#i also have some cool ones of nicholas but i might post those later or tomorrow

[glaasshouses]

Bad Omens at Bahnhof Pauli, Hamburg 04.02.2023

[mostlikelyshutup]

thoughts while watching the first harry potter:

listen i started this list a little late im ngl but notable thoughts so far are me thinking of dumbledore as a gay idiot and still loving hagrid

do you think hes speaking in parseltongue in the zoo when hes speaking to the snake

forgot boats existed

these idiots do scream a lot dont they

i forgot how light hearted this universe really is in the first couple movies

yer a wizard harry, okay hagrid maybe slide him into it a little better

we get it tuney you have fucking trauma, doesnt mean you should abuse a child

hasnt everyone had their name down since they were born, hagrid? theres a list

i like that his umbrella is pink

are you paying for those damages hargid? stop taking the door off the hinges

though, if the dursleys are, keep breaking shit

speaking about dragons on the the fucking tube, its a miracle harry didnt get in trouble with the ministry sooner

what is hagrid's usual? does anyone know???

fucking Quirrell, cant wait for your epic love story with the dark lord

maybe we should tell the 12 year old how the fuck everyone knows his name, just maybe

they do a great job of getting the wonder down pat

how much money and licensing do you think it took for them to get all these owls on set

ahh yes, antisemitism the bank

how many vaults are in gringotts?? also if harry's vault is the potters vault, a literal like sacred 28 family, one of the original families, and its number 600 something, how many were there before the potters?? did the potters get a vault recently? or is this james and lily's vault?? how rich were james and lily if so??

look at ollivander, crazy tinker uncle, love him

this might be the socialist in me but why do people have to pay for wands if everyone needs one??

why is the dark lords twin wand just sitting around on the shelf, ollie me boy??

do you think thats Harry's true wand or do you think thats because of the horcux thing?? do you harry had to get another wand after he died?? did he? i dont remember the last movie

is ollie me boys actor wearing contacts or are his eyes just like that??

thats a very weird way of showing Halloween 81, very misleading

hagrid said ill predict voldys rise in the first movie so we can have some plot development

hagrid is late to everything isnt he? i can feel it in my bones

i swear ive seen these movies, and ive even read the first book, i just dont remember shit

youd think theyd have someone in the know stationed close to the entrance for the platform, for any muggleborns

ginnys actress really had no fucking lines in this movie did she, just had to stand there

oh wait she said good luck

amazing work ginny

ooh a warm filter

can muggles see the express? like just running from london to scotland

wicked!

you didnt have to show the woman the sad sandwich ron

i think the trolly replenishes magically, i think thats how thats how that works, i want to believe that

god i cant tell if i would love or hate hermione, shes pretentious but so was i at that age

god dont fucking point your wand right in someones face mione

how does mione know who harry is?? why does she care?

look at the tiny first years, might just go and pinch theyre cheeks

MINNIEEEE i love you minnie

looking stunning minnie, the green brings out the sternness in your brow

you go minnie, give your speech, thats my head of house

shut up draco, youre not bond

you pretentious fuckwit, your hair is brassy anyways

if this is a class of kids born in the middle of a war, how big are the usual class sizes wtf

THE FUCKING CLAP

fucking propaganda ron, you slytherin hater

what order are these names going in, did they just randomized the list

oooh we get quiet for the boy who lived, jesus let him keep living

the fact that for the rest of these people its just silent is so fucking funny to me, Harry's just fucking whispering to himself

get their attention minnie

me dads a muggle, mums a witch, bit of a shock for him when he found out

NICK, love to see you buddy

i have no emotional attachment to peeves but i feel i should mention him here

the stairs still piss me off, why the fuck would you make moving stair cases

who sets out gloves for the next day? am i the weird one who doesnt??

Minnie, you are the love of my life

shut up snape you dramatic bloodpurist incel

i know theyre setting him up to be mistaken as the villain but jesus christ hes still an asshole

your robes Neville, you forgot your robes

its weird how they have to learn all these latin charms yet only have to say up to get their brooms to work

why wont you go after him, hes obviously not exactly in control, Hooch

does Hooch only teach first years? she is quite literally the equivalent of a history teacher who coaches football

what the fuck is Quirells classroom

they dont make the house teams because no first years can try out, Ron

MINNIE PLAYED QUIDDITCH?!?!? WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS

why didnt you speak up earlier Mione wtf

bc the fire wont give you away, harry, better hide

FLUFFY, WHOS A GOOD BOY

they have much worse things locked up in the school, Ron

Oliver wood is a bloody liar because i still dont fuckign understand quidditch, also theres like 500 rules, wtf

thats a shitty explanation of how the game works, Oliver

BLOW IT UP SEAMUS

SHES TWO FEET BEHIND YOU RON YOU IDIOT

carrot cake? on halloween?

dont shrug as if you didnt literally bully her ron

thought youd oughta know, bit of an understatement Quirell

no duh the trolls left the dungeon ron

lying: the best start to any friendship

we're at a net zero points for gryffindor for the year at the moment

the amount of interaction these kids have with professors is so weird to me, is this what small class size do to kids?? its weird

not comforting Oliver

Okay i understand Oliver simps now, I get it okay

are there no backups or subs for quidditch? feels like there should be, like of all the games

set him on fire mione, i know hes not the villain of the movie but god he sucks

fancy flying from harry fucking potter

okay but also i feel like there are some things we should not trust hagrid with, like hes not that great at keeping secrets

why is harry excited about christmas if he thinks hes not getting presents? i knw there are other aspects but like thats the only reasont o get up early

i always remember this scene at night for some reason??

not just an invisibility cloak, THE invisibility cloak ron

btw who gives it to harry? is it remus? is it dumbledore? is it like an inheritance thing? whats up with that?

there are jumpscares in harry potter

he very much can hide, filch

stop being a narc mrs norris

does harry even know what his parents look like at this point? how does he know who the fuck is in the mirror of erised?? he doesnt have that stupid scrapbook yet does he

oh they nod, sure lets clear up that plot hole

they shouldve put sirius and remus in the mirror in that scene, shown his whole family, wouldve been a nice setup

how does rupert grint already look so tired as a twelve year old

big speech to give to a twelve year old Dumbledore, when you wont even tell him what you see

Emma really does just slam that book on Daniels hand, thats mustve fucking sucked

the fact that ive watched two movies that had Nicholas Flamel in two very different roles this year is very strange to me

well thats probably on account of it being a fucking dragon egg hagrid, now isnt it?

was hagrid a hufflepuff? i think he was, maybe a ravenclaw

yes four, you blonde idiot

that shot is really nice, it sets them apart

what happened to filch to make him such a miserable man?

ooh mention of werewolves, awooo werewolves of london

yeah just dip your whole hand in hagrid, dont be scared of the strange liquid, take a nice little bath

i loev that dog, i want that dog, i want to hug that dog

god just the look of that forest is so bloody cool

wait so is that quirell walking fucking backwards?

maybe ask who the fuck youre talking to before asking other questions??? wtf harry

why are yout talking to the centaur like hes your old friend harry, youve literally never met him before

snape doesnt want the stone at all Harry

god hagrid you sweet stupid man

snape is completely valid for that, if a twelve year old ever looked at me like that i would punch them

Do you think people ever loose invisibility cloaks? like theyre invisible do you think they ever just never get found again

i hate the look of the dog spit, that is so gross

they really left everything in except for the fucking potions didnt they, damn

harry potter walked so queens gambit could run

hermione, posted up

rons stupid in the later movies because he got a concussion as a twelve year old

god harry really posted up to beat up snape in fucking khakis

"I knew you were a danger to me!" Hes twelve, Quirell

let me wait for this weird dude to unravel his head scarf instead of running away

the magic in this movie is real fucking conditional isnt it

just some casual necromancy for the stone? you sure about that voldy, you two faced bitch?

let me choke out this twelve year old real quick

oh yeah why is he able to just avengers endgame Quirell? is there an answer to that? like was that ever found out

do you think voldy passing by him while he hold the stone actually killed him but since he holds the stone hes functionally unkillable and then some magic gets put into him and thats why he can return to life later when he actually goes to the whole afterlife place?

ohhh we're vouching on the blood magic for the endgaming of Quirell

do you think dumbledore came across the vomit flavored bean before or after his sister died?

Mione's got a headband! Looking snazzy!

how did Hufflepuff only get 352 points? Gryffindor literally lost 150 points this year and they only beat them by 50, wtf, is it because they kept getting caught with weed

I wont even speak on the fucking outrage that is this point awarding, its already been spoken on. However, Neville shouldve gotten more points

What if someone just stood up and started challenging Dumbledores math, that would be so funny

some of these extras are really attractive

but james potter is somehow so fucking ugly why did they do that to my mans

hagrid deserves the last shot of this film, i love him, he deserves everything, that stupid sweet man

[searchingwardrobes]

Self Promo Sunday

I have honestly really enjoyed going back to my older fics and making picsets for them to post here on tumblr. This one is a cute little one shot that came to me because I did a brief stint in direct sales and was HORRIBLE at it! (I sold - or tried to sell - scrapbooking supplies). I know Killian is good at charming his way out of trouble and using his charm to steal things, but I imagined that being a salesman wouldn’t be as easy for him. You see, I was horrible at sales because I don’t like talking people into buying something when they clearly don’t want to. Killian Jones is very passionate about choice and free will, so I imagined the following story!

Words: 2k and some change

Rating: G for silly, sweet fluff

Also on Ao3

Tagging:  @snowbellewells​​​ @whimsicallyenchantedrose​​​ @kmomof4​​​ @let-it-raines​​​ @teamhook​​​ @bethacaciakay​​​ @xhookswenchx​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​ @shireness-says​​​ @stahlop​​​ @scientificapricot​​​ @welllpthisishappening​​​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​​ @thislassishooked​​​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​​​ @kday426​​​ @ekr032-blog-blog​​​ @lfh1226-linda​​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​​ @nikkiemms​​​  @optomisticgirl​​​ @carpedzem​​​ @ohmakemeahercules​​​ @branlovestowrite​​​​ @superchocovian​​​​ @sherlockianwhovian​​​​ @vvbooklady1256​​​​ @hollyethecurious​​​​ @winterbaby89​​​​ @delirious-latenight-laughs​​​​ @jennjenn615​​​​ @snidgetsafan​

Emma Swan really hopes Killian Jones has a second job. Because she’s never seen a worse salesman. The first time he comes into the diner, the last thing she would have pegged him as is a salesman. All mussed hair and black leather with piercings and a tattoo. The heavy black vinyl bag leaning against the booth next to him that says Buy the Book: Direct Sales is out of place.

He’s so bad at it that it takes him forever that first day to give her his sales pitch. Until his second cup of coffee, to be exact. That’s when he hems and haws as he gives her his business card. She stares at it, wondering how she can politely decline as he scratches behind his ear and slides a glossy catalogue across the table. She normally wouldn’t have any qualms at turning down either a sales pitch or a pick up line with a gruff not interested, but he’s so adorably nervous. He starts pulling sample inventory out of his bag, and that’s when she’s in trouble because Henry sniffs out the books like a bloodhound. Her son hops from his stool at the counter where he’s been doing his homework, and eagerly starts looking through the books.

“Look at this one, mom!” Henry exclaims, holding up a pirate sticker and activity book. “It’s not for babies. It’s got cool facts about the history of real pirates.”

Yes. Emma Swan’s son is not your typical ten year old. He’s both a bookworm and a history nut. And she loves him for it. Which is why she buys it. Not because salesman Killian Jones has killer blue eyes.

She pulls a twenty from her apron pocket, hands it to him (because there’s no way she’s giving a guy she just met her credit card information), and tries not to swoon when he smiles. It’s killer, too. She’s his first customer, he tells her, and she can’t help smiling back. He frowns, though, when he realizes he doesn’t have change for a twenty, and then Emma rolls her eyes because, really? It’s just a nickel. He smiles again at that and, well, crap. That smile!

She rolls her eyes later when she sees the ten he left for a tip along with a note telling her she’s “bloody amazing.” The fool went and gave the majority of his profit right back to her. Yeah, he really sucks at this.

*********************************************************

The second time he comes into the diner, he wisely comes in the afternoon again, ensuring Henry is there doing his homework. But this time, he tries (and fails) to chat up fellow customers to get a few sales. They seem skeptical of a salesman who looks more like a biker/rock star than someone who peddles used cars. Emma almost laughs when the only single woman in the diner’s face instantly falls when Killian Jones produces his business card and a catalogue. Seems his blue eyes and his smile are powerless against a woman scorned. She huffs as she tosses her tip on the table and exits the diner post haste, leaving a clearly baffled Killian behind.

When Emma approaches his table, he smiles half-heartedly and she feels sorry for him. Once again, he doesn’t try to sell her anything until she fills his coffee mug a second time. That’s when he pulls out a book he thinks Henry might like, all about knights and castles of the Middle Ages. Henry eagerly peruses it, and Emma is a sucker once again. She buys it because Henry loves history so much he’s the only ten year old Emma has ever heard of who was pumped about a weekend trip to Gettysburg. It’s not because of the way Killian Jones swipes his tongue over his lower lip when he’s nervous.

*****************************************************

The next time Killian comes into the diner, Christmas music is playing and a garland of evergreen hangs in loops over the counter. It’s mid-morning, so Henry’s at school. After his second cup of coffee, Killian admits he came when he knew Henry would be at school because he was hoping . . . and then he’s hemming and hawing again, rubbing at his neck and scratching behind his ear. Emma thinks for a split second that he’s trying to ask her out until he pulls his company’s Christmas catalogue out of his bag. She tries to ignore her disappointment when he asks if she’s finished her Christmas shopping yet.

She ends up buying a “Daily Inspirations for Teachers” desk calendar for Mary Margaret and Nicholas Spark’s newest bestseller for David (a guilty pleasure she loves to tease him about). For Granny she gets a book of knitting patterns. Killian pulls out a book he thinks Henry would like: a leather bound book of fairy tales with the title Once Upon a Time embossed in elegant script across the front. Emma knows Henry would love it, but gasps at the price. A forty dollar book is way over her budget, and like the horrible salesman he is, Killian doesn’t push it. She orders two graphic novels for Henry instead, and when she places the order she slides her credit card across the table.

Killian tells her it’s his biggest order to date and smiles so wide Emma is able to confirm her suspicions. There are dimples underneath that scruff. She begins to second guess her assertion that he’s a bad salesman. Because she’s pretty sure he could sell beachfront property in Kansas with those dimples.

*************************************************

In January, Emma is alarmed when a dejected Killian Jones enters the diner and slumps in his usual booth, his head in his hands. Emma decides to stop the charade when she approaches his table.

“You don’t have to wait till your second cup of coffee.”

Killian lifts his face to hers and quirks an eyebrow in confusion, “I’m sorry, love?”

“You know,” Emma says, gesturing with her order pad, “selling me books. What do you have for Henry this time?”

Killian sighs and leans back in the booth, “Alas, Swan, I am no longer in the business. I’m pretty much the worst salesman in the world.”

Emma hates that she chuckles, but she can’t help it, “Yeah, you pretty much sucked.” Killian, thankfully, laughs as well. “I’m glad I was your best customer, then. While it lasted.”

Killian winces, “Actually, love, you were my only customer.”

Emma’s jaw drops at that and her sympathy grows exponentially. She never bought that much, really. She glances around for Granny as she slides into the booth across from him. Although, based on Granny’s reaction to the knitting book (Why don’t you kiss the man already instead of buying all his books?), she doesn’t think she’ll mind.

“Are you okay? I mean, you don’t seem like you’re starving and destitute, so I’m assuming you have another job.”

“Several, actually,” Killian says, drumming his fingers on the table. “My brother and I do seasonal work on the Cape with a boat charter we own.”

“Cape Cod?”

“Aye. The Cape is beautiful in the spring and summer, but in the winter it’s downright depressing. So I like to come here to Boston once we winter the boat. The hustle and bustle is a nice change of pace, and I love city life during the holidays. Plus, like your boy, I’m a bit of a history buff. I work seasonally at the bookstore down the street.”

“So why the direct sales?”

Killian sighs, “A foolish notion. The bookstore only hires me through the end of December. I thought with this second job I could stay in the city until spring,” he shrugs. “Turns out convincing a customer in a bookstore to buy J.M. Barrie’s original Peter Pan instead of the abridged illustrated version is a mite different from selling books all on your lonesome.”

Emma’s heart drops at the implication of what he’s saying. “So what will you do now?”

“Slink back to the Cape with my tail between my legs and help my sister in law at the ice cream shop, as usual.”

So he’s leaving Boston. He’s leaving, and Emma is surprised at how much it disappoints her. “An ice cream place on the cape can make it through the winter?” She almost face palms. Can she sound any more desperate to convince him to stay?

Killian doesn’t seem to pick up on any subtext, thank goodness. “Elsa inherited the place from her aunt. She and her sister helped out there since they were kids. They know how to make it through the lean months. Dull as tombs, though. Yet, as they say, spring will come again!”

Emma tries to smile, but she knows it’s half-hearted. Killian reaches into his bag and pulls out the leather bound book of fairy tales she couldn’t afford at Christmas. Emma arches an eyebrow, “Still trying to make a sale?”

“Oh no, Swan, this is a gift. To thank you.”

“Killian, I can’t accept that. You need to sell off your inventory, or you’ll lose everything you invested.”

Killian chuckles sardonically at that, “Too late for that, Swan. Besides, you’re the only one who ever bought anything, and you know it wasn’t for the books. You felt sorry for me.”

Emma’s face flushes, and she wishes she could tell him that wasn’t it. She’s always despised pity and vowed she’d never doll it out. But how can she explain that while still guarding her heart? Instead, she accepts the leather book and hugs it to her chest, mumbling a soft “thank you.” Killian smiles in return and exits the diner without ever ordering a thing. And she hates the finality of his departure and the possibility that there could have been a them, but now she’ll never know.

She looks down at the book in her hands and notices a little rectangle of cardstock poking out of its pages. She pulls it out, expecting it to be Killian’s Buy the Book business card. Instead, it says Jewel of the Realm Charters with the names Liam and Killian Jones and a phone number. Emma’s heart flips in her chest when she sees that Killian has jotted a note on the back.

I owe you and Henry a free day of sailing. – Killian

The fool still knows nothing about making a profit.

********************************************************

In February, Emma Swan walks into Any Given Sundae along the shores of Cape Cod. She convinced herself there was nothing stalker-ish about her showing up here, but now that the bell is jingling above the door and the blonde woman behind the counter is smiling at her, she’s having second thoughts. Killian had mentioned his sister-in-law’s name, so it’s not like she had to be a private detective or anything to find the place. Still, who drives all the way from Boston to Cape Cod just to visit an ice cream shop? In February?

“May I help you?” asks the blonde, and Emma fiddles with the end of her scarf. She was kind of hoping Killian would just be there when she walked through the door.

“Um . . . I . . .” and she almost laughs thinking of the way Killian would hem and haw when selling her books. She glances around the store. It’s one of those tiny places that beach goers walk in and out of on hot summer days. There are no tables or chairs anywhere in the place. But in the corner a display table has been set up. A display table of books. Emma walks towards it. “You sell books?”

“Oh,” says the blonde – Elsa, she assumes – with a dismissive wave of her hand, “that’s a failed business venture of my brother-in-law’s. Please buy one. I need to get those out of here before tourist season.”

Emma reaches out and runs her fingers along the edges of the books.

“Swan?”

Emma turns to see Killian standing behind the counter with a large tub of ice cream in each arm. He deposits them quickly into their slots behind the glass then comes around to face her. They stand there staring at each other for a few moments, grinning like a couple of idiots.

“Wh-what are you doing here, Swan?” he stutters, and she swears he sounds more nervous than he did when he was trying to sell books.

“Guess it’s too early for that day of sailing, huh?” she teases with a shrug.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” he teases back, “there’s a foot of snow on the ground, Swan.”

Emma bites her lip and fiddles with her scarf again, “Actually, I came to tell you thank you. For Henry’s book. He loves it.”

Killian raises his eyebrows, “You drove all the way out to Cape Cod to tell me that?”

There’s a twinkle in his eyes that makes Emma blush, and they just stare at each other again like goofballs. She sees Elsa laugh and shake her head out of the corner of her eye, and she thinks that she couldn’t possibly embarrass herself any more than she already has. So with a roll of her eyes and a screw this, she grabs him by the shirt collar and kisses the living daylights out of him.

He dives back in for more when she finally pulls away, and when Elsa tells them, “Easy there, tigers, you’re gonna melt all the ice cream,” they laugh against each others’ lips.

************************************************************

Two months later, Henry brings his book along when Killian takes them sailing. He reads parts of it out loud to them when Killian lays anchor, and Emma finds that it’s modern versions of classic fairy tales. Snow White is a bandit with a bow and arrows, Red Riding Hood is a werewolf, and Captain Hook is a hero who falls in love with a princess. And Emma thinks that she really likes this story. A pirate and a princess.

But she likes theirs better.

A salesman and a waitress.

Make that a horrible salesman and a waitress.

[donavanhall]

Acts of Translation

Late in February 2021, I was walking through the Long Island Pine Barrens, along the beginning of the Paumanok Trail.  The snow-covered path was marked by the patterned boot tracks of other hikers (only two or three at the most) and the cloven hoof-marks of deer.  The sky above the trees was pale blue, tinged with gray.  The air was cool, crisp, dry.  With each step, my boots compacted the icy slush and sometimes my boot would shift, sliding on the heavy, dense snowpack so that I’d have to compensate with a movement of my upper body and arms to keep my balance and to prevent myself from slipping.

The fourth branch of Jacques Roubaud’s “the great fire of London”, a volume called Poésie: (récit) — I prefer the French title since Poetry: (a story) is less poetic and loses a sense of meaning that I think should be there, poésie to my ear implies a movement that is lost in the more static English word, poetry, and récit (and perhaps this is peculiar to me and has nothing to do with actual French) suggests narration closer to that when a storyteller speaks to a listener who receives the récit and so completes the action, a story doesn’t necessarily require a reader — begins with the Narrator (Roubaud) moving through space, in this case, the space is urban, the streets Paris.

Early in December 1994, I was walking in Paris.  The sky was gray, low, the air humid, warm.

For walking in Paris, I wear a blue K-way jacket, and a cap, also blue.  The K-way was a gift, not something I’d picked out.  It was light, blue, waterproof, costly.

For walking in the woods, I wear an olive green jacket made by Patagonia that zips up the front and has a little pocket over the left breast where I can store my phone for easy access.  Around my neck, I wear my “Doctor Who scarf” knitted by my mother.  (The scarf isn’t a replica of any of the long scarves worn by the Fourth Doctor, played by actor Tom Baker, but a spirited recreation of the sort that anyone familiar with the various scarves featured in Season 12 through 17 of the TV show would immediately recognize.)  On my head I wear a black bowler hat I purchased at the museum shop of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2018 when I took my mother and son to the Magritte exhibit. (The next summer, I would take my wife and son to Brussels to tour the permanent Magritte exhibit at the Musée de Beaux Arts.  The study of Magritte’s art and writing is a principal concern of my Project.)  The clerk at the shop said this style of bowler hat is the exact same one worn by René Magritte when he was alive.  So it should be no surprise that I’m pleased with it and wear it every opportunity I get, and especially when I’m out on my daily walk.

Before the pandemic, I walked every afternoon through the pine barrens.  This was easy enough since the office where I perform my paid work (not at all literary) is located in the middle of the pine barrens.  There are a network of trails that lead through the woods that are immediately accessible from the back door of the building where I work.  A year ago, my office was closed, so that I now work from home.  Now my afternoon walks (usually) are taken along the streets in the neighborhood where I live in the village of Long Neck.  I’ve become a familiar sight in the neighborhood as the man in the bowler hat.  My neighbors wave to me and sometimes will view my unusual headwear as an occasion for conversation.  What kind of hat is that? asked one neighbor.  Another fellow walker assumed I’m a fan of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, a novel by Anthony Burgess.  I’m more a fan of the book than I am a fan of the movie, but my bowler hat is most deliberately a nod to Magritte and not to Alex and his three droogs.  Throughout the pandemic, Magritte and his art has been my life line.

On his walks in Paris, Roubaud doesn’t wear a bowler — his cap is of a different sort.

I bought the cap in New York, at J.J. Hat Center, at the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street.  It’s a hat made in Scotland and the salesperson assured me that it was the same exact style of cap worn by Sean Connery in the film The Untouchables. It’s no surprise that I’m happy with it.

After I’m vaccinated and I feel like taking the Long Island Rail Road to Penn Station again, maybe I’ll go to the J.J. Hat Center myself and shop for a hat.  Although according to “the internet” J.J. Hat Center is now located at 310 Fifth Ave (between 31st & 32nd), not far from Penn at all.  If/when I do go in to the city, I’ll want to pay a visit to the Fountain Pen Hospital.  A man can never have too many hats or too many fountain pens.

I could go along in this vein for quite some time, this leisurely stroll through Roubaud’s Poésie: (récit) allowing his text to guide my own thoughts, reveries, musings, etc.  The resulting text would function as a companion text.  I’m walking along with Roubaud in Paris as he moves from the National Library, past familiar restaurants, along familiar streets…

I passed between the tops or periscopes of the licorice icebergs of the Buren columns, making sure not to slip on their outgrowths/extensions [? the French word is excroissances, but it’s not obvious to me what these outgrowths or extensions might be], on the damp grills, slimy, soaped with crushed beige leaves.  And I made it through with no accidents to Place Colette, on the right side of the Théâtre-Français.  This route was well known to me.

...but Roubaud himself is not walking with me, only his text, or perhaps he is with me as an invented copy of an imaginary Roubaud that I carry within myself as I read and as I walk along the snow-covered Paumanok Trail thinking of his book, or books (one book in seven volumes called collectively “the great fire of London”).

I read the first two and a half branches (the first three volumes to be translated into English), starting with Branch One: Destruction in the fall of 2018.  Without really intending to, I wrote a little book of jottings while reading Roubaud’s novel.  I called my little book, In the Labyrinth of Forking Paths, since “the great fire of London” is “a story with interpolations and bifurcations” with actual links indicating different narrative paths the reader can take during their wandering reading.  I was reminded (though only a little) of the choose-your-own-adventure books (published by Bantam) I read when I was a kid.  One of my early attempts at writing fiction was a “literary” choose-your-own-adventure called (imaginatively enough) Into the Labyrinth (a slight variation on a title of one of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novels, Dans le labyrinthe, with whose hyper-descriptive nouveau roman style I’d become bewitched, a style ideally suited to such text adventures).  (I published my Into the Labyrinth as an interactive fiction designed for a media platform that worked only on those early generation iPods.  I have no idea if anyone ever read/played my interactive fiction even though according to the app, mine was the most downloaded story.  It was certainly the longest.)  I won’t claim that I have been waiting for the remaining four volumes to be translated into English.  In fact, I felt a certain level of contentment with the artificial truncation of the novel — I had read all that I could, all that was available in English, so now I could move on to other things, like reading the works of Miklós Szentkuthy.  Procuring and reading the rest of “the great fire of London” wasn’t a tempting prospect until Anthony, author of the blog, Time’s Flow, mentioned that he’d purchased the remaining volumes in French and would be making an attempt to read them.  That was all it took.  If Anthony was going to do it, then so would I.  I ordered copies from a bookseller in France and they arrived last Friday in the post.  So when did I get the idea to translate these remaining four volumes into English myself?  Was it a serious idea or just another of my fanciful projects?  Project 7139: translated two thousand pages of Jacques Roubaud’s “the great fire of London” into English.  (For the record, I’m currently working on Project 3 which I started twenty years ago.  Project 4 is “write a masterpiece that will establish my literary reputation.”  That one might take awhile.)  Certainly, I would read these other branches.  Or would I?  My track record for finishing big projects is not stellar.  (The first time I read Proust, it took me ten years.)

While walking in the snow in the pine barrens, I thought about why I was being pulled back into Roubaud’s book.  What was it about his very long prose that attracted me?  Was this a momentary literary crush or had I fallen for “the great fire of London”?  If this were a romance, you could say that Roubaud and I met in the fall of 2018 and spent some time together, mostly walking.  We shared our mutual interests, talking about poetry, literature, and mathematics.  I learned a great deal about haikai (haiku and haibun), gained a new appreciation of the works of Charles Dickens, and was introduced to Nicholas Bourbaki, and then resumed my own mathematical studies after a hiatus of twenty years, this time beginning with set theory and topology.  And then it was over.  He had to go.  We parted ways.

Then two and half years later, Roubaud pops up again at a party hosted by a friend, this time we’re speaking French — my French is better now, so it’s much easier for us to talk and now I feel something different than I did before.  We’re making a real connection.  I can feel it.  And Roubaud seems somehow changed.  When we first met, I was the one who was paying attention to Roubaud, accompanying a new master, and learning new things.  Now, this new Roubaud, this French-speaking Roubaud is interested in me, keeps asking me questions, asking for my opinion. Then it dawns on me.  Roubaud has chosen me.  You’re the one, he says.  I’ve picked you.

Of course, this isn’t an exclusive relationship.  Such is the way with authors and their books.  Readers must share the objects of their affection, but still it feels different when a book chooses you rather than you choosing it.

I’m choosing you.  I’m ready whenever you are.  Shall we begin?

[benisasoftboi]

Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse. 

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’  

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.  

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.  

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned,  Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol 

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret. 

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect. 

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously 

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

[lehillwrites]

Virtual Visit: Vaux-le-Vicomte

Last spring I wrote a series of posts about virtually visiting fandom filming locations for a Travel Writing class, and since November 16th is considered "International Versailles Day" within the Versailles fandom (to commemorate the first episode airing in 2015), I thought I would re-create the post here. This virtual tour, as well as a few others, will be a part of my Capstone project to be completed next year. Enjoy!

The Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte has been used in many period pieces, but the one I am focusing on for this post is the television series Versailles. The show ran for three glorious seasons (2015-2018) and in my opinion could have gone for another three no problem. Life in Louis XIV’s Court was filled with enough intrigue and decadence to put a modern day soap opera to shame. While the show takes some liberties, as they all do, much of what you see as the drama plays out on the screen is true. I fell down the research well after discovering the show and I think sometimes the writers actually hold back when portraying the utterly elegant madness of the time of Louis XIV’s Versailles.

Vaux itself is never mentioned by name in the show, but it stood in for many scenes that were supposed to take place within the real palace of Versailles. In the header picture it is doubling for Saint-Cloud, the royal residence of Philippe d'Orleans (1640-1701), the only brother of King Louis XIV (1638-1715). The actual Saint-Cloud no longer exists, but it is said that the beauty of Philippe's chateau rivaled Versailles' in the opinion of many visitors at the time. A fact that did not please the King.

A quick history lesson

You cannot talk about Vaux-le-Vicomte without also looking at Nicholas Fouquet (1615-1680) from whose mind the chateau sprung. Though less like Athena from Zeus because it took 20 years for Fouquet’s dream to come to fruition.

In 1641 he acquired the land and proceeded to demolish the existing chateau and cleared the village of Vaux and two adjacent hamlets. The three men who were behind the stunning beauty of the chateau and gardens were the architect Louis Le Vau (1612-1670), gardener André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), and painter and decorator Charles Le Brun (1619-1690). Thanks to the support of Fouquet, each of these men, already respected in their fields, would create an architectural, artistic and design legacy that would influence all of Europe.

Le Veu designed a chateau that worked with the gardens to enhance their beauty equally. Le Nôtre used new techniques in gardening along with his own unique designs to create the original French formal garden. Le Brun was the genius behind the lavish artwork inside the chateau, filled with mythology and allegorical figures that were characteristic of the 17th century.

Later, all three of these men would work under the direction of Louis XIV as he created his own masterpiece, Versailles, which was influenced heavily by Vaux. You see, when Nicholas Fouquet, then the Minister of Finance, held the first grand party in 1661 to showcase the completed chateau for the king, that’s when it all fell apart. He had apparently gone too far, and dreamed too big.

The writer Voltaire wrote, “On 17 August, at 6 o’clock in the evening, Fouquet was king of France; at 2 o’clock in the morning, he was nothing.” It didn’t happen quite that fast, but three weeks later Fouquet was arrested by d’Artagnan, of the King’s Musketeers, and accused of embezzling from the Crown. In reality, it had been the Cardinal Mazarin who had depleted the royal coffers, but it didn’t matter. Fouquet was sent to prison in Pignerol, where he died in 1680.

The King claimed much of the chateau's assets and auctioned off the rest. Madame Fouquet left the chateau and gardens to her son, but the domain was sold to the Marshal of Villars in 1805 after the son’s death. It was briefly renamed Vaux-Villars until after the Marshal's death when his son sold it to the Duke of Praslin. The chateau was a place of pride for the Duke, and while six generations of his family called Vaux home, maintaining the chateau and gardens simply became too expensive.

For 30 years Vaux-le-Vicomte was left empty and neglected until 1875 when Alfred Sommier purchased it at auction and began to bring the masterpiece back to life. Today, the chateau and gardens are managed by Jean-Charles and Alexander Vogué, the fifth generation in the family to do so.

What it means to me

I wish it could be possible for every film or television show to be filmed on-location, but time, space and money are always a factor. In the case of using Vaux-le-Vicomte for many scenes to represent the palace of Versailles it was not just because Versailles is only closed to the public on Mondays but also because the interior of the palace has changed drastically since the time of Louis XIV, unlike Vaux-le-Vicomte.

And so many iconic scenes were filmed here, such as when Louis XIV (George Blagdon) feverishly dances in the Grand Salon to the shock of the nobles watching, and the horror of his valet Bontemps (Stuart Bowman) who quickly has the windows and doors closed against prying eyes.

The love Bontemps feels for his King is perfectly portrayed, while the scene also shows how untouchable the King is. No one dares approach the King, not even his guards, when it is obvious there is something wrong. The nobles might be titillated by the odd display, but they keep safely outside of the salon and just watch. Only Bontemps is allowed to take control of the situation.

Historically, the fever that brought him close to death, and made the possibility of his brother (portrayed by Alexander Vlahos in the show) taking the throne, happened before the work on Versailles had begun, but it fits well within the Versailles season one plotline.

I loved that Saint-Cloud was represented, the facade at least, by Vaux-le-Vicomte because, as I mentioned, the original chateau was destroyed. In the show, the brother of the King does not have an easy time of it, similar to what we know of his life historically. That the chateau Philippe loved so dearly and put a lifetime of work into was destroyed just seems a tragic loss for history and for the man who is known as the grandfather of Europe. After all, it is his progeny who lived to become royalty in nearly all of Europe even to today, and not King Louis XIV's.

Best way to virtually visit

We are very lucky that Vaux-le-Vicomte partnered with Google to create a virtual tour experience of many rooms in the chateau as well as the formal gardens. For the long way around, go to:

Vaux-le-Vicomte website (you have the option to choose from several languages)

Scroll down and click “Multimedia”

Click “Virtual Tour”

Click “Google Street View” to go directly to the virtual tour options

Scroll down to see the two icons for the chateau or Gardens

Pick your choice

Or just use this link for the Google Arts & Culture page, scroll down and find the Virtual Tour icons.

I listed the longer way first because the Vaux website has so much wonderful information to explore before or after taking the virtual tour that it’s worth taking the long way around.

The Chateau option starts off in the Grand Salon. From there you can move around using the arrows or go directly into different rooms using the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen.

The Garden option drops you outside of the chateau. While you cannot move straight down the wide path, you can move left or right to continue forward along the side paths. The cool thing about this virtual tour? You can “walk” from the chateau all the way up the hill to the Hercules statue and look back down. (Note: The current Hercules statue is actually a 19th century copy of the original.)

I think this tour has made me want to visit in-person in ways few other virtual tours have, and at this point I have explored quite a few! I want to walk every inch of those garden paths even if my feet complain! And I want to take a guided tour of the chateau to hear about the incredible history and maybe get a few details only someone familiar with the history can reveal!

Thank you Vaux-le-Vicomte and Google!

You can watch all three seasons of Versailles on Netflix.

Source for the historical background of Vaux: the Vaux-le-Vicomte website

Other Sources: Personal screenshots, Google Earth, Wikipedia

Posted: November 16, 2020

[bountyofbeads]

Trump Accused of Enlisting a Foreign Power to Help Him Politically https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/democrats-impeachment-trump.html

Nancy Pelosi Announces Formal Impeachment Inquiry of Trump

Faced with new allegations against President Trump and administration stonewalling, Democrats have ended months of caution.

By Nicholas Fandos | Published Sept. 24, 2019 Updated 5:45 PM ET | New York Times | Posted September 24, 2019 6:00 PM ET | VIDEO |

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump, saying that he had betrayed his oath of office and the nation’s security in seeking to enlist a foreign power for his own political gain.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said after emerging from a meeting of House Democrats in the basement of the Capitol. Mr. Trump, she said, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”

The announcement was a stunning development that unfolded after months of caution by House Democrats, who have been divided over using the ultimate remedy to address what they have called flagrant misconduct by the president. It had the potential to reshape Mr. Trump’s presidency and to cleave an already divided nation only a year before he plans to stand for re-election.

In this case, with an avalanche of Democrats — including many who had resisted the move — now demanding it, Ms. Pelosi said that Mr. Trump’s reported actions, and his administration’s refusal to share details about the matter with Congress, have left the House no alternative outside of impeachment.

At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress.

Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation, practically daring Democrats to try to find an impeachable offense in a conversation that he has called “perfect.” But Democrats, after months of holding back, demanded the full whistle-blower complaint, even as they pushed toward an expansive impeachment inquiry that could encompass unrelated charges.

“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Ms. Pelosi said.

The president, in New York for several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, issued a defiant response on Twitter, in a series of fuming posts that culminated with a simple phrase: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!”

“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “So bad for our Country!

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage. So bad for our Country!

39.3K

5:08 PM - Sep 24, 2019

Ms. Pelosi said she had directed the chairmen of the six committees that have been investigating Mr. Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.” In a closed-door meeting earlier in the day, she said the panels would put together their best cases on potentially impeachable offenses by the president and send them to the Judiciary Committee, according to two officials familiar with the conversation. That could potentially lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment based on the findings.

The decision to begin a formal impeachment inquiry does not necessarily mean that the House will ultimately vote to charge Mr. Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors — much less that the Republican controlled Senate will vote to remove him. But Ms. Pelosi and her leadership would not initiate the process unless they were prepared to reach that outcome.

Ms. Pelosi met privately on Tuesday with the leaders of the six key committees involved in investigations of Mr. Trump, and later huddled with the full Democratic caucus. Her announcement came amid a groundswell in favor of impeachment among Democrats that has intensified since late last week, with lawmakers from every corner of her caucus lining up in favor of using the House’s unique power to charge Mr. Trump if the allegations are proved true, or if his administration continues to stonewall attempts by Congress to investigate them.

The House Judiciary Committee has been conducting its own impeachment investigation focused on the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as well as allegations that Mr. Trump may be illegally profiting from spending by state and foreign governments and other matters. But that inquiry has never gotten the imprimatur of a full House vote or the full rhetorical backing of the speaker, as Democrats remained divided about the wisdom and political implications of impeaching a president without broader public support.

Now, after the revelation of a conversations between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in which Mr. Trump pressed the foreign leader to investigate the Bidens, a cascading flood of Democrats has come out in favor of a formal impeachment proceeding.

The shift in outlook among Democratic lawmakers has been rapid, and could yet still turn away from impeachment if exculpatory evidence comes to light. The developments that have turned the tide began less that two weeks ago, when Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee chairman, first revealed the existence of a secret whistle-blower complaint that the intelligence community’s internal watchdog had deemed “urgent” and credible but that the Trump administration had refused to share with Congress.

Democrats have given Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, until Thursday to turn over the whistle-blower complaint or risk reprisal. And they have threatened to subpoena the Trump administration for a copy of the transcript of the president’s call with Mr. Zelensky and other relevant documents after Thursday if they are not shared voluntarily.

There were also indications the whistle-blower might not wait around for the complaint to be disclosed. Democrats said on Tuesday that a lawyer for the whistle-blower had informed the committee his client wanted to speak with the House and Senate intelligence panels, and had requested directions from the office of the director of national intelligence on how to do so.

Though it has attracted much less fanfare, the Senate Intelligence Committee intends to meet privately with the inspector general and Mr. Maguire this week to discuss the whistle-blower complaint.

The House will begin a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday. More than two-thirds of the 235 House Democrats had already said they support such an inquiry, according to a New York Times survey and public statements.

At least 45 Democrats announced their support since Monday, as more details have emerged from Mr. Trump’s  attempt this summer to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden.

Starting in May, The Times asked every representative for his or her position and has been updating this page with each response. Many House Democrats who do not currently support impeachment proceedings say investigations of Mr. Trump should continue. The White House has stonewalled these inquiries.

Some Democrats called for impeachment after the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said that he could not clear Mr. Trump of obstruction of justice. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan was the lone House Republican to publicly conclude that Mr. Trump has “engaged in impeachable conduct.” He has since left the party, becoming the lone independent in the House.

SEE FULL LIST OF THOSE FOR AND AGAINST IMPEACHMENT ON NYTIMES WEBSITE

"About time! Finally, maybe the Democratic leadership has realized that spineless half measures and empty threats are perceived as WEAK by not only the monster Trump and his Republican lapdogs, but also by the entire country. It is up to Congress to hold this tyrant accountable." RICK, ROCHESTER NY

"Remember Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who revealed Nixon’s secret Oval Office taping system, which provided evidence for his impeachment? The whistleblower who revealed this secret conversation will, I hope, someday receive the gratitude of our nation for helping to expose the traitorous behavior of this soon-to-be-impeached occupant of the White House." THERESA, CA

"Clearly the whistle-blower has deeply damaging information on Trump ... this is why he is hiding it, and why the whistle-blower has reached out directly to the House him/her self. This person is the real hero here ... finally, someone with the spine to come forward and speak out against the traitorous trump. Perhaps we will soon be rid of the fool."

GREG, COLORADO

"God bless the whistleblower! That person may have saved our country! God bless the IG. Both these people are very brave! Speaker Pelosi knows what she is doing...she is pretty cool!" SANDRA, CA

"“I think it’s ridiculous,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “It’s a witch hunt. I’m leading in the polls. They have no idea how they stop me. The only way they can try is through impeachment. This has never happened to a president before.” Six sentences: six lies. Is that a record? 1) It's not ridiculous. it's very serious 2)Witches are not involved 3)He's losing in the polls 4) They know how to 'stop' him 4) there are at least two other ways to get rid of him, not counting 2020 election; 25th amednment , forced resignation 5)It happened to three other presidents" DAVID GUNTER, LONGWOOD FLA

"Finally! After the indictments and convictions against many of his associates, thousands of lies, at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice - not to mention incredible damage to the domestic and international community - there is finally going to be a process that puts the whole of Congress on the record for history to show who stood up to the nightmare of Donald Trump. Even if the cowards in the Senate to not vote overwhelmingly to impeach, there will at least be an undeniable accounting of who stood up against Trump’s wrongdoing and the belief that no one is above the law." HONEST TEA, USA

"Move quickly! Trump is becoming increasingly unstable. Time is of the essence. Impeachment will have a small amount of Republican support, but I still believe that it will fall short of the 67 votes needed in the Senate to remove Trump from office. It is important for voters to know who is in favor of removing Trump from office, and who is in favor of keeping him in office. Voters need to know where each and every member of Congress in both houses stand on this issue, so that they can be held accountable in the 2020 election. All of America needs to know who is responsible for retaining Trump in office just in case he does something catastrophic and irreversible. It's not a matter of whether he does something catastrophic and irreversible, only when." S. BUTLER, NM

"Frankly it’s so long past time for Nancy Pelosi to begin impeachment of the most openly corrupt president in the history of the United States. Get on with it Nancy! No half-hearted measures. Treat a bully like a bully! Be strong. Be proactive. Lead! Stop worrying about pill numbers and your incorrect preconceptions. Anyone who has children understands the importance of setting boundaries. My god, why has this been so hard for Nancy Pelosi and her feckless house lieutenants? After all the prior impeachable behaviors? Hopefully now we will *finally* see the Democratic Party spines and stand up to the openly 24/7 lawless behavior of Trump and his band of GOP sycophants. Stop worrying about poll numbers Nancy - let’s start worrying about whether our little democratic experiment can survive after 2020. Enough is enough!" BRETT B, AZ

"It took months, but we finally have the smoking gun that has forced the Democratic leadership into action. Some of Democrat House members are putting the good of this country ahead of their political careers (they come from marginal Democrat districts). Ms. Warren is correct; impeachment must start today. The future of this country is at stake. By the way, impeachment will also ensnare many in the current administration, as well as GOP Senate and House members, before this is all over. Yes, there is risk to Democrats going forward with impeachment. However, it is even a bigger risk, to the future of this country, if they don't."

NICK, CO

"Congress needs to see the full whistle blower's complaint as well as all the other documents Trump has refused to turn over. Calling for an impeachment inquiry will help with that. There's still no guarantee the president will honor the courts' decision -- and this could force a true Constitutional crisis -- but at least there won't be months and months of delays, which Pelosi et al. seem to have been fine with, hoping to run down the clock. It appears that she and her leadership team have finally realized that their inaction has not only hurt the country, which they also seemed to be fine with, but it's now hurting them personally. Better late than never." AVRDS, MONTANA

"I am one of those people who was against impeachment but this latest scandal has changed my mind. If Trump isn't called out now, then we are all implicit in his crimes. We cannot sit back for another year and do nothing and hope that the ballot box will rescue this nation." AK, IOWA CITY

"Ms Pelosi remarked"The first responsibility...." Ms Pelosi surely knows, as the speaker of our "House" that her first responsibility is to honor the US constitution and its laws, a responsibility that transcends her leadership of House Democrats. If she and her Democratic epigones fail to impeach Trump, she and they will fail in their responsibility to assert and uphold the the power of the legislative branch of our government. They and the rest of us will suffer the irremediable consequences. Moral cowardice will likely lead us to a second Trump term and a ticket to terminal decline." DIDEROT, PORTLAND

"I still support moving ahead. It's duty. But there is nothing that actually requires the Senate to hold a trial. Does anyone think McConnell will have Republicans get on record regarding this? My limited legal research indicates he can surely ignore whatever the House does - experience says he would do so without thinking twice. We know because of what happened to Merrick Garland. This is why we have to impeach. Either branches of government take their duties and separation of powers seriously, or they don't. If they don't we wind up with an imperial presidency, game over. A stand is needed against the slide toward that, even if it's not reversible at this point."

SARAH, CHICAGO

" Trump is beyond any and all acceptable / tolerable limits. Cease the never ending 'discussions' and pull the trigger!! Forget the Senate; use the impeachment process to expose the MOUNTAINS of illegality surrounding Trump; set the stage for his criminal indictment. Use the accumulated facts to get him in front of a federal judge for wholesale criminal behavior, be it for next week or next year. Democrats, citizens, anyone and everyone, get up on your feet and JUST DO IT! It's time to hold this con man accountable."

FORGETABOUTIT, OZARK MOUNTAINS

"Just because a majority of Americans might not support an impeachment inquiry does not mean there should not be one. This isn't the Clinton era. This is more like Nixon on steroids - serious malfeasance and abuse of office." JEFF, NY

"Nancy Pelosi stood back patently and waited for Trump to impeach himself."

HECTOR, TX

"A week ago I strongly believed that the window for impeachment has closed. This new information about Ukraine has caused me to completely change my mind. Impeachment is now the only option. If Trump is allowed to get away with this then our democracy isn't merely threatened, it's already long gone. It took a violent revolution to obtain our freedom as a nation - let's not wait until that's our only option to restore it." RS, PMW

If Trump had been a Democrat, the GOP would have impeached him within his first few months in office. OBSERVER, WASHINGTON DC

"The UK stood up to Boris. Right now it looks like Great Britain is great again. We'll see about America." ANONYMOUS, USA

"If I understand it correctly, it's the law that Maguire must turn over the whistleblower information. If it's not possible to make that happen, something is very wrong with our system. But the fact that he won't do that alone speaks to the dubious nature of this administration." KIM, NEW ENGLAND

"Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment proceedings will go forward in a short but strong statement this afternoon. She is upholding the requirements of our Constitution in so doing, and I hope that most Americans appreciate her prudence in waiting until Trump performed such an odious action--asking a foreign power to get dirt on Joe Biden and his son--that impeachment became imperative." ELIZABETH, AZ

"I live in one of those swing districts that replaced its GOP member with a Democrat. The political differences within my district seem to fall along the lines of tax policy and the amount of business regulation. Differences in economic and government philosophy do not equate to condoning criminality. I see little threat to my newly-elected member for standing up for the rule of law." GREENFISH, NJ

[littlemisssquiggles]

Whit-ty Headcanons: Whitley’s Geist.

@parrot-with-a-mohawk reblogged your post and added:

I really like this musing, especially the Diamond in the Rough theory and also the one where he secretly manipulates Jacques himself. From what I’ve heard, Whitley was based of a book character named Artemis Fowl (don’t remember the book’s name though), who was very cunning, and he was using this trait in order to manipulate fairies, for a good purpose(don’t remember what it was though). He also had an ill mother or something, who didn’t remember who he was, and Artemis was very detached from her, but, towards the end, he became closer to her, as her illness healed(?)(don’t clearly remember this part). So, as you said, I would really love to see Whitley join the Rosebuds, and, might I add, form a trio of guts(Ruby), voice of reason(Oscar) and brains(Whitley).

I also have to correct you on a little something. The Summons are creatures that the Schnees who possess the Glyphs semblance have defeated in battle. This is why Weiss cand summon the giant suit of armour, that, according to the manga, was just a normal giant suit of armou which was possessed by a Geist, and also that Boarbatusk, that she defeated in Volume 1, that one time, during Port’s class. And I don’t think that Whitley has ever fought someone phisicaly, nevermind a Grimm. Imigine him though, once part of the trio, tring to fight one of those “ocasional small Grimm” that Oscar mentioned. That would be kind of funny.

Also, that is just my opinion, but I think that Whitley’s charm stands in his smarts and cunningness. It would be cool to see him support the main team from behind a desk, rather than together with them on the front lines, or, maybe, with a metaphorical utility belt, Batman style or by making plans and strategies for them to use. But this is just my opinion and I’m sorry if I seemed rude in some way.

 Squiggles Answers:

@parrot-with-a-mohawk Eh? Rude? Whaddaya talking about? No rudeness detected RWBY fam. I see where you’re coming from so it’s cool m’dude.

I’m glad you enjoyed my Whitley musing so thank you for the compliments =) You’re not the only person to tell me that Whitley was based off of Artemis Fowl. Ironically enough, I’d heard of the character from before and I even own the first book in the series. Granted, I never finished the book but at least I know the character.

Did you see my RWBY remark about Team ROWZ? If Whitley were to form a team with Ruby and Oscar and the trio are then joined by Zwei, that’s what their team name would be...or at least, that’s how I see it XD

By the way, I actually do know that the Summons are the creatures that the Schnees with the Glyph semblance had defeated in combat. In my original draft of this musing, I’d included a point painting a scenario where perhaps Whitley was attacked by a Geist Grimm during his sisters’ absence and him defeating the beast was as a result of him unexpectedly unlocking his semblance in the heat of battle in order to protect himself.

I didn’t include this hunch in the final draft but that’s how I saw the tie in with my theory about Whitley’s summon being a Geist.

 Imagine...one night, Whitley is left alone inside the Schnee Manor. His parents had gone out for the night on their own endeavours and Whitley is left to himself with only Klein around in case he needed anything. Perhaps this is a night where Whitley decides to entertain himself by practicing his pianist skills.

In V4, it was hinted that Whitley might know how to play the piano. We never actually witnessed him doing so, which was a wasted opportunity however his picture is hung up inside the music room inside the mansion.

So the implication is there. It’s sad. I wish they had taken advantage of Whitley’s own musical talents. If Whitley does know how to play then I wish we’d gotten a scene of him helping Weiss with her recital.

It would’ve been an amazing brother and sister bonding moment if Weiss is there singing her sweet swan song as Whitley’s fingers danced across the keyboard in coordination with his sister; casting their collaborated melodic spell over the audience. If only; am I right?

Anyways, just as Whitley is getting into the song, he hears a sudden strange noise from outside in music room. At first the young boy ignores the noise but when it became too prominent, he was forced to vacate in order to investigate it. Whitley’s search for the source of the disturbance brought him outside the house in the garden. He calls for Klein, thinking it may be the chubby man just tending to the bushes. No answer and it is at this point, Whitley was growing annoyed.

Long story short, Whitley finds Klein passed out in the gardens after being attacked by a Geist Grimm. In all the stories he’s heard of the Grimm, this is Whitley’s first encounter with one. With all his boosting about the benefits of the Atlesian Army, he never dreamt that he’d ever need to protect himself against a Grimm on his own, much less meet one in the flesh.

For the first time in his life, Whitley’s mind blanked. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breath. He had no means of protecting himself and with Klein passed out before him and everyone else in the manor gone, he was alone. No one was going to come to his aid.

He thought...of his sisters. Let’s say, when the Schnee siblings were younger---back in the days when there were good moments that displayed all three siblings actually caring about each other, Weiss and Winter were both protective of Whitley. Particularly Weiss.

Whenever he fell down, got a boo-boo or even just had a bad dream, his big sister Weiss was always there for him to be his comforter. Yeah, yeah, I know this sounds very uncharacteristic for Weiss and her relationship with her brother but let me have this one, alright?

I just need a reason---a deep, significant reason for Whitley to think of both of his sisters, or maybe just Weiss while being attacked by a Grimm---the thought resonating with such force that it’s enough for Whitley to unconsciously call out for Weiss to protect him...all the while awakening something else within him he didn’t know was there.

When Klein finally came to, he awakens to discover Whitley huddled in a corner of the garden, his breathing frantic as his body did its best to contain his fear. As Klein swiftly ran to the boy’s age, he arrived just in time to witness the Geist from earlier wither away. The infernal red eye of its cryptic mask imprinting a lasting effect in Whitley’s mind as it disappeared from his sight. Klein did not know what to make of this scene. He tried asking Whitley to explain what had happened after he’d passed out---how he managed to defeat the Geist on his own.

Instead of giving him an answer, Whitley silenced his erratic breathing and turned the question on Klein, asking him if he was alright. Once Klein confirmed that he wasn’t injured in any way, Whitley withdrew an unsteady sigh of relief before getting to his feet.

Shakily, Whitley left the garden and returned to the quiet solitude of the music room without another word to Klein. Even when the man returned shortly later with some refreshments for the young heir, the young Schnee said nothing more to him even as he stared him down in concern. Finally, then and there, Whitley gave Klein an answer but, not the one he was hoping for. Whitley told Klein to not speak of this moment to his father. He made some other point about discussing increasing security in the household to his father but beyond that, it became clear to Klein that Whitley was adamant on not discussing his feelings on the ‘grimm incident’ any further or at all for the future for that matter.

So with nod of understanding, Klein bowed himself out of the room; leaving Whitley to himself once more.

Taking a long swig from the warm beverage Klein had brought to him; Whitley returned his attention to the piano. With his fingers to the keys, he gave a strong intro to his chosen musical piece only to miss a note and stop abruptly again.

Whitley clutched his head, grimacing as the face of the beast---the Geist flashed across his mind. Why? He was used to putting things far out of his mind. Jacques Schnee had properly schooled him on the importance of that. Yet...why did that creature still...haunt him? What was that strange...power he display earlier? Where did it come from? Why did he have it? And more importantly, what did that mean for Whitley then?

In spite of the pressing questions swarming his mind, Whitley couldn’t think of any logical reasons as to why this was happening him. Nor...did he care to entertain the thought much further.

So for the third time, Whitley returned to the keyboard and started playing. And for the remainder of the night, he kept on playing, allowing the music to drown away any fear left following the encounter...even as the Beast’s watchful eye continued to scrutinize him from within the chained chambers of his mind. 

That’s how I’d like to see it. Just a theory but an interesting one to think about, right?

I understand your point about Whitley’s charm being in his wit and to some extent, I agree with you in that regard. I just wanted to toy with the idea of...what if...he does have powers like his sisters? I can’t picture Whitley becoming a huntsman anytime soon but I do love the idea of him joining the team on the field from to time. Not often but whenever his skills are required. Even rocking a weapon of his own.

I like the idea of Whitley inheriting Nicholas Schnee’s weapon of choice from when he was a huntsman.

Like perhaps...Nicholas left his old weapon to his one and only grandson and that’s the weapon Whitley prefers to use in combat, if anything. I like the idea of Whitley sharing a bond with his grandfather.

Wouldn’t it be really cute if Whitley shares commonality with his grandson? It wouldn’t surprise me if Nicholas Schnee was the kind of guy who was only able to bare girls as his heirs. And while he loved his daughters dearly as his pride and joy, he also secretly wished for a son which would explain why he was so quick to pass the company to Jacques Schnee instead of his own daughter. So I figured Nicholas might harbour a bit of biasness towards Whitley as he’s his only grandson. Sure he loves Weiss and Winter too but it’s different with Whitley because perhaps Nicholas may share a deeper connection with his grandson. Perhaps Whitley looks a lot like his grandfather at that age---scrawny limbs and Big Bird legs and all.

And just like Whitley, Nicholas was very smart and cunning too which is why he was able to achieve his accomplishments as the original Founder of Schnee Dust Company.

I really like the idea of Whitley being like grandfather and perhaps, with a bit more guidance from the right people, he can be as good a person his grandfather was. Again, just another idea to toss out to the FNDM.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2018)  

[miss-musings]

My List of Top 10 Recurring Blacklisters

For my ongoing "Top 10" lists about different aspects of The Blacklist, today I'm tackling recurring Blacklisters who weren't already included in "My List of Top 10 Blacklisters."

Just for an FYI, I'm also disqualifying Tom Keen and Dembe Zuma, as they both have been regular cast members at different points in the series. I am, however, including non-antagonist entries -- that means that some of these Blacklisters didn't actually end up being 'bad guys,' but instead, either were or later became allies of Red and/or The Task Force.

There actually weren't too many Blacklisters to work with as I'd say about 70 percent of them are one-offs (and I already did a list about them), and many of the better ones who are recurring were already on my other list. But, of the small pool that did qualify, I'm judging them based on:

How much I personally liked them / how compelling I thought the character was

How well the guest star did

How much of a threat they were to Red, the Task Force, the public in general, etc. OR if they were an ally, how much the character adds to Red's or the Task Force's goals

I don't have quite as much time to tackle these entries as I have my previous two lists, so I'm only going to put like a paragraph of explanation for each. Also, no honorable mentions this time.

So, without further ado, let's begin:

10. ISABELLA STONE

I don't really care for Isabella Stone, but it was either her or the Pavlovich Brothers, and I care about them even less. I don't remember much about Stone, other than she was played by that actress who played Jan on "The Office," and at the end of her namesake episode, Red has her chained up in a walk-in freezer or something. I don't remember what she did, or why she was a threat to the Task Force/Red. I know she was hired by Kaplan to do some bullshit, but I don't remember what it was or how she did it.

9. NICHOLAS T. MOORE

I'm not really one for all the cults that this show does. It seems like they try to have 1-2 per season; but I actually didn't mind this one and thought it might be the best cult we've seen so far. It had kind of a "The Village" vibe to it, although I'm still trying to figure out how Moore convinced all those people to join him out in the woods. Anyway, the only reason I included him is because I like the actor -- he played The Warden on "Shawshank Redemption" -- and I thought the way he tricked Aram into getting him his Bible so he could kill himself was kind of clever.

8. THE MAJOR

I also don't really care for the Major, but I thought the actor did well in his scenes with Spader. Plus, he seemed to create a lot of problems (read: drama) for Tom and Liz, with trying to tempt Tom back into a life of crime when he was trying to go straight in S3b. (Am I remembering that right?) Again, I honestly don't really care for or about him, but I thought he was around enough and played a big enough role in Tom's, Liz's and Red's lives that he deserved a spot.

7. SUSAN HARGRAVE

Another Blacklister I don't really care about. (Almost makes you wonder why I bothered compiling this list.) Don't get me wrong. I think Famke Janssen is an underrated actress, and I enjoyed her weird dynamic with Spader in their scenes. I didn't like how she ended up being Tom's mother; I didn't like her ham-handed way of telling those one random dudes about her backstory. She's so open it's like she might as well be an audio-book version of her character. But, again, I think that's more how she was written than how Janssen played her. Even though I don't care about the whole Hargrave/Tom spin-off with "The Blacklist: Redemption," I still think she was an intimidating enough villain in her own right, as she was responsible for breaking Mathias Solomon out of prison and sic-ing him onto Liz while she and Tom were trying to get married. It's interesting that Hargrave was ultimately responsible for attacking her son's wedding and almost getting him killed, and endangering her future daughter-in-law and granddaughter. It's the kind of irony you'd see in a George R.R. Martin work. So, even while I don't like her, I think she deserves a spot because of the impact she had and the threat she posed at the time. Plus, I did think it was badass when Red shot her in the arm and she barely cared.

6. TOM CONNOLLY

Okay, NOW we're starting to get into "I actually kind of like these people" territory. I mean, I don't actually like Tom Connolly. If he were a real person, I would want to punch him in the face. But, as a character, I think he's more compelling than any of the previous entries on this list. Granted, he became a little cartoonish and over-the-top there at the end, but he posed a serious threat. And even though he was introduced to us as "a little too good to not want something" from Cooper / the Task Force, I appreciate that the writers at least TRIED to make his loyalties a little ambiguous or 'on the side of the angels' when he was first introduced. Granted, I don't think it really worked, but they tried. The actor also did a pretty decent job, and I thought his final confrontation with Liz and Cooper (where Liz ends up shooting and killing Connolly) was well-done. It was certainly the most shocking death of a Blacklister I can think of. As mustache-twirling as he was, he still posed a serious threat for Liz, Red and the Task Force. In threatening to kill them or end their careers, he pushed Liz into a no-win situation where if she shot him in an attempt to stop his machinations, the Cabal won by being able to turn her into a criminal. And if she did nothing, they would still win. Okay, anyway, moving on:

5. SMOKEY PUTNAM

I really like the character of Smokey. He's a little wacky, but cheerful and light -- which is something the show desperately needed after the morbid, dark and depressing S4b. Granted, I think how the show introduced him (as someone for Red to track down as a bounty hunter-type person) was a bit forced. But, oh well. I like what Smokey brings to the show and to Red's crew. I also think the actor does a good job keeping up with Spader while also bringing his own bit of weird flair to the show.

4. MR. RALEIGH SINCLAIR III

So, I really just love John Noble, and appreciated that the show was able to nab him to play one of the Blacklisters. And a pretty unique Blacklister at that. I thought his gimmick was really cool and unique, and while I could've done without him killing off all the people he recruited to be doubles, I guess it makes sense. I actually enjoyed when the show brought him back to turn that one guy into a double of Ian Garvey -- that was a nice little twist. I thought his interaction with Spader at the end of his namesake episode was a little too long, but still a hoot to see those two sharing a screen.

3. GINA ZANETAKOS

Our first-ever female Blacklister on the show, Gina Zanetakos was a serious badass. She was clever, fast, brutal and sexy. She absolutely demolishes both Ressler and Liz in fist-fights and she nearly kills Tom. She was quite a force to be reckoned with, both in her initial appearance and in subsequent episodes, and I really appreciated when the show brought her back in S3b. (Which, side note, did she get killed off on the show? I don't remember.) If she wasn't killed off, I certainly wouldn't mind her making a return appearance.

2. KARAKURT

So, fun fact: Karakurt is actually played by two different actors -- one in S2 and a different guy for S3. Not anything I hold against the character. It’s just interesting. Anyway, Karakurt is probably the most threatening Blacklister on this list for our Post Office crew. He easily manipulated Liz into killing a U.S. Senator and even more easily set up the OREA bombing to make it look like her fault. In comparison with his S2 showings, I think his S3 appearances are less-than. He just kind of hung out as a plot device for Tom to track down, beat up and threaten. Much less intimidating, although I appreciate that he didn’t give up trying to get one over on Tom, et al, and escape whenever he had the chance. Just what I’d expect of a Russian assassin and Blacklister extraordinaire.

1. MARVIN GERARD

A weird choice to put at #1, maybe, but I really like the character of Marvin Gerard. He’s just so different from most of the other Blacklisters that we see, in no part because of the fact that HE WAS ALREADY IN CUSTODY when he was introduced. Instead of Red giving the Task Force a name so they can track them down and put them IN JAIL, Red asked for Gerard to be brought to him so that he could break him OUT OF JAIL. Unlike most Blacklisters, or hell just characters on this show in general, Marvin Gerard is very calm, collected, calculated and can talk sense into Red when few other people can. But, he also feels very grounded in reality. He just kind of seemingly wandered into a hostage situation in 3x02 like “IDK what I’m doing here. WTF is going on?!?!” and then just kind of got back into a groove with helping Red and Liz with their plans -- both in 3x02 and throughout the rest of S3a. And, speaking of: whatever happened to Marvin Gerard? I feel like Red called him in Cape May about shutting down his business or something, but I don’t think we’ve seen him since 3x10. Hopefully he makes another appearance on the show, because I really appreciated how unique he was as a Blacklister and what he brought to the show as a character and to Red’s team as an asset.

[lothrilzul]

Things about my Dovahkiins

A recent convo with @mrninjapineapple reminded me of this unfinished thing.

I started this questionnaire around March 28th, 2015 and it’s been sitting in my sta.sh unfinished for so long that I forgot who tagged me to do this.

Looking back, it’s quite a silly list of questions, and I originally wanted to scrap the whole thing, but I liked some of my answers, so here it is. You can compare the personalities of my different Dragonborns by their answers.

[I’m planning to make a more serious questionnaire for the characters involved in our collection of stories (The Age of Restoration). I’ll also plan to post some screenshots of them in a later post.]

Onto the questionnaire with 40 silly questions!

1. What is your name? Z: Zinnia(h Fire-Hearth) Y: Yrgrod Ragvirsson C: Casts-First-Asks-Second N: Nicholaus (the Goldsmith) S: Shurag gra-Burz

2. Do you know why you were named that? Z: No. [After a horse called Cinnia, because I thought it sounded unique.] Y: I was named after an old hero and I inherited my fathers family name too. [It was formed from parts of my name, "rág" & "Vir"] C: Yes, I named myself. [And it sounded cool!] N: No, I was too little to ask it by the time and later I was already used to it. [Because he was created on 6th of December, the day of Saint Nicholas (Mikulás in our country)] S: I don't really care about it, it's just a name... [it was formed from a part of my name, "s Virág" sounding "shwirag", with different spelling] 3. Are you single or taken? Z: Taken. Y: Taken. C: Single? I'm unique! N: Was taken. S: Single. 4. Have any abilities or powers? Z: I'm the Dragonborn and a werewolf and I have an ability called Ancestor's wrath Y: I'm the Dragonborn and a werewolf. C: I'm a Volkihar vampire N: Not that I know of, other than still being alive. S: I can go berserk answering such questions. 5. Stop being a Mary-Sue! Z: I do have a bunch of titles, but this one, I never heard of... Y: Isn't that a female name? C: Why should I? N: Silly... S: You mean Shu, right? 6. What's your eye color? Z: Pitch black. Y: Somewhere between blue and green. C: White with a red pupil. Originally my pupil was light blue. N: Green as an emerald. S: It's red. The other one's blind. 7. How about hair color? Z: It's almost black. Y: Some kind of blonde. C: Hair? Phew, filthy thing! I have beautiful horns! N: It was brownish, now it's grey. S: Brown. 8. Have you any family members? Z: A husband and adopted daughters. My parents are dead. Y: I have a wife and adopted kids. My sister and her son died during his birth. C: No, and I'm happy about it. N: I had. S: I adopted a daughter, but I haven't found true love yet. 9. Oh? How about pets? Z: I love horses and I have four: Arvak, Blaze, Frost and Shadowmere. My daughter's pet fox, Vix sometimes lets me cuddle her. Y: I'm a dog man. C: I don't know the Dead Thrall perk yet. Pity. N: I like animals, but I don't want to attach anyone again. S: I have a good horse. I don't need useless critters around me. 10. That's cool, I guess. Now tell me about something you don't like. Z: The Blades. Y: Unnecessary friction. C: Werewolves, Vigilants of Stendarr and the Silver Hand. N: Boots. S: Dragons. 11. Do you have any activities/hobbies that you like to do? Z: Reading. I have a library of around three hundred books. Y: I like to sing (though some say that I shouldn't) and listen to the bards. C: I tend to drink guard's blood in Riften. Broad daylight. N: I like to craft jewellery. S: Exploring the vast wilderness of Skyrim. 12. Have you ever hurt anyone in any way before? Z: Pretty much. Bandits, creatures, some people. But I only regret some of them. Y: Yes, and he deserved it. He was the reason why my sister died. C: Most possible ways, yes. N: I did, but I wish I shouldn't have. I'm not afraid to protect myself, though. S: I gladly smash in anyone's faces, who deserves it. 13. Ever... killed anyone before? Z: I did. Most time I followed orders, but sometimes for my own good. Y: To name the most important: the usurper Ulfric Stormcloak. C: With pleasure. Also, I need hearts and flesh for crafting. N: Same as Q12. S: It was me or them. No question. 14. What kind of animal are you? Z: I'm a werewolf. And the Dragonborn. Y: I'm a werewolf. C: I'm beastfolk, not animal. I should shed your blood for this question. N: I always considered myself a small and peaceful creature, therefore a squirrel, I guess? S: Orcs are no animals. Oh, you mean metaphorically? I'm a sabrecat. 15. Name your worst habits? Z: Hoarding stuff. Especially ingredients and books. Y: I tend to be hot headed and sometimes I regret things. C: In others eyes, killing for my own amusement is one. N: I tend to be melancholic. S: Smashing in faces. 16. Do you look up to anyone at all? Z: Talos. Y: Sometimes, but they mostly prove they were unworthy to it. Sad. C: No. N: Quite a number of people, yes. S: My mother, Shuzhra was the greatest personality ever. I miss her. 17. Are you gay, straight, or bisexual? Z: Straight. Y: Straight. C: I'm not picky. N: I always thought I was straight, but now I'm not that sure... S: Straight-in-your-face, what kind of unashamed question is this? 18. Do you go to school? Z: No, but I learn new tricks on a weekly basis! Y: No, I'm old enough. C: I never needed school to achieve my goals... N: No, but you are never too old to learn! S: I don't need that, unless it's about potions or fighting! 19. Ever wanna marry and have kids one day? Z: Already married, first child is on his way! Y: I already am, and that second... would be good. C: I don't think so. No kids. Never. N: I had a beautiful wife and daughter, but they both died long ago. Now I'm searching for my grandson! S: Maybe... maybe not. 20. Do you have fangirls/fanboys? Z: I don't know. Maybe. [She’s just modest, she has some.] Y: I... have? C: Of course. N: If I have, that's cool. S: I don't need such admiration. 21. What are you most afraid of? Z: That something happens with my family or with those who I care about. Y: Having to fight those who I called my friends once. C: The Sun. Hiss. N: Bonding. S: That I hurt someone who’s not deserving. 22. What do you usually wear? Z: Light armor crafted by myself and a hood. Y: Heavy armor without helmet, or a helmet which doesn't cover my face. I need my foes to know who bested them. C: Light armor with dark tones, hood, sabatoons, veil or scarf and a mask to hide my teeth. N: Plain clothing. I was dressed in burlap clothing with bare feet before the Sparrows made it cool. No, I'm not a religious fanatic. Does it mean I'm a hipster? S: Blades armor with a Greybeard cloak, to shorten the cooldown of my Shouts when I kill dragons. 23. What's one food that tempts you? Z: Most kind of sweets. Y: Milk. C: Hehe. Blood, my dear. N: Elves ear. My favourite spice. S: Dried venison. 24. Am I annoying you? Z: No, these questions are interesting. I love to explore myself by thinking about stuff I usually don't. Y: Not really. C: I don't know yet. N: No. S: A bit. But I manage it. 25. Well, it's still not over! Z: Good! Y: Alright. C: Go on! N: Alright. S: Oh. 26. What class are you? Low class, middle class, high class. Z: Started as middle class, now high class. Y: High class from born. C: Low class to high class in two years. N: Middle class. S: Orcs are orcs, not classy people. 27. How many friends do you have? Z: I don’t like to count, but many. Some are close, the most not much. Kharjo, J’zargo, Brelyna, Aela, Farkas, Lucan, Belethor, Urag, Lydia, Sasha (mod) and my Housecarls. Oh and Paarthurnax. [Non canonically she likes Aronansa and Jenna Sajpa] Y: Who can be sure about that anymore? The Companions, especially after purging our beast blood together. C: Anum-La, The Swamp Knight [from the interesting NPC mod] N: Some people here or there, but I don’t make want to make new friends, I’m too old. S: A few. Why? 28. What are your thoughts on pie? Z: Delicious! Y: I hope it’s a meat pie. C: Bleh. N: I don’t mind one coming my way sometimes. S: Uh, they’re food? 29. If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Z: Talos! Or my father. Y: My beautiful sister Hroda. C: My enemies, so I can flay them! N: My grandson, Mercer. You heard about him? S: Right now? 30. Favourite drink? Z: Red wine and clean water. Y: Milk! C: Fresh blood. N: Mead. S: Magicka potions. They are good for thirst. 31. What's your favourite place? Z: Hm. Skyrim, as a whole, but I like Heljarchen because that where we live now. Y: Dragonsreach is nice. C: Lakeview, my place. N: Solstheim volcanic side. S: The Reach. 32. Are you interested in anyone? Z: My husband, Balimund! Y: My wife, Zinnia [copy of Zinnia as a mod] C: Not now. N: Don’t tell him but I fancy Tolfdir. S: Not right now. 33. How tall are you?

The game gives the height of the character compared to the average. Different races and sexes have different base values. (e.g. Nord males are 1,03, while Khajiit women are 0,95) I headcanonned the average to be 175 cm (5’74). If you think the average Skyrim player character has a different height value, it modifies my calculation (also, sorry, my brain works in centimeters ))

Z: 175 cm (1) Y: 187 cm (1,071=1,04*1,03) C: 175 cm (1) N: 175 cm (1) S: I'm tall enough, thanks! [It’s a bit sensitive topic for her. She’s 164 cm (0,94=0,9x1,045)] 34. Would you rather swim in a lake or in an ocean? Z: A lake. Salty water is not my type. Y: Both are fine. C: I’d rather not, but if I need; the Ocean. N: How about neither? S: Swimming in heavy armor is not good idea. A brook, maybe? 35. What's your type? Z: Bulky nords with beard! Y: My wife. C: Zero negative, but I can eat any blood type. N: Um, people like Tolfdir? S: Someone who’s brave! 36. Any fetishes? Z: Why would I tell you? Y: No. C: I might have some but it’s none of your business. N: None. S: No.

37. Seme or uke?

[I googled what these mean and not going to answer, because my dragonborns don’t know about such things.] 38. Camping or indoors? Z: Indoors. Y: Both. C: Outside. Hunting. N: Indoors. S: Camping? Adventuring! 39. Are you still wanting this quiz to end? Z: I could do other things, yes. Y: It’s indifferent to me. C: Yes. N: If there’s more question, ask. S: Kind of. 40. Well, it's over! Now tag five people to do this.

*Inaudible mumbling, noises of chairs scratching the floor, bootsteps as they leave to their realities.*

[I’m not tagging, I was tagged more two years ago!]

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

My Breakfast With Jim (Post 76) 2-18-15

                        My trip to Ohio included a breakfast to renew the oldest and in many ways my best friendship with my elder brother Jim.  I am close to all my siblings and have shared different experiences with each of them.  With Jim I shared childhood, three years at boarding school north of Boston and another two years at USNA.  Through the ups and downs of life it is helpful to have someone to compare notes with especially in times when you are considering a course change.  In a family of late sleepers, breakfast was a convenient time to arrange for some individual instruction from a trusted adviser who knows me inside and out.

We have drifted away from each other for some periods over the years but our waitress left us plenty of time for catch-up as we were largely ignored in the Bob Evans restaurant that was an unexpectedly popular choice for breakfast on a snowy Sunday morning in Streetsboro, Ohio.   Our conversation ranged far and wide from my job search to family dynamics and updates on each one of our several children; we have four apiece.  While all lives are dissimilar in many respects, my brother’s and my professional and family lives are remarkably similar, enough so to be helpfully comparable.  His version may be an oil painting on ta sketch related to the one on which I have brushed watercolors.  It has been over the thirty years since we spent last spent daily time knocking pucks around Annapolis, Andover and Cleveland rinks in the late eighties.  While he has continued to wear the uniform of our country, my military service ended years ago.  Still, talking with Jim allows me to enter a comfortable space that is only available through the door of true friendship.  Our comfort and trust allowed us to discuss life’s difficulties in an open manner that is available only among natural or spiritual brothers and sisters.

I relayed to him incidents which I now understand to be consolations and desolations, but for many secular years I referred to as successes and failures.  In those days I rode the roller-coaster up in exhilaration and anticipation.  Inevitably, later, my plexi-bodied car of life plunged downward into periods of fear and disappointment.  The tide of my career came in and ebbed out.  I aggravated my bosses, or my bosses aggravated me, leading to a job searches aimed at procuring a higher salary, more responsibility and an increasing stack of materialistic poker chips by which I measured my progress in life … until Pam’s illness changed my calculus.  Now my value equations factor in the progress of my soul, development of my children, and impacts upon our family relationships.  At first, naively, I expected that navigating by this new more Christian compass would ensure that my journey forward would proceed in tranquility.   Nicholas’ and Stephen’s illnesses have dispersed the fairy dust from my expectations. Reading scripture is helpful in cultivating a realistic attitude that Christian life will include some choppy water and even, occasionally, heavy rolling waves.  What Gospel sailing never lacks, though, is a dependable beam from the lighthouse of the Holy Spirit and scriptural GPS to guide us to right decisions.

It was particularly helpful for me to hear about the tribulations of Jim’s son Jack as he seeks to follow his father and me in attending college at the Naval Academy. He is a great candidate and should have been accepted long ago, but his application is on hold due to an annoyingly trivial medical issue that has been resolved by all true measures, but not on the imperialistic and bureaucratic tallies of the Uncle Sam.  The nail-biting wait is truly maddening when examined with a secular slide-rule, but there is the rub.  God’s will is the most important factor in all Christian quadratic solutions.  Delays and denial may frustrate us, but if we live our lives in a way that is submissive to God’s will, set-backs are merely His guidance and teaching to improve our souls in preparation for our ultimate life with Him.

I remember the impatient and frenzied aggravation that I would experience when an obvious professional path forward for me was temporarily or permanently blocked.  Couldn’t God see that I could help such-and-such company with their quality and productivity?  The position was made for me.  Why had the potential employer rejected me?  I would sulk.  But then an unexpected good would replace my frustrated ambition and retrospectively everything would make sense.  I could see the flaws in my original plan in the rear-view mirror and how ingeniously God’s plan maximized the happiness of my life going forward.  For instance, I resisted moving to California up until the eleventh hour, but in the end was brought to Brentwood to live in the near vicinity of the best facility to operate on brain tumors in the world.  Pam’s life was extended and the pain of her passing was lessened by our submission in allowing God to bring our family to the West Coast.

God observes our lives from a high vantage point in His omniscient lighthouse outside of time. He corrects our course by commands to the helm and lee helm that can send us to the rails to cough our cookies and complain … until we spy the avoided shoal water or squall.  Good Christians submit to His will, but some others prefer to plot their own track through life.  God allows those people to reject His plan; to deny their choice would be to negate the merit of our choosing to follow Him.  A path rejecting God can lead to great worldly success and the amassing of hordes of desirable material possessions, but that well-worn trail leads ultimately to temporal pleasure not to lasting happiness.  God is saddened by the rejecters, who hurt themselves and others. His plan for us intends salvation for all, but some prefer the thrill of gambling to the happy return on a lifelong investment in love.

The course chosen through Christian discernment is often as frustratingly slow as proceeding up a narrow channel in fog. Plenty of prayer is required along with repeated graspings and turnings of doorknobs to see which portals are open and which ones are locked.  In my case, for instance, the handle to the door into the Deaconate appears currently barred tight.  Rather than fume darkly, yank repeatedly and yell impotently, I will seek a handle that yields.   Maybe someday, years from now, I will discover a sign on the Deaconate door that says “push.”  For Nicholas, his cancer will prevent him from pursuing naval service at least for the next five years.  He could gripe about eventualities and stew in his disappointment, but instead, he will move forward using his God given talents to serve the public good in a civilian capacity.

In the past, for long periods, no knob would rotate in my hand at all.  I would worry and pray desperately for my deliverance from whatever mess I had created at the time.  Seemingly there was no relief.  My impatience drove me beyond consternation as I itched to move forward in any possible direction.  For what seemed like an eternity, as my guide, working from above in a vantage point much superior to mine, thwarted each instinctual effort to extricate myself out of the latest quagmire.  I was forced to remain stationary and cool it while the fruit ripened, until I uttered the necessary words of forgiveness, finally learned the essential lesson or in humility performed the required service needed by some other innocent person, thus proving that it wasn’t all actually about me anyway.

It is with this hope that I sat sipping ice tea and eating an omelet with my brother, discussing resumes and hiring particulars for government work.  Maybe I will be allowed now to muscle the baton upward and pry the sixth and last dog loose on the door to my future.  Maybe I will be able concoct a living arrangement that meets the needs of my oldest son and youngest daughter, a solution that also serves the interests of the two goodhearted young adults sandwiched in between.  The answer eludes my befuddled calculating skills as if I had skipped my homework and failed to adequately prepare for this important exam, which by my calendar years might be a midterm.

I remain convinced despite all the turmoil on this second anniversary of my wife’s passing that change will come.  She is positioned in an opportune place to intercede for me and has a strong interest in the well-being of her earthly children.  I know she loves me; I know Jesus loves me.  I expect change will materialize in one sort or another, in His time not mine.

[circular-time]

About "Koschei" and degrees of canon

I thought the name first appeared in Divided Loyalties, but I think it’s actually The Dark Path, a Virgin Missing Adventure published in 1997.

Doctor Who canon is very malleable, because it’s been going for over a half a century, nobody can consume let alone keep track of all of it, and various people in charge of it have given more or less of a damn about it and/or past eras.

As fans, our impression of canon is going to vary by the era we first watched on TV, what other EU stuff we enjoy the most (if we enjoy any), and our personal experience.

For ME, that’s:

The Pertwee to Davison era. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy were my “new Who.” I’m not old enough to remember when the addition of the “12 regenerations” limit and the depiction of Gallifrey in The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity and The Five Doctors were controversial. Whereas Saward’s grimdark era and the Cartmel Masterplan still raise my hackles a bit, in the same way that RTD fans side-eye some of Moffat’s stuff. ;) 

Big Finish. Which has made me appreciate Colin Baker far more and accept the Eighth Doctor as adopted into Classic Who instead of Wilderness Years, a significant distinction for those of us crushed by the show’s cancellation in 1990. 

I have MAs in classics and mythology, with training in evaluating the authority, applicability and trustworthiness of certain texts. 

This has caused me to privilege TV Who, especially classic; it causes me to accept/resist EU Who based on how much it seems to fit the spirit and canon I remember; and it causes me to pay attention to behind-the-scenes creation of particular stories. I gauge “degrees of canon” partly according to how much a story was vetted by showrunners or crew working on TV production of Who. (Which is why I tend to regard Big Finish as a bit more canon-ish; the showrunners of classic Who aren’t usually involved, but the cast is, adding another subtle layer of vetting.)

That’s the short version. Here’s the long version. I have a lot of thoughts about degrees of canon and how to look at it. 

As a student of myth, I’m trained to notice when representations of a myth jibe or clash with the more common and popular versions of the myth, in art or ritual or text. 

There’s no “one true version,” but there are versions that get more or less at the heart of certain myths or mythological figures. There are certain versions that get told again and again, or that appear in art again and again, that are the common, default versions of the myth. And then there are versions presented by one particular artist or playwright or writer trying to deconstruct, reinterpret, spoof or embellish elements of the myth: they’re not wrong, and they’re often illuminating or insightful, but they shouldn’t be treated as typical. They’re fanfiction. Also, common perceptions of particular myths and mythological figures change over time, especially when new cultures adopt and adapt older things. Sometimes fanfiction ascends to the “default” version of a myth.

Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream has come a long way from Dionysos and Bacchus, but traces of his ancestry, even that tendency to disrupt and poke fun at the aristocrats of the city (see The Bacchai from the 5th century BCE), peep through. 

Doctor Who, to me, is not just a fictional character we’re treating as real with real history and backstory. He’s a mythological figure. So I’m more forgiving of details being jiggered around (as long as people don’t take them as The One True Version ™), as long as they don’t betray the basic spirit of the character or show. I try to remember that the myth has changed/evolved over time, but I sometimes react against newer elements that go against the grain of the myth I grew up with.

On the other hand, as a ex classics scholar (studying Greek and Roman history and culture, plus Egyptian because Egypt Is Cool), I can’t help but sweat the details, too.

Scholars of ancient literature try to determine which copies of a text are the most accurate, and which have details interpolated by centuries of scribal error, editorial comment slipped into the body of the text, passages rewritten by somebody who objected to something, or bits added by later writers to make a point or insert what he thought should be there. And that’s just whether one copy of a text is close to how it was originally written down.

The other question is whether the chap who first wrote it down (usually a chap, thanks to sexist literary traditions) knew bugger-all about what he was talking about and/or cared about being historically accurate (faithful to canon). 

Maybe he was an eyewitness or talked to eyewitnesses who may or may not have remembered details correctly. Maybe he lived at a later period, but was a general who knew military tactics, or a career politician who had access to official documents, or a scientist or someone with expert knowledge of the subject. Maybe he was Making Shit Up because it sounded good, or illustrated the point he was trying to make, or was entertaining, or was the sort of thing he thought the historical figures at that event might have said, since in those days people didn’t have cameras. Maybe he wasn’t a very good writer or didn’t care or didn’t know his subject matter but later scribes copied it because it was all they had to go on. And what’s come down to us is often written by later writers trying to pool together information from earlier, now lost sources, whose validity they had to weigh for themselves. EU writers, in other words.

How does that translate to Doctor Who?

I’m aware that early Who was mostly produced by people in a hurry to get the shows out, during a time when there was no easy way to look back at what had already been said (whether you were a writer or a fan) since tapes weren’t available or at least easy to get to. 1960s Who cast members have remarked that episodes in those days were thought to be ephemeral; they never expected fans to watch them again after their initial broadcast.

So they didn’t worry about rigorous consistency, until around the beginning of the color era. Even then, it was far more casual than now. There was no “canon bible,” no Wikis to consult. Producers/writers weren’t going back to check that their version of the Time Lords in The Five Doctors matched what we saw of them in The Three Doctors a decade earlier. But at least, all the way through the classic era, there was a continuous literary tradition, so to speak, of people who had worked on it earlier handing it down to those who came after.

The cancellation of classic Who establishes a huge “canon” and “post-canon” demarcation in my mind. Without a TV studio to advocate for the show or the BBC interested in maintaining it, nobody much was minding the store during the Wilderness Years.

Nowadays, Big Finish scripts, written mostly by fans and passed under the nose of Nicholas Briggs and at least one script editor who knows classic Who REALLY REALLY WELL, are sent to the Cardiff studio at the idea-proposal stage and at the finished-script stage, and they’ll sometimes be rejected or asked for a rewrite. I don’t know how involved Moffat himself is involved in that vetting, but that means every Big Finish story is subject to new Who AND classic Who continuity policing, a more rigorous editorial process than ever before.

That’s pretty canon-ish.

Whereas in the Wilderness Years, when the BBC had cancelled Who and didn’t intend to do anything with it ever again, there was little to no oversight. Some Virgin novels were damn fine fanfiction, written by professional writers who were also fans and knew more about classic Who than some of those who had actually worked on the TV show. But they were enjoying a certain amount of creative license which made for some amazing stories but which sometimes took pretty wide sweeping paths away from typical or primary canon. Besides which, a lot of the Wilderness Years material is now inaccessible to fans because those books are out of print.

Wilderness Years Who isn’t wrong, and many of the best bits have now been incorporated into TV and Big Finish canon, because fans who hung onto their love of Who through the Wilderness Years are now in charge of the show. So some of what started out as ascended fanfiction is now pretty much “canon-ish" (like President Romana). BUT. I am still wary of retroactively forcing details from the Wilderness Years onto classic Who TV episodes. Which is why I tend to chirp when the name “Koschei” shows up in discussions of the Pertwee era, or when people start going on about Looms in relation to Deadly Assassin, or Time Lords’ aversion to plants when discussing Arc of Infinity.

I am also somewhat wary of new Who retroactively rewriting classic Who stories. I don’t care (much) if Cybermen and Sontarans and Daleks and the Master and the Doctor are presented very differently in episodes now than they were then. It would be too cumbersome trying to be faithful to everything that went before! New Who had to start with an almost-clean slate and license to rewrite anything it wanted. And sometimes the new version is better-thought-out. That’s all perfectly fine in my book, although I grit my teeth sometimes when they jettison a bit of canon I loved.

BUT at the same time I object when they show clips of the past, real footage from classic episodes, and Photoshop it, so to speak, so that it looks different or reads differently than it did when it was broadcast. That’s not what happened, I scream internally. I resent “my” Who being misrepresented to modern fans. I want to understand and enjoy and discuss old Who stories as they were for their audience and their writers and their actors when they were first broadcast.

Mind you, newer interpretations/embellishments/fanon/fanfiction can be rewarding, enjoyable, and fascinating. They breathe new life into stories that would otherwise be pretty well fossilized by now. My blog is named for an EU audio that dared to throw an entirely new spin on the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration, which for fans my age is a fairly “sacred” moment of canon. BUT however much I love some of the EU, and however much it’s “headcanon fucking ACCEPTED,” it’s not quite the same as “original, classic Who canon,” so I won’t blur the two when discussing a classic Who story that aired on TV. 

And this is all my own VERY biased opinion.

Also, for the most part? I try not to dwell on what is or isn’t canon(ish), or what I dislike about the eras and parts of Who that don’t work for me. 

I’d much rather put my energy into discussing, sharing, and enthusing about the eras of the show I love most. And, yes, that includes coming up with fan theories and fanfiction of my own. Which isn’t canon. ;) 

[buffystylez-blog]

The Harvest

Original Australian air date: probably the same day as Welcome to the Hellmouth or a week later. I don’t know.

Written by: Joss Whedon

Directed by: John T. Kretchmer

Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Anthony Head, Charisma Carpenter, Kristine Sutherland, Julie Benz, and David Boreanaz

 Oh, hello. It’s What Buffy Wore season 1, episode 2, in which Buffy prevents her first apocalypse while simultaneously being grounded by her mum.

I genuinely cannot remember if this episode screened straight after Welcome to the Hellmouth. It did in the US, but I have no idea if Australia followed suit. I googled it for about five minutes and decided it probably doesn’t matter. Plus, I’m kind of in pain with gastritis, which incidentally is probably the sexiest stomach issue you can have.

 The good news with this episode is that there are three outfits. The bad news is that they’re not great.  There are highlights (Buffy’s hair) but some real lowlights (not Buffy’s hair – more like, pants and jackets).

 To the recap!

 We left Buffy at the end of Welcome to the Hellmouth in a coffin at the mercy of Luke, a huge ass vampire dude. I don’t have to say spoiler alert, right?

 In a joyous turn of events (or subtle continuity error), it turns out Buffy has put on the cross necklace her stalker (ahem, love interest) gave her and it burns the vampire, distracting him enough to allow Buffy to escape and rescue two-thirds of her new friends. Soz, Jesse. But before you can say vampires exist, Buffy discovers the Master is planning on sending Luke as his representative or whatever to the Bronze, where the teens go, to drain enough blood to make him strong enough to leave his mystical underground prison/lair.

 After trimming some dead weight from the Scooby gang (soz Jesse), Buffy and friends stop the Harvest by very slowly fighting some vampires and killing Luke with a great fake-out.

 But who cares about that! What was Buffy wearing?

 Here we see the cycle of school outfit and Bronze outfit repeated. But then, bonus! One more school outfit.

  Outfit 1

The hair has definitely improved. The fringe is less wispy because she’s parted her hair in the middle. It’s still 90s as hell, but it suits SMG better. She’s wearing silvery hoops I can’t get a good view of, but they’re pretty.

 She’s wearing the cross necklace, which, again, I’ve always liked and may have looked for a copy once or twice. But as someone raised Roman Catholic who is basically agnostic and suspicious of organised religion, the cross is still a weighty object, emotion wise. It’s why I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear Rosary Beads as a necklace when Kate Moss did that time. Even though it looked cool.

  I always thought Buffy was wearing a navy button-up shirt here. But now I can see it’s black. And not button-up. Is there a zipper at the neckline? Probably not. I think the amount of attention I paid these last 20 years of watching and re-watching suggests I didn’t really care for it. There’s a vague memory of liking it, but perhaps it was more about the accessories.

We’re also back to ankle length pants that are somewhere in between straight and wide leg. They’re a silvery blue, which I think is why I thought the shirt was navy - some sort of same colour palette deal. The boots are around ankle length as well. They have buckles? We see them infrequently but she will wear them to the Bronze. Which will lead me to wonder why she changed her entire outfit except her shoes. Then I remember I do that all the time and shut the hell up about it.

 Was matching your eye make-up to a colour you’re wearing a thing? Because this is the second time Buffy is matching her eyeshadow to her clothes, pants in this case. It looks ok, I guess?

 The real stars of this outfit, however, are the sunnies. I mean, come on. Look at those babies. I would wear the heck out of these now. So. Fucking. Great.

Buffy wanders off school property to battle some vampires and rescue Jesse/find out he’s been turned into a vampire with Xander in tow and some cryptic warning from Angel, who could actually help her but chooses not to because… reasons. But now it’s time to stop Luke, Darla and friends from feasting on more of Buffy’s classmates. Outfit change!

Outfit 2

Again, Buffy chooses practicality for slayage. Does it look any good? Well… sort of? This time we have grey/charcoal pants that are slim fit, but not skinny leg (see previous post on why). She’s wearing the same boots as outfit 1, which – why change everything else but the boots? I’m sure I’ve done the same (see how I mentioned earlier that I’d say that? Is that foreshadowing? Is this a callback?).

 I keep forgetting that she wears a long-sleeved white t-shirt with weirdly placed pockets and a strange neckline. I think it’s designed to show Buffy means business and to show off the cross necklace again. It’s… ok.

  The hair is again the highlight, which has been put in a very practical high ponytail. To hide stakes, possible bloodstains and to battle both the undead and the cold weather she wears a brown leather jacket. That sounds cool, yeah? Probably makes Buffy even cooler, right?

Uh, no.

It’s baggy. It’s old and ugly. It may have been passed down by the previous slayer, or her dad, or a homeless person. I probably loved it. Jackets in the 90s weren’t really about tailoring or correct sleeve length. 

I do love an ugly jacket. You’re talking to a person who has a brown bomber jacket with navy trim and at least four different animal prints. This should be in my wheelhouse. Actually, I should search for this on eBay right now.

This look does feature prominently in the opening credits and a lot of images of Buffy on the worldwide web. She looks cool as hell. Without the jacket. And I might have worn jeans instead. But again, they’d be late 90s jeans and probably not much of an improvement. Speaking of improvement, let’s see how the next outfit isn’t one!

Outfit 3

Like, what is this? We clearly liked the 60s in the late 90s. Upcoming episodes will definitely confirm this. But did we do it well? Uh… not this time.

So we have here a cherry shift dress that looks quite cute on its own. And the boots from Welcome to the Hellmouth are back. And they are welcome. Shift dresses and knee high boots are very cute. Ask Twiggy. But then… Buffy has thrown over the top of this a purple, possibly suede shirt. And it’s… it’s… not great. She tops this look off with a magenta headscarf. 

Nothing individually is too offensive, but also nothing quite works together. You know how Coco Chanel (probably) said to always take one thing off before you leave the house? Buffy, gurl, why not roll with that and lose two-three before leaving the house. Or just start again.

So what were others wearing this episode? Giles was his English librarian best. And we all know how I feel about Giles now. Cordelia didn’t feature too heavily but her outfit at the Bronze was giving off sexy cat burglar vibes, which is good.

 There’s a scene in a computer lab in which Cordelia and Harmony discuss how awful Buffy is and Willow gets sweet, sweet vengeance. But I don’t really care about the ensemble here. It’s the guy who propels the conversation between Cordy and Harmony. I want all of us to take note of extras or supporting cast members who take their role very seriously. This guy is really into doing a good job as guy who asks Cordelia about Buffy.

See?

Xander wins with this green number. But then he loses with a wallet chain, and later a camouflage t-shirt.

Angel is now dressed like he’s going to a meeting with the New York office. Perfect for stalking teen girls and not helping them. But, like, yeah he’s really hot.

  Our actual winner, again, is Willow. Cute overalls? Yes. Cute dress with cute cardigan? Again, yes, of course. Have you met Willow Rosenberg?

Up next is Witch, where I’ll tell you all about how much I love Adidas Superstars and we finally discuss Buffy’s sleepwear. And is there tie-dye? THERE SURE IS.

 Keep an eye out for more bonus posts and the first commentary, which will be… actually, I’m gonna maintain an air of mystery and tell you later.

 Until next time, Slayerettes.

screen caps via screen capped.net.

[elrondsscribe]

The Seventh Avenger: Chapter 1

Nothing here's mine, of course. Tolkien and Marvel Studios own it all.

April 21, 2012

Glorfindel let himself into his apartment and hung up his keys on the rack next to the door. He set his phone down on the counter by the sink, opened the dishwasher to retrieve a clean glass, and retrieved an open jug of distilled water from the refrigerator. He drank deeply, the cool water soothing his dry throat.

He had been running, partly because it was a beautiful day but mostly because he'd needed the exercise to loosen himself up for the day's exercise routines. Now that his profession was so demandingly physical, he had to take better and more intentional care of his body than he'd had to in a few centuries. He quite relished the challenge.

He was just about to go for a much-needed shower when his senses belatedly went on the alert. He stiffened, and looked around.

Someone uninvited was in the house - was in fact in the next room, which was the living room. A tall, completely bald black man with a patch over his left eye was sitting comfortably on the couch holding a book. "You know, I used to love fantasy novels when I was in high school," he said conversationally. "Maybe that's why I still believe in heroes."

Glorfindel could honestly say that he had not had a genuine surprise like this for a solid decade. "Should I know you?" he asked suspiciously.

"You don't?" The man with the patch finally looked up and turned his head so that he was facing Glorfindel directly. "I'm surprised. Didn't you save my ungrateful ass from, to quote you directly, 'a Houseless in service to the Enemy' near forty-three years ago?"

And then Glorfindel remembered the lean, long-limbed boy who had come within an inch of death and worse that hot summer night. "You are Nicholas Fury," he said, and cocked his head. "I didn't recognize you at first; you've changed much since then."

The Man Nicholas Fury looked gave him a searching look. "You haven't."

Glorfindel's mouth tightened. "Is there a reason you are here, Mr. Fury?" he asked sharply.

But the Man smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere," he said, and he shut the book and turned the cover toward Glorfindel. "I'm now the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or SHIELD."

Glorfindel tensed, and wondered briefly if now after all these years he would be exposed. "What is SHIELD?" he asked warily.

Fury tucked the (rather large) book he'd been reading under his arm and got up. As he came into the kitchen Glorfindel saw that he was also holding a folder. "SHIELD is an international extra-governmental counter-terrorism intelligence agency," he said. "Our focus is on protection - specifically, protecting the world from alter-natural threats, and from alter-natural secrets they're not ready to hear yet."

And with these words he swept the book from under his arm and laid it on the kitchen table, and its title, The Lord of the Rings: One Volume, gleamed in large gold letters.

Glorfindel stared at the book and pursed his lips, trying to hide his unease. "Secrets people aren't ready to hear?" he asked. "This work -" he pointed to the book. "- is known the world over - been translated into heaven only knows how many languages."

"It's even been made into a motion picture," said Fury. "You probably already know there's another one scheduled to come out in November."

"That's the point," said Glorfindel. "Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves are popular everywhere -"

"Isn't that convenient," rumbled Fury.

Glorfindel became silent. He couldn't afford vehement denial.

"Then, on the other hand, maybe not," Fury went on. "See, a little while back, I remembered what you said to me that night. I started doing a little research - Fellowship, Silmarilllion, Unfinished Tales, Book of Lost Tales, Peoples of Middle-Earth. Hell, I even went through online forums and fan articles. I had a theory, see, based on what you said."

Glorfindel gritted his teeth.

"Like I said, I did some digging," said Fury. "And I found this story about an Elf called Glorfindel. He came back from the dead and was sent back to Middle-Earth as an emissary of the Valar, like Gandalf was later on. Glorfindel, I hear, was an extraordinary warrior, but he was even more than that. He could send Sauron's most terrifying minions running like a bunch of dormice just by showing up."

In spite of his worries, Glorfindel found his lips curling. "I wouldn't quite say that," he hedged.

"Too humble?" asked Fury with a smirk. "Not surprised."

Caught. Red-handed.

"Is there something in particular you need?" snapped Glorfindel.

"Well, I'm here for two things," said Fury. "The first one you already took care of - admitting to, you know, that." He gestured to the large volume. "You haven't been nearly as careful as you should about trying to protect your secret."

Glorfindel gulped. "What do you mean?"

Fury opened his folder, and began drawing papers and photos from it one by one. "Taylor Alexander, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for three years, been with the company for ten. Laurence Matthews, flute teacher in Maryland for twenty-eight years until a fatal car accident in 1971. Adam Bartlett, promising intelligence agent during the Second World War, killed in action in 1943. Jonathan Davis, professional photographer that went down with the Titanic after nearly thirty years in business. Rare photo of Samuel McCarson, famed abolitionist and post-war Reconstruction activist, killed in a riot in 1875 - you have no idea how many strings I had to pull to get that one -"

Glorfindel felt his heart come into his mouth as all his last aliases were displayed one by one.

"- and those are just the identities we have photos for," Fury went on. "We've got painted portraits of a Bernard Mandeville, a Herman John Walker, a Raymond Vandeleur, and a Charles Williamson. I won't bore you with the entire list, but you get the idea, right?"

Glorfindel's jaw was tight. "What do you want from me?"

"What do I want from you?" Fury shook his head. "No, that's not the question here. The question here is, what do you want from me? See, there aren't too many people even in the intelligence community who know about all this -" he pointed to all the photos and documents on the table. "But when it comes to secrets, two's plenty and three's a crowd. You dig what I'm getting at?"

And just like that, when he'd thought things couldn't get worse, they'd worsened. "You're not the only one who's guessed about me, have you?" asked Glorfindel.

"I'm willing to bet I'm not," said Fury. "So here's the deal: I can make you disappear from every record about you that exists - SHIELD's good like that. Nobody'll ever find you - or any others of your kind, I might add -" Glorfindel let out a small groan. "- the way I did."

"Should have known I wouldn't be the only one," sighed the Elf, rubbing his neck again. "What's the catch? And don't play coy with me, I know there's a catch."

"Not a catch, per se," said Fury, his single visible eye gleaming in amusement. "Just a favor I'd like to ask, which you're actually free to turn down if you really want to. I do owe you that."

"What's the favor?" asked Glorfindel.

Without a word, the Man laid down the folder and turned it toward Glorfindel, who raised his eyebrows at the title, printed in large black letters under a logo designed like an eagle. "The Avengers Initiative?"

"Call me an idealist," Fury's expression was enigmatic. "Earth's mightiest heroes, coming together to fight the battles we couldn't."

Glorfindel opened the folder, and his jaw fell. "These are your other candidates?"

Fury's smile was shark-like. "You got an idea, now, what I'm asking you for?"

A slow grin spread across the Elf's face. He looked back up at Fury. "If I agree to this, may I ask a small favor of you?"

April 21, 2012

A bright yellow sun with eight rays set inside a larger circle of deep forest green glowed on Fury's office wall.

"So he actually wants to use the original Golden Flower device?" asked Agent Maria Hill, gazing at the icon.

"He said he was ready to 'step out of the shadows'," said Fury. "Thought it was 'time for the age of marvels to begin.'" His tone turned mocking at the last words.

Hill was not fooled. "You're enjoying everything about this, aren't you?" she asked, arching her eyebrows at her superior.

Fury's single eye glinted. "Maybe. Get the thing put on a suit of armor."

Hill took a look at the numbers underneath the image. "A suit of armor for a seven-foot-two creature out of an adventure novel. Should I put in an order a sword?"

"What else would he use?" snorted her superior.

She shook her head. "You know the Council wouldn't be happy to hear you're still working on Phase One."

Fury fixed his eye on Hill. "Sure they wouldn't, if they knew jack about it."

[From the classified personal file of Director Nicholas J. Fury]

May 1: Destruction of Project PEGASUS; arrival of hostile Asgardian force identified as Loki; brainwashing of unknown number of PEGASUS participants including Agent Barton and Dr. Erik Selvig.

May 2: Reactivation of Phase One: Avengers Initiative - call in and brief the following candidates: Captain Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Dr. Bruce Banner, and Laurëfindel/Glorfindel (alias Taylor Alexander).

"This is out of line, Director," said Councilman Malick sternly. "You're dealing with forces you can't hope to control."

"You ever been in a war, Councilman?" snapped Director Fury, gazing up at the group of screens in front of him in a virtual conference room. Each of the screens displayed a real-time image of a member of the World Security Council. "In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"

"You saying that this Asgard declared war on our planet?" demanded the American Councilman.

"Not Asgard, Loki," corrected Fury.

"He can't be working alone," interjected Councilwoman Hawley, a representative from the United Kingdom. She was writing busily on a notepad. "What about the other one, his brother?"

"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile," said Fury. "But he's worlds away. We can't depend on him for help. It's up to us."

"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase Two," said Councilman Malick. "It was designed for exactly -"

"Phase Two isn't ready," Fury cut him off. "Our enemy is. We need a response team."

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down," Councilman Malick's voice held a hint of warning.

"This isn't about the Avengers," said Fury dismissively.

"We've seen the list," said Councilman Singh, arms folded.

"We're running the world's greatest security network," Councilman Malick leaned forward. "And you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."

Fury's frown deepened. "I'm not leaving anything to anyone," he said emphatically. "We need a response team. These people may be isolated - unbalanced, even - but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need."

"You believe?" asked Councilwoman Hawley, with a smile that held no warmth.

"War isn't won by sentiment, Director," added Councilman Malick.

"No," said Fury, and his voice rang with conviction. "It's won by soldiers."

Yeah, this chapter was slow. And brief. Sorry. The next ones will make up for it, though I can't guarantee they'll come very quickly.

Couple things straight off the bat - in case you couldn't tell in the first chapter, I've made Glorfindel the focus of my story, not Legolas. He's a lot older, more powerful, and in my opinion more the Avenger type than Legolas (at least canon Legolas). He will also be by far the oldest Avenger.

Also, I referenced the real 2012 schedule for the NYCB to see what a real dancer in Glorfindel's position would have been doing at this point - which on this particular day is nothing, since the winter season ended February 26 and the spring season didn't begin until May 1. [Which means that Glorfindel will get the call to come in at a really bad time . . .]

[buffyverse-rewind]

Buffy S1 E2 – The Harvest

This episode should really just be called “Welcome to the Hellmouth Part 2”.  I’m pretty sure I never caught the original airing of the series premier, or if I did, it’s been too long to remember; so I double checked and both episodes did air the same night. So I’d assume they didn’t even bother breaking it up and aired it in one long format.  Not that really matters.

I love how this continues to the build on momentum and world building of the first episode; and since the two were delivered in some sort of contiguous narrative, the fact that this is technically the second episode is beside the point. The point is that when people sat down for their first venture into the Buffyverse, by the end of that first exposure, they knew the vast majority of the important facts for the story moving forward.  They didn’t get everything of course, but the important parts, the quintessential nature of the series is there within the first two hours. Meanwhile shows now spend the first five or six episodes still introducing new main characters; and doing whatever they can to run out the clock.

Whenever I watch this episode, it always stands out to me when Buffy and Xander are discussing vampire tactics and garlic gets mentioned; because it never actually comes into play through the rest of Buffy or Angel.  There might be one or two instances where someone drapes themselves in garlic or you see it hanging somewhere, but it’s usually an afterthought and playing more to the vampire genre convention; and as far as I recall, it’s never in the presence of any actual vampire.  You never see someone like Spike or Angel react to garlic, at all, much less negatively.  It seems like a missed opportunity.  How does it affect them?  Does it burn them for some reason, like holy water?  Do they not like the smell, on account of their heightened senses?  Can vampires talk to garlic and garlic is actually super offensive, even by vampire standards?  So many questions.

The thing that perhaps plays with my imagination most with this episode is, I think, the implication from what we see in “The Wish”.  We know in the alternate timeline where Buffy never came to Sunnydale that Xander and Willow got turned at some point between “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Wish”.  I don’t believe we’re given an actual timeframe, but the assumption is that, without Buffy around, Xander and Willow probably got turned during the events of “The Harvest”, which isn’t entirely unreasonable; though there are some variables at play here. For one, Jesse, rather than Xander, was the one who was taken from the bronze at the end of the first episode; along with Willow, who we’re given the impression only really went with the guy (actually vampire) who was chatting her up, because Buffy’s word of encouragement. So would Willow have been targeted had she not decide to seize the moment just then; or did the vamp see her before and single because she was largely sitting alone?  The latter seems reasonable enough; and if Willow did in turn get turned, it’s plausible that even if Xander didn’t get nabbed at the Bronze, that Vamp-Willow would have sought him out to turn him.

The other puzzle I ponder is Cordelia in the Wishverse; because she leads a somewhat different life in the post Harvest/sans-Buffy timeline, but it kind of happens in a vacumm. Of all the “It’s a Wonderful Life”-esque looks at various characters’ lives during “The Wish,” we get virtually nothing about how Cordelia is different in this timeline, other than her friends hadn’t turned away from her for dating Xander and she didn’t become a social pariah.  Cordelia was admitted not all that deep at that time, and some of it is probably necessitated by the wish that got her there – after all, it was the prime timeline Cordelia and not the Wish Cordelia that we saw; so it stands to reason that she’d be impervious to any of the changes that other Cordy might have faced. But as it pertains to this episode, I think about how things were playing out between her and Jesse at the Bronze; and Cordelia would have been there during the Harvest whether Buffy was there or not, yet in the Wishverse she apparently survived.  So for one, it seems like at the very least she might have ended up a sacrifice to help release the Master; and quite possibly be turned by Jesse, if the Harvest hadn’t been interrupted.  Since the conceit is that she did survive and wasn’t turned, circumstances apparently still played out in her favor somehow.  But it does make me wonder, what would vamp-Cordelia Chase have been like?  Especially 16 year old vamp-Cordelia?  Another missed opportunity, I think.

It’s weird watching Cordelia and Harmony doing anything along the lines of computer programming, given how where we see either of them a few years later.  Obviously it was a high school class that they probably had to take and only paid enough attention to pass and then promptly forgot, but it’s still weird.

And Willow is stone cold with her “deliver” line. Don’t get me wrong, they pretty much deserve it, but she didn’t even have to think about how to get even with them. It’s still a little bit of a wonder how much of a leap she would make during this same timeframe in the Wishverse; where, unrepressed, she’d become vamp-Willow with so much ease.  I’ve often argued that this just goes to show that it wasn’t the magic or her personal development between season 1 and season 6 that allowed Willow to become “Dark-Willow,” that it was already there, somewhere just below the surface; and all of that quickly came out as vamp-Willow at just 16 or thereabouts.  

It’s truly a shame that this show never brings Jesse up again.  I know they originally wanted him to be Xander’s counterpart in “Conversations with Dead People,” which would have been awesome, but the actor wasn’t available.  I kind of think they could have recast him; it would have sucked, but if they thought using Cassie in place of Tara, which I think was kind of stupid, they could have used a different actor to play Jesse; maybe having him vamped and play it in low-light to add to the creepiness.  I mean, they wouldn’t have had to go full Faux-Crispin Glover, like they did in the Back to the Future sequels and try to pretend it really was the actor or try to fool the audience into thinking it wasn’t a replacement. Plus, because of that, that was became the first and only episode Xander wasn’t in the entire series; which, despite whatever might have been going behind the scenes with Nicholas Brandon, cutting the character out of an episode for the first time during the final season seems like a bad idea if it can be avoided.  I’ve often been curious how that might have effected the other stories, but each time I watch that episode now, the less I’m impressed with how it turned out; especially given how the rest of the season plays, but I’ll get to those gripes once I get to that episode.  

And for the record, I know Amber Benson didn’t want to come back and play someone who looks like Tara, who encourages Willow to kill herself, because she was concerned about how that might play with some fans; and I respect that and don’t disagree with her reason for not doing it.  I just think having a random character Willow never actually met before talk to her and try to convince her she was conveying a message from Tara was stupid; and there must have been a better way to do it.  Like they could have had it be Warren or something.  But once again, I digress…

You know, I don’t think I’ve thought about the Master’s arc in the normal timeline verses the Wishverse. The Master returned, presumably during the Harvest, since it would have gone uninterrupted, yet he clearly didn’t open the hellmouth in the Wishverse.  Instead he just seemed to cool his heels the next two years, eventually embarking on the factory plan.  Sure, he took over the Bronze and struck enough fear in the city to impose a curfew and other restrictions in direct response, but in contrast to his original plans to open the hellmouth and bring back the Old Ones, he must have encountered some appreciable level of resistance that forced him to temper his plans.

I have often envisioned that in the alternate timeline, there must have been a confrontation between the Master and the Mayor, who imagine were rivals going back to the founding of Sunnydale and the Master coming to Sunnydale to open the hellmouth. Wilkens probably wasn’t entirely opposed, per se, to wreaking havoc and bringing back demons, but probably wanted it to happen on his own timetable – specifically so he could become one.  But the Master wouldn’t give a damn or let mayor Wilkens stand in his way; and given how much power he had over the city in The Wish, it stands to reason he came out on top in any confrontation with Wilkens.  It’s also plausible Wilkens managed to strike some type of blow to the Master’s plans to open the hellmouth, that forced the Master to change his focus.

I gotta admit, as far as “demons as a metaphor for high school” goes, Buffy not being about to go out being “the end of the world” is pretty great.  Plus, Joyce.  I mean, come on, Joyce and Buffy must have one of the best mother/daughter dynamics, and it’s right from the start of the series.  And while she manages to overlook a lot of the questionable things going on in town (though arguably no more than anyone else in Sunnydale), the writers didn’t do what a lot of other shows do; they didn’t try to make her hip or edgy or try too hard to be Buffy’s best friend – she was her mom.  And from her perspective, not knowing the truth about what was happening, she had every right to be concerned when Buffy starts missing classes, again, and wants to go out on a school night, again; especially after what happened at her last school.

And for the audience’s part, being in on Buffy’s secret and what the stakes are (so to speak), we also understand Buffy’s angst.

Okay, I do not, nor have I ever truly understand how The Bronze worked.  I’ve never been somebody who goes to clubs or went to clubs in my youth, but I’m not sure what might be the closest comparison in my area that would be quite like it, in terms of having live music regularly, they definitely serve alcohol, yet people who are underage frequent it often and without issue or need for fake idea to enter.  Supposedly a minor has to wear a wristband, which we saw Dawn wear one time, but as far as I can tell, at no other time did any of the other characters when they were underage, where one at the Bronze.

And here we have the bouncer outside the door, telling Darla and her crew he needs to see id – I guess to wristband the underage people?  

How dumb does Luke have to be to forget that dawn is still hours away, if the sun only just went down a short while ago?

“The Earth is domed.” How great is Giles?