the white ravens leaving the tower to announce to the realm that winter is here.

(30:54) Oh god he’s got a magnifying glass. This scene is going to be “comedic,” isn’t it?

(31:33) I question the decision to make this hall empty. The emptiness makes the Citadel seem unreal, rather than a hub of learning in Westeros.

(31:43) The Citadel is so out of touch that while everyone learned about Stannis’ defeat and Tywin’s death mere minutes after they happened, they still think Jeor Mormont is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Comedy!

(32:47) And Gilly ends the season standing stunned and alone in the Citadel’s reception area! See you next year! Enjoy the wait!

(33:38) It’s the library from Beauty and the Beast! It’s definitely not like the Library of Alexandria and it’s definitely not doomed. At least Sam has something to do while he waits for next season. And a plot. Maybe some character development. Anything but going from point A to point B repeating the same stale “story” he’s had for the past three seasons.

(34:39) While I think it’s perfectly legit for Jon to be upset about being seated so far away from his family in a manner that states “you are not worth as much as they are,” saying this to Melisandre…might not be the most tactful.

(55:12) Halfway through the final episode of the season, eleven episodes after Shireen’s death and almost ten since Davos and Melisandre reunited, Davos thinks to pursue the line of questioning about Shireen. Liam Cunningham and Carice van Houten do their utmost, but there’s no hiding the fact that this discussion has been postponed in a way that makes absolutely no sense for Davos’ character, to serve the plot interest of kicking Mel into another geographical area.

(36:05) “If he commands you to burn children, your lord is evil.” This is why Stannis’ plot came with the whole fate-of-the-world aspect, so readers could engage with the discussion of lesser evils, rather than pile on with STANNIS BAD. STANNIS WRONG. STANNIS EVIL.

(36:50) Goddamn, the acting here.

(37:52) In the conclusion to this scene we’re shown a few things about Winterfell’s politics right now. Davos and Mel are both treating Jon as the authority in this castle. If Sansa really wants to be Lady of Winterfell, she’s way behind the eight ball on this one. Lacking a formal decision about who’s in charge, Jon is acting as though he is in charge in a way that Sansa is not. I have no doubt that Jon didn’t think about it; I can’t believe that Sansa is supposed to be this political mastermind now if she’s missed this fact.

Second, it’s nice to see a little justice around the place. Punishing Mel for Shireen’s burning gets Jon nothing except Davos’ good opinion, and not even that unreservedly since he went with banishment rather than execution; he’s clearly doing it because burning children = bad. But at the same time, he asked Mel to speak in her own defence, listened to her arguments, and modified her sentence. This is a good solid stab at being fair and just from Jon.

Finally, last season I mentioned I don’t see how Shireen’s burning caused the retaking of Winterfell. Did the storms hold off all season because of that sacrifice?

(38:48) Lovely shot of Jon and Sansa.

(38:56) “I’m having the lord’s chamber prepared for you.” So Jon’s been giving orders to the castle staff as well, once more in a way that demonstrates his love and respect for his trueborn siblings. Watch Jon accidentally Bavarian Fire Drill into kingship by acting like the Lord of Winterfell while publicly going against Westerosi bastard stereotype. I really don’t think the writers knew what they were writing here.

In the meantime, what has Sansa been doing? I mean, I know the writers can’t actually think of things for her to do, but this is getting ridiculous.

(39:08) Jon shows a far greater appreciation for the symbolic value of that bedroom than Sansa has. And she’s supposed to be the politically astute one?

(39:18) No. No, Jon, you are not standing in Winterfell because of Sansa. You nearly failed entirely because of Sansa. You lost hundreds of your own men because of Sansa’s incompetence and bad faith.

Jon made a bad decision on the day of the battle. It was a shocker. It was really, really bad. Before that point, he had bad options, worse options, and limited means of telling which was which.

Sansa, however, has been lying since 6.05, withholding not tactical information, but strategic information. Those lies shaped the entire campaign. Sansa tells Jon that they might be able to get the Vale on side? They can go to every Northern lord and say “the Knights of the Vale are riding to our aid, they’ve retaken Moat Cailin, they’ll be available when the plot requires,” thereby offering far greater chances of success and incentive to North Remembers. If Sansa didn’t see how her lies affected the way in which the entire campaign was fought, she’s staggeringly incompetent. If Sansa did see this, she’s staggeringly malicious.

And, possessed of detailed information about Jon’s plan, Ramsay’s likely counters, the composition of both armies, and the terrain on which the battle would be fought, she clearly did not relay this to the Vale commanders and okayed the charge right into Stark forces. That’s plain old incompetence. That incidentally got a lot of people on her own side killed. (Or at least it should have, given the shots of the battle we were shown.)

It may be true that the knights of the Vale only rode north because of Sansa. It does not absolve her of the veritable mountain of bullshit that was denying Jon and through him Team Stark of all the benefit of those knights until it suited Sansa’s personal agenda.

There is no way around it. Bad writing, specifically the rape-revenge plot the writers were so eager to insert and the side effects of this plot, have utterly destroyed this character as a consistent, intelligent, decent protagonist. This would not be an issue if Sansa had stayed in the Vale, or even if the writers had boned up on the most basic information about medieval warfare. The staggering incompetence here is to be found on the writing staff.

Oh, and if Jon doesn’t see this, it reflects poorly on him as well.

(39:36) “Only a fool would trust Littlefinger.” I can’t decide whether that’s Sansa bashing herself, the writers bashing Ned, or both.

(39:42) “I should have told you about [Littlefinger].” YES. YES YOU SHOULD HAVE. This apology is so inadequate under the circumstances I cannot even.

(40:20) A sibling moment of trust and affection, emphasising the importance of sticking together in tough times. I don’t suppose this is going to be undermined later.

(41:13) Olenna’s historical references prove that the showrunners have read the books. At least once. Or they skimmed it, at least. Look, they’re long books, okay.

(41:19) “You murder your own prince, and you expect me to trust you?” So many good questions.

(41:35) Ah, Olenna’s consistently-depicted misogyny. How I’ve missed it. Obara was making a point quite civilly - not delicately, but civilly. No call for rudeness.

(41:44) I think the Sand Snakes were as poorly-written as the next critic. That doesn’t mean I think it’s good storytelling to see diplomatic mastermind Olenna Tyrell be horrible to them (since that apparently demonstrates that she’s clever and no-nonsense), nor entertaining to hear yet more sexism from her.

(42:04) There’s no telling how removed in time this scene is from the beginning of the episode. It clearly has to be a while.

(42:23) More copy/pasting from the books without thought about how it fits into the story the show is telling. “Our heart’s desire” doesn’t work with Ellaria as it works for Doran, because Doran’s the one with almost two decades of investment into seeing the Lannisters brought down.

(42:39) Hey, Varys. Nice to see you here in Dorne.

(43:42) It’s nice that the writers found a way to further whittle down the cast list without outright killing everyone inconvenient. This is just a nicely-timed breakup from Dany.

(45:36) They’re just tying up Meereen with a nice little bow, all its problems magically solved. How wonderful that this seasons-long plot can be left behind in such a state.

(47:51) Dany admits she felt nothing as she said goodbye to Daario. Easy enough to depict. Not like we’ve been getting much of Dany’s interiority all season, since she’s mostly been bouncing from plot point to plot point. Daario and Tyrion have both outlined how she feels at points, but Dany herself has done precious little expressing her own emotions.

(49:05) I would like to enjoy this scene for what it is, too, but Dany and Tyrion have barely interacted. The only time they’ve done so this season, Tyrion was too busy covering his ass to actually help her.

(49:55) Like the Citadel, the Twins has cleared out so the main characters can interact unbothered by pesky extras.

(50:52) Arya got the hang of dramatic baking. No, I don’t know how she got the two Freys alone, killed them, butchered them imperfectly, and found the time and materials to bake them into a pie in a busy castle kitchen, or the reasons she would do this particular grisly act specifically (unlike Lord Manderly who served people who were definitely not his guests as a pie at a wedding), but who cares, it’s Frey Pie. Copy/paste from ADWD, it always works!

(51:09) Arya, confirmed. Don’t ask how she got here from Braavos, either.

(51:24) Deaths: 117. Arya kills Walder Frey. Disturbing and intentionally so, which actually makes it a terrible leaving-off point for her. We already knew she was capable of this sort of violence. So hooray vengeance, I guess, but what does this mean for Arya that we don’t already know?

(52:24) Being a smart, empowered woman, Sansa is now an atheist. The sensitive and nuanced depiction of religion continues.

(52:42) Being a smart, empowered woman, Sansa despises her past self for being a little girl.

(53:36) Show!Littlefinger’s endgame is apparently him on the Iron Throne with Queen Sansa. He also only apparently acts if he thinks the action will bring him closer to that endgame. How did marrying Sansa off to Ramsay, whom Littlefinger know nothing about, while Winterfell was about to be under siege, help in the slightest? It doesn’t and it hasn’t.

(54:20) Forget Sansa for the moment, I can’t believe Littlefinger is very good at politics if he’s missed how Jon’s back in Winterfell getting the castle reorganised and settling disputes between important political figures while Sansa sits outside in the snow doing nothing. When he asks “who should the North rally behind” he’s ignoring the fact that in the castle, yes that castle, the one over there, the North’s already looking in a particular direction - because on the facts, Jon’s the one trying to do the job. And Littlefinger should bloody well know how a man lacking station can wrangle greater authority than his birth might otherwise allow.

It’s the writers. It’s always the writers. They don’t understand how this works, and they consistently have problems finding Sansa things to do.

(54:33) Littlefinger reminding us of Jon’s lack of mother and giving us, for the first time, the information that Jon was born in the south.

(55:22) A good sensible reason for Uncle Ben not crossing the Wall with Bran and Meera, foreshadowing the “while it stands” part…but they still look a fair ways off the Wall to me.

(56:45) Why Bran is so eager to hop right back into flashback town is also an in-universe mystery. Out of universe, well, we got some longstanding mysteries to reveal in a super inappropriate place. But at least we’ll stop getting jerked around by the showrunners on this count.

(57:27) “Ned?” “Lyanna!” See how much better that was done than “that’s my father!”

(58:46) While this scene is mostly really good, they left out one single detail. Rhaegar. This single detail puts everything into context. Hence the flowchart HBO had to release after the episode to show that no, Jon isn’t Ned’s son by his sister. Imagine if this had been foreshadowed, though! That would have been really good!

(59:13) And while Isaac Hempstead-Wright has been really good this season, his reaction shots are missing the mark here a bit, in that I’m not sure what he’s feeling about what he’s watching. Is he confused? Upset? I can’t tell.

(59:32) Then we cut to Jon, so the audience puts it together. Who knows if Bran did? Who cares if Bran did, amirite? What a twist this is!

(59:48) Even more shocking, there are Northern lords. They exist!

(1:00:41) Not going to elaborate on this “the enemy brings the storm” business, Jon? I think most of the people in this room could do with a firsthand account of your fight at Hardhome, backed up by Tormund and crew…

(1:00:58) Now they’re just rubbing in the lack of North Remembers, by referencing Lord Manderly who didn’t do a damn thing in spite of the fact his son was murdered at the Red Wedding.

(1:01:20) Lyanna Mormont’s got a better grasp of rhetorical device than Ramsay Bolton did. “You refused the call” is working for her a lot better than “come and see” did for him.

(1:01:45) Oh boy. Politics. Ever the strong suit of the writers. There were ways this scene could have made more sense if they tried for it, and Lyanna Mormont’s speech hit none of them. The object of this scene, crowning Jon king, is fighting a steep uphill battle against precedent. If Jon is crowned while Sansa is alive (and, like, right there), every lord in that room and their wives have to worry about their bastard siblings and children. Lyanna Mormont’s speech does not address this important issue. All she has to say about Jon’s bastard status is “I don’t care.” Great. Solves everything. Not.

This speech could also have put forward a strong argument against Sansa, leaving the meat of the role to Jon by default (since none of the assembled lord here know Bran’s alive). Sansa’s been married into not one but two enemy houses. Sansa’s a girl. We need a strong (read: male) leader through the winter. Someone could bring up the fact that she’s been lying for months, to the very great detriment of House Stark (but that would have its own backlash with the Vale knights). Unpleasant and nakedly sexist, but within in-universe bounds thereof, not far off how book!Kevan was planning to shunt Cersei, Lady of Casterly Rock, to one side. I can see why the showrunners opted against that.

Or, Sansa could have given this speech. This makes it clear that Sansa’s exercising her own agency, abdicating her claim on Winterfell, and that Jon taking over is an exception to the rules about bastards inheriting. It’s also far better from a character standpoint, as by doing this Sansa would make it clear she’s picking Jon and House Stark, and fuck what Littlefinger wants.

(1:02:23) “I didn’t commit my men to your cause, because I didn’t want more Manderlys dying for nothing.” First, grr, not nothing. The Manderlys stood to benefit quite substantially from an independent North, as they hold the North’s only warm-water port and were angling to mint the North’s currency. (In the books, anyway.) Second, so what he’s saying is, if he’d been told the Knights of the Vale were heading up the Kingsroad, he would have committed to the Stark cauase.

(1:02:34) Jon Snow avenged the Red Wedding? The only thing we’ve heard Northerners say about the Red Wedding thus far is “Robb deserved it!” Not a peep about the other Northerners murdered in that slaughter. The Tullys were more pissed off about it!

(1:03:33) THE KING IN THE NORTH! Is seriously undermined by the failure to address the whole “bastard” thing, the fact that every astute political move he’s made in the past two episodes was essentially an accident by the writing staff, and his major fuckups in the most recent battle!

(1:04:09) Sansa’s sitting there, not saying anything, but looking very pissy again. Well, she could have said something. She could have been saying something all season. And she could have done things to reccommend herself as a leader.

I will say this for the Northerners. They may have picked an incompetent leader, but they at least picked a leader acting in their best interests and in good faith. Show!Sansa has demonstrated that she’ll do the exact opposite.

(1:04:29) Another very nice shot of the smoking Sept of Baelor, from Jaime’s perspective. Still don’t know when these scenes occur relative to each other.

(1:04:45) Oh my god. As if that first black outfit with ridiculous shoulderpads wasn’t bad enough, here’s another one! Now with even more ridiculous shoulderpads!

(1:05:58) Here’s where I’m going to talk about acceptable breaks from reality again. In a fantasy series, I honestly don’t mind if the writers let physics slide a bit. In many ways, that’s the genre for you. But fantasy lets physics slide so it can tell stories about people. That, for me, is the cardinal sin of any fantasy work - not telling a story about people. A candle going out instantly when it’s cut in half bugs me, but I can let it go. A city full of people standing idly by after their major religious institution and their beloved queen were blown up? Nope.

The Dorne scene almost has to be a flash-forward weeks after this event. Cersei should not be alive at this point. Mob rule should have overtaken King’s Landing. Why would even the Lannister guards follow Cersei after she blew up their holy place, and a bunch of their colleagues (since Kevan was there)? Where are the thousands of people who massed outside that sept to watch Margaery take a walk of shame? They’re not dead. They can’t be. Where is the mass protest? How can this coronation even happen under the circumstances? Shouldn’t all these nobles be run off their feet trying to defend their holdings in or near the city?

These people aren’t behaving like people, and I find it far less believable than a candle going out.

(1:06:27) Jaime, like Sansa, also finishes out his season looking somewhat pissy.

(1:06:49) Love this shot of Theon looking at the Greyjoy flag.

(1:08:19) The only complaint I have with closing out the season on Dany setting sail is the fact that Varys is here.

Game of Numbers S06E10

Deaths: 117. I know! This episode is less lethal than Battle of the Bastards! I’m as surprised as you are! Anyway, Qyburn kills Pycelle, Arya kills Walder Frey, and Tommen commits suicide. The other 114 casualties of the episode, including Margaery, Loras, Lancel, Mace Tyrell, Kevan Lannister, and the High Sparrow, are all Cersei’s work.

Boobs: 1.

Abs & pecs: 0.

Female butts: 1.

Male butts: 0.

Sex workers: 1.

Woman called ‘cunt’: 0.

Man called ‘cunt’: 1.

Tyrion drinks: 0. (He does have a decanter of wine close to hand, though.)

Cersei drinks: 1.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: …and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame; And on each end of the rifle we’re the same” — John McCutcheon, “Christmas in the Trenches” 103 years ago this Christmas something happened near the beginning of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war. The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again. “Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the war of 1914 – 1918, the so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years of exhausting trench warfare, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupt. British, Scottish, French, Belgian, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian clergymen from church pulpits in those Christian nations were doing their part in creating a decidedly un-Christ-like patriotic fervor that would result in a holocaust that destroyed four empires, killed upwards of 20 million soldiers and civilians, physically wounded hundreds of millions more and caused the psychological and spiritual decimation of an entire generation of young men whose spiritual care was supposed to be the responsibility of those clergymen. Christianity, it should be remembered, began as a highly ethical pacifist religion based on the teachings and actions of the nonviolent Jesus of Nazareth (and his pacifist apostles and followers). Christianity survived and thrived despite persecutions until it became the largest religion in the Roman Empire by the time Constantine the Great became emperor (in 313 CE) and usurped the religion’s leaders into becoming OK with the homicidal violence of warfare. Ever since then, the nations that professed Christianity as their state religion have never allowed the mainline churches to truly exercise the radical peacemaking of the original form of Christianity as Jesus had taught. So, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, most modern Christian churches have refused to become active resisters to its particular nation’s militarist or imperial aspirations, its nation’s aggressive wars, its nation’s war-makers or its nation’s war profiteers. Instead, the church has, by and large, become a bloody instrument of the satanic in support of whatever sociopathic warmongers and sociopathic corporations are in power. So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see that the religious leaders on both sides of World War I were convinced that God was on their particular side and therefore not on the side of those professed followers of Jesus that had been fingered as enemies by their nation’s political leaders. The incongruity of believing that the same god was blessing the lethal weapons and protecting the doomed sons on both sides of No-Man’s Land) failed to register with the vast majority of combatants and their spiritual counselors. So, early in the war, pulpits and pews all over Europe reverberated with flag-waving fervor, sending clear messages to the millions of doomed warrior-sons that it was their Christian duty to march off to kill the equally doomed Christian soldiers on the other side of the line. And for the civilians back home, it was their Christian duty to “support the troops” who were destined to return home dead or wounded, psychologically and spiritually broken, disillusioned – and faithless. A mere five months into this frustrating war (featuring trench warfare, artillery barrages, withering machine gun fire, and, soon to come, unstoppable armored tanks, aerial bombardment and poison gas), the first Christmas of the war on the Western Front offered a respite to the exhausted, freezing and demoralized troops. Christmas was the holiest of Christian holidays and every soldier in the frozen trenches was slowly coming to the abrupt realization that war was NOT glorious (as they had been led to believe). After experiencing death, dying, hunger, frostbite, sleep deprivation, shell shock, traumatic brain injuries and homesickness, the traditional spirit of Christmas and its expectations of peace and love, had a special meaning for the troops. Christmas reminded the soldiers of the good food, warm homes and beloved families and friends that they had left behind and which – they now suspected – they might never see again. The soldiers in the trenches desperately sought some respite from the misery of the rat, lice and corpse-infested trenches. Some of the more thoughtful troops had begun to suspect that even if they survived the war physically, they might not survive it psychically or spiritually. Trench Warfare in 1914 In the excitement leading up to the war, the frontline soldiers on either side had been convinced that God was on their particular side, that their nation was pre-destined to be victorious and that they would be “home before Christmas” where they would be celebrated as conquering heroes. Instead, each frontline soldier found himself at the end of his emotional rope because of the unrelenting artillery barrages against which they were defenseless. If they weren’t killed or physically maimed by the artillery shells and bombs, they would eventually be emotionally destroyed by “shell-shock” (now known as combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder – PTSD). The soldier-victims that witnessed a multitude of examples of battlefield cruelty logically suffered various depths of depression, anxiety, suicidality, hyper-alertness, horrifying nightmares and flashbacks (which was usually misdiagnosed as a “hallucination of unknown cause”, a reality that would condemn millions of future soldiers to be mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia and thus mistakenly treated with addictive, brain-altering psych drugs). Many World War I soldiers suffered any number of traumatic mental and/or neurological abnormalities, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), which only became a diagnosable affliction several wars later. Among the other common war-induced “killers of the soul” were the starvation, the malnutrition, the dehydration, the infections (such as typhus and dysentery), the louse infestations, the trench foot, the frostbite and the gangrenous toes and fingers. If any of the tormented survivors got back home in one piece, they would not really appreciate being treated as military heroes in memorial day parades staged in their honor. They knew – if they were being totally honest with themselves – that they were not actual heroes, but rather they were victims of a sick, delusional, greedy, militarized culture that glorified war and killing and then abandoned the deceived, wounded survivors that made it home alive. Standard operating procedure in every war. Poison gas attacks from both sides, albeit begun by the scientifically-superior Germans, began early in 1915, and Allied tank warfare – which was a humiliating disaster for the British innovators of that new technology – wouldn’t be operational until the Battle of the Somme in 1916. One of the most stressful and lethal realities for the frontline soldiers was the suicidal, misbegotten, “over the top” infantry assaults against the opposition’s machine gun nests. Such assaults were complicated by the presence of shell holes and the rows of coiled barbed wire that often made them sitting ducks. Artillery barrages from both sides commonly resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in a single day. The “over the top” infantry assaults sacrificed hundreds of thousands of obedient lower-echelon soldiers in the futile efforts to gain ground. Those assaults were stupidly and repeatedly ordered by senior officers such as Sir John French and his replacement as British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. Most of the old-timer generals who had fought wars in the previous century refused to admit that their outdated “horse and sabre” cavalry charges across the muck of No-Man’s Land were both hopeless and suicidal. The general staff planners of the various disastrous attempts to end the war quickly (or at least end the stalemate) were safely out of the range of enemy artillery barrages. The national war-planners were safely back in Parliament or hiding in their castles, and their aristocratic generals were comfortably billeted in warm and dry headquarters far from the hot war, eating well, being dressed by their orderlies, drinking their tea and claret – none of them at any risk of suffering the lethal consequences of war. Screams of pain often came from the wounded soldiers who were helplessly hanging on the barbed wire or trapped and perhaps bleeding to death in the bomb craters between the trenches. Often the dying of the wounded would linger for days, and the effect on the troops in the trenches, who had to listen to the desperate, unanswerable cries for help was always psychologically distressing. By the time Christmas came and winter hit, troop morale on both sides of No Man’s Land had hit rock bottom. Christmas in the Trenches So on December 24, 1914, the exhausted troops settled down to their meager Christmas meal with, for the lucky ones, gifts from home, special food, special liquor, special chocolate bars and the hope for peace, if even for one night. On the German side, a magnanimous (and deluded) Kaiser Wilhelm sent 100,000 Christmas trees with millions of ornamental candles to the front, expecting that such an act would boost German troop morale. Using the precious supply lines for such militarily unnecessary items was ridiculed by most of the hardened officers, and nobody suspected that the Kaiser’s Christmas tree idea would backfire – instead becoming a catalyst for an unplanned-for and unauthorized cease-fire, orchestrated by non-officers and unheard of in the history of warfare. The mutiny was censored out of mainstream history books for most of the next century. The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous, unauthorized event that happened at a number of locations all along the 600 miles of triple trenches that stretched across Belgium and France, and it was an event that would never again be duplicated, thanks to the war-profiteers, professional militarists and saber-rattling wannabes in the media, parliament and Congress who glory in their nation’s “pseudo-patriotic” wars. Joyeux Noel Twelve years ago, the movie Joyeux Noel (French for “Merry Christmas”) received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for best foreign film of 2005. Joyeux Noel is the moving story that was adapted from the many surviving stories that had been told in letters from soldiers who had participated in the truce. It was almost a miracle that the truth of that remarkable event survived the powerful censorship. Courageous German soldier singing in No Man’s Land (image from Joyeux Noel) As told in the movie, in the darkened battlefield, a German soldier started singing the beloved Christmas hymn “Stille Nacht”. Soon the British, French and Scots on the other side of No Man’s Land joined in with their versions of “Silent Night”. Other Christmas songs were sung, often as duets in two tongues. Before long, the spirit of peace and “goodwill towards men” prevailed over the demonic spirit of war, and the troops on both sides began to sense their common humanity. The natural human aversion to killing other humans broke through to consciousness and overcame the fear, patriotic fervor and pro-war brain-washing to which they had all been subjected. Soldiers on both sides courageously dropped their weapons, came “over the top” in peace to meet their former foes face-to-face. To get to the neutral zone, they had to climb over barbed wire, walk around shell holes and over frozen corpses (which were later to be given respectful burials during an extension of the truce, with soldiers from both sides helping one another with the gruesome task of burying their comrades). Graves in No Man’s Land Mutinous French, German and Scottish Lieutenants The spirit of retaliation had been replaced by a spirit of reconciliation and the desire for real peace. New friends shared chocolate bars, cigarettes, wine, schnapps, soccer games and pictures from home. Addresses were exchanged, photos were taken and every soldier who genuinely experienced the emotional drama was forever changed. Suddenly there was an aversion to killing young men who deserved to be treated as they had been taught in Sunday School: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And the generals and the politicians back home were appalled at the unexpected Christ-like behavior of the front-soldiers. Fostering Peace on Earth in Times of War is an Act of Treason for Conscientious Soldiers Fraternization with the enemy (as well as refusing to obey orders in time of war) is universally regarded by military commanders as an act of treason and a serious crime deserving of severe punishment. In most wars throughout history, such “crimes” were often dealt with by severe beatings and often firing squad. In the case of the Christmas Truce of 1914, most commanding officers feared mutiny if severe punishments were carried out so, instead, not wanting to draw public attention to an incident that was potentially contagious and could stop the war, they censored letters home and tried to ignore the episode. War correspondents were forbidden to report the incident to their papers. Some commanding officers threatened courts martial if fraternization persisted. They understood that getting to know and befriend a supposed enemy was bad for the carefully-orchestrated killing spirit of war. There were punishments that were carried out against some of the most conscientious soldiers who refused to fire their rifles. The troops of French Catholic and United Kingdom Protestant persuasion naturally began questioning the moral legitimacy of the decidedly un-Christlike war and so those troops were often re-assigned to different – and less desirable – regiments. German troops were either Lutheran or Catholic, and the consciences of many of them had been revived by the truce. Refusing to obey their orders to kill, many of them were sent to the Eastern Front where there were much harsher conditions. Separated from their Western Front comrades who had also experienced the true spirit of Christmas, they had no choice but to fight and die in the equally suicidal battles against their Russian Orthodox Christian co-religionists. Very few Allied or German soldiers who experienced the Christmas Truce of 1914 survived the war. If humanity is truly concerned with the barbaric nature of militarism, and if our modern-era false flag-generated wars of empire are to be effectively derailed, the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 needs to be retold over and over again – and taken to heart. The satanic nature of war became obvious to the ones who experienced the Christmas Truce in 1914, but war-mongers and war profiteers have been trying to cover it up ever since. Flag-waving patriotism and telling exaggerated stories of military heroism have worked well to glorify what is blatantly inglorious. Both ancient and modern wars have been glorified in every nation’s history textbooks but, if civilization is to survive, war needs to be exposed as demonic. Violence begets violence. Wars are contagious, universally futile, and never truly end; and their extremely high costs always results in a very poor return on investment – except for the banks and the weapons-manufacturers. Modern American wars are now being fought by thoroughly indoctrinated, post-adolescent, Call of Duty-type first person shooter gamers who liked the adrenaline high of killing virtual “bad guys” in a video game. Sadly, unbeknownst to them, they are at high risk of having their emotional and spiritual lives negatively and permanently altered by the physical, mental and spiritual damage that always comes from participating in actual homicidal violence. Combat war can easily doom its participants to a life overwhelmed by the wounds of war (PTSD, sociopathic personality disorder, suicidality, homicidality, loss of religious faith, traumatic brain injury, malnutrition from the highly processed military food, autoimmune disorders because of the military’s over-vaccination programs with neurotoxic aluminum-containing vaccines (especially the anthrax series) and addictive drug use [either legal or illegal]). What is most important to realize is that all those lethal effects are totally preventable. Christian Church Leadership has an Ethical Duty to Warn it’s Prospective Cannon Fodder Soldiers About the Potential for Spiritual Suicide if They Participate in Combat It seems to me that it would be helpful if moral leadership in America, especially its church leaders and its Christian parents, would discharge their duty to thoroughly warn the children and adolescents in their sphere of influence about all of the serious consequences of being in the killing professions. Jesus, who commanded his followers to “love your enemies”, would surely approve. Without such countervailing truths being told by a nation’s moral leadership, war planners have an easy time keeping potential soldiers from recognizing the humanity of those that are accused of being enemies, whether they are Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Russians, Vietnamese, Chinese or North Koreans. I have been repeatedly told by military veteran friends of mine that military chaplains – who are supposed to be nurturers of the souls of the soldiers that are in their “care” – never bring up, in their counseling sessions, the Golden Rule, Jesus’ clear “love your enemies” commands, his many ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount or the biblical commandments that say “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oil”. The Church’s Theological Blind Spots When the Pro-War Flag-waving Begins One theological blind spot about war was nicely illustrated near the end of Joyeux Noel in a powerful scene depicting a confrontation between the Christ-like, altruistic, antiwar, lowly Scottish chaplain and his pro-war over-privileged Anglican bishop. As the humble chaplain was mercifully administering the “last rites” to a dying soldier, he was approached by the bishop, who had come to chastise the chaplain for fraternizing with the enemy during the Christmas Truce. The bishop summarily relieved the simple pastor of his chaplaincy duties because of his “treasonous and shameful” Christ-like behavior on the battlefield. The authoritarian bishop refused to listen to the chaplain’s story about his having performed “the most important mass of my life” (with enemy troops participating in the celebration) or the fact that he wished to stay with the soldiers that needed him because they were losing their faith in God. The bishop angrily denied the chaplain’s request to remain with his men. Christmas Eve Mass, France The bishop then delivered a rousing pro-war, jingoistic sermon (which was taken word-for-word from a homily that had actually been delivered by an Anglican bishop later in the war). The sermon was addressed to the fresh troops that had to be brought in to replace the veteran soldiers who had suddenly become averse to killing, and were refusing to fire on the “enemy”. The image of the dramatic but subtle response of the chaplain to his sacking should be a clarion call to the Christian church leadership – both clergy and lay – of every militarized, so-called “Christian” nation. This chaplain, after listening to the bishop’s sermon, simply hung up his cross and walked out of the door of the field hospital. Joyeux Noel is an important film that deserves to be an annual holiday viewing. It has ethical lessons far more powerful than the traditional fare of It’s A Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol. One of the lessons of the story is summarized in the concluding verse of John McCutcheon’s famous song about the event: “Christmas in the Trenches”: My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell. Each Christmas come since World War One, I’ve learned its lessons well: That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame And on each end of the rifle we’re the same. A critical scene from the movie is here. Additional scenes from the movie, with the narration of a letter from one of the soldiers involved can be viewed here. http://clubof.info/

[celticnoise]

Wow. Just wow. I have just watched a breath-taking press conference at which Mark Allen, Sevco’s director of football, has embarrassed himself and at which Stewart Robertson talked some of the worst nonsense I have ever heard.

Throughout it they constantly referred to Graeme Murty as a “permanent appointment”.

Not one hack had the stones to administer the grilling that was required here.

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What a mess.

Robertson opened it with a smile, professing himself “delighted” with the decision.

It is bonkers.

The first hack asked “how tricky a decision was this?”

I have no words.

Tricky? To make a decision which this website called as early as the first week?

It’s been two months and this is where they have ended up.

This was not “tricky.” This was shambolic.

Robertson said Murty had “risen to the task”.

Three defeats in seven games?

Can this possibly be real?

Can this actually be happening?

The Sevco MD then confirmed that “Graeme is in pole position now” and thus makes it clear that this is the appointment they are hoping to make for the long term. All the big talk about a top name … and they’ve hired the guy who’s had the job the whole time.

We did this with Neil Lennon when Tony Mowbray left.

But Celtic made the decision to give Lennon until the end of the season on the very day Mowbray went. We didn’t drag it out through seven weeks. We didn’t play games and lie to our own fans. Tony went, Neil was put in place and that was the position as everyone at the club knew.

Robertson squirmed when someone finally asked why the appointment was only until the end of the season. It is a pertinent question, one of the only ones asked. If the manager is under review then this isn’t a credible decision.

Robertson passed it on to Allen, and thus got off the hook.

Fearless interrogators our media.

Mark Allen then took over and discussed the “recruitment process.”

And you are going to love this.

“Strategies were provided to the board in terms of the decision we could go … the board were free to make that decision, we made that move and we’re here as a result of that move not working out as originally planned,” he said. “In a perfect world you’d hope things would have been more seamless, and perhaps a little quicker. That’s not always possible … there are a number of things going on in and around the situation that don’t make those things easy … when you are looking at all the characters the best thing is to make the right decision.”

When I wrote last week about Robertson being under pressure and considering his position I said that it was Allen who had talked him out of chucking it. Allen is under his own pressure; the Sevco fan forums buzz with rumours that he has fallen out with the board. BBC Scotland appears to have confirmed that; there was some discussion on there about it. When you consider those rumours in line with what he has said today, it is not difficult to see his comments as a rebuke to that faction in the boardroom that was determined to get McInnes. It is as close as a major figure at a football team could come to slagging his bosses.

Thank God (for him) that it went right over the heads of the hacks.

Not one of them picked up on his dig at the board.

He then engaged in a superb piece of doublespeak in relation to the current Sevco squad, spelling out to the fans that the resources will be limited.

“I think the squad is more than capable of attainting the highest position we possibly can.”

As I said. Wow.

It means everything and nothing.

It can be translated as “the squad could win the league” but equally “this squad will struggle to finish fourth.”

Murty then said he’s hiring a coach.

Bloody Hell.

They have a cast of thousands over there already and the temporary manager thinks they need another member of staff.

I would hope they’re going to give him the same short term deal his boss has.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Murty, now doing the job for the second time. His one consolation is that there will not be a third. The next Sevco manager to be sacked will be him, so there’s no chance of him being interim boss again.

Robertson was pinned, once, on the issue of Derek McInnes and Sevco’s inflammatory statement.

He wanted nothing to do with the question, and it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with the statement either.

It wasn’t hard to work out that neither he nor Allen had any role in that particular act of this farce. It’s equally clear they weren’t going to name names because the name in question was probably standing ten feet away, watching the show.

Murty said he wants to every player to make himself “irreplaceable.”

His first signing is complete; Declan John signed for them today.

This “irreplaceable” footballer, who was at Ibrox on loan, has been released from his contract at Cardiff City who didn’t even bother asking for a fee. They clearly did not think of him as someone who could not be replaced.

“Recruitment is an art, not a science,” Robertson said when asked to defend the way this has panned out.

It is a ridiculous answer, means nothing at all, and actually turns the truth on its head.

Recruitment is actually relatively simple if the people involved in the process have a clue what they are doing and the freedom to get on with doing it.

Finally, Robertson was asked about King and the Takeover Panel verdict.

Incredibly, he said that he had not spoken to him about it and that anyway it wouldn’t impact on the club.

Nobody followed up on that point, which on the surface of it is preposterous.

So a major courtroom reversal for which King has to find £11 million will not impact on any part of the club which is, by admission, depending on him forking over more millions in the next 12 months just to keep on the lights? Really?

No impact at all?

Uh-uh.

We’ll see.

All in all, this was incredible, and what was even more incredible was the soft-ball nature of the questioning from the assembled hacks. It was pitiful stuff, it really was. No wonder this board thinks it can take its fans for mugs; the media here is completely inept and incapable of holding anyone to account.

  http://ift.tt/2DyOqF8

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Ranked] The Seasons of AMERICAN HORROR STORY from Best to Worst

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/ranked-seasons-american-horror-story-best-worst/

[Ranked] The Seasons of AMERICAN HORROR STORY from Best to Worst

The seventh season of everyone’s favorite hot mess, American Horror Story, premieres on FX tonight. This batch of episodes (subtitled Cult) puts a political spin on the proceedings. And, while they could technically just replay this year’s inauguration video for each episode, it seems this season focuses on Sarah Paulson’s fear of clowns and Evan Peters’ blue-haired screaming fits. In preparation of tonight’s inaugural episode, let’s take a look back at all six seasons so far from best to worst.

  6. FREAK SHOW (Season 4)

Last and definitely least is American Horror Story: Freak Show. Right from the get-go, this season was one big eye roll. It’s very basis is a theme not unfamiliar in Murphy’s cannon; a group of outsiders fighting against bigotry and hate. But here he places the protagonists in the most obvious setting possible: an actual freak show. Effectively turning the subtext of his previous stories into capital-t Text, and shoving it down our throats while he’s at it. Get it?? They’re actual freaks!! It’s as if he missed the screenwriting class that teaches you the “show, don’t tell” method of storytelling.

The resulting season is cringe-inducingly on the nose. It has exactly one redeeming quality, having a villain who’s genuinely terrifying. Twisty the Clown still haunts my nightmares, but then so does Kathy Bates’ god awful Minnesota accent. Add to that some obnoxiously anachronistic musical numbers performed by Lange with a phony German accent, and you have what’s surely the worst season in a largely hit-or-miss series.

  5. HOTEL (Season 5)

After Freak Show, series highlight Jessica Lange opted out of the show. American Horror Story: Hotel was the first one without her, and a Lange lost is a Gaga gained. Inviting the certified queen of all things weird, Lady Gaga, into the AHS universe was perhaps the most inspired bit of casting the show has had. Gaga, while not amazing, brought a calm assuredness to her performance that bagged her a Golden Globe. What’s unfortunate about this season is you aren’t really given a reason to care about anything that’s happening. There’s no real through-line here, it’s just about this weird hotel run by this weird woman who calls herself ‘The Countess‘ who’s kind of a vampire and also collects children. Wes Bentley plays a detective who checks in to the hotel in hopes of investigating a murder or something. There’s also a killer afoot who kills people according to the Ten Commandments for some reason.

In typical Murphy fashion, it’s a bunch of puzzle pieces that were all taken from completely different puzzles. The end result is as incoherent as it sounds. One hidden gem however is Evan Peters’ gonzo performance as the hotel’s founder James Patrick Marsh, who terrorized guests in his torture chamber on the property in the 1920s. Peters even adopts a ‘1920s accent’ (if that’s even a thing), and somehow manages to make it sound completely natural. So that’s a plus.

  4. COVEN (Season 3)

Asylum (which I’ll get to in a moment), while well-regarded by most, was largely criticized for being ‘too dark’. In retaliation, Ryan Murphy delivered one of the lightest, most ridiculous seasons of the series with American Horror Story: Coven. The humor is in abundance, but most of it is far too campy to ever really be funny. Despite the delightful inclusion of Stevie Nicks (who was actually accused of being a witch in Fleetwood Mac’s heyday), even that cameo was inconsequential.

In fact, the only thing keeping this season in fourth place is the addition of Angela Bassett, who chews the scenery like she’s ripping into a juicy steak. If her death glare doesn’t kill you, surely the amount of verbal acid she spits will. Nobody knows how to deliver a cutting insult quite like Bassett, and it’s one of the only things making this season worth checking out. But she’s the rose in a field full of thorns. Including but not limited to: zombies, racism, and Precious‘ Gabourey Sidibe having sex with a minotaur…

  3. ASYLUM (Season 2)

The second season is a bit of a reversal of the typical AHS formula. The kitchen-sink approach is employed from the get-go here, toning down as it goes along. There’s a Nazi doctor, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, and of course the ill-advised subplot of alien abduction. American Horror Story: Asylum begins as a complete mess with glimmers of promise, and ends on a pleasingly suspenseful and satisfying note.

Aside from bringing Lange to the forefront as the HBIC (Head-Bitch-In-Charge) of the titular institute, we’re also treated to a wonderfully zany performance by Lily Rabe as the repressed nun, and a fun twist that casts Zachary Quinto in a sinister new light. By the time Sarah Paulson’s Lana Winters finds herself unwittingly trapped in Bloody Face‘s lair, the season is finally finding its footing. The problem is, that’s in the third-to-last episode.

  2. ROANOKE (Season 6)

The most recent season also proved to be one of the most divisive. The show’s schtick was beginning to grow quite stale, with many die-hard fans considering jumping ship. Love it or hate it, American Horror Story: Roanoke injected the series with something it was in dire need of: a fresh new storytelling structure. [Spoilers start here, folks] By dividing the season into two halves, Ryan Murphy gave the show something it’s been lacking since season one, and that’s genuine intrigue. The marketing was our first hint that we were in for a change, with the plot and even the subtitle a total secret until it premiered.

It was revealed the season was presented in the style of a true crime docu-series titled “My Roanoke Nightmare“, complete with “dramatic reenactments” of the strange events that occurred after a couple move to a creepy house in North Carolina. Interesting enough, until you realize that all the ‘real’ versions of the characters are still alive and telling the cameras their version of the story, thus dispelling most of the suspense. Things progressed quite quickly, with the story even coming to an apparent conclusion by the end of the fifth episode.

So what now, you ask? Well, it turns out the second half of the season follows the producers of “My Roanoke Nightmare” starting a new reality show. In it, they plan to put the real people and their reenactment counterparts in the same house together with hidden cameras, Big Brother style. Not only did this invigorate the formula, it reached peak excitement when the end of the sixth episode revealed that every single castmember except for one was killed over the course of filming. And what we’re about to watch is the ‘found footage’ of what transpired. F*ck me up, Ryan Murphy. This is storytelling experimentation the likes of which we rarely see on television. Save for a little noticeable lack of focus toward the end, Roanoke proved to be the incredibly necessary slap in the face to those of us being lulled to sleep by the typical AHS formula.

  1. MURDER HOUSE (Season 1)

A clear plot and sense of structure has rarely been AHS‘s strong suit, but it’s part of what makes the first season the undisputed champion. Following some unsavory marital struggles (he’s a cheating jerk who wears fedoras), the Harmon family uproot their lives in Boston and seek a fresh start in sunny California. And wouldn’t ya know it, turns out the house is haunted by literally everyone who has ever died there. Ugh, realtors, amiright? Notable bright spots include a uniquely creepy (and rubbery) villain, Jessica Lange as the unhinged nosy neighbor, and something called “the infantata“. What follows is a season full of memorable moments, but even the best season isn’t without its faults.

As it progresses, it starts to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks. And while it’s a defense mechanism that’s present in every season, it’s perhaps employed least offensively in this one. And while we definitely didn’t need an almost-whole episode devoted to the Black Dahlia, we most certainly needed a scene with Connie Britton eating gourmet brains. Ryan Murphy giveth and Ryan Murphy taketh away.

            So where will season seven land on the ranking? Only time will tell. American Horror Story: Cult premieres tonight, 9/5 on FX at 10pm.