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shwarmii · 1 year ago

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(tumblr put this under my Recommended Posts; so im sorry if this is too late, i just saw it)

maybe something Shakespearean? ive heard "Romeo" be used demeaningly and sweetly specifically towards men. Shakespeare used several terms if endearments in both ways too, like "lambkin" which is unisex ("Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king." - Henry IV, Part 2; which the context of the line was it being Pistol's way of saying "uhh guess who died") but he also had others (another one of mmmmyyyyyyy favorites is "ducky")

one of my favorite ones "time-based insults that a story turned into a term of endearment" was "hellkite". i think Lestrade could be a good candidate for one of those, perhaps (you would know better than i). this was another line from Shakespeare, but i took it for a Regency era story to have be a insult-turned-affectionate that is still unfinished and you are more than welcome to use it if you want (it was used in Macbeth if you want a quotation; Macduff said it as a kind of pun, about how Macbeth killed Macduff's wife and kids "in one fell swoop"). it just means someone is "devilish (in the sense of being cruel)". it could work with a Sherlock that is obsessed with birds additionally, as it is referencing being a hellish bird of prey if you were to look at the etymology's meaning. it is also unisex

historically, "boy" has been used in both "sexy and demeaning" settings coming from another man. it does have some racial tension to it though, as it was more often used against Black men from White men, but it is a racially-unilateral term to address young adults in demeaning and "sexy" ways though, of course, it all depends on context. i know people were suggesting things like "pretty boy" and whatnot, and thatd be a good direction to take as adding an adjective in front of "boy" helps lessen the potential racial charge significantly while still upholding 'boy''s historical usage as "both demeaning and sexy". i think "my dear boy" is probably the most famous usage otherwise? at least, its famous enough to be a book title for the "My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters Through The Centuries" anthology from Rictor Norton, it goes over about 2,000 years of gay love letters (alas, the book is out of print (it originally came out in 1998) and is now worth hundreds of dollars so i have never read it in full. but a friend did introduce me to this website last week https://rictornorton.co.uk/dearboy.htm which has all the letters as far as i know? i havent sat down and read it yet, but i will skim through the 1800s and up to 1914 for you), along with its variants of "my darling boy" and "dearest boy" and so on. i also found record of Henry Greville to Frederic, Lord Leighton in that aformentioned anthology, dated in the 1850s, featuring the line "You are rather a bad boy not to have given [my sister] or me a signe de vie [aka: the title of a document that is proof a person is still alive, so he's cheekily saying 'wRITE TO US MORE' to his lover]". so. "bad boy" is definitely demeaning yet sexy, or at least so i assume (im asexual lmao). (this may not count, but i do personally have a lot of affection for this one moment in "Gilmore Girls" where Rory is comforting Jess by cooing something along the lines of "Aw, sad boy. What's wrong?". also i have a young boy in my family often cooed at with the pet-name "shy boy" and "shy guy". anyway i digress) a lot of these love letters in "My Dear Boy"'s link features "boy" in some capacity being used throughout the timeline i am skimming through. it's probably your best bet for a "sexy but demeaning" pet-name from the period, but, again, i would recommend doing "[adjective] boy" to lessen the racial-based historical connotation of just straight-up "boy". but you get it

there's also "kid" (most famous in Casablanca's "Here's looking at you, kid") for a more unisex term, which has been used for a long time as well (i couldn't find exactly when it started being used romantically; but its been used for goats since 1200s, and started being well-known for it to informally be used to refer to children by the 1840s (earliest accounts are apparently from the 1590s, so it took a while), it started being used to refer to young thieves since approximately 1812, and it was used as a verbage to "tease playfully" since 1839. this is all cited from Etymonline, btw. highly recommend that site, very reliable, not good for linguistic professionals as its pages aren't complete but it is great for amateurs who just want an idea of things)

theoretrically, "young man" could work too. quite patronizing, but not very romantic. but the meme on tiktok going around with the audio "Oh, you're such a handsome young man. Can you give us a big smile?" with lots of people making the trend be about their ships gives me some hope that it could be made romantic. idk

one of my favorite things to do is read letters, esp love letters, (if that wasnt already evident by my interst in "My Dear Boy") and it is rather unfortunate that i cannot think of a single time a letter ive read from a gay man in the 1800s used a term of endearment not already popular with straight couples. they use "dear/est", "dear heart", "[Forename] dear", "darling", "sweet", "precious", "beloved", "adored", and so on. i looked through the "My Dear Boy" anthology link above for any more from the 1800s - early 1910s. i skimmed them for this post (again, haven't read things in full. just skimmed to attempt to be helpful), so feel free to look more in depth. but there was "Sir" being used rather coyly by John Church in his 1809 letter. im ignoring Beethoven's love letters to Karl because that is his nephew that he was the legal guardian of (needless to say: ew) especially since they called one another "father" and "son/child" (again: ew), so im ignoring almost of those "pet-names" between them. i will say "(Little) rascal(, best little rascal)" is kind of cute to call your hypothetical partner, if we just ignore my source of it being era-accurate is Beethoven towards his nephew. i digress. Franz Schubert and Anselm Hüttenbrener made "friend" feel very cute, though it was also used in several OTHER of these letters as a term of endearment between the pair of letter-writers (i still assume you will not be using it due to contemporary understandings of the word, and i dont blame you for that, esp since it isnt demeaning). but yeah! i skimmed through a lot and those were the best o found from doing that. i skimmed through the letters from "1807 - William Beckford & Master Saunders" and up until the end of "1912 - Rupert Brooke & Denham Russell-Smith", as google told me Sherlock Holmes is generally between 1880 - 1914 (i read all of the 1800s in case of precendence, since there otherwise there would have been only 8 letter exchanges to look through and that seemed too small a sample) and my dumbass wasnt exactly sure when your Holmes story takes place, and the next section was in 1917-1918 for the love letters in "My Dear Boy". most of it was "friend", "boy", or one of the Also Famously Used By Straight Couples pet-names. "comrade" was also used in smattering amounts, but i dont assume youll use it

also, because im me and i love our pet bird, i would also like to submit "pidge" as a pet-name (yes, it is short for "pidgeon"). it is rather archiac, and is most famous for its usage in Disney's "Lady and the Tramp". i couldnt find anything about the pet-name, but i did find three people from the early 1900s who had it as a personal reference (Noah Berry Jr, Pidge Browne, and George Browning). i know "dove" and "turtledove" would also technically work as they are types of pidgeons, but yeah. a bird-based nickname for the bird-nerd is a fun idea to me and i had to shout it out before i continued further

i think you could get the "demeaning but sexy" from most effeminate terms of endearment. but i also understand if you want it to be "a demeaning term anyone could call you, not just an effeminate term only a romantic partner would use". in which case, id circle back to insults-turned-endearments personally, like "wiseguy" or "smart alek" or something (i got a migraine from skimming, so im too tired to research at the moment if those are period-accurate lol). i also know you dont want to use "sweetheart" for all genders, despite it being a genderless term, as it is specifically demeaning to women under certain contexts and you want a term demeaning to each Sherlock gender option — but i think you could make a case for it being a genderless term of patronizing in your game. youd just have to preface its place, i think. but. like. we're already allowed to be a queer Sherlock and specifically are already allowed to be a nonbinary Sherlock in the 1880s - 1914 era of England and have everyone refer to us with they/them pronouns (and i say this as someone who also uses they/them pronouns): giving a preface that "sweetheart" was used demeaningly across genders under certain contexts from men to be very easy suspension of disbelief for your audience. however, it is your game, not mine. if you dont want to, then i wont push

personally, i do otherwise wonder how youre going to also include an option for nonbinary Sherlock Holmes? do they just get to pick which they prefer out of the two? or do they get their own? it is unclear to me (you dont have to answer this element. or reply to any of this reblog. i am babbling uselessly at this point. my dyslexic ass really shouldnt skim lol i did my best, fam, i don't know)

im gonna take a nap is all i know ♡ hope this helped

lmaooo it's hilarious that you've previously said that for Lestrade "the height of their intimacy is using a term of endearment" and then their first use of one (only if Sherlock is a woman which I will say is a little unfair) is when they want to figuratively spread Sherlock's viscera across the seedy bar floor. Thanks so much for your hard work. Good luck from here on

You might think them using your first name is intimate, but the height of their intimacy is using a term of endearment (you won’t hear it much outside of the privacy of the bedroom and in letters though!)

Hahahaaaa 🤣 I suppose I can clarify... Their exceptions from that are in a partly-sexual/partly-demeaning way while they are mad or annoyed or used ironically. They reaaaally think back on using that word later while trying to sleep and hate themselves a little (a lot) extra. Trust me.

(only if Sherlock is a woman which I will say is a little unfair)

Believe me, I looked far for a good word with the same vibe that I could use for MMCs and/or NBMCs. I even asked my discord, and we tried to think of a word that had the same demeaning/sexist/flirty balance, and the closest I think I got was "sport"... which... no.

The word was Sweetheart, in the middle of the rant, if anyone is curious. If you are FMC and have romance points. If anyone can think of a word that strikes that balance of demeaning/sexy vibe for MMCs or NBMCs, send it to me! And if I find it fits, without assuming too much of the player MC, fits the setting, and L's character, I'll add it ❤️😘

#this was originally gonna be a Reply and then i remembered ''My Dear Boy'' and went 'WELL I GUESS ITLL BE TOO LONG FOR A REPLY HUH'#lmao forgive me

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topweeklyupdate · 4 years ago

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TØP Weekly Update #142: A Formidable Album (5/21/21)

So... how 'bout that album release week?

There's so much to cover; the release of nine new songs, the hype that's building for the World's Best Band to return to the stage, and (if we're able to come up for air) the massive speculation of what the future brings for our band.

I'm gonna get right into it, laying out my thoughts regarding this bold new album and covering all the most notable news from the week. I'll be sharing my (mostly) positive opinions about Scaled and Icy under the Read More line; I hope they're the start of a fun conversation with all of y'all who have stuck around through this last year.

Scaled and Icy Review

First, my general thoughts on the album: It's good! Really good. Do I think it's a no-skip like Vessel or a cohesive piece of art like Trench? Absolutely not! But it's also not the potential misfire that I worried that we might be getting when I first heard "Saturday" (more on that later); I think all of the songs are at least good, and some of them are downright great tracks that hold up with anything else that our band has ever released. It is also indisputably very different, but I think that generally works pretty well. Many of the songs evoke '60s rock or Britpop sounds and structures that you can tell Tyler is still trying to navigate, but I think he does a very solid job at adapting them to suit his strengths- namely his lyricism and knack for melody- rather than change to suit them. Unfortunately, this does result in a bit of square-peg-in-round-hole syndrome at times; most of the rap verses on the album feel like they're here just to fulfill an obligation to fans who would be mad if they weren't here, and most of the songs that use them are the weakest ones in the project.

"Good Day" plays a major role in getting the rest of the album to work as well as it does. Its gradual ramp-up, introducing the sound that will be used throughout the rest of the album. Its playfulness belies its message about how one can project a somewhat false optimism for oneself in the midst of tragedy: the type of dark stuff in a bright package that Tyler is so so good at. It's perhaps not an instant classic, but I am excited to see how it comes across when it's eventually used as a show-opener. 9/10

I've of course already discussed "Shy Away"; an anthemic, inimitably catchy track that I just wish had a bit more going on under the hood. Still going to be so good to hear thousands of voices scream "An 'I LOVE YOU' that isn't words!" someday. 9.5/10

"Choker" definitely took a little bit to grow on me. I think part of that was a bit of disappointment from over-inflated expectations and the environment I was in when I first heard it. With further listens, I fall more and more in love with the melody of the song... well, most of it. Like the rest of this album, the biggest weakness in the song is when Tyler tries to tick the box of having a rap verse; it just feels really out of place, unfinished, and almost amateurish, and it doesn't end the song on the note that it really should. Without it, it'd be one of my favorites on the album; with it, "Choker" is a solid 8.5/10.

Speaking of unfinished-sounding songs really hurt by their rap verse: "The Outside". There's a definite something to the vibe of the song, but that seemingly nonsensical verse is one of the two weakest parts of the entire project for me. The way the song meanders only adds to the feeling that there wasn't as much energy and attention paid to it compared to other parts of the project. It's pretty easily my least favorite track on Scaled and Icy, and the only one I might regularly skip. I've also seen plenty of people saying it's the best song on the album, so please tell me why I'm wrong! 6.5/10

"Saturday", as mentioned above, had me really nervous about this album. Like "Choker", it's grown on me a bit since I first heard it, in part because it fits better with the context of the rest of the album. However, this one really does feel undercooked lyrically and overreliant on the novelty of using a disco-inspired sound that seems to chase trends more than almost any other TØP track. The inclusion of that very sweet audio clip from Jenna boosts the song in some ways, but also adds to the disappointment in others; there are many other songs on this project that would be more worth surrendering time watching Friends. Thankfully, those come next. 7/10

"Never Take It" is fascinating. I never thought I'd hear a Rolling Stones-style song from Tyler Joseph featuring a gd guitar solo of all things, and it actually sounds pretty great. However, I also predict that this song will see some of the greatest critical scrutiny out of all the songs on the album. The lyrics seem to be Tyler's criticism of the media for playing up division in our society, but he's extremely vague when discussing which entities are spreading said division and ultimately recommends that people "educate yourself, but never too much". I'll be honest: maybe it's the fact that it sounds like something my dad would listen to, but it feels like this would get tons of play on Fox News. Since it makes specific reference to the events of last summer, it's hard not to feel like song is at least partially inspired by Tyler's brush with cancellation last year. Maybe I'm reading too deeply into it, but those reservations come from the song's lack of specificity, which is an issue of songwriting more than politics. They hold me back from truly loving a song that still manages to be one of the most exciting the band has ever put out. 8.5/10

"Mulberry Street" seems like the perfect realization of the entire album's intended tone. It is so pleasant, so lush while also simply produced, full of great lyrics, metaphors, and imagery. It really brings the whole project together, even if it's missing That One Line to really move this up to the top tier of the canon. 9.5/10

"Formidable" is the best song on the album and one of two songs I would truly rank in the top tier of the band's canon. Extremely pleasant and brimming with well-crafted lines to make your heart swoon. Jenna (and Rosie) is (are) a lucky gal(s). Or is it about Josh? Who's to say? 10/10

"Bounce Man" is just plain wild. I think Tyler's smuggling someone to Mexico to escape the feds? The playfulness of it all really covers up any frustration I might have with the clarity; it makes it clear that there's not really stakes here, just vibes. 8.5/10

"No Chances" sees the album take a turn that I'm sure the Reddit Clique is going to have an absolute field day with; it and "Redecorate" both sound quite different from the rest of the album and evoke enough elements of Trench to make me think that's it's actually possible that all this 'SAI is Propaganda' stuff might actually have something to it... until I actually pick apart the lyrics, then I'm even more confused. The song has some of the best rapping on the album, though that's not saying much (the feng shui line is a groaner right out the gate) and the gentle pre-chorus is really pleasant. I still haven't made up my mind on whether the chorus is effective or just plain goofy. This one might get worse or better on repeat listens, impossible to say for now. 7.5/10

"Redecorate" rounds out the album by opening with a Clancy quote (Tyler, you bastard), firmly setting this as a coda to Trench more than the album we just listened to. The rest of the song is really storytelling, with Tyler describing a bunch of people who are struggling deeply. The idea of "redecorating" here stands for how they are faced with the option to clean and resort their own spaces and lives or leave that to their loved ones to do after they're gone. By the time it gets to the album's name drop, you begin to wonder how much of this is potential autobiographical of the last year. It's moving stuff, a callback to some of the great strengths of the band's discography. 10/10

If I average those scores all up, this project ranks below almost every album among the Pilots discography on my rating scale, very narrowly edging out Self-Titled. That's still a very solid 8.6. Scaled and Icy is a very good album on first listen. We'll see how I feel about it after having a little more time to sit with it, but I've rambled enough: let's move through the rest of the week's news.

Other News

Of course, there was a lot else going on this week! To accompany the release of "Saturday", Zane Lowe over at Apple Music dropped an interview with Tyler. As usual, Zane did a pretty solid job of getting to the heart of the craft and the creation process. However, Tyler also wound up skirting a lot of the questions to just talk more about how much he loves being a dad, which makes me happy; if the cost of getting a little less attention and mental energy devoted to the music is that little girl getting all of his attention, that's honestly preferable for me.

The album rollout is not even close to over. Later today, the concert will be streamed live. It's our first real performance that we've gotten from the band since 2019, but the previews that we've seen have completely exceeded any of my expectations, and really anything that we've seen from the band. It appears that they've transformed the entire arena (which I think is the ol' Schott at Ohio State) into a whole TØP world, with different sets laden with Easter eggs and a cast of backup dancers. If the website can hold up to the traffic (and I acknowledge that might be a big ask), this could really live up to Tyler's promise of this being the best livestreamed concert ever.

Oh, and this guy dyed his hair pink.

What a time to be a fan. Catch you all tomorrow.

Power to the local dreamer.

|-/

#twenty one pilots #scaled and icy #tyler joseph #josh dun #good day #shy away #choker #the outside #saturday #never take it #mulberry street #formidable #bounce man #no chances #redecorate #top weekly update

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adultswim2021 · 4 years ago

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Space Ghost Coast to Coast #87: “Dreams” | January 11, 2004 - 11:30 PM | S08E06

There is no doubt in my mind that Space Ghost is one of the most underappreciated comedy series of all time. For a show that is so screamingly hilarious, it sure is ignored. Hell, the creators of Space Ghost don’t even appreciate the goddamn thing. It makes it all the more special for those of us who love it. This episode of television, which I regard as a comedy masterpiece, sits on IMDB with 35 votes total. Not only is this an exceptional episode of Space Ghost, it also happens to *sorta* be the series finale, and it’s also the single-most profane episode of Space Ghost in existence. It deserves your respect, goddamn it.

In this one, Space Ghost cobbles together a charity organization for the sole purpose of one-upping Zorak and Moltar. He demands an animal be booked as his guest in order to elect it as the org’s cute mascot. Space Ghost winds up with Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.

For those of you who require context: Triumph is an intentionally cheesy dog puppet with a vaguely ethnic accent who makes old-school but also very profane roast-style jokes at his various targets. He was an intentionally one-note character featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Triumph developed enough of a cult following that he wound up recurring pretty regularly. Most notably on Conan he got kicked out of the Westminster Dog Show for humping some of the dogs and generally being a nuisance. My favorite remote he did was where he made fun of nerds waiting in line to see Star Wars Episode II.

In 2003 Triumph released an album which came with a DVD which featured a cameo from Conan O’Brien saying the c-word (cunt) and the recently disgraced Horatio Sanz deep-throating a dildo. That, presumably, is why Triumph is on this show: to promote this album. He keeps trying to steer the conversation to “get to the plug”, and referring to his “beautiful singing voice” There’s a small number of Space Ghost guests who show up genuinely believing that they’ll be allowed to plug their project and that the episode will air in a timely manner. Like Adam West or Fred Willard, this is in fact one of those.

What makes this episode so goddamn funny is that there’s an undercurrent of the Space Ghost staff aggressively trying to undercut Triumph’s shtick. Triumph is almost always the most outrageous character in any given room, and people almost always have a hard time contending with the barrage of fast-paced/profane insults that Triumph supplies. The editing may have had a hand in this, but here we see Triumph doing roughly what he does, but Space Ghost is too boneheaded to really let it effect him. Space Ghost, true to form, misunderstands almost everything Triumph says, taking it at face value. When it finally dawns on him that Triumph is breaking taboos he is briefly shocked. But when Zorak lies and tells him that “money came in” from Triumph’s transgressions he is suddenly motivated to childishly repeat Triumph’s vulgarity.

When Moltar tries to put his foot down he casually breaks an actual network taboo: he says “they will shut us down for that shit. I mean stuff.” completely unbleeped. Not sure what the status of “shit” is on adult swim these days, but in 2004 I don’t think Adult Swim was technically considered it’s own network yet (I’m hazy on the details here, but there was a turning point where Adult Swim ceased to be programming that simply aired on Cartoon Network and was actually registered legally as a network unto itself that shared space with Cartoon Network). So, allowing shit to play on what was still legally considered a children’s network was a pretty big deal. I don’t even think Turner allowed swears that harsh to appear on Adult Swim’s website.

The show escalates beautifully and ends with a song about “retardos”, while Space Ghost inexplicably holds up a Dexter’s Laboratory branded foam finger, a detail I’ve never noticed until this viewing. It is breathtakingly dumb. I love this episode so much.

There are a lot of great lines in this that I’m intentionally leaving out. The length of this write-up might lead you to believe I’ve revealed the entire episode. I haven’t! There’s so many great jokes in this. This begins what I like to think of as the finale trilogy. There are two more quasi-episodes of Space Ghost coming up (not counting the GameTap episodes because they suck or The Room interstitials because that’s so far out from the series true end that it’s practically a reunion special). One is an abandoned episode they aired in an unfinished state. Then comes the tenth anniversary bumpers the Sunday after Space Ghost’s big birthday. But I’ll talk more about that when the time comes. Okay? Alright? Damn!

I forgot to say this earlier so I’m just tacking it on here: my wife and I literally quoted this episode in our wedding vows. It was the “You will lick my shiny boots, for you are now my dog on a leash.” line. This isn’t a joke.

MAIL BAG

Here’s more FUCKING FUCKS writing me dumb shit and wasting my valuable time. Damn. Dang it!

I'm in a minority here but while I loved Home Movies I think it diminished by the time Season 4 rolled around that I think it's straight up overall bad. So much so that I feel you can tack on the camera drop ending to any of the other season finales and have a better show. I don't know why exactly. Is it because H. Jon Benjamin has a writing credit for this one and McGurk is wackier than ever? Did Brendon Small just run out of childhood experiences to mine from? I dislike it.

Huh I wouldn’t go that far OBVIOUSLY. So far I’ve liked a hundo percento of Season 4 even though it’s just two episodes. haha “Aw, who’m I tryinta fool? it’s just two episodes.”

I like the Sonic Guys. Their keen sense to pinpoint the exact craveability of every new Sonic item as well as their overall familiarity and comradery leave the viewer ready for fun and ready for fun: the Sonic way. And if you don't like that, buddy, then you are an Adbusters Stooge.

More like “ready for run” because I would use my feet to get away from their tires, because they’re tired!!!

Do you think the Sonic Guy ever dry over to Popeyes when the cameras aren't rolling. What do you think they would get. If I were them I would get the chicken: it's tender, it's juicy, it has cajun seasonings.

I think they would go there and say stupid cutesy shit like “extra chicken please :D :p” and a teenager would call them n*88*s and they’d commit suicide that night. But what a way to go

Don't give up on ephemera week!, The blog was super fun last week. And it's just a nice way to end the blog after a year of spankworthy stuff. It will be less special if you just pepper them in now and then. How many venmo bucks would I have to pay for you to keep it that way?

What a swanky message to get. I do think Ephemera week will be pretty hard from here on out because 2004 is about where I ended my initial research for this blog and the prospect of doing more of that to give a fairly complete overview of each year would just be too much. I’d much rather just slide it in. You’ll love seeing me slide.

What are your big wishes for 2004?

what the fuck am I supposed to do here? Wish for something to happen in a year that already happened? Do I get to transport myself back there and do this wish all the way back then? Or do I simply feel the butterfly effect of it having had happen in 2004. What the fuck kinda fucked up shit is this anyway.

#space ghost coast to coast #adult swim #adultswim2021

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kikotsukino · 5 years ago

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To shed some light, or.....

Something I wanted to say, and I felt like it is needed to be said. I might be the ‘Only one’ who enjoys Taichi in this remake, because I personally really like it, and it’s just not on Taichi, but the other Digi-Destined kids as well, because they are different in a sense, where they are together with their Digimon, each to their own bond that they have for their Digimon, and it is bonus points for me because they are more mature for their age when compared to the original. That all aside, I do take that no matter which version it is, there will be pros and cons, where some would enjoy this one slightly better than the original, or the original better than this reboot, and that’s fine, since we all have our own right on which we prefer and loved better.

Back to Taichi by the way, since this is what made me do up this post and yeah, to probably hopefully be able to just to shed some light to others, or I am probably doing this because Taichi is my favourite character in the original, so here goes, for those who cannot empathise with Taichi in this episode (10) or for the previous other episodes, whatsoever, for a fan, it’s quite sad to see, since I’m sure no fans would like to see someone bash their favourite character or criticise their favourite character, but I guess it’s what makes each of us different…

About this whole Taichi business, and how he care about the fight with Ogremon more than anything else? Well, truth be told, this is something between Greymon and Ogremon, as it was said, it’s a battle that started by Ogremon because of this whole ‘Pride’ business, I’m sure that much is understood in terms of context, right?

So, as Greymon’s partner, in this case Taichi, he would have understood his own Digimon’s feelings, because that was to demonstrate a connection and bond between the two. This is something between the two of them, where the other Digi Destined would not understand, and that’s fine, because that’s just.... something between the two of them.... Taichi didn’t want to go into this battle for him, or his own selfish reasons, NO. He wanted this fight, because it was also Agumon’s wish, like he said here:

It was an unfinish business between Greymon and Ogremon, because of the interruption from Metal Tyranamon... And it was a pity that they couldn’t finish their fight/battle, the others won’t understand Agumon’s feelings nearly as much as Taichi because they’re not connected/bonded the same way. This is why it’s so endearing to see, like each of them have their own bond/connection with their own Digimon in their own way. And this is Taichi and Agumon’s bond, which is perfectly displayed in this episode, in my opinion. Sure it was subtle, but was it so hard to feel/grasp from this episode?

I understood and can empathise why Taichi felt that way in that episode in terms of writing, because it was a way of showing how Taichi connects with Agumon and understood Agumon’s feelings. It’s also another way to show how the others doesn’t understand just how important that battle was for the two of them. Taichi caring about that battle doesn’t mean he care for this mission of the Holy Digimon any less, but it he shows us these feelings because he care about how Agumon feels at the end of all this, and I quite like that display of affection. This is something subtle, that I love.

As for how Taichi trusted Ogremon words, why wouldn’t he? He was there, at the scene, he saw in his eyes up close, or through his eyes, however you like to put it, and Ogremon’s sacrifice to protect both him and Greymon, so ofcourse Taichi would believe in Ogremon. And for Yamato’s case, how he didn’t trust the source coming out from the enemy, that is absolutely fine too, because it shows a sense that Yamato doesn’t trust outsiders easily, or those who he doesn’t consider his ally, and I think it is endearing that it display that trait from Yamato to be honest, because when it comes to him opening up, and those he consider his friends, he will trust them, like how he said here:

In other words he trusted Koshiro words/source over Ogremon, and for Yamato’s case, it’s understandable, because he consider Koshiro his friend, and not Ogremon, since he was on the enemy side. Yamato was just being careful, but the result is... Taichi was right to trust in Ogremon, but it doesn’t mean the reason why Yamato didn’t believe in Ogremon at first was less valid coming from his stance/point of view. So I understood and can empathise with both Taichi and Yamato in this scene.

Finally, Greymon not going the Skull Greymon route... For me, I am perfectly fine with it NOT going the Skull Greymon route. Since for me, I see this is a reboot for a reason, different story, different circumstances surrounding it. It’s much easier to treat this as an AU since it’s more enjoyable that way. So, what happened in the original will most likely not going to happen in this one, because it's kinda like an AU setting, a reboot, different story writing etc, despite it's still the same characters, however there will be differences in this one. Not going the Skull Greymon route like in the original, doesn't mean Taichi or the other Digi Destined will not have other developments with their Digimon later on. Why watch something that is of the same when they can maybe offer us something different and better?

Honestly, despite I am not a fan of the Skull Greymon Route in the original, but I understood why it happened in the original, but in this one, the characters are much maturer for their age, and this isn't just on Taichi, if you notice, so let's just wait and see what they have to offer us. It's still too early to be disappointed about it when it's only 10 episodes in. I personally like this one for it having a strong connection and bond with their Digimon, and have a sense of 'togetherness' i.e. they go into battle together, when compared to the original.

The built up in the original lead to the Skull Greymon route, and that's understandable, in terms of context, but in this reboot, it’s understandable why it didn’t, because Taichi isn't as impulsive and hot-headed as he was in the original, instead in this one they work together as one, and so they perfected this 'together', and he demonstrated the crest of courage really well. If it suddenly went the Skull Greymon route, it would have been bad writing/makes no sense in this episode. So, really, instead of complaints it didn't go that route, why can't we just appreciate that Taichi and Agumon can perfect their Digivolution together between partner and Digimon in this one for once. Just like how the other Digi-Destined would be able to later on, and back then.

For those who was disappointed for not going that route, you can always go back and watch the original for that route. In this one, I wanted something more refreshing and different. You don’t need the Skull Greymon route for developments between the two. It can be something different and refreshing, so let’s just wait and see.

I know there are people who have issues with this remake, for their own personal reasons, and probably because there’s this comparison between the original writing vs this reboot version, but all in all, you can always treat this as an AU, same characters, similar story, but not the same, that’s what makes it enjoyable and less predictable if that makes sense. If you still hate it, then.... Well, I guess this reboot is not for you.

P.S: I know the subtitles have Orgemon, but the website have it as Ogremon, so I am sticking to this spelling on my end, doesn’t matter which spelling, you know what I’m talking about.

At the end of the day, you don’t have to agree with me, but I am just honestly tired of seeing negatives comments about this episode, so I did up this post. Some of you may dislike it, but I surely like this episode on my end for all said. Taichi is still relatable and likeable to me, just like the rest of the other digi-destined kids (so far).

This reboot have proven to be better than Tri (for me at least).

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon 2020 #taichi yagami #agumon #greymon #metal greymon #digimon reboot

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angeltriestoblog · 5 years ago

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I watched a couple of movies! (Part 1)

Back when I regularly had the luxury of long breaks, I spent my days binge-watching films, as you can see from my extensive knowledge of 80s chick flicks and all the cheesy tropes and disgustingly adorable, predominantly white leading men that come with them. Sadly, a side effect of growing older in the digital age seemed to be the diminishment of my attention span: the only things I could focus on were academic requirements, simply because I had to. But, thanks to several factors—the suspension of online classes, the sudden annoyance I developed towards Barney Stinson that prompted me to discontinue How I Met Your Mother, etc.—I decided it was high time to rekindle this lost love. So, here is an unsolicited review of the 17 films I managed to finish in a little over a week! Rest assured, I tried my best to venture out of familiar territory and brush up on some of the more cultured picks, according to Letterboxd, at least.

Bar Boys (2017, dir. Kip Oebanda) ★★★

The film that kickstarted everything, which I never would have seen if the director had not uploaded the full version on YouTube. This well-meaning tale of four best friends (Carlo Aquino, Rocco Nacino, Enzo Pineda, and Kean Cipriano) and the challenges they face in law school—terror professors, fraternities, and financial difficulties included—does have a lot of heart, and is sensitive enough to show how the effect of this experience differs depending on a student's background. But, what it lacked for me was a certain degree of specificity: I think the same premise would have been applicable in med school, or any other post-graduate degree for that matter. So, why did the characters choose law? I also would have appreciated some commentary on the shortcomings of the country’s justice system, and further fleshing out of the characters so the audience could have seen why we could count on them to fill in the gaps.

Legally Blonde (2001, dir. Robert Luketic) ★★★½

The rating might be surprising, considering that the courtroom scene was responsible for the short law school phase I had in Grade 5. As if I could ever make use of the rules of haircare in an actual cross-examination. Of course, I am compelled to admire Elle (Reese Witherspoon) and how her motivations for going to Harvard shift from winning back a boy to discovering what she never knew she had and using these gifts to help those around her (especially the manicurist, who I feel was given way more exposure than what was due to her). Ultimately, though it was inspirational at some points, it felt too good to be true and impossible to relate to. (But then again, shouldn’t there be a willing suspension of disbelief when consuming forms of media such as this?)

Lady Bird (2017, dir. Greta Gerwig) ★★★★★

I’ll probably end up making a separate post dedicated to this movie and how it singlehandedly called me out, as a sensitive, occasionally self-important product of an all-girls Catholic high school. For now, I am forced to condense my overflowing feelings into a couple of sentences. Lady Bird takes place over the course of the titular character's senior year, a pivotal moment in the lives of all teenagers. But, instead of focusing solely on the formulaic firsts like the normal coming-of-age film would, it shines a light on her dwindling relationship with her equally strong-willed mother. Saoirse Ronan’s colorful performance as the human embodiment of my pre-teen self's conscience, and Greta Gerwig’s tremendous ability to make even oddly specific scenes speak to any viewer shine through and speak to me the most, and easily make this gem something I will be recommending this to anyone who bothers to ask for as long as I live.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018, dir. Bryan Singer) ★★★

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding Bo Rhap, particularly its failure to portray Freddie Mercury in a manner that does him justice. While I understand that it is a valid concern for fans of the band, I admit I don’t know enough about who he was as a person to criticize the film in this aspect. Regardless of its factuality, this still was just average for me, the typical rise-and-fall type of biopic that is indicative of a rockstar’s legacy, but with laughably faulty editing. The redeeming factors were Rami Malek’s brilliant portrayal of the legend himself—his Live Aid performance gave me chills that lasted the entire 20 minutes, how alarming—and, obviously, the soundtrack that I kept on loop for several days.

About Time (2013, dir. Richard Curtis) ★

Apparently, this movie focuses on Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), who discovers at age 21 that the men in his family have the power to time-travel and thus revise and repair certain parts of their lives. He uses this to address the fact that he’s never had a girlfriend, and effectively so as he ends up bagging Mary (Rachel McAdams), a charming American who is the settler in this relationship by default. But, of course, this gift is not without its dire consequences—or at least, that’s what it says on Wikipedia. It’s hard to trash on this and admit that I bailed halfway because so many of my friends swear by this. But, I just couldn’t stomach the lack of chemistry between the two leads; the surprisingly boring dialogue for a screenplay crafted by Richard Curtis of Notting Hill fame; and the story that, although bore enough of a resemblance to “The Time Traveler’s Wife” to be interesting, was still not powerful enough to sustain my attention.

Your Name (2016, dir. Makoto Shinkai) ★★★★★

I’m a huge fan of plots that are sure to make my eyes swell and heart hurt—I can’t explain the psychology behind this either. So when this was recommended to me and I had made it through an hour without shedding a single tear, I was prepared to be disappointed. But, the events leading up to the conclusion proceeded to rip me into shreds, as if to taunt me and say, “You asked for it.” Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) and Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki), teenagers living on opposite sides of the country, suddenly start switching bodies following the appearance of a comet. This unexplainable phenomenon causes them to forge an unbreakable bond that transcends the very limits of time and space. I know the description is not much, but it’s best to experience this unique plot for yourself. Besides its storyline, its charm lies in its excruciating attention to detail in depicting life in urban and rural Japan, both in the realistic animation of one picturesque scene after another, and the use of cultural elements to arrive at a twist viewers will not see coming.

Booksmart (2019, dir. Olivia Wilde) ★★★★½

I can't summarize what I imagine Booksmart to be for teenagers in the future, so here's an entire scenario: It's the year 2070. Two young girls of around 16 are sprawled on their bedroom floor, watching this on whatever device they use for streaming. (Maybe it's from an LCD projector embedded in their foreheads, who knows.) The credits roll, and they instantly think to themselves, "Man, we were born in the wrong generation!" (They simultaneously think of doing a high-five, and without raising their hands themselves, it happens because that's technology.) Anyway, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are best friends who played by the rules all throughout high school and realized too late that they could’ve afforded to have a little more fun. On the eve of their graduation, they decide to cram four years’ worth of adventure in a single unpredictable and outrageous night, getting to grips with everything that comes their way in an exceedingly comedic yet refreshing fashion. Also, the protagonists have such a genuine and wholesome relationship: the way they hyped up their most ridiculous looking outfits, or overshared borderline uncomfortable stories is honestly my personal definition of an ideal friendship.

When Harry Met Sally (1989, dir. Rob Reiner) ★★★★½

Despite this film’s constant presence in every “chick flicks you must watch” list I’ve bothered searching up, I spent a huge chunk of my teen years in constant protest against the decision to cast Billy Crystal as the male lead instead of, I don’t know, literally any other actor on the planet. But, once I finished it, I realized that he’s a much better fit than I thought. The laidback Harry to Meg Ryan’s finicky Sally, both of them spare no effort exploring and debunking truths and misconceptions about modern relationships: examples of which are the idea of being high maintenance, and the quintessential question of whether a guy and girl can ever be just friends. Although their dynamic is the definition of slow burn, audiences can’t help but earnestly root for the pair—the frustration brought by the several almosts pay off in the end, as they lead to one of, if not, the most romantic love confession scene.

Hintayan ng Langit (2018, dir. Dan Villegas) ★★★★½

This tale adapted from a play by no less than Juan Miguel Severo is set in purgatory—a grandiose art museum-four star hotel hybrid of sorts—where souls can stop and rest while their papers for entry to heaven are being processed. It is here we meet Manolo (Eddie Garcia) and Lisang (Gina Pareno), ex-lovers with unfinished business. Things admittedly start off a bit slow, but it's understandable since there needs to be ample provision of context regarding the standard operating procedures of this unique waiting area. Once that’s done, the focus stays on the main actors, who drive audiences to tears with their powerful performances, and thought-provoking questions on matters of betrayal, forgiveness, and the afterlife. The ending had me rocking back and forth like a baby, my shirt soaked with tears, so do take heed and stock up on tissues!

The Social Network (2010, dir. David Fincher) ★★★★★

Within its packed first 15 minutes alone, you can easily see what makes The Social Network an example of cinema at its finest: an intoxicated Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) hacks into the websites of all Harvard dorms to create Facebook’s oldest ancestor from scratch, in an attempt to get back at his ex-girlfriend. The atmosphere is tense, the dialogue is loaded with witty one-liners and powerful insight, and the actors are so in touch with their characters they practically fuse into a single person. This remains consistent for the next two hours or so, making for an enjoyable and fast-paced, yet still informative glimpse into the human side of what is arguable the most powerful company of this era. I also heard that it’s much more fun if seen with the cast commentary on, so I’m gonna have to find a copy of that for myself!

Pretty in Pink (1986, dir. Howard Deutch) ★★★★★

I’m cheating here, I know: this has been a long-time favorite, but I guess I can still give a review if I was still 15 when I last saw this. Andie (Molly Ringwald) and Blane (Andrew McCarthy)’s classic “poor girl + rich boy = happily ever after” story is masterfully tackled by John Hughes, who manages to inject equal amounts of swoon-worthy romance and biting criticism of the inherent class divide in society. Others would argue that Duckie (Jon Cryer), Andie’s devoted best friend, is the true star of the show, and while I do agree that he has his shining moments (if you listen closely, you can hear Try A Little Tenderness playing softly in the background), I sadly inherited my mother’s adoration for Andrew, which I will pass on to my child and so on—truly the defining characteristic of our lineage.

St. Elmo’s Fire (1985, dir. Joel Schumacher) ½

I understand that being an adult in the Real World is bound to come with some grave mistakes and lapses in judgment. But, not a single character in this friend group redeems themselves by the end. While Ally Sheedy’s Leslie and Mare Winningham’s Wendy were just borderline forgettable (why did the latter even end up here with the Brat Pack?), Judd Nelson’s Alec cheats on his girlfriend and believes that marriage is what will make him change his ways; Rob Lowe’s Billy neglects the family he didn’t plan on having by fooling around with other women and making a home out of his favorite bar; Demi Moore’s Jules relies on cocaine and extramarital affairs to hide trauma she refuses to process, and Andrew McCarthy’s pretentiously cynical Kevin suddenly claims he knows what love is when Leslie pays attention to him for 10 minutes. But, none of them compare to Emilio Estevez’ Kirby, the sociopath obsessed with a girl he barely knows. It honestly resembles some sick contest of how many problems this gang can cause before they end up behind bars, with the last scene being a lazy and rushed attempt to wrap everything up, in the name of this surface-level “friendship”.

Before Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight (1995, 2004, 2013; dir. Richard Linklater) ★★★★★

Guess it’s better to admit it now, but I made this post as an excuse to rave about how beautiful this trilogy is, the most authentic depiction of love in its purest form. Sunrise has been recommended to me by both friends and the Netflix algorithm, but I put off watching it again and again and again. I mean, what could I possibly get out of looking at two strangers roam around Vienna? Well, to answer that question: quite a lot. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy)’s relationship spans an entire trilogy, and throughout that period, they manage to define then destroy the idea of having a soulmate to call your own in approximately six hours. But certain constancies are present in each movie: the emotion intense even in the smallest of gestures (you don't understand the anguish I feel when the scene at the listening booth randomly pops in my head), the dialogue truly thought-provoking and natural, the settings so picturesque, and the chemistry of the actors so electric I have trouble believing that the director didn’t actually invade the personal space of a real couple and eventually get issued a restraining order.

High Fidelity (2000, dir. Stephen Frears) ★★

I’d like to think of this as an essay: I'm confident that the introduction is the protagonist Rob's soliloquy on his five biggest breakups to understand why he’s so flawed that everyone always leaves him, and the conclusion his attempt to win his ex Laura (Iben Hjejle) back. But as for the body, I’m not entirely sure. Interspersed between these moments are thoughtful top five lists of anything that can be enumerated, and occasional banter with the employees at his record store that may be charming, but do not enhance the film in any way, shape, or form for me. Also, I normally enjoy seeing John Cusack onscreen, but more often than not, he was nagging in front of the camera instead of talking to the people around him; no wonder his relationships failed!

Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010, dir. Edgar Wright) ★★★

I wanted to enjoy this so bad, I swear! Sadly, the one thing I gained after seeing this is knowledge of where the “I’m So Sad, So Very Very Sad” meme came from. I get that it’s supposed to resemble a comic book or video game, and maybe the reason why I failed to appreciate this as much is because I was never a fan of either. I found the prolonged action scenes surprisingly boring, the storyline too fantastic, and the whole quest of having to defeat seven monstrous exes for the hand of a manic pixie dream girl not worth it in the end. Although I can’t give it less than three stars given its impressive visual effects, and appeal to the entire Tumblr community (gamers on one end, millennial film connoisseurs on the other), it’s definitely not something I would watch a second time.

There will surely be more where that came from! (I mean it. Since completing this post, I’ve finished another five films.) If you wanna keep tabs on what I’m watching without having to wait on another post, you can give my Letterboxd a follow. Wishing you love and light always, and don’t forget to wash your hands and pray for our frontliners!

#recs #angeltriestoblog #life dump #movies #movies to watch during quarantine #or at least movies I'VE watched over quarantine #so far #17 films are u CRAZY!!!!#i have carpal tunnel #quarantingz

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listoriented · 6 years ago

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Card City Nights

acronym party

My twitter feed today is half references to the pumpkin fascist’s amplification of civil war threats, and half untilted goose memes. But it’s Tuesday, so I’m going to uh, I’m going to write about Card City Nights.

Card City Nights (CCN) marks a couple of firsts here at List Oriented. First first: seventy-seven games in and it’s the first Digital Collectible Card Game (DCCG) that we’ve encountered. Second first: three decades into life it is the first such that I’ve ever played. I know, it’s been a popular genre for a few years now. Hearthstone, Gwent, Slay the Spire, Artifact, that other one you’re screaming at me to say but I’m not going to — I’ve heard of them all, tried none.

I am as ignorant of wider context here as I’ve ever been, basically, with little to compare CCN to, beyond the time I got into Wizard of the Coast’s (WotC) popular long-running (non-digital) collectible card game (CCG) Magic the Gathering (MTG) as a ten year old, and quit a year later because the friend who introduced it to our group moved back to Canada, and it’s not the kind of hobby a ten year old can afford to keep up with. So while I know CCN is not heaps similar to MTG, I don’t know if it plays at all like any of the other popular DCCGs.

So, I’m going to take the opportunity to try an experiment and attempt to describe this in reduced terms. Wish me luck.

Card City Nights is a video game. You, the player, play as someone who lives in a town (graphically depicted as an island-town) populated by cartoony people along with various supernatural cartoony creatures (the meta-text says that these are all characters from “the Ludosity Universe”, though I cannot speak to this because I have not played any of Ludosity’s other games (oh, I guess that marks a third first)). You can name your character whatever you like and pick their appearance from several options. Anyway, you find out that your town has all gone completely mad…for a card game! I can’t remember if the card game has a name, in the game, or if it’s just referred to as “the card game”. Someone shows you how to play it, and then you find out that if you collect eight unique “legendary” cards, which have been obtained by various people around the town, you can win a million (dollars? credits? coins?) maybe.

How do you obtain the legendary cards from the people who have possession of them? By beating them at the card game, of course! But you’ve got to find the right people, and often you’ve got to beat other people at the card game first in order to get to the legendary card owners, and sometimes there are other people who you can fight for booster packs of cards, as well as money (to buy more cards), but they aren’t strictly compulsory to your progression. Anyway, the point is that Card City Nights is a video game where you role-play as someone who plays a card game in a town full of people who want to play the same card game.

The card game itself is (unusually, I suppose) about placement. Players take turn placing cards onto their own 3x3 grid from a five-card hand. Most cards have one or more arrows pointing along eight directions. You build combos by having the arrows flow into one another, so for instance placing a card with a direct-left arrow to the right of a card with a direct-right arrow allows those two cards to combo. Combos usually require a minimum of three connecting cards, though some cards allow combos of two. As soon as a combo is made, an action is resulted and the cards disappear — you can’t choose to keep trying to add more cards to the combo. Actions depend on the type of cards within the combo. Cards can be either Attack, Defence, Revive or Neutral. Attack combos either reduce the opposing player’s health, or can disable a target card on the opposing player’s board. Defence combos add health to the casting player. Revive combos revive a previously disabled card. Neutral cards can be used to build any of the above combos.

You win if you can get your opponents health down to zero, or if they fill their grid and can’t place any more cards. Each deck has a minimum of twenty-five cards and a maximum of forty. If one player runs out of cards from their deck, they can’t pick up any more and they’ll lose health each turn. Because running out of cards is BAD but your deck has specific quality thresholds, you’re therefore going to be choosing between endurance and stacking, along with if you’re gonna hedge bets with your strategies, or have a deck more focused on attack or defence. Some cards also have special abilities to do with, say, disabling or flipping your opponents cards, or discarding from their deck.

The connective mechanic of the game is fun, and after several hours with the game I start seeing the green lights of a combo pathway in my minds eye as I’m going to sleep. It’s a mechanic that I can see working particularly well for a DCCG rather than a CCG, owing to the aforementioned green-light (I’m not what this game’s physical analogues are, or if such a game could work as well if the players were monitoring their own combos). I got less enjoyment from the process of trying to balance my decks with arrows that match up. It felt like the kind of thing I could fidget with endlessly, but in a “trying to remember a sliver of information that I’m sure I know” way rather than a “doing this is an inherently interesting experience” way.

I did enjoy the setting, for the most part. It leans into cartoon ridiculousness, but there’s something kind of wholesome and homely about the idea of this town, alive at night, everyone playing the same game. The narrative is pretty superfluous, but the writing is light, reasonably self-aware and funny and some of the characters are worth having the extra chat with. It could have used a little more in the music department, just IMO — the loop that plays during card battles repeats a short riff to the point that I couldn’t go more than a few minutes without muting it. But that’s also okay, because it’s the kind of game that pairs alright with other things going on in the background.

I think I’m about halfway through, four legendary cards collected, twenty-four wins and four losses notched. I’m a little sad to be leaving it here unfinished. Perhaps I’ll continue with it, for once. In my own private, unblogged time. Perhaps.

Where/When/Why/Who: Card City Nights came in the Humble Card Game Bundle of January 2015. I bought mainly with the intention of playing Dominion online, a thing I have not subsequently ever done. It was made by Ludosity [website], who are from Sweden (I think?) and also made, uh, Ittle Dew, and most recently uhm, Slap City. Card City Nights launched in 2014, and its sequel came out in 2017.

next is The Cat Lady

#game77 #card city nights #digital collectable card game #dccg #ludosity #games of 2014 #rpg #humble card game bundle

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encephalonfatigue · 6 years ago

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to turn the mills day & night? art thou not newton's pantocrator?

i actually wrote this as a goodreads review of Friedrich Engels’ “The Conditions of the Working Class in England”. i use that website more as a place to post reflections on books i read, and being as self-indulgent as i am, i wrote too much and it can’t fit within the allotted space goodreads provides, so i’m just posting the thing here. a lot of half-baked thoughts in here, but it is a further elaboration on mills, which i have been thinking a lot about for the past couple years.

At it again with those mills. I'm really into the history of mills. Sorry, but mills are a thing for me. I want to do an STS dissertation on mills so if any of y'all know professors who want grad students to write stuff on mills -- I'm right here, hmu. Ok, Engels (of Communist Manifesto fame, but he didn't really write any of it): he's from a rich and austere Calvinist family, in Germany. They owned a bunch of mills -- one in Manchester. Engels was a naughty boy with radical ideas, so his father sends him out to Manchester to straighten him out. Get him to smarten up about those silly ideas of his. He sees the workers of Manchester living in total squalor. He falls in love with one of them, an Irish working class woman, Mary Burns, who he remains with for the rest of her life. He sees how the industrial mills of Manchester have laid waste to the rivers, the air, and the people.

An Engels mill in Germany is still around and is part of an industrial museum now. By the time Engels was 17, his father had secured water rights along the Agger River to power a water mill for the production of cotton yarn. He was able to do so from capital he had accumulated from his Manchester operations. When Engels was 22, he was sent by his father to their Manchester mill on the River Irwell. It was here that Engels collected his materials that would become this book. Engels writes about these rivers framing the areas of Manchester he explored while there:

“Manchester proper lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into the Irwell. On the right bank of the Irwell, bounded by a sharp curve of the river, lies Salford, and farther westward Pendleton; northward from the Irwell lie Upper and Lower Broughton; northward of the Irk, Cheetham Hill; south of the Medlock lies Hulme; farther east Chorlton on Medlock”

Early on in this book Engels starts spewing out numbers galore. It’s breathtaking to see the magnitude of these 19th-century statistics, and the horsepower figures are really interesting too:

“In 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the value of £1,200,000. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not included, in the service of the cotton industry; and, according to MacCulloch’s reckoning, nearly a million and a half human beings were supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000 worked in the mills; the power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to 33,000 horse-power, and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power. At present these figures are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year 1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834.”

With these large numbers in mind, I think it’s worth noting that when Engels was writing this book, the American Civil War was still two decades off. By 1860, two-thirds of the global cotton supply was from the US, much of it cultivated by slaves. Sven Beckert, Harvard history professor known for his book “Empire of Cotton”, writes in The Atlantic:

“On the eve of the Civil War, raw cotton constituted 61 percent of the value of all U.S. products shipped abroad… Now, in 1861, the flagship of global capitalism, Great Britain, found itself dangerously dependent on the white gold shipped out of New York, New Orleans, Charleston, and other American ports. By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.”

Though cotton production was fairly small in Canada at the time, the proportion sourced from the U.S. was of course much higher, due to the obvious reason of proximity. M.N.A. Hinton and T. Barbiero (2012) in a paper write that:

“Canadian cotton mills, of course, were totally dependent on foreign sources of supply to obtain raw cotton. Before Confederation 95 percent of it was imported from the U.S. South; after Confederation 99 percent was imported from the South.”

Marx in “The Poverty of Philosophy” (his denunciation of Proudhon) wrote:

“Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.”

In no small measure because of his acquaintance with Engels, Marx actually mentions cotton right through his first volume of Capital, which was published shortly after the close of the American Civil War. I first realized that Marx and Lincoln were alive at the same time when I read this in Marilynne Robinson’s “Death of Adam”:

“Americans are astonished to realize that Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln were contemporaries, let alone that Lincoln and much of literate America would have read Marx, who published articles on European affairs for years in Horace Greeley's New-York Daily Tribune, and that Marx wrote about Lincoln. They are amazed that Marx also wrote a contemporary account of the Civil War, passionately taking the side of the North. This is only one illustration of the great fact that we have little sense of American history in the context of world history.”

About 600 articles written by Marx were published in the New York Daily Tribune according to Robin Blackburn. While the description of Blackburn’s book “The Unfinished Revolution” inflates the issue somewhat, saying: “Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln exchanged letters at the end of the Civil War,” Marx did write to Lincoln a number of times and Lincoln (or more specifically his ambassador) responded to an address of the International Workingmen’s Association, drafted and signed by Marx, with a brief acknowledgement. What undoubtedly was the case was that the American Civil War was deeply influential in Marx’s writings. This was at a time where a radical wing existed within the Republican Party. Horace Greeley who edited the paper Marx wrote for was one of the founders of the Republican Party and was himself a Fourier socialist — among a number of other Republican Party founders.

Anyways, Engels quotes a number of reports of the environmental conditions and health hazards faced by workers daily in these mill towns. In one of these long excerpts, Engels interrupts to say:

“...it must be added, like all other rivers in the service of manufacture, flows into the city at one end clear and transparent, and flows out at the other end thick, black, and foul, smelling of all possible refuse”

This is not unlike what you find in Toronto later in the century. Based on an interview with Jennifer Bonnell who wrote “Reclaiming the Don” (published by University of Toronto Press), Katie Daubs in a Toronto Star article writes:

“By 1860, there were more than 50 mills in the watershed, supplying paper, flour, wool and wood, and pollution… By the 1880s, the price of Toronto’s growth was told in the river. Industrial runoff, deforestation and sewage had turned the meandering lower Don into a festering flow of pollution.”

Photo: The Wonscotonach flowing under Highway 401 in 2019.

The Wonscotonach took on the name Don River because the imperialist Simcoe thought it reminded him of the River Don in Yorkshire, another industrial hub mentioned a number of times in this book by Engels.

Photos: Evergreen Brick Works (Don Valley Brick Works)

Close by what is now Don Valley Brick Works Park is Todmorden Mills, now a museum and art centre. It was once a paper mill that supplied paper for William Lyon Mackenzie’s sheet “The Colonial Advocate”. Mackenzie was actually integral to the genesis of this mill. He was worried about the cost of paper for the Colonial Advocate and lobbied the government to award anyone who would establish the first paper mill in Upper Canada. A gristmill known as Don Mills was converted into Todmorden Mills, and Mackenzie had a new supply of affordable paper.

Mackenzie came to Canada in the same boat as James Lesslie — a book publisher and Owenite socialist. They would open and run a bookstore for a number of years together across the road from St. James’ Church (now a beautiful cathedral) around the St. Lawrence Market area.

He and Mackenzie were responsible for union organizing and the setting up of Mechanics Institutes — something Engels talks glowingly about in this book, saying:

“Here the children receive a purely proletarian education, free from all the influences of the bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These arrangements are very dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in withdrawing several such institutes,”Mechanics’ Institutes,” from proletarian influences, and making them organs for the dissemination of the sciences useful to the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught, which may draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring in money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance with the natural sciences is utterly useless now when it too often happens that he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large town with his long working-hours.”

A lot of socialists, communists, and Marxists admire William Lyon Mackenzie. Some examples include — an excerpt from a Young Socialist League leaflet

“For we are required, nothing more nor less, than to carry forward the revolutionary struggle that William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau launched in 1837. That revolution exhausted itself so that as Mackenzie, commenting on its fate in the U.S., saw: ‘the power of the community pass from democracy of numbers into the hands of an aristocracy — not of noble ancestry and ancient lineage, but of monied monopolists and jobbers and heartless politicians.’”

The Communist Party of Canada website states:

“We honour those who led many of these struggles — Louis-Joseph Papineau in Quebec, William Lyon MacKenzie in Ontario, Louis Riel on the Prairies, and Amor de Cosmos in British Columbia.”

And in a rather long article by Julien Arseneau, , William Lyon Mackenzie’s importance to Canadian history is exposited on a Marxist website.

Photos: Silverthorn Mill ruins at Meadowvale Village, operated by Gooderham & Worts for a period of time. Sketched by the likes of A.J. Casson.

My interest in the mills of the Greater Toronto Area originates in Meadowvale Village, and there is a William Lyon Mackenzie connection here also. This is the area from which my neighbourhood of Meadowvale got its name. ‘Vale’ is the type of word for valley you might find in the romanticist verse of Shelley, a poet both Karl and Eleanor Marx were very fond of. So there was a certain poetic cachet that developers could draw on by co-opting the name ‘Meadowvale’ for their subdivisions father out west in the 1960s.

Anyways, back in Mackenzie’s time, the area I now live around was known as Switzer’s Corners, named after the Switzer family — Irish settlers who had garnered somewhat of a reputation as being seditious agitators and friends of Mackenzie. They would host him at their home when he was campaigning in the area, and one of the sons of the family, Martin Switzer, once rounded up a bunch of peace-loving Quakers (around Elgin, south of London) to go join the armed insurrection that had been launched from Montgomery’s Tavern. Charles Switzer (related to Martin Switzer) eventually ran what became known as the Gooderham store for some time, and was a fixture within the Meadowvale Village community.

Photo: The Gooderham store no longer exists, but the Gooderham mansion still stands. Now a private school. How fitting.

At the mouth of the Wonscotonach (Don River), as it empties into Lake Ontario, was the main industrial operation of Gooderham & Worts. This site is now a tourist destination known as the Distillery District, and the name Gooderham & Worts is still plastered throughout the Victorian industrial buildings there.

This company owned a number of other mill sites around the area, including a couple along the Credit River. One was a textile mill, although it was spinning flax (linen) and not slave-grown cotton. Gooderham & Worts, however, owned another major mill site in Meadowvale Village, and owned a department store there comparable with the T. Eaton’s store in Toronto (the one Charles Switzer ran for a period), with lavish and fashionable offerings for the wealthier folks of the area.

As with the ecological destruction of the Wonscotonach (Don River), similar results were manifesting in Mississauga’s Missinihe (Credit River). Donald Smith in his book “Mississauga Portraits” writes what Chief Peter Jones would have seen before and after the mills:

“The great trees stood so closely together that they formed a canopy shutting out the sunshine and most of the daylight leaving the ground free of undergrowth. He remembered the salmon-rich streams and rivers that flowed from the forested interior down to the harbour. Now the area was extensively deforested. The building of dams for gristmills and sawmills now prevented Ontario salmon reaching their upper spawning grounds. Released sawdust blanketed the bottoms of streams and rivers. By the mid-1850s, the salmon runs had declined to the point of extinction.”

The Anishinaabe ethnobotanist and Dalhousie professor Jonathan Ferrier referred to the clearcutting of forests around Lake Ontario as a “genocide by sawmills”.

I’ve mentioned in a previous review the child labour Mother Jones experienced in American textile mills. I wasn’t able to find evidence of similar stuff in Toronto at the time of writing that interview, but I have found some stuff since then. Firstly, Jean Barman in the Canadian Encyclopedia writes:

“The first wave of provincial legislation regulating child labour in factories and mines began to pass in the 1870s and 1880s. But the prohibition of child labour did not come until the 20th century.”

Secondly I found in a republished version of Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital, 1889 where James Brown a Toronto factory inspector is being interviewed about, among other things, child labour:

“Q. Did you notice […] any large percentage of children?

A. Yes; in some of them — in the cotton mills and some woolen mills, in cigar factories and knitting works, and some others.

Q. Were there many of those children below the age designated by the Act?

A. Well, I found about 40 girls under 14. Girls are not allowed under 14 nor boys under 12. I found six boys altogether nine years of age, and some ten or eleven.”

Mother Jones was from a working-class Irish family, and Engels spends quite a long time discussing how the Irish were an underclass in the industrial towns throughout England, and suffered extreme exploitation at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy.

I think it’s important to see a lot of the things happening in this century (the dispossession of land from and genocide of indigenous peoples, the global trade and Naval Operations those colonially sourced commodities went into, and the cotton plantations powered by American slavery) as deeply connected to the horrors of environmental destruction, child labour, and the extremely filthy and diseased living and working conditions of the English proletariat — as all connected together in the matrices of the capitalist economy. Capitalism cannot be blamed for all the ills in the world, but it certainly sustains and shelters many of them for the benefit of a small elite class of people.

It is hilarious that billionaires like Nick Hanauer are growing extremely anxious, feeling as if a revolution is going to break out any day. Rich people are not oblivious to the incomprehensibly enormous inequality that persists in the world. Hanauer has tried to gather other really rich people like him to lobby the government to implement some sort of ‘wealth tax’, which does not exist now. They can only extract wealth from the rich by way of income taxes right now. You might have heard this covered in a recent episode on NPR Planet Money. Starbucks piece of shit Howard Shultz is absolutely disdainful of this proposal put forward by the likes of Elizabeth Warren. It’s hilarious to see some rich people talk about their generosity in a self-congratulatory way when what they are really worried about is that thing Rousseau warned about: "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich". This is at the core of Hanauer’s ‘Pitchfork Economics’. He outright said, at the end of the NPR Planet Money Episode that he’s fine with a wealth tax that ‘slows’ the growth of his wealth, which is the moderate proposal made by people like Elizabeth Warren. This is already rare among the extremely rich. Hanauer mentioned that he can’t be on board as soon as this wealth tax ‘stops’ the growth of his wealth or even farther, reduces it. Laughable really. Engels had something to say about people like this:

“The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: “If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!” It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois!

…What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow.”

Nick Hanauer is worried about some pending insurrection of violence on the horizon. What many people do not realize is that this is precisely the concern Engels had, except he obviously didn’t believe a ‘heterodox’ reformation of capitalism was the answer. Often times ‘communism’ has taken on a reputation of encouraging brutal and violent revolution, but Engels saw communism in a very different way — a way to prevent the cruel striking out of the poor in a unproductive way that accomplished little except the carrying out of individual revenge (think Atwood’s “Alias Grace”). Engels writes:

“Besides, it does not occur to any Communist to wish to revenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, i.e., Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual. Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing; and the more their action against the bourgeoisie will lose its savage cruelty. If, indeed, it were possible to make the whole proletariat communistic before the war breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that is no longer possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will be enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the proletariat, to enable the communistic party, with the help of events, to conquer the brutal element of the revolution and prevent a “Ninth Thermidor”.”

Engels however is not rejecting the ‘ressentiment’ and its related ‘slave morality’ that people like Nietzsche were so disdainful of (a narrative that people like Jordan Peterson have leveraged for very particular ends). Anyways, Engels writes:

“English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat… They understand, it is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state of England.”

Ayn Rand once called Christianity the best kindergarten of communism possible, and verses like Mark 3:27 always remind me of this ‘slave morality’ that Nietzsche talked about. In the verse Jesus says:

“But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”

This verse is also mentioned in one form or another in the other two synoptic gospels. Craig Keener supposes it is an allusion to Isaiah 49:24-26 (the context being oppression under Babylonian imperialism), which I think is a good point of resonance:

“Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce?

But this is what the Lord says:

“Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save.

I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine.”

Second Isaiah maybe one-upped the revolutionary Rousseau here. That’s some pretty gruesome stuff. This sort of radical rhetoric within faith communities was not unknown in Upper Canada’s more revolutionary moments. In the neighbourhood where I live there was a Methodist church on Switzer’s Corners known as Switzer’s Church. It eventually became known as Eden Methodist Church, and today is Eden United Church (where I visit not infrequently — though it’s no longer a hotbed of revolutionary fervour). It is fascinating to learn how Methodism was caught up with Owenite socialism in Upper Canada at the time. More broadly both Owenite socialism and Chartism were spread under the umbrella of the Reform Movement in Upper Canada. Engels speaks of both Robert Owen and his brand of socialism (critically) and Chartism (more approvingly) in his book on the working class in England. He also quotes a radical Methodist preacher named Rayner Stephens. Engels writes:

“The people were called upon to arm themselves, were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in the French Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson, said to the assembled working- people of Manchester:

‘You have no need to fear the power of Government, the soldiers, bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can wield it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of straw dipped in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its hundreds of thousands of soldiers will do against this one weapon if it is used boldly.’”

Haha, wow, this is like an episode of Damnation. Mackenzie himself is probably best known as a failed revolutionary, who led the feeble 1837 insurrection from Montgomery’s Tavern that was easily thwarted by Jarvis. (Peter Matthews, one of the two men hanged as a result of this insurrection, was encouraged to join the uprising by a Baptist preacher from Markham Township called George Barclay.) Mackenzie would go on to occupy Navy Island, just upstream from Niagara Falls and declare it to be the Republic of Canada, before eventually escaping to the U.S. — later returning to Canada in 1849 to take back a place in the legislature. The 1837 uprising was also an important theme in Margaret Atwood’s book Alias Grace (my favourite Atwood novel I’ve read so far), and the role of certain sorts of Methodists and Quakers is thematic in the novel as well.

For all the fear-mongering over atheism that Christians have expressed against Marx and Engels, I think Engels was very well-read in religion. And he knew the working classes generally weren’t, though he didn’t necessarily see that as a problem. Engels inserts a very large and humorous excerpt from the “Children’s Employment Commission’s Report” of working class children being asked about their faith:

“One child had ‘attended a Sunday school regularly for five years; does not know who Jesus Christ was, but has heard the name. Never heard of the twelve apostles. Never heard of Samson, nor of Moses, nor Aaron, etc.’ Another ‘attended a Sunday school regularly six years. Knows who Jesus Christ was, he died on the cross to shed his blood, to save our Saviour.’”

Engels however felt that education was focused on very unproductive sectarian theology and no proper moral teaching:

“The consequence is that religion, and precisely the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions; that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected.”

Engels goes onto elaborate the general indifference to religion felt by much of the working classes as a result of this pedagogical failure:

“All the writers of the bourgeoisie are unanimous on this point, that the workers are not religious, and do not attend church… among the masses there prevails almost universally a total indifference to religion, or at the utmost, some trace of Deism too undeveloped to amount to more than mere words, or a vague dread of the words infidel, atheist, etc. The clergy of all sects is in very bad odour with the working-men…”

Engels likely thought this outcome to have a fairly bright side, considering the theological convictions of the bourgeoisie which he described in this way:

“It is all very pretty and very agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the “sacredness of property” asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of itself. Money is the God of this world; the bourgeois takes the proletarian’s money from him and so makes a practical atheist of him. No wonder, then, if the proletarian retains his atheism and no longer respects the sacredness and power of the earthly God…

…The English bourgeoisie is violently scandalised at the extravagant living of the workers when wages are high; yet it is not only very natural but very sensible of them to enjoy life when they can, instead of laying up treasures which are of no lasting use to them, and which in the end moth and rust (i.e., the bourgeoisie) get possession of.

…the humanity of the workers is constantly manifesting itself pleasantly. They have experienced hard times themselves, and can therefore feel for those in trouble, whence they are more approachable, friendlier, and less greedy for money, though they need it far more than the property-holding class. For them money is worth only what it will buy, whereas for the bourgeois it has an especial inherent value, the value of a god, and makes the bourgeois the mean, low money-grubber that he is.

…It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic bosh.

During my residence in England, at least twenty or thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. …many have died of starvation, where long-continued want of proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produced such debility that causes which might otherwise have remained inoperative brought on severe illness and death. The English working-men call this “social murder”, and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are they wrong?”

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simplesinger · 6 years ago

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I had no idea that this is what Jai Paul was going through. What a brutal experience, and example for how tech/culture can be so incredibly destructive. It’s really great that he is back, and that he was able to describe, work through, and come out on the other side of this experience.

So looking forward to what he brings into the world next.

“A message for fans.

I wanted to use this opportunity to share a little information about what happened regarding my music in April 2013. As you may know, some of my unfinished demos were put up for sale illegally via Bandcamp. The leak consisted of a fairly random collection of tracks I had made over quite a long period of time (from roughly 2007 to 2013), in various stages of completion. Some are short skits and beats from my MySpace page back in the day before I signed a record deal. A large proportion of this music was to be completed and released officially in some format.

Regarding how this music got leaked, the short answer is that I don't really know. I believe these particular versions of tracks may have come from a burned CD that got misplaced - a fair amount of people would have had access to my music in various forms between 2010 and 2013.

The first I knew about the leak was when I woke up to a phone call from my management at around 3 am on the night it happened. I contacted the City of London Police immediately. No-one in my team knew how best to deal with something like this and there was some confusion as to how we should react. I remember thinking if we could act fast we might be able to contain it somewhat and keep damage to a minimum. However, because it was 3 am on Saturday morning it was tough to get hold of anybody. Whoever was behind it likely planned it this way.

I understand that it might have seemed like a positive thing to a lot of people - the music they had been waiting to hear was finally out there - but for me, it was very difficult to deal with. As things unfolded I went through a number of phases, but the immediate, overriding feeling was one of complete shock. I felt numb, I couldn't take it all in at first. I felt pretty alone with everything, like no-one else seemed to view the situation in the same way I did: as a catastrophe. There was a lot going through my mind, but the hardest thing to grasp was that I'd been denied the opportunity to finish my work and share it in its best possible form. I believe it's important for artists as creators to have some control over the way in which their work is presented, at a time that they consider it complete and ready.

I was also frustrated by how all this was being framed online, leading to the widespread belief that I had decided to leak my own music, despite my record label and I saying otherwise. It didn't fit at all with anything I had done previously in style or attitude, and especially not in presentation. To make matters worse I was advised at the time to keep quiet and leave things ambiguous, but this didn't really fit with my vibe and there was disagreement among us. I soon felt unable to engage with it at all.

I suppose the music was special to me in a way, stuff that I began writing as a teenager in my room just for fun, eventually signing my record deal with it at 21, and hoping that I could put it towards a debut album with XL. I guess having that dream torn up in front of me hit me pretty hard. Of course, I'm not the only person who was affected, it was disappointing to all who worked on the music and to the wider team working on my project at my management, label and publisher etc.

A police investigation started during the Summer. Email addresses from the Bandcamp page and a linked PayPal account led to two suspects who were eventually arrested, their property raided and computers seized. Nothing was found, but by this time it was almost a year after the leak had taken place. The BPI kindly offered to step in and help towards the investigation so I'd like to thank them for their concern. I'm grateful to the City of London police for their efforts. Whoever was behind the leak collected a significant amount of money from sales, which was quickly frozen by the Police. Thanks to co-operation from PayPal and Bandcamp, everyone who paid money to download the music was refunded.

There were some long term effects for me following the leak. There was a significant loss of trust. For the next 3 years or so this one event was all anybody asked me about. Everyone was convinced that the story they had read online - that I'd leaked the music myself - was true, so I had to repeatedly explain the reality of the situation over and over again. It was frustrating and disorientating to find that I had no ownership over the story (or the music) and that people were choosing to believe a different truth. I guess this all made it feel like I had thousands of people not believing me, not trusting me, and also that in some strange way I was responsible for all of it. On a personal level, things gradually went south and I had a breakdown of sorts. I was in quite a bad place for some time. I was unable to work and withdrew from life in general.

Recently, I've been having therapy of various kinds, and this has helped me get to a place where I can begin to think about returning to music. I am thankful for that. It has allowed me to understand some of what happened in 2013 a little better - not through anybody else's lens, but through my own, and through this, I've been able to acknowledge some of the trauma and grief. I've grown to appreciate that people have enjoyed that music and lived with it, and I accept that there is no way to put that shit back in the box. There was no way to fix what happened and continue down our original path. Looking back, it's sad to think about what could have been, but it is what it is and I had to let go.

Founding the Paul Institute has also been an important step for me in terms of putting stuff out there again and getting back to what I love. I wanted to create a positive environment that artists could be supported in and stand together through some of the pressures that can make this industry difficult to navigate. I'm proud of what we've achieved so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing our artists develop.

We have decided now to make the April 2013 leaked music readily available so that those who want to hear it can access it via platforms they're used to. In order to do this we had to remove a bunch of samples that we were unable to clear, so what you hear won't be exactly what leaked in 2013 - but I know the original stuff is still floating about if you know where to look. Of course, it's completely surreal to me that this music will now exist officially in this form, unfinished, and even sequenced by the people who leaked it! Much of the tracking and production work was there, but it's a shame about the scratch vocals and the overall mix. This is also not all of the material from those early sessions so again it's a shame not to be able to present something completed, in its entirety. It will always be a little painful for me to listen to myself, but I don't want to deny people a chance to hear it, especially as it's already knocking about. Hopefully, this message gives it all a bit of context and answers a few questions about it.

Finally I just wanted to express how grateful and appreciative I am for the friends, artists, colleagues and strangers that have stuck by me and shown so much love, support and mad patience over the last however many years. I truly appreciate the help and positivity I've been given to get back on my feet. I wanted to put two new tracks out to say thank you.

For the double B side, we decided it would make most sense to pick up where I'd left off, so I've finished two tracks that I was working on at the time of the leak. I've signed and numbered all 500 copies of the white label vinyl. I've not had a website or merch for sale before so I'm excited to share all that stuff with you. We'll see where things go from here.

Anyway, if you got this far thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the tunes. As always, you can find me down the pub (shout out to all the safe people who've come up to me to say hello over the years) so I'll see you down there for a pint later. Peace, Jai P.S. 10% of profits on merchandise will go to SANE.”

via Jai Paul Returns With 2 New Songs, Officially Drops 2013 Leaked Album: Listen

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rejectrhynnblog-blog · 5 years ago

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About: Reject Rhynn

Introduction

Hey! I’m Rhynn, the author of Reject Rhynn. This is a blog I will be writing on as a part-time job. I have big dreams and high hopes for this blog. I will work hard to make quality content regardless of my lack of experience in the blogging community. I am an average writer but I did think about blogging for a while in the past but dropping the idea instantly. I also stopped regularly writing for leisure 2 years ago; though I did expand my world on writing in those 2 years, I really haven’t had a good concept in a while. I usually write romance-drama fiction but this isn’t going to stop me from writing this blog, and learning to become a better writer in the process.

Blog Schedule

This blog will be composed of 2 different blog series: the 1st will be mainly on analysing stories and ideas I had as a young writer but will be divided into sub-series, and the 2nd is about my Mental Health journey. As of right now, I have 2 sub-series planned to release for my 1st blog series called, Journey from the Past (a small tribute to the hit live musical Anastasia). I will take the topic discussed on the post that was released right before it, and expand it by discussing the development of my mental state from the past to the present with the blog series called, Emotion’s Game.

Schedule (unless announced on Twitter):

Debut Post on my Patreon, Tumblr and Facebook Page: March 2, 2020

Journey from the Past, The Blog Series: every first Monday of the month

Emotion’s Game, The Blog Series: every third Monday of the month

Exclusive Livestream (for all Patrons {after 20 Patrons}): TBA on Twitter 7 days before

Exclusive Content (for Patrons: Official Believers and Reject Fam): TBA

Early Access (for Patrons: Reject Fam): every last Monday of the month before posting

Exclusive Monthly Life Deep Dive (for Patrons: Reject Fam): TBA

History in Writing

I really don’t have much experience with writing or editing. I just really do it for leisure. I never really sold a work or worked for any organization, company or anybody for that matter. I did have a few published short stories/fanfiction on Wattpad but those things make me cringe and I would appreciate it if no one looked for it. I have at least a hundred unpublished and unfinished works and ideas, some written on random notebooks, some written on loose papers in a folder kept under my bed, some are in my laptop, and some got lost as time flew by.

History with Mental Health

Let’s set something straight, I am not in any way, shape or form, a Mental Health professional I am not here to give out advice, and maybe even my story can be a sample of a do not do story; but it is totally fine if by chance you feel like sharing your story to me or my audience. Yes, I don’t go through much in the physical world aspect but I do have troubles of my own within myself. I am seeing my own psychiatrist so no need to worry. I am a Mental Health Awareness advocate. I don’t agree with any stigma that other people seem to think is true, but I do have my own opinions, whether popular or unpopular it maybe, it is only formed based on the experience I had. Other than that, I tend to stick to facts from multiple sources and testimonials. I like to ask and do research before assuming things, and I hope that you as my audience will too be open to asking questions and clarifications before assuming the worst or best.

Note

I do come out as problematic to people from my past but I will do my best to stir away from drama. I will write the full truth even if it meant bruising my reputation, as to show that I am not perfect in any way and that though I try my best I still do mess up sometimes. I will never write about anyone in my life or name drop them in this blog, though if I am recalling a past experience I will not name anyone or even mention their connection with me. If there is sensitive content to be posted, I will send out a note with its warnings before posting the work. I will make sure to write the warnings first in the post besides the title, and include appropriate hotlines for the specific topic as the end of the blog post.

My Plans

My initial plan for this blog is very simple: share my story, make people aware, and inspire the people who need it most. I really don’t expect to blow up overnight but I will work hard to reach my goals for this blog. I do have a Patreon (with great benefits if I may add) to help me fund the development of my blog. I am not requiring anyone to contribute to Patreon since my blog post will be very public, but I am offering exclusive content, exclusive votes and suggestions, exclusive access to posts, exclusive livestreams, early access to my posts and if you’re interested in my life, a monthly vlog composed of things I did and updates during the prior .

I have a few plans up my sleeve:

35 Patrons – I will set up a basic website where all my blogs will be found and hopefully be organized.

100 Patrons – I will hire a cast member to upgrade and possibly maintain my website. (including proper credits)

150 Patrons – I will hire a cast member to help me brainstorm and edit my works. (including proper credits)

200 Patrons – I will hire a cast member to be the official illustrator. (including proper credits)

250 Patrons – I will consider selling merchandise and maybe sending a few samples of merch to my Patrons.

500 Patrons – If in high demand, I’ll start a podcast (with an additional segment interviewing one member from my beloved Reject Fam. Also Contributors and Believers will be free to suggest and vote for topic ideas for the podcast).

Cast Member(s)

I call them cast members as a tribute to my love for theatre, also I see them like my equals because they are as important or even more than me when it comes to this blog. I will hire cast members with little to no experience but with a burning passion for the required job and/or mental health awareness. I’ll also accept volunteers, if any would like to join in on the fun.

RHYNN PUNSALAN (OWNER, Executive Producer)

ROBERT PUNSALAN (VOLUNTEER: Editor, Consultant, Accountant, Overall Supportive Father) - As of right now, I am only starting the blogs, so I do get most, if not all of my support from my family and friends. (BTW: Thank you so much)

The Reoccurring Colours (Green and White/Silver)

It’s nothing original and sentimental, I just find this specific type of green to be quite aesthetically pleasing to the eye with white or silver. Also, a tribute to the only book series I read for leisure, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, and the first podcast I listened to and got me into podcasts and the art of it, Potterless by Mike Schubert. They are in no way, shape or form sponsoring me or working with me (though I would love to be part of Potterless). Basically the Green and White/Silver is the house that was given to me by Pottermore (now known as Wizarding World) and I gave myself after binge watching the movies a couple of years it all came out, and being labelled Hufflepuff by someone in my class without explain to me what it was (no offense to the Hufflepuffs, I just am not one), Slytherin.

Breathe and Stay Alive

I’ll be honest, I said to myself (when making my welcoming note), “I badly need a catchphrase,” so I went through a few random papers and notebooks looking for a phrase I can use to end my posts with, since I really don’t know what will be award-winning to my audience just yet. Upon the many phrases and quotes I wrote down, only a handful were positive enough to be put in a blog (without any context) about mental health awareness. I found a short, not even long enough to be a prose, paragraph, I wrote down on the blackboard of my classroom during lunchtime that I made my friend copy before the bell rang. It was titled “Breathe” and it had something to do with a corrupt government and the ending statement went along the lines of, “to stay alive.” I liked the irony of using a phrase of the bad guy from my story and put a positive connotation to it, so I used it.

#introduction #clarifications #random stories #patreon #patron #slytherin #writing #blogging #blog #blog post

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zarbakht-bilal · 6 years ago

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Hello beautiful souls,

I hope you all are as charming as always and cherishing your life to bits 🙂 I am here with a new article that I’ve been wondering to write on for the past two days. This is about how you can surround yourself with positive vibes all the time without being bored, lazy and depressed. So without any further delay, let’s dive into the blog ❤

1. Keep your space clean:

Be it your room, personal study, working space, or research cubicle, make sure you keep your space neat, clean, and organized.

A study led by associate professor Nicole R. Keith, Ph.D., research scientist and professor at Indiana University, found that people with clean houses are healthier than people with messy houses. Keith and her colleagues tracked the physical health of 998 African Americans between the ages of 49 and 65, a demographic known to be at an increased risk for heart disease. Participants who kept their homes clean were healthier and more active than those who didn’t. In fact, house cleanliness was even more of a predictor for physical health than neighborhood walkability.

A 2010 study published in the scientific journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin used linguistic analysis software to measure the way 60 individuals discussed their homes. Women who described their living spaces as “cluttered” or full of “unfinished projects” were more likely to be depressed and fatigued than women who described their homes as “restful” and “restorative.” The researchers also found that women with cluttered homes expressed higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

In 2011, researchers at Princeton University found that clutter can actually make it more difficult to focus on a particular task. Specifically, they found that the visual cortex can be overwhelmed by task-irrelevant objects, making it harder to allocate attention and complete tasks efficiently.

A survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that people who make their beds every morning are 19 percent more likely to report regularly getting a good night’s sleep. People who were surveyed also reported benefits from having clean sheets — specifically, 75 percent of people said they get a better night’s rest when their sheets are freshly cleaned because they feel more comfortable. (Psychology Today, 2016)

2. Organize Yourself:

Organizing yourself is the easiest thing in this world to do right now. In this modern era of technology where people are becoming quite organized and sensible day by day, it is very easy to get planners, and organizers from different websites and online stores. Planners give you a next-level sense of responsibility and future planning.

From to-dos to the grocery list, from tasks to homework, from house chores to paying bills, from class schedules to birthday reminders, everything can be penned-down in a single notebook that you can proudly call as your planner. I decorated a beautiful planner in last winter vacations and am using it successfully since then. I also implemented several creative ideas like my yearly transformation to track down my fashion sense and photography skills enhancement. I will stick a fresh picture ate the end of every month below the respective month name. Also, I created a birthday tracker of my friends and family that helped me in reminding the birthdays of my friends which I always forget otherwise, thus earning much disappointment.

3. Time for a Change:

I don’t know about others, but a lot of Asians seems to have this particular habit of keeping the old things for years while purchasing new things simultaneously. It is totally understandable that some things are very dear to us and we cherish them forever, but we shall keep this in mind that:

A change is always beautiful!

Have an old rose-flower pot on your study for two years? Time to replace it with new crystal crockery with fresh lilies instead. Have a vintage wallpaper in your room for too long? Why not try a summer color this time? Have a cute cactus by your bedside? Let’s bring a sunflower pot in its place this season. Been sipping on this bright red mug all winters? The whole supermarket is filled with beautiful new mugs in pastel colors that you are absolutely going to love. Replacing old things with new ones always help to rejuvenate your mind and keeping your soul alive. Whereas, decluttering the old stuff is important to avoid mess and useless cluttering. It is true that old is gold, but a fresh change always motivates us to do something beautiful and unique. A change always helps us in making miracles happen.

4. Green heals the soul:

Color psychology suggests that different colors can evoke psychological reactions. For example, color is often thought to have an impact on moods and emotions. Sometimes these reactions are related to the intensity of a color, while in other cases they are the product of experience and cultural influences.

How does the color green make you feel? For many people, it has strong associations with nature and immediately brings to mind the lush green of grass, trees, and forests. Perhaps because green is so heavily associated with nature, it is often described as a refreshing and tranquil color.

“Green, which is Nature’s colour, is restful, soothing, cheerful, and health-giving.” – Paul Brunton

According to color psychology, green is a color of balance and harmony which is very important to keep your mind and thoughts intact while living. The green color is reported to give you a sense of fresh start and a punch of positive thoughts and ideas every morning. To inculcate green in your environment, you can go from minimal to grandeur. From keeping a cactus on your bedside to raising a palm tree in your garden, from hanging a spider plant in your window to growing a dragon tree in your living room, you can surround yourself with the greens, and ultimately attracting the positive aura.

Green is a color that can evoke powerful emotions. It is a dominant color in nature that makes you think of growth. Think of nature and see the incredible variety of shades of green expressing renewal and life. Green evokes a feeling of abundance and is associated with refreshment and peace, rest and security. Green helps people feel rested and secure. People are invited to wait in the “green room” before going on camera to relax. Many doctors even use green in their offices to put patients at ease. Green encourages a balance in your brain that leads to decisiveness. However, green may also be perceived negatively when associated with materialism, envy, and possessiveness (Christi Wharton, 2019).

5. Do not argue about un-knowledgeable things:

It is the most common behavior of us humans that we have to participate in almost everything even if we are unacquainted by the context and background knowledge. I have learned this thing from my personal experience actually!

A lot of the times, if some controversy breaks out, we all become the scholars and start judging or defending a certain party without knowing the whole story, and without analyzing both sides. This behavior is spreading 99% of the negativity in this world today. What actually happens is that when we start a social media fight without complete knowledge, and somebody else (who is acknowledged and learned) confronts us, we, unable to defend our claim start being intolerant by bad-mouthing, hating and criticizing the character of the other person. Such a situation creates a very destructive atmosphere where we learn nothing but extremism, intolerance and destructive criticism. Also, as a piece of advice, stay away from politics if you want your mind to work without any bounds and bias. Live as an individual and give your stance likewise without being under any impact and influence.

6. Witness Maximum Positivity:

What if you decorate your bedroom’s wall with all the bloodshed and warfare images from the time of Hitler? How would you feel whenever you’d look at those pictures throughout the day and the night? On the other hand, if you put up vibrant frames displaying positive quotations, rainbow and sunshine depiction, plants and unicorn portrayals, you would feel completely different than the earlier scenario.

Being a student, I own four notebooks, a bag, planner, laptop, phone, USB, wallet, makeup bag, pencil pouch and a collection of different pens and markers. To witness the maximum positivity, I decorate my notebooks myself in the vacations or the semester break with all of my favorite morale-boosting quotations.

Moreover, I have made a bunch of photo frames and wall-hangings displaying my own happy-drawings and positive-paintings. You can also implement this witness-maximum-positivity phenomenon in your life and trust me you will feel an emergence of positive aura inside yourself. I made multiple bookmarks to help myself in not-giving-up on a book and to carry on with a punch of colorful motivation. My planner also has this new-year-resolution front page that reminds me of what I have achieved so far and what is already left, what do I need to improve and how better can I get? Being a free-lancer, I have selected a minimal laptop wallpaper that says “Create” and trust me the wallpaper alone helps me with writing new things and creating new ideas when I am feeling bland. I also decorated one of my notebooks with my favorite J.K. Rowling’s quote that says:

“It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us!”

This quote helps me in my mood swings throughout the lectures, it boosts my morale when I score lesser than expected in any exam, and cheers me up when I achieve something great! Below is a collection of my personal contribution to make my life witness more positivity throughout the day. 🙂

I hope this article would help most of you guys. Happy Blogging! 🙂

Adios,

xoxo.

Tips to surround yourself with positivity. Hello beautiful souls, I hope you all are as charming as always and cherishing your life to bits 🙂 I am here with a new article that I've been wondering to write on for the past two days.

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itcowcer · 8 years ago

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Elagabalus

The following was sent to me anonymously after my original posting about PP on r/NoSleep. Strangely enough that original post was taken down shortly thereafter. For those of you that missed that posting I will include a link at the end of this story. I do not believe it is necessary to read this to understand the horror of this content. However, for those interested it may provide some context.

What I have here appears to be an excerpt from a yet unfinished, yet unpublished book by an independent author named Paul Holland. Holland went quiet some time ago and many believed this was because of some kind of self-imposed seclusion done in order to finish his latest work. This speculation was not voiced by the author’s small –time publisher Mark Gergich, who was very vocal in his belief that Holland had been abducted and was in mortal danger. Gergich was not able to tell officials the last known location of Holland, however he did direct detectives to the website of The Pumpkin Patch. The Pumpkin Patch is a cultish arts movement allegedly responsible for the ritual murders Holland was investigating. The detectives hit a wall when they found that the site was no longer available (Apparently previous actions had been made to take down the site when a buyer discovered that the artwork he purchased was painted using human blood and refuse.) As of now there are no leads on Paul Holland, although I have heard rumors that the PP website still exists on the Dark Web. If this is the case, anyone with the capabilities to reach this site will likely find more answers than I am capable. Good luck.

Elagabalus

Paul Holland

Chapter VI

I had managed to find the dark place described in the journals. It was apparent that I was not looking hard enough during my first few perusals of Kathryn’s entries, because all of the clues were there. My greatest mistake was in assuming that the only important sections were those pertaining to her diabolical club. I made a point to shy away from entries that were too personal in some kind of late respect for the deceased girl. In doing so, I missed some of the more important details leading to her death; in particular the location of “The Studio.”

On August 14th, Kathryn described a penultimate meeting with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Brian. It was a pleasant day by the James River, but despite this, Kathryn had felt a great amount of discomfort with the meeting. It had been a few months since the two had been separated by a summer intersession. Kathryn had returned to her family home in southern Virginia, whereas Brian remained on campus. Though Kathryn tried to continue communication with the man that she loved, she found it more and more difficult to keep his attention as the weeks wore on. Eventually the two drifted apart. Even when she returned, she felt immense difficulty when re-establishing communication with the boy she had once felt so free and open with.

As Kathryn waited on a park bench overlooking the rambling rapids of the James, she could feel a heavy, sinking discomfort in her stomach. She did not know what would become of this meeting. She did not know whether the boy felt the same way about her, as he did before, or even if she still felt that way. As the minutes wore on, and he finally appeared, she could tell that everything had changed. He was not the same Brian. Although he spoke warmly to her she could tell his mind was adrift somewhere else. Even so, she decided to stick with him through the rest of the evening, under the presumption that trying was the least she could do considering all they had been through together.

The night wore on and though the evening was pleasant, the spark had been gone between the two. Both were very aware of this as they walked back to the place where her bike was chained, near the old civil war exhibit by the river. She fumbled the lock of her bike, her mind reeling over the thought that their once electric relationship would end without a word, aside from the possible wave good bye as she rode her bicycle out into the night. She thought that Brian felt this as well, which is how she rationalized his next, eccentric actions. He begged her to spend some more time with him, coaxed her to follow him to some dark place by the riverside, and convinced her that he had something to show her.

Though Brian had been acting strangely the entire day, Kathryn still hoped that there was some way they could remedy the situation and go back to the brilliant winter and spring they had shared together. She followed him to a dark place beneath a foot bridge. She had been here numerous times with her friends when they adventured to the small island situated in the middle of the James. Although she had been here often, she was surprised when Brian pushed aside some corrugated metal revealing a dark, yawning tunnel leading downward.

Brian looked at her desperately and petitioned that they both explore the creepy forgotten place together, implying that it was something they would have done before. Kathryn took one look at the tunnel and, seeing only darkness, decided she would have none of it. She left him there then, riding up to the city above while he descended alone into the tunnel. The two would officially break-up a few days later through a slew of vicious text messages, and Kathryn would push the memory of the evening off as much as she could.

That would be until a few weeks later, when Kathryn and her friends were spending a day by the river in a bid to make the most of the now dwindling summer heat. This day had been going much smoother for the girl, but she had been trying desperately to close the wounds she had felt from her breakup. She had been trying her best to show her friends she was happy. She laughed at all of their jokes, and even tried flirting with some of the boys, at the suggestion of Trisha. This seemed to work as she was beginning to convince herself that she was getting over it all. These attempts were all but ruined when she noticed a figure moving just in the distance. She could tell that the figure, even if it were just a silhouette, had been Brian. Her stomach lurched. He did not seem to notice her, which only proved to sharpen the blow, but continued his path to the place where they had departed some time before, disappearing behind a sheet of corrugated metal.

This vision haunted her, and she would spend the rest of the outing, and the hours that followed, replaying the image in her head. She could not stop herself from thinking about it. The sight of Brian descending down that dark tunnel had struck something in her. It was like some long grey finger had reached out from the blackest part of her subconscious and scratched that part of her mind that craved the mysterious. It would scratch until she had found answers to some of her most pertinent questions. What had really happened to Brian, and by extension the Pumpkin Patch, while she was gone? Why had Brian insisted they meet by the river for their last meeting? What was Brian dying to show her that night? And why was he going into that dark place again? Why was it important to him? Ultimately this line of thought would poke and prod Kathryn Mason down the path that led to her death.

The day I decided to investigate the area by the river, the weather had been quite unpleasant. The sky was grey from clouds and, although a greater storm had been threatening, there was little but the occasional drizzle. To the south and below me roared the white capped rapids of the James, now reeling from the encroaching storm. Just beyond their cacophony stretched the lonesome island the locals called Belle Ilse, a name that I couldn’t help but notice shared some similarities to the diabolical Belial. I trained my gaze along the foot bridge where it stretched from the lonely island to my side of the water. Above it, the noisy overpass of US 301 loomed. At the end of the foot bridge was a stair way leading down to my level of the street.

Behind me Trisha was leaning on the side of her red Honda accord lighting a cigarette. She had driven me here, and was now determined to wait it out until I returned from my mission. I told her there was nothing to worry about. It was broad daylight and I felt like there was no chance of danger. Even if this place had once been the location of the Pumpkin Patch’s base of operations, “The Studio”, it would be unlikely that they remained here after the murders. Regardless, Trisha remained stubborn. According to her, any friends she knew that entered that place either died or disappeared. She did not want to lose the only other person who was still looking into the murder of her friend Kathryn. Eventually I caved, but I reiterated to her that if I did not return in an hour or two, she should go directly to the police, and not come in after me. She begrudgingly agreed.

The entrance was actually a lot trickier to find than we had assumed. It took a good fifteen minutes to find, although it would have been longer if it weren’t for the help of the lovely Trisha. Once we discovered the place, Trisha and I exchanged one last, apprehensive look. There was no telling what I would find down there, and although I was sure the place would be abandoned there was still a sense of dangerous foreboding in the air. After a brief pause to prepare myself, I fired up my flashlight and began my descent down the long dark corridor before me.

During my time at college, I studied all sorts of literature. Most of my favorite stories were myths and folklore that families historically recited to each other by dancing fire-light. These stories were often similar to each other in many areas. The tales would include some great hero, a monster, and some impossible journey to vanquish evil and return to normal life. One of my favorite stories spoke of a goddess who descended into the underworld to meet with her once forgotten sister, the keeper of the underworld. Often this story was stated to have metaphorical meaning. It was said that the underworld was truly an analogy for the goddesses’ own subconscious, and that she had to travel into this underworld to discover some kind of long forgotten, long suppressed part of herself. Her hero’s journey was only accomplished once she had communed with this part of herself and brought it to the light. She had to journey into the realm of death and return changed.

I thought of this story as I began to maneuver through the expansive tunnel system of the city. I wondered how many other cities had tunnels like these. Long forgotten passages that stretched miles beneath their respective city-scapes, containing crimes and secrets long since shunned by the people who lived above. Like some deep, primal sub-consciousness lurking at the heart of every metropolis, rarely seen or spoken of but always present and felt. It seemed to me, as I waded through the dark passage way about me, ankle deep in sludge, that there was something fermenting in this place. Something was festering down here in the darkness beneath the city, amassing itself and gaining strength before its inevitable return. Perhaps the murder of Kathryn Mason had ignited that return.

In the dead girl’s journal, she had referenced a series of glow in the dark markers which traced her way through the tunnels. At my first large intersection, I followed the dead girl’s path and trained my flashlight to the top right corner of the passageways. I only had to hold my light on the spot for a few short minutes before turning my flashlight completely off. I was both relieved and anxious when, after doing so, a symbol appeared ghostly green over the left most passage. According to my later research, this symbol was the alchemical rune for phosphorus. I continued this process at a couple of other intersections. At one place was the zodiac symbol for the Scorpio, while another was decorated unceremoniously with an upside down pentagram. My favorite had to be the enigmatic “666” scrawled out in wispy green script over a particularly fungus covered passageway.

There was only one time that I felt particularly scared within that system of tunnels. I will not lie, the whole situation was suitably creepy. I found myself fighting to press onward into the unknown place. Often I could hear the scratching of insects around me and the rhythmic drips of water from above. At one intersection, with my flashlight off, I could hear the distinct sound of something large crashing into the water just ahead of me. I quickly jumped to shine my flashlight in the direction of the sound. I probably scared the thing in the process, as all that could be seen was some furry, distinctly four legged creature retreating into the darkness away from me.

Eventually I had reached my destination just beyond an intersection marked by a glowing devil emoticon. While most of the tunnels had been cement constructs the last bit, just past this intersection, had been carefully fashioned from stone bricks. The passage continued around a bend before it opened up to a raised area just past an arched portal way of masonry. At the top right corner of this arch was a sneering glow-in-the-dark jack-o-lantern. The room itself was fairly large and musty smelling. There was still a rather waterlogged, roach infested couch sitting on the left most wall of the room. This was described in the journals. A generator was also there in the right most corner, just by the entrance. I checked to see if the thing had any gas but, unfortunately, it was empty. All in all the place looked abandoned. Although that was what I expected, I still felt the slight jab of disappointment.

There were a couple of easels propped up in random positions around the room, with one laying awkwardly on the ground, looking like some kind of dead thing. The walls were painted very darkly with splotches and patches left bare here and there. For a second I thought that the walls were just lazily covered, like the painting was done by some three year old with a crayon who was used to scribbling in a coloring book. As I got closer I realized that this effect existed because the walls were covered by a script of close together, overlapping words and sentences. This was also described in the girl’s journal, but she never properly described their effect. Perhaps she was un-phased by the design choice because she had a friend with her, or else because she was once a member of the group herself and did not fear them. As I was alone during my visit, I couldn’t help but feel the wicked lunacy evoked from painting a wall in this manner.

Out of the whole, incomprehensible mass, there was only one spot of wall that was left completely bare. It was on the wall straight back from the entranceway, just past the four stone columns in the center of the hold. Here, all of the wall scribbles stopped to form a single rectangle of empty space. I cannot explain why this spot unsettled me so, but to me it was the most unsightly aspect of all I had seen in the “Studio”. Perhaps it was the strangeness of it. In a room where every wall was covered by the noisy scrawl of threatening and damning messages, there was only one part left completely bare, pristine, and blank. The rectangle was about twenty six by twenty eight inches, the correct size for a large painting. Just beneath it was situated a small golden plaque, about four inches long, that was screwed into the wall. The plaque had only one letter engraved on it, and the letter was “E”.

When I emerged from the bowels of the city, I had found that the weather had cleared up considerably. It was about noon and, to my luck, Trisha was still waiting there by her car. Together we drove back toward the college campus, and found a small coffee shop where I explained to her what I had found. She did not seem all that surprised that the place was empty. She assumed that place might have been abandoned when the group went, way underground a few months prior. She also had some insight into the identity of the enigmatic “E” painting.

“It’s Elagabalus!” she said, her green eyes flashing excitedly. I had shown her the journals before, when we first met and this whole journey started. Even then this word “Elagabalus” had been of great interest to her. For a while she seemed obsessed by it. It was only mentioned once in the journals, however, and until now I wasn’t so sure of its importance.

“You think that the painting is called Elagabalus?” I asked her quizzically

“Well why not?” She challenged with a confident smirk. It took me a moment to take in her response. In the entry where Elagabalus was mentioned, it seemed to me that the name referred to a person. As we looked at the journal again in the coffee shop, I was not so sure. This assertion, that Elagabalus was in fact a painting, raised more questions for me. Where did it come from? Why did the group hold it in such high regard?

We decided to journey to the public library in order to research the location of a new Pumpkin Patch den and learn more about the Elagabalus painting. I got busy trying to find whatever I could on the name in question. Trish, the local, set off in search for the next likely place for a murderous art-cult to be hiding. While I spent most of my time on the public computer’s search engine, Trisha spent her hours in the archives reviewing old city surveys and maps. When we reconvened in a few hours, Trisha had amassed an impressive list of possible “Studio” locations that put my few articles of Elagabalus to shame.

“Okay so where should we start?!” She asked enthusiastically with an arm full of books and notes.

“You’re really enjoying this aren’t you,” I teased. To this she only shook her head.

We decided that I would go first. I had the least information to present, and we were afraid that the discussion of Trisha’s findings would get lengthy and get us side tracked. There were only a few hits on the subject of Elagabalus. The first referred to a roman emperor, also known as Heliogabalus. Apparently he had been a rather controversial figure during his reign from 218 to 222. His reign began when he was declared an illegitimate heir to the empire, and fought a rebellion for the throne. He had also overthrown the religious order in Rome, installing his own deity in place of the customary Jupiter. This deity had the extravagant name of Deus Sol Invictus, or “God, the Undefeated Sun”.

A second controversy was started when the Emperor was found to have been sleeping with his chariot driver. The reign ended with an assassination, and much of Elagabalus’ rule was apparently stricken from the public record. Perhaps the painting was of this controversial figure? If the painting was of a person, then it would makes sense why I would confuse the painting for a “who” instead of a “what”. The only issue is that the figure in question seemed quite random. The only thing that had stood out to me was Deus Sol Invictus, but I had yet to see any reference to this in Pumpkin Patch’s archived works, and I had not seen any other themes of the emperor’s life aside from the use of his name. It was a mystery to determine why this particular figure was so important to the group.

The only other article was a strange one regarding an occultist named Eliphas Levi. According to Levi, in his book Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie (What a mouthful), Elagabalus refers to a stone which was worshipped for it properties. Apparently the stone could prolong life and served as the font of all wisdoms. This metaphysical “stone” also served as the basis from which all magic could be built upon and was at the cornerstone of human subconscious and conscious of being. Elagabalus, for Levi, was nothing less than the famed philosopher stone, and its power could be found within the human mind. While it seemed to me a stretch, this definition of Elagabalus seemed to be the closest fit to explaining the painting. The group certainly held it in high standing, as though it were the mythical philosopher’s stone. Trisha agreed that this explanation, though imperfect, seemed like the best fit.

Next we turned over to the locations for the Pumpkin Patch’s new studio. The locations in question all catered to the eerier side of the city’s history. Among the locations were an old civil war prison on Belle Isle, the magnificent Hollywood Cemetery, and several locations close to the Poe museum, a place where the Pumpkin Patch was once show cased in their earlier, non-murderous days. I asked about Lumpkin’s Slave Jail and Trisha pointed out to me that it was under a parking lot, and there was no physical place for a killer cult to hide.

Eventually we decided that the old train tunnel, beneath Church Hill, was the likeliest place for the group to be hiding. The Tunnel was subject to a catastrophic collapse in the 1920’s, resulting in the death of four people, and it has been the subject of urban legend ever since. According to one story, a first responder to the disaster arrived at the seen only to discover a strange, deformed, humanoid being crouched over a victim of the crash. This creature reportedly fled the scene and set up shop in Hollywood cemetery, which is one explanation for the Richmond Vampire. Anyways, we decided to leave immediately to investigate the place.

By the time we arrived at the place it was dusk. Not wanting to attract attention, Trisha suggested we park the car and walk to the tunnel entrance. I asked her how we would enter the place, and she said she used to do it all the time; there was a hole in the fence and the lock on the gate was often replaced because of trespassers. She was right, of course. The chain-link fence, which warded the area, was compromised. It was fixed half-hazardly with zip ties and blue wire. The gate itself was held shut by a simple combination lock. Trisha informed me that this entrance was supposed to be for service and maintenance. The actual tunnel opening was apparently sealed sometime after the collapse by cement. We were able to break open the lock and enter the maintenance tunnel with our flashlights at the ready.

“It’s funny,” I said “I thought the gates of hell were supposed to say something like ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’?”

Trisha did not think my joke was funny and chose to ignore it.

What followed seemed to occur in a dreamlike trance. We passed through the gate and were soon descending down a winding passage way into the dark tunnel. Aside from our echoing footsteps, we could hear the unnerving chatter of rats, which scurried away from us somewhere just outside the reach of our flash lights. As I moved through the tunnel, I became painfully aware of this feeling that I was being watched. I tried to push this anxiety aside and was assured by the sound of Trisha’s footsteps behind me. That was until I turned around and discovered she was not there.

I must have been halfway down the access tunnel by that time. I tried calling her name but got no response. Actually I was quite sure, at one point, that I heard a muffled giggle in response, but perhaps that’s just a detail I added after the fact. Looking back now, I do not know what overtook me as I decided to move further into the tunnel proper. The place was not as large as I thought it would be. I followed the ruined trackway down to the center of the tunnel, altogether too aware that someone, or something was watching me. Eventually I could make out the flicker of candle light in the distance and, I suppose, I was drawn to the light like a moth to a flame.

What was once a small flicker soon became a roaring flame as I trudged down the cramped stone tunnel. There, at the end of my journey, was a circle of red, glowing candles with a lone easel at their center. Upon this easel sat a covered painting. I was so transfixed by the scene that it took me a few minutes to process that there were others in the chamber with me. Just at the outer edge of the glowing candle light, there moved figures and shapes of masked individuals, who seemed to be assessing my every move. Among the masked faces I could see a rabbit, a clown, a skull, an assortment of hand carved tribal-looking masks, and the shriveled husk of a face which I knew belonged to someone called Hungry Preta.

I was eventually approached by one of the figures, undoubtedly female, who wore a handmade crow mask. She seemed to be far too familiar with me, as she stoked my arm indulgently, leading me closer to the painting at the center of the space before stopping to press herself close behind me. She nestled her chin upon my shoulder and stretched her arms, caressingly, across my chest in a gentle but inescapable embrace from behind. I was not altogether unnerved by this experience, I had gone numb to the fact that any of it was really occurring. Had I really wandered into this dark and diabolical den? Had I really lost Trisha in the passageway? Had I so foolishly wandered into my own death, as Kathryn had? Was this the end? I would soon discover that it was not the end but rather some type of beginning, as the other figures slowly removed the covering of the painting, and my captor began to lovingly stroke my hair. There before me was the face of the thing I recently learned had been called Elagabalus. And as I stood there dumbstruck, taking in the thing, I thought it was magnificent.

http://itcowcer.tumblr.com/post/156423063519/subject-pumpkin-patch

#writing #horror #I.T. Cowcer #Pumpkin Patch

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