#anyway i really like Pauline shes Fascinating

[eric-the-bmo]

Blood and Silicon Ep5: The Dice Hate Us

[Summary: Blake and Leo decide to go check out the garage without Pauline. It doesn’t go well.]

Picking up from last episode, Blake goes off to feed from the woman Pauline brought in, leaving her and Leo alone in her office. There’s some silence, and eventually Pauline pauses from her typing (where she’s typing up all the information we gathered from the census quest) and lets Leo know that if anything is bothering him, he can talk to her about it. He holds his hands and says he just can’t tell her those things at the moment. She goes back to typing. Sebastian enters the room and asks Pauline for some time off, since college classes are going to be starting up eventually in the spring. She grants it to him, and he leaves. She goes back to transcribing the documents we got from Victor, and Leo pulls out his notebook to try and decipher some of the code he’d written down.

Blake returns from feeding and asks what they should do next; Leo suggests the garage and once again is immediately shut down. Blake offers to drive Leo home, and the two start to exit the club.

On the way out, Seb stops the two of them and recommends Leo change his wardrobe, since he doesn’t dress like everyone else at the club and is getting looks about it. Leo acknowledges this, drawing his coat closer around himself, and he and Blake exit the club and get into the Gangrel’s car.

Leo starts smoking a cigarette as they drive, and few minutes into the ride he realizes this isn’t the way to his apartment.

“Where are you taking me?” “...Somewhere I shouldn’t be.”

Leo is reasonably a bit terrified hearing that, but Blake is all “wait no hold on im not gonna kill you,” and it turns out they go to the garage of the Ashen Rose gang. There’s a chain link fence surrounding the perimeter, and a guard standing by the garage door entrance.

They get out of the car, and Blake asks Leo how long they should stake this out- Leo, a bit impatient from hunger, says “Or I could just do this” and turns invisible. Unfortunately, this causes him to gain a point of Hunger; His Beast begins yelling at him, and he tells it to shut up. Blake asks if he’s okay, but Leo ignores him and goes to investigate. His Beast tells him to go after the guard, she’s a Thinblood, won’t her blood taste great? He heavily considers this, but decides to stalk the perimeter of the chain fence to find an opening.

While trying to do this and be stealthy, Leo avoids kicking a can, and he’s very proud of himself, but then accidentally kicks a cat, which lets out a yell (and then knocks over a metal pipe!!!), and he’s like “oh god we fucked up,” and due to the hunger and anxiety of creeping around, he starts to dissociate because oh shit, oh my god they might get caught.

Trisha, the Thinblood guard, looks over and begins to head towards the sound; Blake realizes he should cause a distraction, and so he does a great impression of another cat.

Leo, still invisible, tries to continue finding a way through the fence, but ends up hitting the fence. His Beast goes full-paranoid- Leo fucked up, the guard is going to notice, they fucked up, they’re going to get caught oh god they should run- and so he runs away.

Smash cut to Pauline, still doing her paperwork. Sebastian enters her office and asks how long she’s been working with Blake and Leo [the answer is about a month for Blake, and only a few days for Leo]. He then asks if she’s certain she can trust them. Pauline responds that she can, and warns Sebastian to be careful.

Cut back to Leo. He’s stopped running now, as his paranoia has now worn off, but he’s still incredibly hungry. He goes off into the alleyways of the city, still invisible, and eventually finds an extremely drunken man sleeping behind a liquor store. He bites down and begins to feed, ending his invisibility.

Blake, not knowing that his companion ran off, tries to see if Leo had managed to make his way into the garage or not. He spots a vent on one side of the garage, and determines that no, Leo didn’t make it in, actually. He decides to wait and see if Leo will come back, and that he’ll go out and search for him after enough time has passed.

Meanwhile, Leo’s still been drinking the man’s blood, and is aware that if he continues to do so he’ll also get drunk. He doesn’t really care- in fact, part of him is looking forward to it. He drinks, and while his Beast is practically chanting at him to drain the man, and while he’s still a bit hungry, Leo pulls away so that he doesn’t end up breaking one of the Chronicle Tenants [The weak deserve protection]; and at this point he realizes he doesn’t know where he is. That’s fine; he can try and retrace his steps.

Blake decides to go find Leo, going down alleyways and whisper-calling his name. He eventually finds the Malkavian, and is relieved at this a bit, because 1) he found him, and 2) Leo being drunk at least means he fed, yknow? He asks Leo what happened and Leo responds that he got lost, and the two of them sit down. Blake asks how he’s feeling, which leads to an interesting interaction:

[”At least he’s not yelling at me anymore!” “??? Why would I yell at you?” “No, no, not you- J.” “...Is J still here with you?” (laughing) “He’s just not yelling at me anymore.”]

Blake gets Leo to look at him- letting him know he doesn’t have Pauline’s dominate abilities- and gets him to agree that they’re not going to tell her any of this; it stays between them. They head back to the car.

Inside, Leo asks Blade why he took them to the garage, since he seemed against it; Blake said it was his way of apologizing for being a stick in the mud (and also Leo needs to learn some lessons). Leo then asks what was up with the look Blake gave him after meeting with Victor (specifically, after Leo asked the Nosferatu to look into someone named Jeremiah). Blake says it just reminded him of his own past, and refused to elaborate any further. Blake sends Leo a text after dropping him off a few blocks from his apartment to make sure he got home safe.

The next night we meet up at the Asylum- Leo actually has on a black sweater this time to try and blend in better. Pauline’s printed out her documents and has put them all in a black folder. The trio heads to her office, and she calls up Zane the drug dealer, telling him she’s got someone interested in the drugs the Ashen Rose gang is selling. He says to go to the Northeast dealers, and warns her that their stuff is dangerous; also, it’s too early in the night for them to be out selling it at the moment. She thanks him and hangs up.

Blake and Leo somehow manage to convince Pauline to let them go check out the garage, and she’s all “okay, you wanna go so bad? fine.”

Pauline does not want to do this, but here we are, at the garage. Blake pretends to just now spot the vent, and he and Pauline try and do a “stand on the shoulders” thing to get Leo up there, but the dice continue to hate the players here, so even after two tries they’re unable to do this. Blake somehow ends up ripping the vent off its hinges, I think, which makes a Loud Noise. This, like the night before, alerts the guard.

Blake gets on the roof somehow???? Leo uses Obfuscate to hide, and Pauline waits. When the guard shows up, Pauline casts Dominate [”There was a thief here, but you scared him away. Everything is fine.”], and when the guard leaves she heads the other way.

Trisha the guard meets up with another gang member who wanted to see what was up, and the two get into an argument; because why would someone try to steal from this garage, as far as everyone knows nothing is in there?- they should change locations, the other guard is saying. Trisha is adamant it’s okay, since she scared the thief away. The other guard opens up the garage door; Leo sees his chance and goes in.

There's all sorts of alchemical stuff in there; tables with shelves and vials and weird components in jars, notebooks with alchemy equations/numbers, some of the weed the gang was making- but the main thing was this: There is a fridge laying on its back. Black tubes are running from it, dripping liquid into containers and running up to the alchemical equipment on the tables. Leo is certain there’s a vampire in there, perhaps, but is unable to check; The two gang members were in front of the open garage entrance, and doing something like that would cause the invisibility to end- and even if he were to do it again super quickly, it wouldn’t hide the fact that the fridge would be open.

However, Leo manages to grab some stuff (alchemical components, a notebook, some weed), and does the Quick Invisibility idea mentioned above for it. The trio all gets tf out of there and into the car, where Leo tells them about his Vampire Fridge theory. 

The session ends with the coterie heading over to meet Harrison at his bar- It’s time to give him the information they learned from the census interviews, and to receive their reward (aka, feeding territory so they can eat without trespassing/fear of getting staked)

[fruitsofhell]

It's really a crying shame I haven't done anything to make this part of my internet persona, but I am MASSIVELY obsessed with cartoon girlspersonal, cartooning of femininity. Like if there was an aspect of cartoon history I had to lock myself into studying, (besides racism) it would be women. I think the last time I made a fuss about this is when I wrote like a thread on Twitter about Clawroline and blocked people for shitting on her design. I ADORE Clawroline.

I also adore a lot of cartoon women from Nintendo, cause they're between outlandishly sexual or sensual as a less family-oriented brand might do, but also much sillier than say Disney women despite Disney often being seen as like them. They're also ofc coming more from Japanese cartooning sensibilities which has its own long history I'm tragically not as familiar with as those of America. But at the same time Popeye was an explicit early influence of Mario, though during that time of heaviest influence, you had Pauline portrayed in a more sexy cartoon lady way not very reminiscent of say, Olive Oil. But still not necessarily a Jessica Rabbit type yknow, and it may be more relevant to compare her design to something from anime/manga design history really, like I said I don't know.

Though once Super Mario rolled around the style very much more began to resemble comedy anime cartoon styles, and it's been like that ever since. But definitely has evolved into its own thing.

Anyways this is preamble to say, I've been silently obsessed with Wapeach. Like, I've both been kinda passive to it, but also it's something I know if I gave it my attention I'd go crazy, cause there is SO MUCH going on with that design. And there's so much that COULD be going on with that design that isn't too! My feelings on it are not negative nor positive, it's such a THING, it's crazy. It feels like a concept that would be relegated to shitty fanart by people who only draw women for Twitter thirst trapping, but supposedly the idea reached official unused design status! And it's intriguing not because it's surprising, it feels like something that would have been done forever ago, but the execution is... well its AN execution there are so many ways to go I can't say I'm surprised nor expected what they went for. Well, historical context could help, I think I've heard she was designed in the 2000s, and she looks it if so. She's deeply fascinating of a creature. A little she-beast.

Once I find the lore breakdown on the design it's over.

[antigonick]

Bonjour Pauline! J’ai vu ta guide d’Anne Carson et je suis pas sûr si je devrais acheter Bakkhai ou An Oresteia. J’aime les mythes de Dionysos mais j’ai déjà acheté autre version de cette histoire (n’est pas la version plus poétique et j’aime la poésie :/) et je veux lire An Oresteia parce-que c’est un peu gay, non ? (Je te promets que je connais un peu plus que ça sur Orestes ahdjfjfkgk) Très sérieusement, lequel est préférable ? Merci, et je suis désolée pour te déranger 💞

Tl;dr: Anon is hesitating between Carson’s “An Oresteia” and “Bakkhai.” (Also, tu ne me déranges pas du tout!)

Hahaha, oh, I’m guessing you’re judging An Oresteia on that line with Orestes and Pylades? Anyway, yes, it is a little gay, but Bakkhai is too (it’s Carson and Greek myth: when is it not?). The sexual tension between Dionysos & Pentheus is off the charts. It’s not the focus point in either book though.

I personally love them both, so I couldn’t say which one would be best for you. Carson’s Bakkhai is my favourite Bakkhai; gorgeous, dynamic, clever, cheeky as fuck. Her Dionysos has so much word-power. Carson is ascetic as a rule, and the way she talks about sex is usually very remote, very cold; but Bakkhai drips with it, with something honeyed and joyous and erratic. I haven’t seen this one performed on stage but when I think about that sliver of a text, I get a sense of buoyant noise, of scarlet behind the eyelids, it’s such a joy. (It’s actually pretty gruesome. But like. Joyfully?)

An Oresteia is much longer (you get three plays for the price of one + a bit of commentary for each), and feature some of my favourite characters (Elektra, Orestes, Kassandra) and some of Carson’s most evocative writing. There’s a lot of work on Elektra’s and Kassandra’s voices, their screaming, their expression and the going beyond expression. Not to mention, the Oresteia you get there is not the classical one, but reconstructed from several versions by several authors (Euripides, Aiskhylos, Sophokles), which is fascinating. These are stories we know well, but they taste renewed here. You get to see what shifts and what remains locked. You get to see the myth writhe. There are multiple angles from which to tackle the book—it felt less like a fever dream than Bakkhai did, but more intellectually thrilling.

So yeah. I hope the rambling gives you a better idea of what to expect. Ideally, buy/find both. If that’s not an option, I’m sorry (not really) to report that they’re both in my top 5 and I’m the worst chooser ever.

[beshert-bh]

My journey to/with Judaism

***This is a super long post, it’s the FULL story, not a brief overview, but it would mean the WORLD to me if you read it***

Upbringing: very much Not Jewish™️

I was born into a Catholic family. I have a goyish last name. I was baptized as an infant, and my parents took me to church each week as a kid.

In kindergarten — back when I still went to a secular private school — one of my best friends was Jewish. He told me all about the traditions his family did...told me all about the kippahs they wear, and how they had their own game called dreidel for this holiday they celebrated, called Hanukkah. (Of course this convo was at a basic-kindergarten-level of knowledge.) When I came home from school I was fascinated with Hanukkah, (this is cringey to admit but my 5-year-old self tried to integrate the traditions together and so in order to do this I drew up a “Christmas dreidel” complete with Santa Claus’ face on one side, a present on another side...you get it)

And that is when I was promptly put in “parochial” schools. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade to 12th grade. I went through Holy Communion and Confirmation like all the other kids did. My elementary soccer team’s mascot was an Angel. My high school’s mascot was a Crusader. Our high school was located on Rome Avenue. I went to a Catholic youth conference. I considered becoming a nun because I was single all throughout high school.

Growing up, around Christmastime we would always travel to visit my grandma, and she would always say we’re “German Jewish” — but I would write her off. In my mind, I was like, Yeah ok like 1%? .....It felt like my grandma was acting like one of those white people who takes a DNA test and says, “Look! We’re 1% African!” So I would dismiss her and remind her how we’re Catholics and she would drop the subject.

Falling away from Xtianity: my first 2 years of college

My freshman year I changed — politically — as I was only conservative in high school because of the ‘pro-life’ agenda being shoved down my throat. I really aligned more with liberal and leftist policies and views, though. Once I became open to new political ideology, I began to question my theological beliefs.

I always had a strong connection to God. My whole life. But I struggled with connecting to Jesus, Mary, the saints, and so on. So obviously my freshman year of college I began to fall away from Catholicism.

You see, Catholics are “bad at the Bible” as I like to say. Other Christians do a better job of teaching and analyzing the writings. They actually require school-aged children to memorize Scripture passages. Catholics mostly just teach the same stuff over and over. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, blah blah blah. Catechism, liturgical calendar, blah blah blah. Parts of the mass, fruits of the spirit, blah blah blah.

So since I was already doubting Catholicism, its corrupt leadership, and its mindless traditions.... I thought maaaaybeeee I would find purpose, truth, clarity, etc. in plain-old Christianity. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The other Christian churches I went to baptized people (which is a BIG LIFE DECISION) on the spot. For example if a newcomer felt on a whim that they wanted to be baptized, the church would do it right then & there. No learning, no planning or preparing, that was it. They promoted blind faith and circular thinking. I began to realize these were both normal attitudes and cognitive patterns within any and every Christian community that I encountered.

Even the Christians who exhibited curiosity mostly just asked questions in order to be able to understand, and then accept, the doctrine as truth. Questions never ever challenged anything.

Oh and let’s throw in the fact that I’m bisexual. Homophobia, transphobia, biphobia (and more) are rampant in the church. So needless to say, with all my observations about the lack of logical thinking in the church (and considering my sexual orientation) I fell away. I stopped going to church unless my family made me when I was home from college.

Enter stage right: Judaism

In retrospect I happened to have a lot of friends in my sorority and my favorite fraternity on campus who were Jewish (the frat happened to be a traditionally-Jewish one). Thought nothing of it at the time. Fast forward to junior year when I met this cute guy on Tinder. He’s now my boyfriend and we’ve been dating for over a year. He didn’t tell me this on Tinder, but when we went on our first date, he revealed that he’s Jewish and wanted to make sure that’s something I was ok with. Clearly I had no problem with that. I wasn’t too into Christianity anymore but I still identified as one (and I was still surrounded by Christian friends in my sorority) so I told him I was Christian/raised Catholic and asked hypothetically if he would be comfortable with a “both” family. He said yes.

We started dating during an October, so of course Hanukkah came up soon. There was a mega challah bake at our local Chabad, which he took me to, and we had a blast. From then on I decided I wanted to show him how supportive I was of his Jewishness. (The last girl he dated dumped him after 3 months BECAUSE he was Jewish... so I felt that I needed to be supportive)

We started going to shabbat services and dinner every week. We did Hanukkah together (we bought our first menorah together, he taught me how to spin a dreidel, his mom bought me Hanukkah socks...lol). At some point in our relationship I told him I may have Jewish ancestry from my grandma but it’s distant and my whole extended family is Christian so it really wouldn’t even matter. I don’t remember when I had that conversation with him.

Eventually, after another few months of Shabbat services and Shabbat dinners, Pesach came around.

We went to the first seder together. The second seder is what changed everything.

Deciding to convert

At first I wasn’t sure if I belonged at this second seder. My boyfriend had always brought me to every event. I had never attended anything alone at Chabad before. But I went anyway. Throughout the night I felt increasingly comfortable. I had never felt more like I was a *part of something* than I did at this seder.

I sat near a friend who I recognized. (He knows I’m raised Catholic.) Then he & his friends welcomed me. We all took turns reading from the Haggadah, we drank the four cups of wine together, and we laughed together as I had maror for the first time.

Then the familiar faces left to go home, and one of them even went to another table to sit with his other friends whom he hadn’t had a chance to see yet that night. Naturally I thought I was alone again. I almost left, but something tugged at my heart to stay until the very end of the second seder. Something told me to keep going and keep taking in this wonderful experience.

The rest of the night consisted of many songs (most likely prayers, in retrospect) I did not know. Everyone stood to sing and we all clapped to the rhythm. I knew none of the words but I still clapped along, alone at my own table. Then one of the boys — the one who had been sitting with my friends and I earlier — motioned at me to come over and join his other friends. I approached this new table full of people I’d never met, feeling awkward as ever, and they not only hoisted me up to stand on the table with them as they chanted, but they also included me in their dance circle. (no, I don’t think it was the Hora, we just spun around over and over. lol.)

This was the first night I felt at home with Judaism. Going through the Jewish history with the Haggadah, remembering the important occurrences and symbolizing them with various foods, ending the night by being welcomed into the community... it was transformative. After attending shabbat services for months and learning about Jewish values, it changed something in me when I observed Pesach for the first time last year. I knew this path would be right for me. I felt as if my soul had found where it belonged. The Jewish history, traditions, beliefs, and customs resonated with me. It all just... made sense.

I told my boyfriend I wanted to convert. I wrote three pages of reasons. But I sat on the idea of converting and did nothing for a while. I did do some more research on Judaism, though, as I continued to attend services each week.

The exploration stage

I began to actually research on my own time. If converting was something I was genuinely considering, it was high time I began actively learning as much as I could possibly learn. It was time to dive deeper than just attending the weekly services and googling the proper greetings for Jewish holidays.

I started digging deeper into Judaism and Christianity so I could compare and contrast the two. I needed to understand the similarities and differences. And BOY are they different. That was surprising at first, but the more I learned about Judaism, the more I loved how different it was from the Christianity I was indoctrinated into.

Not only are the values and teachings of each religion vastly different, but the Tanakh (which is “The Old Testsment” in Christian Bibles) actually contradicts:

The entire “New Testament”

The gospel books specifically

The Pauline letters specifically

How did I realize this? Some bible study of my own, but mostly through online research. And, of course, I would have gotten nowhere without the help of Rabbi Tovia Singer and his YouTube videos. He debunks everything there is to debunk about Christianity.

Here were some things I came across when researching:

It confused me how the four Gospels didn’t align (like, major parts of the story did not align at all...and supposedly they’re divinely inspired...but they don’t even corroborate one another?)

It confused me how the psalms we sang in church were worded completely different from the true wording in the Bible (essentially the Christian church is taking tehillim and altering it to benefit Christian dogma and Christian rhetoric.)

It confused me how we read in the Bible that Jews are ‘God’s chosen people’ and yet in every Catholic Church, every Sunday, there is a Pauline letter being read which depicts proselytization of Jews, as if Jews are lost and need Christians to save them. As if Jews would go to hell if they fail to accept Jesus.

It confused me why we would pray to Mary and the saints, because praying is worship, and worshipping anyone but God themself is idolatry.

It confused me why Christians make, sell, and use graven images. Idolatry. Again.

It confused me why Christians give absolute power to humans. For example, if you crawl up the same steps (Scala Santa) that Jesus supposedly crawled up before he died, you automatically get “saved” because *some old men who have no divine power* said so (they have a term for this and it’s called “plenary indulgence” lol).

It confused me why Jesus was believed to be the messiah considering he had to have biologically been from the line of Joseph. Wasn’t Jesus supposedly conceived without any help from Joseph? Wouldn’t that render Jesus, uh, not messiah by default? Even if he was from Joseph’s blood, he still did not complete all the tasks moshiach is supposed to fulfill. And even if he DID fulfill all the tasks required of moshiach... we still would not worship a messiah as he is human and not GOD.

These were all new thoughts I developed this past year between Pesach and Yom Kippur. New questions that challenged everything I thought I knew. It was like teaching a child 2+2≠22 but rather 2+2=4.

Hillel

This fall, after the High Holy Days, my boyfriend began attending shabbat dinners at a rabbi’s home. His new rav lives in the community and it’s exclusive to be invited, so I never imposed. We do Shabbos separately now (with some exceptions, we do it together sometimes).

I continued to go to Chabad with one of my friends who knew I wanted to convert. But one month, she couldn’t come at all, and I felt a little judged there anyway.

So I began going to Hillel a few months ago. And I honestly have found a home there.

From Hillel’s Springboard Fellow reaching out to me and taking me out for coffee to get to know me... to running into my sorority & fraternity friends at every Hillel event (shabbat or otherwise)... From getting included in various clubs like the women empowerment group and the mental health inclusivity group... to being the only college student to participate in Mitzvah Day (hosted by Hillel) with the elderly and the local Girl Scout troop... I feel truly welcome. I’ve started to attend every week. I even talked briefly with the rabbi about having Jewish lineage and wanting to convert.

Discovering new information

I went home to be with family during Thanksgiving break. My grandma flew in so she was there when I got home. She stayed with us from then until New Years (and she’s actually moving in with us next year.)

Of course, now I have a Jewish boyfriend, Jewish friends, and I’ve done extensive research on Judaism. So this time I had background knowledge when she inevitably said... “You know, we’re German Jewish!”

I inquired a little. I asked her what she meant. How is she Jewish? I know my uncle took a DNA test this year and came back part Ashkenazi. But I needed a deeper explanation than DNA.

She revealed to me that her mom’s mom was Jewish. We believe she married a Christian man. Together they had my great-grandmother, who I believe was Christian. She had my grandma, who had my dad, who had me.

And I immediately felt like that changed things. At first I was (internally) like, Now I definitely need to convert! But then I was like, Wait, does this make me Jewish? Am I Jewish-ish? ...Can you be considered Jewish if you’re only ethnically Jewish but not raised Jewishly? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad is your only Jewish parent? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad never had a bris or a bar mitzvah?

I joined a bunch of Jewbook groups, began learning the Hebrew calendar & holiday schedule, and found some folks who assist with Jewish genealogy. They did some digging for me and apparently I descend from the Rothschild family. THE Rothschild family.

Who is a Jew? Who “counts”?

This is something I’ve been muddling over.

At Hillel, at my school at least, most people are pretty Reform. They’re very liberal with their definitions of Judaism (they believe in patrilineal descent and not only matrilineal descent).

They accept me and see me as actually Jewish ...and the ones who don’t... they at least see me as Jewish-adjacent, an “honorary Jew” or an “ally to the Jewish people”.

My boyfriend, however, still sees me as Not Jewish.™️ (For context he’s Reform but he’s trying to become as observant as possible) I know he only thinks this was because of how we began our relationship and because of how I was raised. But I’m very confused here.

Do I count?

Do I not?

Do I count *enough* but still need to go through a formal conversion process?

So...now what?

I don’t know how to navigate this odd journey but I have felt for a while that I have a Jewish neshama and I feel a strong need to affirm it. I just don’t know how or what is appropriate. Do I learn Hebrew? Sign up for a trip to Israel/Germany/Poland? Put up a mezuzah? Or go toward the other end of the scale, and head down a path of a formal conversion/reaffirmation process?

Thank you in advance for your responses and thanks for reading. 🤎

[thisbluespirit]

Ten Favourite Characters

Memed from @mariocki​  And despite the numbering, not really in strict order, although I tried and no. 1 is definitely no. 1. 

10. Kathryn Janeway

"There are three things to remember about being a starship captain. Keep your shirt tucked in, go down with the ship... and never abandon a member of your crew."

Okay, basically, me and Star Trek is: I like it if it has Captain Janeway in it.  If it does not have Captain Janeway in it, I might go so far as to mildly enjoy it from time to time, but Janeway is the essential thing.  I walked in one day and saw Kate Mulgrew on the screen and sat down immediately, eventually asking my friend, in hushed tones of awe, “Who is that?”  (I’m not even joking.)  (I don’t hate the rest of ST or anything, but, you know.  It’s not Doctor Who and it doesn’t have Captain Janeway in it, what can I say?  I like the one with the whales, too?)

9. Jenkins

“Magic is not an exact science. If it were, it would be science.”

With Jenkins (John Larroquette), The Librarians takes a mythical character I never gave a thought to, or imagined I would want to, and gave me All the Feels about him.  By the end of S1, I was drawing hearts around Jenkins every time he appeared and that happens all too rarely at the moment, so I think he has to go on this list.  (I’m a Doctor Who fan, how could I not love a grumpy immortal caretaker with a magic door and a heart of gold?) *draws hearts around him regardless of his disapproval and annoyance at said hearts*

8. G’kar

“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. The Centauri learned that lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.”

G’kar’s arc is just beautiful (from semi-villainous schemer to unwilling religious icon), as is every part of his epic relationship with Londo, and he is my favourite.  There was a period in S1 where there were about 7 episodes without him and I nearly died.  And, I mean, I really like Babylon 5 and everybody else in it, but that was just cruel and unusual.  Thank goodness it never happened again.  Andreas Katsulas was just brilliant.

7. Seventh Doctor

"That's what guns are for. Pull the trigger, end a life. Simple, isn't it?  Why don't you do it, then?  Look me in the eye, pull the trigger, end my life.  Why not?"

What do you do with a thing like Doctor Who in a meme like this?  I could do my top ten fave characters just in Doctors, let alone companions, before we even get started on minor characters, so let’s have my favourite Doctor do the honours for everyone here.  He hates unrequited love, loathes bus stations (terrible places, full of lost souls and lost luggage), and knows we all have a universe of our own terrors to face, and he’ll be back in time for tea.

With Ace, of course, who is also the best.  As are so many of the rest.

6. Servalan

"There’s no one as free as a dead man.”

It’s so hard to choose Blake’s 7 characters!  They’re all so fascinating, that’s why it still gets watched and loved.  If I’m honest it’s Vila or Servalan, and today I went for Servalan, which probably will save anyone from getting stabbed in the back.  I love me an evil lady and Jacqueline Pearce’s Servalan is probably my favourite villain in anything, especially in terms of characters who remain irredeemable, but are also plausible and interesting.  She’s certainly the most fabulously dressed, anyway.

5. Lynda Day

”I don’t do conversation.  Everything I say comes out like an order.  I say hello and people salute!”

Like every other girl of my very specific age demographic in the UK (Press Gang was watched by something ridiculous like 80% of its target teenage audience, which I don’t think has ever happened before or since), I wanted to grow up to be Lynda Day, dictator editor of the Junior Gazette.  It’s probably as well that none of us did, but she was the very best, and I remain grateful to have had her around, and Julia Sawalha was always fantastic right from trespassers will be exterminated to there are crocodiles. 

4. Silver

Sapphire: “You’re supposed to lose sometimes.”

Silver: “Oh! I wondered why I wasn’t having any fun.”

So, Sapphire and Steel are pretty amazing, right, but let’s be honest, I was always watching this for the red-headed guy in Assignments 3 & 6, and he did not disappoint.  I mean, Sapphire & Steel is the weirdest, creepiest low-budget thing with our srs bsns inhuman heroes and then suddenly David Collings turns up and makes light-bulbs glow and turn into glitter.  He is the sparkliest, no one can deny it and he can slide right into the perfect OTP and turn it into the even shinier OT3.  Not that that stops him flirting with everyone else as well, of course.

3. Regina Mills

“There's no redemption for me. There's only suffering. Because now I have a curse. The curse of knowing the difference between good and evil. And I'm caught between them. If I revert, I lose everyone I love. Henry, my friends, everyone. And if I go forward trying to be good, I have to live with my past darkness and all its well-deserved consequences... But for me, it's a simple choice really. I'd rather suffer than see that pain on the people I care about. This is my fate.“                            

Regina gets to go from being Once Upon A Time’s original OTT fairytale villain to hero (and plays out every possible shade in between, plus various cursed and alternate versions of herself, not to mention her evil doppelganger), and Lana Parrilla’s just amazing at All The Things.  I went from not even liking her to somehow letting her rip my heart right out of my chest when I wasn’t looking.  (Bonus shout out to her mother Cora Mills/Queen of Hearts (Barbara Hershey) too.)

2. Frank Marker

"Have you heard about old heads on young shoulders?  Well, you employ me, you get an old head.  You get old shoulders, too, but then no-one's perfect."

I’m with @mariocki​ here: Alfred Burke’s run down, small-time enquiry agent in Public Eye (TV 1965-75) is one of the most utterly 3D, real and compelling TV characters I’ve ever come across.  (With a bonus mention for the very lovely Helen Mortimer (Pauline Delany), because I might even love her a tiny bit more than Frank some days. <3)

1. Ruth Evershed

“I like to think no institution in the country is safe from me.”

I had to think about this long and hard a while ago, and Nicola Walker’s Ruth from Spooks | MI5 is still probably my favourite character in anything.  It’s tough.  But RUTH.  I love her so much.  There’s a S2 DVD commentary with Howard Brenton and Nicola Walker on her first episode and basically Nicola just sits there going, “I love Ruth.”  And I’m: “ME TOO.” From her first appearance, dropping the files, buggering the Home Office, and breaking the desk lamp to more serious, angsty, later stuff, she’s just so damn good at her job (and in Spooks that’s a tragedy waiting to happen).

It’s really hard to list only 10 though.  I’m an all-eras Doctor Who fan.  I’d need three posts at least just to start on that, I keep falling in love with characters from ancient telly and every now and then I even watch new things...

[crimehathnofury]

Love. Such a simple thing right? Well it can be simple, sometimes. As for other times it can be complicated and chaotic. I've heard that people in love can do extraordinary things. Good and evil. Like the things Cathy and Gwen did. However, that’s a story for another time. Today’s journey is going to take place in Manchester, England. A couple of lovers known as the Moors Murderers. What do you say we dive in?

  Ian Brady was born Ian Duncan Stewart on January 2, 1938 to a tea-waitress named Margaret (Peggy) Stewart. He didn’t know much about his father. Although Peggy said it was a journalist.  Peggy found it difficult to raise her son on her own and with little income, so she gave him up to a young couple. The Sloane family adopted young Ian and raised him as their own. Early on Ian had shown signs of troubling behaviour. He’d throw violent tantrums if he didn’t get his way that would end with him banging his head against the walls. Peggy would come visit him from time to time and give him gifts. Eventually Peggy stopped visiting Ian and he figured out who Peggy was and deduced that the Sloanes were not his family. There were others in the neighborhood that caught on to his illegitimacy and then coupled that with his sullen personality made him unpopular. Ian came to resent this and thought of himself as a rebellious outsider not bound by the same rules as others. He was a smart and handsome kid at school, just not well liked. At 11 he had passed a test that got him into Shawlands Academy. Sadly his potential was never really recognized. He was lazy, never applied himself, and misbehaved. Eventually he took up smoking and gave up on school work. He also started developing an interest in Nazis. He would ask for souvenirs from the boys whose fathers would bring back from the war. When playing war games he would insist on being german. Also at this point in time he became very perverse and sadistic. He would bully small children. Also he would torture animals in various grotesque ways. When he was a teenager he was brought to Juvenile court for burglary and housebreaking. The first 2 times he was given probation but the 3rd he was considered incorrigible and was told to leave Glasgow. In November 1954, 2 months before his 17th birthday, Ian left the Sloanes and moved to Manchester England where his mother, Peggy, and her new husband were. Even though Ian did not get along with his step-father, he took his last name. Brady. Ian felt like a scot exiled in England and that his compounded feelings of isolation and hostility began to manifest in different ways. He began to take interest in the writings of the Marquis De Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche. He focused mainly on The Will of Power and Nietzsche theories of Ubermensch. He adopted the philosophy that championed cruelty and torture as well as the idea that superior creatures had the right to control and destroy the weaker ones. He avidly collected books on torture, sadomasochisms, and other paraphilia about domination and servitude. Around this time he was working at a butcher shop as an assistant. This caused speculators to think that this job nurtured his growing interest in mutilation and murder. He began drinking heavily, frequenting the cinema, and gambling. He needed money to fund these new habits so he resorted to thieving. Which led him to be convicted a few times which then led to his eventual incarceration. While behind bars he learned ways of illegally obtaining money. Also he entertained the idea of becoming a grandiose criminal. Pulling off lucrative bank heists. Ian wanted to avoid manual labor and aimed to seem respectable. He studied book keeping. After his release, he had a hard time finding a job. He worked as a laborer for a brewery between April and October of 1958 before spending a few more months unemployed. Ian had ended up finding a job in February, 1959 as a stock clerk at Millwards Merchandising. About 2 years later he met Myra Hindley, who was recently hired as a typist at the same place he worked. Now before we go on with the case I must tell you a little bit about Myra. 

  She was born on the 23rd of July in 1942 in a suburb of Manchester known as Crumpsall. She was the first child of Bob and Hettie Hindley. Her father, Bob, served in the parachute regiment in World War II, so he was absent for the first 3 years of Myra’s life. When he returned home he worked as a machinist. When Myra was 4 her parents had another daughter. To make room for this new addition, they sent Myra to live with her grandmother. Myra never went back though. To my knowledge people have said that she came from a broken home. To be clear, she didn’t come from a broken home, and she was very loved. Bob was a roman catholic and had both daughters baptized, which was a compromise for both parents. Bob said that if the girls were baptized they wouldn’t have to go to catholic school. Hindley struggled though in primary school and failed her 11 plus exams. She then went to Ryder Bow secondary modern school where she proved to be the most intelligent in her class with an above average IQ. She always earned good grades, however her attendance record was bad. Apparently her grandmother was very lenient and usually let her stay home from school to keep her company. As she grew into a woman, she was known to be tough and aggressive. Some even considered her to be masculine. She was made fun of because of the shape of her nose and her peers gave her a very cruel nickname ‘square arse’, because of her broad hips. As a teenager she was also a very responsible babysitter. She befriended a 13 year old boy named Michael Higgins when she was 15. Sadly he drowned in a reservoir and she was devastated. She said ‘If i had been there it wouldn’t have happened. She was a very strong swimmer and would have been able to save him. At this age and because of what happened to her friend she quit school. Finally when she was 18 she got a job at MIllwards Merchandising. And that is where our lovely couple met. Myra was enamoured with Ian’s dark hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion. He was also well dressed and fingernails were well kept, which apparently no other guy had done according to Myra. Ian also drove a motorcycle. Everything about Ian Fascinated her. He however was very aloof and didn’t really show much interest in Myra until an office party. After he had gotten a few drinks in and relaxed a little he asked her on a date. Myra became so infatuated with him that whatever he said became law. She even took to being more germanic for him; Apparently by wearing short skirts. Is that really more germanic? Anyways She bleached her brown hair to platinum blonde. She wore red lipstick to seem more aryan and to please Ian. She adopted his anti-social philosophy and became anti-social. She kept a photograph of Irma Grese who was an SS guard at a couple concentration camps in her bag, meanwhile Ian had started to call her Hessie in homage to Rudolph Hess.

As obsessed as Myra was there were also indicators that she was also afraid of Ian. She once sent a letter to a friend that if she ended up dead that Ian was somehow involved. She wrote a letter after she was imprisoned that ‘within months he had convinced me that there was no god at all; He could’ve told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese, and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.’ Time went on and as it did he revealed his innermost twisted fantasies. Hindley agreed to pose in sexually explicit photographs. Soon enough the couple started talking about robbing banks, soon after that it turned to talk about sexually abusing kids and murder. Then in July of 1963 they started to discuss committing the perfect murder.

On the 12th of July, Ian and Myra targeted their first victim. A young 16 year old named Pauline Reade. Pauline vanished on her way to a local disco in Gorton. A few months later they abducted 12 year old John Kilbride and strangled him at the Saddleworth Moor. The following year, they took 12 year old Keith Bennet. 10 year old Leslie Ann Downey disappeared 200yards from her home on Boxing day of 1964 at a fairground. Finally their last victim was 17 year old Edward Evans, whom They had bludgeoned to death in the home they shared. The way they got caught was Ian trying to persuade Myra’s brother in law to help them. Her brother then went to the police and told them about everything. During the trial Myra’s obsession was very evident when she said, ‘I loved him. I still love him.’ 

The jury found them guilty of 3 of the murders. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. I feel so bad. Four of the victims were sexually assaulted, and I think two of the five were never found. People dubbed Myra the most evil woman in Britain for just following Ian’s fantasies. Personally I could understand wanting to do everything for the one you love but this, killing people, is not a line I’m willing to cross. Myra and Ian both died while in prison. Myra died of bronchial pneumonia on November 15th of 2002. Ian died of obstructive pulmonary disease on the 15th of may in 2017. Wow not that long ago right. Horrible acts done for love. Earlier I did mention Cathy and Gwen. Let me know if you want to hear about them next week. Message me also if there’s another crime that has caught your attention. I’m all ears. Well until next time guys.

[mermaidsirennikita]

i hope it's okay if i ask this? but what are, in your opinion, some of the best sibling relationships in history? (hope i didn't send this message twice, but my laptop just did something weird so idk if the last one sent!)

No problem!  This is an interesting question, and definitely one I’m uniquely suited to answer lol. For me, the best relationships aren’t necessarily the ones that were the most communicative or healthy, but the most fascinating to read about.  So fair warning there.

Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia will always be first in my heart, of course.  I’ve talked about it AT LENGTH on the blog.  They represent two sides of the same coin, in my opinion.  He was ruthless and cunning and an objectively horrible person; she was intelligent and amoral in many ways, but more merciful, with an emotional soft spot for her family and her brother in particular.  I think that Sarah Bradford called Cesare the evil genius of Lucrezia’s life.  He did put his own needs before hers at times--but oddly enough, I think that he believed, in his way, that when things worked out for him they would ultimately work out for her.  And they were so politically tied that he wasn’t entirely wrong?  Anyway, I don’t think that it was a physically incestuous relationship, but I do think that in some ways it was emotionally “too close”--on his part especially.  Fascinating.

Francois I of France and Marguerite of Navarre.  I just finished Sarah Gristwood’s “Game of Queens”--which was really good, by the way--and she went into some detail about Francois and Marguerite’s relationship.  They were their mother’s only children, and for that matter their mother intensely believed that Francois was destined to be king. (He did become king in a roundabout sort of way; he wasn’t the son of a king, and therefore not guaranteed the throne at first.)  Marguerite, in turn, was sort of raised to be her brother’s support--emotionally, politically, etc.  She was driven to help him, driven to be at his side and put him above all others.  While Francois was--like Cesare--more self-centered, he clearly loved Marguerite and emotionally depended on her.  There was, I remember reading years ago, some gossip about them--obviously unfounded, but they were close enough for there to be an air of impropriety.  Not that they much cared.

Napoleon and Pauline Bonaparte.  These first three sibling pairs have the commonality of being sort of associated with amorality, to an extent, and social climbing (less so with Francois and Marguerite, but he was certainly accused of sexual amorality and he did have to sort of politically battle for his throne, or at least let his mother do so for him).  Napoleon is, rightfully, remembered as something of a nasty little tyrant.  But his relationships with women are very interesting.  He obviously had his great passion for his wife Josephine, and after their marriage ended he never really got over her.  But he did remarry--and reportedly, his marriage to Marie Louise of Austria was met with some resistance by his sister Pauline.  Pauline and Napoleon were confidants, were incredibly close, and were plagued with rumors of incest.  Again, probably unfounded...  But honestly, I think that historians give those rumors somewhat more credit in their case because Pauline has, rightly or wrongly, cultivated a reputation for promiscuity and nobody likes Napoleon.  No matter what their true relationship, they were loyal to each other until the end.  Like Lucrezia did for Cesare, Pauline sacrificed much to help her brother after his fall.  It’s touching, despite their obvious problematic natures.

Lord Byron and Augusta Leigh.  I seriously doubt that the above three relationships were incestuous, despite the rumors surrounding them.  Conversely, I am pretty damn sure that Lord Byron slept with his sister.  Byron was five years Augusta’s junior--they had the same father and different mothers, and were raised largely apart until they made contact when Byron was a teen.  They began exchanging letters and did meet in person then, hitting it off immediately, but lost contact again for years.  When they reunited, Byron was gaining fame as a poetic and seducer, and Augusta was a married mother with a gambling husband who wasn’t much use.  Their relationship was magnetic and strange--she didn’t have his incredible wit, but was very sweet and maternal.  They called each other “Gus” (her) and “Goose” (him) and exchanged jewelry and locks of hair.  They tended to stick closely to each other--he confided in her his secrets.  They also happened to get snowed in at Newstead Abbey together for weeks at one point, during which time Byron wrote a poem called “The Corsair” which had a heroine named Medora.  Well...  Sometime later Augusta gives birth to a baby girl nicknamed Medora.   Byron shows unusual interest in the baby, and after seeing her writes his best friend Lady Melbourne (mother of THAT Lord Melbourne) that the baby is, thankfully, not an ape.  As wisdom of the day indicated that a baby born of incest would be an ape, indicating that Byron had good reason to think the baby could be his.  Byron eventually would have to flee England due to allegations of sodomy and abuse towards his wife--who was likely made very aware of Augusta and Byron’s relationship after Augusta came to stay with them for a time--as well as those incest rumors.  He wrote to Augusta for years after, and in fact had almost persuaded her to run with him--I’ve seen a couple different historians say that it’s very likely that Augusta was the only woman Byron ever truly loved, and was perhaps even the love of his life.  

Mary I and Elizabeth I.  I find the fact that Elizabeth had such interesting relationships with not one but two queens in her lifetime just... sort of tragic, and sort of great for the dramatic history buff in me.  The thing about Mary and Elizabeth is that I don’t buy into the idea that Mary hated Elizabeth from the moment she was born--resented her, yes.  Hated her mother, almost definitely.  But there are moments which indicate an affection between them to me.  If Mary’s childhood had been kinder, or perhaps even if her father had had a second legitimate son, things may have been different.  They were forced apart by circumstance.  I wish that more was written and put onscreen about the two of them.

Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard III.  Oh, the three sons/”suns” of York.  Basically made for tragedy.  There’s such a tangled web here--two would be kings, one would kill the other, another would be heavily implicated in the disappearances/deaths of his nephews.  You literally can’t make this shit up.  Their relationships and their ups and downs just go on for years.  The tragic thing is that there seems to have been genuine love there at some point--but the crown costs.

Octavian/Caesar Augustus and Octavia.  By no means was this relationship was incestuous as “Rome” would portray it to be--at all.  But I’m obviously a sucker that includes a supportive sister and her messed up, power-hungry brother.  Octavia strikes me as loyal for better or for worse--sometimes to her own detriment.  In many ways, she seems as important to him as his wife Livia.  It’s just an interesting relationship that I honestly don’t know a ton about want to learn more of.

[ginnyzero]

Completely Harmless Ch. 14

Completely Harmless An SSO SilverGlade Re-imagining Story (Or Fix it Fan Salt fic) By Ginny O.

When Lily and her friends wanted to buy horses and were directed to the Silverglade Manor and its myriad of problems, they didn’t expect to start a revolution. They were just a bunch a stable girls. Completely harmless. Right?

A/N: Things are only canon if I say they’re canon. Pre-Saving the Moorland Stables compliant for the most part. Posted in its entirety on my website. Posted in 2000 to 4000 word bits here. Rated T for Swearing Word Count 177,577

Chapter Fourteen Anastasia in Charge

They finished the front gardens and the reflecting pool/waterfall just in time, because the next day Antonia sent Lily a frantic text that she had a meeting with Anastasia in Jorvik City at Leonardo’s with Aaron Silverglade.

Lily wasn’t sure why the tough sounding woman needed her and Pauline but if it reassured her, then Lily was willing to join the meeting. Plus, ice cream.

Anastasia made a small noise about their outfits when they arrived. But it wasn’t like they had anything better than the Silverglade Clan outfit! But she didn’t say anything else. They all ordered ice cream.

Antonia shuffled her papers. She had a pile of her recipes and suppliers along with a trial layout of the menu and some pictures of different ceramic and glassware.

Anastasia raved about the food. “Classic and flavorful, and light, perfect for a summer menu. The cardamom in the rizogallo was the perfect touch. And you say you got everything locally, my mother is so proud of the resources in the Silverglade area. You are perfect for this position.”

Antonia smiled, pleased. “Local and fresh is essentially for a quality restaurant.”

Anastasia raised her hands. “I believe I have the perfect name, darlings; The Silver Glade, Fine Mediterranean Cuisine.”

“You’re the boss,” Lily said.

Antonia nodded. “My vision for the upstairs and downstairs dining areas is modern, fresh and young,” she said and laid out her photographs. “Upstairs the most important way to convey this will be with the place settings. I’ve brought several choices.”

“Going up and down those stairs, the servers are going to want comfortable shoes,” Pauline made a face.

Lily put a finger on a photograph. “What about those? They’re sufficiently modern and the white won’t interfere with the food.” The dishes in question had white on white Greek keys done intaglio style around the edges.

“That would be the Wedgewood set,” Antonia said with a wince.

Anastasia pounced. “Wedgewood is classic. Yes, I believe that will be perfect.”

Lily and Pauline rolled their eyes at each other.

“Now, Aaron has a plan to use the birches around the property to make birch syrup. The Silver Glade itself has a lot of birches we could tap as well.” Anastasia said. “Once we get that going, we’ll want to find ways to use it in the restaurant as well as, do you have a name for your little ice cream bar yet, brother dear?”

“I’m working on it,” Aaron fidgeted.

“I’m sure we can find something to use birch syrup in, such as the drinks or the ice creams and desserts,” Antonia reassured him. “That sounds fascinating.”

Aaron smiled at her and looked at his hands.

Antonia gave Anastasia a mild glare. Aaron was trying.

“And it will be something to sell at the Farmer’s Market,” Lily said.

“Farmer’s Market,” Antonia pounced.

“Yes, um,” Lily pulled out her phone. “We have a sister club called the Summer Chipmunks based in Silverglade Village. They have claimed the four local tenant farmers, Landon is a sheep farmer, Marley does potatoes, Steve grows grains and keeps dairy cows and Barney also has crop fields such as carrots, beets, and turnips. They found an area that’s relatively centralized to put in a farmer’s market. They’ll be using the pavilion we used for the taste testing. It’s near the Golden Fields.”

“Really? That’s wonderful.”

“They’re hoping to get farmers from all over the county, like MoonRiver honey and the Sunfield’s dairy,” Pauline said. “They’re looking into finding who owns the apple orchard in Firgrove.”

“The spot is near the Golden Fields, but they can’t figure out why they’re called that. I don’t know why the Silver Fields are called that either, they’re just useless expanses of grass that rich people call lawns,” Lily drawled out.

“Buttercups?” Pauline asked with a shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was dandelions.”

“Mrs. Holdsworth would like that and dandelions are at least useful,” Pauline tilted her head. “You can eat the flowers, the leaves are good for salads, the roots make a bitter tea and can be added to coffee, I think it was dandelions.”

“It’s probably not important,” Antonia said.

Lily texted the President of the Summer Chipmunks a message. “Oh, they looked into it, they used to be canola fields. It doesn’t seem right that the Silver Fields aren’t silver. I suppose if we must, we can do something about it ourselves.” She sent another text.

Pauline gave her an odd look.

Lily put her phone away. “How did you want to decorate?” She asked Antonia. “We have plenty of miniature roses left over for the upstairs restaurant if you want them.

“I was thinking round tables and roman style chairs? If there is such a thing. And of course, we’d want candles in the middle with flowers from the gardens. Or even table lamps we could put flowers around. I don’t want it too fussy.”

Pauline brightened. “Agnetha has had globe style lamps made for the gardens already and commissioned benches.” She pulled out her phone. “Okay, Linda has been posting pictures on her Jorvikgram and I took a bunch.” She passed the phone over. “So, similar to that?”

“Yes, yes,” Antonia looked relieved. “Maybe a bit more modern. But we could do something similar for the interior, that is, I don’t know how much your mother wants to make over for a downstairs rainy and cold day dining area.”

“Mother has given me free reign to make this a success.” Anastasia waved a hand. “Aaron, where is your computer, let’s have a better look at these pictures.”

Aaron retrieved his computer and chicken pecked in his password. He nudged it towards Pauline.

Pauline input Linda’s JorvikGram and scrolled through the pictures and the pictures were captioned with who had actually done the pieces.

“Linda believes in fair attribution for the artists,” Pauline explained. “She wants them to get more business.”

“And they will,” Anastasia said.

By the end of the session, they at the very least had some ideas for lamps, place settings and silverware. The Wedgewood sets even had flower vases.

Lily and Pauline were sent off with orders to leave at different businesses to be shipped to Silverglade. (Where Lily knew that they’d have to pick them up and bring them to the Manor.)

Anastasia also made one more request. She needed the measurements of all of the girls. She had plans it appeared. Lily and Pauline promised to get them for her.

Aaron was still dithering over what to call everything. “I’m not that inventive,” he said plaintively. The girls promised to think about it for him.

“Anastasia went the easy route,” Lily told Pauline on the name for the restaurant as they left for Aideen’s Plaza.

Pauline snorted. “You’re up to something.”

“Really?” Lily batted her eyes at Pauline.

“Why do you care so much about the Baroness’ lawn anyways,” Pauline twisted to look at her on the trolley.

Lily shrugged. “It seems like a waste. I mean, lawns are all about conspicuous consumption. They came to be because rich people had so much land and money that they could afford to have large swaths of it doing nothing. See my big tracts of grass that doesn’t grow food or flowers or feed animals. Lawns are dumb. And, the grass isn’t silver, so the name only makes sense if you know it’s the property of the Silverglade’s and, maybe I have something against grass.”

Pauline giggled.

So Pauline pretended not to notice that Lily and Iris had a furtive exchange at Iris’ shop. They placed the orders they needed with the artisans Agnetha had found. They weren’t too surprised. Rumors were rampant about things happening out around the Baroness’ Manor.

No doubt many of them were created by Anastasia herself.

They returned back to the Manor to report to the others who were washing a new set of ducks. Brittany was frantic over a black one.

“Uh, Brit, I think he’s supposed to be that color.”

Brittany held the black duck upwards, it reflected purple in the sun. “Are you sure?” She sounded panicked.

“Okay, vet time!”

They took the duck to the vet.

“It’s a Jorvegian Aubergine Black Duck,” the vet reassured her. “It’s supposed to be black.”

“Some poor fool named this duck after an eggplant,” Regina moaned.

They giggled.

Brittany cuddled the duck. “Okay, as long as he’s supposed to be this way.”

“They’re known for their deep black feathers, orchid sheen and purple bills and feet,” the vet explained.

“We have added a rather large water feature to the manor,” Regina told her.

“It may be attracting other Jorvegian duck species. The South Silver Waters also border the Baroness’ lands and many wild ducks like to swim in the shallows. Keep your eyes open for Jorvegian Purple Mallards and Jorvegian Purplebills. They’re both native wild species.” The vet said. “But don’t be surprised if others turn up if you’re making the Manor hospitable to them.”

The girls nodded.

“Thanks!” Brittany called out to her as they left, the duck safely tucked in her saddlebag.

They returned to the manor and since all the chores were done for the day, they rode around with Pauline trying to decide on races.

“I’m not sure I like this, we’ve been so busy and doing nothing is boring,” Melody said.

“Don’t say that,” Grace groaned. “You’ll jinx it.”

“Well, Antonia the Chef is going to be moving to Silverglade from New Hillcrest soon. She owns a Scooter, so she might need help moving. And well, the restaurant is going to need to be decorated and everything.”

So, they decided to poke their noses around to see what was going on with the restaurant and kitchen.

They tramped up to the roof of the manor again and spread out.

“Well, this is fine and all for a warm summer day,” Elsa observed. “But there has to be a room that we can use in the Winter. You can’t let it sit for most the year wasting money. You don’t want to lose employees!”

“It doesn’t look like it needs that much sprucing up.” Jennifer added. “If there was furniture you could start tomorrow.”

“If,” Tyra said. “There is a room downstairs for the restaurant, I think. I mean, it’s past the stairs.”

“Forward is the library,” Lily said as they went back downstairs. “That leads to the Baroness’ dining room.”

“I think her kitchen is supposed to serve both places,” Linn scratched her neck.

“That’d actually make sense,” Stacy said.

“So, it’s this door here,” Lily said and put her hand on the handle. She cracked it open. It was a big empty room. “Yeah, I think this is it.” She opened it more and they filed inside to look around.

“It isn’t very,” Abigail shrugged. “Memorable.”

Lily took pictures and sent them to Anastasia and Antonia, asking Anastasia if this was the room in question.

They checked the door leading into the house. “Okay, yeah, that’s the kitchen,” Tyra said after peeking inside. “I don’t think there is anyone there.”

“Doesn’t her butler do most the cooking?”

“Maybe she has a private chef.”

Lily put a finger to her lips, ducked inside and took more pictures for Antonia. She left without touching anything. It wasn’t a huge space. It didn’t have to be.

“Just a big empty room,” Regina bit her lip.

“What does a stylish Mediterranean Restaurant look like anyways?” Linn asked.

“That sounds like an internet search!” Elsa said.

They retreated to the library and took out their phones and searched. They showed each other different pictures.

“I think this is the closest we can do with the room,” Regina said and brandished her phone to show them pictures of the Le George restaurant at the George Four Seasons Hotel in Paris.

They did all agree. They didn’t have quite the same type of architecture, because the Le George definitely had a glass sunroom type area. So, again, Lily forwarded the pictures to Antonia and Anastasia mentioning something similar could work for the Silver Glade and that surely they could use the Roses instead of orchids.

But they didn’t want to copy it exactly.

That and if there wasn’t purple, the Baronness would be upset. Anastasia knew a decorator and informed Lily that she’d be there tomorrow with materials and that they better be available to her.

They all rolled their eyes and agreed.

“Better warn Agnetha,” Lily mumbled and went to do just that.

Then, they went for a ride in the Silver Fields. Lily passed out a bunch of seed packets from Iris for them to scatter of wild Carnations. They didn’t grow more than three to five inches high and were colored white with bits of pink on the inside or plain white.

Pauline rolled her eyes

The rest of the girls just giggled.

Lily hummed as she scattered seeds. She was sure that Agnetha would agree with her that big lawns of grass, grass, and more grass were nothing but a waste.

FOR THE ACCOMPANYING IMAGES PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE MY WATERMARK AND CONTACT INFORMATION. THANK YOU. I get it. Some of you might get excited and want to see this stuff in the game, especially the clothes, tack, and pets. However, the only way I want to see this in the game is if I get paid for it. If I see it in the game and I’m not paid for it, there will be hell to pay. You think I’m salty. I’d be angry. Personally, I’m not going to send this info to SSO. If you do, leave my contact information there! Don’t give them any excuses to steal.

Now, I’ll know you haven’t read this note if you leave me comments about how ‘salty’ I am about the game and if I hate it so much I should do something else. I am doing something else. It’s called Mystic Riders MMORPG Project. Mystic Riders however is a very baby phase game. You can check out our plans on the game dev blog. (Skills, Factions, Professions, Crafting, Mini-Games, 25+ horse breeds!) If you know anyone who would be interested and has money or contacts about game making, direct them to the blog.

[how2to18]

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT continues. Reviewers, at least some of them, experienced a kind of wonderment at the appearance of the first three volumes of the Graphic Canon. Five years later, the wonderment has deepened to just this side of bafflement. Not that editor Russ Kick, known for his work in the underground press way back, and his exposure of government secrets later on, means to be secretive. Not in the least. Indeed, he is so attached to his indirect creation (that is, the work of the artist-adaptors, and only occasionally his own adaptation scripts) that he provides a sometimes intensive, sometimes casual introduction for each entry. He really wants this project taken seriously in the large field of comic art. And understandably so, since he has managed to create something unprecedented in comic art, at least in the English language.

Or perhaps the reader is only likely to infer that claim because Kick’s volumes have now reached thousands of oversized, intermittently color pages, and stand to reach many more. The initial series of three volumes covered assorted literary genres across the ages, from antiquity to present, in more or less chronological order. This was followed by two volumes of children’s stories, told without much talking down or dilution of the scary parts. Now we have passed on to the world of noir, where practically everything is scary, and not much in a supernatural way.

There is so much good art and fine storytelling in this latest volume that complaints and criticisms seem almost niggling. But I consider the vision or map rather too broad when we can go from Solomon and Sophocles to de Sade, from Boccaccio to Nathaniel Hawthorne to Agatha Christie, within a single volume. “Crime and Mystery” becomes, in the process, a catch all for the stories that fascinate the omnivorous editor, and for which he has found a talented (mostly very talented) set of illustrators who also usually functions as adapters.

But crime and mystery, as a generic category, might be defined more precisely as literary responses to the social realities of the last couple centuries. Slavery, mass slaughter, and so on are, of course, present in previous eras and just as monstrous as they are today. But what sets off crime and mystery as a genre, what makes it the object of endless treatments in every phase of popular culture, is modern property relations. The novel in general emerged to transcribe the drama of the worthy rising bourgeoisie against sinking aristocrats, and for Dashiell Hammett and Columbo right down to the classic years of Law & Order, the contemporary master class is ultimately the guilty one. Hammett himself, as a teacher of mystery writing in the left-wing Jefferson School of the 1940s, supposedly told his students, “Look for the money, always look for the money.”

Never mind. What is here is remarkable enough. I am especially drawn, for instance, to Sophia Wiedeman’s retelling of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in black and white with the use of one color, of course red. I am not sure that Wiedeman has captured the interiority of Hawthorne himself and his acceptance of guilt, as a descendant of New England’s pitiless Puritan settlers, for the American conquest of the land from its earlier inhabitants. But the fate of women, one woman, caught in the maw of patriarchal judgment — Wiedeman nails that, for sure.

Elsewhere in the volume, Rick Geary brings his vine-like style to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and captures the heart of the story, its essential action, in only a few pages. Another painterly Dostoyevsky, this one Hadar Reuven’s The House of the Dead, invokes the Holocaust with its scenes of men in beards in a monstrous prison.

Arriving in the 20th century, Sarah Benkin misses the crypto-racism of the wife and murderer of her husband in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (“He’s so greasy!” the scheming missus says about her husband in the original), instead showing hubby as a jolly Italian American. She also misses the lust that drives her collaborator into the murder. But the essential story is here, anyway. Ellice Weaver’s full-color version of Iceberg Slim’s Pimp, meanwhile, works as a series of amazing paintings with a subordinated narrative.

It would be easy to go on indefinitely, but I’ll mention only a few more examples. Theo Ellsworth’s adaptation of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a 30-page comic novella in itself, so intense that the reader gets a feeling of emotional exhaustion, in a good way, pages before the end. Robert Berry has made a section of James Joyce’s Dubliners into a Mutt and Jeff dialogue of sorts, in a bow to the immortal (for old time comics fans) Bud Fisher as much as to Joyce. As I am an admirer of R. Sikoryak’s intriguing approaches to comics history, I find his rethinking of de Sade as a series of comic book covers in “Sadistic Comics” — with an improbably helpless Wonder Woman at the center — utterly delightful. That may exhaust my list of particular favorites in the volume, except for the adaptation of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s short story “Talma Gordon” (reputed to be the first mystery published by an African-American writer) by C. Frackes, herself a rising feminist artist.

If I commit myself to describing particular stories, it’s because every generalization about this volume fails and must fail. While each piece, taken by itself, is not necessarily strong or convincing, together they convince.

Convince us of what? That is the question, at least for this reviewer. We can usefully examine The Graphic Canon from another angle. The international sweep of its cast of artists and writers offers impressive evidence of a global comics community. It also testifies to Russ Kick’s amazing capacity for outreach. But as with Kick’s career, we find the essential origins of the series in the breakthroughs of the 1960s and 1970s, breakthroughs that left behind so many of the limitations long imposed upon comic art.

The comics-reading public, mostly readers under the age of 30, know little of this history today. Superheroes of every kind; quirky and sexy personal stories of mostly inward or troubled youngsters; the occasional historical saga (March, eulogizing John Lewis within his lifetime) — these comprise nearly all of today’s menu of comics, to judge from sales and advertising on the web. Hardly remembered now, except as an influence on today’s graphic memoirs, the distinct comics of the Vietnam Era and a decade after profited from artists’ ownership of their uncensored comic art, delivering up marijuana use, feminism, denunciation of corporations and the government, and flagrant sex of every variety, often flavored with humor. (The Southern California feminist series Tits & Clits Comix comes to mind.) Contemporary readers, excepting academic or those with a taste for the “old stuff,” tend to be familiar with only a fraction of this body of work — perhaps R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, along with slightly younger figures like Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, and the Hernandez Brothers.

Stop for a moment and contemplate what that origin of a new comics, a new comic art, meant. It was a ragged community (just ask the feminists), but it was a real one. It recalled, in American life and art, nothing so much as the Works Progress Administration artists of the 1930s or the group gathered around The Masses magazine in the 1910s. These had rebellion of form and content, narrative and style, written all over them, but also a vision of a different relation between art and popular life in a better future. In the comics world, this is what slipped away by 1980 or so.

The elevation of comic art followed, although its arrival at true respectability arguably awaited Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize in 1992 — and arguably, dolefully, also awaited the return of the cutting-edge comics publishing locus from California back to New York, its historic location. Today, with the advance of college teaching into visual culture, the comics canon is taught very much as the canon of literature has been taught forever. In part, this is the nature of canonization: the few remembered, the mass of artists forgotten.

But this is also the case because the comic art anthology, pretty much the foundation stone of underground commix, has practically ceased to exist. Post-1970s efforts, like Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s Raw magazine, could not be sustained financially. My own series of topical anthologies ended with the volume Bohemians (2014), because these efforts no longer seemed worth publishers’ attention. The annual Best of Comics anthologies and the more or less annual World War 3 Illustrated appear too infrequently, and have too few pages, not to mention idiosyncratic editorial tastes. Rumors of a revival of Arcade, the Spiegelman and Bill Griffith–edited anthology from the late 1970s, appear to be unfounded, for various reasons.

Altogether, we see too little work side by side — and more than that, we get far too little sense that comic art has a purpose comparable to the socialist modernism of a century ago or the counterculture of the late 1960s. Perhaps the website The Nib is the exception, because its social criticism comes fast and furious, day by day, topic by topic. But we need more, much more, with a dialogue among artists and their admirers, editors, and others. At least, this is my conclusion after 50 years as an editor.

Russ Kick’s Canon thus does something that too few venues for comic art do nowadays. It is, for now, the most sustained anthology of comic art in the English language — the best showplace of what comic art is today and what it can do. That’s quite an accomplishment.

¤

Paul Buhle was publisher of Radical America Komiks (1969) and has edited a dozen comics since 2005. His latest is Johnny Appleseed, drawn by Noah van Sciver.

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