#but clearly there is no revolution. there is only suffering. there is no mercy killing. we just fucking go on.

[james-stark-the-writer]

bought and started playing Cloudpunk because i wanted to watch a video essay on it and honestly, from the video title and based on the person that made the video, i don't know what i was expecting the game to be but i don't know why i didn't expect it to be a "existential dread under capitalism" simulator, this is simply too fucking much. like the game (so far) has some really good fucking writing and really good fucking pacing and really good fucking voice acting and a gorgeous world and great design and aesthetics but like my brain is simply shutting off trying to think about the implications like it's too much. talked to Teko and my brain just switched off trying to think about the implications. talked to Eveline and my brain started to think about the implications and i completely zoned out (not really but my brain was almost static at that point although i clapped when she said "don't tell me how to label myself"). rn i'm only a few deliveries in, i just gave Never-Slow Joe his drive converter and the moral dilemma the game presented was simply too much so i am. done for the day. that is a problem for another day.

[thewillowbends]

So I'm rewatching the first season and reading the book, and I've got Thoughts (TM)

And I've got a LOT of thoughts about what exactly Leigh Bardugo was doing here in terms of the moral and ethical statements of the narrative, so I'm putting it under the cut.

Something that's really glaring on the rewatch is just...the complete lack of compassion every character outside Aleksander has for the plight of the Grisha. The army treats treats them with reciprocal dislike, despite the fact that they couldn't even cross the Fold with the Inferni or Squallers. The tsar and tsarita treat them with condescension and disdain, clearly valuing them mainly as a utility that, historically, they've happily turned on when they felt they were growing too powerful. Baghra has just given up on trying to protect other Grisha who aren't immortal like her or Aleksander. Even Alina is guilty of othering them and has to be told off by multiple characters (Ivan, Aleksander, Baghra) to stop treating her power like a yoke instead of a responsibility and opportunity to help others.

We get this big, bad, armor-piercing line from her to Aleksander about how he doesn't care who suffers as long as he wins. Which is true to some extent, but...where is her compassion? Didn't we just spend a hefty portion of the narrative wanting to give her power away to somebody else so she can, what, be with her bestie? Meanwhile, there's, you know, an actual war going on. This isn't small stakes shit she sees going on around her. People are dying. We literally have an entire plot where we see a Grisha kidnapped, enslaved, and then sent to be put to death...who was given to the enemy by her own people!

And then we get that line from her in 1x07, only to have it followed up by her running away at the end of 1x08 for....why? Most people on the ship are dead or those that survived weren't his supporters. The people on the docks were killed, and most of them actually were traitors trying to kill Alina. Aleksander didn't lie about that. So she's running away to take the blame for some nebulous reason that's not really well explained, which is...well, what the fuck happens to the rest of the Grisha? Do we not care about how Aleksander's actions are going to reflect back on them and cause a potential backlash or something? Not to mention, nobody is on the other side to warn them that Aleksander is a threat to begin with. Even if you assumed he was dead, you'd definitely want to assume he likely had supporters back at the palace, too!

From a character writing perspective, I find it stupid that Aleksander doesn't tell her certain things because if he's such a big, bad, clever manipulator, he would absolutely be weaponizing his own pain and experiences to make her stumble in empathy. That's bad character writing to me when you're telling me somebody's an abusive villain but actually isn't using very real and effective abuser tactics. But then you also have Alina who refuses to even point out...Aleksander, I get it! I've talked to other Grisha! I see what you're going through! But this can't be the answer. You have to see this won't end well for you! Like, her own arguments make no sense to me. They're so myopic and self-involved.

One of the big things that bothers me that gets folded into Aleksander's other manipulations is this idea that he primarily associates and values her for her power, in contrast to Mal who primarily sees her for being herself. While I get the intent of that on a narrative level, in the scope of the wider story...it just literally makes no sense for Aleksander to parse those two as separate. Not when the whole reason Grisha are hunted down and killed is because they don't get the privilege of being people outside of their power. Aleksander doesn't get to be General Kirigan without also being the Darkling. Therefore, Alina doesn't get to be Sankta Alina without also being the Sun Summoner. Not a single other character gets to be relevant without being powerful.

Even on a narrative level, it makes no sense. One, it's frankly kind of sexist (when are male protagonists ever expected to be segregated from their power) and two...that's the whole reason we're telling her story! That's why she's the protagonist! She is special. She can't be separated from this unique power destiny has handed her. We don't tell stories about common, boring people; we tell stories about people who incite conflict or change. So even the mere concept to me of basing a character's identity or value around not wanting value is frankly kind of ridiculous.

There's just this strangely insidious underpinning to the story that power is inherently dangerous, even as it acknowledges that people who are NOT in power can very much suffer at the hands of those who do. So where's the moral and ethical reflection about what this means for the rest of us? What does that mean for minorities?

Think of the scene on the boat where Aleksander has Ivan kill off the nobility. The narrative wants you to see this moment as blackly humorous and awful, but stop for a moment and think about what happened there from his perspective. This is a man who spent centuries watching his people get killed and enslaved, and that isn't a false representation or manipulation from him, either. His statement is backed up both by what we see in the flashbacks and by other Grisha. Nobody created a safe haven for him and his people - he did that! He had to claw his way to the top, flatter, kill, and fuck his way through god knows how many noble houses, just to get to this moment where he could build a Little Palace. And it took him four hundred years just to get that! All while Grisha are dying!

And nobody did anything about it. Not the king, not the landholders, not even the peasantry. They were happy taking advantage of the Grisha's powers, of course, when Aleksander helped raise them up into a position of prominence, making them soldiers and enchanters. And even then, they're mocked! The army can't wait to get rid of them!

And then some noblewoman, who has enjoyed the benefits of her wealth and power, some of which were built on the backs of your people, sits there and tells you, the moment you take hold of the power everybody else has been grabbing for centuries, has the audacity to sit there and tell you that the world will hate Grisha and view him as a heretic?? When less than twenty years ago, your people were being killed right and left? When the enemy is still kidnapping and enslaving your people? When your own countrymen view you with fear and intrigue already? The audacity to sit there and frame it as a hypothetical when it's very much an actual reality still going on. Just look at the barely hidden seething rage and contempt on Barnes face when he delivers that quip about "needing to do that speech again." Motherfucker has been waiting YEARS for this moment, this revenge. And really, who can blame him...if you aren't wrapped up in the narrative wanting you to focus on just what he's doing to poor Alina.

The way the Grisha's situation is framed along with how the Darkling's descent into villainy is handled is so just incongruent to me. The pieces don't fit. You're asking me to see this man as completely irredeemable after you just showed me six episodes of Grisha being killed both for being what they are in the hopes of protecting Alina, after you showed me that Aleksander had already TRIED appealing to the protection of the crown by lending it his power, after making us see that lies and manipulation are the only way he and his mother have been able to survive as long as they have in a world that eradicated them. Where is the compassion in the narrative for that?

And okay, fine, you can do an irredeemable villain. You can do a Kilmonger-esque story with the Darkling, but that requires forcing your protagonists to empathize with the villain and change from it. But then I read ahead and...that doesn't happen?? She winds up walking away from it all at the end?? In fact, she even loses her power. And that's supposed to be a HAPPY ending? After we just saw how badly this minority was treated for how many centuries??

You know what it feels like? It feels like Leigh Bardugo read The Hunger Games, tried to replicate a Katniss, and then completely failed to understand the profound situational differences between her protagonist and that one. Katniss is a girl made extraordinary by her circumstances. She's not special herself other than the fact that she did the right thing at the right place at the right time and helped create the tipping point for a revolution that was already in the works before her. Katniss walking away from the world after makes sense because she's burned out after the war, but it also got its use from her. She helped make the revolution work; she showed up for the event while it was happening and did what she could. The situation was out of her control and power for the most part, and she still managed to rise the occasion.

Alina is NOT Katniss. She is inherently special. She is inherently powerful. She has the ability to create change and bring a new perspective that Aleksander has long given up on and which her country desperately needs. We know the world of the Hunger Games will be better because the creators of real change were always working behind the scenes behind Katniss. She was just their propaganda, their symbol. Alina is a symbol, but she is also a very real power. It's not an act of moral celebration for her to walk away from power at the end, namely because there's a whole minority class of people we still have to worry about. Putting a Grisha on the throne is no promise the country won't turn against them eventually, nor does that protect the hundreds of Grisha at the mercy of a superstitious peasantry and countries that will likely continue to invade them.

It's just...I dunno guys. It's frustrating because all the compelling elements are there in the characters and storyline, but it's like the author had a set of characters telling one story and then she had an entirely different plot in mind, and they just clash all over the place for me and become thematically inconsistent. But what really gets me is that she had seven years to think this shit over...and we're looking to get the same story all over again. Usually, it's a great thing to have an author involved in the show. This is a rare situation where I wonder if it hurts the chances of it improving.

[razzle-zazzle]

Whumptober Day 01: All trussed up & still nowhere to go

Bound + Barbed Wire

2338 Words; Sanctuary Island

TW for blood, mentions of slavery, and mild violence

This was not an ideal situation.

Not that Cole had really been in any ideal situations since being brought to this island, but this was more of a relative case. At least having allies nearby was better than being tied to a chair.

But, ideal or not, Cole was here, heavy metal collar held close to the back of the chair by a chain, and escape was not going to come as easily as the last time. The overseers were doing their best to make sure of that.

Really, all Cole had to do was stay alive and hope Artura didn’t attempt anything too reckless in his absence. All of the others had managed to disappear into the woods safely, and it’d be a while yet before their little makeshift fortress could be taken. He’d probably faced much worse odds on the mainland.

His restraints weren’t exactly uncomfortable, per se—he could do without having his arms pulled behind the chair over the back of it, elbows lashed tightly together with what had to be rope chosen deliberately for how rough and scratchy it was, his wrists similarly bound—his legs were tightly tied to the front legs of the chair, but the fabric of his pants prevented most of the friction currently chafing his arms.

He could definitely do without the ropes over his chest, and it would be very nice to get the metal collar off. But Cole refused to focus on the negatives here. He had to stay positive, and keep his eyes open for the opportunity to escape and rejoin the revolution.

So Cole waited, doing his level best to ignore the discomfort, flexing his arms to test the strength of the ropes.

He could snap them with his earth punch easily. That wouldn’t handle any of the other ropes, and he’d have to disconnect the metal collar from the chair if he wanted to lean down to pull the ropes on his legs apart, but it shouldn’t take too long to undo the lock fastening the chain to his collar.

The problem, however, was the collar. Cole wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but there were traces of vengestone in the metal—just enough to cut his strength in half, preventing him from actually snapping the rope.

Cole was stuck waiting until an actual opportunity presented itself, and the longer he waited, the more uncomfortable his position became.

First Master, his arms were aching. The back of the chair was digging into his back, and he couldn’t pull his arms up to alleviate the situation. His elbows being lashed so tightly together was starting to become a problem for his shoulders, too.

But Cole was tougher than that. He had to be. He was the rock of the ninja, so he could be the rock here, too. It was just like Jay said: the power of positive thinking.

Time passed. It probably felt longer than it was—Cole couldn't exactly tell; there wasn’t any way to tell the time. Just a small, windowless room dimly lit by an oil lamp on a table in the corner.

Honestly, the room felt more like a shed than anything. Maybe Cole was locked up in some kind of fortress, and maybe he wasn’t. It was hard to tell, but Cole was leaning towards torture room based on the tools hanging on the wall to his right.

Fuck, now his back was starting to ache, and he was losing feeling in his fingers. Grunting a little, Cole shifted as much as his restraints would allow—not much, but it’d have to do—in an effort to alleviate some of the pain.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, it depended on how one looked at it—the door opened at that moment, heralding the arrival of one of the overseers.

Cole recognized this man. The shiny badge on his top hat gave him away as one of the people enforcing the messed-up system on the island, but Cole recognized the man’s face from the few weeks Cole had been put to work in the fields.

The man opened his mouth to say something, but Cole cut him off.

“Oh good,” he snarked, “I was starting to think I’d been forgotten here.”

The man’s expression changed immediately, shifting from merely dismissive contempt to fury. He crossed the room in two steps and slapped Cole, hard. His head jolted to the side from the force of it.

“Hold your tongue, boy.” Venom dripped from the overseer’s voice, enough to kill a man. “Do not speak unless spoken to.”

Cole grinned. “So I can speak now that you’ve said something to me?” He got another smack in return, his head jolting to the other side this time. Cole tasted copper—he’d bit his tongue twice now.

"You have caused more than enough trouble here, on our fair island.” The overseer stated, adjusting his gloves.

Cole shrugged as much as his restraints would allow, swallowing the blood in his mouth. “Yeah, I kinda specialize in that.” He only got a sharp look at that remark, thankfully enough.

“And what, pray tell," the overseer snarled, reaching back to grip Cole’s hair harshly, "Makes you so special, dirt boy?"

"I'm a ninja." Cole said tersely. He flexed against the restraints. "Protecting people is what I do." Just grin and bear it. That should be easy enough.

He grinned again, past the taste of copper in his mouth, making sure to bare his teeth. "Of course, you wouldn't understand that, would you, slave-driver?"

He got a third smack for his sass. The overseer’s grip on his hair kept Cole’s head from jolting to the side again, but the tradeoff was a harsh yank on his hair.

The overseer huffed, letting go of Cole’s hair. “Well then.” He hissed, walking over to open one of the drawers to Cole’s left. “We’ll see about correcting this little… discipline issue. This little ‘revolution’ of yours ends here, boy.” The overseer held up a spool of barbed wire, face oddly impassive for such a pompous man.

Cole stilled. This was not something he’d seen before.

The overseer opened another drawer, digging through it before pulling out some cloth.

Cole wasn’t sure where this was going, but he was pretty sure it was going to hurt.

“I was going to ask if you’d learned your lesson,” the overseer began, closing the drawers. “But clearly you haven’t.”

“You say that like there’s a lesson to be learned, here.” Cole shot back as the overseer approached. Any further retort was cut off as—rather predictably, Cole would later reflect—the overseer shoved the cloth in his mouth.

It wasn’t a lot, certainly not enough to make his jaw ache any time soon, but it did muffle and garble his words.

Before Cole could spit the cloth out, the overseer was there, securing it in place with a length of barbed wire. Cole glared as the overseer looped the wire twice more around his head before calmly fastening it behind Cole’s head with a metal clip.

None of the spikes were directly digging into Cole’s flesh, but he could feel the edges of the points threateningly close to his skin, close enough to cut into it if he moved too much.

Cole growled through the cloth. He couldn’t actually reduce the man to ash with just a look, but damn if he wasn’t trying.

“Since you fail to understand simple instructions,” The overseer hissed, beginning to wrap more barbed wire around Cole’s chest and arms, “You will have to be educated in proper behavior.” The wire was dangerously tight around Cole, to the point where he could feel some of the spikes through his shirt. His bare arms were spared slightly by the width of the chair, but that didn’t mean much when what was touching his arms was forcing them tighter against the back of the chair.

“You refuse to hold your tongue,” the overseer continued, “so you will not be allowed to speak for the time being. He pulled the wires tighter, cinching the two ends together behind Cole… somehow. It wasn’t like Cole could really see behind himself. “And since you continue to be bullheaded,” the overseer spat the word bullheaded like a curse, “some long-term negative reinforcement is in order.”

Cole huffed, the sound muffled by the gag. Unlike the wire used to gag him, the wire looping around him was digging into his flesh at several points. He couldn’t feel any blood, though, so he supposed there were still small mercies.

Not that those small mercies really made the situation ideal.

The overseer, satisfied with his work—and with the way Cole was glaring at him, curses muffled by the gag—nodded, and then left, the click of a lock finalizing his departure.

Cole groaned. If it had just been some light torture or the whip again, Cole could have handled that. But barbed wire? Being left alone with the barbed wire to suffer for a while? In what basically amounted to solitary confinement?

You can bear this, Cole. Cole reminded himself, staring at the small crack where the door met the floor. You’re too tough to be broken by something so small as this. It didn’t make the situation less painful, but it did give Cole some confidence.

He was going to be aching for weeks after this, he just knew it.

There was something weird about the barbed wire, though. It felt like the spikes all had sharp edges along their lengths, instead of just a sharp point at the end. It was like being held in place by a bunch of tiny little knives—

Cole’s eyes widened. Of course! He’d have grinned were it not for the barbed wire against his cheek. The overseer had left him with exactly what he needed to get free.

Carefully, trying not to cut into himself further, Cole shifted so the ropes around his elbows and wrists were as close to the spikes as he could manage. He couldn’t see what he was doing, having to feel it out, and he could definitely feel one or two of the barbs digging in deeper, but he could also, if he strained his ears enough, hear the faint sound of metal cutting through fiber.

It took some more experimenting before Cole could build up a proper rhythm, but eventually he’d managed to free his elbows, with a lot of little cuts up and down his arms for his efforts. The wire was still pinning his arms against the chair, but it wasn’t holding his arms together.

A little more wriggling—there was definitely blood starting to bead up on his arms now—and Cole’s wrists were free of the rope, allowing Cole to separate his arms. It took some shimmying, and the barbs sliced through his flesh as he did so, but he managed to get his arms to the sides of his chest. This gave the wire enough slack for it to start to fall a bit, and a little more shaking and wiggling got it all the way down, the wire lying in several loops at his waist.

Carefully, avoiding the barbs, Cole twisted the coils around until he could get at whatever was fastening the ends. A little jiggling, and the metal clip came loose, allowing Cole to move the wire where he pleased.

Carefully, trying not to cut up his wrists, Cole lifted his arms out of the wire, freeing them up. Immediately, he used that newfound freedom to fiddle with the clip fastening the wire behind his head.

Cole spat out the cloth, tossing the wire that had held it in place to the side.

Of course, that still left the ropes around his chest and legs, and the collar—

The next step was the collar. Cole wasn’t strong enough to break it without his powers, but he couldn’t access his powers with it on. So he reached back, feeling around the collar for where the chain fastened to it for a weak point.

Blood had dripped down onto his hands while he’d been working his arms free, though, and it was making fiddling with the lock difficult. But dammit, Cole was not sticking around long enough to find out what else the overseer had in store for him, so he grabbed one of the ends of the wire in his lap and jammed it into the lock.

A click signaled the chain was detached from the collar, even if it was still on. Whatever. Cole would deal with that later. Preferably far away from this place.

Of course, he wasn’t home free just yet. There was still the matter of the ropes around his legs.

But Cole also had several coils of barbed wire.

After that, it was a simple matter to cut through the rest of the ropes. Cole was still bleeding, but he’d handle that once he could stand.

Finally free, Cole stood up. His joints creaked in protest after spending so long so tightly bound, but Cole pushed on anyway. He went to the drawers first—he’d need to grab a few things before he could make his daring escape.

First step: the cuts on his arms. They were starting to scab over, not that they’d been that big in the first place, but there was still blood dripping languidly down his arms. So he dug through the drawers for some bandages, and, failing that, some cloth that would serve the same purpose. There wasn’t really anything in the room Cole could use to clean the wounds, so he’d worry about that once he got back to Artura and Laina and the others.

Arms now wrapped with something resembling bandages, Cole moved on to the tool board on the wall, searching for a weapon. His hand-to-hand was usually good, but “usually” didn’t apply to arms covered in cuts and still aching from his bonds. So really, it was a question of which “tool” would serve him best here.

Cole grabbed a knife, examining the blade.

Yeah, this would do.

[herinsectreflection]

Top five unintentionally resonant metaphors in Buffy and Angel.

Ooh, this is interesting. I had to ruminate on this for a while. The writers put in a lot of metaphor that is intentional and resonant, so on one level it kind of feels unnecessary to look for unintentional metaphors, and it’s also difficult to tell what’s intended and what isn’t. I also guarantee that I totally forgot something far more interesting and resonant than some of these. But here’s what I came up with off the top of my head: 1) Chosen as revolution. The main theme is obviously choice, with Buffy reshaping her life to allow herself control over what she will do next. But also, she overthrows an old system to replace it with something better. She specifically calls out that the system she lives under is merely a construct, created by “dusty old men” because it suited their agenda. They wanted to concentrate slayer power into one girl so that they could control her, deny her choice, and have that power used as they saw fit. Buffy destroys that constructed world in order to create a better one. What she distributes to the masses of potentials is not just slayer power, but the power of choice. They now have the means to produce their own stories, thanks to Buffy. 2) Buffy and Faith as a tragic love story, and a repeat of Buffy/Angel. Some of that subtext is obviously intentional, but I don’t think it’s necessarily intended as a love story. Except that is very blatantly is, and it’s better for being read that way. The Buffy/Faith arc of S3 is structured almost identically to the Buffy/Angel arc of S2 - a tentative courtship in the early season that suffers a setback in episode 7, then the two of them get gradually closer again until the climax (heh) of episode 14. At this point Faith/Angel turns evil, teams up with the bad guys, and spends the rest of the season proving how much they don’t care about Buffy by obsessively deconstructing her life, until she kills them via stabbing in the finale.

It’s specifically Angel’s return that drives a wedge between them initially, and I think it’s more resonant to consider this not just as one friend lying to another, but as the trauma of one relationship tearing down a potential new one. There are several scenes in early S3 that can be read as Buffy being interested in Faith, but pulling back because of everything regarding Angel. Buffy’s unresolved trauma from the events of S2 causes the same thing to happen again in S3. Pain begets pain - that’s the cycle of tragedy. 

3) Adam as Season Four itself. I love season four, I think it’s criminally underrated, but it absolutely has its issues. It never quite grasps the student experience in the same way it does the teenage experience or the adult experience. The plot feels cobbled together and directionless. As is Adam. He is cobbled together and does not know his purpose in the world. S4 is a transitional season, and Adam is a transitional state between human and demon. In Superstar, he perceives Jonathan’s warping of the narrative as a lie, because he himself is the true narrative. His ultimate plan is to turn all other beings into creatures like him, just as S4, if the show had not course-corrected, could have spiralled into more S4s, more doomed transitional seasons that do not know themselves. By summoning the First Slayer and ripping out Adam’s core, Buffy, taking on the role of the writer, destroys the core plot of the season and summons a more interesting finale. 4) The fawn that Willow kills for the spell in Bargaining is Buffy. Some of the language used in this scene is really interesting. “Come forward, blessed one. Know your calling.” She refers to the fawn as “blessed” and having a “calling”, just as Buffy is blessed with power as part of her calling. "Accept our humble gratitude for your offering. In death... you give life.” Willow might as well be talking to Buffy, whose “offering” (or “gift”) was her own death, in order to give others life.  "May you find wings to the kingdom.” Clearly evoking the idea of heaven here. Buffy believes that she was in heaven. She found her wings there. Until Willow drags her back. But unlike Buffy, who defied the idea of sacrificing someone else and instead sacrificed herself to give life, Willow sacrifices another creature. She goes against Buffy’s wishes by literally killing metaphorical Buffy. And so she curses the entire project, and what she tells the fawn/Buffy is reversed. Buffy’s wings to the kingdom are torn off her, and in life she feels dead, and so she neglects her responsibilities and calling. Buffy feels empty throughout S6 because her metaphorical self was killed, by her metaphorical spirit no less. Only death may pay for life, and the cost of Buffy is... Buffy. (There also might be something to the fact that it’s a deer/fawn. Obvious symbol of innocence but also sounds kind of like Dawn? Maybe? Could be a stretch.)

5) Finally I feel I’ve got to throw an Angel one in here, so let’s say the Senior Partners as the network executives. They are a powerful but unseen group with total control over Angel’s ultimate destiny, and the name very clearly evokes a load of men in suits sitting in a board room deciding things, aloof and disconnected from the creative process, and from lived reality. The show is very clear that Angel only lives by their mercy, and avoids death/cancellation because he is useful to their agenda. The point in real world where it becomes clear that they will not renew the show is the point where in the show, Angel becomes aware that the apocalypse is afoot, on their terms. So he rebels against them, cancelling himself and bringing about the end on his own terms. Instead of going quietly and sadly, he creates one of the best finales ever and so proves the senior partners/networks wrong.

[pointlesswalks]

Never Look Away

Biographical films are strange beasts in that they are, perhaps somewhat unfairly, expected to cleave closer to truth than ordinary dramas. Biographical films about artists, moreover, carry the extra burden of attempting to locate the genesis or turning point in an entire artistic style whilst only showing a small part of an artist’s life. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2018 film, Never Look Away, is loosely based on the life of German artist, Gerhard Richter, and by the time we get to the end of the 180-plus minute running time, we get the impression that Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling) – Richter’s stand-in – has become a fully formed artist. How we get there isn’t entirely clear or convincing, but, strangely, it’s not entirely to the detriment of the film.

 The film covers the Kurt’s years as a child living under one totalitarian system, that of the National Socialists’, as a young man living under another, that of the German Democratic Republic, and of his escape with his wife to West Germany where he finally achieves both his personal and critical artistic breakthrough. Complicating matters is that Barnet’s father-in-law, Professor Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch), is the man responsible for the sterilization and euthanasia of one of Kurt’s aunts.

 Never Look Away was inspired by the revelation in Jürgen Schreiber’s book, Ein Maler aus Deutschland, that Richter’s father-in-law, Heinrich Eufinger, a high-ranking SS-doctor, had actually been responsible for the forced sterilisation of women no longer deemed fit to procreate by the National Socialist regime. One of these women, it turns out, was Richter’s aunt, Marianne Schönfelder, the subject of one of his celebrated photorealistic, blurred paintings, Aunt Marianne (1965). Henckel von Donnersmarck punches up the drama somewhat, and Marianne, an aunt Richter barely knew, has become Elisabeth May, a vibrant young woman, much involved in young Kurt’s life and who is intent on developing his interest in art. It is also this aunt that delivers the invocation of the (English) film’s title, the command to “never look away,” a command that Kurt will carry with him.

  The film opens in 1937 Dresden at an exhibition of “Degenerate Art” hosted by the Nazi party which includes works by luminaries such as Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky and others. The guide explains that the abstractions expressed by these artists can only either be the product of some hereditary disease or otherwise a pernicious attempt to undermine society. The natural conclusion is that creators of such works should, in the latter case, be open to criminal sanction, or that, tellingly, in the former, steps should be taken such that their peculiar “ocular afflictions” are not passed to future generations: the seeds of the Final Solution have already been sown.

 The young Kurt Barnet (Cai Cohrs) is accompanied to the exhibition by his aunt, Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl), who quietly confides in Kurt that she rather likes the “degenerate” art that is on display. Elisabeth’s approval of these works isn’t driven by an ideological sensibility – although the Barnert family seem decidedly anti-Nazi – but rather that more clichéd, banal one in which “madness” informs artistic receptivity. Elisabeth suffers from schizophrenia, and the same affliction which can drive her to ecstasy when hearing a symphony of bus horns or when witnessing the pomp of a Nazi parade is what will ultimately see her treated so monstrously by Professor Seeband when she is finally institutionalised .

 Kurt finds Elisabeth the morning after the Nazi parade, naked at the piano, and in the middle of a full-blown psychotic break and rambling about having discovered “the code of the universe.” It is as a result of this breakdown that Elisabeth is forcefully taken to a sanatorium. As she is removed by the nurses, we get an important shot from Kurt’s point-of-view, a shot that comes to represent the film’s most significant recurrent visual motifs. As Kurt lifts his hand up to cover his eyes from the awful scene of his beloved aunt being sedated and forced into an ambulance, the camera focuses on his hand. When his hand drops away, the scene behind it remains blurred. This visual motif will gain significance each time Henckel von Donnersmarck employs it, its significance becomes clearer to the audience such that by the time Kurt produces his first blurred painting, they know exactly how to read it. The key for how to read this motif, however, is present right there the first time we see it, in the very first shot of the film, in fact. The film opens with a blurred shot of the degenerate art exhibition, and the first thing we see in focus is the face of the Nazi tour guide when it comes into the shot before he delivers his polemic against degenerate art.

  Both Kurt and Professor Seeband find success in the new East German regime: Kurt, by excelling in art school and making a name for himself as a muralist of socialist realism works; and the professor by successfully concealing his past as a Nazi and becoming an “active co-creator of the [the] Socialist Republic.” However, where the professor has slotted quite naturally into the new regime Kurt can’t quite resign himself to the abandonment of innovation and artistic freedom demanded of him in order to make socialist realism art. Once again we see the blurred visual motif at play: as Kurt’s art teacher implores his students to reject the “Ich, ich, ich” of the innovator while paradoxically beseeching them to “Be different, gentlemen. Be different,” artworks by Picasso, Francis Bacon and Max Ernst are continuously coming in and out of focus as they are passed through an episcope. As at the exhibition of degenerate art, the discussion of “ideology” only serves to obscure. It is also at art school where Kurt meets his future wife, another Elisabeth (Paula Beer) who he insists on calling Ellie, and who bears more than a passing resemblance to his now deceased aunt.

 In the West, Kurt finds himself at the mercy of a different, but just as limiting, regime. Where in the East art was made to service the worker’s revolution, in the West, “money is all that counts,” and one doesn’t innovate to make good art but to find the idea that allows one to stand apart from the rest. Kurt’s teacher is Professor Antonius van Verten (Oliver Masucci), a stand-in for Joseph Beuys, who was in actuality for a time a contemporary of Richter. van Verten, dismissed as a maniac by his students, particularly because his idea – making art using only felt and grease – isn’t considered to be interesting, nevertheless locates true freedom in art and urges his students to develop their own subjective abilities without reference to external guidelines. van Verten is intrigued by Kurt but can tell immediately that the work he is creating isn’t reaching its full potential, because there is nothing about it that is true to Kurt. The professor confides to Kurt of his time in the war, of being shot down over Crimea with terrible head wounds that should have killed him. He recalls how Tatar nomads nursed his wounds with grease and wrapped him in felt. van Verten concludes that if he were to distil everything he had learnt in his life, if he had to make a claim about what he truly knew, it would be the feeling of felt and grease. Armed with this, Kurt abandons his first aborted attempts at art, and after a slow start, he paints his first photograph, a painting of Dr. Burghart Kroll (Rainer Bock), architect of the program that saw Kurt’s aunt sterilised and murdered by his father-in-law. A second painting follows, of his beloved aunt, Elisabeth. And in a moment of insight – and we see once again the shot of young Kurt’s hand dropping away from his eyes and the blurred shot of his aunt being taken away – Kurt deliberately brushes his photo-realistic painting over his painting creating a blur.

 Here we come to the jarring contradiction at the heart of the film. The visual motif Henckel von Donnersmarck consistently deploys is of blurred, out of focus shots. In Never Look Away these shots, when out of focus, paradoxically, represent a deeper access to truth. However, the culmination of Kurt’s idea is a composite painting which layers a picture of his aunt, a passport photo of Professor Seeband and the photograph of Kroll – it’s the sort of composite painting that Richter never made. When Professor Seeband sees this painting in Kurt’s studio, he loses his composure for the first time. However, if we consider what exactly spooked Professor Seeband, it’s not that Kurt’s painting, by virtue of being blurred, revealed a deeper truth that otherwise would have remained hidden, but that the painting clearly – with respect to what it represented, not how it represented it – revealed his involvement with Elisabeth’s death. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Kurt – who knows his father-in-law enjoyed preening around in his SS uniform, who knows he is a world-class gynaecologist who happened to work in a hospital at around the time Elisabeth was treated, who knows his father-in-law deceived Kurt and his wife into having an abortion that he then himself went ahead and performed – fails to see any sort of connection between his painting and his father-in-law’s past.

Another contradiction is in the nature of reality in Never Look Away. The film is a drama grounded in conventional cinematic realism so that when Elisabeth has her psychotic breakdown and begins to ramble on about the code of the universe we aren’t expected to think for a second that there is a code to the universe. This isn’t to say that the film is spiritually devoid. The moment of artistic transcendence for both Kurt and certainly for Professor van Verten is spiritual, but it is also decidedly not supernatural. Henckel von Donnersmarck undercuts the materialist nature of his film with the inclusion of two sequences. The first comes towards the end of the war when a slightly older Kurt witnesses the bombing of Dresden. As Kurt looks into the Dresden night, shots alternate not only between the planes dropping their bombs and carnage taking place in Dresden, but also of the Russian front, where we witness his brothers die, and of his sister being led into a chamber as the Nazi party prepares to liquidate her. The editing of the shots, in particular with respect to Kurt’s searching eyes, give the sequence distinct impression that Kurt can somehow see or is aware of these other events taking place. Even more troubling is the second sequence. When Elisabeth is first brought to the office of Professor Seeband, she makes her way first to a clock, then comments on a picture drawn by the professor’s daughter, Elly, and then, finally, on learning that she is going to be sterilised, she cowers in a corner of his office. Some twenty years later Kurt has been invited to Professor Seeband’s office in order to paint his portrait. While waiting for the professor, Kurt’s eyes linger on the clock first, then on Elly’s drawing, before widening with fear and turning to the same corner where his aunt had cowered. What are we to make of his preternatural sight?

  Intentionally or not, Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, with its contradictions and what can only be described as deviations from narrative coherence, somehow works because they echo something of Richter’s pronouncements about his own work. Try to find something about why Richter blurs his photo-realistic paintings... His statements are sometimes contradictory, oftentimes confusing, and never entirely clear; this is not because Richter doesn’t know what he’s talking about but rather because he is either suspicious of or not entirely interested in that sort of precision. After all, this is the man who once said, “To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too.” At the heart of Never Look Away is a major fabrication, in which the nature of Richter’s relationship to his aunt was entirely embellished. Henckel von Donnersmarck made this change because reality, as it stood, simply didn’t make for a good film. These changes, like the blurring of Richter’s paintings, inexorably lead us to some sort of truth. Perhaps this is why Richter can denounce the film saying it both distorts his biography but still remains too true for him to watch.

[aion-rsa]

20 Underrated Wrestling Games

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Whether you don’t know the difference between a mark and a bump or you can name the main event of every WrestleMania, you’re probably aware of at least some of the absolute best wrestling games of all-time. Titles like SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain, WWF No Mercy, and WCW/NWO Revenge have transcended the popularity of professional wrestling itself and have become a part of many gamers’ fondest memories.

Yet, there are some forgotten wrestling games that are still worth remembering. While it’s true that there are well-defined tops and bottoms in the wrestling game hierarchy, there are also a few titles somewhere near the middle that have been unfairly lumped together even though some of them deserve a spot near the top of the card with the undisputed legends of the wrestling game scene.

So join us as we look at 20 of the most underrated wrestling games of all-time:

20. Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special

1994 | Human Entertainment | Super Famicom

Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special’s status as one of the earliest wrestling games with a substantial story mode is noteworthy enough. However, what really makes this one special is the fact that one of the game’s scenarios writers was Suda51: the legendary game director known for some of the weirdest games ever made. 

True to form, this game is weirder than you could ever imagine. I can’t think of another wrestling game that ends with the protagonist killing themselves after realizing that their championship win is hollow due to the pain and losses they suffered along the way, and while I’m grateful no other game has tried something like that, this title’s dark and bizarre story should at least make it more talked about than it typically is. 

19. Natsume Championship Wrestling

1994 |  Natsume  | SNES

This is hardly the best wrestling game on this list (clearly), but it does represent a fascinating turning point for wrestling video games that is sometimes overlooked. 

This game combined two eras of wrestling games by featuring the more simplistic arcade style of many early console wrestling titles with a few concepts (such as an advanced fatigue system) that would go on to help shape the more complex wrestling games that would define the years to come. If you like that classic style of wrestling game, this is one of the best ways to revisit it. 

18. Wrestling Revolution 3D

2014 |  MDickie  | Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Mac, Ouya 

Let’s be clear: this is a very bad game. It’d go so far as to call it objectively bad in many ways. However, it’s the fact that the game is so bad that makes it so much fun. 

Considered by many to be maybe the only example of a “So bad, it’s good” wrestling game, Wrestling Revolution is slow, awkward, broken, and clearly made with love. At a time when so many of the recent yearly WWE games end up being glitchy messes anyway, there’s something to be said for a game that embraces its glitchiness and usually leads to a lot of laughs. 

17. WWE ‘13

2012 |  Yuke’s  | PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360

As suggested above, there’s a point where it’s hard for all but the most hardcore WWE game fans to distinguish recent WWE titles from one another. Maybe that’s why WWE ‘13 is sometimes forgotten when we’re talking about the best relatively modern wrestling games. 

This game’s best feature has to be its “Attitude Era” story modes which let you relive some of the best moments from WWE’s most beloved period. More importantly, this game benefited from pretty good animations and a hit detection system that made it feel good to play years before the clutter of this series’ engine would drag these titles down. 

16. WCW vs. The World

Given that PlayStation gamers spent years lamenting that N64 owners got to play WCW/NWO Revenge and WWF No Mercy (two of the best wrestling games ever), I’m shocked that we don’t hear more people praise WCW vs. The World. 

Essentially the predecessor to those brilliant N64 games made by AKI, WCW vs. The World is by far the closest PlayStation gamers came to getting a wrestling game on the level of the best N64 titles. It’s pretty rough compared to those titles, but I can’t help but think of the years I spent missing out on this true gem.

15. WWF War Zone

1998 | Sculptured Software, Acclaim | PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy

Granted, it’s not nearly as good as the best wrestling games of its era, but at a time when WWE (then WWF) was enjoying an incredible popularity resurgence, WWF War Zone allowed fans to live out a truly special era of wrestling.

War Zone’s roster is a time capsule of that era that includes a fascinating blend of big-name stars and notable novelty acts. Its gameplay could have been much smoother, but the game’s presentation and graphics made it feel special. It’s still one of the better PS1 wrestling games of its era and is sure to invoke a strong sense of nostalgia.

14. Legends of Wrestling II

2002 | Sculptured Software, Acclaim | PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance

Legends of Wrestling II’s appeal was (and always will be) its roster. This game’s roster of legendary wrestlers includes some names that still haven’t been included in modern WWE titles. The list of superstars in this game includes Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Mil Mascaras, Bam Bam Bigelow, and many more legends.

The game’s appeal goes beyond its roster, though. The game’s territory-based story mode, which lovingly recreates the structure of ‘80s wrestling, is one of the most inventive ever featured in a wrestling game. It even lets you recreate the famous feud between Jerry Lawler and Andy Kaufman.

13. TNA Impact!

2008 | Midway Games | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Nintendo DS

TNA Impact was not a great game. Its roster was thin, its gameplay needed a few more months in development, and it just didn’t have nearly enough modes and features to compete with WWE titles. However, the one thing TNA Impact did have was the benefits of the TNA name.

It turns out that counts for quite a lot. Developed during the arguable peak of TNA’s talent level, Impact allowed you to play as everyone, from Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe to AJ Styles and Abyss. On top of that, the game benefited from its impressive presentation and a surprisingly deep story mode. It was far from perfect, but it was and is a must-have for any TNA fans.

12. MicroLeague Wrestling

1987 | MicroLeague | Commodore 64, Amiga, DOS, Atari ST, AmigaOS

MicroLeague Wrestling is arguably the most obscure, odd, and fascinating game on this list. Released for Commodore 64, Amiga, DOS, and Atari ST, MicroLeague was actually a professional wrestling strategy game that allowed you to decide matches and careers through a series of turn-based commands.

It may feel hopelessly outdated today, but MicroLeague Wrestling was a surprisingly advanced concept at a time when wrestling games were dirt simple. It would be fascinating to revisit this concept through some kind of modern wrestling management game.

11. The Main Event

1988| Konami | Arcade

You’d think that a wrestling game released by Konami in 1988 would be better known, but The Main Event has somehow managed to mostly escape the scrutinizing lens of history. That might have something to do with its unlicensed roster that was only vaguely (and hilariously) based on actual wrestlers.

Still, The Main Event should have been a stepping stone for bigger Konami arcade wrestling games to come. It featured deep wrestling gameplay (for the time) that served as a preview of some more notable wrestling games to come.

10. WCW Wrestling

1989| Nihon Bussan | NES

The NES wasn’t exactly known as a haven for great wrestling games, but WCW Wrestling still deserves to be remembered above most of its console contemporaries. Somehow, though, memories of it remain relegated to the few that played it and are not always as fond as they should be.

WCW Wrestling not only offered WCW fans the chance to play as some of their favorite wrestlers of the era, but it included features such as an expanded ringside area and customizable move sets that were ahead of their time. This game certainly remains one of the most playable of its generation.

Read more

Culture

WWE: The History of WrestleMania Battle Royals

By Gavin Jasper

Games

Lost WCW Game for NES Has Been Digitially Rescued

By Matthew Byrd

9. WCW Mayhem

1999| EA | PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy

It’s generally agreed that the N64 got better overall wrestling games than the PS1, but it’s simply a fact that the N64’s WCW games were better than those featured on the PlayStation. However, WCW Mayhem did offer PS1 gamers a taste of something pretty good (especially if they missed out on WCW vs. The World).

Granted, Mayhem was a poor man’s version of the WCW N64 wrestling games (its canceled sequel was going to be developed by the same team that made those N64 games), but it was unfairly overlooked by many PS1 gamers who were burned by too many bad wrestling games over the years. Of course, the game’s N64 version was less impressive in comparison to its direct competition.

8. Power Move Pro Wrestling

1996| Yuke’s | PlayStation

Power Move Pro Wrestling was originally based on the NJPW promotion, but it seems that fears over the international popularity of that promotion (at the time) caused the NJPW stars to be replaced with generic wrestlers with NJPW move sets. That decision stands as this game’s most glaring weakness.

Otherwise, this is a solid wrestling title for its era. Power Move Pro Wrestling was released on the cusp of an incredible generation of wrestling titles, but even though it lacks some of the refinement and features of those games, it does boast some admirable 3D gameplay that was head and shoulders above many other wrestling games at the time.

7. WWE Raw 2

2003| Anchor Inc. | Xbox

The WWE Raw games for Xbox were generally not as strong as their GameCube and PS2 counterparts, but they have been unfairly swept under the rug by fans that feel that they had very little to offer.

WWE Raw 2 actually boasted a few features that would soon become standard. The most notable of those features is the game’s “Create an Entrance,” which not only let you create custom Titantron videos but even let you import your own music. Raw 2 also featured an interesting RPG-lite story mode that complemented its more arcadey elements.

6. Fire Pro Gaiden: Blazing Tornado

1994| Human Entertainment | Arcade, Sega Saturn

Fire Pro Gaiden: Blazing Tornado was a 1994 Arcade/Sega Saturn game that combined elements of Saturday Night Slam Masters, Street Fighter, and more “traditional” pro wrestling games. It was a strange hybrid that was sadly overlooked by too many gamers.

Blazing Tornado is more of a fighting game than a wrestling game, but the ways that it incorporates grappling and other pro wrestling elements make it one of the more notable games of its kind. Its visuals are also enjoyable in a cartoonish kind of way.

5. WWE WrestleMania XIX

2003| Yuke’s | GameCube, Wii

While WrestleMania X8 and XIX would eventually be spun into the overall superior Day of Reckoning titles, WrestleMania XIX deserves to be remembered both as the forerunner of that series and for its wonderfully absurd story mode.

WrestleMania XIX’s story mode saw you seek revenge on Vince McMahon by fighting regular employees and other wrestlers across construction sites, barges, malls, and other random locations. The goal is to cause enough havoc to ruin WrestleMania. It’s a glorious piece of “who came up with this?” game design.

4. Wrestle Kingdom 2

2007 | Yuke’s | PlayStation 2

Wrestle Kingdom 2’s release date is notable not only because it’s the newest game on this particular list but also because it was released at a time when major wrestling games were veering more into “simulation” territory, a time when wrestling games stopped catering to more casual players.

Well, Wrestle Kingdom 2 happens to be “arcadey” and accessible in all of the right places without sacrificing depth. Its gameplay is deep enough for genre masters, but can also be picked up fairly quickly. The fact that it so happens to feature some brilliant tournament modes along with an impressive collection of Japanese stars is just the bow that tops this gift to wrestling.

3. WWE Smackdown! vs Raw 2006

2005| Yuke’s | PlayStation 2, PSP

“Underrated” might be a bit of a stretch in this instance considering that those who love this game place it alongside the greatest wrestling games ever made, but the fact remains that not enough gamers know that this is an absolutely brilliant wrestling title.

In fact, some believe this to be the perfect middle ground between SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain’s lovably ridiculous gameplay and the more grounded games that would follow in this series. SvR 2006 includes an unbelievable number of match types, a very welcome general manager mode, and pick up and play gameplay that some at the time compared to the timeless WWF No Mercy. It deserves to be remembered as a classic.

2. King of Colosseum II

2004| Spike | PlayStation

While there are quite a few Japan-only wrestling games that would qualify as underrated in the West, many consider King of Colosseum II to be the crown jewel of that particular crowd. With its massive roster, deep grappling system, and incredible create-a-wrestler mode, this game is often thought of as the closest we’ve come to a 3D successor to the Fire Pro Wrestling series (it was made by the same team responsible for many of the early games in that series). It’s a shame that it was never exported to the West.

1. Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation

2002| AKI Corporation | GameCube

Many people know that AKI Corporation, developers of those classic N64 wrestling games like WWF No Mercy, went on to develop the first two excellent Def Jam titles. What fewer people remember is that AKI also developed this absolute gem of a wrestling game.

Essentially an anime wrestling game, Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation sees good and evil wrestlers battle across the universe. Bolstered by AKI’s all-time classic grappling gameplay, Ultimate Muscle proves to be a wonderfully over-the-top wrestling game that’s just as fun to watch as it is to play. Imagine if DragonBall FighterZ and WWF No Mercy had a video game child. This is what you’d get, and it’s better than you can imagine.

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[roman-catholic-mass-readings]

24th November >> Mass Readings (Except USA)

Saints Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his Companions, Martyrs  

    on 

Tuesday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time.

Tuesday, Thirty Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

(Liturgical Colour: Red)

(Readings for the feria (Tuesday))

(There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Tuesday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

First Reading

Apocalypse 14:14-19

The harvest and the vintage of the earth are ripe

In my vision I, John, saw a white cloud and, sitting on it, one like a son of man with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the sanctuary, and shouted aloud to the one sitting on the cloud, ‘Put your sickle in and reap: harvest time has come and the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ Then the one sitting on the cloud set his sickle to work on the earth, and the earth’s harvest was reaped.    Another angel, who also carried a sharp sickle, came out of the temple in heaven, and the angel in charge of the fire left the altar and shouted aloud to the one with the sharp sickle, ‘Put your sickle in and cut all the bunches off the vine of the earth; all its grapes are ripe.’ So the angel set his sickle to work on the earth and harvested the whole vintage of the earth and put it into a huge winepress, the winepress of God’s anger.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 95(96):10-13

R/ The Lord comes to rule the earth.

Proclaim to the nations: ‘God is king.’    The world he made firm in its place;    he will judge the peoples in fairness.

R/ The Lord comes to rule the earth.

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,    let the sea and all within it thunder praise, let the land and all it bears rejoice,    all the trees of the wood shout for joy at the presence of the Lord for he comes,    he comes to rule the earth.

R/ The Lord comes to rule the earth.

With justice he will rule the world,    he will judge the peoples with his truth.

R/ The Lord comes to rule the earth.

Gospel Acclamation

Luke 21:28

Alleluia, alleluia! Stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand. Alleluia!

Or:

Revelation 2:10

Alleluia, alleluia! Even if you have to die, says the Lord, keep faithful, and I will give you the crown of life. Alleluia!

Gospel

Luke 21:5-11

The destruction of the Temple foretold

When some were talking about the Temple, remarking how it was adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings, Jesus said, ‘All these things you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed.’ And they put to him this question: ‘Master,’ they said ‘when will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that this is about to take place?’    ‘Take care not to be deceived,’ he said ‘because many will come using my name and saying, “I am he” and, “The time is near at hand.” Refuse to join them. And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened, for this is something that must happen but the end is not so soon.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and plagues and famines here and there; there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Saints Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his Companions, Martyrs

(Liturgical Colour: Red)

(Readings for the memorial)

(There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Tuesday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

EITHER:

First Reading

2 Chronicles 24:18-22

'You have deserted the Lord: now he deserts you'

The Judaeans abandoned the Temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, for the worship of sacred poles and idols. Because of their guilt, God’s anger fell on Judah and Jerusalem. He sent them prophets to bring them back to the Lord, but when these gave their message, they would not listen. The spirit of God took possession of Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood up before the people and said, ‘God says this, “Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord to no good purpose? You have deserted the Lord, now he deserts you.”’ They then plotted against him and by order of the king stoned him in the court of the Temple of the Lord. King Joash, forgetful of the kindness that Jehoiada, the father of Zechariah, had shown him, killed Jehoiada’s son who cried out as he died, ‘The Lord sees and he will avenge!’

OR: --------

First reading 2 Maccabees 6:18,21,24-31 I am glad to suffer because of the awe which he inspires in me

Eleazar, one of the foremost teachers of the Law, a man already advanced in years and of most noble appearance, was being forced to open his mouth wide to swallow pig’s flesh. Those in charge of the impious banquet, because of their long-standing friendship with him, took him aside and privately urged him to have meat brought of a kind he could properly use, prepared by himself, and only pretend to eat the portions of sacrificial meat as prescribed by the king.    ‘Such pretence’ he said ‘does not square with our time of life; many young people would suppose that Eleazar at the age of ninety had conformed to the foreigners’ way of life, and because I had played this part for the sake of a paltry brief spell of life might themselves be led astray on my account; I should only bring defilement and disgrace on my old age. Even though for the moment I avoid execution by man, I can never, living or dead, elude the grasp of the Almighty. Therefore if I am man enough to quit this life here and now I shall prove myself worthy of my old age, and I shall have left the young a noble example of how to make a good death, eagerly and generously, for the venerable and holy laws.’    With these words he went straight to the block. His escorts, so recently well disposed towards him, turned against him after this declaration, which they regarded as sheer madness. Just before he died under the blows, he groaned aloud and said, ‘The Lord whose knowledge is holy sees clearly that, though I might have escaped death, whatever agonies of body I now endure under this bludgeoning, in my soul I am glad to suffer, because of the awe which he inspires in me.’    This was how he died, leaving his death as an example of nobility and a record of virtue not only for the young but for the great majority of the nation.

OR: --------

First reading 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14 'The King of the world will raise us up to live for ever'

There were seven brothers who were arrested with their mother. The king tried to force them to taste pig’s flesh, which the Law forbids, by torturing them with whips and scourges. One of them, acting as spokesman for the others, said, ‘What are you trying to find out from us? We are prepared to die rather than break the laws of our ancestors.’    With his last breath the second brother exclaimed, ‘Inhuman fiend, you may discharge us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since it is for his laws that we die, to live again for ever.’    After him, they amused themselves with the third, who on being asked for his tongue promptly thrust it out and boldly held out his hands, with these honourable words, ‘It was heaven that gave me these limbs; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again.’ The king and his attendants were astounded at the young man’s courage and his utter indifference to suffering.    When this one was dead they subjected the fourth to the same savage torture. When he neared his end he cried, ‘Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas for you there can be no resurrection, no new life.’

OR: --------

First reading 2 Maccabees 7:1,20-23,27-29 Make death welcome, so that in the day of mercy I may receive you back

There were seven brothers who were arrested with their mother. The king tried to force them to taste pig’s flesh, which the Law forbids, by torturing them with whips and scourges. But the mother was especially admirable and worthy of honourable remembrance, for she watched the death of seven sons in the course of a single day, and endured it resolutely because of her hopes in the Lord. Indeed she encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors; filled with noble conviction, she reinforced her womanly argument with manly courage, saying to them, ‘I do not know how you appeared in my womb; it was not I who endowed you with breath and life, I had not the shaping of your every part. It is the creator of the world, ordaining the process of man’s birth and presiding over the origin of all things, who in his mercy will most surely give you back both breath and life, seeing that you now despise your own existence for the sake of his laws.’    She said to her youngest son, ‘My son, have pity on me; I carried you nine months in my womb and suckled you three years, fed you and reared you to the age you are now (and cherished you). I implore you, my child, observe heaven and earth, consider all that is in them, and acknowledge that God made them out of what did not exist, and that mankind comes into being in the same way. Do not fear this executioner, but prove yourself worthy of your brothers, and make death welcome, so that in the day of mercy I may receive you back in your brothers’ company.’

OR: --------

First reading Wisdom 3:1-9 The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God

The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God, no torment shall ever touch them. In the eyes of the unwise, they did appear to die, their going looked like a disaster, their leaving us, like annihilation; but they are in peace. If they experienced punishment as men see it, their hope was rich with immortality; slight was their affliction, great will their blessings be. God has put them to the test and proved them worthy to be with him; he has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a holocaust. When the time comes for his visitation they will shine out; as sparks run through the stubble, so will they. They shall judge nations, rule over peoples, and the Lord will be their king for ever. They who trust in him will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with him in love; for grace and mercy await those he has chosen.

OR: --------

First reading Ecclesiasticus 51:1-8 Thanks to God the saviour

I will give thanks to you, Lord and King,    and praise you, God my saviour,    I give thanks to your name; for you have been protector and support to me,    and redeemed my body from destruction, from the snare of the lying tongue,    from lips that fabricate falsehood; and in the presence of those around me    you have been my support, you have redeemed me, true to the greatness of your mercy and of your name,    from the fangs of those who would devour me, from the hands of those seeking my life,    from the many ordeals which I have endured, from the stifling heat which hemmed me in,    from the heart of a fire which I had not kindled, from deep in the belly of Sheol,    from the unclean tongue and the lying word –    the perjured tongue slandering me to the king. My soul has been close to death,    my life had gone down to the brink of Sheol. They were surrounding me on every side, there was no-one to support me;    I looked for someone to help – in vain. Then I remembered your mercy, Lord,    and your deeds from earliest times, how you deliver those who wait for you patiently,    and save them from the clutches of their enemies.

-------- ________

EITHER: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 30(31):3-4,6,8,16-17

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Be a rock of refuge for me,    a mighty stronghold to save me, for you are my rock, my stronghold.    For your name’s sake, lead me and guide me.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Into your hands I commend my spirit.    It is you who will redeem me, Lord. As for me, I trust in the Lord:    let me be glad and rejoice in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

My life is in your hands, deliver me    from the hands of those who hate me. Let your face shine on your servant.    Save me in your love.

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 33(34):2-9

From all my terrors the Lord set me free.

I will bless the Lord at all times,    his praise always on my lips; in the Lord my soul shall make its boast.    The humble shall hear and be glad.

From all my terrors the Lord set me free.

Glorify the Lord with me.    Together let us praise his name. I sought the Lord and he answered me;    from all my terrors he set me free.

From all my terrors the Lord set me free.

Look towards him and be radiant;    let your faces not be abashed. This poor man called, the Lord heard him    and rescued him from all his distress.

From all my terrors the Lord set me free.

The angel of the Lord is encamped    around those who revere him, to rescue them. Taste and see that the Lord is good.    He is happy who seeks refuge in him.

From all my terrors the Lord set me free.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 123(124):2-5,7-8

Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.

If the Lord had not been on our side    when men rose up against us, then would they have swallowed us alive    when their anger was kindled.

Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.

Then would the waters have engulfed us,    the torrent gone over us; over our head would have swept    the raging waters.

Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.

Indeed the snare has been broken    and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord,    who made heaven and earth.

Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 125(126):1-6

Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.

When the Lord delivered Zion from bondage,    it seemed like a dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter,    on our lips there were songs.

Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.

The heathens themselves said: ‘What marvels    the Lord worked for them!’ What marvels the Lord worked for us!    Indeed we were glad.

Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.

Deliver us, O Lord, from our bondage    as streams in dry land. Those who are sowing in tears    will sing when they reap.

Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.

They go out, they go out, full of tears,    carrying seed for the sowing: they come back, they come back, full of song,    carrying their sheaves.

Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 15(16):1-2,5,7-8,11

You are my inheritance, O Lord.

Preserve me, God, I take refuge in you.    I say to the Lord: ‘You are my God.’ O Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup;    it is you yourself who are my prize.

You are my inheritance, O Lord.

I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel,    who even at night directs my heart. I keep the Lord ever in my sight:    since he is at my right hand, I shall stand firm.

You are my inheritance, O Lord.

You will show me the path of life,    the fullness of joy in your presence,    at your right hand happiness for ever.

You are my inheritance, O Lord.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 22(23):1-3a,5-6

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

The Lord is my shepherd;    there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures    where he gives me repose.

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

Near restful waters he leads me,    to revive my drooping spirit. He guides me along the right path;    he is true to his name.

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

You have prepared a banquet for me    in the sight of my foes. My head you have anointed with oil;    my cup is overflowing.

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me    all the days of my life. In the Lord’s own house shall I dwell    for ever and ever.

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 39(40):2,4,7-10

Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.

I waited, I waited for the Lord    and he stooped down to me;    he heard my cry. He put a new song into my mouth,    praise of our God.

Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.

You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings,    but an open ear. You do not ask for holocaust and victim.    Instead, here am I.

Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.

In the scroll of the book it stands written    that I should do your will. My God, I delight in your law    in the depth of my heart.

Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.

Your justice I have proclaimed    in the great assembly. My lips I have not sealed;    you know it, O Lord.

Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 88(89):2-5,21-22,25,27

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord.

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord;    through all ages my mouth will proclaim your truth. Of this I am sure, that your love lasts for ever,    that your truth is firmly established as the heavens.

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord.

‘I have made a covenant with my chosen one;    I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your dynasty for ever    and set up your throne through all ages.

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord.

‘I have found David my servant    and with my holy oil anointed him. My hand shall always be with him    and my arm shall make him strong.

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord.

‘My truth and my love shall be with him;    by my name his might shall be exalted. He will say to me: “You are my father,    my God, the rock who saves me.”’

I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 95(96):1-3,7-8,10

Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples.

O sing a new song to the Lord,    sing to the Lord all the earth.    O sing to the Lord, bless his name.

Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples.

Proclaim his help day by day,    tell among the nations his glory    and his wonders among all the peoples.

Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples.

Give the Lord, you families of peoples,    give the Lord glory and power;    give the Lord the glory of his name.

Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples.

Proclaim to the nations: ‘God is king.’    The world he made firm in its place;    he will judge the peoples in fairness.

Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 105(106):19-23

O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for your people.

They fashioned a calf at Horeb    and worshipped an image of metal, exchanging the God who was their glory    for the image of a bull that eats grass.

O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for your people.

They forgot the God who was their saviour,    who had done such great things in Egypt, such portents in the land of Ham,    such marvels at the Red Sea.

O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for your people.

For this he said he would destroy them,    but Moses, the man he had chosen, stood in the breach before him,    to turn back his anger from destruction.

O Lord, remember me out of the love you have for your people.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 109(110):1-4

You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.

The Lord’s revelation to my Master:    ‘Sit on my right:    your foes I will put beneath your feet.’

You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.

The Lord will wield from Zion    your sceptre of power:    rule in the midst of all your foes.

You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.

A prince from the day of your birth    on the holy mountains;    from the womb before the dawn I begot you.

You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.

The Lord has sworn an oath he will not change.    ‘You are a priest for ever,    a priest like Melchizedek of old.’

You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.

OR: --------

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 116(117):1-2

Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News. or Alleluia!

O praise the Lord, all you nations,    acclaim him all you peoples!

Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News. or Alleluia!

Strong is his love for us;    he is faithful for ever.

Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News. or Alleluia!

-------- ________

Gospel Acclamation Mt5:10

Alleluia, alleluia! Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Alleluia!

Or: Jn17:19

Alleluia, alleluia! For their sake I consecrate myself, so that they too may be consecrated in the truth. Alleluia!

Or: 2Co1:3-4

Alleluia, alleluia! Blessed be God, a gentle Father and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our sorrows. Alleluia!

Or: Jm1:12

Alleluia, alleluia! Happy the man who stands firm, for he has proved himself, and will win the crown of life. Alleluia!

Or: 1P4:14

Alleluia, alleluia! It is a blessing for you when they insult you for bearing the name of Christ, for the Spirit of God rests on you. Alleluia!

Or: cf.Te Deum

Alleluia, alleluia! We praise you, O God, we acknowledge you to be the Lord; the noble army of martyrs praise you, O Lord. Alleluia!

________

EITHER: --------

Gospel Matthew 10:17-22 The Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Beware of men: they will hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.    ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved.’

OR: --------

Gospel Matthew 10:28-33 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body

Jesus said to his apostles: ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.    ‘So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.’

OR: --------

Gospel Matthew 10:34-39 It is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword

Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth: it is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household.    ‘Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.’

OR: --------

Gospel Luke 9:23-26 The Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously

Jesus said:    ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self? For if anyone is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels.’

OR: --------

Gospel John 12:24-26 If a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it yields a rich harvest

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘I tell you, most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life. If a man serves me, he must follow me, wherever I am, my servant will be there too. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him.’

OR: --------

Gospel John 15:18-21 The world hated me before it hated you

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because my choice withdrew you from the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the words I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours as well. But it will be on my account that they will do all this, because they do not know the one who sent me.’

OR: --------

Gospel John 17:11-19 Father, keep those you have given me true to your name

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said:

‘Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us. While I was with them, I kept those you had given me true to your name. I have watched over them and not one is lost except the one who chose to be lost, and this was to fulfil the scriptures. But now I am coming to you and while still in the world I say these things to share my joy with them to the full. I passed your word on to them, and the world hated them, because they belong to the world no more than I belong to the world. I am not asking you to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself so that they too may be consecrated in truth.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

[pineaberry]

Fictober 2019: #15

Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Inspired by all the Quinn love on my dash, here it is:

The Transponder Station Pt. 2 aka Why Pissing off a Sith is a Bad Idea: An In Depth Analysis.

Pt. 1 Found Here: [X]

For all my Quinn fam:

@sunsetofdoom, @fluffynexu, @doomhamster, @riajade01, @aliyamirat, @kunoichi-ume, @cinlat, and the great @semper-draca

________________________

His actions were precise, she would give him that much. She’d often teased that he could remove someone’s lungs without as much as a drop of blood. The assessment would prove correct as both droids advanced and sought to corner her. He had meticulously written each line of code, each weapon designed to seize on whatever opening she left. All too soon she felt the burn of a blast nicking her side as she swung an arch a bit too wide. Her heart raced as she realized how naked and exposed she was without him. For too long she had been blind to how much she depended on his skill to clean up the edges. Now, with him standing impassively, she could see just how easy it was for someone who knew her so intimately to poke through the holes in her defenses. A multitude of emotions swirled around her like a maelstrom: anguish, fear, rage, despair. Yet she knew that if she allowed herself to drown in them, she may as well shut off her lightsabers and accept her fate. 

Volatile emotions had always been a particularly toxic element of the Dark Side. Hatred, cruelty, and rage had a way of igniting destruction chaotically.  She had used them before sparingly wielding them like a controlled explosion. However, in her current state, control was a hindrance she could ill afford. She needed chaos to circumvent the killing machines so attuned to her fighting style. And so it was that she reached into the void and the blackness she had vowed never to abuse.

His stomach was in knots as she saw her fight. It would be over in five blaster shots. She would never know how much he loved her. She would never know how thoroughly he he had broken his vow to Baras for her. Darth Baras had demanded her head the moment Draagh had been destroyed and it would have been easy for Malavai to comply. He could have tainted her kolto infusions, or murdered her through hundreds of different ways as she slept in his arms. Instead he lifted his blaster, the same she had gifted him, and aimed at her shoulder. How much of her destruction would come from the very kindness she had crafted for him?

One…

Two…

The first shot struck true and he saw her fall back. Guilt rose like bile in his throat and the second shot went wide, deflecting off one of the droids. He felt ill wishing this to be over, and yet, when he looked into her deep blue eyes he knew: He would die soon. He raised his blaster once more as his heart and his mind warred for supremacy. His head ultimately won and his fingers squeezed the trigger. 

Three…

Another blast, perfectly executed pierced through the opening she’d left. It was the gap he had defended countless times in the past. It was the same gaping hole in her shield he would have given his life to protect not fifteen minutes ago. He felt nauseous and his only solace was the constant mantra promising it would be over quickly. His body once again reacted with a sickening ease as he spotted more cracks in her defense.

Four…

She reeled and one of the droids landed a blow. To those facing her she had been as unstoppable as the rising tide. Yet he knew every twist of her form, every hum of her weapon. He alone could perceive the weaknesses no one else could, and so of course, Baras would choose him to execute her. Darth Baras had always lured him with promises of grandeur in return for his patience and blind loyalty.

All too late he realized, he didn’t want this. A traitor’s death at her hands was merciful. He deserved to suffer. His heart felt as though it would rupture. The pain spread from his chest as he heard her lightsabers hiss and hum frantically.

He had to remind himself why he was doing this.

Balmorra was a means to an end, he was a pawn being hidden away from other players in the game. Even his mission with the Wrath was just a way for the pawn to navigate across the board until he could strike. Now was that time. Baras had begun gathering his power and there was no place left for an apprentice who would one day threaten to snap her leash. 

Revolution was coming. The Empire was changing, it had to or it would certainly fall to the Republic. Baras had only confirmed what Malavai and many other officers already knew: The Emperor only cared about the Emperor. While his empire and subjects were at the brink of collapse, he had run off on scholarly pursuits that would do nothing to alleviate the resource shortages. Consolidation of power was the only viable option. But consolidation behind whom? Baras? The man didn’t know or care about anything that didn’t feed his own ego.

Consolidation would come, yes. The Empire would rise but it would be Lord Tremas who would lead the charge.

Unfortunately, such a revolution meant sacrifice.

He was beholden to Darth Baras but the man was quickly weakening. His terror was not misplaced. Lord Tremas would soon end his little charade and after today she would be cleansed of all weakness. He would obey Darth Baras, as was his duty, but he would forever belong to her. He would die to eliminate the crack in her armor. 

Malavai’s heart screamed in agony as he saw the first lick of blood on the floor. He had destroyed the only person who had ever cared about him. He was betraying what he held most precious. For the Empire. It had to be done for the good of the Empire.

He took a frantic breath realizing he was already too far gone into the abyss to know how to pull away. He had to make this quick. He had to be the one to do it, not out of hatred or deceit, but out of mercy. It would be better this way. 

Five shots. Only one more… one more and it would all be over.

My life for yours...

Five…

The blast echoed so much louder in Quinn’s ears than all the others before it. 

The final blow came with sickening precision and a blinding flash of light. She screamed like a feral beast as her pain and rage bubbled over. Time seemed to slow as Dark Force energy focused and gathered within Tremas’ form. The red laser blast had slipped past her defenses and burned into the left side of her face marring her porcelain skin. She twisted away before it could do any real damage. Her movements were a blur and shower of sparks scattered over the ground as she tore out one of the machine’s legs with a vicious crush of raw Force. Her entire body was rippling in savage power. 

With a start, Malavai stepped aside as bits of droid littered the floor. Dread coiled around his heart as he saw her straighten for the span of a breath before lashing out. She fought and slashed madly at the machines like a rabid manka cat. Her movements were little more than a streak of color and, before the programming could compensate, the first droid fell torn to pieces. She stood triumphantly stepping atop the mechanical corpse. The second droid advanced, turrets firing. Crimson blasts clipped her shoulder and thigh, but it only seemed to enrage her more. Quinn ducked as he saw a pair of violet crescents fly from her hands as she cast out her lightsabers towards the attacker. The droid’s primary weapons were cleaved in half and it stumbled back now crippled and damaged beyond repair. She plucked her weapons from out of mid-air as they were recalled and she stormed up to the damaged droid. She clenched her lightsabers tightly as she summoned a tidal wave of dark force energy to blast at the droid. The dark pulse burst forth like a weapon in its own right and slammed the battle droid into the far wall denting the metal plating and crumpling it like tissue paper under the impact.

She shook with ill contained fury before turning to her betrayer. His blaster remained in his hand but, like a prey animal suddenly caught in the presence of a  ravenous predator, he stood deathly still. Her eyes bore into his, smoldering in fury and hatred. She stormed up to him as her lightsabers hummed at either side, as though daring him to fire.

It was over. He knew it was over, just as his calculations predicted.

Her mind was a whirlwind. Had he foolishly confused her mercy with weakness? All of his supposed admiration and devotion, had it all been a lie to hide his condescending thoughts? She had raised him far above his station, far above HER to the point where she depended on him. Oh how amused he must have felt each time she deferred to him. How he must have reveled in keeping a Sith Lord like a simpering dog vying for his approval. How easily he led her to the slaughter in a noose fashioned from her own idealist interpretation of love. She lunged at him and his shield generator flickered as her lightsabers made contact. He was jolted into action and he attempted to move away, shooting haphazardly at her as she continued to slash at him. Her wrath was clearly visible, but her power was fueled by pain. Gone were the numbers and all of his meticulous planning. She was chaos incarnate and he was forced to use depend on sheer instinct to stay out of her reach.

Memories bled through the red haze of her vision and tore at her soul: his flustered mannerisms, his discreet smirks, their first mission together, his touch on her skin, their first embrace, their first kiss… all of it a lie. All of it had been nothing more than the machinations of a bloated spymaster in Dromund Kaas. 

She would not be manipulated. 

She would not be mocked!

Each tainted memory physically manifested itself with a vicious strike of her blades. He fought back desperately using his blaster hoping she would be forced to exert her efforts on defense rather than attack. Yet he knew no amount of knowledge could ever make him a match for a Sith. His blaster soon ran out of ammunition and he tossed it aside worthless. He drew his vibroknife, a laughable action. Soon he was cornered and his shield generator wavered as it was depleted. One more stroke and it would end. 

Malavai’s gaze then flickered behind her and she spun about just in time to block a mutilated droid’s desperate attempt at crushing her with a cross of her violet sabers. She all but growled before throwing the immense war machine back in three pieces. Dark crimson energy flowed around her in wild deranged patterns visible to even the most force-blind creatures.

She spun about and her blue eyes were burning crimson as she met his gaze. There was a moment when neither of them moved and Malavai realized she was regaining control. He had to give her a reason… he lunged fully expecting to be speared by her lightsabers but the pain never came.

Instead, he felt his blade enter her side with a sickening ease. There was a hum and he released the knife just in time to avoid losing his hand. He stumbled back onto the floor disarmed and defeated. The severed handle clattered and skittered across the room.

Malavai looked up at the Sith Lord he had so deeply wronged and only now did he realize his mistake. She should have blocked that. It was easy. Simple. Clean. She should have been able to block that!

The Wrath loomed over him, her mind’s focus sharpened to a lethal point. She would not be weak, not in front of him, not ever again. He would learn through pain since patience seemed to have no effect on him. Her gaze burned as the dark side corruption tinted her eyes a brilliant reddish gold. This betrayal could not stand unpunished. An example had to be made. Discipline was the core of the Imperial Military, and she would bring him to his knees. He reeled back cowering from her while holding his side. Her mask had fallen and the terrible sith beneath filled him with more dread than any audience with Darth Baras. She had let him stab her. Why? Why wasn’t he dead? Why had she... How could he have gotten so much so wrong?

“I should have known…” he uttered frustration and defeat evident in his voice, “I thought I’d programmed the perfect killing machine for you. I was painstakingly precise.”

“After all your calculations, all the time we’ve been together, have you not realized that I am unbeatable?” she spat with disdain as her burnt orange eyes bored into his wavering gaze. 

He didn’t recognize this Sith Lord. Her features were hard and mottled damaged encircled her left eye. There was no warmth in her voice, no life. The gentle core he had believed her to possess had in-fact been durasteel. She was not some meek child playing among the stars. His lord had simply learned to control her darker tendencies behind a mask of oblivious kindness for her companions’ benefit... And he had repaid her considerate accommodation by ripping it off. Regret overwhelmed him and he bowed his head in shame.

“I’m at a loss,” he whispered, “I have betrayed you, conspired with your most hated enemy. I know it is meaningless to express my deep regret. I don’t expect your mercy.”

Her eyes flashed red and a dark twisted voice echoed within her thoughts.

Mercy. My mercy. Sith have no mercy. To the very end he mocks us, laughs at us in defiance. 

Teach him respect. Make him beg, and plead, and grovel! TEACH HIM HIS PLACE!

Let him die laughing.

He felt a spike of raw terror as he inadvertently detonated her rage.

“It’s useless to defy me,” she growled before unleashing a feral triumphant burst of power which cast him into the far wall. Like a child with a rag doll who had caused some perceived slight, she tossed him aside before letting him crumple to the floor. 

He managed to pull himself to his feet but no sooner had he turned to face her when he was met by her piercing gaze. Blood red eyes glowed menacingly before she raised her hand in a claw-like gesture. He had seen that motion many times with Baras and it had often sent fear through his heart. Her own gesture when executing a force choke was sleeker almost delicate, but this time it was different. There was true rage behind the action. A new sort of terror flooded him as he realized that he had never witnessed her execute a force choke before, but the ease with which she did it betrayed practice. Fear and panic set hold as a coil of intangible power constricted around his throat.

He was dying… just as he planned...

Malavai fell to his knees before her as she extinguished his life with the same ease one could blow out a candle. The last thing he saw was his lord’s scarred face twisted in anger. Her eyes, once so warm and blue, were now blood-red with corruption. She was Sith, as cold and vengeful as the darkest of them. As his vision dimmed and he felt his life slip away, Quinn could only feel horror at what he had forced her to become.

Now he knows… now they will ALL know...

She observed him claw at his throat in vain and it soothed her vindictive edge. His body twitched as he choked and gasped for a breath that he would never draw. Tremas saw the terror in his blue eyes before they fluttered closed and she released him only once he’d collapsed in an undignified heap.

He felt a rush of power and she closed her eyes to let it flow through her.

Power. Control. Subjugation. It feels good. It’s been so long… 

She stretched out her arm enjoying the sheer rush of power at her fingertips. Her kind facade had evaporated. All of her self-imposed rules and social etiquette were tossed aside. That particular mask lay discarded and the monster beneath could finally breathe.

Yessss... That’s what I’m talking about.

________________________

Read More About Tremas HERE!

Original Fictober Promp List HERE!

[aridara]

Verifying a list of “hateful feminist quotes”. (From S to Z + groups and anonymous individuals)

Final part of my rebuttal at all those lists that are supposed to show how feminism is evil, but in practice shows how anti-feminists rely on an extremely inaccurate (and, in some parts, deliberately lying) list.

"Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."

Margaret Sanger

False.

"The most merciful thing a family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it."

Margaret Sanger, founder of planned parenthood

True, but extremely edited; not hateful. I’ve bolded the parts that anti-feminists didn't bother to include in the list:

"Thus we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live twelve months."

"This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five."

"Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members."

(Yeah, anti-feminists cut out a LOT.)

Also: she was talking about using birth control to deal with unwanted pregnancies. Not about using infanticide to kill already-born children.

“I do want to be able to explain to a 9-year-old boy in terms he will understand why I think it’s OK for girls to wear shirts that revel in their superiority over boys.”

– Treena Shapiro

Unverifiable.

“In general, I support a girl’s right to offend any member of the opposite sex who happens to cross her path. In fact, I’d much rather see a little girl wearing a shirt that mocks boys than one that turns them on.”

– Treena Shapiro

Also unverifiable. In fact, I think it's not even hateful at all: it points out a double standard where there's a lot of men's shirts that mock women, while a lot of women's shirt are designed to look "seductive" to men - and the reverse doesn't happen.

(Small diversion: while I tried to look for this quote's source, I found this ebook. The 2-3 pages I read sound like a book version of these "List of hateful feminist quotes" lists.)

[insert literally any quote from the SCUM Manifesto]

Valerie Solanas

I won't give a different rating to each individual quote, given how these kinds of lists tend to have many, many, so fucking many quotes from Solanas. I'll only give a general rating.

Usually, in these "hateful feminist quotes" lists, all of the Solanas quotes are true and hateful, and come from the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) manifesto she wrote in 1967. However, I’m doubtful that they count as “quote by a famous feminist”, considering that:

SCUM was never founded - it stopped at its manifesto;

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM at the time was divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “This is satire in really bad taste”;

Feminists’ opinion of SCUM today is divided between “What is wrong with you, Valerie?” and “Who the hell is Valerie Solanas?”;

Absolutely nobody, feminist or not, condoned Solanas’ attack on Andy Warhol; and

Solanas's attack on Warhol wasn't motivated by her feminist beliefs.

“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men.”

– Elizabeth Cady Stanton

True, possibly hateful. But I want to point out something: this quote is from 1890. This is what anti-feminists believe modern feminism to be? Really? Haven’t they heard of how feminism isn’t a monolith, how there have been various discussions, schisms and revolutions during feminism's history, how there’s a lot of positions and criticism - oh, right, I forgot, feminism is evil and has always been the same since the dawn of time, duh. (# sarcasm)

“The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.”

- Sharon Stone; Actress

Almost 100% false. It also seems that Sharon either wasn’t a feminist during those years, or chose to not display her feminist beliefs back then. In either case, Sharon Stone cannot be considered a significantly important feminist by any stretch of the word.

"If the classroom situation is very heteropatriarchal--a large beginning class of 50 to 60 students, say, with few feminist students--I am likely to define my task as largely one of recruitment...of persuading students that women are oppressed,"

Professor Joyce Trebilcot of Washington University, as quoted in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women.

Hm, this is an interesting one.

It’s unverifiable. Yes, AGAIN. No, it doesn’t count that it’s (supposedly) in Christina Sommers’ book “Who Stole Feminism” - she still needs to source the quote. As far as I can tell, Sommers mught've just made that quote up and falsely attributed it to Trebilcot.

Not only that, but the quote  looks like it has been truncated. Considering the level of this list, I’m quite suspicious every time I see some ellypsis.

By the way: Sommers? Really?

“Men are animals. Don’t you think so?”

– Ireen von Wachenfeldt, radical feminist leader in Sweden

True and hateful, apparently (given that she quoted SOOOLAAANAAASS). Here's the link to the Wikipedia page on her - you'll have to run it on Google Translate or similar, though.

On another note: of all the quotes in anti-feminists' lists of "hateful feminist quotes" that are actually hateful quotes, it's noticeable how many of those come from Solanas alone. It’s almost as if anti-feminists focus excessively on her, and use her as the base that forms their opinion of all feminists.

I wondered if the woman married to a pig had read this ... Did that mean that all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts? ... Why are so many men really beasts? "

Jeanette Winterson "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit" 1993, pp.71 -76

Fictional. The novel is about a lesbian girl growing up in a Pentecostal community. At one point, various religious people from that same community take the main character and her girlfriend, and subject them to exorcism.

In response to a question concerning China’s policy of compulsory abortion after the first child, Molly Yard responded, “I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world”

(Gary Bauer, “Abetting Coercion in China,” The Washington Times, Oct. 10, 1989).

Unverifiable. There is no trace of the quote in the "Washington Times", but I think that I found the original source: the American Life League, an evidently anti-abortion group. You'll forgive me if I treat that source with all the respect it deserves.

...

We aren't done yet, though! Here's some more quotes from organizations or unknown individuals!

"We are taught, encouraged, moulded by and lulled into accepting a range of false notions about the family. As a source of some of our most profound experiences, it continues to be such an integral part of our emotional lives that it appears beyond criticism. Yet hiding from the truth of family life leaves women and children vulnerable."

Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women.

Unverifiable and not hateful. It sounds like they’re talking about how a lot of assumptions and myths about “proper” families have lead women to believe that abuse is a “normal” part of a relationship.

MALE: represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants...the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.

MAN: an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched...a contradictory baby-man...

TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... ‘Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."

From 'A Feminist Dictionary; ed. Kramarae & Triechler, Pandora Press, 1985

Unverifiable. The book DOES exist. What does NOT exist, is scans of it. Nor are there extensive citations of it - the only ones around are the same ones anti-feminists uses, same ellipsis and all. And, frankly, whoever first wrote this list has done such a sloppy job fact-checking this list that, by this point, I don’t trust them if they said that the sky is blue.

"Women have their faults- men have only two: everything they say and everything they do."

Popular Feminist Graffiti

Goddammit. Yet ANOTHER joke from a collection of jokes. No indication whatsoever this was from a feminist.

"Men, as a group, tend to be abusive, either verbally, sexually or emotionally. There are always the exceptions, but they are few and far between (I am married to one of them). There are different levels of violence and abuse and individual men buy into this system by varying degrees. But the male power structure always remains intact."

Message on FEMISA, responding to a request for arguments that men are unnecessary for a child to grow into mature adulthood.

Oh, now you’re just grasping at straws - misattributed. This quote is not from the FEMISA staff; it's from an e-mail sent to FEMISA. Come on - I thought this was a list of hateful quotes from *relevant* feminists - not from any random anon down the street!

"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male-controlled social structures. Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down."

Letter to the editor, signed: "Liberated Women", Boronia Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996

Unverifiable. Once again, the only places where this quote pops up are lists of “hateful feminist quotes”. And judging by the quality of this list, that isn’t nearly enough.

“The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist”

(National NOW Times, January, 1988).

Unverifiable (supposedly written in 1988). There’s a lot of citations for this particular quote (many from copies of this list), but no image of the original.

“We identify the agents of our oppression as men…….ALL MEN HAVE OPPRESSED WOMEN…..We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men……The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men.”

–The Redstockings Manifesto

True, but out of context. Once again, anti-feminists have deliberately cut out various parts of the original manifesto. Here's the full quote (the bolded parts are the ones anti-feminists cut out):

"III    We identify the agents of our oppression as men.  Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination.  All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest.  All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented.  Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force.  They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position.  All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women."

"IV    Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from men to institutions or to women themselves.  We condemn these arguments as evasions.  Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of the oppressor.  To blame institutions implies that men and women are equally victimized, obscures the fact that men benefit from the subordination of women, and gives men the excuse that they are forced to be oppressors.  On the contrary, any man is free to renounce his superior position, provided that he is willing to be treated like a woman by other men."

"We also reject the idea that women consent to or are to blame for their own oppression. Women's submission is not the result of brain-washing, stupidity or mental illness but of continual, daily pressure from men.  We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men."

"The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men.  The basis for this illusion is the isolation of individual relationships from their political context and the tendency of men to see any legitimate challenge to their privileges as persecution."

So, to sum it up:

Systemic sexism is caused by men.

All men benefit from this oppressive system.

Various people have tried to shift the blame for systemic sexism on "the institutions", which wrongly implies that both men and women are equally affected by sexism, and that men have no choice but to act as oppressors.

Various people have also tried to shift the blame on women, falsely claiming that sexism exists because women deliberately "consent" to be subjected to sexism.

Various people fail to see sexism as a systemic problem; instead, they wrongly paint it as a collection of individual acts that have no relation with each other.

When an oppressive system is challenged, the privileged group does not see that as "the dismantling of an unjust system"; instead, it sees that as "unjust persecution, and an attempt to upturn equality".

This is pretty accurate, and isn't hateful.

“We regard our personal experience, and our FEELINGS about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all the products of male supremicist culture.”

– The Redstockings Manifesto

True, but not hateful. Oh, no, feminists dare to talk about all their personal experiences about sexism and how they feel about it; and they also dare to reject existing sexist explanations of why sexist gender roles are just "natural". How dare they.

Also, why is "feelings" in all-caps like that? Is this the usual jab that women are emotional and therefore "inferior" to the logical men? Because that jab is shit.

FMS stands for: Full of Mostly (Bull) shit; For More Sadism; Felons, Murdereres, Ssumballs; Frequent Molesters Society

From a February 1995 handout at the "Stone Angels" satanic ritual abuse conference in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The conference was supported financially by the Ontario Government

Unverifiable. And frankly too ridiculous to be true.

"All men are good for is fucking, and running over with a truck".

Statement made by A University of Maine Feminist Administrator, quoted by Richard Dinsmore, who brought a successful civil suit against the University in the amount of a $600,000.1995 settlement Richard had protested the quote; was dismissed thereafter on the grounds of harassment; and responded by bringing suit against the University..

Unverifiable. It IS true that Dinsmore sued the university due to, in his own words, “man-hating feminists”; HOWEVER, there’s no mention of the quote itself.

"Masculine sexuality involves the oppression of women, competition among men, and fear of homosexuality." "Rape is the end logic of masculine sexuality." "Male sexuality is negative."

Introductory texts for Women's Studies Courses at UCLA including: "More Power than We Want: Masculine Sexuality and Violence" by

Bruce Kokopeli and George Lakey [Cited in TNV]

Unverifiable.

And that’s it. The VAST MAJORITY of quotes are either not-hateful once we actually see the context (and paste back all the parts that anti-feminists censored behind ellypsis); or, their origin cannot be verified (and therefore we can’t be sure whether they actually came from feminists). Some quotes came from works of fiction and were spoken by fictional characters; they aren’t statements that the author personally made and supported. Of the remaining quotes that are both verified and hateful, a GIANT chunk of them is comprised entirely of Valerie Solanas - which isn’t held in much regard by modern feminists. In fact, I’m pretty sure many don’t even know about her.

[dfroza]

Today’s reading from the ancient book of Proverbs and book of Psalms

for August 24 of 2021 with Proverbs 24 and Psalm 24, accompanied by Psalm 66 for the 66th day of Astronomical Summer and Psalm 86 for day 236 of the year (now with the consummate book of 150 Psalms in its 2nd revolution this year)

[Proverbs 24]

[Wisdom’s Warning]

Don’t envy the wealth of the wicked or crave their company.

For they’re obsessed with causing trouble

and their conversations are corrupt.

Wise people are builders—

they build families, businesses, communities.

And through intelligence and insight

their enterprises are established and endure.

Because of their skilled leadership,

the hearts of people are filled with the treasures of wisdom

and the pleasures of spiritual wealth.

Wisdom can make anyone into a mighty warrior,

and revelation-knowledge increases strength.

Wise strategy is necessary to wage war,

and with many astute advisers

you’ll see the path to victory more clearly.

Wisdom is a treasure too lofty for a quarreling fool—

he’ll have nothing to say when leaders gather together.

There is one who makes plans to do evil—

Master Schemer is his name.

If you plan to do evil, it’s as wrong as doing it.

And everyone detests a troublemaker.

If you faint when under pressure,

you have need of courage.

Go and rescue the perishing! Be their savior!

Why would you stand back and watch them stagger to their death?

And why would you say, “But it’s none of my business”?

The one who knows you completely and judges your every motive

is also the keeper of souls—and not just yours!

He sees through your excuses and holds you responsible

for failing to help those whose lives are threatened.

Revelation-knowledge is a delicacy,

sweet like flowing honey that melts in your mouth.

Eat as much of it as you can, my friend!

For then you will perceive what is true wisdom,

your future will be bright,

and this hope living within you will never disappoint you.

Listen up, you wicked, irreverent ones—

don’t harass the lovers of God

and don’t invade their resting place.

For the lovers of God may suffer adversity

and stumble seven times,

but they will continue to rise over and over again.

But the unrighteous are brought down by just one calamity

and will never be able to rise again.

Never gloat when your enemy meets disaster,

and don’t be quick to rejoice if he falls.

For the Lord, who sees your heart,

will be displeased with you and will pity your foe.

Don’t be angrily offended over evildoers or be agitated by them.

For the wicked have no life and no future—

their light of life will die out.

My child, stand in awe of Yahweh!

Give counsel to others,

but don’t mingle with those who are rebellious.

For sudden destruction will fall upon them

and their lives will be ruined in a moment.

And who knows what retribution they will face!

[Revelation from the Wise]

Those enlightened with wisdom have spoken these proverbs:

Judgment must be impartial,

for it is always wrong to be swayed by a person’s status.

If you say to the guilty, “You are innocent,”

the nation will curse you and the people will revile you.

But when you convict the guilty,

the people will thank you and reward you with favor.

Speaking honestly is a sign of true friendship.

Go ahead, build your career and give yourself to your work.

But if you put me first, you’ll see your family built up!

Why would you be a false accuser and slander with your words?

Don’t ever spitefully say, “I’ll get even with him!

I’ll do to him what he did to me!”

One day I passed by the field of a lazy man,

and I noticed the vineyards of a slacker.

I observed nothing but thorns, weeds, and broken-down walls.

So I considered their lack of wisdom,

and I pondered the lessons I could learn from this:

Professional work habits prevent poverty from becoming

your permanent business partner. And:

If you put off until tomorrow the work you could do today,

tomorrow never seems to come.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 24 (The Passion Translation)

[Psalm 24]

A song of David.

The earth and all that’s upon it belong to the Eternal.

The world is His, with every living creature on it.

With seas as foundations and rivers as boundaries,

He shaped the continents, fashioned the earth.

Who can possibly ascend the mountain of the Eternal?

Who can stand before Him in sacred spaces?

Only those whose hands have been washed and hearts made pure,

men and women who are not given to lies or deception.

The Eternal will stand close to them with blessing and mercy at hand,

and the God who redeems will right what has been wrong.

These are the people who chase after Him;

[like Jacob, they look for the face of God].

[pause]

City gates—open wide!

Ancient doors—stand back!

For the glorious King shall soon pass your way.

Who is the glorious King?

The Eternal who is powerful

and mightily equipped for battle.

City gates—open wide!

Ancient doors—stand back!

For the glorious King shall soon pass your way.

Who is the glorious King?

The Eternal, Commander of heaven’s army,

He is the glorious King.

[pause]

The Book of Psalms, Poem 24 (The Voice)

[Psalm 66]

For the worship leader. A song.

Shout out to God, all the earth.

Erupt with joy to the one True God!

Sing of the glory due His name!

Offer Him the most magnificent praises!

Say to God, “All You have done is wondrous and causes fear!

Your power is mighty, and Your enemies pretend to submit to You.

The entire earth will bow down to worship You

and will sing glory-songs to You;

they will sing praises to Your name!

[pause]

Come and witness the True God’s endless works.

His miraculous deeds done on behalf of humanity inspire fear.

He transformed the sea into dry land;

our people passed through the river on foot!

Rejoice in Him; celebrate what He did there!

By His great might, He rules forever;

His eyes watch over all the nations,

so no one should go up against Him.

[pause]

Everyone, bless our True God!

Let praise-filled voices be heard near and far—at home and on foreign soil!

Praise the One who gives us life and keeps us safe,

who does not allow us to stumble in the darkness.

For You have put us to the test, O God;

You have refined us as silver is refined.

You trapped us with a snare;

You have laid upon our backs a heavy burden.

You allowed us to be conquered and let our enemies run over us.

We journeyed through dangers, through fire and flood,

But You led us finally to a safe place, a land rich and abundant.

I will come into Your temple with burnt offerings;

I will fulfill my promises to You—

The oaths that parted my lips

and were promises my mouth freely made when I was suffering and in anguish.

I will bring You my sacrifices—plump beasts

and the sweet smoke of consecrated rams—

I will also offer You bulls and goats.

[pause]

Come and listen, everyone who reveres the True God,

and I will tell you what He has done for me.

I cried out to Him with my mouth,

and I praised Him with my tongue.

If I entertain evil in my heart,

the Lord will not hear me.

But surely God has heard me;

He has paid attention to the urgency of my request.

May the True God be blessed,

for He did not turn away from my prayer

nor did He hold back His loyal love from me.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 66 (The Voice)

[Psalm 86]

A prayer of David.

O Eternal One, lend an ear to my prayer and answer me,

for I am weak and wanting.

Safeguard my soul, for I remain loyal to You.

Save me, Your servant, who trusts in You, my God.

O Lord, please be merciful to me,

as all day long I cry out to You.

Bring joy into the life of Your servant,

for it’s only to You, O Lord, that I offer my soul.

O Lord, You are good and ready to forgive;

Your loyal love flows generously over all who cry out to You.

O Eternal One, lend an ear and hear my prayer;

listen to my pleading voice.

When times of trouble come, I will call to You

because I know You will respond to me.

O Lord, You stand alone among the other gods;

nothing they have done compares to Your wonderful works.

O Lord, all the peoples of earth—every nation You established—

will come to You, bowing low to worship,

and rightly honor Your great name.

For You are great, and Your works are wondrous;

You are the one True God.

O Eternal One, guide me along Your path

so that I will live in Your truth.

Unite my divided heart so that I will fear Your great name.

O Lord, my God! I praise You with all that I am.

I will rightly honor Your great name forever.

For Your loyal love for me is so great it is beyond comparison.

You have rescued my soul from the depths of the grave.

O True God, arrogant people are after me.

A violent gang wants to kill me;

they have no interest in You or Your ways.

But Lord, You are a God full of compassion, generous in grace,

slow to anger, and boundless in loyal love and truth.

Look at me, and grant me Your favor.

Invest Your strength in me, Your servant,

and rescue me, Your handmaiden’s child.

Give me a sign so I may know Your goodness rests on me

and so those who hate me will be red with shame at the sight of it.

For You, O Eternal One, have come to my aid and offered me relief.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 86 (The Voice)

[captainextremis]

It’s yo boy back at it again with the terrible fanfiction :D

In all honesty, I hope you enjoy.

And I do hate being “that guy” but I’m putting up the link to the story on AO3 again. In case you missed it. link

The Road to Hell, Part 2

The first thing the chameleon saw that morning was the Quartermaster herself walking right up to his cell, bending a whip in her gloved fists. He’d been caught on the border of The Ends and the Snikaree Foothills, and instead of killing him, apparently the Quartermaster had ordered for as many rebels as possible to be caught and interrogated. He scoffed quietly to himself and looked away. “Sorry, ma’am. That’s not one of my turn-ons.”

The Quartermaster only hardened her stare and snapped the disciplinary whip through the air. The resulting *crack!* bounced off the walls of the stone and mortar of the holding cells. “You know I’m not here to play games, trencher,” she said. Her voice was melodic, but she had long since learned how to use it to freeze a man in place. “So let me try thees one more time...where ees Hopper?”

“You know where she is,” he replied. “Why you askin’ me somethin’ you already know?”

“Because…” she seethed, “The Skirts stretch on for miles. The KSR has expended hundreds of munitions, soldiers, and food to raid two outposts already.”

The chameleon laughed. “Those Commonfolk...they don’t go down easy, do they?”

The Quartermaster growled in a low voice and nearly bent her whip to a breaking point. She quickly snapped back up straight and took a deep breath, massaging her forehead. This was the fourth day in a row that she hadn’t been able to glean anything from interrogating the Trench Gang, and she couldn’t buy their loyalty; they feared betraying The Family too much. All was not completely lost, however. She turned and left the chameleon to suffer in silence, and went two cells over.

This jail cell was even smaller than the previous one, and held a single mole sitting in the corner, arms crossed and scowling. He’d been captured two days before, and upon finding him making dents in the wall with his hammer, it was forcibly removed from his hands and used as tinder for the ovens. He had been pouting ever since, and didn’t seem to care that the Quartermaster was approaching him. “Mole,” she began, “I need to talk to you.”

“Engineer not talking,” he spat back.

“You vould know the best place that Hopper Silvya vould be hiding in The Skirts. Talk.”

The mole stared back up at the Quartermaster uncaringly. “KSR cannot make Engineer talk.”

“I can break you in more ways than you know how to die, commoner scum,” she hissed back. “I vill only give you thees mercy one last time. Talk, or you’ll scream your answers after I’m done with you.”

The Engineer only tightened his arms and clenched his fists. The Quartermaster breathed in and pursed her lips. “So be it.” She pivoted and made for the hallway to get another pair of hands to drag the prisoner to The Tenderizer, but stopped to let a ferret pass, holding a plate of grain and drutcele. She would have kept walking, if not for the fact she could clearly hear the conversation being held in the cell.

“Heyyy, you better eat, peasant.”

The mole, she assumed, made an exaggerated retching sound. “Engineer would sooner die than eat beast food!” A plate fell and shattered on the ground.

This made the Quartermaster freeze mid-stride and quickly double back to the cell. She turned the corner, which frightened the ferret as soon as she showed her face. “Ach…! Misses Quartermaster, ma’am!” he exclaimed. “I...I didn’t drop nothing, it was the rabble over here, he-he knocked it outta my hand when I gave-”

Normally, should would have struck him across the face with her whip, but she paid him no mind. Instead, the Quartermaster threw him aside and picked up the remnants of the plate and the vegetables. “And Engineer will never let KSR force-feed him beast food either!” he shouted, shooting to his feet. “Engineer would sooner choke on his own hammer than-”

“What are you villing to give up to never eat this again?” the Quartermaster cut in. The mole’s expression shifted almost immediately from seething hatred to dumbfounded confusion.

“...Engineer thinks that is stupid question. Why would KSR be asking stupid question...?” he replied.

The Quartermaster retained her uninterested expression and tossed the cracked porcelain and food over her shoulder, which the ferret hurriedly picked up. He paused for a moment, considering how hungry he was, then slowly brought a handful of the grain up to his mouth, keeping his eyes on the Quartermaster.

“You so much as put your tongue on any of that, I vill cut it off and store it in The Larder,” she scolded. The ferret immediately stopped and left the cell’s area, repeating, “Yes, ma’am, right away ma’am” as he ran away.

She turned her attention back to the mole. “I ask thees question because I have a proposal for you,” she stated, standing at attention.

“Engineer thought KSR was going to make him cry for his mommy-”

“Shut up!” the Quartermaster barked, causing the mole to flinch. “Perhaps…” she began again, “You’d be villing to disclose Hopper’s location for some meat, then...?”

The Engineer scoffed. “Engineer will never tell where Hopper is, even for meat! Engineer does not like beast food, but he likes KSR even less.”

“Ve can promise you three meals a day and a roof over your head,” she commented. The Engineer looked at her but kept his arms crossed and his scowl fixed on his face. “Ve mostly use Svine, but you’re allowed to eat who you keel after battle, so long as they aren’t KSR forces.”

“Usually Hopper stays in train station Two Hundred Two. If Hopper is not there, look in northeastern Skirts,” the Engineer explained.

The Quartermaster smiled and quickly unlocked his cell, and escorted him out. She walked him around the corner to one of the AFB guards and instructed, “Soldier, get thees one a new uniform.”

The skunk saluted and mumbled something, most likely an affirmation than anything else. “And if he tries stealing any food, keel him!” she added as she turned around and pointed at the mole. Helpful or no, this Engineer belonged to The KSR now, and if he disobeyed, he’d suffer by their laws.

Thank the Tsarina loyalty came cheap these days.

The Skirts took a hard mindset and an even harder gullet to survive. Luckily, both it and the Commonfolk banner attracted a lot of such animals who were sick and tired of Civilized oppression. Even Hopper was surprised to find out that just by shouting “We’re gonna chuck the Civilized into their own fryin’ pans!” from the rooftops got her a substantial army ready to buther on her behalf. Of course, that meant food had to flow to the new troops, and meat was hard to come by in The Skirts even before the Revolution.

But she made it work, somehow. Through either iron will and determination or sheer luck, Hopper had been able to lead an army of what would otherwise be common rabble. From her shack built to overlook the majority of Station Two-Oh-Two, she could see the whole town, and the tunnels that led both north and south. They’d been blocked off for nearly a year now. Before the Revolution, they only carried animals to Harvest in Levacaloo. Now, it was all just KSR prison trains.

Hopper glanced back at the map of the countryside. Taking strategic positions in The Ends itself was far too taxing, even for the Commonfolk themselves. But she knew that taking advantage of certain areas and blockading them early, or at least before The KSR got to them, was imperative to winning the war in the long-term.

As she leaned over the table, she heard one of the floorboards of her house creak. It didn’t sound natural, but she was certain she was the only one here. She sighed. “Means only one thing…” she muttered to herself, turning around. “Yer not bein’ clever no mo’.”

A chameleon uncloaked himself, and leaned on his spiked club. His eyes twitched, but he smirked. “Didn’t think mice could smell that good.”

Hopper chuckled and pointed to her ears. “Not smellin’...Hearin’. Anyway, wha’cha want?”

The chameleon chuckled too, and paused to think of how to word his message. “So, you know how the Revolution’s taken every walk’a life by storm?” he asked, twiddling his thumbs.

“Do I know…?” Hopper repeated indignantly. “Even before dis Revolution got off da ground, I knew it’d shake dis country up!”

“Yeah, well,” he continued, “Apparently, those aristocrats in the south wanna get in on it.”

Hopper did a double-take and her eyes widened. “W...What? Really...?” She froze, and the neutral expression on the chameleon meant he wasn’t joking. She paused to consider her options. Suddenly, digging into the sands of The Ends didn’t seem so monumental. “...Neva thought the high-brows would want a part’a dis war,” she said.

“Yeah, well...I’ve just been hearin’ rumors, but apparently, Arroyo...you know, the king of the ring? That Arroyo...Well the Civilized, they, erm...took a significant interest in his son, if you catch my drift,” he explained.

Hopper went quiet. The fact that not even the rich were exempt from Harvest was, in all honesty, news to her. “Guess we gotta go talk to ‘im,” she said at length. “Best an’ fastest way’t win, if ya ask me.”

The chameleon waved his hand dismissively and muttered, “You’re the leader here, Nubs,” before disappearing from sight. Hopper returned to her map and planning. A general, she wasn’t, but she prided herself on at least knowing what to attack and when.

First order of business, therefore, was to push out into The Ends and take either Solawa or Old Mother Township. She pursed her lips. Solawa was a big city, but if the Commonfolk could push out the defending Civilized, it could become a secondary stronghold. On the other hand, Old Mother Township could be easily defended, but it was further up north, closer to the Hagro Highlands; if The KSR wanted, they could easily crush it. Both locations were risky gambles.

Hopper eyed both locations on the map. In time, she took out a pen and started drawing lines, connecting routes, and planning an assault. When she finished, the map showed the ideal situation:

Solawa would fall...and the Commonfolk would feast.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: I was recently told by an Asian friend of mine who is working in Paris: Lately I stopped following almost all that is happening politically in the United States, in the UK and even here in France. It all feels suddenly so irrelevant, a waste of time. Statements like this would be unimaginable only one decade ago. In the past, what came from Washington and (to a smaller extent) from London was monitored with great attentiveness and fear all over the world. But all of a sudden, things have begun to change, rapidly. Despite the extremely violent nature of the Western-designed-and-manufactured global regime, which has been over-imposed on so many parts of the world for decades and centuries, increasing amounts of people in Asia, Latin America and Africa stopped worrying and went leisurely to the ‘barricades’, beginning to rebel against the perverseness of the ‘world order’. Did it all really happen ‘all of a sudden’? Or were there various catalysts at work for already quite a substantial period of time? It is a well-known fact that any deep-seated, chronic anxiety cannot disappear in just a short moment. People who are enslaved, humiliated, scared into obedience, people who are forced to feel uncertain and constantly frightened, cannot reverse their state of mind without some important external factor or set of factors. It became obvious to me, as I have been working continuously on all continents and in almost all conflict zones of our Planet, that the renewed pride and courage which is now inspiring millions of oppressed human beings, actually came from the decisive and determined stand of just several brave and determined nations, big and small. The myth about the omnipotence of the Empire has received a few significant blows. The fable of invincibility has not completely disappeared yet, but at least it has got fractured and gravely injured. The gate of the terrible prison began cracking. It has not collapsed, but the fractures were wide enough for at least some sunlight to enter the dark and dreadful cavities inhabited by billions of unfortunate and shattered beings. Some victims stood up immediately; not many but at least some did. Others raised their heads in feeble hope, still lying down on the dirty ground, still chained, and still shaking. That weak light alone entering the dungeon was actually much brighter than what most people ever experienced in their entire life. It has been strong enough to provoke wonderful, brilliant sparks of hope. ***** Except for some temporary setbacks (like in Brazil and Argentina), the anti-imperialist coalition is now steadier than ever; it is determined and constantly expanding. And it is clearly winning! It is truly a ‘rainbow coalition’ of countries, big and small, ‘red’ and ‘pink’, even ‘green’. The only unifying factor is the shared determination not to be controlled by Western imperialism and neo-colonialism. For decades, Cuba stood against the Empire, even after the Soviet block was broken to bits, even when all mutual agreements ceased to be honored by the criminal Yeltsin administration. The Cuban people never surrendered. It is because most of them always believed, from the bottom of their hearts, in socialism and internationalism. And also because they have been convinced that the Western Empire is a morally corrupt and illegitimate entity and therefore has to be resisted. A small and relatively poor country – Cuba – demonstrated to the entire world that while the Empire is mighty, sadistic and brutal, it is not omnipotent, and it is possible to defy it. There is no reason why one should not dare, or one should not dream about a much better world, why one shouldn’t fight for true freedom, attempting to win. Cuba inspired the world. Its daring Revolution took place just a few miles from the shores of the United States. Soon after, its teachers and doctors went to all parts of the earth, spreading optimism, solidarity and kindness. Its heroic revolutionaries went to fight against the most dreadful forms of colonialism, which were torturing people in such places as Congo, Angola and Namibia. After Obama’s attempts to water down the determination of the Cuban citizens, many enemies began to predict, cynically: “Now Cuba will compromise and sell its Revolution.” It never did! I traveled to the Island last year, driving through the countryside, and speaking to people in Havana, Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba. Almost no one was ready to compromise. A greatly educated nation, Cuba saw through the Empire’s tricks and deceptions. Now almost nobody speaks about the “Cuban compromise”, anymore, simply because there isn’t any on the table. China, one of the oldest and greatest civilizations on Earth, went through the terrible period of ‘humiliation’. Divided, occupied and plundered by the West, it has never forgotten nor forgiven. Now the Chinese Communist state and its mixed economy are helping countries in virtually all parts of the world, from Oceania and Latin America, to the Middle East and especially Africa, to survive and to finally stand on their own feet. Despite all the vitriolic propaganda regurgitated by the West (those people in Europe or North America who know close to zero about Africa or China, habitually passing ‘confident’ and highly cynical ‘judgments’ about China’s involvement in the poor world; judgments based exclusively on the lies and fabrications produced by the Western media), China has been gaining great respect and trust in virtually all corners of the globe. The Chinese people and their government are now standing firmly against Western imperialism. They will not allow any recurrence of the disgraceful and dreary past. The West is provoking this mighty and optimistic nation, pushing it into a terrible confrontation. China doesn’t want any military conflict. It is the most peaceful, the most non-confrontational large nation on Earth. But it is becoming clear that if pushed against the wall, this time it will not compromise: it will fight. In the last years I have spoken to many Chinese people, as I traveled to all corners of the country, and I’m convinced that by now the nation is ready to meet strength with strength. Such determination gives hope to many other countries on our Planet. The message is clear: the West cannot do whatever it wants, anymore. If it tries, it will be stopped. By reason or by force! Russia is ready again, too. It is standing next to China, enormous and indignant. Go to Novosibirsk or Tomsk, to Khabarovsk, Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. Talk to Russian people and you will soon understand: almost nobody there believes or respects the West anymore. Throughout history, Russia was attacked and ransacked from the West. Millions, tens of millions of its people were murdered, literally exterminated. And now, the nation is facing what some consider to be yet another imminent attack. Like the Chinese people, Russians are unwilling to compromise anymore. The old Russian forecast is once again alive, that very one professed by Alexander Nevsky: Go tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives! Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as a guest. But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and forever will we stand! In Russia, as in China, and as in so many other nations that were devastated by the Western plunderers, nothing is forgotten and no one is forgotten. It only appeared for a while that the memory had fainted. It never does. You cannot burn down an entire land, ruin the cities, burn the fields, and still pose as one with the moral mandate. Or as we say in Chile: “Justice takes time, but it always comes!” And the world is watching. It is suddenly clearly registering this determined and brave epic stand of morally strong nations. Many of those who are watching are deeply impressed with what they are seeing. Perhaps not in London or in Paris, but go and ask those in Johannesburg or Beirut, or even in Calcutta, Cairo or Buenos Aires. Perhaps you suspect what answers you’d receive there! Throughout modern history, not once has Iran invaded a foreign country. Yet its secular, progressive and democratic government (under the leadership of Mohammad Mosaddegh) was overthrown in 1953, in a CIA-backed coup. What followed was the monstrosity of the ‘pro-Western Shah’, and then a horrendous war, an invasion by Iraq, which was also fully backed by the West and which took hundreds of thousands of human lives. Since then, Iran has been suffering from targeted killings of its scientists (by the West and Israel), as well as terrorist attacks also backed from abroad. Instead of falling on its knees and begging for mercy, Iran defied the West. On several occasions and when provoked, it sent its battleships to the neutral waters near the US coast, and it pledged to defend its land, in case it was to be attacked. Iran also showed great solidarity towards Latin America, working closely with virtually all of the revolutionary governments there. It stood firmly by Venezuela in a time of great crises, building social housing in Caracas and supporting the Process by all other means. In Latin America, no one will ever forget how former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to Caracas to attend the funeral of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, his dear friend. During the memorial, the aged mother of Chavez suddenly approached Ahmadinejad, in tears. Breaking all religious protocol of a Shi’a country that he was representing, the Iranian President embraced her, and held her against his heart, until she calmed down. This moment was expressing one simple and powerful reality: all of us, the internationalists and anti-imperialists, are fighting for the survival of humanity and this planet. There is more that unites us than what is tearing us apart. Once we win, and we will win, the world will be able to find a common language. The West wants to divide us, by spreading hostilities and distrust, all through ‘false news’ and fabrications. But we understand its game. We will not break our ranks anymore. The West is clearly losing. It knows it. It is in panic. Its nihilism, its propaganda and indoctrination tactics will soon be defeated. I wrote a lot about the DPRK and how it joined the list of the ‘most hated nations on Earth’. It is a well known fact that North Korea was, for years and decades, much richer and more democratic than South Korea (ROK). But it embarked on one tremendous humanist ‘project’, and together with Cuba, the Soviet Union and to some extent China, it liberated almost the entire African continent, at great cost and sacrifice. And not only that: it sent its top educators and doctors to all corners of the most devastated continent on Earth. Its pilots also flew Egyptian MIGs against Israel, during the 1967 war. These facts have been silenced by Western propaganda, but they clearly explain why the DPRK has been ostracized, pushed to the corner, hit by senseless embargos, and forced to react the way it has been reacting for at least the last two decades. North Korea has never surrendered either, and it never will. Neither has Venezuela, for many years the great sentinel and engine of the Bolivarian Revolution, as well as of Latin Internationalism and solidarity. Surviving coups, embargos, plots and propaganda campaigns, surviving attacks, even terror, of the foreign-backed ‘opposition’, Venezuela has been injured but it is alive. Just a few days ago I spoke to an Italian Parliamentary delegation, consisting of  the“5-Star-Movement” MPs, which recently returned from Caracas. Their conclusion was simple: “The worst is over”. The world knows it! Venezuela, DPRK, Cuba – they never fell. No matter how many knives penetrated their bodies, despite so much pain caused by the sanctions, coup attempts and direct acts of terrorism administered by the West and its monstrous Empire. It is becoming clear and obvious: the West is helpless against determination, true courage and patriotic love. It is powerless when confronted with humanist ideologies, and with true loyalty! And the world keeps watching, drawing its conclusions. I wrote about Syria, comparing Aleppo to the 20th Century Stalingrad. This is where racism, terrorism, and the lowest forms of Western imperialism (and shameful acts of the regional lackeys) were decisively stopped. The price was terrible, but the message to the world extremely clear: The people who love their country with their entire hearts can fight and win against all odds, especially if by their side stand truly great and reliable friends and comrades! One day the world will thank the Syrian people, profusely and properly. One day, everything will be understood. One day, perhaps soon. ***** This is one of the greatest moments in human history, perhaps the greatest. It has arrived without big salvos announcing monumental revolutions. Everything is happening fast, in an organized and determined manner. The greatest minds of Russia, China, Latin America and the rest of the world, are feverishly, day and night, trying to determine what really brought our world, our civilization, to this ludicrous downfall. The simplified and stripped-down answer is this: Western imperialism (military, economic and ‘intellectual’/ ’cultural’), colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as that dreadful by-product of all the above combined – a set of unchecked and savage form of capitalism. Simultaneously, new forms of government, of economy and social systems are being, once again, planned. The military strategists of the countries that are refusing to kneel in front of the barbaric terror of the West, responsible for hundreds of millions of murders and billions of ruined lives, are planning how to defend their countries and the world. Once again, the world is at work! It is building trenches, educating people, preparing them for the final showdown with the culture that has been tormenting our Planet for centuries. It is the moment of great hope and renewed enthusiasm. Of course, if seen from Western capitals, everything is bleak and depressing. There is no ‘hope’ at all. I agree fully: there is no hope ‘for them’. The logic, the ‘philosophy’ with which the Europeans and the North Americans have become accustomed to analyze the world, has arrived at a dead end. Yes, it is ‘the end of philosophy’, or as they say, ‘the end of history’. I fully agree: it is the end of their philosophy and of their history. That’s why, reading about their elections or statements produced by their politicians, is nothing less than a waste of time. The world realizes it, more and more. Their ‘new tricks’ are actually very old. Their entire system is outdated. It should have been retired at least one hundred years ago. It survived only because of its savagery and cruelty. It will go soon, anyway. These days, encountering people inhabiting the West is like encountering those zombies who were living in Nazi Germany during WWII. After the war was over, they were street walking for years, at least many of them, repeating the same refrains: “We didn’t know!” “We never realized”. The Nazi propaganda and the one, which has been used in the West and in the colonies (as Noam Chomsky and I defined in our book “On Western Terrorism”), are based on precisely the same roots, foundations and methods. Both are extremely effective when it comes to the total brainwashing of the population. To follow up the last chapter of the imperialist and turbo capitalist morass of the West is embarrassing and useless. Both Europe and the United States are suffering from a series of devastating mental illnesses, as was defined by the great Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, right after WWII. Getting too much involved in pathological behavior, constantly studying and analyzing it, could only break and deeply depress any healthy person’s mind. There is nothing more to understand. Hundreds of millions of victims in all parts of the world are speaking for themselves. The only rational issue here is this: how to stop this horror as soon as possible? How to allow humanity to return to its natural development and evolution patterns? I don’t believe in ‘punishments’ and ‘trials’ and other vehicles of intimidation and of spreading fear. I don’t care whether the West will ‘pay’ for all that it has done to the world. I only want it to be stopped, once and for all. I work very hard for it to be stopped. So are others. And the world is watching, and all of a sudden enjoying what it sees. Suddenly more and more people are daring to laugh at the global regime. Of course not in Paris, London or New York (here they are scared and obedient, even more than before). But outside, yes! People on all continents want to see and hear about what ‘others do’, what ‘we do’, not what the Empire and its mental conditions are producing. They are laughing and waiting impatiently for what a new day, a new year will bring. They are waiting for the true new beginning to arrive. http://clubof.info/