#can you tell I like the term divine dawn for getting visions

[asterias-fallen-star]

Prayer for Nausiklutia

Hear me, O beloved ocean goddess, calmer of waves, protector of mariners, she who heralds sailors away from harm and into her arms.

Messenger through dreams, who guides us to the divine dawn, blessed lady of the sea, please guide those who’ve strayed from the safety of your eyes.

Brizo of slumber, fair protector, and navigator I revel in your divinity on this day and for all you offer us through your kind heart.

O sea faring goddess of far-famed Delos may you guide me to prosperity and fairer times as you do with ships in your harbour.

Sea loving Brizo may you accept these offerings and bring blessings of your divinity.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Ooh! I would love to hear your thoughts on how Twilight is like Othello!

So, in a nutshell, it goes like this: Carlisle is Othello, Edward is Iago, Aro is Desdemona.

The Beginning

Our story begins with Carlisle departing Volterra on amiable terms. Yes, the diet became a non-negotiable difference between him and Aro, but none the less he views Aro as a very close friend and an uncorrupt and wise ruler.

On his end, Carlisle is the only true friend Aro has (now that Marcus is out of commission). While Carlisle was able to leave Volterra, I imagine Aro both expected and hoped that one day Carlisle would return after realizing for himself he was unable to find the like minded in the wide world.

However, it didn't end up that way. Carlisle turns Edward and rapidly builds himself a coven.

However, there's still no ill feelings towards the Volturi, quite the opposite. We don't hear much from Carlisle himself, but of all Carlisle's many friends, it's only the Volturi who get featured in Edward's story. And, speaking for Carlisle when he's not in the room, there's a giant ass picture of the Volturi on the wall.

Edward loathes that painting.

And this is where the tiniest seeds are sown.

Edward never really likes the idea of a Carlisle before the Cullens, before him, that is to say. When he tells Carlisle's tale, there's this pervading sense of narcissism throughout it. Carlisle's life was miserable and damned until he saw the divine spotlight hanging over Edward and turned him.

The Volturi, oh, yeah, guess they were around and important BUT NEVER MIND THEM.

Edward never outright says anything, not even really to Bella or to himself, but his internal narration and what he does say speaks for him. He doesn't like the painting, he leaves only the bare minimum of their influence in the story, he doesn't even tell Bella what they really do and why he may have fucked up in telling her the secret.

He doesn't want to think about them and never wants to meet them.

If he ever does, it is only under the pretext that they will be the tools he uses to kill himself when Bella dies.

New Moon

As Edward told Bella, when he thought she died, he travelled to Volterra and asked for assisted suicide. They said no.

And that, that is the moment that they become corrupt tyrants.

Before then, Edward didn't necessarily like the Volturi, he certainly didn't like the threat they represented to Bella but he had no real thoughts on them. Indeed, he viewed them with enough respect that he thought they would grant his suicide request.

But then they didn't.

And granted, we don't know what Edward witnessed in Volterra, we don't know what he heard going around in everyone's head, but given that this is Edward I think this alone is enough.

They didn't give Edward what he wanted. Then, worse happens, they become a legitimate threat to Bella Swan.

They have now seen Bella in person, Aro lays down the law, Aro shows interest in her gift, and everything's spiraling out of control. By the time we hit the meeting in New Moon that Bella is present for, Edward is accusing Aro of openly being a corrupt tyrant.

However, ultimately, Edward, Bella, and Alice do return to Forks unharmed (though with Bella's turning hanging over their heads). And Edward does not forget that.

We don't see Edward's immediate reunion with the family, we don't see exactly what he says to Carlisle about what happens, but I imagine Edward tells Carlisle what he tells him later in Eclipse: that Aro is a power hungry monster who will stop at nothing to collect Edward and Alice (funny how Edward always leaves Bella out of that when she's the one Aro would actually want but never mind that).

Given what has happened so far, Carlisle very likely does not believe this. Yes, Edward has his gift, but he hears so little of what people think and things are easily misinterpreted.

Had Aro wanted Bella, he would have demanded she be turned and stay there, it was well within his rights. As it was, he did something very generous for the Cullens and Carlisle at least will be grateful because of it.

Edward goes and smashes another TV after having smashed the first after the vote.

Eclipse

Then the events of Eclipse happen.

First, we start with the ramp up.

Seattle is being terrorized, it becomes clearer and clearer that this is not gang violence nor another Ted Bundy, this is a newborn army. The Cullens, Carlisle, wait on the Volturi to arrive: they never do.

Edward continues to disparage the Volturi but now... Now Carlisle is starting to listen.

Aro is letting Seattle burn because he wants Edward and Alice, he has this vision of total omniscience by holding on constantly to Edward and Alice's hands and he will be utterly unstoppable. He'll use this as an opportunity to wipe out the coven so he can take the gifted members.

As for Bella, a vampire has been sneaking into her bedroom, it's likely a Volturi agent sent by Caius or Jane under Aro's implicit orders. (Though everyone actually disagrees with this one, even Alice, who helpfully tries to give Edward an out of "maybe it was Jane!" Carlisle just sits in the corner looking pained and dubious.)

Carlisle likely doesn't believe all of this. Yes, Aro collects gifts, and yes the Volturi's absence is bizarre and damning, but what Edward is saying is... well, evil.

But then Jane shows up, just after the battle has ended, strolling in like she has all the time in the world. She tortures and murders Bree Tanner, a girl who never even had a chance to know what the law was, and leaves with a parting threat that Bella better be turned or else.

Carlisle's faith in the Volturi is completely shaken, such that, when the Renesmee debacle happens, desperately gathering witnesses is his family's only means of survival.

Now, where the Othello comes in, is I don't think Aro's guilty. His having given that order makes no sense on any level. More, for all Alice was stretched thin, she was certain that she would see any major decision coming from Aro during Eclipse. She did not, implying that someone else was behind it (my money's on Caius).

However, by allowing this to happen, any of this to happen, and with Edward spewing poison, Aro becomes everything Edward is saying and more.

And there is nothing he can possibly say to make up for what happened and so he says nothing.

Which, of course, just makes everything worse.

Breaking Dawn

Irina goes to the Volturi and tells Aro that the Cullen coven has created an immortal child. Less than six months ago, the Volturi subtly tried to wipe the Cullen coven off the map, and now Irina has just handed them every excuse they need.

Carlisle doesn't question what happens next: he gathers witnesses.

If his coven stands alone, they will fall and they will die, and if the Volturi act then there must be many vampires watching this go down so as to hold them accountable.

Of course, gathering witnesses quickly turns into gathering an army, which is not what Carlisle wanted but what he got.

In the meantime, Edward and Eleazar are riling each other up and painting a very bleak history of Volterra: of what has happened to other gifted covens in the past.

And then it happens: the confrontation in Breaking Dawn.

Renesmee is clearly not an immortal child, the Volturi admit as much, but the confrontation continues regardless. It becomes about whatever Renesmee is, about the wolves, about anything and everything.

Then Aro does it. He uses every gifted vampire he has against them. Jane, Chelsea, Alec, through Bella's gift alone the group is spared but if Bella hadn't been there.

I imagine Carlisle thought he and every witness he gathered would have died that day.

(For the record, I don't think that was Aro's intention.)

And just like that, it's done, whatever man Carlisle thought he knew in Volterra was a lie. Edward was right, this man is utterly corrupt and will sacrifice everything for power.

And the end isn't here yet.

There will be another confrontation and, the way canon will likely go, the Volturi will lose.

Which is very bad for all of us.

Back to Othello

The important thing here is that, throughout all of this, while a series of the world's most tragic miscommunications and events took place, you also had Edward on the side insisting the worst about Aro at every turn.

Hence, Carlisle is Othello, Edward Iago, Aro Desdemona.

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 30

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 30

Is she calling me? Lin Yan nodded his head in a daze. His mind was spinning, his legs were weak like he was stepping on cotton. The light in the living room dimmed even darker. Wind blew in from the window. His hair was still slightly wet from the shower and the cold wind made his head go numb.

"Why doesn't it look like you?" Lin Yan asked.

The little girl struck a big cross across the face in the drawing with a black crayon, a thick black bar slashing across her teeth: "Why doesn't it look like me? This is how I looked when I died."

"Brother." The little girl stood up. She tilted her head and stared at Lin Yan. Her head was crookedly rested on her right shoulder, but her thumb was still in her mouth. When she took it out after a while, the top part was gone, the nail chewed halfway down her finger. The girl grinned, her mouth full of scarlet blood flowing past her lips.

"Brother, follow me, follow me." The little girl threw the crayon aside. She tugged on Lin Yan's hand and dragged him towards the bathroom: "I'll show you what I looked like when I died, it was beautiful."

Lin Yan muddled behind her. He instinctively sensed something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what it was. His head felt like a steel nail was being nailed into it, throbbing intensely.

Why was the wind so strong? Did he forget to close the windows?

"My brother bought me new clothes and then I died, hehe. Grandma is dead, Grandpa is also dead. Everyone is dead." The little girl took Lin Yan's hand and jumped forward. The braid on the back of her head was tied with a faded pink string. The bow was coming undone and the long string was stretched out and hung behind her head. "Brother, you are dying too. I'll draw a picture for you too when you die."

"Brother, hee hee, come with us." The little girl pulled the old padded jacket on her body. Her head became even more crooked as if it would accidentally fall off. "Come on, hurry. We have to catch up."

His vision was distorted. The dark corridor looked like a giant beast's gaping mouth. Lin Yan quickened his pace and suddenly kicked something with his toes. Lin Yan subconsciously climbed onto it and went up onto a platform. It was so cold, so windy. . .

Why wasn't he there yet?

"Lin Yan!" An anxious voice sounded like it came from another world, a distant echo: "Come back."

It was a familiar voice. Lin Yan twisted his stiff neck and tried to look back, but the little girl grabbed his wrist harshly and yanked him forward: "It's too late, hurry up."

Lin Yan nodded and took a staggering step forward, but his foot didn't land on anything and he lost his balance and fell. As soon as he fell forward, a huge resistance suddenly came from his torso, aggressively holding his waist. The fresh scent of shower gel jolted him back to his senses as if he had suddenly awakened from a nightmare. He looked around in confusion and saw that the old movie-like dark surroundings had returned to their usual appearance. The little girl was gone. Lin Yan looked down. The scene in front of him left him utterly speechless, only able to suck in a sharp breath.

He was standing on the windowsill in his bedroom. The window was wide open, the curtains were billowing out in the night wind, rustling and rattling. Half of his body had already stepped out. Looking down the outer wall of the apartment building, the flowerbeds and dark shadows of the trees seemed to stretch towards him on the twelfth floor. Two hazy figures in the garden were looking up and waving at him. One was the little girl in the old cotton jacket, and the one holding her hand was the second was the soul that they hadn't been able to recover today, Second Immortal Gu!

"We're dead, we're all dead, and you're going to die too." The little girl's voice echoed in his head: "Hurry up, you have to catch up to us."

"Xiao Yu, Xiao Yu!" Lin Yan yelled out in despair. He instinctively backed away and slammed into the arms of someone behind him. The hand hooked around his waist squeezed tighter, spinning him around. The deep voice repeated over and over again: "I'm here, I'm here."

That cold body had never been as warm as it was now. Shocked, Lin Yan buried his face in Xiao Yu's chest, but Xiao Yu didn't reciprocate intimately. He immediately led Lin Yan down the window sill and closed it. He stared at the flower bed on the ground and frowned.

Lin Yan looked at Xiao Yu's profile. His serious expression made him almost forget for a minute that Xiao Yu was a ghost. Lin Yan pursed his lips. He felt that he must be really disturbed to come up with the idea of letting him hold him for a while longer.

After shaking his head to drive the weird idea from his mind, he leaned on the windowsill and looked down. The green courtyard was surrounded by trees and the tiled path was empty. Second Immortal Gu and the little girl were gone.

"The little girl and the old lady were standing down there just now." Lin Yan stammered. "They waved to me. . ."

"I can't see them." Xiao Yu's expression was serious. and he raised his hand to straighten out his damp hair. Raising his hand to fix his wet hair, Lin Yan realized that he seemed to have rushed straight out of the bathtub. His clothes hanging loosely on his body, exposing his marble-like chest. Lin Yan felt himself blush and hurriedly turned his head to the side to hide it.

"They're not like me." Xiao Yu closed the curtains. "Don't go too far away from me."

Lin Yan was silent for a while then asked softly: ". . . how are they not the same?"

Xiao Yu didn't answer. He took a deep look at him and abruptly dragged Lin Yan from the bedroom back to the living room and pressed him into the sofa. Just when Lin Yan thought he was going to force himself on him again, Xiao Yu let go. He picked up the ancient books that had fallen on the ground and shoved them at him. He said seriously: "Learn these."

"Dude, are you kidding. . ." Lin Yan swept through the pages of the books, glancing at a large string of unheard-of terms. He couldn't help but let out a pathetic laugh: "Putting aside the fact that there's no way I can get through all of these, even if I look up each individual word to understand what it meant, I can't become a Daoist priest in one day."

Xiao Yu was silent for a while and said lightly: "If I leave one day, you have to know how to protect yourself."

Xiao Yu's hands pressed on his knees as he spoke, his demeanour as tame and gentle as usual, but something seemed different. Lin Yan hesitantly asked him in a low voice: "Are you going to leave?"

"Haven't you been looking forward to it?" Xiao Yu replied coldly.

Lin Yan didn't know what to say. He raised his hand and gently touched his face. His delicate and cold skin felt like fine porcelain. He slowly rested his palm on his face and stroked his jaw. Xiao Yu didn't shy away, quietly lying on Lin Yan’s knees. Just when Lin Yan thought he was asleep and was going to take him back to the bedroom, Xiao Yu suddenly shot up. He spread open the book on Lin Yan’s lap and stared at him calmly, eyes almost sad.

"You really want me to learn this?" Lin Yan asked in surprise.

Xiao Yu nodded. Lin Yan still wanted to argue, but when he saw his serious expression, he swallowed his retorts.

The books from the online store covered almost every subject. Not only was there I Ching Feng Shui, the Five Elements of Yin and Yang, Astrology and Geomancy, Tomb Charms Guide, Qimen Dunjia*, but even calling back souls to raise corpses so they could continue their lives. Some of the books were reasonable and well-founded, but most of them contradicted themselves. The authors were shooting themselves in the foot trying to sound all-knowing with all the contradicting information. The more Lin Yan read, the more nonsensical it all seemed. He yawned sleepily. He had drunk three cups of coffee overnight and smoked almost a full pack of cigarettes without finding anything. Every time he wanted to stop. he was forced to continue by Xiao Yu's murderous eyes. He wasn't allowed to sleep at all until dawn.

*(T/N: 奇门遁甲 - a type of divination)

Feudal superstition kills people. People need to be selective about what they absorb from traditional culture. Keep the essence stuff and discard the rest. Lin Yan vaguely remembered his junior high Chinese history textbooks. He muttered that after years of atheistic education, he was forced to go to Liangshan* by a ghost.

*(T/N: 梁山 - this is where the Daoist heroes from the Water Margin were from. So kind of like a land of heavy spiritualism)

If someone really wanted to learn something, you can’t eat one bite to become a fat guy*. Lin Yan lazily lay on Xiao Yu's lap, his cold palm stroking his shoulders down to his waist. After getting used to the coldness of his body, he felt very at ease. Lin Yan huddled up on the sofa and all the symbols and phrases in the book appeared in his mind; so much Yin and Yang, the sun rises in the east, how to disrupt a nightmare, avoid bad luck. . .

*(T/N: 一口吃成个胖子 - an idiom that means basically it's not going to happen all at once)

He slowly nodded off as the dawn sky began to lighten.

The next few days were extremely hard. In addition to visiting the young Daoist priest in the hospital every day at lunch with Yin Zhou, Lin Yan spent almost all his time buried in a variety of old books. Xiao Yu seemed determined to train him to become a Daoist master. On the table were large stacks of white paper, each one scrawled with odd incantations taken from the books. Some of them weren't even in Chinese. He could only trace them with a pencil, noting the patterns and corresponding them with their intended purpose.

The worst thing was that he had no way of experimenting with the effects of these charms. Lin Yan lay on the table and stared at Xiao Yu's back, reluctantly thinking that the only thing he had as a test subject was this ghost. But no matter what talisman he tried, there was no reaction. After trying more than a dozen, Lin Yan's patience had finally worn out. He uncontrollably swept the books onto the ground. He slammed his hands on the table and yelled at Xiao Yu: "Are you fucking playing with me?"

Xiao Yu wasn't angry. He patiently picked the books off the ground, turning back to where they had been and placed them in front of Lin Yan. He stepped aside and looked at him quietly. Lin Yan felt like a dumb firecracker, extinguished by a pot of water before he had the chance to explode. It happened to rain for several days, the sound of rain and the sound of pages turning made the house extremely quiet. Lin Yan, for the thousandth time, wrote out notes on geomancy. Xiao Yu had more patience than him. No matter how long Lin Yan sat at his desk, Xiao Yu stayed beside him for as long as he could. Every time Lin Yan turned around, their eyes would meet. He had given up on the idea of slacking off. He lit a cigarette and continued to bury himself in the pile of books.

"You have been sitting here with me for ages, don't you feel bored?" Lin Yan sighed. "The remote is on the table and there's a notebook in my room. I'll teach you how to use it. This is also your home. You don't need to be so polite with me."

"There's some pens and ink. You'll have to use it yourself. You can write or paint anything you want. I don't have that kind of talent anyways. I won't be able to tell if it's bad." Lin Yan chatted up and laughed a bit. "It's a bit like filming a TV series."

He still didn't answer. The whole room seemed to grow mouldy in the rainy weather. Coupled with the chilly aura radiating from Xiao Yu's body, Lin Yan felt that he had become a mushroom growing in one of the damp corners. Before Xiao Yu could speak, he always liked to hug him whenever he had the opportunity. Now that he had regained some consciousness, he didn't touch him as much. He just watched from behind, the silence suffocating and making Lin Yan somewhat uneasy.

[tarithenurse]

Agent of Hope - 23

Your world falls into ruin together with the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcements Logistics Division when you find out that your boyfriend isn’t one of the good guys. Pairing: Brock Rumlow x fem!reader, Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader Contents: Errors (no, I did not spell check this time – shame on me), dealing with trauma, mental health care, feels, growth, smut, pain. A/N: So, this is one of those chapters that I call a “bridge”. Maybe that’s not the right term, but it’s needed for…reason. You know before tossing the last chapters at you. Lots of love for liking and reblogging!!

23 - Never give up. Never back down

…   Romanoff   …

The change comes creeping in like the first light of dawn that suddenly makes it possibly to make out the shape of furniture in the dark and later adding a depth to the surface even before the colours are visible. Some days are exhausting for both [Y/N] and Natasha in each their own way. One is drained from the weekly session with the psychologist or maybe the hard physical training under the stern but kind guidance of Maria. The other, a certain redhead, finds it had to stand by. Hands off even as her love struggles with nightmarish processes that set off nightmare after nightmare until her throat is raw from crying out in anguish. No preparation can make it easier. No knowledge of the importance can soothe the Avenger when she rocks the shaking woman in the dark of night.

But that’s not the real change.

The change is the flashes of peace. The straight back and head held high. It’s the healthy thoughts that are voiced, each time with a sense of acceptance that they are the truth.

Sitting in the kitchen of the Compound, [Y/N] is allowing herself to be completely absorbed in the book she’s reading only glancing up when the glass of lemonade is empty. Clint, who’s sitting next to her, is twirling a straw around in his own empty glass but otherwise only paying attention to the take-out menu. Supposedly. Natasha is fairly certain that she’s heard him drinking even after he’d drained the jug and as such running out of options for a refill plus it’s the kind of stunt the archer has pulled on pretty much anyone who isn’t paying attention to their snack, drinks, or food.

“Mister Barton,” [Y/N] begins hyper-politely, “do you have any knowledge of what might have happened to the last half of my lemonade?”

The man puts on the perfect display of surprise spiked with such a subtle outrage at the underlying accusation that Natasha knows 100% that he’s guilty. “What? Why should I know?”

“Not buying that,” you happily announce, “so I guess I’ll use you to test out something Maria told me about.”

You refuse to tell the suddenly nervous archer what it is, merely patting him on the shoulder as you get up to make a new batch of lemonade.

…   Reader   …

Every single muscle in your body is sore. It hurts to put on a sweater. There are muscles in your back you didn’t know you had screaming at you when you bend to put tie the shoes. Hell, you can barely face going to the loo because your thighs and butt are punishing you for all the work you’re putting into the training with Maria, but at least it’s finally paying off. The former SHIELD agent is an exceptional teacher: honest, but kind without talking to you like you’re a kid. Most importantly, though, there’s an unspoken understanding of why you feel like you have to learn to defend yourself and perhaps feel like you’re in control of your own body. So that’s where she’s started.

First, she has helped you get into shape with simple cardio and strength, teaching exercises you can use on your own in the impressive gym two floors down. The second step has been to show how to use defend against simple attacks by using the other person’s body (weight and size) against them – your own stature is irrelevant or can even be used as an active benefit.

“Aaaah.” Hot water sloshes against the sides of the tub as you lower yourself into the soothing bath.

Natasha’s voice drift through the gap by the door: “Should I be jealous?”

She’s perched on the bed with the blue light from the tablet creating shadows almost as ominous as the intel she’s studying for tomorrow’s missions. Well, it starts in the morning when the present Avengers (Tony, Nat, Cap, and Clint) all leave for wherever they’re heading, and if all goes well they should be back in three days.

“Mhmmmmm…I’m having an affair with the bathtub.” The heat seeps into stiff limbs, dissolving reluctant tensions. “Sometimes we even go as far as adding bubbles to our fun.”

There’s an audible snort and you can imagine the exasperated eyeroll that doesn’t diminish her smile. Perfect, that’s how it is. Sliding deeper into the water, jaw skimming the surface as steam rises past the face, you’re completely enveloped in subtle heat and it lulls you into a drowsy contentment that pulls the eyelids down.

A rustle of clothes seems to filter in from far away before the water and you are stirred by sleek limbs as Natasha settles between your willingly parting legs, back against chest, with a quiet moan. Perhaps it’s an addiction rather than natural behaviour, but your hands are drawn to her, first massaging the tension from shoulders that hold up your world too before flat palms start stroking her arms. Her chest. The swell of her breasts where fingertips tug and twist the rapidly hardening nipples only for the warm water to soothe the skin.

She’s your friend, ally, and lover. Someone you never planned on being such an integral part of your soul and though logic dictates you could be happy without her, you simply don’t want to try. Natasha.

You love these moments when the tough hero melts like snow in your hands, head resting against your chest and mouth slightly open to release the quaking sighs of satisfaction conjured by you and no one else. Tasha is surrounded by you, laid out bare and vulnerable and easy to read. Breaths hitch, toes curl, her fingers dig into the flesh of your thighs as your fingers move faster now they’ve found her clit. She’s granted a few fingers for the core to clench around, and holy fuck, the heat fluttering around the digits that curl against the soft walls is beyond divine. Better than any bath could be.

The name on her lips as she falls apart in your hold is like a prayer. Or the praise from a goddess who has decided to adorn the life of a mere mortal, you.

“[Y/N]!” There’s a hint of a whine to her gasp. “I love you.”

The red locks are matted against her skull from the steam but still soft on your lips as you find the way to her ear. “I lo–”

Out of nowhere, the pain bombards you, starting in your head but sending rigid tendrils into the rest of your body.

…

Gone is the gentle lapping of the water and the comfortable weight of Natasha’s body against you. Fighting against leaded eyelids, you catch a glimmer of white and steel illuminated by a (thankfully dimmed) panel of LED lights overhead, but it’s the smell of hand sanitizer that reveals where this is. Infirmary. This time, as you try to look around again, it’s evident that you’re alone. Aware of an itch on the back of your hand, it’s with some trepidation you begin to search for the button to call for the nurse or whoever’s on duty.

What happened? You recall the bath, the sighs on Tasha’s lips before…the vision. The scene had unfolded (or will unfold) somewhere tropical, a lush jungle as a backdrop for the little houses in a village or maybe the outskirts of a town. It’s the two-story building with the flaking reddish concrete that holds Brock, so that’s where you have to go because you’re the only one that can get access to the place. But…why? There’s no logic to it as far as you can tell. Why would he let me in? But he did, or will, waiting on the other side of the door with a crazed smile as if it had been an agreement to meet. It hurts just to think about it, and not just in your head.

A door slides open with the ssshhh of vacuum, allowing the petite Dr. Cho to enter with Maria Hill in tow.

“How you feelin’?” Maria asks, phone in hand and thumb dancing on the little screen, “Promised to let Natasha know as soon as you woke up.”

Your throat is dry when you try to answer, but Cho is already prepared and stands with a glass of water with a straw in it. It’s drained before you try again. “I’m ‘kay…I guess.” Admittedly, you wouldn’t quite mind volunteering to test a guillotine, but that just means you’re alive. “Where’s Tasha? Why am I here?”

…   Romanoff   …

48 hours. Learning to wait had been a part of Natasha’s training, but the last 48 hours after [Y/N] seized up in the bathtub have been the longest and hardest to get through for the former assassin. Steve had offered she stayed back, he could ask his buddy Sam to cover, but of course she can’t accept that either. The redhead needs to stay busy which isn’t an option if she stayed by the side of the bed. Useless, that’s what Tasha would have been.

“Everything’s okay?” Clint asks, placing the last slice of cheese on the impressive sandwich he’s made.

There’s a distinct absence of weight on Natasha’s chest, a pressure she hadn’t allowed herself to focus on until now when she finally can breathe freely again. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Primacy of Peter and of Love

This week is the Third Sunday of Easter, and our readings highlight the primacy of Peter among the Apostles, and the primacy of love in following Jesus.

During the seven weeks of the Easter Season, the Lectionary reads semi-continuously through Acts in the First Reading (showing the birth of the Church on earth) and through Revelation in the Second (showing the final state of the Church in heaven).

In the First Reading this week (Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41) we see Peter’s primacy (“Peter and the apostles said in reply …”) in leading the early Church through the experience of persecution, and in boldly proclaiming the Gospel despite sustained and serious cultural opposition. Let’s pray for Pope Francis to do the same.

In the Second Reading, (Rev 5:11-14 ), John, whom tradition has identified as the same as the author of this Sunday’s Gospel, sees the entire creation in worship of the Lamb: “every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth and in the sea”—all cry out “To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor …”

It’s amazing that John should have such a universal vision of the glory of the Church, at a time (perhaps the AD 60’s) when Christianity was still very small and persecuted.

Even today, despite large numbers on the books, the Church still feels like a little flock, persecuted by civil authorities as in Acts 5, and also by a smug-and-snarky international media establishment, yet we take courage in the firm hope that all creation will acknowledge Jesus as Lord on the last day.

The Gospel is Jn 21:1-19 :

At that time, Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself in this way. Together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We also will come with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” They answered him, “No.” So he said to them, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.” So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish. So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad, and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, for they were not far from shore, only about a hundred yards, dragging the net with the fish. When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to Simon Peter a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” Jesus said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that Jesus had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Some scholars insist that John 21 is an addition to the Gospel by a different author that chapters 1-20, but this has to be regarded as improbable and unsupported. The language, structures, and thought on John 21 are very similar to the rest of the Gospel and there are a large number of intertextual links that bind John 21 with the entire book.

Two other Gospel passages have to be kept in mind to properly understand John 21. The first is Luke 5:1-11, where Jesus first calls the disciples. After preaching from Peter’s boat, Jesus tells Peter to “put out into the deep” (duc in altum) for a big catch, even though they had toiled all night and caught nothing. Peter and the sons of Zebedee pull in an amazing catch of fish, Peter begs the Lord to depart because he is a “sinful man”, and Jesus calls the disciples to follow him and become fishers of men. There are several obvious parallels with this Sunday’s Gospel. John the Evangelist presupposes that the reader knows the story of Luke 5, in order to grasp that here, in John 21, after the resurrection, Jesus is renewing his call to the Apostles to “follow him” and calling them back to their original vocation and mission. This is one of several instances where John presupposes that his readers have some familiarity with the life of Jesus from the other Gospels or possibly oral tradition.

The other Gospel passage to be kept in mind is John 18:15-18,25-27, the account of the threefold denial of Jesus by Peter. When Peter denied Jesus, he was warming himself over a “charcoal fire” (John 18:18). Jesus makes a “charcoal fire” to cook breakfast in this Sunday’s Gospel (John 21:9). These are the only two references to a charcoal fire in the Gospel of John, indeed in all of Scripture. It’s not accidental — Peter is being reminded of the night of his betrayal, and Jesus will allow him a chance to ritually “renounce his renunciation” three times.

This Gospel account highlights the primacy of Peter among the Apostles. The character of Peter, in fact, dominates most of John 21, the conclusion of this greatest of the Gospels, even though the Gospel was clearly written by a different apostle (John 21:20-24). Peter is listed first among the disciples named as present. The other disciples follow his lead by accompanying him fishing. When Jesus shows his presence on the shore, Peter is the first one to go ashore, followed by the others. The others don’t seem to be able to get the fish ashore. But then, the way John describes it, it sounds like Peter goes single-handedly back on board the boat and drags the net of 153 fish in by himself. After the breakfast, Peter alone is granted a private audience with the risen Lord. Obviously the author of this Gospel has a high regard for Peter and his role among the Apostles and within the Church.

But this Gospel is not only about the primacy of Peter. It is also about the primacy of love. During the “audience” between Jesus and Peter (vv. 15-19), Peter’s ritual re-confirmation as chief shepherd all revolves around his love for the Lord.

First, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” The question is ambiguous. Who are the “these”? Does Jesus mean:

(1) “Do you love me more than [you love] these [other men]?” I.e. Do you love me above all other persons in your life? (2) “Do you love me more than these [fish]?” I.e. Do you love me more than you profession, your way of life, your livelihood, your “comfort zone”? (3) “Do you love me more than these [other men do]?” I.e. Do you have greater love for me than others do? Do you excel in love, so as to be suitable to excel also in authority?

Ambiguity abounds in the Gospel of John, and I think it is intentional. All three meanings may well be meant. Jesus is eliciting from Peter a comprehensive love to correspond to the comprehensive role of shepherding that he will bestow.

Three times Jesus asks about Peter’s love; three times he affirms it. Two different words for “love” are used in the Greek. The first two times, Jesus asks Peter, “Do you agape me?” Agape is the word for divine love. Peter always answers, “I phileo you.” Phileo is the Greek word for fraternal love. The last time, Jesus adopts Peter’s term and asks, “Do you phileo me?”

This gives the impression that Jesus asks twice, Do you love me with divine love? And Peter responds twice, “I love you with brotherly love.” And at last Jesus condescends to Peter’s capabilities, “Do you love me with brotherly love?”, thus implying that such love will suffice: Jesus will accept what Peter, no longer brash and now painfully cognizant of his human weakness, knows he can offer.

This interpretation is suggestive, but must be entertained with caution, because both phileo and agapao are used elsewhere in John for both divine and human love.

The idea that Jesus is condescending to Peter’s human weakness is, nonetheless, clear from the passage as a whole. Otherwise, Jesus would have rejected Peter on account of his threefold denial at the Lord’s time of need.

The primary requirement that Jesus asks of Peter is love. In return for this love, Jesus commissions Peter to “Feed my lambs—tend my sheep—feed my sheep.” The threefold repetition of this commission, together with the variations in which the shepherding charge is phrased, point to the comprehensive nature of the shepherding role being given to Peter. While all the apostles have a role as shepherd over part of the flock, Peter is commissioned as shepherd of the whole flock. As Protestant Bible scholar Andreas Kostenberger puts it: “[Peter], who has renounced all earthly ties and who has declared supreme loyalty to Jesus … is commissioned to serve as shepherd of Jesus’ flock as the Great Shepherd takes his leave.”

It’s remarkable that more and more Protestant biblicists are willing to acknowledge that this and other passages of the Gospels imply that Peter was given a kind of general pastoral responsibility over the whole early Church (see for example Markus Bockmeuhl, Simon Peter in Scripture and Memory: The New Testament Apostle in the Early Church [Baker Academic, 2012], especially the last few pages of the last chapter.)

Peter’s love will lead to the cross. “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands” –this is a reference to stretching one’s arms on the patibulum, the perpendicular bar of a Roman cross.

Love and authority go together in the Church. Love gives credibility to authority. St. Ignatius of Antioch gives one of the earliest testimonies to the primacy of the authority of the Church of Rome, Peter’s See, in his Letter to the Romans, when he famously refers to Rome “presiding in love” over the other churches. Indeed, whoever would preside in authority should first preside in love. Pope Francis quoted St. Ignatius’ words about “presiding in love” on the very night he was first presented on the balcony of St. Peter’s as “bishop of Rome,” the one who presides over the church that is to preside in love.

This Sunday’s Gospel lays out the role of Peter and all his successors: they must renounce all others and excel in love of Jesus in order to lead the whole Church.

At the same time, the Lord’s words are applied to us: Do we love him “more than these”? Do we love him more than we love other persons, than we love our profession and lifestyle? Do we in any way distinguish ourselves from other people by our love for Christ? That’s what it means to follow Jesus, and everyone, from the Pope to the most unknown believer, has to respond to Jesus’ summons: “Follow me!”

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[imagineclaireandjamie]

anonymous asked: Sapphire's post reminded me of Our Story! The most recent chapter wasn't the last one was it?

Liv says: I’m calling this Chapter 8.5. It still ties into their second marriage, of course—I just couldn’t resist Julia and little Claire. And a massive thank you to @lenny9987 who is always willing to read my drafts and give me feedback <3 

Read Chapters One through Eight here.

Our Story

Claire has few memories of her mother, and those that exist are only half-formed. Hardly memories at all.

Rather:

Small blips of sight and sound and smell. Directionless aches in the night, skin raised to gooseflesh by a living darkness. Sometimes there is a vision of two fine-boned hands, their fingers playing the air with passionate arcs and flutters. At others, there are emeralds winking from pale lobes, and a whisper of bergamot on the stretch of neck below. Baby, a voice says, so clear but distant, it’s only for one night. We’ll be back before you—

Fragments.

Among these, however, there is one that is complete. It is something Claire parades at dinner parties, a piece of trivia that reduces her childhood to the first five years of her life. No funerals, no suitcases. No grief hollowing her little, avian bones. Only: Easy.

In this memory, Julia Beauchamp wears a sweater dress and Kork-Ease boots. Her heels are impractical for a stroll through the park, though that is what they are doing—strolling—as they have done every Friday since Claire could walk. It is just the two of them, mother and child, while her father toils in a dark mechanic’s shop, slicked with sweat and sleeved in black grease. 

He will return so deflated that evening—“Like my own bloody oxygen pumped the tires.”—that Julia will kiss the moons under his eyes, will regret not capturing the sun. And so the following week, when Claire remembers her father’s tired face, she will produce a drained Dasani and hold it skywards. Autumn seeping inside the bottle and then inside her pocket; the bright November gliding down Henry’s throat over an meatloaf dinner. (He will indulge his sweet daughter, drinking and drinking until the December day where he cannot; where Claire must pour the bottle over a mound of dirt.)

But while Henry tinkers with cars so, too, does Claire’s mother do her own work. Observing, absorbing, and storing the day away—right here, on this park path.

That is how Claire’s one full memory begins: their joined hands swinging, and their eyes taking. Dried leaves; flannelled backs bent over canoe oars. So vivid in her mind, even now.

But when Julia says, “Baby, how about we play our game?” young Claire breaks the hold and sighs.

At this point, it has been two weeks since the death of her four-year old self, a feat for which she feels a tremendous pride. With the simple opening of her palm, she can now present her age—Five! Can you imagine?—without ever bending her thumb. Her parents often overlook this incredible development in Claire’s life, still seeing her as the girl with four wiggling fingers, as the walnut nestled in Julia’s stomach. Baby, Baby, Baby.

Claire waves at her mother, as if to say, Five, Five, Five.

“Silly me!” Julia cries. “What I meant to say was: Claire Elizabeth. An honest mistake.”

The correction is enough to earn Claire’s forgiveness. She huffs a petulant “All right,” though she has been waiting for this all week, the moment when her mother’s words begin to change. Their game, with its stories she only sometimes understands, is the key to a world she is slowly (but surely!) approaching.

Claire looks around and searches for their first target.

“Him!” she says, pointing to a man grieving his damaged kite. It lies in the arms of an oak, speared but bloodless, and the protruding branch reminds Claire of summertime splinters. Those little knives of wood, which always wheedle beneath her toes when she dances across the porch, barefoot. (Julia is an expert at removing such splinters. No tweezers needed, just, All better?—and it is. Her fine-boned hands giving Claire’s feet their rhythm again.)

“My. He’s a bit of an odd duck, isn’t he?” her mother says, studying the old man. She tilts her head to the side, as if the angle will reveal the source of his almost-tears, his slumped posture, the very soul within. “Robert! That’s his name. Robert—Owner of Toy Shops.”

Claire giggles with excitement. This has always been her mother’s trick: the divining of lives from the smallest of glimpses. Julia has been known to call it Magic, though Claire has grown more skeptical since the dawn of October 20th. (Magic is, after all, a baby’s word.)

“He’s a recent widower. Do you see how he wears a ring but keeps watching the couple over there?”

Claire does see, and she drafts a mental note for school the next day: Tell Mrs. Heath that Mum is smarter than that scraggly bugger, Albert Whats-His-Face. 

“No children either. He and his wife…his wife…” And just as Claire remembers, Einstein! Julia cries, “His wife, Susan! Dear, dead Susan. Both turned off by the whole business of childrearing. Susan’s mother up and left when she was only three.”

“And joined the circus?”

“Yes. I daresay she joined the circus.”

“Poor Robert, Owner of Toy Shops,” Claire laments. “Poor Dear, Dead Susan.”

“Mhmm, such a shame. Poor Dear, Dead Susan didn’t stand a chance against those wretched measles.” (At this, Claire’s fifth year gives her a sudden rush of gratitude. For Dr. Rawlings, who once stuck her with a vaccination needle. For her mother, who covered the red dot with a Pooh plaster. All better.)

“But why is he flying a kite, Mum?”

“Why, indeed…”

This is a crucial part of their game: where Claire probes with further questions, thereby allowing a detailed history to form. No room for doubt when everything is fully realized—just the growing surety that maybe, maybe their guesses are correct.

“I’d wager he’s quite lonely now, and for the first time in his life, he’s regretting they never had children.” Julia’s voice is so confident, that Claire nearly forgets it’s all a game. Almost believes in the name and the wife and the unborn children her mother has given this sad, old stranger. “Flying the kite is a way to…conjure them into existence. A big What if? Rather maudlin if you ask me.”

Claire cannot make sense of these fancy, foreign terms—conjure? maudlin?—or why anyone would fly a kite for their nonexistent kids. Still, Claire nods, Of course, of course, and plans to comb the ‘c’ and ‘m’s of her father’s dictionary. Ask him, casually, for clarification. (And if Henry were here, he would temper his wife’s candor with a more age-appropriate fantasy; shake his head. Even to her own husband, her mother has always been slightly incomprehensible.)

“Baby,” Julia says, suddenly serious. “Claire. Don’t you dare live to regret a thing. Promise me that if something scares you, you’ll do it.

“I’m not scared of anything,” Claire announces (except spiders and cavities; except Father Christmas burning in the chimney and the night noises coming from her parents’ bedroom). “When Willie Burke stole Jacob’s sausage roll last week, I gave him a wedgie. And he’s two years older than me!”

“A wedgie? God, you are fearless!”

Whenever Julia laughs, as she is now, it is the sound of a goose deep in his cups. Oddly enough, Claire prefers it to the less embarrassing, less recognizable titters of other mums. Should Claire ever lose her mother, finding her would be a cinch. She’d just listen for that boisterous, snorting honk, and—presto!—there she’d be. Boisterously snorting and honking.

“You know, munchkin, you’re my favorite. I’d be terribly sad if I didn’t have you.” 

“I think I’d be sadder. Papa never cuts the crusts off my sandwiches.” Claire turns once more to the old man. Her brows, just two brown lines of the softest down, knit together. “Will I ever be as sad as Robert, Owner of Toy Shops?”

“Not if I can help it,” Julia says, smiling. “You’re stuck with me.”

“For your whole life?”

“My whole life. I’ll never stop squishing those precious cheeks of yours.”

“Mum! That would hurt my face.”

They go on walking, leaving Robert and the shade of Dear, Dead Susan behind. Claire’s hand has returned to her mother’s, a granting of all past and future forgivenesses, if only to catch some of that maybe-Magic. Discover if it truly exists.

“Your turn!” Julia says, and she chooses a young boy picking flowers. “How about that lad over there? With the Chinese plumbago?”

Claire keeps her mouth shut, though ideas immediately spring to mind. He is a prince picking a posy for his princess, a wizard whose dragon follows a strict vegetarian diet. She keeps these conjectures to herself, wanting to prove that she is big—no baby! no walnut!—and has adultness growing inside her, like the flowers.

The boy reminds Claire of her runty friend, and so she announces, “His name is Jacob.”

“And what’s Jacob picking the flowers for?”

“They’re for his mum to paint,” Claire says. “She’s a…a famous artist, and she’s the only one who can get the plumbago blue just right.” (Too late, she realizes she has mispronounced plumbago, plumbagel. Feels one of those treasured links to adulthood disappear, alongside the missing ‘o.’) “She eats plenty of Vitamin A, so her eyes see what other people’s can’t.”

Julia smirks as the wind lifts her honey curls, then sets them back on her shoulders. So gentle, like the wind was made just for her, to offer its autumn-crisped affection. (Cinderellas and Rapunzels may not be real, Claire thinks—but mothers certainly are. Beautiful, ethereal, capable of a maybe-Magic. The closest thing.)

“That’s very kind of him,” Julia says. She squeezes Claire’s slippery five-year old hand, and the game goes on:

Under the sycamore lies a former ballerina, who once danced for Queen Elizabeth. Not far from her—“Near the tennis court, see?”—is an American scientist. He has made a profound discovery, something that cooks inside a glass beaker and over a flame. A cure for cancer? The bubonic plague? Who knows, but it’s Brilliant. (Boobonic plague? Claire frets, pitying her mother’s chest.)

And then there is that couple—the same one Robert had watched with such depravity—once Claire and Julia circle back to the gates. The man is dubbed Hal, the woman Minnie. Hal is given a talent for poetry and weather-predictive ankles. Minnie, a mastery of crossword puzzles and a penchant for box-color hair dye (How else to explain that lucent shade of blue-gray?). The pair met, per Claire’s request, in Morocco.  

“Like in that movie you and Papa always watch!”

“Casablanca? Darling, that’s perfect!” her mother exclaims, then adds, “Eloped in 1908. A love 65 years in the making.” 

This last statement makes Claire pause. 65 years, she realizes—despite her complicated relationship with double-digits—is a span of time much vaster than her own life. She can hardly imagine surviving that long, yet she suspects that her mother, with her maybe-Magic, will do just that. Live forever, being incomprehensible and laughing like a drunken goose. (Unfortunately, Julia’s so-called Magic will not prevent the crash that cracks her open. The middle of winter, and the geese a hundred steps ahead; long gone.)

“65 years? Mum, that’s ages.”

“It is,” her mother replies. “But if you asked them, I’d reckon they’d wish for 1,000 more.”

It’s Julia who takes the final turn, and so Claire shows her a girl by the lake. She is staring out towards the opposite bank, where a boy slices the cold, calm water. Each time he reaches the shallows, he stands, smiles at her until she looks at her lap. His reddened nose and his shaking arms have won something: the girl’s restless fidgets, the teeth biting the cushion of her lower lip.

There is a peculiar light on her face, though the clouds have stolen the sun and tucked it behind their fat, cumulus bodies. The light suggests something great, Claire thinks. A holy, incandescent secret. It is what gave Minnie’s bouffant its faint blue halo, and here it is now, spreading all over this girl, right up to her ears.

Julia gives her only a brief glance—not even a tilt of her head—before she seems to understand.

“Easy,” she says, and she nuzzles Claire’s scalp. Bergamot and the maybe-Magic filling the kiss.  “She’s found her soulmate.”

(On a day in August, Claire wears another white gown, carries another bouquet, and walks down another aisle ensconced by well-wishers. She feels a sense of fear as she comes before her husband, who she is marrying for the second time after nearly two decades. It is, she understands, the fear of a future regret: of doing this again, of not doing this again. And it is this fear that dares her to welcome the weight of the thistle ring, marry this beautiful man at the foot of the altar. Watching her, watching her—so much in his eyes. You break my heart wi’ loving you.

Claire recites her vows, teary with joy, but loud enough to be heard from the gallery. She pictures her younger self and her mother up there, observing, absorbing and storing away the sight of her. The not-walnut, the woman-grown now saying, “I do,” to 65 years. More.

And just as Jamie leans in for their kiss, young Claire notices how her older self is shining from the inside out. That same holy secret, all over her. And Julia, leaning down to Claire’s little skull, says, Easy.

And when Claire and Jamie turn to the crowd, Claire looks to the gallery. Holds her head like that, tilted upwards, as Jamie whisks her down the steps, towards a shower of rice.

Do you see? Claire is saying to her younger self, wanting her to know that there is grief but, Baby, there is Magic in the world.

Do you see? she is saying to Julia, wanting her mother to know for certain—at least this once—that she is right.) 

[wesleyhill]

Spy Wednesday: The Shaking of the Powers

A homily on Mark 13:24-27, preached for the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama, on Spy Wednesday 2020, Coronatide

I would speak to you in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

During Holy Week, as he moves slowly, inexorably, toward the cross, Jesus talks at length with his followers. Shortly after his symbolic judgment of the temple and his debate with the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead, Jesus offers a long discourse that has often been described as “apocalyptic.”

In somewhat cryptic terms, Jesus looks ahead to what will happen in Jerusalem after his death and resurrection. “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be,” he says, “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter.” It’s hard to know precisely what Jesus is referring to here. It could be that he is predicting the way the Zealot fighters occupied the temple in the lead-up to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. It could be that he is thinking of the time when Titus, the Roman general, after the successful siege of the city, as the temple burns, peers into the Holy of Holies, the place where no unbidden human eye should ever look.

Whatever the case, Jesus tells his followers that there will be a yet more momentous event. If you thought the sack of Jerusalem was apocalyptic, he seems to say, wait until you see what comes next.

And that brings us to our passage for today: “[I]n those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” With these words, Jesus’s perspective seems to shift. He is looking past the destruction of Jerusalem to a time “after that suffering.” He is looking ahead, many readers have thought, to the conclusion of history and the end of the world. And the first thing he sees and tells his hearers about it is that it will involve a cosmic cataclysm. The sun will go dark. (If, like me, you found the solar eclipse in 2017 a bit eerie, can you imagine what it would be like to see the sun’s light finally giving out for good?) The moon will cease to shine, Jesus says. And the stars will fall as the powers in the heavens are unsettled and displaced. These are images of decreation, of the unraveling of the fabric of the cosmos.

It’s important to keep in mind, I think, that Jesus’s audience probably would have thought of the stars in personal terms — like spirits. Think of how Satan and the demons’ fall from heaven is described in terms of the falling of a star (Isaiah 14:12).

You may remember in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia story The Voyage of the Dawn Treader how the children encounter a star named Ramandu. The children are initially puzzled. “‘In our world,’ said Eustace, ‘a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.’” And Ramandu replies, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” The stars, for ancient people, represented cosmic powers — personal powers.

One of the earliest Christian interpreters of Jesus’s words here was Eusebius, the historian of the early church. He drew a connection between Jesus’s vision — “the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” — and what we read in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about spiritual warfare: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” According to Eusebius’s interpretation of Jesus’s apocalyptic message, at the end of history, the cosmic forces of darkness and evil will be undone — they will fall from their heights and be humbled at the appearance of the glory and kingdom of God.

It can be uncomfortable for modern Christians to think in these kinds of “mythological” ways, but we should be honest and admit that this way of speaking is on virtually every page of the New Testament. Jesus and his apostles believed in personal agents of spiritual evil — Satan and the demons. In one of his radio broadcasts during the bombing of Britain in World War II (an apocalyptic time if there ever was one!), C. S. Lewis said: “One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin.” Lewis admits that modern people often have a hard time taking this imagery seriously. We tend to picture a man in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork and an evil grin. Forget that picture, Lewis advises us, and focus instead on the reality: “Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

Personally, I think the world has changed since the 1940s in such a way that people might find it more possible to conceive of evil in personal terms than they did back then. Think, for example, about how we now talk about addictions. We say that we are “gripped” by them, “held captive” by them, “ruled” by them. That’s the language of personified agency. Think, for another example, about how in this time of the coronavirus, the language of apocalyptic is back in the pages of our newspapers. We are newly aware of how truly vulnerable we are to powers and agencies and movements at work in the universe that are beyond our ability to control.

I don’t know whether you saw it, but at the beginning of March, Pope Francis went to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Divine Love — where his predecessor Pope Pius XII had gone to pray in June of 1944 for an end to the bloodshed in Europe — and begged the Virgin Mary to intercede to her Son to bring an end to the plague. Now, I’m Protestant enough to want to go directly to Jesus myself in prayer, but, still, I was deeply moved by this sign of faith. We are not simply meant to wrestle in laboratories and hospitals, as grateful as I am for scientific advances. We are also meant to plead with God to bring Satan and his minions to heel — to intervene in the world and defeat, once and for all, the spiritual forces of wickedness at work in the heavenly places.

And what is the outcome we are ultimately praying for?

“[T]he stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.”

Jesus, looking ahead to the world’s end, sees the starry hosts falling from their heights. He sees the cosmic forces being toppled from their thrones. And then, he says, those enemies of humankind will see a Human Being, the Son of Man foreseen by the prophet Daniel, descending in the clouds. Then the cosmic forces of evil will be the captors in his wake, in his triumphal procession after the final victory has been won. They will behold him whom they crucified (1 Cor. 2:8). They will see him coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and they will bend the knee.

This is the gospel of Holy Week. Jesus, on his way to the cross, promises that that cross will not be his final end. He will go into death, pass through it, triumph over it, and emerge victorious on the other side. He will bear our sins and griefs — and bear them away. He will be crowned with glory and honor. And when he comes again, all viruses — all sicknesses, all sorrows, all poverty and unemployment, all losses, even death itself — will be defeated. The coronavirus, and all other sadnesses, will be vanquished.

Let us pray, even now, for foretastes of that final victory. Let us, this week, keep company with Jesus as he walks the way of the cross, secure in the knowledge that his cross is the victory that has overcome the world.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[ecotone99]

[RF] A world beneath your own

Do you ever feel like you're missing out? Like everyone else knows something you don't?

Maybe you're walking down the street and you see two people laughing and time slows down as you pass them, and they look at you like you're a freak. Or maybe you're driving down to Aldi to get the weekly shop, and you glance out of your driver's window and see a young couple holding hands - a girl you might have fallen in love with. Or you spy a family through a living room window watching television, or at the dinner table joking and discussing.

And sometimes you find yourself in this strange, isolated world full of tall pine trees with their middles illuminated by cutting street lamps. And nothing feels real. And everything speaks the language of concealed danger, and the shadows claw through the sunlit days like demons waiting to be set free. Of anger. Of hatred. Of revenge.

That is the world I live in.

I never go on Reddit, or online to speak. I think it's all just a way of escaping. It's not real. It's all just a sick fantasy world; lost people running away from the dark and the cold outside, pretending the four walls they're currently confined to isn't a prison. Denying the fact that they're a wild animal caught in a trap.

If you get past the gloss and the glass and posters of people smiling and all the sparkly high heels, what you're left with is the mud and the soil. The concrete and the grey and the dog shit.

I make myself laugh.

The thing is, God is dead. Nietzsche said it, and now it's all true. There is no meaning. Nothing matters. It's all sex and money, and the rest is just a distraction. Even though, there are some of us who feel something else. That power matters. Dominance. Control. I am one of those select few.

You may have seen me walking around somewhere in the middle of the night once. You may see me buy a sandwich from Tesco on a Friday night, or on Tuesday getting something else to eat. Maybe I'll eat a pizza, or cook myself a lasagne. I'm a bad cook though.

Sometimes I make myself laugh.

It's difficult to snap yourself out of a delusion. We all have them. Sometimes it's hope: I will be happy one day. Someone will come. Someone will see me in pain. Someone will love me. Daddy will come home. Mummy won't drink anymore. And sometimes it's a cynical view to distract you from your will to power. Whatever it is, it is all a delusion, a distraction from raw reality; raw truth.

Raw truth isn't nice. It's actually pretty ugly. See what I did there?

People prefer to be comfortable, and I understand that, but as I say, some of us want something more. Some of us don't want to watch Netflix and go on Reddit and be distracted. Some of us want to seek the truth no matter what the cost. Even if it means death, and I admit, that is scary for anyone. Death is the unknown. The world beyond.

I knew a girl once in my secondary school who committed suicide. I was in love with her. We used to look at each other in the hallways and in class. I was obsessed, and I cried for weeks because I was too shy to talk to her. It was painful. Then I moved away and two years later I found out over Facebook that she had taken her own life - her hair mysteriously dyed an out-of-place orange. She hung herself using a belt and a door knob. I'm still uncertain how people do that. What was she thinking? Where did her mind go?

Sometimes I crack myself up.

Freud was clever. He wanted to seek the truth. That's why he invented his theories. The unconscious. That sneaky clandestine aspect of the brain. All the things we do in dreams. The jealousy and the huge monsters and the infinite corridors. The tornados and the massive tsunamis and the destruction and the chaos. The terrifying potential lies dormant behind the eyes of consciousness, festering away like rotten fruit, attracting flies, creating bad smells. Polluting the world.

It's a fucking strange world we live in today. Such a lonely world.

I told myself when I was 19 that I had to murder someone. A vision of me appeared beside my bed - a vision of the man I knew I could be; my self-actualised manifestation. He told me that I was weak. That I was succumbing to depression and nihilism. He told me what I needed to hear, but didn't want to acknowledge. I needed to kill someone in order to feel in control of my life again. And not just anyone.

The thing is, about murder, it's a lot less glamorous in real life. Murderers aren't particularly evil people or smart people or even sneaky people. Anyone can go out in the dead of night and stab a homeless person, or a prostitute, or shoot a jihad dead in the dusty plains with a rifle. They're easy targets. That's not how you achieve control and self-actualise.

Some of the most notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, they murdered out of a sexual fascination. It was also about power, but polluted with delinquency and sexual degeneracy. Not pure. Not righteous.

I don't necessarily have an interest in being righteous, but the idea of killing for sex or of killing an easy target doesn't excite me. I feel like killing for justice, for raw truth, for ultimate power over someone else too weak to seek the truth, that is the pinnacle of masculine achievement. That is how you reach the divine state of being. Some call it enlightenment. It's different for everyone.

The mind is like an onion, and reality is just an image of what you project based on the level you happen to be on. Once you've peeled away all the layers, all you're left with is black. You become blind. You lose all your senses except smell. You smell everything; the sweat, the shit, the snot, the rain, the lights, the darkness, the kitchen, the eyeballs, the skeletons.

People lose their personalities and become primates. They lose their faces. Their skin melts away along with their identities. They then become objects - physical manifestations of matter that interact with other bits of matter. Almost as if they could have been splurged out by some white matter gloop machine and painted by a Warhammer nerd. Porcelain dolls. Rag dolls.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and laugh at my handsome face as it contorts into something that manages to scare me.

Before I decided to kill someone, I used to steal, and vandalise buildings. I'd wake up at 2AM and instantly jump out of bed with my pre-assembled rucksack equipped with a spare set of clothes and big rocks. Then I'd take the pitch black footpath to the town and, with my hood down, hurl the rocks at WHSmiths, McDonald's, Wilko's. And then I'd leave a message to the police: "I am the Zodiac... You will decode this message if you wish to find me... If you do not post the details to your Facebook page, I will strike again... And do something different."

You may have seen me before. Me and you might have shuffled past each other on a crowded train once, or maybe I asked you where a specific item was in a supermarket three years ago, or maybe you taught me at school, or maybe I am the friend of a friend of a cousin that you've never heard of. And maybe you have some connection to me or my victim. Part of you wants to reach me and talk to me. Part of you is as lonely as I am.

When you drop a plate and it smashes on the floor, you feel defeated. But what if the plate drops you on the floor and feels defeated, and you smash into 50 ceramic chunks? What if my mind is broken? It's not. Sanity doesn't exist. That's just another lie people tell themselves as they flick through Twitter or post an ironic meme on Reddit.

I can pinpoint exactly at what age when I fell down the rabbit hole.

I was 17. My only parent, an alcoholic mother who abused me, neglected me and treated me like shit, decided to abandon me, so I left home, aged 16. And then at some point I stopped denying. Living on my own in supported accommodation with rats, literally and metaphorically. I stopped picking my nose and I started picking my brains. I started imagining my mother burning alive, her flesh reappearing only to disintegrate again as she screamed in agony.

I gazed upon the abyss; the singularity. Pure, unadulterated truth: pain in its most horrific form. Boundless anxiety and primal fear - loss - terror - horrific depression - burning rage - hypochondria. Then total despair. I wrapped myself up like a newborn baby in my duvet and weeped into the carpet floor for hours. I couldn't take it.

I had been mistreated. My childhood had been tainted with lies and lost opportunities. I would never recover.

I looked through Facebook and saw pictures of people laughing; knowing what I didn't the whole time. Knowing a sense of security and not doubting themselves and who they are. "Ha, fuck their stupid comfortable little identities." I was jealous, deep down, but there was no way back. Not anymore.

It was at this point a sense of odd peace descended on me; a moment I termed the Dawn of My Awakening. The eye of the storm. I thought back to everyone who had ever wronged me, made fun of me. It's not like I was bullied heavily in school, but after school, the people in the social housing, they were so horrible. They ripped me up. I was nothing from that point onward.

I thought I'd cried all the tears I could. I honestly thought I was a psychopath.

Sometimes I make myself laugh.

That is when I entered the next layer of the onion. Those people I walk past in the street - they are murderers. All the smiling people, and even the ones who don't - the inwardly serene people. It's subtle, you have to catch it. You see it in the ease of their actions, the minor flourishes of a hand or the lack of twitching lips. Stability. The foundations of which cannot be anything but the fulfilment of unconscious desires: the sex, money, power part of the brain that ticks and chimes like Big Ben. The private resounding in the brain. The reptilian.

The reptilian sentinels with their menacing diamond-shaped pupils and cold personalities that allow them to walk all over humans like me. The lizards with their slippery elongated tongues with lisps that lash out like cracking whips. The screaming children and the reversing cars that shield them in the sunshine halls of suburbia. I hate them all.

I hate the parks and the children and the houses and the cars and the volleyball players. I hate the computers and the iPhones and the sunglasses and the law degrees and the depressed parents who yell at their children outside community centres. I hate the warm days when it's so easy to pretend everything is going okay, and I hate the posters of the smiling people. I see behind their eyes the neglected skeletal figures of Hell. I hate the adverts about shampoo and sitcoms like Big Bang Theory. I hate the fashionistas and the pretentious Starbucks employees, and the fat girl who works as a cashier who is always laughing way too loud.

I hate it all.

Don't infect me with your la dee dah land of grown ups. Don't lecture me with maturity you've constructed out of your own neglected ambitions. Don't fist bump me the hand you used to masturbate to girls on Facebook, or neglect your responsibilities as a man with a video game controller. I don't care about you, or /this/.

In truth, I am a lonely animal who lives off of small pleasures, so if you see me, offer me a friendly smile. Maybe open a door for me. Don't be angry at me. It's not entirely my fault. The dice of fate were loaded. If you are kind, I won't harm your children. I won't hunt productive members of your society. I won't hurt the economy. You'll do this for me. Otherwise we're going to have a disagreement. Otherwise, I'll think about taking action. But for now, I'm dormant. And I will stay that way. For now.

I take my job as a clinical psychologist very seriously. The days of feeling self-conscious when I don my dark-brown trench coat are long since gone. The imposter syndrome fades into the background along with the rest of the distractions.

I care about my clients I deal with, which are mostly young men dealing with aggression and depression. I feel for them. I relate to their stories and their pain and their anger. I wish I had a magic wand to make it all better, but I don't, and so I have to deal with reality. I tell them as much truth as I can afford. I tell them they need to get off their backside and fend for themselves because nobody else is gonna do it for them in this cruel life.

These are the children of alcoholics, abandoned by their fathers, by their families, by society.

I zoom out and listen to the silence and gaze up at the full moon in February. I imagine the waves crash against the cliffs as they once did in my childhood. The feeling of salty freshness bashing against my ears. That is just enough to soothe my anguished soul until the next big thing knocks me down like a sack of potatoes. Like a smashed dinner plate.

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[fathersonholygore]

Many drugs are mind altering. Opioids, and specifically heroin, are life altering. I’ve never taken heroin, even though I’ve seen others take it and had it offered to me. My addiction was contained to many of the other opioids, from oxycodone to Demerol to garden variety morphine. Nine years clean and I still remember the stranglehold they held on my life, intent on ruining everything good in my life. It wasn’t exactly Trainspotting. Still, I’ll always understand Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and the lads, to some extent. Opioids pull you away from the world, both with an otherworldly physical sensation and in the mental isolation they instil in the user, effectively shielding them from reality. On an existential level, they end your life. The addict becomes suspended in a space somewhere between fantasy and reality, as if experiencing a form of spiritual death. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting is a humorous if not bleak look at the truth that hard drugs are, for the junkie, a version of the afterlife, during which they experience heaven, hell, and purgatory at various intervals. Boyle’s choice to weave the gritty life of a group of heroin addicts shot, by necessity, in a low-budget style with moments of magical realism captures the process of addiction in vivid and at times terrifying detail. It’s like a 20th-century version of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy narrated by a lad from Edinburgh hooked on skag. Renton guides us from Inferno to Purgatorio and finally to Paradiso. This journey is facilitated by Boyle’s use of magical realism to convey the fantastical, if not devastating effects and consequences of taking heroin.

  “In the middle of the journey of our life/ I found myself within/ A dark woods where the straight way was lost.” – Inferno; Canto I lines 1-3

Immediately, the “Choose Life” monologue from Irvine Welsh’s book – originally located around the middle of the text, moved to the beginning of the screenplay by Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge – is essentially the anthem for all narcissist drug users. The viewer has no doubts about Renton or his friends Spud (Ewen Bremner) and Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) being addicts right from the opening scene. The “Choose Life” monologue also reveals the utter obsession of the addict with nothing else except getting high. Renton could’ve chose any number of paths, and yet he chose one that lead him into those dark woods of Dante. Nevertheless, those dark woods, for him, are just as good as heaven if he has heroin to guide him. No matter how it appears outwardly to the non-addict, junkie heaven is the high itself. Boyle puts us directly in the midst of all the needle use and the decrepit apartments in rundown public housing complexes. He never glorifies the drug lifestyle while not shying away from illustrating how much an addict enjoys being high. After spending so much time in heavenly bliss, the junkie gets so desperate to crawl back to that chemical fantasyland they’re willing to mentally bend reality themselves to get there. Even when Renton decides on getting clean he’s desperate enough to go fishing in a nasty pub toilet for opium suppositories he lost. The Worst Toilet in Scotland scene is prefaced by Boyle adding “The Worst” and “in Scotland” to the toilet door’s label, similar to Dante’s vision of hell where a sign hangs above the entrance warning: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” The toilet transforms via the junkie mind into a clear pool of water. In the throes of desperation, Renton is suddenly no longer a junkie – he’s a diver searching the ocean floor for glorious, valuable pearls. Boyle doesn’t let the viewer stray too long, though. He reels us back up out of the water and into the stall of that hideous toilet where – just as it does when baby Dawn perishes from neglect partway through the film – the reality of the junkie once more returns in all its brutality.

“I did not die, and I alive remained not/ Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit/ What I became, being of both deprived.” – Inferno; Canto XXXIV lines 25-28

When Renton overdoses in the apartment of his dealer, Swanney a.k.a Mother Superior (Peter Mullan), he passes between life and death; not quite alive, never fully dead. Boyle’s magical realism here is a double dose of symbolism. After Renton shoots up, he literally sinks into the carpet. On one hand, this is a metaphor of the opioid high itself, as the warm, fuzzy carpet hugs him into it with open arms. It’s also symbolic of the antisocial nature of heroin; the retreat into the carpet is the junkie reverting completely within themselves. On the other hand, Boyle shows us the banal, everyday death of the junkie symbolised by the carpet transforming into a coffin, and the floor of the apartment acts as a grave. D.P. Brian Tufano’s camera assumes the point-of-view of Renton, pointing up through the opening of the makeshift grave while Mother Superior looks down upon him. The viewer becomes a corpse looking out from a carpeted grave. When Renton makes it to a hospital and the nurses give him adrenaline he comes back to life, even though he wasn’t totally dead. He then re-emerges from the carpet-lined coffin. As if hovering on the line between life and death wasn’t disturbing enough, it’s Renton’s drug purgatory where the actual horror begins. Following his overdose, Renton is forced into a cold turkey, homemade rehab by his mother and father. This is his personal purgatory, or as he describes it himself “the junkie limbo,” before any of the nastier symptoms take hold. Withdrawals turn fantasy into terror, and those happy, cosy fantasies of junkie heaven are subverted into nightmares. Magical realism is now horrific realism. He see his friend Begbie (Robert Carlyle) under his sheets representing the social shame of being a junkie. He sees his parents on a television set answer game show questions about AIDS, which symbolises his fear of the consequences of his intravenous drug use. There’s also the most harrowing representation of heroin’s consequences: baby Dawn, who was found dead in her crib by the group of junkies, now crawls along the ceiling, and her head spins around, before she falls down onto Renton in bed. Later comes the guilt when he sees Spud in prison chains after Renton managed to escape any charges for their doomed robbery, and he sees Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who he introduced to heroin, in a wretched state of advanced addiction; both of which signify his own psychologically debilitating guilt. His parents assure him he will get through it, just as Virgil tells Dante in Purgatorio: “My son/ Here may indeed be torment, but not death.” Torment doesn’t necessarily end there, either. The worst comes after purgatory when the junkie must return to reality. They’re not able to sweat and vomit the guilt out, neither can they rid their system of the damaging memories of the things they done and what they’ve seen. Suddenly, life is hell, which is no less difficult even if it’s part of the route to heaven.

“You dull your own perceptions/ With false imaginings and do not grasp/ What would be clear but for your preconceptions.” – Paradiso; Canto I lines 88-90

Renton remarks that “once the pain goes away that’s when the real battle starts” because Trainspotting’s vision of junkie hell is real life itself. After first kicking the habit, Boyle’s magical realism vanishes. For over a half hour near the end of the film the viewer and Renton experience unfiltered reality. Even when he relapses the ugliness of reality does not leave because his eyes have opened from the slumber of addiction, and while physically he’s falling back into drugs he refuses to fall back there mentally again, too. This is punctuated by Renton witnessing his maniac friend Begbie cause a violent, bloody scene in the pub for no other reason than his own clumsiness and anger. He sees the destructive reality of his life in no uncertain terms, which only fortifies his will to make an actual, lasting change. Ironically, Renton’s betrayal of his friends is the absolute best personal choice for him, and the only way he can truly escape addiction. Just as it is in real life, sometimes to be free of addiction we must shed the skin of our former life, even though our friends are a part of what makes up that skin.

“Open thy mind to that which I reveal/ And fix it there within; for ‘tis not knowledge/ The having heard without retaining it.” – Paradiso; Canto V lines 40-42

Boyle’s magical realism puts the viewer through the afterlife of drug use and addiction alongside Renton. More importantly, it acts as a guide along the journey. We experience the heavenly hallucinatory highs of heroin with him, then we go through the purgatorial space of withdrawal, as well as the hell of real life where there’s no more fantasy, just pure and honest reality. This doesn’t mean there is no hope for Renton. Dante’s Divine Comedy is thematically concerned with sin, in that it suggests the individual must recognise and accept one’s sins in order to find a path to heaven. Once Renton fully accepts his addiction and the magical realism slips away, he experiences a version of hell, yet in a sense he’s also able to move closer to a real heaven that’s non-drug induced; reality instead of fantasy. Although Trainspotting ends on a bittersweet note with Renton betraying his longtime friends, this is actually his salvation. It isn’t exactly what Dante would’ve envisioned, though it’s as close as someone like Renton will get to salvation. If someone like him – or me, for that matter, nearing a decade into my own recovery – can escape that life and the cycle of addiction, it’s attainable for anyone willing to undertake the journey. This is why Renton narrates the film to the viewer, almost as if he’s our guide, similar to how Virgil was a guide for Dante. If we consider where he ends up in the sequel, T2, at least we know that he’s able to stay clean for many years. What neither Mark Renton nor the rest of society can afford to forget is that addiction never leaves us, it’s a force we must constantly battle even after the addict is clean. This means that the important lessons of Trainspotting are pointless if they’re forgotten.

TRAINSPOTTING; Or, Renton’s Divine Comedy Many drugs are mind altering. Opioids, and specifically heroin, are life altering. I’ve never taken heroin, even though I’ve seen others take it and had it offered to me.

[iamrinftw-blog1]

Op Ed: Bitcoin’s Scaling Concern Brings often the Battle regarding Liberation connected with Cyberspace

The 2010 season brought any climax inside prolonged Bitcoin block measurement debate. Warmed up disputes above scaling that contain become deadly in the eco-system have outweighed the technological innovation. The cancelation of SegWit2x, the most marked by controversy proposal on this cryptocurrency’s story, averted a possible catastrophe. Invention moves on along with the community will be finding a for reflectivity. What performed this hottest crisis coach us? Often the political challenge that came for the forefront within the last few several months obstacles all to check a fundamental notion with Bitcoin seeing that apolitical income and can guide us investigate the dark vision guiding this engineering.

The trilogy of Wachowski’s science tale fantasy film evolved into a popular meme in the Bitcoin battle with social media. The exact Matrix is actually a story of an computer coder played by means of Keanu Reeves who is asked become the Person that can free of charge people originating from a machine-controlled method. Neo’s battle to liberate the human race from oppression seems to have resonated with many Bitcoiners who observed a similar enthusiasm in the likely of Bitcoin to bring fiscal sovereignty on the common gentleman in the world of banks.

In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo confronts a guy who intended the system. The particular Architect, who all represents medical reason in addition to logic, shows Neo:

“Your life is the sum a the rest of an out of kilter equation which is part of the computer programming of the matrix. You are the exact eventuality of anomaly, which usually despite our sincerest work I have been struggling to eliminate by what is usually a a harmonious relationship of numerical precision …”

To this, Neo responds telling, “Choice. 60 choice. ” Neo’s selection represents a great irregularity that will disrupts get and eventually is set out the system. That irregularity, during the eyes with the Architect, is a type of bug that must be removed, nevertheless he is can not do so.

Bitcoin is an buildings that contains that anomaly. Once we look rear at the recent nine regarding its lifetime, the development of the following network counted on the individual’s choice. Inside white document published dealing with a financial desperate, the secret author recommend a training of a decentralized network make up it is basic design. Just what created the multilevel was engaging of people who, of the volition, used the light rabbit. But at the same time because the network mature, this big anomaly begun to bring dangerous forces into the network as well as fluctuations with equations.

Scission of A couple Visions By Bitcoin XT to Bitcoin Classic to be able to Bitcoin Infinite, the plans to change Bitcoin’s consensus appeared over time, which often stirred right up disagreements. Typically the crux of your conflict can be obtained from opposing intuition of Bitcoin. One camp out views this a payments system, wanting inexpensive, faster on-chain transactions, whilst the other considers censorship level of resistance and permissionlessness as its interpreting feature plus value offrande.

The mischief of these a couple visions is usually metaphorically represented as a struggle between Adviser Smith and also Neo relating their several ideas regarding freedom. Representative Smith provides the Mandsperson Smith around the globe, advocating some sort of “free market” economy delivered in the Manufacturing Revolution. Conversely, Neo means civil freedom in the Digital camera Age, which represents free presentation and data security enabled by way of asymmetric security. The rising schism in between two représentation of Bitcoin seemed to reach the point involving no give back in Could with the launch of the “Bitcoin Scaling Deal. ”

SegWit2x, or the Nyc Agreement, was given birth in the heat in the scaling challenge. This pitch was recommend by enemy of the Main development team’s proposed project upgrade (a way to raise a new volume without having to adjust consensus principles, while solving a long-lasting malleability bug). Most signers of the deal saw SegWit2x as a skimp between Core’s planned SegWit implementation (BIP141) and Bitcoin Unlimited’s menace of a good hard pay alternative. They will saw this a way to maintain your network collectively.

SegWit2x, a scheme to increase the obstruct size by way of a hard derive, was developed within the invite-only assembly in a New york city hotel simply by major actresses in the industry. Contrary to Bitcoin Funds, which was unveiled by practitioners of a wedge size increased response to the particular SegWit lock-in, SegWit2x didn't have enough the re-run protection was required to prevent possibilities loss of users’ funds by accidental play the recording again spending along with replay problems. Concerns have been raised relating to this proposal, specially its in a rush preparation worn out a finished development practice. Some thought of it as a high risk and clumsy hard hand, which is not an application upgrade like proponents promise, but an harm on Bitcoin.

Beginning connected with Resistance During the Matrix set, aside from the Creator, who highlights himself for the reason that father on the system, you can find another critical character: typically the Oracle, who might be the mother with the system. Morpheus speaks showing how the Oracle, who manufactured a prediction, has been with all the common people considering that the beginning of the weight. He explains to Neo before he mets the Oracle, “Try to never think of that in terms of proper and drastically wrong. She is information. She will let you find the journey. ”

In any respect, the builder of Bitcoin was similar to a prophet just who set up a new path for just a new potential for others to look for. What is involved in the white report is a imaginative and prescient vision that has placed everything around motion: your vision in which existed from very beginning. Ahead of architecture with 1s in addition to 0s, if numbers were being used to compute profit margins or even program program, there was any vision to steer human actions.

The bunnie hole this took most people to the Wonderland of this crypto-world goes more deeply. In a conversation in Zurich titled “Call for a Cutting edge Hacker Mobility, ” Amir Taaki, who had previously been one of the first coders to start implementing Bitcoin, detailed the war that has established itself as engaged since dawn of your internet. He or she reminded often the audience just how Bitcoin can be a political mobility that was created on an prior struggle.

Taaki spoke in relation to another diviner who prompted him to interact with in Bitcoin development. His or her name is usually Richard Stallman, the originator of the cost-free software action, who introduced the idea of no cost software. The following godfather in the GNU/Linux computer described absolutely free software since “the initially battle regarding liberation involving cyberspace. ”

Stallman discussed that free of charge software is “controlled by many people, rather than the slow. ” They defined “free” as flexibility, libre inside French, instead of in terms of value. This idea of technological know-how to persuade individuals plus change the universe formed hacker ethics, which will inspired a gaggle known as the exact cypherpunks, a mailing list connected with activists who also advocate cost-free speech and also privacy using strong cryptography.

Amir observed how business interests co-opted Stallman’s perspective by renaming free software package as “open source” along with rebranding the idea with an open-market idea devoted to efficiency, benefit and growing. Networks with committed folks, who away from their own no cost resolution specific themselves for you to shared values greater than their selves, were slowly but surely overtaken by simply business likes and dislikes and people who ended up overly pushed by self-interests. He then complained how the desastre of the mass size controversy was a hijacking of Bitcoin’s original eye-sight, rooted during these ethics.

Growing of No cost Software Bitcoin is a uncovering of laptop or computer science while free application, which makes sure individual users’ rights to regulate its plan. The first necessary condition of liberty in the guideline of absolutely free software of which Stallman articulated is “freedom to run this method as you wish. ” Stallman defined that if you aren't going to be a designer and would not know how to software, you can fork out someone to apply it for you and, through these individuals, you can workout your mobility.

Bitcoin is often a global undertaking of free of charge software, whereby changes to the particular protocol are designed through a large consensus on the network. Precisely what maintains typically the integrity in this collective cost-free software usually are full clients run by means of individual consumers who apply Bitcoin agreement rules, also known as the fiscal majority. After running codes of their choice and also the clients to receive orders, users develop economic pastime. This way, they will support often the developers who have work on all their behalf.

Often the proposed substantial block volume violates this specific first conclusion of overall flexibility, for it will increase the fee for individual people to run whole nodes, turning it into impossible to help them to use the free-market forces to help exercise their particular freedom. So, this strategy for a much larger block sizing was terminated on complex grounds, having consideration with the security trade-off that centralization brings. A whole new solution is put forward by way of core creators to preserve this kind of essential current condition of freedom for the first stratum, with focus to be built in other coatings.

Responding to the exact SegWit2x thing, CEO in addition to co-founder regarding Prasos, Holly Brade, said, “We can find the removal of #Bitcoin cypherpunk beginnings and the component of an manufacturing oligopoly to manipulate all Bitcoin development. ” Some articulated how the genuine story regarding this your own drama depends upon control plus noted precisely how these were hard work partially operated by the prefer to remove the have an effect on of Bitcoin Core contributing factors and secure development of their own vested interests.

Hash Power Superiority Like Realtor Smith, who all tried to hold Neo within his handle, the world of IOU with laissez-faire economics collides with cypherpunks’ hacker integrity of no cost and available software. Having ICOs and also new BIPs filled with unfilled promises, management and business and Investing profiteers covered as prophets try to compromise the cryptosphere.

Big small business players, including wild cowboys, plunder know-how in the Bitcoin source computer code repository that is definitely carefully looked after through arduous testing along with peer evaluate. Under the over the top of “open source, ” those motivated by hpye and business oriented interests aim to copy, customize and create their unique versions about this currency make the whole market under their whole proprietary command.

Here, the economic infrastructure involving power arrived full drive to refuse the incline of a completely new Digital Period of time. Ideology connected with hash strength supremacy has been taken up simply by SegWit2x supporters, who quarreled that miners can consider or really should dictate innovations in the Bitcoin protocol. This specific ideology draws on the belief (perhaps held by simply some outside of lack of experience and by other folks more intentionally) that a blockchain with more hashing power specialized in it becomes Bitcoin. Some belittled these miners’ attitudes that will put themselves on the protocol regulations enforced by means of users. That they saw this a dangerous, elusive slope when it comes to changing all rules, for example the 21 zillion coin control.

The community’s concern regarding this seemingly overarching power of miners reached a different level continue spring in the event the controversy around Bitmain’s AsicBoost technology came forth. The witness was made that will Chinese appliance maker Bitmain was confidentially exploiting some sort of previously well-known weakness throughout Bitcoin’s roman numerals and engaging with unfair mining or prospecting practices. Issue was accurate, it was such as a malicious trojans in computer software that was unveiled into the community. Monopoly through the patent for mining processor chip technology can be employed as a equipment to inhibit fair sector competition in addition to restrict users’ access to get involved in the networking fully.

#UASF, Proof-of-Hats Agreement While promoters of SegWit2x tried to command line economically realistic miners plus intensify the particular threat on the hard division, resistance got emerged. The exact attempted hashing power takeover was found by Tweets hashtag movements. Around this total algorithm, an athlete network with solidarity ended up being quickly made, and a impromptu ? impulsive, self-directing affected individual emerged from the ecosystem.

A new seed on this movement seemed to be planted if pseudonymous Bitcoin and Litecoin developer Shaolinfry proposed his or her User Stimulated Soft Forks (UASF). The particular vision regarding UASF has to be inspired by way of game idea put forward by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, namely a notion of the “intolerant minority. ” This perception of an account activation mechanism put in place by end users began to raise when it kindled in the energy of some others. Samson Cut, the CSO of the blockchain technology corporation Blockstream, build a resources to fund the creation of a UASF software rendering designed to bring about BIP141.

Typically the UASF limitation distributed by Cut became a new Proof-of-Hat opinion, a flashlight of flexibility that connects those as their hearts whip to keep an original vision involving Bitcoin immutable. Linux program engineer Warren Togami informed Bitcoiners in which users will be in charge: “Stop begging designers to decide. End users have the true power, and in addition they need to raise their briefing game. #BIP148. ” Often the previously quietened majority possessed found a way to exercising their own electrical power.

#NO2X, typically the Rise connected with Hashtag Operation With his gift idea for societal engineering, Cut created Bebo moments. Known as “Bitcoin and CorporateBitcoin (corporate takeover), ” his “moment” called in users to go up up in that “battle intended for Bitcoin’s internal. ” After that as Bitcoin Independence Morning, activation to get Bitcoin Betterment Proposal 148 (BIP148) appeared to be set pertaining to August 1 ) In an appointment with Bundle magazine, Cut pointed out often the contingency of folks who are pressuring for a tough fork and also driven simply by an agenda bringing Bitcoin on top of a way of centralization. Their irreconcilable differences were definitely manifested appropriate in the codes of BIP148, with its unique activation procedure being inadaptable with SegWit2x.

Facing the process of a prospective coin-split involving two implementations, another unique rose towards occasion.

Wayne Hilliard, Bitmain Warranty manufacture (not for being confused with Bitmain), created BIP91, a typically miner-enforced gentle fork which may keep the Bitcoin network jointly. Bitcoin Center contributor Nathalee Corallo made it easier for a soft rollout through updates that will FIBRE, the exact fast block-replaying network, along with alerted miners to make sure their particular BIP-enforcing clients had contacts. With these aides, BIP91 received rapid impulses from the gold mining community in addition to was straightened in 12 days previous to BIP148’s the flag day regarding activation.

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5: goal AM : Jul 21 years of age, 2017 tenty-seventh 27 Acknowledgement 300 500 Retweets 739 739 prefers Twitter Advertisings info plus privacy The exact threshold traction leading up to the particular SegWit lock-in and its accélération attracted a persons vision of the total global multilevel to the blockchain. Rodolfo Novak, the PRESIDENT and president of Coinkite, a Bitcoin web finances system, tweeted in counting down for lock-in: “#SegWit is already locked-in! On account of #UASF #BIP148. Never forget just who governs #Bitcoin, no one, although everyone. ”

Exuberance produced through BIP148 mobilization supported a #NO2X protest movements. Strong help came from typically the Bitcoin area. Mir Fresco Liponi, a organizer of your Milan Meetup and key expert expert at BlockchainLab. it, publicised the mutual NO2X report from the Swedish Bitcoin online community. On the first days of the four week period that this challenging fork has been planned to generally be activated, sensible contract conquer Nick Szabo went open with his other, adding often the NO2X point to the Twitter report. As a result of neighborhood reactions including these, SegWit2x was identified as off. The particular announcement in the suspension was performed, citing an absence of sufficient comprehensive agreement.

Michael Goldstein, founder and also president on the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, tweeted, “Between #UASF and #No2x, I have to fully rethink this former dismiss for hashtag activism, ” to which Bitcoin Core factor Peter John responded, “It’s almost for instance virtual exercise is good ample for a internet currency... ”

Human People Behind Technological know-how What does this hashtag battle show? The waste in cyberspace shook off the impression of Bitcoin as apolitical money, that is certainly often regarding cold rules and sensible and neutral scientists. These have shown the following community the exact role with human attempts in the progress this very disruptive advent and how you can find motives in addition to economic benefits. We have noticed the people of individuals to both sides that happen to be deeply invested in their own imaginative and prescient vision of Bitcoin.

Miners not represent wintry power crops and the characters of models equipped with productive computing cash. Co-founder along with CEO regarding Bitmain, Jihan Wu, located gain vast recognition together with sensational twitter; “F-k your personal mother if you'd like f-k. ” Marek “Slush” Palatinus, ceo of the to-days first Bitcoin mining swimming pool area, came out to be able to announce this @slush_pool, in control of ~4 per-cent of the world hashrate, ended up being dedicated to signaling for BIP91. Behind the scenes, there are actually real people using own ideals and concepts.

Political love ignited the particular crypto living space. One of the most top quality angel people and Bitcoin evangelists, Roger Ver, exhibited his competitive will for you to unite his / her libertarian tips and current market forces within the new model, Bitcoin Dollars. Rick Falkvinge, IT buyer and the inventor of Sailing Party, spread his perception of Swarmwise to guide your leaderless market.

Bitcoin Key contributors just like Eric Lombrozo and Lomaz Dashjr include played major roles around forming the thinking behind deploying SegWit as a tender fork inside 2015. These kind of developers converted their understanding into motion by giving voice their assist for UASF and encouraging the process. Pieter Wuille, on the list of authors with the SegWit setup, celebrated his particular SegWit financial transaction after their activation, your method all who also helped go it frontward. We have viewed strong perseverance and interest behind this specific technology.

Decision: A Feature, Not really a huge Bug Equally efforts at the rear of #UASF in addition to #SegWit2x displayed an abnormality - people that acted of the choice. Inside the old approach to control, this kind of choice showed something that would have to be eliminated. Bitcoin is a flying from that technique. The events of which unfolded all around Bitcoin that last year demonstrate how the ability to individuals to produce choices, which in turn exists previous to any research endeavor, is absolutely not a pest. It is not an issue that needs to be predetermined, but is usually a vital attribute.

In the report of Neo’s resistance, typically the Architect indicates Neo not one but two doors, one who leads to often the salvation involving Zion (the entire individual race) or other that produces him in to the Matrix, to Trinity, who lost herself just to save him as well as end of your species. In place of trusting your third party plus complying while using instructions presented, he decides on what he or she knows to get true, whatever is approved in his heart and soul and networked with the center of the different.

What tutorials his conclusion is a link with another man that he thinks in the coronary heart, rather than the abstract understanding of humanity displayed by the Originator. Neo’s alternative opens up a whole new possibility that is previously inaccessible: to save equally Zion as well as the woman they loves. The love intended for Trinity giving him trust is regarded as a strong imperfection connected with humanity, that your creator in the Matrix represents as a regular flaw and also an “anomaly revealed seeing that both starting point and ending. ”

Still it is the following love that will inspires dreams; it is the moralista code with cryptography and is particularly what heats up the website of Bitcoin’s decentralized design. In the commotion of Bitcoin’s great sencillo war regarding 2017, we are seen this specific love, put by each one person’s aiming to make inbound links, commit spots and make internet connections wherever the exact network may become cracked.

The originator of this systems saw a diverse future. Satoshi’s message inside the genesis prohibit stands for a warning as well as a wakeup get in touch with. We are all Satoshi. We are the particular prophecy rapid the coming of your new reference code and also an promising P2P community that could bust this system involving control along with open all of to a absolutely free society.

We could the One we are waiting for, do you know subjective valuation choice practiced adamantly would bring together a couple of divergent walkways toward liberty and conclusion this conflict. Computers undoubtedly are a universal appliance, and with Bitcoin, programs we choose to function that exhibit collective prices create a worldwide law connected with mathematics in which cannot be dangerous. We are all combined as clients before staying divided into suppliers, miners, pocket book providers in addition to developers. We live the designer of our unique future made through a agreement built for a perfect industry in this balance of math precision.

[totesmccoats]

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Dark Days: The Casting #1

This issue continues The Forge’s storytelling maneuver of throwing DCU canon at the wall to see what sticks, but also helpfully starts putting a few pieces together to the story of Metal.

Carter Hall writes in his journal about his multiple lives’ quest to discover the secret of Nth Metal – the power-source of his wings and weapons, and has traced it back to the beginnings of the universe, a bat-shaped Destroyer, and the “birds” that fought him back. Batman too, quests to discover the secret of the metals, which Wonder Woman tells him was used to make divine weapons, is found in all of the DCU’s most powerful relics, and courses through the blood of Earth’s heroes, including Batman himself. Meanwhile, Hal and Duke try to interrogate Joker about what he knows about the Metal and Batman’s been hiding from them.

This is Snyder going for broke, giving the DCU its biggest event since Flashpoint with Morrison-esque levels of continuity play connecting everything in the DC canon together. I’m expecting this to get incredibly silly, and make absolutely no sense to anyone not already 100% invested. Because it’s Snyder, I am so game for this. There’s still a radical shift in quality when the art goes from Kubrick to Romita Jr, the latter of whose style just does not fit the story as well as it does something like the first arc of All-Star Batman.

  Wonder Woman #26

Considering her previous work, I wasn’t expecting Fontana’s first issue on the series to completely gel with where Rucka left us, but the shift in tone is still something I’m getting used to, even within this one issue.

I like the opening scene, with Wonder Woman breaking up a fight in a refugee camp, although I’m honestly not sure what’s supposed to be happening. She punches out a guy harassing a woman and her kid, but then the whole camp is on fire and explodes for some reason? I’m not sure; but that leads directly to a flashback where Wonder Woman overhears her mother worry that she shouldn’t still be playing with dolls if she’s to become an Amazon – a plot-thread which doesn’t really go anywhere nor even plant seeds for the story to come. After that, Diana debriefs from what’s revealed to be her 43rd mission this year with the US military, and the General offers to be someone she can talk to with any problems regarding what she sees on the missions; there’s a check-up with a Doctor with a mysterious cough; and Diana goes to Etta Candy’s brother’s wedding where she helps a young girl find a missing shoe.

Now, I’m the first person to advocate for more superheroes helping out children in comics, but there’s a tonal inconsistency between that and the beginning of the book which implies Di might be going through some PTSD. And that tonal inconstancy also appears within individual scenes, like when right after the General offers to be someone she can talk to, he bumps his head on a low-hanging light fixture, and then the two are interrupted by a Mark Zuckerberg-looking fellow who invites them to a building-wide softball game. Also, the final page feels like a Batman ’66 type cliffhanger, which I kind of love, but which also feels out of step with the rest of the issue.

  The Flash #26

Eobard shows Barry and Iris a vision of their future where their children, Don and Dawn, grow up to be supervillains because Barry wasn’t around to be a father to them. Deciding that Iris has had enough of his lying to her, and that there is only one way to prevent this bad future from playing out, Barry goes with Eobard to a place where he’d never hurt anyone ever again – the negative Speed Force.

Although it probably happens too quickly, I like how Eobard breaks Barry by mind-judo-ing him into thinking that being the Flash is somehow irresponsible and hurts people. It’s not the most original storyline, god knows it’s happened to Peter Parker too many times, but in this situation, it works. Like Pete, Barry has seen how much his being the Flash hurts those closest to him, so when Eobard offers a way to prevent further harm, he takes it.

Also, it gives the series a great excuse to focus on Iris, who has to come to terms with her best friend being a superhero while fighting off the Reverse-Flash on her own. Hopefully this story will also borrow the ending from Spider-Man 2 and have the girlfriend knock some sense into their “my power = my choice” mindset when it comes to relationships.

  Spider-Men II #1

The cover asks the question “Who is the other Miles?” but, of course we don’t find out this issue – though we do see his face. Instead, we get a cold in medias res open of the two Spider-Men failing to catch a plane with, presumably the other Miles on it, before jumping a week into the past where Peter and Miles meet up at the warehouse where the first Spider-Men story kicked off to investigate another mysterious pink portal flinging stuff through Manhattan.

I stopped picking up Bendis books, including Spider-Man (Miles’ book) because I was getting tired of his style after Civil War II; but reading this issue reminds me of what I like about his writing. All of Bendis’ dialogue is snappy and witty, with everyone knowing exactly how to respond to the last thing said with their own little witticism. So, basically, he’s perfect for Spider-Man (men).

Bendis does tend to be verbose, but the boxes and bubbles are broken up nicely through the spreads, never getting too much in the way except in one moment in particularly where the wordiness is a punchline. And despite each character being recognizably Bendis, they are still recognizably distinct. Peter’s inner monologue and dialogue reads as someone trying – perhaps too hard – to be funny. He repeats words and phrases, doubles back on things he’s thinking/saying to provide his own commentary, and goes out of his way to be self-deprecating while taking others down with his esteem. We don’t get any of Mile’s inner monologue, but his dialogue represents him as more self-conscious, more laconic. He speaks mainly to respond to others, and lets Ganke – oh man did I miss Ganke – do much of the talking for him.

Pichelli’s art also does a lot to define each of the Spider-Men. Peter, like his dialogue, is more comedic. His poses are more exaggerated, with him spreading his limbs away from his body with wide kicks and flips, and leaning and looking down over other characters. Conversely, Miles moves more conservatively, keeping his libs tucked while swinging, and crouching where Peter would stand and lean.

  Amazing Spider-Man #30

We open on Spider-Man organizing a retreat from a Mjolnir wielding Hyrdra-Cap, then go to Peter in Shanghai, trying to rally his employees and prepare them for an attack by Doctor Octopus, who is raiding Parker Industry labs. Pete meets with the employees who remain loyal, warning them that if it comes to it, they’re going to have to destroy their life’s work to keep it out of Hydra’s grasps. And then Otto attacks.

It’s really impressive how Slott manages to weave his ongoing stories with event books without skipping a beat. Even without all the Secret Empire stuff, this arc is just another chapter in the Spider-Man/Doc Ock rivalry he’s set up since his Ends of the Earth storyline in 2012. Otto sees allying with Hydra as a means to the end of claiming all of Peter’s work as the fruits of his labor, and destroying Peter’s legacy as he takes it back.

And what’s scary is that, despite becoming a better CEO and doing his best to prepare for Ock, Peter is still a few steps behind. He still, unknowingly let Otto into his company, giving him the chance to sabotage everything right under his nose. In a way, Parker Industry is just as much Otto’s as it is Pete’s, and Otto’s taking advantage of that while Peter is failing to really comprehend it.

  Black Panther and The Crew #4

In Mississippi in 1964, Ezra and Frank take the Crew to take care of some KKK members who can’t be touched by the law. In the present, Luke Cage escapes the firebombing of his apartment building by Hydra, then joins up with Misty Knight to investigate why he was targeted, and what that might have to do with Ezra’s assassination.

The cold open in Mississippi is one of the strongest scenes in comic books regarding racial violence printed in the Big 2’s comics yet. Not only does it clearly and concisely explain how white people can (and still) get away with murdering black people, but also demonstrates exactly why groups like the Crew, or the real life Black Panthers, were and are necessary in those times and places. It’s its own complete story and statement of purpose in four pages. And it’s echoed through the rest of the comic, as Misty and Luke eventually talk to the CEO of the company behind the Americops, who still gets away with targeting black people with impunity because that’s what benefits the powerful.

It’s weird how the same company that’s publishing Nick Spencer’s half-assed sanitized metaphor for fascism can also publish such clear-eyed commentary on race in America. And that also applies to David F. Walker’s too-short run on Nighthawk, which you should totally pick up.

  Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #22

Doreen and Nancy win a programming contest and an all-expenses paid vacation to the Savage Land! Expect jokes involving: computer programming pun titles for classic literature, how insane Wikipedia articles in the Marvel universe must be, colonial era nomenclature, Jurassic Park, paleontology, Latveria, and more.

Reading this issue, it’s hard not to feel like North has wanted to write a Jurassic Park episode for Squirrel Girl for a while now, and he taps into the seemingly universal human love of dinosaurs. Henderson continues to deliver on art, with some of the best and funniest faces in comics, my favorite of which this issue is Doreen’s reaction to realizing Nancy has a crush on one of the other contest winners.

  Kill or Be Killed #10

The cops, including detective Lily Sharpe find the Russian hitman’s burned-up corpse in the back of the van after learning about Dylan dropping off Rex at the hospital, and begin to postulate why their murderer tried to spare one victim while brutalizing the other. Meanwhile, Dylan, devastated by Rex’s death, move back home with his mom where he gets high, plays video games, and swears off killing, resigned to let the demon kill him. But then the demon reminds him that the Russians are after him, and might target the people he cares about, which complicates things a tad.

For a bit it seemed like Dylan was getting used to his new life, but this issue shows him in a downward spiral stemming from Rex’s death, as it’s the first one that’s actually personal for him. It’s his Uncle Ben moment, and that’s not the only part of this issue reminiscent of Spider-Man. When Dylan goes back to the city, it’s mainly to break up with Daisy and shut out Kira, who just happens to tell him about her feelings for him, just as he’s decided he’s too dangerous and messed up to afford to return her feelings.

This issue doesn’t really feel like the ending to an arc, but somewhere closer to the beginning of one. Continuing the comparison, this is Dylan’s “Spider-Man no more!” moment, which means that the stage is pretty much set for his comeback, whatever that may look like. It certainly won’t be as heroic as Spidey’s; but I wouldn’t rule out the inclusion of a criminal kingpin.

Comic Reviews for 7/12/17 Dark Days: The Casting #1 This issue continues The Forge's storytelling maneuver of throwing DCU canon at the wall to see what sticks, but also helpfully starts putting a few pieces together to the story of Metal.

[readbookywooks]

Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

Early next morning, Harry woke with a plan fully formed in his mind, as though his sleeping brain had been working on it all night. He got up, dressed in the pale dawn light, left the dormitory without waking Ron, and went back down to the deserted common room. Here he took a piece of parchment from the table upon which his Divination homework still lay and wrote the following letter: Dear Sirius, I reckon I just imagined my scar hurting, I was half asleep when I wrote to you last time. There's no point coming back, everything's fine here. Don't worry about me, my head feels completely normal. Harry He then climbed out of the portrait hole, up through the silent castle (held up only briefly by Peeves, who tried to overturn a large vase on him halfway along the fourth-floor corridor), finally arriving at the Owlery, which was situated at the top of West Tower. The Owlery was a circular stone room, rather cold and drafty, because none of the windows had glass in them. The floor was entirely covered in straw, owl droppings, and the regurgitated skeletons of mice and voles. Hundreds upon hundreds of owls of every breed imaginable were nestled here on perches that rose right up to the top of the tower, nearly all of them asleep, though here and there a round amber eye glared at Harry. He spotted Hedwig nestled between a barn owl and a tawny, and hurried over to her, sliding a little on the dropping-strewn floor. It took him a while to persuade her to wake up and then to look at him, as she kept shuffling around on her perch, showing him her tail. She was evidently still furious about his lack of gratitude the previous night. In the end, it was Harry suggesting she might be too tired, and that perhaps he would ask Ron to borrow Pigwidgeon, that made her stick out her leg and allow him to tie the letter to it. "Just find him, all right?" Harry said, stroking her back as he carried her on his arm to one of the holes in the wall. "Before the dementors do." She nipped his finger, perhaps rather harder than she would ordinarily have done, but hooted softly in a reassuring sort of way all the same. Then she spread her wings and took off into the sunrise. Harry watched her fly out of sight with the familiar feeling of unease back in his stomach. He had been so sure that Sirius's reply would alleviate his worries rather than increasing them. "That was a lie, Harry," said Hermione sharply over breakfast, when he told her and Ron what he had done. "You didn't imagine your scar hurting and you know it." "So what?" said Harry. "He's not going back to Azkaban because of me." "Drop it," said Ron sharply to Hermione as she opened her mouth to argue some more, and for once, Hermione heeded him, and fell silent. Harry did his best not to worry about Sirius over the next couple of weeks. True, he could not stop himself from looking anxiously around every morning when the post owls arrived, nor, late at night before he went to sleep, prevent himself from seeing horrible visions of Sirius, cornered by dementors down some dark London street, but betweentimes he tried to keep his mind off his godfather. He wished he still had Quidditch to distract him; nothing worked so well on a troubled mind as a good, hard training session. On the other hand, their lessons were becoming more difficult and demanding than ever before, particularly Moody's Defense Against the Dark Arts. To their surprise, Professor Moody had announced that he would be putting the Imperius Curse on each of them in turn, to demonstrate its power and to see whether they could resist its effects. "But - but you said it's illegal, Professor," said Hermione uncertainly as Moody cleared away the desks with a sweep of his wand, leaving a large clear space in the middle of the room. "You said - to use it against another human was -" "Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like," said Moody, his magical eye swiveling onto Hermione and fixing her with an eerie, unblinking stare. "If you'd rather learn the hard way - when someone's putting it on you so they can control you completely - fine by me. You're excused. Off you go." He pointed one gnarled finger toward the door. Hermione went very pink and muttered something about not meaning that she wanted to leave. Harry and Ron grinned at each other. They knew Hermione would rather eat bubotuber pus than miss such an important lesson. Moody began to beckon students forward in turn and put the Imperius Curse upon them. Harry watched as, one by one, his classmates did the most extraordinary things under its influence. Dean Thomas hopped three times around the room, singing the national anthem. Lavender Brown imitated a squirrel. Neville performed a series of quite astonishing gymnastics he would certainly not have been capable of in his normal state. Not one of them seemed to be able to fight off the curse, and each of them recovered only when Moody had removed it. "Potter," Moody growled, "you next." Harry moved forward into the middle of the classroom, into the space that Moody had cleared of desks. Moody raised his wand, pointed it at Harry, and said, "Imperio!" It was the most wonderful feeling. Harry felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness. He stood there feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching him. And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody's voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk...jump onto the desk... Harry bent his knees obediently, preparing to spring. Jump onto the desk.... Why, though? Another voice had awoken in the back of his brain. Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice. Jump onto the desk.... No, I don't think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly...no, I don't really want to.... Jump! NOW! The next thing Harry felt was considerable pain. He had both jumped and tried to prevent himself from jumping - the result was that he'd smashed headlong into the desk knocking it over, and, by the feeling in his legs, fractured both his kneecaps. "Now, that's more like it!" growled Moody's voice, and suddenly, Harry felt the empty, echoing feeling in his head disappear. He remembered exactly what was happening, and the pain in his knees seemed to double. "Look at that, you lot...Potter fought! He fought it, and he damn near beat it! We'll try that again, Potter, and the rest of you, pay attention - watch his eyes, that's where you see it - very good, Potter, very good indeed! They'll have trouble controlling you!" "The way he talks," Harry muttered as he hobbled out of the Defense Against the Dark Arts class an hour later (Moody had insisted on putting Harry through his paces four times in a row, until Harry could throw off the curse entirely), "you'd think we were all going to be attacked any second." "Yeah, I know," said Ron, who was skipping on every alternate step. He had had much more difficulty with the curse than Harry, though Moody assured him the effects would wear off by lunchtime. "Talk about paranoid..." Ron glanced nervously over his shoulder to check that Moody was definitely out of earshot and went on. "No wonder they were glad to get shot of him at the Ministry. Did you hear him telling Seamus what he did to that witch who shouted 'Boo' behind him on April Fools' Day? And when are we supposed to read up on resisting the Imperius Curse with everything else we've got to do?" All the fourth years had noticed a definite increase in the amount of work they were required to do this term. Professor McGonagall explained why, when the class gave a particularly loud groan at the amount of Transfiguration homework she had assigned. "You are now entering a most important phase of your magical education!" she told them, her eyes glinting dangerously behind her square spectacles. "Your Ordinary Wizarding Levels are drawing closer -" "We don't take O.W.L.s till fifth year!" said Dean Thomas indignantly. "Maybe not, Thomas, but believe me, you need all the preparation you can get! Miss Granger remains the only person in this class who has managed to turn a hedgehog into a satisfactory pincushion. I might remind you that your pincushion, Thomas, still curls up in fright if anyone approaches it with a pin!" Hermione, who had turned rather pink again, seemed to be trying not to look too pleased with herself. Harry and Ron were deeply amused when Professor Trelawney told them that they had received top marks for their homework in their next Divination class. She read out large portions of their predictions, commending them for their unflinching acceptance of the horrors in store for them - but they were less amused when she asked them to do the same thing for the month after next; both of them were running out of ideas for catastrophes. Meanwhile Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, had them writing weekly essays on the goblin rebellions of the eighteenth century. Professor Snape was forcing them to research antidotes. They took this one seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of them before Christmas to see if their antidote worked. Professor Flitwick had asked them to read three extra books in preparation for their lesson on Summoning Charms. Even Hagrid was adding to their workload. The Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace given that nobody had yet discovered what they ate. Hagrid was delighted, and as part of their "project," suggested that they come down to his hut on alternate evenings to observe the skrewts and make notes on their extraordinary behavior. "I will not," said Draco Malfoy flatly when Hagrid had proposed this with the air of Father Christmas pulling an extra-large toy out of his sack. "I see enough of these foul things during lessons, thanks." Hagrid's smile faded off his face. "Yeh'll do wha' yer told," he growled, "or I'll be takin' a leaf outta Professor Moody's book....I hear yeh made a good ferret, Malfoy." The Gryffindors roared with laughter. Malfoy flushed with anger, but apparently the memory of Moody's punishment was still sufficiently painful to stop him from retorting. Harry, Ron, and Hermione returned to the castle at the end of the lesson in high spirits; seeing Hagrid put down Malfoy was particularly satisfying, especially because Malfoy had done his very best to get Hagrid sacked the previous year. When they arrived in the entrance hall, they found themselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students congregated there, all milling around a large sign that had been erected at the foot of the marble staircase. Ron, the tallest of the three, stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front of them and read the sign aloud to the other two: TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT THE DELEGATIONS FROM BEAUXBATONS AND DURMSTRANG WILL BE ARRIVING AT 6 O'CLOCK ON FRIDAY THE 30TH OF OCTOBER. LESSONS WILL END HALF AN HOUR EARLY- "Brilliant!" said Harry. "It's Potions last thing on Friday! Snape won't have time to poison us all!" STUDENTS WILL RETURN THEIR BAGS AND BOOKS TO THEIR DORMITORIES AND ASSEMBLE IN FRONT OF THE CASTLE TO GREET OUR GUESTS BEFORETHE WELCOMING FEAST. "Only a week away!" said Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff, emerging from the crowd, his eyes gleaming. "I wonder if Cedric knows? Think I'll go and tell him...." "Cedric?" said Ron blankly as Ernie hurried off. "Diggory," said Harry. "He must be entering the tournament." "That idiot, Hogwarts champion?" said Ron as they pushed their way through the chattering crowd toward the staircase. "He's not an idiot. You just don't like him because he beat Gryffindor at Quidditch," said Hermione. "I've heard he's a really good student - and he's a prefect." She spoke as though this settled the matter. "You only like him because he's handsome," said Ron scathingly. "Excuse me, I don't like people just because they're handsome!" said Hermione indignantly. Ron gave a loud false cough, which sounded oddly like "Lockhart!" The appearance of the sign in the entrance hall had a marked effect upon the inhabitants of the castle. During the following week, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation, no matter where Harry went: the Triwizard Tournament. Rumors were flying from student to student like highly contagious germs: who was going to try for Hogwarts champion, what the tournament would involve, how the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang differed from themselves. Harry noticed too that the castle seemed to be undergoing an extra-thorough cleaning. Several grimy portraits had been scrubbed, much to the displeasure of their subjects, who sat huddled in their frames muttering darkly and wincing as they felt their raw pink faces. The suits of armor were suddenly gleaming and moving without squeaking, and Argus Filch, the caretaker, was behaving so ferociously to any students who forgot to wipe their shoes that he terrified a pair of first-year girls into hysterics. Other members of the staff seemed oddly tense too. "Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can't even perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!" Professor McGonagall barked at the end of one particularly difficult lesson, during which Neville had accidentally transplanted his own ears onto a cactus. When they went down to breakfast on the morning of the thirtieth of October, they found that the Great Hall had been decorated overnight. Enormous silk banners hung from the walls, each of them representing a Hogwarts House: red with a gold lion for Gryffiindor, blue with a bronze eagle for Ravenclaw, yellow with a black badger for Hufflepuff, and green with a silver serpent for Slytherin. Behind the teachers' table, the largest banner of all bore the Hogwarts coat of arms: lion, eagle, badger, and snake united around a large letter H. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat down beside Fred and George at the Gryffindor table. Once again, and most unusually, they were sitting apart from everyone else and conversing in low voices. Ron led the way over to them. "It's a bummer, all right," George was saying gloomily to Fred. "But if he won't talk to us in person, we'll have to send him the letter after all. Or we'll stuff it into his hand. He can't avoid us forrever." "Who's avoiding you?" said Ron, sitting down next to them. "Wish you would," said Fred, looking irritated at the interruption. "What's a bummer?" Ron asked George. "Having a nosy git like you for a brother," said George. "You two got any ideas on the Triwizard Tournament yet?" Harry asked. "Thought any more about trying to enter?" "I asked McGonagall how the champions are chosen but she wasn't telling," said George bitterly. "She just told me to shut up and get on with transfiguring my raccoon." "Wonder what the tasks are going to be?" said Ron thoughtfully. "You know, I bet we could do them, Harry. We've done dangerous stuff before...." "Not in front of a panel of judges, you haven't," said Fred. "McGonagall says the champions get awarded points according to how well they've done the tasks." "Who are the judges?" Harry asked. "Well, the Heads of the participating schools are always on the panel," said Hermione, and everyone looked around at her, rather surprised, "because all three of them were injured during the Tournament of 1792, when a cockatrice the champions were supposed to be catching went on the rampage." She noticed them all looking at her and said, with her usual air of impatience that nobody else had read all the books she had, "It's all in Hogwarts, A History. Though, of course, that book's not entirely reliable. A Revised History of Hogwarts would be a more accurate title. Or A Highly Biased and Selective History of Hogwarts, Which Glosses Over the Nastier Aspects of the School." "What are you on about?" said Ron, though Harry thought he knew what was coming. "House-elves!" said Hermione, her eyes flashing. "Not once, in over a thousand pages, does Hogwarts, A History mention that we are all colluding in the oppression of a hundred slaves!" Harry shook his head and applied himself to his scrambled eggs. His and Ron's lack of enthusiasm had done nothing whatsoever to curb Hermione's determination to pursue justice for house-elves. True, both of them had paid two Sickles for a S.P.E.W. badge, but they had only done it to keep her quiet. Their Sickles had been wasted, however; if anything, they seemed to have made Hermione more vociferous. She had been badgering Harry and Ron ever since, first to wear the badges, then to persuade others to do the same, and she had also taken to rattling around the Gryffindor common room every evening, cornering people and shaking the collecting tin under their noses. "You do realize that your sheets are changed, your fires lit, your classrooms cleaned, and your food cooked by a group of magical creatures who are unpaid and enslaved?" she kept saying fiercely. Some people, like Neville, had paid up just to stop Hermione from glowering at them. A few seemed mildly interested in what she had to say, but were reluctant to take a more active role in campaigning. Many regarded the whole thing as a joke. Ron now rolled his eyes at the ceiling, which was flooding them all in autumn sunlight, and Fred became extremely interested in his bacon (both twins had refused to buy a S.P.E.W. badge). George, however, leaned in toward Hermione. "Listen, have you ever been down in the kitchens, Hermione?" "No, of course not," said Hermione curtly, "I hardly think students are supposed to -" "Well, we have," said George, indicating Fred, "loads of times, to nick food. And we've met them, and they're happy. They think they've got the best job in the world -" "That's because they're uneducated and brainwashed!" Hermione began hotly, but her next few words were drowned out by the sudden whooshing noise from overhead, which announced the arrival of the post owls. Harry looked up at once, and saw Hedwig soaring toward him. Hermione stopped talking abruptly; she and Ron watched Hedwig anxiously as she fluttered down onto Harry's shoulder, folded her wings, and held out her leg wearily. Harry pulled off Sirius's reply and offered Hedwig his bacon rinds, which she ate gratefully. Then, checking that Fred and George were safely immersed in further discussions about the Triwizard Tournament, Harry read out Sirius's letter in a whisper to Ron and Hermione. Nice try, Harry. I'm back in the country and well hidden. I want you to keep me posted on everything that's going on at Hogwarts. Don't use Hedwig, keep changing owls, and don't worry about me, just watch out for yourself Don't forget what I said about your scar. Sirius "Why d'you have to keep changing owls?" Ron asked in a low voice. "Hedwig'll attract too much attention," said Hermione at once. "She stands out. A snowy owl that keeps returning to wherever he's hiding...I mean, they're not native birds, are they?" Harry rolled up the letter and slipped it inside his robes, wondering whether he felt more or less worried than before. He supposed that Sirius managing to get back without being caught was something. He couldn't deny either that the idea that Sirius was much nearer was reassuring; at least he wouldn't have to wait so long for a response every time he wrote. "Thanks, Hedwig," he said, stroking her. She hooted sleepily, dipped her beak briefly into his goblet of orange juice, then took off again, clearly desperate for a good long sleep in the Owlery. There was a pleasant feeling of anticipation in the air that day. Nobody was very attentive in lessons, being much more interested in the arrival that evening of the people from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang; even Potions was more bearable than usual, as it was half an hour shorter. When the bell rang early, Harry, Ron, and Hermione hurried up to Gryffindor Tower, deposited their bags and books as they had been instructed, pulled on their cloaks, and rushed back downstairs into the entrance hall. The Heads of Houses were ordering their students into lines. "Weasley, straighten your hat," Professor McGonagall snapped at Ron. "Miss Patil, take that ridiculous thing out of your hair." Parvati scowled and removed a large ornamental butterfly from the end of her plait. "Follow me, please," said Professor McGonagall. "First years in front...no pushing...." They filed down the steps and lined up in front of the castle. It was a cold, clear evening; dusk was falling and a pale, transparent-looking moon was already shining over the Forbidden Forest. Harry, standing between Ron and Hermione in the fourth row from the front, saw Dennis Creevey positively shivering with anticipation among the other first years. "Nearly six," said Ron, checking his watch and then staring down the drive that led to the front gates. "How d'you reckon they're coming? The train?" "I doubt it," said Hermione. "How, then? Broomsticks?" Harry suggested, looking up at the starry sky. "I don't think so...not from that far away...." "A Portkey?" Ron suggested. "Or they could Apparate - maybe you're allowed to do it under seventeen wherever they come from?" "You can't Apparate inside the Hogwarts grounds, how often do I have to tell you?" said Hermione impatiently. They scanned the darkening grounds excitedly, but nothing was moving; everything was still, silent, and quite as usual. Harry was starting to feel cold. He wished they'd hurry up....Maybe the foreign students were preparing a dramatic entrance....He remembered what Mr. Weasley had said back at the campsite before the Quidditch World Cup: "always the same - we can't resist showing off when we get together...." And then Dumbledore called out from the back row where he stood with the other teachers - "Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!" "Where?" said many students eagerly, all looking in different directions. "There!" yelled a sixth year, pointing over the forest. Something large, much larger than a broomstick - or, indeed, a hundred broomsticks - was hurtling across the deep blue sky toward the castle, growing larger all the time. "It's a dragon!" shrieked one of the first years, losing her head completely. "Don't be stupid...it's a flying house!" said Dennis Creevey. Dennis's guess was closer....As the gigantic black shape skimmed over the treetops of the Forbidden Forest and the lights shining from the castle windows hit it, they saw a gigantic, powderblue, horse-drawn carriage, the size of a large house, soaring toward them, pulled through the air by a dozen winged horses, all palominos, and each the size of an elephant. The front three rows of students drew backward as the carriage hurtled ever lower, coming in to land at a tremendous speed - then, with an almighty crash that made Neville jump backward onto a Slytherin fifth year's foot, the horses' hooves, larger than dinner plates, hit the ground. A second later, the carriage landed too, bouncing upon its vast wheels, while the golden horses tossed their enormous heads and rolled large, fiery red eyes. Harry just had time to see that the door of the carriage bore a coat of arms (two crossed, golden wands, each emitting three stars) before it opened. A boy in pale blue robes jumped down from the carriage, bent forward, fumbled for a moment with something on the carriage floor, and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectfully. Then Harry saw a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerging from the inside of the carriage - a shoe the size of a child's sled - followed, almost immediately, by the largest woman he had ever seen in his life. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained. A few people gasped. Harry had only ever seen one person as large as this woman in his life, and that was Hagrid; he doubted whether there was an inch difference in their heights. Yet somehow - maybe simply because he was used to Hagrid - this woman (now at the foot of the steps, and looking around at the waiting, wide-eyed crowd) seemed even more unnaturally large. As she stepped into the light flooding from the entrance hall, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face; large, black, liquid-looking eyes; and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers. Dumbledore started to clap; the students, following his lead, broke into applause too, many of them standing on tiptoe, the better to look at this woman. Her face relaxed into a gracious smile and she walked forward toward Dumbledore, extending a glittering hand. Dumbledore, though tall himself, had barely to bend to kiss it. "My dear Madame Maxime," he said. "Welcome to Hogwarts." "Dumbly-dort," said Madame Maxime in a deep voice. "I 'ope I find you well?" "In excellent form, I thank you," said Dumbledore. "My pupils," said Madame Maxime, waving one of her enormous hands carelessly behind her. Harry, whose attention had been focused completely upon Madame Maxime, now noticed that about a dozen boys and girls, all, by the look of them, in their late teens, had emerged from the carriage and were now standing behind Madame Maxime. They were shivering, which was unsurprising, given that their robes seemed to be made of fine silk, and none of them were wearing cloaks. A few had wrapped scarves and shawls around their heads. From what Harry could see of them (they were standing in Madame Maxime's enormous shadow), they were staring up at Hogwarts with apprehensive looks on their faces. "As Karkaroff arrived yet?" Madame Maxime asked. "He should be here any moment," said Dumbledore. "Would you like to wait here and greet him or would you prefer to step inside and warm up a trifle?" "Warm up, I think," said Madame Maxime. "But ze 'orses -" "Our Care of Magical Creatures teacher will be delighted to take care of them," said Dumbledore, "the moment he has returned from dealing with a slight situation that has arisen with some of his other - er - charges." "Skrewts," Ron muttered to Harry, grinning. "My steeds require - er - forceful 'andling," said Madame Maxime, looking as though she doubted whether any Care of Magical Creatures teacher at Hogwarts could be up to the job. "Zey are very strong...." "I assure you that Hagrid will be well up to the job," said Dumbledore, smiling. "Very well," said Madame Maxime, bowing slightly. "Will you please inform zis 'Agrid zat ze 'orses drink only single-malt whiskey?" "It will be attended to," said Dumbledore, also bowing. "Come," said Madame Maxime imperiously to her students, and the Hogwarts crowd parted to allow her and her students to pass up the stone steps. "How big d'you reckon Durmstrang's horses are going to be?" Seamus Finnigan said, leaning around Lavender and Parvati to address Harry and Ron. "Well, if they're any bigger than this lot, even Hagrid won't be able to handle them," said Harry. "That's if he hasn't been attacked by his skrewts. Wonder what's up with them?" "Maybe they've escaped," said Ron hopefully. "Oh don't say that," said Hermione with a shudder. "Imagine that lot loose on the grounds...." They stood, shivering slightly now, waiting for the Durmstrang party to arrive. Most people were gazing hopefully up at the sky. For a few minutes, the silence was broken only by Madame Maxime's huge horses snorting and stamping. But then - "Can you hear something?" said Ron suddenly. Harry listened; a loud and oddly eerie noise was drifting toward them from out of the darkness: a muffled rumbling and sucking sound, as though an immense vacuum cleaner were moving along a riverbed.... "The lake!" yelled Lee Jordan, pointing down at it. "Look at the lake!" From their position at the top of the lawns overlooking the grounds, they had a clear view of the smooth black surface of the water - except that the surface was suddenly not smooth at all. Some disturbance was taking place deep in the center; great bubbles were forming on the surface, waves were now washing over the muddy banks -and then, out in the very middle of the lake, a whirlpool appeared, as if a giant plug had just been pulled out of the lake's floor.... What seemed to be a long, black pole began to rise slowly out of the heart of the whirlpool...and then Harry saw the rigging.... "It's a mast!" he said to Ron and Hermione. Slowly, magnificently, the ship rose out of the water, gleaming in the moonlight. It had a strangely skeletal look about it, as though it were a resurrected wreck, and the dim, misty lights shimmering at its portholes looked like ghostly eyes. Finally, with a great sloshing noise, the ship emerged entirely, bobbing on the turbulent water, and began to glide toward the bank. A few moments later, they heard the splash of an anchor being thrown down in the shallows, and the thud of a plank being lowered onto the bank. People were disembarking; they could see their silhouettes passing the lights in the ship's portholes. All of them, Harry noticed, seemed to be built along the lines of Crabbe and Goyle...but then, as they drew nearer, walking up the lawns into the light streaming from the entrance hall, he saw that their bulk was really due to the fact that they were wearing cloaks of some kind of shaggy, matted fur. But the man who was leading them up to the castle was wearing furs of a different sort: sleek and silver, like his hair. "Dumbledore!" he called heartily as he walked up the slope. "How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?" "Blooming, thank you, Professor Karkaroff," Dumbledore replied. Karkaroff had a fruity, unctuous voice; when he stepped into the light pouring from the front doors of the castle they saw that he was tall and thin like Dumbledore, but his white hair was short, and his goatee (finishing in a small curl) did not entirely hide his rather weak chin. When he reached Dumbledore, he shook hands with both of his own. "Dear old Hogwarts," he said, looking up at the castle and smiling; his teeth were rather yellow, and Harry noticed that his smile did not extend to his eyes, which remained cold and shrewd. "How good it is to be here, how good....Viktor, come along, into the warmth...you don't mind, Dumbledore? Viktor has a slight head cold..." Karkaroff beckoned forward one of his students. As the boy passed, Harry caught a glimpse of a prominent curved nose and thick black eyebrows. He didn't need the punch on the arm Ron gave him, or the hiss in his ear, to recognize that profile. "Harry - it's Krum!"

[dieverdediger]

Is Jesus God?

Over the years I’ve collected numerous Bible passages which illustrate that Jesus is God, or at the very least that He claimed to be. It is my hope for this post to become a comprehensive list of verses and arguments in support of Christ’s divinity. As such I will update, revise and improve it over time. For the time being it will appear incomplete and lacking in depth. I request help in creating this post. I myself know little of it. So please tell me if you know of other verses, arguments, counter-arguments and sources on this topic.

Keep in mind that this is not a post on arguments for the Trinity. 

I’m using the NIV or NASB for these verses. Not out of liking for them, but for the sake of their widespread usage. 

Verses in Favour

Conclusive

1) Daniel 7:13-14 - “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Mark 14:61-62 - But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Jesus used the term “Son of Man” multiple times in the Gospels.

2) John 1:1 -  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

3) Exodus 3:14 -  God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

John 8:57-58 -  “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”  “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”

4) John 14:9 - Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

5) John 10:30 -  I and the Father are one.

6) John 5:18 -  For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

7) John 17:22-23 -  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

8) John 20:28-29 -  Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

9) Isaiah 44:6 -  “This is what the Lord says — Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.

Revelations 1:17-18 - When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

10) Genesis 28:12-13 -  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.

John 1:51 -  He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Attributes only God has that Jesus Claimed

1) Only God can forgive sins:

Psalm 51:4 -  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.

Mark 2:5-10 - When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,  “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?  But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

2) God will judge the earth: 

Joel 3:12 -  Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side.

Psalm 9:7-8 -  The Lord reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. He rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity.

Matthew 25:31-33 - “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Jesus continues to say who will enter Hell and who will enter Heaven, in effect judging the world. 

3) God kills and makes alive - also note the part of Jesus having authority to judge

1 Samuel 2:6 -  The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.

John 5:25-29 -  Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

John 11:25 -  Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die

4) God does not share his glory

Isaiah 42:8 -  I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.

John 17:5 -  And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

5) Jesus being worshipped

Matthew 2:11 -  On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Matthew 14:33 -  Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

John 9:38 -  Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

Matthew 28:17 -  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted

Luke 24-52 -  Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

6) God calming the sea

Nahum 1:4 -  He rebukes the sea and dries it up; he makes all the rivers run dry.

Mark 4:39 - He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

7) God walking on the sea 

Job 9:8 -  He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea

Matthew 14:25 -  Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake

(KJV Matthew 14:25 -  And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea)

8) God knowing people’s thoughts 

Psalm 94:11 -  The Lord knows all human plans; he knows that they are futile

(KJV 94:11 -  The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity)

Matthew 9:4 -  Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

[To be added: being the creator of the universe, Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah]

Other

Mark 2:28 -  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

Matthew 12:6 -  I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.

Matthew 18:20 -  For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Matthew 28:18 -  Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

John 16:15 -  All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.

John 5:21-23 -  For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.  Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

Matthew 24:36 -  “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

This verse is, ironically, often used to argue against Christ’s divinity. This is a figure of speech called anabasis. Each statement grows in importance. For instance if you say, “No one will stop me. Not my pets, not my wife, not the state, not the universe”. Each statement grows in importance. In the same vein, you have men, then the angels, then the Son, then the Father. At the very least this implies that Jesus is not a mere human. He is above the angels whereas man is below them (Psalm 8:5).

Other Arguments

[Work in progress] Such as the fact that Jesus was crucified because he claimed to be God. Context matters. For instance, look at the verses following Jesus’s statements regarding Him being the “I am” and “the Son of Man” (see for instance John 5:18). Following some of the statements, the Jewish leadership realised the significance of Jesus’s words - even if his disciples did not; they accused him of blasphemy and wanted to stone or crucify him.

Analysing Alternate Views on Christ and Verses Supposedly in Favour of Them

For More Information

Where Did Jesus Say, "I Am God, Worship Me"? (David Wood)

[totesmccoats]

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Dark Days: The Casting #1

This issue continues The Forge’s storytelling maneuver of throwing DCU canon at the wall to see what sticks, but also helpfully starts putting a few pieces together to the story of Metal.

Carter Hall writes in his journal about his multiple lives’ quest to discover the secret of Nth Metal – the power-source of his wings and weapons, and has traced it back to the beginnings of the universe, a bat-shaped Destroyer, and the “birds” that fought him back. Batman too, quests to discover the secret of the metals, which Wonder Woman tells him was used to make divine weapons, is found in all of the DCU’s most powerful relics, and courses through the blood of Earth’s heroes, including Batman himself. Meanwhile, Hal and Duke try to interrogate Joker about what he knows about the Metal and Batman’s been hiding from them.

This is Snyder going for broke, giving the DCU its biggest event since Flashpoint with Morrison-esque levels of continuity play connecting everything in the DC canon together. I’m expecting this to get incredibly silly, and make absolutely no sense to anyone not already 100% invested. Because it’s Snyder, I am so game for this. There’s still a radical shift in quality when the art goes from Kubrick to Romita Jr, the latter of whose style just does not fit the story as well as it does something like the first arc of All-Star Batman.

  Wonder Woman #26

Considering her previous work, I wasn’t expecting Fontana’s first issue on the series to completely gel with where Rucka left us, but the shift in tone is still something I’m getting used to, even within this one issue.

I like the opening scene, with Wonder Woman breaking up a fight in a refugee camp, although I’m honestly not sure what’s supposed to be happening. She punches out a guy harassing a woman and her kid, but then the whole camp is on fire and explodes for some reason? I’m not sure; but that leads directly to a flashback where Wonder Woman overhears her mother worry that she shouldn’t still be playing with dolls if she’s to become an Amazon – a plot-thread which doesn’t really go anywhere nor even plant seeds for the story to come. After that, Diana debriefs from what’s revealed to be her 43rd mission this year with the US military, and the General offers to be someone she can talk to with any problems regarding what she sees on the missions; there’s a check-up with a Doctor with a mysterious cough; and Diana goes to Etta Candy’s brother’s wedding where she helps a young girl find a missing shoe.

Now, I’m the first person to advocate for more superheroes helping out children in comics, but there’s a tonal inconsistency between that and the beginning of the book which implies Di might be going through some PTSD. And that tonal inconstancy also appears within individual scenes, like when right after the General offers to be someone she can talk to, he bumps his head on a low-hanging light fixture, and then the two are interrupted by a Mark Zuckerberg-looking fellow who invites them to a building-wide softball game. Also, the final page feels like a Batman ’66 type cliffhanger, which I kind of love, but which also feels out of step with the rest of the issue.

  The Flash #26

Eobard shows Barry and Iris a vision of their future where their children, Don and Dawn, grow up to be supervillains because Barry wasn’t around to be a father to them. Deciding that Iris has had enough of his lying to her, and that there is only one way to prevent this bad future from playing out, Barry goes with Eobard to a place where he’d never hurt anyone ever again – the negative Speed Force.

Although it probably happens too quickly, I like how Eobard breaks Barry by mind-judo-ing him into thinking that being the Flash is somehow irresponsible and hurts people. It’s not the most original storyline, god knows it’s happened to Peter Parker too many times, but in this situation, it works. Like Pete, Barry has seen how much his being the Flash hurts those closest to him, so when Eobard offers a way to prevent further harm, he takes it.

Also, it gives the series a great excuse to focus on Iris, who has to come to terms with her best friend being a superhero while fighting off the Reverse-Flash on her own. Hopefully this story will also borrow the ending from Spider-Man 2 and have the girlfriend knock some sense into their “my power = my choice” mindset when it comes to relationships.

  Spider-Men II #1

The cover asks the question “Who is the other Miles?” but, of course we don’t find out this issue – though we do see his face. Instead, we get a cold in medias res open of the two Spider-Men failing to catch a plane with, presumably the other Miles on it, before jumping a week into the past where Peter and Miles meet up at the warehouse where the first Spider-Men story kicked off to investigate another mysterious pink portal flinging stuff through Manhattan.

I stopped picking up Bendis books, including Spider-Man (Miles’ book) because I was getting tired of his style after Civil War II; but reading this issue reminds me of what I like about his writing. All of Bendis’ dialogue is snappy and witty, with everyone knowing exactly how to respond to the last thing said with their own little witticism. So, basically, he’s perfect for Spider-Man (men).

Bendis does tend to be verbose, but the boxes and bubbles are broken up nicely through the spreads, never getting too much in the way except in one moment in particularly where the wordiness is a punchline. And despite each character being recognizably Bendis, they are still recognizably distinct. Peter’s inner monologue and dialogue reads as someone trying – perhaps too hard – to be funny. He repeats words and phrases, doubles back on things he’s thinking/saying to provide his own commentary, and goes out of his way to be self-deprecating while taking others down with his esteem. We don’t get any of Mile’s inner monologue, but his dialogue represents him as more self-conscious, more laconic. He speaks mainly to respond to others, and lets Ganke – oh man did I miss Ganke – do much of the talking for him.

Pichelli’s art also does a lot to define each of the Spider-Men. Peter, like his dialogue, is more comedic. His poses are more exaggerated, with him spreading his limbs away from his body with wide kicks and flips, and leaning and looking down over other characters. Conversely, Miles moves more conservatively, keeping his libs tucked while swinging, and crouching where Peter would stand and lean.

  Amazing Spider-Man #30

We open on Spider-Man organizing a retreat from a Mjolnir wielding Hyrdra-Cap, then go to Peter in Shanghai, trying to rally his employees and prepare them for an attack by Doctor Octopus, who is raiding Parker Industry labs. Pete meets with the employees who remain loyal, warning them that if it comes to it, they’re going to have to destroy their life’s work to keep it out of Hydra’s grasps. And then Otto attacks.

It’s really impressive how Slott manages to weave his ongoing stories with event books without skipping a beat. Even without all the Secret Empire stuff, this arc is just another chapter in the Spider-Man/Doc Ock rivalry he’s set up since his Ends of the Earth storyline in 2012. Otto sees allying with Hydra as a means to the end of claiming all of Peter’s work as the fruits of his labor, and destroying Peter’s legacy as he takes it back.

And what’s scary is that, despite becoming a better CEO and doing his best to prepare for Ock, Peter is still a few steps behind. He still, unknowingly let Otto into his company, giving him the chance to sabotage everything right under his nose. In a way, Parker Industry is just as much Otto’s as it is Pete’s, and Otto’s taking advantage of that while Peter is failing to really comprehend it.

  Black Panther and The Crew #4

In Mississippi in 1964, Ezra and Frank take the Crew to take care of some KKK members who can’t be touched by the law. In the present, Luke Cage escapes the firebombing of his apartment building by Hydra, then joins up with Misty Knight to investigate why he was targeted, and what that might have to do with Ezra’s assassination.

The cold open in Mississippi is one of the strongest scenes in comic books regarding racial violence printed in the Big 2’s comics yet. Not only does it clearly and concisely explain how white people can (and still) get away with murdering black people, but also demonstrates exactly why groups like the Crew, or the real life Black Panthers, were and are necessary in those times and places. It’s its own complete story and statement of purpose in four pages. And it’s echoed through the rest of the comic, as Misty and Luke eventually talk to the CEO of the company behind the Americops, who still gets away with targeting black people with impunity because that’s what benefits the powerful.

It’s weird how the same company that’s publishing Nick Spencer’s half-assed sanitized metaphor for fascism can also publish such clear-eyed commentary on race in America. And that also applies to David F. Walker’s too-short run on Nighthawk, which you should totally pick up.

  Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #22

Doreen and Nancy win a programming contest and an all-expenses paid vacation to the Savage Land! Expect jokes involving: computer programming pun titles for classic literature, how insane Wikipedia articles in the Marvel universe must be, colonial era nomenclature, Jurassic Park, paleontology, Latveria, and more.

Reading this issue, it’s hard not to feel like North has wanted to write a Jurassic Park episode for Squirrel Girl for a while now, and he taps into the seemingly universal human love of dinosaurs. Henderson continues to deliver on art, with some of the best and funniest faces in comics, my favorite of which this issue is Doreen’s reaction to realizing Nancy has a crush on one of the other contest winners.

  Kill or Be Killed #10

The cops, including detective Lily Sharpe find the Russian hitman’s burned-up corpse in the back of the van after learning about Dylan dropping off Rex at the hospital, and begin to postulate why their murderer tried to spare one victim while brutalizing the other. Meanwhile, Dylan, devastated by Rex’s death, move back home with his mom where he gets high, plays video games, and swears off killing, resigned to let the demon kill him. But then the demon reminds him that the Russians are after him, and might target the people he cares about, which complicates things a tad.

For a bit it seemed like Dylan was getting used to his new life, but this issue shows him in a downward spiral stemming from Rex’s death, as it’s the first one that’s actually personal for him. It’s his Uncle Ben moment, and that’s not the only part of this issue reminiscent of Spider-Man. When Dylan goes back to the city, it’s mainly to break up with Daisy and shut out Kira, who just happens to tell him about her feelings for him, just as he’s decided he’s too dangerous and messed up to afford to return her feelings.

This issue doesn’t really feel like the ending to an arc, but somewhere closer to the beginning of one. Continuing the comparison, this is Dylan’s “Spider-Man no more!” moment, which means that the stage is pretty much set for his comeback, whatever that may look like. It certainly won’t be as heroic as Spidey’s; but I wouldn’t rule out the inclusion of a criminal kingpin.

Comic Reviews for 7/12/17 Dark Days: The Casting #1 This issue continues The Forge's storytelling maneuver of throwing DCU canon at the wall to see what sticks, but also helpfully starts putting a few pieces together to the story of Metal.