#so this being cursed bill to only be able to exist in his physical form in the nightmare realm. he has access to infinite dreamscapes

[mydearjonah]

The Magnus Archives & MBTI Part 1 -- Jon & Martin

Hello. When I was a depressed 19-year old, I hyperfixated on the Meyers-Briggs personality typing system in an effort to solve all of my interpersonal problems.(1) It didn’t work, but ever since then I have been cursed both with deep, useless knowledge and searing, useless opinions. In the hopes that sharing my terrible burden with others will allow me to one day find the rest I so desire, I would like to introduce you today to what is, as far as I can tell, the first dedicated MBTI typing post in this fandom.(2) 

The hyperfixation ran deep, so I am trying to make this as intelligible as possible. If you so desire it, this is a great general resource for typing. If you have opinions or thoughts, PLEASE share them. Much like a fear avatar slurps up people’s trauma, I am sustained in part by healthy, albeit occasionally heated, debates over MBTI types. You should have seen the time I typed Kanye West on Reddit.(3) 

Jonathan Sims -- INTP  Confidence Level: 90% Certainly (at the very least): IxTx

It is easy and tempting to type Jon Sims as an INTJ. After all, he certainly fits many of the stereotypes: bookish, awkward, out of touch with his feelings and his environment, with a tendency to come off as overly critical. I am not saying that this typing is necessarily wrong, but I do not think that it should be taken for granted.

Jon is clearly an introvert and a thinker (IxTx). It is tempting to type him as an intuitive as well, but I caution against this and suspect that it is an example of intuitive bias. Certainly I do not believe that he has the kinetic knowledge and energy of an ISTP – he hasn’t done a single damn thing in this entire podcast to make me think that he has any higher-level grasp of Extroverted Sensing (Se), the function an ISTP uses most confidently to interact with the outer world – but, if INTJ is in consideration, ISTJ should not be written off.

ISTJs and INTJs use the same auxiliary function, Extroverted Thinking (Te), to interact with their environments. Te is often characterized as being cold, clinical, unfeeling, and pragmatic: essentially, how Jon comes off in the early series, especially S1. The difference between them is their dominant function, or their primary way of existing and processing information. ISTJs are led by Introverted Sensing (Si), which is best conceived of as a “web” (haha) of past experiences and sensory details that a user can access when making decisions. INTJs are led by Introverted Intuition (Ni), which is a largely unconscious and abstract style of pattern-sensing which feeds a user insights about the world around them. For Jon, I think that fair arguments could be made either way for dom Si or dom Ni. Does Jon rely more on what has come before (ISTJ) or what may come next (INTJ) to guide his thinking? It could be either, in my opinion, and it is especially difficult to tell because the Beholding itself is an EXTREMELY Ni domain. As the series progresses, Jon’s choices and behavior are colored so thoroughly by his patron that it is difficult to separate evidence of natural Ni intuition from plain old Beholding intuition.  

So, with this in mind, why have I typed him as an INTP of all things? It all comes down to the INTP’s inferior function, Extroverted Feeling (Fe). Your inferior function is the thing that you use but aren’t very good at – it tends to be what gets you into trouble. Fe is best understood as a natural awareness of other people’s emotions as well as the privileging of group values over individual values, so inferior Fe users tend to be sensitive to other people but not super great at actually interacting with them. It is tempting to type Jon as an IxTJ because he comes off like a high Te user at first, but it’s pretty well-established at this point that he’s projecting that persona due to his insecurities. This, in my opinion, is classic inferior Fe. He knows that there is a broader group expectation for his behavior in his new position, but he is (a) too out of his depth to project it naturally and (b) not savvy enough to find a middle ground so he overcompensates and comes off like an asshole. So many of his interpersonal problems stem from this same issue. He clearly cares deeply about group values, other people, and their opinions of him but he struggles to read social situations well and is then caustic as a defense mechanism.(4) So much of his emotional growth has been about him being softer and kinder, even as he grows more monstrous, and to trust others, especially Martin… that’s an inferior Fe narrative.

Once you’ve nailed INTP as his type because of the inferior Fe, I think that everything else falls into place. INTPs lead with Introverted Thinking (Ti), which is a logic-based, internal system of categorization, and they interact with the external world through Extroverted Intuition (Ne), which is a creative, abstract, “idea machine” approach to environmental analysis. In essence, INTPs are logical, systems thinkers (Ti) who basically try out new ideas by throwing them at the wall and seeing if they stick (Ne). I think that describes Jon far more accurately than the IxTJ approach, which tends to be far more reserved and calculated.

Martin Blackwood -- ISFJ Confidence Level: 70% Certainly (at the very least): IxFx

I have found Martin to be a particularly challenging character to type. After a great deal of thinking, and some helpful input from @twinliches, I have gone with ISFJ. 

Martin is an introvert whose primary mode of interaction with the external world is through Extroverted Feeling (Fe). He cares primarily about the group and is sensitive to its dynamic, he has a good read on other people’s emotions, and he is able to easily maneuver through interpersonal situations to his own benefit and the benefit of those he cares about. But what is this Fe working conjunction with? As a prominent Fe user and an introvert, Martin’s only two options are to have dominant Introverted Sensing (Si), which would make him an ISFJ, or dominant Introverted Intuition (Ni), which would make him an INFJ. So, does Martin rely on a “web” (badumtssh) of past experiences to connect with others (Si), or is he using a more unconscious, forward-thinking intuition to do so (Ni)?

It is extremely tempting to type Martin as an INFJ, but, honestly, I think that do so is an example of intuitive bias. His actual choices – how he moves through the world and comes to conclusions, the way that he relates to others, the things that he fears – strike me far more as dominant Si than dominant Ni. Although he may not always broadcast it, Martin is shrewd and observant when it comes to interpersonal relations, and his grounded, real-world knowledge of how people are acting, how similar situations have played out in the past, and what details others are missing is what allows him to so consistently outmaneuver the big bads. A Ni user may come to similar conclusions, but they just don’t get there in the same way. Martin is also invested in maintaining social harmony by providing a sense of stability, which is a classic ISFJ move. INFJs are more likely to promote social harmony by using their Ni insights and Fe people skills to actively influence group dynamics for what they believe is the better. Martin doesn’t really ever do that – instead, he works to make sure that everyone is taken care of, whether that means bringing them tea, dragging them out to lunch or for drinks, or sacrificing himself to the Lonely so Peter leaves Jon alone.

I anticipate that one potential criticism of my Martin typing will be in regard to the inferior function. ISFJs and INFJs have different inferior functions: ISFJs have inferior Extroverted Intuition (Ne), which means they can struggle with open-endedness and have a tendency to catastrophize, and INFJs have inferior Extroverted Sensing (Se), which means they struggle with being in touch with their physical environment and can overindulge in sensory activities. People with inferior Se often have difficult relationships with their physical forms, and Martin’s canon and fanon body image issues certainly fit the bill. But inferior Se users are not the only ones who struggle with their bodies, and, overall, I don’t think the INFJ’s broader function stacking fits Martin as well as ISFJ does. Plus, I think there is just as much, if not more, evidence for manifestations of inferior Ne from Martin.

To wrap it all up, here is my final Martin take: Martin is an ISFJ who, if he knows anything about the MBTI, thinks that he is an INFJ. He was probably accurately typed on whatever popular test he took, but he read some anti-Sensor bullshit that included a hackneyed portrayal of Si, thought “I’m not boring and conservative… I can’t actually be an ISFJ! I must be an INFJ.” For a time, he even has “INFJ” in his Twitter bio. Sometimes he wonders if he’s mistyped because he doesn’t totally relate to the stray descriptions of Ni-Se that he comes across… but he figures that, if he is, he’s probably actually an INFP. He really likes their whole aesthetic… artsy, sensitive, caring, intuitive, and his favorite poets are INFPs. What he’s really vibing with here is their Si-Ne, which he can relate to… because as an ISFJ, he also uses those same functions! If post-series Martin is alive (and living happily with his husband, Jonathan Blackwood-Sims, of course), I bet that his increased self-knowledge and confidence will allow him to solidly write “ISFJ” in that online bio. I want that for him. And for all of you ISFJs out there, too!

On a personal note, I also really love ISFJ Martin/INTP Jon in the context of the ship. ISFJs and INTPs use the same functions, just in a different order! They can connect by sharing their Ti and Si thoughts and insights. Jon can help Martin develop his Ne, and Martin can (and already has!!) help Jon develop his poor inferior Fe by giving him an example of a much stronger, far healthier one. It is just *chef’s kiss*

Up next: Jonahlias, Peter, and Gertrude!

--

(1) The actual answer to my interpersonal problems was therapy and life experience. Who knew!

(2) If I’m wrong, let me know. We all know how useless the Tumblr search function is, and I also couldn’t find anything indexed on Google besides the Personality Database. 

(3) Kanye West is an ESTP, btw. 

(4) I’m not saying that Fi users don’t do this, but I think you tend to see more & genuinely meant “I don’t give a fuck” from them because they’re operating a little more on their own wavelength. I’m not sure if Jon knows himself as well as a Fi user, even an inferior Fi user, does.

[lukalew]

- - - The Affectionner - - A Creepypasta Origin

Axel Coss, black haired boy, with a white streak of hair going down the middle of his front hair. Strange really, not many kids a white streak of hair. But, moving on from that, he lived with his mom, Cece Coss, his dad, James Coss, and his two brothers, Ames and A.J. Triplets of course, they did everything together . Play, draw, clean, and otherwise. They all five lived in St. George, Utah, on a empty land, with their house and field. After the triplets were born tho, James and Cece decided to move to Kansas. But that didn't work out well. So, they moved to Mississippi. Where the triplets are now 15. School was pretty easy and all, everyone loved them. Well, the majority of people in their school. Axel was really the quiet and calm one, Ames, the short tempered, and A.J, the awkward type. So, they all kinda just stuck together like a pod. A couple more and now they are all 25 , well...two are at least. Ames and Axel- now , A.J ... when he turned to the age of 22, he got kidnapped and was tortured to death. LITERALLY. Nobody was able to find him. Until 2 months later, after he died he was found in a rusty old grey building. Almost looking like it was gonna collapse. His face torn, ripped...his arm and legs broken. It was just a nightmare, but thats only the start of it.

Ames got pretty emotional afterwards - Axel didn't say much after as well. He sometimes stayed in his room for hours , not eating, sleeping, nothing really, just thinking. 4 months passed and later on, Cece and James had been kidnapped by the same guys from when A.J was. And the parents died as well. The kidnappers had been caught and taken to jail. Ames soon left Axel, and if he was being honest to himself..he was glad Ames left. After everything that happened Ames started to drink and abuse Axel. Thats when his life became even more of a living hell. Work got harder, the bills were too much, and nothing could really make him happy at this point. Except for thing. Stitching. He would stitch blankets, stuffed animals, and when he got a bad cut- sometimes even himself. That was the only thing...for now. He was like cursed or something. Thats when he got to point- - -"Your fired." "What?" his voice shuddered as he clicked his pen a few times. "Your..FIRED!! You always mess up on the cars when we are on break- and you are too quiet- good for nothing piece of roadkill!" his boss, Keith, screeched as he took a fair raise of the hand and slapped him across his ear to mouth-that somehow cutting him. I mean, he was holding a wrench so- that probably why. Axel gently ran his finger down his face from his ear to mouth and felt the blood rushing out. "O-okay, under-s-stood..sir." the male exhaled taking th scarf he brought in with him because it was usually cold in the warehouse. Axel slid it on and ran home. At this point it was too much. He sat on the dining room chair rethinking his entire existence. "Do i even matter?...Of course i don't- not to my parents, not to my boss, ...not to my family.." out of the corner of his eye- he spotted a small, brown and white gun. "Thats it..." he said to himself, with a faint- but crazy smile. He walked to the gun, and made sure it was loaded. The black haired male pointed it to his heart and shot himself. Blood splattering on the wall and carpet. No screams, no cries, no pain. With the last bit of energy that he had, he shot himself in the head...

"Hey! Ax! Over here!" his brother A.J shouted waving from the field. He smiled softly and ran to the other versions of him. "whats up?" he asked kneeling down to his height. "Why do you always wear that scarf? It kinda looks like its from the eighteen hundreds." Ames spoke lifting a piece of the scarf up from Axel's neck. "Well, this girl at school gave it to me." He laughed softly rubbing the back of his neck. "Ooooooo!- Axel has a crush! Axel has a cru-" Ames interrupted what A.J said by pushing him backwards- "Oh shut up, its probably just a present." he sighed. "Whatever you say, maybe you should ask her out! Whats her name??" A.J declared getting up and picking some dandelions from the ground and putting them in his hair. "O-Oh uhh, her name is Jane-." Axel slightly blushed. Ames sighed laying down with his hands behind his head. "Yup, just as i expected- good old Jane Arkensaw.. she's kinda a brat if you ask me." "H-hey! Thats not true, she's actually really nice if you get to know her." A.J looked confused. "Isn't she the one who hasn't been coming to school for some time?" Ames glared at A.J- "Yes, yes she is." Axel replied taking the dandelions out of A.J's hair and putting them in a row at the top of his black silk hair, seeing he was struggling to put them in since they just get falling out. "i hope she's okay tho..."

HIs eyes shot open and then rubbed his head. "just another stupid nightmare..." he calls them nightmares because, well to him they are just painful memories. He put on his boots and looked at the calendar, "Huh....Macy Stars...well, this should be fun." He sighed and git his scalpel, stitching utensils, needles, thread, and his scarf. Ax put the scarf on and walked out with his drawstring bag.

(This is the bag btw)

He followed the directions where it told him to go. Now, he would normally go on his own free will and time, but it was like Slender decided when she dies. He shrugged it off and soon arrived. "This must be it huh?" Ax sighed ruffling his own hair a bit so his scar would show as much. He thought if you had scars it makes you weak, can't take care of your self. Anyways, he quietly entered through her back door,which was unlocked. "Who leaves their back door unlocked at a time like this?" The medium hight male said looking at the sunset and took in a deep breath then exhaled. That sorta calmed him down. Axel walked up the stairs and looked in the bathroom to see her doing her makeup. He had to admit she was beautiful, but still worthless to him. She was in fact a girl that went to his school. "There we go!" She smiled at herself in the mirror and did a duck face as if the mirror was taking a photo of her. She was really nice to him and all, but he didn't care, he didn't care about any of the victims of his. "They don't deserve this love...." he shuddered under his breath. Axel walked in holding a scalpel and his eyes now looking fully gold. The brown faded away, no mercy in his look. Macy spotted him in the mirror and screamed backing up her back hitting the sink. "How did you get in my house?!" She screamed and reached for a small mirror of hers and hid it behind her. "That's a pretty stupid question to ask...more concerned how I got in your house...then how your gonna survive this? Well, I can answer that for you. Your not." He walked to her and slashed the scalpel across her face- giving her a scar as well, "OWW- YOU LITTLE-" She screamed in pain holding one side of her face and taking the mirror and trying to hit him with it. Axel sighed seeing her on the ground, she had fell. He bent down, and grabbed her arms- putting them together. "W-wh-What are you doing....?!" She asked in a shaky tone. No response, he softly held them tightly tighter and took out his stitching utensils and started to weave her arms together. "Ow stop please!!" She begged trying to kick him- but he was almost done with the stitching process. Is she really that weak, stitches don't even hurt that bad, it's like poking yourself with a sharp en or pencil. Macy looked down at her sewn arms and her eyes as wide as the galaxy. "I really don't like loud noises you know... so, if you would have just been quiet I wouldn't had have to do this.." he softly whispered in her ear and sew her mouth together. No matter how hard she tried to scream- it was all just muffled noises. "There we go. Now, if you don't mind me, I will proceed to kill you." Her eyes were wider now. Tears formed in her eyes and just looked down. "Aww.. come on now-" he started to say, lifting up her chin and wiping the tears away. "I'm just putting you out of your misery- we only live in this world to die, it just is stressful for me to see people in pain like this." That was a lie of course. He didn't care if his victims were hurt, physically or mentally.

He cut open her stomach and found her heart. "There it is..." he took another piece of thread and needle then started to stitch a X into her heart. Soon, a golden piece of light came out of her heart and Axel held his arm out-the light transferred to his arm and he sighed in relief. "That felt good," he thought then looked down at Macy. "You know, life is as valuable as your love.." he smiled then ripped her heart out in one light pull. Her body falling to the floor . He smiled softly and set the heart near her makeup. He always set the heart of theirs next to something they loved. "Now that that's done," he sighed getting up and grabbing all his things and heading out.

His appearance strikes so many people, sometimes he would pretend to be a human to lure in victims. He is a handsome, kind, boy- so it's pretty easy. But he doesn't do it often, only when there's nobody really good to kill.

He still has his black hair with the white streak. And of course, he wear a big grey scarf around his neck with a small black X at the bottom of the end of the scarf. A beige, sorta brown jacket. Sometimes he would wear a black zipped up leather coat, but that's only when it's really cold outside. Black pants with a chain going form the top right corner of his belt, to the lower half of his left side. Sorta like his scar. Black boots with a stitched in X at the bottom corner of both boots. Some witnesses have said he is a tall, around 5'5 , male. Some people say he takes in emotions, that's not really it tho...

See, what he can do is- he only takes peoples lives, who get a lot of love, and give a lot of love, and not really sad people. He would climb through their windows at night , or when they are alone. But in some cases he just breaks in wherever he can. Axel is a ghost, spirit, otherwise. But he doesn't really like doing all of that appearing in thin air thing. Ever since people have reported sightings of him, he tries his bets you stay of out sight. Axel will use his stitches to sew a big X into their heart so he can acquire all the love that has been given to the person, or, the love that they have to share. If they attempt to scream or fight back, he will sew their mouths closed- or arms and legs together. The reason he takes the affection from his victims is because, his parents gave him none- and when he was alive, nobody gave him any either. After some time, the affection runs out, so he needs to restock it every 2-4 days. If one of his victims try to give him affection before they die, he will go to their height smile at them , and say...

"Im afraid ...your love means nothing to me.."

He also has another famous quote which is..

"Life is as valuable as your love."

If he were to go on a mission with a creepypasta - his most compatible people would be

-Puppeteer

-Jason The Tomaker

-Eyeless Jack

- Laughing Jack

- Jane The Killer

- Sally

- Zero

- and Judge Angels

[minchase-ingclouds]

𝕒𝕗𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕪𝕠𝕦 ｌｅｆｔ, 𝕚 𝕔𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕒𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝒻𝒶𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓈𝓎

╰ ♡ ✧ ˖ chae hyungwon. 25 he/him. have you seen charles “chase” min? they used to be so +confident before their heart got broken. now they just seem to be very -timid. i think it had something to do with (tw: abuse) his sugar mama emotionally/physically abusing him, but who knows how accurate that is. i know, we should get them hair dye to help cheer them up! maybe then they’ll start acting like fairy floss and cherry blossoms blooming.

basics

name: charles min

nicknames: chase, whatever nicknames his sister gives him, rosir (his sTriPPEr NamE)

age: 25

pronouns: he/him

sexuality: heterosexual (he thinks) ((but is actually bisexual)) (((he’s confused ok)))

tldr

traumatic childhood backstory etc in the bio below so if ur here from dee’s intro on ciel then jump down there hey

anyway bc of the traumatic childhood backstory, chase and his little sister ciel moved out when he turned 18 and she was 14/15ish

long story short he became a stripper to support them

when he was about 20, he met tiffany, a rich business woman who frequented his strip club because she thought he was stunning and had seen him on a night out with the girls

she wasn’t that old, maybe 7 or 8 years older than him, and approached him one night asking for a private session where she then asked if she could take him out on a proper date

they dated for a while and she became his sugar mama, asking him for sexual favours but paying for pretty much everything, EVERYTHING he wanted and even offering to pay for things for his little sister too (she was stubborn and refused tho)

only a few months ago, tiffany had an STI scare and insisted it must be chase’s fault bc - you’re a stripper, you’re a whore, i bet you cheated on me - and when he told her that no, he’d been loyal, and if she had cheated on him and had this scare then he thought they could work through it and stay together, she continued to grow more agitated and (tw:abuse) started to throw things and hit him

when his little sister found him in their lavish penthouse (courtesy of tiffany, ofc) he was covered in bruises and cuts

together, they decided to move to palm springs to a shitty little apartment since chase was done with tiffany, wasn’t going to use her credit card ever again or even speak to her again and now we’re here, his arm’s just healed after being broken but his heart still hurts and he kinda misses tiffany - after all, they were together for four years

bio

born in new york, new york, chase was a curse to his father from pretty much the moment he was born; with his mother dying in childbirth, his father had a love/hate relationship with him, since he reminded him so much of the wife he so loved but was also the very reason she was gone

when he was 4 his father remarried a woman named stacy who was pregnant with a little girl ( @cielmins )

speaking of ciel! if you are here because you were redirected by dee (thanks for palming this bit off to me btw sweetheart) then buckle up kiddos, cus we’re about to go for a RIDE

stacy was never all that nice to him, mostly put up with him because she loved his father, gerald or some other basic dude name

of course, stacy absolutely ADORED ciel, since she was her actual daughter, but chase never resented ciel - in fact, quite the opposite, since he adored her even more than their parents did

yes, chase is literally the most doting big brother that could ever exist, would move mountains for his baby sister if she asked (she would never ask because she’d figure out how to move the mountain herself), but that doesn’t stop the pair from being literally The Worst™ to each other and general public nuisances of the meme variety

side note - although nobody ever told ciel that she and chase aren’t related and are just step-siblings, she has a big brain and figured it out eventually (chase couldn’t be prouder of his genius little sister, although the difference in their ethnicities was probably the biggest tip off)

home life was not so great - stacy was constantly feeling undermined by gerald’s first wife, knowing he would always love her just that little bit more, and the more insecure she felt, the more she’d take it out on chase, and the meaner she was to chase, the more distant gerald was towards her and to ciel. it was kind of a cycle.

just before chase’s 18th birthday, ciel pointed out that they could run away, just the two of them, and take care of each other like they always do. her big brain pointed out that as an 18 year old, he could be her legal guardian

so, at 14ish (maybe 15? idk how old ciel is tbh) and 18, the pair moved out

when it became apparent that they weren’t coming back, stacy and gerald said fuck it, got a divorce since they were really only together for the kids at that point anyway, and ciel and chase were pretty much independent from then on

he and ciel even adopted a kitty named mayonnaise britney spears min - but you can call her may for short

as two teenagers they uhhh weren’t so great in the funds department and chase took it upon himself to provide for them so that ciel could focus on her studies - sacrificing his own education, he put himself through odd jobs here and there until one day shortly after his 19th he was approached by someone who told him he’d be great at ‘twilight modelling’

turns out by ‘twilight modelling’ they meant hhhh stripping

well, one look at ciel’s immaculate report card and the pleased twinkle in her eyes when she started talking about scholarships and college and stuff, chase was absolutely fuckin gone and knew he’d do anything to keep that look on his baby sister’s face so - hoo boy, here we go, ya boi turned to stripping

it actually took him a while to let ciel know, he told her he was, well, twilight modelling because he didn’t want her to know, but when she did eventually find out about one and a half years later, she help him come up with his rad stripper name - Rosir, because it’s french for ‘pink sky’ which matches ciel’s name, but also ‘the colour you turn when you’re embarrassed’, which suits him

a year into stripping, he meets tiffanny, and yk, all that stuff in the tldr, she pays for all his loans, buys him all his fancy designer brands, gives him plenty of allowance (which ya boi saves cus he’s not an idiot), even buys him a car and opens up her penthouse for the two of them

of course, when shit hits the fan, he has to give up his fancy car and leave the penthouse with ciel, now the two of them live in a shitty little apartment in palm springs because he doesn’t want to blow al their savings and since his arm was kinda uhhhh broken after the ordeal, he’s only just been able to get back into stripping (since he stil isn’t qualified for anything)

(tw:emotional abuse) before he started dating tiffany, he was pretty sure he was bisexual. tiffany had him confused for years because she told him that liking it up the ass didn’t mean he was gay and he could enjoy bottoming for a woman without being bisexual; he was totally straight, she would insist, and he started to believe that and to this day he struggles with whether or not he’s straight or bisexual because he knows he finds men attractive, but he isn’t sure if he would date one --> this was a form of emotional abuse that went on for literal YEARS

(tw:emotional abuse) should i mention that tiffany was kinda lowkey the worst and also tried to convince him to stop being a stripper several times? things like “you don’t have to strip, you’re basically my personal prostitute baby” and “you don’t need an education, i’ll always be here to provide for you, you’re all mine baby boy” and when she’s mad uhhh “you’re my little whore, got it? no one else’s” so............. yh let’s just say ciel wasn’t a fan but chase, well, he was blinded by those hearts in his eyes

but don’t feel too bad for him! chase actually kinda likes stripping now, thinks it’s made him feel much more confident with himself and his body, having always felt maybe he was too gangly and thin and awkward, and he likes the feeling he gets when people can’t take their eyes off of him

despite the fact that he’s a stripper, he’s actually real sweet and innocent. has only had sex with tiffany, has never even kissed a guy and hasn’t even really kissed many other girls except for a few awkward dates he’s had here and there - most he’s done is private dances for paying customers

anddddddddd now that he’s been saving, and is finally free of tiffany and of his shit ass parents, with encouragement from ciel, ya boi has finally, finally started college

it’s a little scary since he’s older than most of the people in his classes, but he’s studying to become a kindegarten teacher and cannot wait for the day that he can hang up his lacy black garters and pick up a whiteboard marker

so, still stripping and working part-time as a waiter to pay the bills, chase is starting a new chapter of his life (signified by his brand new pink hair, courtesy of ciel), and whilst he doesn’t know what the future has in store for him, he’s ready to face it with a big smile and with his baby sister (aka his favourite person in the whole wide world) by his side

wanted connections

well hello beautiful people! if you’re still here, i must say, i’m rather impressed, so without further ado let’s get into this

ride or die best friend - chase only met this binch after moving to palm springs, but they happened to see him entering the strip club and figured out he worked there and, uhh, with persistence and a promise not to tell anyone, they became great friends and probably visit his shitty apartment to play with may and piss off ciel all the time

classmates - everyone needs a study buddy! if u got an ugli in college, throw em his way

gay awakening - now, chase isn’t necessarily going to date this person or even develop feelings, but as a beautiful man he’s going to turn chase’s sexuality upside down and cement his suspicions that yes, he is bisexual no matter what tiffany said (taken: moon jisoo)

honestly open to anything! hmu if you have any plots you’d like to chuck at him or any you’d like to fulfil <3

signing off for now,

yours faithfully

mich 

[ayearofpike]

The 2010s reprints, all at once

So if Simon & Schuster is going back to the well for Pike’s vampire books, what’s stopping them from bringing back other stories from their one-time best-selling young adult author? Form factor, perhaps. It’s the twenty-first century now, and no self-respecting teen would be caught dead reading a pocket-sized paperback. We need something big and beefy to show that we’re Serious About Literature even as we read about murderous insane girls. Fortunately, he’s written more than a couple continuations that will link together into a handy packaged bind-up. But a lot of these books were originally written twenty years ago or more, when the absence of technology and communications wasn’t something that needed to be addressed to explain why these bastards weren’t better informed. Indeed, new audiences (the ones we in education call “digital natives”) might not even understand the characters’ rationales for action without being able to step back in time and forget what they take for granted.

Is it worth rereading these new editions? How different are they from the originals? Lucky for you, I’ve decided to find out.

Remember Me

Compiles Remember Me, The Return, and The Last Story Simon Pulse, 2010 789 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-0596-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Re 2010 OCLC: 646299604 Released July 6, 2010 (per B&N)

Since this was the magical bestseller that made Pike who he was in the first place, it shouldn’t be too surprising that not much is changed or updated in this edition. Still, the very nature of the YA market having morphed into the vehicle that allows these stories to be reprinted throws a pretty massive wrinkle (like, even worse than the fact she’s publishing under her white name) into Shari’s expectation that her mom will never read Remember Me. Come on, dude — I guarantee she already read about the vampires. 

The only changes I found through all three stories were giving Lenny the Latino gangbanger a CD player rather than a cassette (because 2010), saving the final story on a jump drive rather than a floppy disk (again, 2010), and swapping Shari’s green pants for blue jeans (I guess to match the outfit Jean is wearing when she falls off the balcony?). One thing that hasn’t changed: Third Book Whitewashin’ Shari is still an asshole. You’re lucky I’m so determined to be thorough, otherwise I would have never reread this shit.

To Die For

Compiles Slumber Party and Weekend Point, 2010 408 pages ISBN 978-0-545-26432-1 LOC: not listed OCLC: 679759450 Released September 1, 2010 (per B&N)

Little weirdness here, as this is a Scholastic joint rather than Simon & Schuster, but the covers are all coordinated, down to the typeface. Not sure whether the two houses worked together to try to sell their books (at Pike’s agent’s suggestion?) or whether Point saw an opportunity to mine some back catalog and tried to copy the existing presentation as close as possible.

The oldest viable stories (read: not Cheerleaders) must have some major rewrites pending for a modern audience, you’d think, but it’s not that drastic. The main complication would be these kids being able to reach someone outside the immediate group and report problems, so Pike quickly writes around that with a single line in each story establishing the locale as beyond cell service. They also both turn emergency CB radios into walkie-talkies, which isn’t even close to the same thing. It’s a little hinky at times, especially in accepting that Lara Johnson has packed an alarm clock instead of a phone, but it does the job.

Most of the rest of the changes hinge on contemporary references. Slumber Party loses its Richard-Pryor-lighting-himself-aflame-while-freebasing joke, but keeps the kids watching Dr. Zhivago at the first fateful party. Weekend has to adjust a lot more — party music is no longer on record, David Bowie becomes Bono (replacing a ten-year-old reference in 1985 with a ten-year-old reference in 2010), Angie’s Datsun is now a Camry, and song leaders are finally just cheerleaders. At times, he’s just wiped out a reference altogether: gone are Pat Benatar, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, Fonzie, Michael Jackson, and most tragically the Carpenters, which undoes a joke at Sol’s expense and removes any understandable sense from the passage they once were in. Oh well. At least he spelled “gringo” correctly in this edition.

Until the End

Compiles the Final Friends trilogy (The Party, The Dance, and The Graduation) Simon Pulse, 2011 846 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-2252-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Unt 2011 OCLC: 693810612 Released August 30, 2011 (per B&N)

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure what this compilation is doing here. Did anybody clamor at the bit for Final Friends even back in the day? I mean, there must have been some demand to let our boy write a trilogy, but even as a teenager I saw the problems embedded in this tale. Simple time-shifting adjustments weren’t gonna fix those. And this is the beefiest book of the lot, maybe to appeal to young readers who like the huge format and want to show off how much they can read. (I had it in the waiting room of my kid’s doctor this week and another dad said it was the biggest book he’d ever seen.) It’s a lot to plow through for the sake of completeness. Still, we’re committed, right?

I got like 200 pages in and did not see a single change — not even in the computer lab where Bubba is “hacking” into the district grade data bank — which made me worried I was going to just be rereading the same stories over again. And 650 pages later, GUESS WHAT. Literally the only difference is that Jessica, in bemoaning her travails with Bill, says she was “trying to seduce a gay guy” instead of merely “a gay.” Like, even the part about it taking all day to transfer 40 megabytes via modem and filling up a school computer’s hard drive is still there. This was NOT done for new fans. But reading it so fast and soon and smushed together did help me realize that The Rock does indeed have a given name. (I’ll save you the research time: Theodore Gordon.)

Bound to You

Compiles Spellbound and See You Later Simon Pulse, 2012 490 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-5971-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 OCLC: 777602521 Released August 7, 2012 (per B&N)

Maybe this is the only bind-up where the two stories could have been anything. (The Point book: those were his only two under Scholastic, so it makes sense.) There’s a back catalog of literally two dozen books not otherwise committed that they could compile. So why these two together? OK, sure, we’re four years away from the phrase “sexy lizard teens” entering the lexicon, but for sure Scavenger Hunt is better paired with Spellbound than a story about nuclear war survivors time traveling out of regret. See You Later seems like a really obtuse deep cut to me, but if he was committed to it why not pair it with The Midnight Club, which is similarly about love lost to inevitable death? I don’t really see the connection, and am too lazy to do any rationale research. But I’m not actually mad at the books — they’ve shown as two of my favorites in this reread. 

Spellbound, being the oldest of the S&S catalog, does need a little reworking, particularly in the racist elements of an African shaman going to a podunk Old West high school. Pike didn’t take them all out, of course, because we have to know what a dick the boyfriend is by his connection of the dude to savage cavemen. However, the lack of cell phones is very glaring in the bits where they’re trying to find the brother/potential murder victim, and Cindy has to sit around the hospital waiting to be paged. In 2012 it’s inconceivable that high school kids wouldn’t have SOMETHING. You tried to reach the brother at his house, at his friend’s, at his girlfriend’s ... did you call him directly? Such a simple fix: “He’s not answering his cell.” It probably would have made the unease even stronger.

See You Later, hinging as it does on the main character understanding a video game, has its own needs for updating, and does it better than the Final Friends remake. Still, it’s a little slapdash. Becky works in an electronics store instead of a record store, but do these places even sell physical media computer games anymore? Even six years ago that shit was all download-only. And Ray STILL works in a bookstore ... do those still exist? Mervyn’s definitely doesn’t; they went bankrupt in 2008. As for the game itself, it requires 12 gigs of RAM rather than the paltry megabyte, which is what my newish machine runs six years later. (At the time I had ... two gigs?) Also, in the original Mark asked who won the 2010 World Series, which isn’t the future anymore in 2012 ... but it’s weird that he’s now asking about 2020, just eight years off rather than twenty. Most unsettling, though, is how the tenor of international violence rhetoric still rings true for the setting of this story, even though we’re not worried about Communists anymore. The Cold War is long over, but we’ve swung through tolerance and hope and are right back on fear.

Chain Letter

Compiles Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil Simon Pulse, 2013 456 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-7215-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Ch 2013 OCLC: 852941511 Released July 23, 2013 (per B&N)

Chain Letter was also not originally published by S&S, so it’s interesting that they’ve gotten the rights to print it in this volume. (Though they were compiled in the UK in 1994, so maybe it wasn’t too hard.) By now, though, it feels like they’re reaching, as the teen fiction world shifts yet again to futuristic dystopias and Pike doesn’t really have anything like that. Thirst was on its way out too; the fifth book appeared just before this, and we’ll note that even though Pike didn’t finish the story the sixth has yet to emerge. Curse you, unpredictable teen girls!

Not too much is different from the original editions here. Obviously Pike was throwing in his timely references that had to be cut for understandability (Nastassja Kinski?), but by Chain Letter 2 he’d learned to rein that in. Also, there’s a moment in the first one where Alison yells “Hate you!” at the attacking Caretaker, which always struck me as awkward. This version changes it to “Screw you!” which makes me think Pike originally wrote it as “Fuck you!” and had to bowdlerize for YA. Of course they have to throw some shade at snail mail, too, since that’s how the letters arrive in the first place. 

But the main differences are cassette recorders and phones. Obviously the kids aren’t going to tote around a whole bunch of old-school tools when we are now six years into the smartphone era. There’s some nice cleaning up in The Ancient Evil, writing around the idea that people need to (or even CAN) look numbers up in the phone book, but in lots of cases it just makes things awkward. Like, why is Joan going after the driving controls to turn the incriminating recording off if it’s on Kipp’s phone in the backseat? Why do Alison and Brenda have to sit around the kitchen waiting for a return call? Why is Kipp waiting until he gets home to check his voicemail? Did he seriously leave his phone in his room while he ran to the store and left a seven-year-old sister alone at the house? It just makes less and less sense.

You might have seen somewhere online a mention of another compilation, collecting Last Act and Master of Murder. This book does not actually exist. The ISBN and OCLC numbers associated with the title both lead to a British printing of the second half of Final Friends, by Hodder Publishing. I emailed the house just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and they responded that they’ve never printed these two stories together. There’s no record of it anywhere else, certainly not on Simon & Schuster’s Pike page, and reviews I’ve found where people have attempted to buy this collection attest to the fact that they’ve actually received a copy of Final Friends Part 2 But Not Book 2 Even Though the Second Half of Book 2 Is In It.

There also used to be another one named on Wikipedia called Time of Death, which was supposed to compile Bury Me Deep and Chain Letter, but why the hell would they do that when Chain Letter has its own sequel already? There’s not any verifiable record of such a book anywhere online, not even a flawed cross-listing like the first. 

So fuhgeddaboudit. I’m done reading compilations.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S1 Ep 43: Mokuba Simply Has No Survival Instincts

While it surely wasn’t intentional, since the 00′s hadn’t finished their course at the time this show aired, the storyline of Kaiba, the moodiest millennial of them all, the boy who works his ass off, wins every award, studies hard, and then fails at every aspect of his life when he actually goes out to try and get his career on track is just so very millennial. It’s a pretty familiar story--trained to be a shark in a small swimming pool, dreams as big and high as the moon, but occasionally completely disconnected with what’s going on around us because we’re trapped in some MMO videogame. Again.

We’ve already had quite a few episodes that dove into Yugi’s psyche, including one where we literally walked through his labyrinth brain full of traps and real legit problems as he said “nonono this is all really just fine.” But, this is an arc that’s all about Kaiba, who is about to be devoured by the same insane pipe dream ideas he worked so hard to create.

Mai and Joey suddenly realize who the other is and then just decide “youknow lets not duel” and I praised the sun because how pointless would that have been?

The Mokuba orange text is very close to the Joey yellow. Sorry if any of you are colorblind, I never realized that Mokuba would have so many speaking lines when I started this. Maybe I’ll make him a light blue at some point?

I know I titled it as Mokuba has no survival instincts but honestly it’s every single person on this show.

(read more)

I only say I’m too afraid to check the skyrim mod forums because most those mods are a little too kinky for me.

Like...

Why didn’t Bakura use THAT card back on the island? Holy cow. It’s a good thing Joey isn’t cursed with the ring because everyone would be very super dead.

So they trot along across the desert and not much happens. I guess a sand worm or something? It’s just a desert.

And like do I even need to make the obvious joke or is it already--

No, not yet.

Anyways, what’s at the other end of the desert, hm?

We are SO CLOSE to finishing this season how is there ANOTHER MAZE!? There’s only like 6 episodes left we could have been maze free I just...whoever was in charge of maze design for this show worked overtime.

God bless, storyboarder. This is a frame I caught completely by accident--most people would not be able to notice that Joey just takes two hands--one on Yugi’s head, the other on his chest and just pushes him completely over like he’s one of those roly-poly toys.

The hell Mai? She is the age to date Joey’s Dad.

This labyrinth is different than Yugi’s, in that it is crowded by a bunch of huge inconvenient tanks that all want to kill them for some reason. I have no idea how any of these tanks ever turn a corner.

Mazes seem to be the most boodthirsty thing in this universe--can’t pass through a maze without every law of physics/tanks wanting to murder the hell out of you

Imagine the David Attenborough documentary on this family of wild tanks.

And then this weird thing happened--as if we weren’t already seeing the weirdest collection of things that Kaiba chose to focus on in this magical world where he could have made anything else happen.

It’s Marie Antoinette Mokuba. She’s just here. To exist.

Speaking of bad ideas, Kaiba is getting crucified.

Every anime ever made just acting out the Passion for kicks and giggles, it ain’t even Easter yet.

So quick side story about bad ideas and stuff, because sometimes we spend YEARS of our lives trying to make something that is not very good work and it just doesn’t--it just doesn’t happen. I work in freelance so I see that a lot. I see it happen to other people, I’ve seen it happen PLENTY to myself.

I knew this guy, I’ve known him my whole life (and he’s way super old so he won’t read this blog) and for the entirety that I’ve been alive he’s been trying to make an operating system to compete with Windows. Now I’m from the Bay Area, so this isn’t SO weird. There’s this whole crazy world outside of Linux where everyone and their mule is making an OS that will change the Silicon Valley landscape and make them the next Bill Gates. It’s kind of like “here’s my neat app idea” but like 2 steps more ascended.

For about 40 years, this guy has *and still is* making this OS. 40 years. But his OS is now like 40 years behind the times because he never released it in any form because it wasn’t done yet, it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t ready.

One of the most important things I’ve ever learned is that whatever you may be working on right now will not be your Magnum Opus. It just won’t. So finish whatever you’re on and move on to the next thing. When I was told this, I was working on my first comic and although I wasn’t really aware--it was hella not great. But, it was a story I grew up writing, so I was hella attached to it. So, it could never be perfect. It mattered so much to me to get it right, and I was so worried about what other people would think, that I worked on it for about 4 years before I ran into the OS guy and I realized “I need to just post this and move on or this will be my endless OS”

Like, this is all a silly story of climbing through Kaiba’s bad fiction, but sometimes our simple ideas can turn into parasites, and we become so obsessed with them, that our good efforts are robbed of ever getting a chance to finish something good. Like this is Kaiba’s one big huge sprawling terrible video game idea and all of his friends and his brother are here to basically give him an intervention. Also to save him from the guys who are still heading Kaiba corp for some reason.

Anyways, now these guys are in a generic carriage because they got to the Camelot section of Kaiba’s cyberworld because this boy could not focus on one single genre.

Whatever because inside this castle is DINNER

The vague orange oblong fruit is back! The gravity melons! We still aren’t sure what they are--because they could be mangoes but they’re orange like oranges. huh...

Anyways, it’s about time for this show to get dark.

So this is a game mechanic of playing the card game Yugioh--so like...it actually does make sense why it’s here but like. This is just medieval The Lottery, huh? Is Kaiba getting ritually sacrificed by his own video game? Ritually sacrificed WHILE getting crucified? For a DRAGON? It’s like right in front of him that his Dragon Obsession has maybe gone too far but I assume that once this is over he’ll be right back on ship dragon.

I just like to think that, for the past few years, Kaiba’s just been drawing birds and medieval stuff in class and being all “it’s going in my sweet ass video game, Joey, it’s not a princess, it’s Princess Atena, and she’s gonna get sacrificed to satisfy the Mythic Dragon” but none of his classmates ever remembered any of this lore because their brains kept getting wiped by some Season Zero Pharaoh nonsense.

This color scheme on the walls is just...that’s lime green and lilac all right.

Anyway, how generic 90′s fantasy anime can we make the armor here?

None of them use swords.

Scratch that--Pharaoh would know how to use a sword. For the rest of them the weapon seems kind of moot because they’re all card wizards?

So off they go, Joey in a minidress made for...breastfeeding? I guess? And the rest in matching armor suits. Seems like Kaiba’s game is programmed to recognize and harass Joey just as part of it’s core code.

OH.

So there was a lot of buildup to that happening and I blinked and missed it and had to rewind, it happened so quickly.

Man if they had just stayed indoors none of this would have happened.

So Mokuba is in a 7 layer ballgown for the rest of this show right? I feel like the hoop skirt would make it very difficult to get crucified in. So, at least he has that.

As they bring this ancient bird to life with the time card, we get to see what Tristan and Tea have been up to--mostly just pushing stuff.

So when Tea does ballet she’s on the bottom just tossing everyone else around, right? That girl is jacked.

So, that was a lot of random things in succession--Next week, on Yugioh:

Does Kaiba turn into a dragon, finally, like he’s always wanted? Will the next environment in this randomized video game land them right in the middle of a Fallout Post-Apocalypse? Or will it be in the middle of a Petz kitten-adoption center? Or, will it be the ultimate challenge for these kids--in a Japanese High School visual novel sim where they actually have to attend class?

[rmjagonshi]

Whole Again - Chapter 7

Whole Again on AO3

Stanford had been wandering back and forth between the main cabin and the engine room for nearly half the day. He’d heard some rifling of papers and the soft ‘thump’ of books being shifted and re-shelved. He also suspected Sixer had send a few texts out to Dipper; the telltale clicks of Ford’s untrimmed nails on the touch screen and quiet cursing as he struggled with the device. His Sixer would always be more comfortable with analogue medium, but Stan figured that slow adjustment to recent technology was due to Ford’s experience with alien technology. It was like trying to get a teen from today with smartphones and the internet to work and program an IBM 7030 supercomputer. Heck, he and Sixer had grown up during the golden age of super computers the size of whole rooms and he doubted either one of them could program one. Although, Ford had built an interdimensional gateway and Stan had built and programed an interdimensional biomolecular scanner, but…eh, it didn’t matter if the analogy worked exactly. Sixer would get the hang of texting eventually.

What bothered Stan now was the fact that Ford had been, not avoiding him exactly, but rather making an effort to be elsewhere. Stan wanted to head back into town and get the twins some presents, maybe even send them out if they could, but Sixer was too wrapped up in his current project. He was trying very, very hard not to let his worry tap into Sixer’s mind, and he was letting paranoia set in over Stanford’s knowledge of his ‘condition’. Sixer was fine. He hadn’t noticed anything. Stan had come up with reasonably credible excuses for his slip-ups. He was in the clear…right? Stanford was even warm and open that morning and showed no signs that he thought that an evil demonic dream triangle had been reborn as his brother and said brother had regained all his memories. If Stanford was acting normal, then it was all good…maybe. Stan knew he should have left well enough alone.

Sixer had had another nightmare. Stan had woken up to a damp shirt collar and Sixer reaching across the center table to wring his hands in Stan’s shirt. They’d been at sea for months, and sure Sixer had been struck by nightmares before, but he’d not actively reached out to Stan before. Stan was usually the one to initiate comfort. What had gotten Sixer worked up this time?

Stan had run his fingers over Ford’s, slowly urging him to let go so Stan could roll over. His eyes were met with Ford’s brow, beaded with cold sweat and eye’s clenched tight. He really shouldn’t risk it so soon, influencing his brother’s dreams, but his heart ached and Ford was unconsciously seeking comfort. He raised his hand, thumb faintly flickering blue and rubbed tiny circles beside Ford’s eye. Stan felt his eyes shift before being pulled into Ford’ dreams.

Bill…again. It usually was when Ford divulged the topic of his night terrors to Stan. Before it was reasonable, expected, and matched Stan’s own concerns. Now it was just wearisome and a bit annoying, if not troublesome now that Stan remembered. Now that he was slowly regaining his abilities. For now, he would deal with Ford’s fears and deal with the rest when it came; it really was physically taxing to do this in human form.

He Bill was again taunting Ford, reminding him of their deal, of how it had never been officially severed. It had as soon as Ford had stopped work-…wait. Had it? To break a deal, either partner had to retract their promise; He had supplied Stanford with the knowledge his brother craved and in return, Sixer had tried to build a portal. Succeeded in building. Sixer had succeeded and only after he realized where the portal opened to (after it was open) did he shut it down and make efforts to keep Stan Bill from entering his mind. Their deal, their bond, had never been revoked. Well, Shit. This put a wrench in the cogs. Damnit.

Stan let his dreamscape projection shift into the younger image that Ford’s mind designated and wandered into the wheat field. By the time he got to Sixer’s side, dreamBill had taken on his Bipper form (He didn’t care what Shooting Star said, it was a terrible name. It made it sound like they were a Power Couple), and Ford was in pleading and desperate tears. Now Ford’s actions made sense. Stan used his power to dispel Bipper the same way he had lost control before, by pulling Ford’s mental Mabel out and having her tickle the fiend into submitting. Looking back on it now, it was ingenious to use Dipper’s weakness against him, if a bit humiliating. The Bipper manifestation laughed himself into a puff of smoke and Stan drew out Ford’s inner Dipper to take his place.

Ford was exuberant. “KIDS!” He embraced the two siblings in a bone crushing embrace. “Oh, God, Thank you. Shhhh, it’s ok. I’ve got you. He’s gone now.” Ford rocked the two back and forth and the dream siblings responded the way Ford expected them to; they cried and clung back. Stan took the last few steps to reach them and laid a hand down on Sixer’s head, ruffling his hair. “You alright there, Poindexter?”

Sixer turned his head up to look at Stan, face still mended from the last time he was here, and took a sigh of relief. When Sixer didn’t say anything, just held the kids and smiled up at Stan. “You wanna take the kids and play on the swings, or give’em a tour o’ the Stan O’War?” He really didn’t know what to do here. Ford let go of the kids and stood, turning to face Stan. The siblings took each of Ford’s hands in theirs. “I think….that’s a great idea.” Ford’s face seemed to melt and lose all trace of fear or worry. “Well, let’s get to it.”

Stan stayed in Ford’s dream so long, he himself fell asleep, consciousness pulling back into his body just before falling into REM sleep. He’d woken up to a cup of coffee being held under his nose and Sixer smirking at him.      

They’d gone through the treasure haul after a few more cups of coffee each to help an embarrassing set of hangovers. The coins were sorted into piles based on metal type and likely country of origin; Stan had pulled up a book on Ford’s tablet on old coins that had helped and subtly showed Ford how to use the app. A number of coins were set in a bowl of distilled vinegar to get them clean. The gems were sorted by type, size and cut ; Stan kept some gems for himself and the kids: a pink rough stone that Ford identified as Tugtupite for Mable, a light blue and white swirl stone that reminded Stan of the color of the ocean near shore for Dipper (Ford called it Larimar), and a piece of ‘Fool’s Gold” for himself (he was all too familiar with it, having sold it in the Mystery Shack as real gold a few times). He urged Sixer to pick one out, finally choosing a piece of snowflake obsidian that had been shaped into a blade point. Stan also snagged a piece of rhodonite while Ford wasn’t looking. The rest were put in a pile to be dealt with in experimentation, gifts or be sold. Stan swiped a ring with two interlocking triangles. He also pretended not to see Ford wrap a leather band with a compass (Vegvisir, a symbol to provide guidance to wayward souls, Stan’s inner Nerd provided) around his left wrist and conveniently forget to take it off. There were a few other pendants with various symbols that Ford didn’t recognize and Stan refused to recognize and were set aside for later study. The scrolls were gathered and quickly brought to the top cabin with the rest of Stanford’s research material. And that was the last Stan saw of Ford, except for the occasional trip down to the engine room where Ford stored his more volatile experiments.

And that was it. Now here Stan was, sitting in the galley texting back and forth with Mabel about what they wanted for Christmas and assuring her that he and his brother didn’t need presents (and not being able to give her an address to send it to anyway). And Ford was furtively zipping back and forth between the cabin and the engine room, trailing papers, and rank odors with him.  

Stanford’s actions were normal, (well normal for Stanford, they were bordering on unhinged for other people) so everything was fine. He just need to play the part of lovable and eccentric con man until he could adjust to his new memories. He could do that. He’d been a con man his whole existence, it was his bread and butter. However, he had never had to beat down an oncoming existential crisis that he could not deal with in present company.

What was even more alarming, was Mable had picked up on his suspicious knowledge. Mabel had been working on some holiday chemistry homework  and was having difficulty figuring out how to balance chemical equations and Dipper was texting Ford.

I wanna ask Grunkle Ford how to do it, but Dipper has been texting him for like 10 whole hours about science.

Maybe I could help.

No offense Grunkle Stan, but you’re not all that sciencey.

Try me.

She sent over a picture of her homework and Stan worked it out on a napkin. It really was simple,

6 CO2 + 6 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

He took a picture of his work and sent it back to her with a brief explanation.

You have to remember to count your elements. See how there are 18 O’s on the left, you have to keep the same amount on the right. Take a look at your next problem and work it through with me.

Wow Grunkle Stan! I just checked with Dipper and it was right! Did Grunkle Ford help you?

Crap.

Hey, I know some science too, I fixed the portal remember.

True. Ok, the next one has a lot of B’s in it.

They worked through the second problem together and he instructed her to try the next few on her own. He needed to be more careful.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was two hours until dinner when Ford came down and approached Stan. Stan, meanwhile, had kept himself busy by flipping through several different online articles on dream psychology and mental manipulation while having an Arctic Fishing article open in case Ford walked too close.

Ford looked exhausted, and a bit crazed, like he’d been obsessing over something. However, as soon as he noticed Stan looking, his demeanor changed, perked, and nearly split his face with a disingenuous grin. Stan did his best not to be offended by his brother hiding things. Ford was an inherently closeted person; wasn’t the whole reason everything came crashing down around them was Stanford’s inability to place his trust in others? He’d been trying, so, so hard, Stan wasn’t expecting Ford to share everything.

And, he would be a hypocrite if he said there should be no secrets between them. Ford wasn’t the only one hiding behind a veil of charm.  

“How are you feeling about heading out for dinner tonight? We’ve got a few more days before we need to renew our tourist visas.” Stan blinked at his own choice of words. He had become acutely aware that his inner voice and speaking voice no longer mimicked one another. He had tried to continue his habit of running words together and using slang; He’d let his accent slip. Stan wanted to blame it on the fact that he hadn’t spoken much that day. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself. The truth was, it was exhausting, needing to be careful about his pronunciations, how much knowledge he had (he’d already let some things slip), and how much he was aware of the things around him.

Ford, however, didn’t respond, either waving it off or just not taking the time to care. All he did was collect the envelope of local currency from the drawer by the stairs, and smiled at Stan. “Bistro?” Stan nodded, “Sure.”

Ford looked…soft. Just…soft. Stan was overwhelmed by the desire to hug his brother, to bury his face in the crook of Sixer’s neck and…and what? His gums tingled. He wished he still had real teeth.

Stan blinked his mind clear and watched Ford take the steps to the main cabin. He joined Ford on deck not to long after, choosing to throw on his red and gold leaf Hawaiian shirt under his trench coat as an excuse for dawdling. It was happening again.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

An hour and a half later they were walking along the boardwalk, a bit reminiscent of the one in Glass Shard Beach, although the chill November air and soft snow meant everything was closed for the season. They’d eaten at a tiny little diner about a seven-minute taxi ride from the docks. The interior had been done up in brick and arches and looked like and old subway tunnel system. They served soul food, and Stan felt his mouth water at the broasted chicken while Ford hummed with delight at baked ziti. Greasy though his meal was, Stan liked at every morsel. They had shared a fudge lava cake for desert. No alcohol this time; they’d learned their lesson.

Ford had suggested they walk back to the docks, ‘to work-off their dinner’ as the saying goes, but Stan could sense Ford was trying to ease back into walking. They were both still sore from overexerting themselves; part of the reason they’d indulged the night before, to numb the pain. Ford had developed a multicolored bruise on his abdomen, but the swelling in his hand had gone down enough that he could use it, albeit still weak. Stan hesitated only a few moments before interlacing his fingers with Ford’s, protecting it, keeping it.

Damnit! It was starting again. He was losing control of his thoughts; impulses creeping in to take over his mind and his new mental state not being one that complied with ignoring those impulses. Not that he ever had it easy denying his impulses, but when he had been just half of who he is, it had been somewhat easier. There had also been consequences then; not so much in the Nightmare Realm.

They walked hand in hand, slowly, taking their time and easing their muscles back into working normally. Stan supporting his brother only occasionally on the way back, prompting them to take it slower, take in the sights, and just be for a bit. It seemed to do them both good. They laughed and pointed at things, snapping pictures, and purchasing some souvenirs for the kids; a book on Nordic culture for Dipper (Ford had decided to add his own notes before sending it off), and a stuffed Puffin for Mabel (Stan thought the blue bow tied around its neck added to its appeal).

When they reached the boardwalk, it had started to snow. Soft, tiny flakes floating down and catching the light from the streetlights and the setting sun. The sky was sparkling. Ford had let go of his hand and before he had even fully turned to see why, Ford had hurled some snow that had collected on the dock railing at his face. It wasn’t much, the fresh stuff had only just started to fall and anything older having frozen solid and made for dangerous horseplay. It was still enough for Stan to reach out and snag Ford by his hood and yank him into a noogie. Not a hard one, just a hard ruffling of his hair and trapping Ford’s head under his arm. “Ow, hey! Stan, let go!”

Stan ran his fingers through Ford’s hair and over his scalp a few more times before letting go, chuckling though a playful sneer. Ford rubbed his head softly, mouth twisted between a frown and a smirk. Ford lightly pushed at his shoulder before taking his hand again.

Stan missed this. He’d missed his brother, of course, but these simple little things, these happy moments where nothing was wrong, nothing was worrying them, he’d missed these the most. Just sharing time, sharing space. They were bother here, both happy, healthy, and doing wat they always dreamed. Stan felt the need to hug his brother once again, to feel Ford’s body pressed against his, feel the pulse under his fingers and just know that Ford was there. But he resisted, mind churning at the very idea that he would ignore an impulse again.

They stopped in front of a close skeet ball game, teasing each other about playing it for hours and competing for the high score. Stan had gifted a red frog (he thought) with a black bowtie and grey shorts to Ford that had sat at the food of the top bunk for a few years (until it got pushed off by Ford’s ginormous pile of books, then it sat on the floor as a guard for Fort Stan).

Ford just laughed at remembering the hideous thing, reveling that it had given him nightmares and that was why he kicked the damn thing off. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, I would’a won you something else!” Stan gasped though laughter. Ford smiled sadly, “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. You were so excited the day you brought it home.”

Stan just punched Ford’s arm, playfully, and leaned against the railing, back to the water and facing his brother. Ford mimicked him, arms crossed over the rail, to watch the waves crash against the frozen beach. The snow had picked up some and fat snowflake clusters tangled in Ford’s hair, making him look mystical…otherworldly.    

He loved his brother’s face. He was acutely cognizant that they, as twins, had similar facial features. But they were fraternal twins, not identical, and Stanford just…wore it better. Stan played it like he was the better-looking twin, but he knew it was just show; Ford could look marvelous without even trying. It really hadn’t helped that Ford could kill the ‘sexy librarian’ look with his sweater vests and open collar button-downs. His brother always assumed that he was stigmatized by his abnormality in high school. Stan was reluctant to say the opposite was true. Ford was a magnet for people, he was just too oblivious when people flirted with him that he’d never noticed. His obsession with Cathy Crenshaw had acted against him, making him blind to all other offers; including mine.

Stan was willing to admit that he had flirted with his brother, at first inadvertently as he was a natural flirt and did it without thinking, but then he’d done it with intention. Ford looked good. Even when he was covered in sweat and sand from the beach and sunburnt in mismatched splotches. Even when sleep deprived and had avoided showering for days. Even when he had drunk way too much coffee and was bleeding from his right eye. Even when he had been filled with rage and fear, and helpless and even when the electricity had made him lose control of his bowels (Stan Bill had taken care of that though).

Ford’s face was bright, reflecting the last of the sun’s rays. Being outdoors had done wonders for his complexion. His face was full of color, his cheeks soft, and his chin only slightly dark with hair beneath the skin. Stan wanted to bite him. Bite that smooth and baby soft beside his eye. He wanted to pinch Fords ears, to tug on the lobes and stretch them out. He wanted needed to leave bite marks all along Ford’s face and body. To grab at Ford’s hips and tear into his abdomen, Stan was certain he could extend his jaw far enough to get it in one bite. He needed to rip off Sixer’s extra finger’s and string them around his neck to wear as a keepsake. He wanted to rip IQ’s head off and just nuzzle at his cute brother’s face.

Stan could feel the wood fracturing under his hand with how tight he had been gripping the railing. His mind baulked and he tried desperately to not choke on a rush of bile. He failed. He leaned far over and away from Ford while he coughed up stomach acid and a bit of dinner. NO!

Ford was at his side in an instant, hand rubbing his back and trying to shush Stan’s pained groans, saying “I told you to eat something light. Grease increases the production of stomach acid and without the proper amount of…” Stan sopped listening. He knew that. Just like he knew that the chicken hadn’t done this to him. No, it was your own fucked up head that made you up-chuck. He should be lucky it was just acid reflux and not his whole dinner. That would be embarrassing; stupid American tourist blows chunks off Reykjavik boardwalk, yeah that would go well.

His throat burned and he felt himself wheezing when he tried to catch his breath. He’d inhaled some. Though the pain was distracting him from the…thoughts he’d had. It seared, but he’d take it over the alternative. He was done with that! No more violent thoughts. No more freakish clinginess. No more biting fantasies. It didn’t matter if it was the brain’s way of dealing with over affection (human brains were fucked up and inefficient at storing and processing data anyway).

Ford rubbed at his back again, frowning, and taking Stan by the hand again. “Let’s head back, it’s late. And we can get these presents wrapped and in the mail tomorrow afternoon.” Ford readjusted the backpack that contained the niblings’ presents. Stan just followed, grumbling about being old to keep his brain occupied.

It wasn’t far from the boardwalk to the fishing dock, maybe twenty minutes’ walk at a brisk pace, thirty-five at their pace. They made it just as the last rays of sunlight melted away below the horizon.

Stan pulled out a bottle of water to ease the pain in his throat as Ford unpacked, placing the book upstairs to add to later. He entered the galley as Stan started convulsing, coughing and shaking to pull in a breath. Ford just smacked Stan on the back several times as Stan leaned over the sink.

“You really need to start thinking about your health. I’ve seen you eat, Stan. No amount of exercise on a boat is going to magically make up for a lifetime of poor eating habits.” Stan just groused. He knew he wasn’t ‘healthy’ by any doctor’s standards, but he was far healthier than he had been in years, both physically and mentally. Well sorta. So what if he indulged in fried foods when they made port. And ate brown meat…and…fine.

Stan felt another rise of bile, but kept it down with a groan.

“Alight, Sixer, but I’m gonna make you a deal. I start eating healthy and stop eating that ‘disgusting brown meat’ if you,” he jabbed at Ford’s chest with a finger, “start being more careful when we go out. That side of yours is still bruised and you still can’t grip anything with your hand.”

Ford looked annoyed and weary. But after a moment, he sighed and nodded. “Fine.” Stan grinned.      

Stan reached out, palm open and fingers splayed to shake Ford’s hand. The universal gesture for making a deal. His hand wreathed in blue flame

His grin dropped from his face, replaced with horror as he pulled his hand away and shook it rapidly, putting the fire seal out. He turned to Ford, trepidation marring his face, his eyes wide, mouth slightly agape, a nervous laugh escaping his throat.

Ford looked shell shocked.

Fuck.

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Chapter 1

[jojotier]

The Cat Came Back

(More OgaTani, but now it’s light angst with your regularly scheduled Fluff Ending! This is a gift fic I made for @no-riaki set in a modern au of his!! Ogata finds himself unexpectedly craving warmth and companionship after leaving Genjirou’s home and going back to his apartment in Saporo. I hope you like it!)

One would think that living in a city as big as Saporo would mean that it wouldn’t be so damn quiet.

Ogata lay down on the couch, passively watching the ceiling above him. He supposed the silence was partly his fault- he was the one who leased a high end flat in an apartment building so new and private that there were only a couple neighbors on his floor, and one with soundproofing to boot. Apparently the old tenant had insisted on having it installed, before something or another went wrong and they started seeing things and whatever else the salesperson had blathered on about.

He’d lost Ogata’s attention when he started talking about ghosts and possible murders. After all, what use did he have for information like that? All he’d come for was to lease an apartment, not to have a full history of whatever dubious activities went down there. Especially since his own dubious activities were already adding to that list. At most, he needed this place to eat, sleep, and give him a place to hang around when he was between jobs.

Like he was now. Staring up at the ceiling. Ogata could only think that after the fact of his failure to assassinate that damned Matagi spread, he’d be out of the game for a bit, meaning that money may end up being tight. What a pain.

Currently, he was making a very concerted effort not to glance at the clock. Not only because that would mean that he would actually have to move from his position on the couch- though that played at least a very large role in it- but also because he really didn’t want to know how long he’d stayed there. However long it might have been, this must have been the longest he’d stayed sedentary in at least a month.

Back there had been different. Once he was able to actually start moving around without much pain, there was always something demanding his attention- that old crone who blabbed to him while drying out fibers for some new piece of clothing, speaking in words he could half understand but had been getting better at grasping; that little Ainu girl who ran around him in circles on more than one occasion and somehow ended up being an impressively good pickpocket when it came to anything filched from Tanigaki’s pockets; that damned oaf, and his flowers and hunts. And his singing.

All that greeted him in this bland apartment was a white ceiling and a silent cityscape outside the window.

It was almost maddening, how little there was. How much it aggravated Ogata to his core.

… It was too quiet.

Finally, he found it in himself to push himself up a bit, reaching for the remote on the little table in front of him and flicking on the television. The screen flickered to life and was settled on some shitty action movie he vaguely remembered seeing once or twice before, with all the action of some snotnosed kid banging a couple seashells together. Shaking his head at the unwarranted thought, he changed the channel to some American show that he could give less of a shit about and laid back down, idly listening to the sound.

… There was still something missing. The silence was filled, sure, but it was just white noise that filtered through Ogata in prickles that shuddered down his back. It wasn’t as if he particularly cared what was happening on screen anyway- only that it was bright and bouncing and had way too much energy to be anything less than some shite meant to be the equivalent of shaking keys in front of some gullible tween’s face. It wasn’t any real substitute for people.

Not that he particularly needed to be around people. Ogata wasn’t much of a people person; he could tolerate most, but it wasn’t as if he went out of his way to interact with others. Frankly, dealing with them could be tiresome, and Ogata much preferred silence to just letting any old straggler into his personal space.

Then again, though, Genjirou wasn’t just anyone.

Ogata chased the thought back to the abyss from whence it came, moving to sit up again. He was not, under any circumstances, going to think of that damned Matagi. He already had to deal with him for the last month, and while the companionship and free medical care were appreciated, Ogata had moved on. Genjirou was moving on too. He was back in the woods, growing pliable and soft with his new little Ainu family, and he wanted to leave all thoughts of Ogata and his own past behind. Understandable, if hypocritical, coming from Mister Rose Tinted Memories…

Not that Ogata was going to say anything about it. He’d already moved on.

So Ogata got up, stretching to try and move some warm blood through his body in an attempt to get rid of the numbness in his limbs, and got up to turn on the radio. There was a bit of the usual- pop songs that made his ears bleed, some jazz hybrid that caught his attention for a moment but didn’t quite hold it, a bit of new age rock and roll- but then he found a station playing songs in English.

“A long long time ago

I can still remember

How the music used to make me smile”

The piano and soft chords were relatively nice. It wasn’t anything he’d go out of his way to listen to, of course- but it was pleasant enough, and it filled the silence, breathing a little more life into the dull blankness around him. Occasionally, he caught snippets of the lyrics as he trudged his way towards the kitchen in search of something to feed into the empty pit in his abdomen, but he tried to put them out of mind as he tried to find something around here that was somewhat edible and wasn’t spoiled.

“Do you believe in rock n’ roll?

Can music save your mortal soul?”

It’d be nice if he weren’t freezing down to his bones. Sure keeping the heat off saved on bills, and sure he didn’t normally mind so much- but it was getting to be a little excessive. He let the cupboard door swing shut (though he didn’t know why he bothered looking, since he didn’t really keep much in that one in the first place) and padded over to the thermostat, turning the temperature up a bit. The most he found was that cheap prepackaged ramen in the back of the cabinet- and suddenly, his appetite didn’t seem to really exist anymore. It wasn’t actual food anyway...

“Something touched me deep inside

The day the music died.”

Ogata thought idly to himself that this would be something that might sound nice coming from Genjirou and had to keep himself from physically throwing the machine against the wall. That damned Matagi- It had been bad enough back at that Ainu house, being forced to mull over his idiotic face, his gentle hands, and that damned singing. This was getting out of hand. Damn that Genjirou...

But most of all, Ogata cursed himself- he was still letting this linger in the back of his head. Sure, it’d only been about… three, maybe four… five…? … days, since he’d left, but he didn’t think that he’d get any symptoms of withdrawal, much less have it be this bad this fast. The man was invading his thoughts, and not for the first time over the past few days. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to figure out what the hell he even wanted to do. Finally, after a small eternity, the song was over.

“And now, from Blue Oyster Cult’s classic collection, ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’!” The radio host announced ostentatiously as the beginning chords slid out from the speakers.

Ogata nearly cracked the dial with the amount of force he put into turning the damned thing off.

Of course. Why wouldn’t Ogata have expected anything different.

He took a breath and tried not to think about Genjirou gravely gritting the lyrics out between his teeth while they were coming back from a particularly bad battle. He did not for a moment think about him gently and carefully working flowers between his fingers, voice low and lingering on the words as if they were as precious as his damn flora. And most of all, Ogata did not think about Tanigaki Genjirou, looking in any way more than the oafish bear he was, sitting right by his side and seeping a drowsy warmth into his entire being.

And he’d had the gall to call Ogata a ghost.

Ogata retraced his steps and undid everything. The thermostat was turned back down to the point of blistering cold, and the television was shut off once again. Ogata was left alone in the slowly darkening living room, watching as the last rays of dusk slowly faded behind the sprawling city that imposed silently through his window. He was left in silence and chill, with nothing to guide him but his own feet forcing him automatically towards his bed. He could have slept on the couch, certainly- but he’d spent the last few days there, and a change of scenery was sorely needed.

He walked into his bare bedroom and didn’t even bother to change out the clothes he’d been wearing for the last two days straight. Ogata laid down on the sheets, on a proper bed, and closed his eyes against the frigid darkness.

It almost seemed ideal, until he opened his eyes again, and he was doing what he’d done for a long while. Staring up at the ceiling.

Ogata could only think that after so long with that damned Matagi, the withdrawal would be hell- but he would move on soon. It was just a matter of getting used to, was all. Still, it was such a pain…

Two weeks after Ogata had made himself scarce, he was back on Genjirou’s couch.

Genjirou stared down in surprise at the sleeping form of the sniper, bundled up with a blanket that had been newly woven. So Huci had gotten to give him her present after all. Genjirou was so shellshocked for a moment that that was the only thought that could come to mind, because he’d thought that he was just getting over it.

Not over Ogata as a person- with the presence he had, it was rather difficult to get over him or his memory- but with the feeling that he would show up. For two weeks, whenever he went out, whether to tend to the garden or hunt or run errands, in the back of his mind he expected Ogata to be back at the house, doing some inane thing or just sleeping in whatever random place he ended up drowsing that day.

Here Genjirou was just getting used to not seeing him, and then he threw a wrench in that and just showed back up out of the blue. Didn’t he have somewhere else to go?

“Genjirou!!” Osoma tugged on his sleeve, bringing a finger up to her lips. “If you think any harder you’re gonna wake him up.”

“Why is he here.” Genjirou finally found his voice, crouching down beside the child to make it easier to talk quietly. He had his suspicions that Ogata might have been awake (it was always difficult to tell whether or not he was actually asleep or if he was just pretending to), and Osoma wanted him to be quiet, so he may as well.

Osoma rubbed at her nose as she said, “Ogata nispa said he can’t really find work for now so he’s gotta ‘lay low’. He looked really tired when he came too, so me an’ Huci figured he should sleep some!”

Ogata shifted in his place on the couch and Genjirou glanced at him, trying to gauge whether he was awake or waking up. Ogata settled back again, curling up a little further in the patterned blanket. Then he stopped moving, breathing slow and relaxed, body pliant and… oddly unguarded. Genjirou stared for a moment before Osoma giggled a bit, grinning widely. “It’s like that song- one of the ones on that game on your phone.” Then before he could ask, Osoma answered the question already forming on his lips by singing, “The cat came back, the very next day- the cat came back- meow meow!”

Genjirou smiled a bit and got up, putting a hand on Osoma’s hair and ruffling. She giggled a bit and kept on singing, even as he started steering her out the room. “We thought he was a goner- but the cat came back! He just couldn’t stay away~”

“Hey now.” Genjirou said quietly, glancing over his shoulder at Ogata, who hadn’t moved again- but also hadn’t wiped the peaceful look from his face. So he really was out cold. Genjirou started herding Osoma out the room. He could demand answers from Ogata later on, once he woke up- for now, it was time to start cooking the deer he’d brought in.

“Let’s let him sleep for now.”

[delwray-blog]

THE “POWERS OF DARKNESS”

“Christianity today is Anti-Christianity to that which existed in the 1st Century”

Scream as loud as you please but you’re going to read the truth in this document – Read and instant fear should enrage you!

THE “POWERS OF DARKNESS”

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Eph. 6:12.

Just who are these “Powers of Darkness”?

Just who are these leaders of darkness? Jesus called them, “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” Rev. 17:5; “…The Synagogue of Satan” Rev. 2:9, Rev. 3:9; “The Powers of Darkness” Eph. 6:12; and the “Mystery of Iniquity” 2 Thess. 2:7.

This treaty is penned to show who these are: the “rulers of the darkness of this world”,” the spiritual wickedness in high places”. It is my purpose to make known that the Pharisees of yesterday are the Leaders of Jewry today!

Hitler and the Nazi’s may have murdered 6,000,000 Jews in 1945, while in 1917 during the Bolshevik Revolution the Jews in Red Russia slaughtered more than 20,000,000 Christians, promising to do the same here in America. Under Stalin, married to a Jewish and his gulags, Lenin, Trotsky and Engels, all Jews, murdered more than 100,000,000, “million” I say, of their own people. Khruschev came over here and said, “They, the Communist Jews were going to bury America”.

Hillary Clinton who just ran on the Democratic ticket for President comes from a long line of Jewish ancestors and promised if elected she would do away with Christianity in America. Her husband Bill Clinton during his presidency his entire cabinet was all Jews. The Jews are running this country and our current President Donald Trump is under attack from the news media owned by the Jews.

I am NOT an Anti-Semitic I am an Anti-PHARISEE and an Anti-Talmudic Jew Christ hater. You can scream as loud as you please but you’re going to read the truth here.

The Conspiracy that turned Russia into the World Center of Atheism and is doing the same in America!

The Jewish Hatred for Christ and Christianity:

"And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. And they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy." Acts 23:12-13. The same forces which crucified Jesus Christ two-thousand years ago are today out to destroy Christianity in America and kill every single Christian living here. They’re out to crucify His body, the Church. Many Christian leaders have not yet realized it, but Christianity is in the grip of a life and death struggle at the present time. International Jewish Communism, which has already undermined all nations, firmly expects to exterminate all Christians. What the Cause of Christ has endured in Russia the past many years surpasses its suffering at the hands of bloody Nero. This exposition is to show that the present-day Jewish Pharisees are the greatest enemy facing the United States today.

The Jewish Assault on Christianity Christianity is passing through a crisis the like of which it has never faced before. Whether or not it possesses sufficient moral and spiritual resistance to survive remains to be seen. Paul said the Christian's instruments of battle were not physical: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds." The same thought is emphasized in the supernaturally inspired words to Zerubbabel: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." The strength of the Church is in its ability to influence the hearts and lives of men by the demonstration and proclamation of divine truth. Questions like the following constantly haunt this writer: "Will the Church be able to demonstrate sufficient power to triumph over its foes in the present crisis? Or has it become so weakened by apostasy and pernicious teachings that it will have to be drenched in its own blood before it can be brought to its senses?" Persecution has always had a purifying effect upon the Church. Like the individual saints of which it is composed, its "strength is made perfect in weakness." Unless the Christian forces of the western nations come under a new baptism of old-time spiritual power, the Church will go down and Soviet Atheism will come up. The Russian Empire was destroyed by the Red hordes, many years ago, because it did not possess sufficient spiritual vitality to resist the onslaught.

The Greek Orthodox Church, which governed the religious life and thought of Russia, was a cold, dead, pagan institution. It lacked life, emotion, and creative energy. Consequently, it yielded to the first attack of organized Atheism. It’s gorgeous temples have been turned into museums, brothels, and centers of entertainment and vice. Its wealth has been confiscated. Its priests and other leaders have been put to death. Its members have been slaughtered by the millions. Church life is a memory of the past. Now let us turn our attention toward Germany. Next, to the British, the German people are the most religious people in Europe. Protestantism was cradled there. Out of a sixty-seven million population, sixty million Germans are today identified with some kind of a Christian Church. For several years, the Moscow conspirators focused their attacks upon Germany. It looked for a time as if the Country was doomed. But by degrees, the Church began to assert its moral and spiritual strength. Finally, the deep, underlying principles of Christian truth manifested on the surface with the result, that by a single stroke, Communism was destroyed. Vibrant soul-sustaining evangelism is the only dependable antidote for Soviet Atheism. The same underground organization which produced the French Revolution is responsible for the present wave of international Communism. The latter part of the eighteenth century witnessed the destruction of France and brought about the “Great Ejection”. The same sinister agencies were at work across the English Channel in Great Britain. It is a matter of historical record, admitted by the best historians, that the revival of John Wesley saved England from the fate of France. If the Church of America continues to lose its spiritual moorings, it requires no prophet to determine what the future will bring forth. An old philosopher once said, to know a thing well one must understand its first cause. It is unpleasant to realize that a certain element of apostate Jewry is behind the turmoil of this dark hour and the present Soviet persecution through which the Church of Jesus Christ is passing.

The Jews and the Church In the dialect of the street, the Jew is sometimes called a "Christ hater." The spirit of Judaism is one of direct antagonism to the principles of Christianity. It is not difficult to understand why an apostate people, who have rejected their Messiah, should continue in spiritual darkness and despise everything that bears His name. No sooner had the tomb of Christ been sealed than the tormenters set out to destroy His followers. This assault has continued straight through the centuries until now it has come into fruition in the form of international Jewish Communism. In the first twelve chapters of the book of Acts, five specific persecutions, sponsored by Jews against the infant Christian Church, are recorded. Failing to blot the new religious conception from the face of the earth by putting its Leader to death, they invented every conceivable scheme for torturing and murdering those who pledged allegiance to His plan for redeeming the world from the curse of sin. The Jews regarded Christianity as being an illegitimate child of Judaism. Therefore, in their hatred, they believed it to be their solemn duty to stamp it out. After the divine visitation at Pentecost, so many thousands of Jews were converted that the leaders became alarmed. One thing stood in their way, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Had His body remained in the tomb, they would have found it easy to combat the new Faith which had suddenly sprung into existence. But with the resurrection being discussed on every side, they found themselves confronted with an insurmountable difficulty. When first faced with the fact of the empty tomb they did not hesitate to resort to deliberate falsehoods.

"And when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying say His disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." The first few months of the Church's history witnessed five distinct persecutions. What the Cause of Christ has endured at the hands of Jews, through the centuries, far surpasses anything the Jewish people have suffered from Christians. The attitude of the Jews toward the early Church reminds us that there would be no Christianity in the world today had Paul and others not taken the Gospel message to the Gentiles. First persecution: Acts 4:1-22. A pitiful beggar, a man born a cripple, was placed near the gates of the Jerusalem temple every day to beg for alms. On a certain occasion, as Peter and John were about to enter, the poor, helpless creature stretched forth a dirty, bony arm and pleaded for a coin. "Silver and gold have I none," said Peter, "but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." Instantly the resurrection life of Christ smote the recipient of divine mercy and he jumped to his feet "walking, and leaping, and praising God." The man was more than forty years of age and had therefore been a familiar object on the streets of Jerusalem for years. This miracle caused a great stir throughout the city. Large crowds of curious people gathered around the apostles and the healed beggar. Peter was quick to take advantage of the opportunity and turned the occasion into a sermon. "Why marvel ye at this?" he asked, and then explained that a far more wonderful miracle had occurred a short time before in Jerusalem, namely the resurrection of Christ from the grave. When the report of this healing reached the treacherous Jews, their minds got busier than ever. They began devising new plans for putting an end to everything that was being done in the name of Christ. Their first thought was to deny that the miracle had been performed. Then they realized that this was useless because the man was so well known. At that moment he was rejoicing, praising God, testifying to his deliverance and telling everybody what had happened. "And we cannot deny it," mourned the Jews who would have lied to discredit the story if it would have advanced their selfish purposes. The members of the Sanhedrin came together and the little band of Christians was forced to appear before them. A torrent of abuse was turned loose upon the trembling group until finally Peter, "filled with the Holy Ghost," became bold. As spokesman for the group, he made it clear that the Christians proposed to obey God rather than man. Had it not been that the mobs were at that time favorable toward the apostles because of the miracle which had been performed, the Jewish leaders would have no doubt put the entire body of believers to death. Second persecution: Acts 5:17-42. "Many signs and wonders" were wrought among the people by the apostles. All manner of diseases were healed. But the Jews could see no good in any of this relief of human suffering because it did not come through the narrow, selfish channels of their bigoted nationalism. The leaders agreed to the use of physical weapons in their attempt to destroy spiritual power, the same as Communists are doing today in trying to exterminate Christianity by killing Christians. Repeated acts of supernatural intervention preserved the early Church. Without divine assistance, it would have perished. These early miracles confirmed the words of the Founder that the gates of hell would not be able to prevail against the Church.

The Jews "laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth." Next morning when the Jewish senate convened and messengers were sent to bring the apostles for trial, it was discovered that unknown to the jailors, they had escaped and were at that very hour preaching in the area of the temple. Jerusalem was in turmoil by this time. Had the officials dared, they would have killed the Christians without a legal trial. When the saints appeared before the tribunal they were told that they had been previously warned not to teach in the name of Jesus. "Ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us," said the high priest. From this, it is evident that the apostles had been denouncing the Jews and charging them with the responsibility for Christ's death. Here we find the leaders complaining about His blood being upon them, forgetting apparently their previous utterance: "His blood be on us, and on our children." It is to the credit of our spiritual ancestors that they were able to fill a whole city with the doctrines of Christianity in the face of such defiant opposition. Peter finally dared to shout: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." Next, he called upon his persecutors to repent of their sins. We read that this "cut them to the heart." Who was this upstart that he should have the audacity to rebuke them! When they were almost ready to demand the lives of the apostles, Gamaliel, a tolerant member of the Sanhedrin, lifted a warning voice. If the new cult was not of God, he declared that it would come to naught and fall by its own weight. "But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." At length, this line of common sense reasoning prevailed, and the passions of the leaders cooled a bit. The result was, instead of killing the apostles they were given another warning and a severe flogging. This form of punishment was cruel, brutal, cowardly and unjust. But even though bitter and painful to the flesh, it caused rejoicing to the spirits of the faithful few. As the wounds healed they "rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name." The only way the Jews had of striking at the Christ Whom they hated was to injure His followers; they availed themselves of this opportunity. Boldly and properly disregarding their illegal judges, the Christians kept on preaching Christ and reminding the Jews of their crimes against the government of God. Third persecution: Acts 7:54-60. The blood of martyrs began flowing in the same year that the Lord ascended into heaven. The Jews' first victim after Christ was a man named Stephen, whose primary crime was a belief in the deity of the Son of God. This was regarded as blasphemy. The story of the murder of Stephen is one of the saddest in all the history of the Church. It is significant that a Hellenist, rather than an apostle, should have become the first Christian martyr. Stephen was accused of three things: blaspheming God, setting aside the Old Testament, and belittling the Temple. Each of these charges was untrue. Even while lying witnesses were being introduced against him, the members of the Jewish council saw his countenance light up with a spiritual glow like "the face of an angel." After listening to the charges, the priests asked their helpless victim: "Are these things so?" But instead of devoting himself to an answer of questions which everyone knew to be based upon falsehoods, Stephen entered into a discussion of Israelites’ history and closed by rebuking his judges for their hypocrisy. He declared that their devotion to God, the Law, and the Temple, was hypocritical. Here are his words: "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your father’s persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." Thus Stephen laid bare the full measure of their guilt. The blood of the Son of God was upon their heads; they had ignored the miracles which testified of His deity; they had rejected the Pentecostal program of the new Church; they had also spurned the wooing of the Holy Spirit. Before God, they stood condemned, and judgment was sure to overtake them! Taking no thought of his own safety, Stephen shot his words of truth, like barbed arrows, into the hard hearts of his merciless tormentors. As he spoke, the Jewish leaders yelled and screamed to drown his words. They stopped their ears with their fingers to avoid hearing the truth about themselves. Like serpents, they hissed their poison at the courageous Christian. They rushed upon him with one accord. In their madness they dragged him outside the city, removing their outer garments as they ran. With stones, they pelted the body of the first Christian martyr until his life ebbed away. This execution was illegal because the matter was not submitted to the Roman Governor. Emulating the blessed Saviour, Stephen cried with a loud voice: "Lord lay not this sin at their charge." "And when he had said this, he fell asleep." Fourth persecution: Acts 8:1-3. The first three persecutions were spontaneous and did not result from deliberate planning. There had been no coordination of effort. Events had transpired so rapidly that there had been no time to sit down and quietly work out a concerted plan of attack. But the spilling of Stephen's blood seemed to whet the Jewish appetite for more Christian suffering. From that hour, nothing but a terrible pogrom could possibly satisfy them. The sight of blood, the appearance of the first deadly wound in the flesh of a believer, seemed to stir all their criminal instincts. They came to the conclusion that an organized effort was imperative if the new Faith was to be put down. Up until that time, their attempts to suppress the truth had proved ineffective. In searching for a persecutor who would be both cunning and brutal they selected a brilliant young rabbi by the name of Saul from the city of Tarsus. It will be recalled that this was the young man who had guarded the coats of those who stoned Stephen. Saul stood grinning at the contortions of the martyr squirming and writhing in death agonies, under the barrage of rocks which were heaped upon him. Jesus told his followers to go everywhere proclaiming the glad tidings. This was done following the Pentecostal harvest feast which brought Jews to Jerusalem from all parts of the civilized world. Those who accepted the Gospel message, on that great occasion, returned to their various communities to kindle spiritual fires. Unwittingly, in the fourth persecution, the Jews contributed to the success of this very plan of evangelizing because when Saul began scattering believers, driving them from their homes, forcing them into exile, "persecuting them from city to city," every such Christian became an evangelist. Until this time, the activities of the Christians had been confined for the most part, to the city of Jerusalem and its immediate environs, although a skeleton of Church organization was set up reaching into other areas, resulting from the embers which blew in all directions after the experience Pentecost. "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." The very name Saul became a terror to the early Christians because of the heartless methods which he used. He and his helpers were happiest when they could rush into a house and catch a little group of believers in the act of worshipping, they would kill and wound some, banish others, and torture still others in ways too numerous and terrible for words. The irony of this organized attempt on the part of the Jews to blot the cause of Christ out of existence was the fact that their own ringleader got gloriously converted on the road to Damascus and became the greatest missionary and evangelist the world has ever known. But, in later years, Paul never forgave himself, nor was he ever able to erase the memories of his early attacks upon the little Church, which he came to love so dearly and for which he finally sacrificed his life. Fifth persecution: Acts 12:1-19. The next spasm of Jewish terror, mentioned in the early part of the book of Acts, was directed against Peter. This persecution is of particular importance because it introduces a new element in the Jewish plan of destroying Christianity. It reveals the scheme, which was continued for hundreds of years, influencing Gentile rulers to do their dirty work for them. During the first few centuries of Church history, when the pagans slaughtered Christians by the tens of thousands, a careful study will show that time and again the pogroms were precipitated by powerful Jews who were able to maneuver things from behind the scenes. They simply used pagans to carry out their crimes against Christians in the same manner that the player moves chessmen on the board. St. Justin said in the middle of the second century: "The Jews were behind all the persecutions of the Christians. They wandered through the country, everywhere hating and undermining the Christian faith." Tertullian said about the same time: "The Jews formed the breeding ground of all anti-Christian action." A plain example of Jews causing unbelieving Gentiles to destroy Christians is to be seen in this, the fifth persecution. We read that Herod the king has James put to death by the sword because of Jewish influences being brought to bear upon his throne. This ruler was the grandson of Herod the Great who murdered the babes of Bethlehem after the birth of Christ. James was one of the three, with Peter and John, who enjoyed the sweetest possible fellowship with the Lord. No details are given in the Scriptures about the killing of James. And yet underneath the simple statement, deep anguish and sympathy may be felt. Then the next verse shows that the wicked king had planned to make away with Peter in the same way. "And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. And when he apprehended him, he put him in prison ... Peter, therefore, was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him." The Jews desired a public execution of Peter. They wanted his death to be viewed by all because he was one of the principal leaders of the despised Christians. This would give them a chance to gloat over their ability to wrap Gentile monarchs around their fingers. It was quite an achievement, in their estimation, to get a Roman king such as Herod, to do their bidding. But a strange thing happened during the night proceeding the day when Peter was to be put to death. Another miracle occurred. Although execution awaited him, the faithful apostle who spent the night chained between two soldiers, slept as sound as a babe. Suddenly a shaft of light shot into the darkened cell like a bolt of lightning and an angel smote Peter on the side. He dressed quickly and followed the heavenly visitor to the outer court, through the gate, and down the street. Not until then did he realize that his deliverance was real and not merely a dream. Making his way to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, Peter found that an all-night prayer meeting was being held in his behalf. He came into the presence of the saints rejoicing "that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the Jews." The angel smote Peter and the result was life and liberty. A short time later the same angel smote Herod and the result was disease, death, and worms devouring his flesh. And this king was not the last to be cursed for allowing himself to come under the domination of Jews. So Herod having consented to an ignominious death for Peter, himself suffered one much more ignominious. Judgment! It is not a safe thing for non-Christians to persecute Christ's saints. God will not permanently excuse or condone such crimes. History is replete with judgments being visited fast and furiously upon individuals and nations who have made this mistake. Torturing Christians is a dangerous pastime. "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him." "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" "And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily." "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." The Jewish Bolshevik’s who are today digging a pit for Christianity in Russia are creating a future hell of judgment for themselves, exactly like the Jews of the first century sealed their destruction by torturing the saints at the dawn of this age. The same Romans, whom the vicious, designing and tricky Jews used as tools to destroy the Christian Church, later turned against them and added sorrow upon sorrow until the nation was at last drenched in its own blood.

Jesus said to the Jews: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." This pathetic prophecy was literally fulfilled in the middle of the first century when Titus, the Roman Emperor, brought his iron legions against the city of Jerusalem for one of the most terrible slaughters the world has ever known. Famine, disease, pestilence, and starvation on the inside of the city walls, and the Romans pushing fiercely against them from the outside brought upon the Jews such a wave of judgment and suffering as the human race has never before or since witnessed. A few pertinent snatches from the history of the Jews, written by Josephus, will be sufficient to illustrate this fact: "But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives: and while they are after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating almost up out of their throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to the infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor. "This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as guarded them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterward be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies. "Titus then went round about the enemy with some chosen troops, and fell upon their flanks himself; so the Jews, who had been before assaulted in their faces, wheeled about to Titus, and continued the fight. The armies also were now mixed one among another, and the dust that was raised so far hindered them from seeing one another, and the noise that was made so far hindered them from hearing one another, that neither side could discern an enemy from a friend. However, the Jews did not flinch, though not so much from their real strength, as from their despair of deliverance. The Romans also would not yield, by reason of the regard they had to glory, and to their reputation in war, and because Caesar himself went into the danger before them; insomuch that I cannot but think the Romans would in the seclusion have now taken even the whole multitude of the Jews, so very angry were they at them, had these not prevented the upshot of the battle and retired into the city. "Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the houses of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever’s their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come. Nor was there any lamentations made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints, but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die looked upon those that were gone to rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves; for they break open those houses which were no other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they had; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords in their dead bodies; and, in order to prove what metal they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground; but for those that entreated them to lend them their right hand and their sword to dispatch them, they were too proud to grant their requests, and left them to be consumed by the famine. "There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. It now became impossible for her anyway to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, 'O thou miserable infant! For whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these Jewish rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.' As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the Jewish soldiers came in presently and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight when she said to them, 'this is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also'? After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty, they left the rest of that meat to the mother. "This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under; but there were many of them who were thereby induced to a more bitter hatred than ordinary against our nation. But for Caesar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said that he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of Concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine." Josephus tells how this state of affairs continued for months until finally the Roman soldiers set fire to the gates and literally burned their way into the city. The siege of Titus continued until the sacred Temple was burned and razed to the ground. He continues: "While the holy house was on fire, everything was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain; nor was there a commiseration of any age or any reverence of gravity, but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests were all slain in the same manner; so that this war went round all sorts of men and brought them to destruction, and as well those that made supplication for their lives, as those that defended themselves by fighting. The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought the whole city had been on fire." Again we are reminded of the Lord's reference to this terrible judgment which was predicted to come upon the Jews, "Your house is left unto you desolate." The Jews and the Prophets.

Even a casual reading of the Old and New Testaments will show that the Jews are a disobedient and rebellious people. Nowhere in Scripture are Christians required to excuse and condone their evil deeds simply because of their nationality. Jesus knew better than anyone else the unspeakable crimes of which these people are capable. It was to them that He addressed the following powerful polemic: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! And say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" In this indictment, Jesus lays the charge of persecuting the prophets at the door of the Jewish people. It is by far the most severe, denunciatory and withering blast of language which fell from His lips during the entire thirty-three years that He was in the flesh. The Jesus of this, the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, is not the quiet, reticent Jesus of modern literature and the fashionable pulpit. The Jesus, whose righteous indignation is here asserted, is a man of words and action, a man in the act of pronouncing eight woes upon the Jewish leaders and finally condemning them to the damnation of hell. In the next breath, Jesus affirms His Godhead and says that He will soon send other messengers of God to them. He then predicts that they will treat His coming servants exactly like their fathers treated the prophets. "Behold I send (or 'I am about to send') unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." True to the Lord's promise, after His departure He sent the first group of messengers forth on the day of Pentecost. Others followed later. The book of Acts records the persecutions and deaths they suffered at the hands of the very Jews who declared they would not have been guilty of the similar conduct of their fathers. It is particularly significant to notice that Jesus blamed the Jews for the murder of Abel. But how could this have been in view of the fact Abel was a son of Adam and Eve, whereas the Jews date their origin from Abraham about nineteen hundred years before the birth of Christ? By way of parenthesis, it should be remarked that the name Jew did not originate until a few hundred years after Abraham. It was first used in the book of second Kings as a reference to the patriarch Judah in distinction from the other ten tribes of Israel. Later the term became the appellation of the whole nation. When Jesus accused them of killing Abel, He was seeing beyond their particular nationality. He was seeing beyond the garb of flesh which they were wearing. He was looking deep into their souls. He was seeing the demonic poison which was stored up in their lifestream. He knew that the same satanic hatred for the program of God which took the life of Abel was to reach its climax in the murder of the Messiah and His apostles. Hence the judgment which He pronounced upon them: "How can ye escape the damnation of hell?" To grasp the full meaning of the above reference to Abel, one needs to understand that from Eden to Bethlehem's manger there runs a perfect avenue of divine heredity. This path of the ages, carved straight through the human family, may be likened to the Gulf Stream which plows its way across the ocean. The conflict of the centuries is the fact that Satan tried repeatedly to break the royal line so the Redeemer of the world could not be born. Early in Genesis, after the fall of man, it was announced that the "seed of the woman" would bruise the serpent's head. This is the first reference in Scripture to the virgin birth of Christ. Eve was given to understand that a male child, a descendant of hers, would break Satan's power in the world. When Cain, the first child was born, it is evident that Eve thought he was the one who would destroy the serpent, then and there, because she said: "I have gotten a man from the Lord." This was a mistake for the reason that a study of Cain's life shows him to have been full of hereditary poison. He was guilty of six specific sins: he worshiped in self-will, was angry with God, refused to bring a sin-offering, lied to God, would not repent, and murdered his brother. Abel, the second son, was in the blood-line between Eden and the manger. It was for this reason that Satan inspired the killing of Abel so the line would be broken. Seth was born later to repair the damage. After that, the two lines ran in parallel until the deluge, the Sethites, and the Canaanites. Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and many others, were in the royal line from which the promised Redeemer was finally born. Now, in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, we find Christ charging the Jews with the same sin which was laid against Cain, namely, that they had become the instruments of Satan for the destruction of the plan of human redemption. The poison of the serpent had been handed down until that hour; it was flowing in their veins; the blood of the righteous Abel was upon them; they were cooperating with Satan; they had permitted themselves to become a party to the same crime of which Cain was guilty; they were trying to destroy the Saviour of the world even as Cain tried to destroy the line from which the Redeemer was to be born. When these facts are understood, this chapter becomes truly pathetic. There Jesus stands in the temple dedicated to the worship of the true God. He is confronted by a crowd of blind and impure hypocrites. Sinless anger burns on His face as His eyes melt into anguish and misery. From the hill on which the temple is situated, he looks down upon the city spread before and beneath Him. He cries out: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killed the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Then once more addressing the Jews, He cried: "Behold your house is left unto you desolate." As Jesus walked down the steps that day, the people only saw a simple man leaving the temple, but the angels saw the God of Heaven forsaking it. As an example of how the Jews treated the prophets, Jesus cited the circumstance of Zacharias being slain between the temple and the altar. This takes us back to the twenty-fourth chapter of second Chronicles. Baal worship had invaded Israel. Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, exalted herself to the throne of David. She caused all the male members of the royal family to be put to death except Joash, the six-year-old son of King Asaziah, who was hidden away secretly by the good priest Johoiada. In this revolution which overtook his nation, Johoiada showed great tact and ability. He waited until public sentiment became ripe for a change, then on a certain day when a large crowd was assembled in the temple court he displayed the child and drove Athaliah from the throne. Soldiers had been previously concealed in the temple and were armed with weapons. At the proper moment, Johoiada released his private army from hiding and stationed warriors at the various places of entrance so no one could leave or enter the court. The power of idol worship was thus broken, with a single stroke, in Israel. Athaliah with Mattan, her chief prophet of Baal, were put to death. Johoiada died at the age of one hundred and thirty. As a signal honor, he was buried "in the city of David among the kings." Zechariah was the son of Johoiada and succeeded his father as the leading priest of Israel.

Because Zechariah dared to rebuke the Jewish leaders for their apostasy, King Joash had him put to death. "And the spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, “Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord that ye cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you.” And they conspired against him and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada, his father, had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it." In less than a year from the time that Zachariah was killed, the Syrian armies overran Jerusalem and massacred the people. Joash was later put to death. On the eventful day, when Jesus stood before the Jews who thirsted for His blood, He reviewed this bit of Israelites’ history by reminding them of their crimes against the prophets of old. The Jews and the Christ Speaking to the sect known as the Pharisees, Jesus said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own: for he is a liar and the father of it." The Pharisees wielded a satanic influence over their nation. They represented a system of occultism mingled with Jewish doctrines and beliefs. They poured a constant stream of poison into the thinking of Jewry which twisted and perverted the minds of the rank and file of people. Although the Sadducean high priests were the head of the Sanhedrin, the decisive influence upon public affairs was in the hands of the Pharisees. The People's Bible Encyclopedia says: "They had the greatest influence upon the congregations, so that all acts of public worship, prayers, and sacrifices were performed according to their injunctions. Their sway over the masses was so absolute that they could obtain a hearing even when they said anything against the king or the high priest. Hence the Sadducees, in their official acts, adhered to the demands of the Pharisees, because otherwise, the multitude would not have tolerated them." As a Jew avoided as far as possible all contact with a Gentile, lest he should thereby be defiled, so did the Pharisee avoid, as far as possible, contact with the non-Pharisee, because the latter was to him unclean even though a Jew. The egotism of the sect is at once evident. There is no way of calculating the demoralizing influence that this group of men had upon the people who looked to them for leadership. In tracing the origin of this organization we find that it began back in the occult demonism of the Chaldean soothsayers. General A. Netchvolodow says: "The Chaldean science acquired by many of the Jewish priests, during the captivity of Babylon, gave birth to the sect of the Pharisees whose name only appears in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the Jewish historians after the captivity (606 B.C.). The works of the celebrated scientist Monk leave no doubt on the point that the sect appeared during the period of the captivity.

"From then dates the Cabala or Tradition of the Pharisees: For a long time their precepts were only transmitted orally but later they formed the Talmud and received their final form in the book called the Sepher ha Zohar." When the leaders of Israel contacted the occultism of the Chaldeans they brought a satanic element into Jewry which was in a great measure responsible for all of the subsequent crimes of the nation. The Pharisees carried on constant subversive activities against the Gentile peoples around them. They were, in a sense, the Communists of their day. To them, a Gentile was no better than a dog. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, explains: "For there was a certain sect of men that were Jews, who valued themselves highly upon the exact skill they had in the law of their fathers and made men believe they were highly favored by God. These are those that are called the sect of the Pharisees, who were in a capacity of greatly opposing kings. A cunning sect they were, and soon elevated to a pitch of open fighting and doing mischief. Accordingly, when all the people of the Jews gave assurance of their good-will to Caesar, and to the king's government, these very men did not swear, being above six thousand; and when the king imposed a fine upon them, Pheroras's wife paid their fine for them. In order to requite this kindness of hers, since they were believed to have the foreknowledge of things to come by Divine inspiration, they foretold how God had decreed that Herod's government should cease, and his posterity should be deprived of it; but that the kingdom should come to her and Pheroras, and to their children. These predictions were not concealed from Salome, but were told the king; as also how they had perverted some persons about the palace itself; so the king slew such of the Pharisees as were principally accused, and Bagoas the eunuch, and one Carus, who exceeded all men of that time in comeliness, and one that was his catamite." Josephus also tells how the Pharisees were able to crowd their way into the lives of Gentile rulers to the point of gaining control of whole nations exactly as Jewish financiers and political leaders are doing today. The following historical statement by Josephus, describing ancient Alexander, at the time when Alexandra was ruling, sounds like it might have been written about some modern country:

"These are a certain sect of the Jews that appear more religious than others and seem to interpret the laws more accurately. Now Alexandra hearkened to them to an extraordinary degree, as being herself a woman of great piety towards God. But these Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her favor by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs: they banished and reduced whom they pleased; they bound and loosed (men) at their pleasure: and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority, whilst the expenses and the difficulties of it belonged to Alexandra. She was a sagacious woman in the management of great affairs, and intent always upon gathering soldiers together; so that she increased the army the one half, and procured a great body of foreign troops, till her own nation became not only very powerful at home, but terrible also to foreign potentates, while she governed other people, and the Pharisees governed her." Thus we see how, back there, powerful Jews were able to rule from behind the scenes, pull wires and produce Gentile strife the same as they are doing today through their "Gentile fronts" among the various nations. We must always remember that it is natural for the Jewish people to have only contempt for Gentiles. They are possessed of a natural aversion for Christianity. When they gain control of a country, as in Russia at the present time, they never fail to vent their ill-will upon Christians. From the foregoing, we now understand that the Pharisees represented the secret, sinister organization which existed for the purpose of opposing God and overthrowing all law and order. Out of their evil, occult program, there eventually came two documents known as the Kabbalah and the Talmud. The Kabbalah governs the spiritual life of the Jews, while the Talmud regulates things material. Concerning the writings of the rabbis which were added to the Old Testament Scriptures by these leaders, Josephus says: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers." It is believed by many that the Talmud and other writings of the Jewish leaders were directly responsible for the rejection of Christ. These "traditions" blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies which related to the coming of the Messiah. They produced the hatred which finally resulted in the assassination of the Son of God. Hence the words of our Lord: "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" And again: "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."

A few quotations from the Talmud will give an insight into the mental processes of the rabbis of all ages and will show why these inhuman writings were objectionable to Jesus. Gentiles, realizing the sinister contents of these documents have sought at different times to destroy them. All copies were ordered burned by Philip IV, the Fair, King of France, in 1306, but the book survived the flames. The Jewish conception of God was that of a tyrant whose wrath had to be constantly appeased by the most rigid observances. He was confined, they believed, to the four walls of their own bigoted nationalism. Their contempt for other peoples is shown by quotations from the Talmud: "You (the Jews) are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts." "On the house of the Goy (non-Jew), one looks as on the fold of cattle." The following prayer from the Talmud is quoted to the present day: "We beg Thee, O Lord, indict Thy wrath on the nations not believing in Thee, and not calling on Thy name. Let down Thy wrath on them and inflict them with Thy wrath. Drive them away in Thy wrath and crush them to pieces. Take away, O Lord, all bone from them. In a moment indict all disbelievers. Destroy in a moment all foes of Thy nation. Draw out with the root, disperse and ruin unworthy nations. Destroy them! Destroy them immediately, at this very moment!" "It is wicked to protest the words of the rabbis than of Torah (Law of Moses)." "The decisions of the Talmud are words of the living God. Jehovah himself asks the opinion of earthly rabbis when there are difficult affairs in heaven." "Jehovah himself in heaven studies the Talmud, standing: he has such respect for that book." The Talmud teaches that the Jewish nation is the only nation selected by God, while all the remaining ones are contemptible and hateful. That all property of other nations belongs to the Jewish nation, which consequently is entitled to seize upon it without scruples. That an orthodox Jew is not bound to observe principles of morality towards people of other nations, and on the contrary, he even ought to act against morality, if it is profitable for himself or for the interest of Jews in general. Continuing quotations from the Talmud: "A Jew may rob a Goy, he may cheat him over a bill, which should not be perceived by him, otherwise the name of God would become dishonored." "It is permitted to kill a Jewish denunciator everywhere ... it is permitted to kill him before he has denounced ... though it is necessary to warn him and say, 'Do not denounce.' But should he say, 'I will denounce,' he must be killed, and he who accomplishes it first will have the greater merit." "How to interpret the word 'robbery'. A Goy is forbidden to steal, rob, or take women slaves, etc., from a Goy or from a Jew, but he (a Jew) is not forbidden to do all this to a Goy." It would be a mistake to pass lightly over the satanic influence which the Chaldean priests wielded upon the Jewish leaders while they were in Babylon. This association of Jews with pagan magicians perverted the teaching of the Old Testament into murky materialism and brought the people under the despotism of demonism. In Scripture, the Chaldeans are classed with the magicians, astrologers, soothsayers, and sorcerers. Therefore, the inner circle of Jewish leaders in the days of Christ was nothing short of black magicians. Is it reasonable to suppose that this hereditary poison which was handed down in the life-stream of Jewry, from the time of the Old Testament prophets, has ceased to exist? The common-sense answer is No. We have with us today the same kind of human "vipers" that Christ had to contend with nineteen hundred years ago. They constituted the scheming, tricky group which stirred up the mobs that screeched for the destruction of the Son of God. They uttered the most vicious cry that ever fell from human lips: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" "Then Pilate said unto them. Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, crucify him." Had Christ shown hatred toward the Gentiles, started a revolution, organized an army, marched on Rome and promised to give the Jews earthly power, they would have accepted Him as their Messiah and King. But they rejected Him because He said: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then My servants would fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews." It was a tragic night when our Lord went into the garden of Gethsemane for His final season of prayer before facing Calvary. Three times He prayed: "O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." Prior to this time, certain Jewish leaders had approached one of the disciples with a financial offer if he would only lead the mob to the place where the Saviour had secluded Himself for the evening. The Jews possess the rare ability for stirring up strife among the Gentiles. They know exactly how to create confusion and unrest. They are experts in arousing human passions by producing mob psychology. They are able to stampede crowds into croaking special phrases like frogs. We see this today in the streets of the large cities of the world where throngs of unemployed men congregate, carrying banners, and repeating slogans. Little do these mobs know that behind their misery there are usually Jewish Capitalists who have deliberately planned the abnormal economic conditions which produced their suffering. Little do these mobs know that at the top of their Communist organizations there are powerful, but diseased, Jewish minds. Judas told the conspirators that the One Whom he should kiss would be Jesus. So, the deceiver drew near, sneaking like a serpent through the undergrowth and shrubbery of the garden. Reaching the Master, he greeted Him with a familiar oriental salutation consisting of a gentle embrace and a kiss on the cheek. In a few minutes, the Lord was entirely at the mercy of the savage pack of Jewish wolves. They were determined to do away with Him. This was the world's blackest night. First, the innocent Victim was taken to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest, then to the Sanhedrin. And finally to Pilate's Court. All three of these trials were illegal. Both Jewish and Roman laws were broken. Meanwhile, Judas had collected the thirty pieces of silver due him for his part in the crime. He hurried quickly away from the mob, into the semi-darkness, down the path, and vanished from sight. At first, he was inclined to congratulate himself on having made some easy money. This was before his conscience began lashing him. Is it too much to suppose that Judas soon discovered that he had blood on his lips? Yes, his mouth was moist. He found his lips were bloody. Only a few minutes ago, he had kissed the cheek of the Son of God. And the sweat which bathed the Lord's face had been great drops of blood. It was true that blood was oozing through the pores of the Lord's body at the time of the fatal kiss. Medical science declares that only one thing can produce a bloody sweat, namely, a broken heart. In the sad hour of the garden prayers, Jesus loved the world so much, so deeply, that the physical organ in His breast could not stand the strain; it actually collapsed. His heart could not stand the outburst of emotion. It was literally, physically ruptured. And this sad experience fulfilled Psalms 69:20: "Reproach hath broken my heart." When the heart collapsed from the deep emotional impact, blood naturally dripped through the pores of His flesh.

Let sinners remember that this was the way Jesus Christ loved them just before He went to Calvary to suffer for the sins of the world. Try to imagine the feelings of Judas when he discovered the blood of the Master on his lips, poor conscience-stricken creature! Back to the Jewish leaders, he ran. "I have sinned", he cried "in that I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?" The Jews replied scornfully. "See thou to that." Then the cringing betrayer literally threw the thirty pieces of silver on the floor of the temple and fled from the presence of the vicious priests. "I have betrayed innocent blood," he sobbed. Judas was found dead a few hours later, having committed suicide. Special notice should be taken of the word "innocent". The last thing the betrayer did before he died, was to declare that Jesus Christ was guilty of no wrong, that He had committed no sin, that He was living a clean, pure, innocent, sinless life. Had Jesus been guilty of one sin, Judas would have known about it and would have used it to justify his heinous crime in that tragic hour. The perfect life that the Master lived while in the flesh is an unanswerable argument for His perfect commencement and His Godhead. Yes, this innocent, sinless God-Man from heaven was subjected by Jews, to every conceivable indignity, and because of their demands was finally put to a horrible death on a disgraceful cross like a common criminal. The Jews and the Church (Continued) The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70 was a direct fulfillment of the prophecy made by Jesus in Matthew 24:2, "See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." Naturally, when Titus plowed down this gorgeous structure, Christians hailed the event as a confirmation of the Lord's ability to read the future. This aroused ever-increasing interest in prophetic subjects among the believers. The destruction of the Temple and the siege at Jerusalem resulted in the dispersion of the Jews. And wherever they went, they carried burning hatred in their hearts for the saints because they were constantly reminded that Christ had predicted their downfall. Now, coming to the middle of the fourth century we find another example of Jewish influence over Gentile rulers, which is equally as remarkable as their control of King Herod.

For three hundred years, powerful Jews dispersed to all parts of the Roman Empire, kindled ill-will against the Christians. Then came Emperor Constantine who reversed everything and made Christianity the official state religion of the nation. This was a rebuff to both the Jews and pagans who had used every conceivable scheme to destroy the Faith. After the departure of Constantine from this life, his three sons ruled the Empire. Meanwhile, the Jews bided their time, waiting for the right opportunity to place a Gentile in power that they could control. Their chance came, following the death of Constantine's last son, when Julian ascended to the throne. Contempt for Christianity filtered through Julian's mind and he resolved, as soon as an occasion might arise, to deal it a final, crushing blow. He swore that when the time was ripe he would throw off the religious cloak of Constantine. It remained for the Jews to produce a situation in which they could assist Julian in venting his spleen against the believers who were then growing strong both in numbers and spiritual strength, due to more than a half-century of religious freedom. Happily, for the Church, this Emperor reigned only two years, but those two years embodied a period of unspeakable agony. Julian gave the Christians the name "Galileans" which, in his day, was a word that carried a slur with it. As if actuated by the spirit of anti-Christ he adopted the curious means of attempting to nullify the Bible prophecies. His contact with the Jews was no doubt responsible for this novel idea. Early training had taught him how to gain favor with Jewish leaders by insulting and tormenting the followers of Christ. Neither, Jews or Christians had forgotten that the destruction of the Temple was a fulfillment of predictions made by the Lord. It was therefore decided that, as a slap at the Christians, Julian should rebuild the edifice in Jerusalem and turn it over to the Jews. From all quarters of the Empire, Jews came to assist in erecting the building and to offer their wealth. Julian personally made the preliminary arrangements and sent one of his chief officers to superintend the work. The Jews who were directing affairs from within the shadows, shaping the official policies of the Empire, saw in this a deadly rebuff which promised to ultimately threaten the very existence of the Christian religion in the world. Stirring scenes were enacted. Women brought their ornaments and jewels by the cartloads. So much precious metal was received that tools were even cast and forged of it. It looked to Jews and pagans as if the prophecies of the Bible relating to Palestine were going to be set aside. But God intervened at the last minute and when the Temple was partway built a violent earthquake and severe electrical storm took place which demolished the whole undertaking. Fear came upon the Jews and the workers so that all activities were suspended. Not only Christian writers but pagans as well, record this strange happening. Julian was mortally wounded on the field of battle with the Persians a few months later. He became known in history as "the Apostate." It has been related that just prior to his death, he cried: "Thou hast conquered, after all, O Galilean." Church leaders, through the age, have been alert to Satan's use of the Jewish people in thwarting the program of Christ in the world. Some Christians have been more outspoken than others, on the subject, but every generation has produced its watchmen who have known the truth and have dared to proclaim it. Among the more bold spokesmen on this question was Martin Luther who prepared a treatise entitled, The Jews and Their Lies. In it we read the following statements which are characteristic of the entire discussion: "How the Jews love the Book of Esther, which is so suitable to their bloodthirsty, revengeful, murderous appetite and hopes! The sun has never shone on such a bloodthirsty and revengeful people, who fancy themselves to be the chosen people so that they can murder and strangle the heathen. "No folk under the sun is greedier than they are than they have been and always will be, as one can see from their accursed usury. They console themselves that when their Messiah comes, he will collect all the gold and silver in the world and divide it amongst them. "The Princes and authorities sit and snore with open mouths and let the Jews take, steal and rob what they want out of their open purses and chests; they let themselves and their subjects be skinned and sucked dry by the Jews' usury, and make themselves, with their own money, beggars in their own State. The Jews have got our money and property, and are therefore our masters in our own land. "It all agrees with the judgment of Christ that they are poisonous, bitter, vindictive, and malicious serpents, assassins, and children of the devils who kill and inflict injuries by stealth because they cannot do so openly. "But if we fear that they may do us harm in body, wife, child, servant, beast, etc., etc. let us reckon up with them what they have taken from us by usury, and so share it amicably, but drive them forever into the fields. "Anyone might think I am saying too much. I am not saying too much, but rather far too little. If we do not want to partake in the Jews' blasphemies we must be separated and they must be driven out of the land. That is the best advice that secures both sides in such a case." The Jews and Communism.

No informed person who is truthful denies the Jewish character of Communism! The writer recently published in one of his magazines, the names and nationalities of every leader in the Moscow dictatorship as it was set up years ago. It was discovered that out of the 545 members of the bureaucracy, 454 were Jews and there were only 23 Russians in the group. In other words, the Russian people are governed by a gang of anti-Christian foreigners, many of whom are said to be unable to speak the language of the people they govern. Some of the principal officials of the Red government are reported to have come from the East Side of New York. It has been said on the floor of the United States Congress, and the charge has not been denied, that a certain Jewish banking concern in Wall Street sponsored Trotsky's mass meetings of rebellion in New York some years ago, sent him across the ocean secretly, and deposited millions of dollars in a Swedish bank to the credit of the destroyers, with which the Russian revolution was financed. In her remarkable book Waters Flowing Eastward, Mrs. L. Fry states that back in 1893 a Jewish secret order here in America appointed Jacob Schiff, a Wall Street Jew, chairman of its committee on Russian revolutionary activities. If this is true, it simply means that Mr. Schiff sat at his desk in New York and directed the destruction of the Czar's government thousands of miles away. It is impossible to separate Jewish Communism from Jewish Capitalism. Laboring men who think they can free themselves from the Money Power by embracing Communism are being betrayed by soap-box oratory. The Moscow leaders are the world's wealthiest Capitalists. They own one-sixth of the earth's surface. They control one hundred and sixty million Gentile slaves. The Russian people are not allowed to vote, own property, exercise free speech, enjoy the freedom of the press, or worship God. The masses are kept in their weakened, helpless condition by the most powerful system of secret police ever invented in the history of the world. The attitude of Communism toward Christianity was explained by Lunatcharski, one of the leading Jewish members of the Moscow dictatorship: "Why should we believe in God? We hate Christianity and Christians. Even the best of them must be regarded as our worst enemies. They preach love of one's neighbor, and pity, which is contrary to our principles. Christian love is a hindrance to the revolution. Down with love of one's neighbor; what we want is hatred. We must know how to hate, for only at this price can we conquer the universe. We have done with the kings of the earth; let us now deal with the kings of the skies. The anti-religious campaign must not be restricted to Soviet Russia: it should be carried on throughout the entire world. The fight should also be developed in the Moslem and Catholic countries, with the same ends in view and by the same means." There is no way of knowing how many millions of Russian Christians have been slain during the last 100 years because of their faith in Jesus Christ. A magazine recently carried an article entitled, "Men of Russia." It was the author's purpose to make a critical examination of the ringleaders of international Communism. He says: "Some of the businessmen are Russians, but most of them are of other blood, and practically all of them have prison records. In considering the men of Russia, it should be remembered that it isn't often that ex-prisoners get a crack at the society which punished them, but they did in Russia." The writer in the article then proceeds to discuss some of Moscow's principal Jewish fiends: "Joseph Stalin is a minor official of the Soviet Government. He is but one of the three hundred or so members of the Central Executive Committee, and yet, nevertheless, he is the first man of Russia. Although serving as secretary of the All-Russian Communist Party, Stalin is not a Russian. His every feature is commensurate with 'Stalin', the Russian word for steel." Parenthetically it should be remarked that Stalin is merely the customary "Gentile Front" for the Moscow Jewish leaders. His Gentile wife died a "mysterious" death recently and he immediately married a Jewess. The article continues: "Lazarus M. Kaganovitch is a member of the Politbureau or arbitrary 'Brain Trust', and chief organizer of the Second Five Year Plan. This Polish Jew is Stalin's Number One Boy, and his logical successor as a dictator. "Maxim Maximovich Litvinov is Commissar of Foreign Affairs. He is the super-traveling salesman of Bolshevism. This shrewd Polish Jew has fought diplomatic battles in every political arena where the gate receipts warranted his appearance. He returns from these victories from time to time to his spacious Moscow office to check up one more Red diplomatic triumph by sticking a new red glass tack in the huge map which covers the wall behind his desk. "Klementy Voroshilov (another Jew) is Commissar of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. He is the dashing yet modest cavalry officer who is charged with preparing the Russian forces for an anticipated war. "Mikhail Kalinin, (an Armenian Jew) is President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Like all big leaders, he served his term in prison, taking an important part in the revolution of 1905 as a member of the Council of Workers' Deputies. "Karl Radek, (another Jew) is Contributing Editor of Izvestia, official government newspaper. Radek has frequently been suppressed by radical organizations for being too radical. "Michael Borodin, Editor of the English-language Moscow Daily News. This Czechoslovakian Jew was educated at Valparaiso University in Indiana; and spent many years agitating for the International Communist Party, in Spain, in Mexico, in America, the British Isles, and China. “Just' Podolsky, master of the Foreign Office Press-Censorship Bureau He may have a first name, but it is doubtful that anyone in Russia, including his wife, knows it. He is a soft-spoken Jew in eight languages, not counting American slang, of which he has a thorough knowledge. Padolsky is a hundred percent Communist. "Jerry Lifschitz, Ex-Vice-Yankee Consul, ex-Second-in-Command of Moscow Amtorg. This Polish Jew had an American jail and prison record for I.W.W. activities; and an added palm for being twice tarred and feathered by irate Midwest American farmers. "Comrade Smirdovitch, (another Jew) is the 'Red Pope'. Smirdovitch, an atheist, is the official restrainer and regulator of religion in the U.S.S.R. He is a member of the important Central Executive Committee. As the official Anti-Christ of the Soviet Republics, he decides how far remaining priests of the church may go toward preaching the Word of God. Kindly, cultured, educated, tolerant in manner, Smirdovitch says religion will die out when divorced from superstitious ritual, pomp, and fear. His job is to help kill it." Toward the close of the article, this writer in the magazine says: "But the men who control Russia are not Russians. Members of the Jewish race from all over the world predominate. Every member of the foreign office press censor bureau is a Jew. Little men of Russia who help in responsible positions, heads of offices, trusts, are mostly Jews." Let Christians remember that the international Jewish Communists and Capitalists expect to eventually destroy all Gentile governments, rule the world, and establish throughout the earth the kind of conditions they have introduced in Soviet Russia. They expect to murder all Christian believers and blot Christianity out of existence. The struggle is between the philosophy of the Jew Karl Marx and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The manner in which the Moscow Jews have proceeded with their program of destruction is recorded in a quotation taken from the London Times dated November 14, 1919. The quotation is a letter written by a British army officer, who was stationed at the time in southern Russia, to his wife in England. It reads: "The Bolshevists are devils. I hope to send you copies of 64 official photos taken by British officers at Odessa when the town was taken by the Bolshevists.

I suggest you make them widely known. Their horror may make people realize. The victim gets crucified with nails through his elbows. The hands are treated with a solution which shrivels the skin. The skin is cut out with a razor, round the wrist, and peeled off, till it hangs by the fingernails. a human glove. The victim gets terrified and insane. Other photos are of women. Women with their breasts cut off to the bone. Passes issued to Bolshevists by commissaries authorize holders to arrest any girl they fancy for use of the soldiery. Sixty-two girls of all classes were arrested like this and thrown to the Bolshevist troops. Those who struggled were killed. The rest when used were mutilated and thrown dead or dying into the river. Slaughter-houses were choked with corpses. Hundreds of suspects, men, women, and children, were herded in these, doors and windows manned and the struggling mass fired into until most of them were dead or dying. The doors were then locked and they were left with veritable plague spots causing widespread epidemics. The Bible, to them, is a 'counter-revolutionary' book to be stamped out. Churches are used for anything from movie shows to 'slaughterhouses.'" Let no Christian be duped into believing that we are supposed to sit supinely by and permit the Reds to create a reign of terror in America simply because this menace happens to be a "Jewocracy." True, there is a stratum of Jewry that is indeed "Chosen" and has been a blessing to humanity through the centuries, but there is another stratum that is a "curse in all places" as Jeremiah said they would be. Speaking through the lips of the prophet in Ezekiel 38:3, God said: "I am against thee, O Gog" and this is a clear reference to Communism with its seat of government in "Meshech" (Moscow). It is possible that this invisible empire has existed as a self-propagating body ever since the Jewish leaders contacted the Chaldeans while in Babylonia. Persons holding to this view agree that the organization has almost completed its course, that the time for the consummation of the plot is near at hand, that the last great attack is now being launched for the purpose of setting up an international system of Jewish government. The existence of this secret sinister organization in New Testament times is implied in 1 John 4:3, "And this is that spirit of anti-Christ whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world." The entire cabal (plot) is so large and far-reaching, its motives so hellish, its plan of attack so contrary to Christian thinking, that it simply staggers the mind when it is first exposed to view. But the results of its devastating influence may be seen both in history and among the nations today. It breathes the spirit of the last great Beast-Emperor described in the thirteenth chapter of Revelation. It discloses the perverted Messianic theories of an apostate people. This anti-Christ force has apparently manifested itself from its underground sources in different ways at different periods of history, but never with the boldness and permanency that it has since it came to the surface about one-hundred years ago.

There have always been two kinds of Jews. One racial division represents all that is highest and best in Jewry and regards the Jews primarily as being a system of religion. The other has little inclination toward religion but regards Jewry as a political State, the purpose of which is to conduct world conquest until the nations are brought under one head with themselves in control and all the Gentiles changed into serfs. When the Romans turned against the designing and wicked political leaders of Israel, the Pharisees and Sadducees were driven undercover. With the dispersion that followed, their taint was taken to the ends of the earth and has grown up in every nation. No doubt Jesus had this in mind when he warned to: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." In all parts of the world, it appears that this poison "leaven" is "leavening" the whole lump of the nations. What used to be the Russian Empire is now completely "leavened." These are the subversive forces that have moved through the centuries, changing their form from time to time as governments have been made to heave, totter, cave in, and fall, but always with the same object in view, a final culmination when all nations will be leveled and a super-Jewish State set up, presided over by one man, their apostate Messiah. This is the genius behind Socialism and Communism.

The Church in America suffers from blindness, delusions have overwhelmed the Christian mind as has been in every age in every generation when men forsake the God of the Bible and the sin-cursed heart depraved as it is has caused vast numbers of Christians to swallowed the devil’s lie that the Jews are harmless when it is the Jew that leads the assault on Christianity. In the last analysis, there are only two remedies for Jewish Communism: The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and full stomachs. The Red Menace thrives only where there is spiritual apathy and physical hunger.

[simplyoriginalcharacters]

Chizuru Yamagi

((Hey I’ve been working on this girl for like six years and I want a second opinion? I tried to cut as much as I could but this is still s u p e r long.))

BASICS Name: Chizuru Yamagi Gender: Cis female Age: 22 Birthday: June 19 (making her a Leo-Cancer cusp) Race: Human with Eldritch blood. Ethnicity: Japanese Sexuality: Pansexual Alignment: Chaotic Good

Profile and review are under the cut! Content warning: mention of sexual abuse. ~Cori

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE Height: 4'11" Weight: 118 lbs (most of this is muscule) Chizuru can be said to be a conventionally attractive girl,with wide silver eyes (Though she’s taken to wearing brown colored contacts), clear skin, and a cute button nose. She’s frequently mistaken for being younger than she is, although her behavior frequently clears up any misunderstandings about her actual age. Chizuru has a pear-shaped bodytype- with narrow shoulders and hips that jut out widely, culminating in thick, muscular thighs. Even though her shoulders and arms are more narrow, however, muscle is pretty evenly distributed over her body, and defined pretty nicely under that cursed purple sweater she always wears. Her hair isn’t the neatest in the world, and if you squint, you may be able to tell it’s slightly lopsided. Her bangs are often in her face, though frequently held back with a hair clip or other accessory. PERSONALITY Likes: Winter and autumn, alcohol, physical and mental exertion, the smell when it rains, looking down from high places, opponents who give her a good challenge, sewing (she makes most of her own clothes!) Dislikes: Being shown affection by those she doesn’t trust, being inordinately praised, hot weather, enclosed spaces (this is a trigger for her), being treated like a child, authority in general (tolerable, though she’ll be clenching her teeth the entire time.) Fears: Being forgotten, being taken advantage of, being made powerless, is a claustrophobe General Attitude and Intelligence: Although you wouldn’t be able to tell from talking to her, Chizuru is a cynic who doesn’t see much faith in humanity, and who hates letting on how she really feels. If you manage to get under the front she puts up, you’ll find a bitter, tired person who has her fair share of scars. Though getting close to her is a feat in and of itself, she cherishes those she knows she can trust, and will protect them with her life. Provided her arrogance doesn’t rear its head. Due to receiving a formal education late in life, Chizuru lacks book smarts, and doesn’t have the patience for literature or math. However, she is quite street smart, and is good at adapting to precarious situations, as well as reading body language. General Sociability: When it comes to social things, Chizuru is able to smoothly operate most situations, being a natural when it comes to speaking. She operates on the idea of brevity being the soul of wit, and she usually tries to keep her conversations short as she can. Chizuru is good at reading people most of the time, and she often knows exactly what comments to slip in to keep people intrigued. She generally focuses on the positive aspects of others, though she generally pays little attention to aesthetics if she isn’t considering her conversation partner as a sexual partner. She often playfully flirts with those who physically appeal to her, and sometimes even those who don’t. Overall, she’s extremely friendly on the surface, to the point that people tend to flock to her, though those she dislikes will often find themselves on the end of open scorn. General Moral Compass: A great way to describe Chizuru in regards to morality would be to call her a benevolent hedonist. While she tries not to make it immediately obvious on the surface, everything Chizuru does is done because she thinks it’s the right thing to do. She’s an incredibly willful, brash person who pursues the protection of others with unstoppable zeal (though she often passes it off as a desire for battle). Unfortunately, she’s also extremely stubborn in her perceptions of right and wrong, and hates even entertaining the possibility that what she’s doing may not be the right thing. As such, if you can convince her that ‘the right thing’ is something objectively dangerous or reckless, she’ll do it with the same zeal as her other goals. Personal Goals: Have an exciting life and death, and snuff out any major criminals she can catch while she’s at it. She also wants to rid the world of corruption. An impossible goal. Positive Personality Traits: Perceptive, determined, social, independent, confident, charismatic, friendly Negative Personality Traits: Stubborn, prideful, has no sense of limits, distrustful, has issues with commitment, unreadable, childish on occasion BIO Chizuru is from a world vaguely close to our own… with the exception being that Eldritch Abominations exist and hide among the human population. Although they aren’t quite ‘Gods’, these creatures are generally able to exceed humans in physical capability… Socially, however, humans are often considered superior. There’s not much public knowledge about these creatures, however, as the few who see their true forms are often traumatized beyond speaking, or otherwise dismissed as liars. There are some who see them as gods, however, and given the powers of some of them, they may not be entirely wrong. Some of these creatures are capable of opening wormholes, in a manner of speaking, allowing them some level of free movement through the multiverse. However, this is unknown to the public due to government coverups… That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from talking, though. Chizuru was born via an uncommon union. You see, her mother wasn’t exactly human, but rather a cosmic horror having taken human form. Now, in her world, it was far from a unique occurance. However, despite her mother being a horrific abyss generally beyond human comprehension, she had a pretty normal first few years of her childhood. Probably because her mother left after she was born. Growing up in a poor and destitute home wasn’t easy. Especially since her father had a chronic, medical case of what we call, “The douche” alongside a brief addiction to opium. It was only brief because it killed him, though, and that definitely fucked with little Chizuru. Her father was willing to do disgusting things to feed his addiction- Up to and including pimping out his daughter. For five years of her life, Chizuru served as a call girl for her father’s friends- And on occasion, her father himself. The event gave Chizuru a… grim outlook on sex, believing it to be a good thing whenever she feels degraded or harmed. After her father’s death, Chizuru was sent into fostercare for a year, but was eventually found by an estranged sister (who basically disowned her father so she had no idea Chizuru was even A Thing), who took Chizuru in. She lived with her older sister, Kyouko Yamagi, for ten years.  Living with her sister was a better experience than living with her father, even though she was frequently left to her own devices due to her sister’s constant business with her job as a homicide detective. Due to this, she learned to take care of herself to a rough degree, although her tastes are… interesting. Ten years into living with Kyouko, Chizuru finally got wind of a big job her sister had been working on for a while- Involving a serial killer going after anyone with any ‘abnormality’ that put their humanity into question. Wanting to be of some use to her sister, Chizuru attempted to get involved in the case. Hey, we never said she was SMART. During her involvement in what little she knew of the case, Chizuru met and befriended a conspiracy theorist by the name of Ryouta Kawajiri, and he imparted a theory of his to her- The theory that not everyone she’d ever met was “human”. This was where she first began to consider the existence of eldritch beings, although by the time she got older, she dismissed the thought as a madman’s ravings. Ryouta was, you see, obsessed with the thought that these eldritch beings wanted to subjugate humanity… And thus, he lynched everyone suspected of being one. Unfortunately, Kyouko, due to her unnatural eyes, fit the bill. Chizuru realized this too late, but due to never keeping the documents Ryouta gave her about his theories, she was never able to prove his guilt. Trying to go to the police led to a small investigation.. but they came up empty handed. Ever since, she’s been searching for some way to prove Ryouta’s guilt, as the murder of her sister is one crime she could never forgive. Current Status Currently, Chizuru lives in a small apartment in Kyoto, as most of her work comes from there, and has spiraled into a slightly hedonistic lifestyle- Though she’s never forgotten Ryouta. She has ties to an organization known as The Purity Foundation, who promised her information on Ryouta in exchange for her acting as a sleeper agent.  POWERS/ABILITIES Boxing- Chizuru has practiced boxing since she was a child, and is thus in peak physical condition for someone her height/weight. She’s capable of delivering powerful blows, but it’s useless against magic of any kind. The Sight- Due to her eldritch blood, Chizuru is capable of seeing things ordinary humans can’t- Ghosts and demons for example. She’s also able to comprehend things normal humans can’t. Enhanced stamina- Due to her eldritch blood and upbringing, Chizuru is sturdier than most, and able to take more hits thanks to her stocky build. Superhuman strength- Chizuru is incredibly strong, and capable of easily lifting things like people (and once, a small car.) This has the unfortunate side effect of making her hyperaware of just how fragile everything is compared to her, so she’s often reluctant to use her full strength.

((I’d like to apologize for the utter monolith that is this bio))

Hello, Cori here! Let’s take a look at Chizuru, starting with appearance. Overall, I’m happy with the amount of details that you’ve given me for Chizuru’s physical appearance. I love the way you’ve described her body shape and her cute button nose. There are a few details missing here and there that I’d like to see clarified. You’re missing Chizuru’s hair color (since she’s Japanese, I’m assuming her hair is black at the moment) and I’m not sure how long her hair is either. I appreciate that you’ve described its messy appearance. Additionally, the mention of her wearing colored contact lenses is a nice detail. All in all, I can form a pretty clear picture of your character in my mind, so good work there! As far as Chizuru’s personality is concerned, there are a few spots that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to me at the moment, especially after I read her backstory. I can understand how someone who went through Chizuru’s trauma could learn to put up a friendly facade and learn how to read the emotions of others, but where did the rest of her social skills come from? How does someone who was abused by her father and neglected by her sister learn to be such a smooth speaker? Does she have any trust issues related to her experiences growing up? I find it a little confusing that Chizuru tries so hard to focus on the positive aspects of people when you’ve said previously that she’s a jaded person with little faith in humanity. How does this affect her outlook when she meets someone new? Does she expect the worst from a stranger, or does she look for the good parts? It also seems like her preference for keeping conversations short would push a lot of people away–they would feel like they were being dismissed. In that way, I have a hard time seeing people ‘flocking’ to Chizuru. You also said that she was ‘unreadable’, which is another antisocial trait that would put a lot of people off. Chizuru might pretend to be friendly to the strangers that work up the nerve to talk to her, but I don’t imagine many people being willing to approach her. I’m curious to know what you mean by Chizuru being ‘childish on occasion’ as well. I’m not really seeing any part of her personality that would exemplify ‘childish’, aside from her stubbornness–which you have already addressed.  I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to address regarding her personality, so let’s move on to backstory. I have a few questions about the content in Chizuru’s backstory–the main ones are about Chizuru and her sister. I’m assuming, based on the information in this profile, that Kyouko is also a half-eldritch creature because of her eye color. If a union between a human and an eldritch horror is so ‘uncommon’, like you’ve said it is, then how are Chizuru and Kyouko both the daughter of an eldritch horror? Do they share the same mother? The same father? How old was Kyouko when she left home? Why would Chizuru’s eldritch mother stay around long enough to have two children and THEN decide to disappear? Or, conversely, maybe Kyouko and Chizuru have different mothers. How did their father manage to meet two eldritch horrors and have a child with both? Or maybe I’m wrong about both, and Kyouko just happens to be a human woman with unusually colored eyes (how did she get her unusual eye color, in that case?). The details regarding Kyouko and Chizuru’s parent figures is confusing! If Chizuru didn’t know about or believe in the existence of eldritch beings before she met Ryouta, what did she think about her own unique abilities? Her silver eyes, her sight, and her strength? You say she dismissed Ryouta’s theory when she got older–how old are we talking? When did her superhuman abilities start manifesting? If she had any inkling that she was ‘more’ than human somehow, how could she dismiss Ryouta’s theory when she heard it? I know that she’s at least aware of her strength, since you said she’s hyper-aware of how delicate other people are (and what does she think about her ability to see ghosts?).

All in all, I’m interested in Chizuru and I want to know how her story pans out, so you’ve succeeded in making a character I want to read about–good job on that! However, there are some conflicting details and holes in this profile that are interfering with my overall enjoyment of this character. I’m having too difficult a time suspending my disbelief. Maybe you have answers to all the questions I had in this profile–in which case, that’s great and I wish those details had been included (even in this ‘monolith’, as you called it–if you think it’s necessary to Chizuru’s story, then include it! I’d rather know more about her relationship with Kyouko than the fact that she likes the smell of rain.). If any of my questions are difficult for you to answer, you might want to consider changing that part of Chizuru’s profile. I know that it’s hard to change things about a character you’ve worked on for years–it took me a long time to work up the nerve to “kill my darlings” in regards to a character I created back in high school. But I think you’ll find that once you cut and change those parts, no matter how attached you were to them at the beginning, you’ll have a much stronger character for it. Good luck! ~Cori

[crossroadsdimension]

Lucky!Ford Chapter 5

Here’s the last chapter for this guy for a while. Heh heh; I had fun working with this one.

And @howtotrainyournana (and recently @impishnature) know some of why that is. There are a couple characters who pop in from another dimension and come over into this one...and they mention a character who belongs to Nana, but that character doesn’t actually make an appearance. Let’s see what you guys think of these little inter dimensional visitors, eh?

Just so you know, if I write anything more for Lucky, it’s probably gonna be one-shots of future shenanigans he gets himself into -- and his luck gets him out of!

Unexpected Visitors

It turned out that Ford’s “safe trail” wasn’t actually as safe as it had been thirty years ago.

Ford dove into the underbrush, leaving Stan yelling curses behind him as he was dragged into the open clearing they had arrived at.

One of the three figures that had suddenly appeared in their path hit Stan over the head -- a pig-like creature with leather skin and thin, sharp spikes jutting out along his spine. “Shut it.”

Stan collapsed to the ground; Ford’s hand instantly went to the gun at his belt, and he gritted his teeth. Bounty hunters. How they had managed to reach his dimension and disturb the peace, he wasn’t entirely sure and he didn’t want to find out, because that question would lead to him being captured and being taken away from the home that he had fought so hard to reach.

“That one’s got five fingers,” said the stick-thin, green humanoid figure with pointed ears. “You grabbed the wrong one! We want the six-fingered one, not this oaf.” He kicked Stan, who rolled over and let out a groan, still stunned from the whack to the head.

“Use him as bait,” said the third figure -- a portly, scaly lizard humanoid who was anything but fat, if Ford’s experience was anything to go by. “They must be related, if you look at their faces. Humans look even more alike when they are.”

Ford gritted his teeth even more tightly. He had to do something, but his gun didn’t have very many shots left, and they wouldn’t be able to do much against two of the three hunters.

Of course my luck has decided to run out.

A hand came down on Ford’s left shoulder, and he stiffened and whirled, pulling out his weapon. He froze when his eyes locked with the figure who had come up behind him. “What in--”

“Shh.” The red-gold, fox-like ears on top of the other’s head twitched and swiveled, tracking the sounds from the clearing and the forest itself. “I’m here to help.”

The last person Ford had been expecting to hear that from was himself.

“Help?” he hissed. “How do you expect to help?”

“A distraction.” The other Ford’s seven red-gold tails twitched in a way that made Ford think of a nervous, cornered animal. “Wait here; we’ll take care of the rest.”

“What are you--”

His counterpart dashed out of the underbrush before Ford could say another word. “Leave him be!”

The bounty hunters looked up from Stan’s form sharply.

“Cipher’s runaway pet!” crowed the lizard. “That’s a double score! Get him!”

Ford felt a chill run down his spine. Cipher’s runaway--

His counterpart held a hand back behind him as the bounty hunters ran towards him. A fireball materialized in his open palm, and he threw it at the bounty hunters -- who dodged it -- before bolting into a different part of the forest. “Maria, now!”

Another figure came out of the forest as Ford’s counterpart disappeared: a young woman in red, orange, and gray armor, and a frown on her face that made her seem older.

“Wait!” The pig started flailing, trying to stop. “That’s--”

The young woman flicked her wrists, and a flat disk of blue energy appeared under the three aliens. Ford’s eyes widened sharply as the three dropped into it with yelps of surprise, the disk winking out of existence a moment later.

The woman relaxed, her frown shifting into a wide grin. “Got ‘em, Sixer!”

Ford’s counterpart came out of the trees, looking relieved. “Lower-level bounty hunters; obviously, they’re still running around despite the fact that we’ve cut off the head.” He looked over at where Ford was and motioned with his head to come out of hiding.

Ford hesitated, then stepped out from the trees, gun still in hand and the two newcomers kept in his line of vision as he moved over to where Stan lay on the ground. “Stan, are you all right?”

Stan groaned, then rolled over and started to sit up. “Ugh. What the he--eeeck was that? They looked like something out of a B-rated horror movie.”

“You can swear in front of me, Stan, I’ve grown used to it,” the woman called over -- right; Ford’s counterpart had called her Maria.

Stan muttered something as Ford dropped his gun near him and grabbed his brother’s head to give it a look over. “H-hey! Watch it!”

“Hold still; you might have a concussion,” Ford replied shortly as his counterpart and Maria came closer. He eyed them as they came to a stop, then looked back at Stan and looked him in the eyes. “...it doesn’t look bad; some aspirin and you should be fine.”

Stan grunted and pulled his head back. “I could’a told you that, Poindexter.” He looked over at the other two and blinked. “Am I seein’ double or…?”

“I’m actually physically here, yes,” Ford’s counterpart replied. “I’m a dimensional double of your brother, to put it simply; others call me either Kitsune or Sixer.”

“Would’a thought they’d’ve called ya Seven or somethin’.” Stan frowned at the seven tails behind Kitsune, which twitched in response to Stan’s comment.

“He had six when I met him,” Maria explained. “One of his tails split two years later.”

“It what?”

“Is this natural or is this something else?” Ford asked sharply.

Kitsune’s tails stilled at the question, falling limp behind him; his ears flicked back. “...Something else.”

“If you’re worried about Sixer, you really shouldn’t be; the Cipher that did that to him isn’t around to cause anymore trouble.” Maria folded her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels, a knowing smirk crossing her face.

Ford’s eyes widened sharply.

“What are you talking about?!” Stan demanded. “Yer leavin’ me out of the conversation here! Who is this Cipher guy you’re talking about?!”

Maria and Kitsune stared at Stan, then looked over at Ford.

“You haven’t had Weirdmageddon?” Kitsune asked in confusion. “Or has Stan not recovered all of his memories yet?”

“What are you talkin’ about? I haven’t forgotten anything!” Stan snapped back.

“Weirdmageddon?” Ford repeated in confusion. He blinked, and his eyes widened as he connected together the information he was hearing. “You mean that’s what would have happened if I had come back through my portal and Bill had gotten his hands on the Rift--”

“Yes,” Kitsune replied flatly.

“Who’s Bill?” Stan grumbled.

“His full name is Bill Cipher,” Maria replied. “He’s...simply put, he’s a demon who has an odd attraction to Fords across dimensions. Your brother’s lucky that he managed to get back here without opening a rift -- speaking of which, how did you get back?” She looked at Ford with a raised eyebrow.

“A young man named Joshua did the exact same thing for me that you did to those bounty hunters.” Ford motioned to where the bounty hunters had been a moment ago. He was a little confused as to how the girl knew anything about Bill Cipher and was willing to speak freely about him and not attempt to arrest them.

Maria blinked, then a smirk crossed her face and she snorted. “Joshua is neither young nor human, and neither am I.” She rapped her right hand against her chest.

Clang clang.

Ford stiffened at the metallic noise; Stan’s eyes widened.

“I’m surprised that he managed to get you here without Cipher getting involved, though.” Maria frowned, lowering her hand. “I’ve tried that before -- he always blocks the natural pathways off; that’s why your rift maker is usually the only thing that works. Why wouldn’t he get involved this time….” Her frown deepened, and she tapped again against her chin thoughtfully.

“I think I know what happened.”

Maria, Stan, and Ford looked over at Kitsune.

“Enlighten me,” Ford said dryly.

“There is someone that we have made the acquaintance of a year after I met Maria,” Kitsune said carefully. “A being who is a fury goddess who has had interactions with the Mas -- w-with Cipher.”

Maria looked up at him with a worried expression as Ford’s eyes widened sharply. Maria slipped her hand in his and squeezed it, which seemed to ground Kitsune.

Kitsune closed his eyes and took in a breath for a moment, then opened his eyes again. “She was in a relationship with him previously, but after he stole part of her power from her, she went on a sort of revenge quest against any and all versions of Cipher. Which leads me to believe that she has already found your iteration of him and has destroyed him utterly.”

“Huh.” Stan blinked. “Well that was nice of her.”

“Did you just almost call Cipher Master?” Ford demanded harshly. Even more connections were starting to come together -- especially considering what the bounty hunters had called Kitsune.

Kitsune winced and pulled back a little, but not very far because of Maria’s grip on her hand. “I-I was not--”

“Sixer.” Maria looked at him with concern, then looked back at Ford. “You didn’t know about that either, huh.”

“Know about what?” Ford hissed. “That the bounty hunters referred to him as Cipher’s runaway pet? Because that and what he nearly said are all that I am going on and I would love to know why.”

Kitsune’s ears flicked back as he shuddered. “I lost. That’s the simplest answer.”

Ford stiffened at Kitsune’s statement, eyes widening. “You what?” That was not the answer that he had been expecting from his counterpart. He rose to his feet, staring at Kitsune. “But...but the Quantum Destabilizer -- Our -- my plan to--”

“I missed.” Kitsune wasn’t looking at any of them. “The Zodiac could have worked, should have worked, but Stanley and I got into an argument and Cipher took that to his advantage.” He took in a shaky breath. “The appearance I have now is a result of that; the reason that I nearly called him that is a result of that. And he did this not only to me; he did it to the rest of us as well.”

“No….”

Kitsune nodded glumly. “The four of us were changed and forced into service. We were saved from that some time ago, but...our dimension….” He shook his head again. “We were able to save the people in Gravity Falls, but no one else.”

Ford stared at his counterpart as Kitsune’s statement sank in, Stan also looking at him with a murderous expression at the mere idea that Dipper and Mabel could have possibly been pulled into this. Ford hadn’t thought that it would have been possible for any one of his counterparts to lose against Bill, to lose with not only the one weapon that they planned to use against Bill directly in the Nightmare Realm, but also with the possible backup they had if he ever happened to enter their respective worlds -- much less if they ever managed to find all the parts of the Zodiac, which was apparently possible but not something that Ford was entirely willing to put stock in.

Especially since it was apparent that Cipher was no longer going to be attempting to make his way into his dimension.

“So, wait.” Stan pushed himself up to his feet, swayed for a moment, then managed to keep his balance. “Yer sayin’ that there are some places where yer entire dimension fell ta pieces?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Kitsune replied. “I’m at fault for that as much as the Ciphers, considering what I was used for. Those bounty hunters you saw were no doubt planning on reporting in to some Cipher with your brother so they could utilize the network that I left behind. Maria and I have been working to tear it apart, but...it’s been difficult, considering how large the mess I left behind is.” He sighed and shook his head.

Ford stared at his counterpart, his mind whirring as he put the pieces together -- what his counterpart was saying, what it was that he wasn’t, what it possibly meant for his other counterparts--

“How many?” Ford asked finally.

“I’m not sure of the exact number.” Kitsune shrugged a little.

“I’m sure Agnostic might know,” Maria commented, thoughtful. “He doesn’t like to think back on what happened, though.”

“Who?” Stan frowned. “Another Ford?”

“Yeah.” Maria looked over at Ford. “One who got brainwashed pretty severely. He’s one of the few that we’ve managed to rescue from Cipher’s clutches.”

Kitsune shuddered. “And I’m glad we got to him first. I don’t know what things would look like if Bishop was still--” He shook his head.

Ford flinched back. He’d heard of Bishop, of his religious fantasies and how easily words flowed from him that could make you consider changing sides. If he was going by Agnostic now --

Well.

“What, was he some kinda demon-worshipping -- “ Stan stopped short when Kitsune nodded. “Holy Moses.”

“He’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Maria said. “There are versions of you running around doing his bidding too, Stan.”

“Me?” Stan snorted. “Like that Cipher guy would want anythin’ ta do with me. I don’t got the brains that Ford has.”

“But you have the skills to see through his attempts at making deals,” Maria replied. “It takes a con to outcon a con, and you have the reputation of being the best at that out of the entire multiverse.”

Stan straightened himself up at that, puffing out his chest as Ford rolled his eyes.

“That can’t be it,” Ford said, frowning.

“Considering that Stans have been rather consistent throughout the multiverse as being the one to trick Cipher in a final deal? I’d say that Maria’s actually right,” Kitsune replied.

Ford stared at his counterpart in disbelief. “You...you’re backing her up?”

Kitsune shrugged. “The dimension I now call home has nine other versions of me and eight versions of everyone else in our family. I’ve grown to know and appreciate the quirks everyone has.” He smiled a little. “It gets to be rather entertaining when my brother and his counterparts attempt to out-con each other, especially after a few drinks.”

Maria snickered. Ford stared with an incredulous expression. His counterpart could not have been serious.

“That’s a crowded house,” Stan commented. He swayed a little, then righted himself. “Speakin’ of which, we should probably get back to the Shack. I don’t want to leave that place in the kids’ hands for too long.” He started to take a few steps forward, then stumbled and started to fall over, only to get caught by Kitsune before he could hit the ground.

“We’ll stay in this dimension long enough to get you back, at least,” Kitsune said. “Then we should probably get moving ourselves.” He looked over at Maria, who hesitated for a moment before nodding in agreement.

“I’ll be fine, you.” Stan righted himself again. “You go on an’ keep huntin’ down those guys who are goin’ after my brother. If any more of ‘em show up again here, we’ll be ready fer ‘em next time.”

Kitsune hesitated, unsure. “Being out in the forest with you as you are could be--”

“Grunkle Stan!”

“Great-Uncle Ford!”

The group of four turned their heads as Dipper and Mabel suddenly crashed through the underbrush and grabbed their grunkles in tight hugs.

“What are you two doing out here?” Stan demanded, looking down at Mabel. “I thought I told you kids to stay back and watch the Shack!”

“We saw these monsters come out of a portal!” Mabel looked up. “They were talking about taking Grunkle Ford away!”

“W-we gotta get back to the Shack before that mean pig-thing finds you,” Dipper added. He started tugging Ford back the way they had come.

“We’re already taken care of them, Dipper,” Kitsune spoke up. “You don’t need to worry about them finding your grunkles, I can assure you.”

Dipper and Mabel stared at Kitsune and Maria with wide eyes; Maria started giggling at their expressions.

“U-Uh….” Dipper looked between Ford and Kitsune. “What’s--”

“Ohmygoshyouhavetails!” Mabel let Stan go and moved closer to Kitsune’s seven tails. “They look so soft! Can I--”

Kitsune chuckled as one of his tails moved a little closer to Mabel. She instantly buried her fingers in his red-gold fur and gasped.

“Dipper, come over and feel this! It’s like a cloud or something!”

Dipper came over, frowning, but curious. “Mabel, clouds are water vapor, they can’t exactly be--” He stopped when he put his hand in Kitsune’s fur. “Whoa; that is soft.”

A low rumbling noise came from Kitsune; Ford was startled to find he could identify it as purring.

Mabel gave a delighted squeal. “Ohmygosh! You sound like my cat when he’s on catnip!”

The purring puttered to a halt as Kitsune looked down at Mabel with an unsure expression.

Stan and Maria laughed at the look on his face as Ford’s mouth quirked up in a slight smile. Another thought popped into his head then, and the smile faded.

“Who were you before?”

Kitsune looked over at Ford at the question while Dipper and Mabel exchanged confused looks. “You mean….”

Ford nodded. “Yes; before...all that.” He eyed the flicking ears on top of Kitsune’s head.

Kitsune frowned, then sighed and shook his head. “It’s...difficult, to remember before. I’ve spent well over six centuries like this; my memory-keeping abilities may be sharper now, but...some things still fade. One or two memories stand out among the mess, but not many. And...not very many good ones.”

Maria looked up at him with a concerned expression, biting her lower lip. Ford got the impression that she had heard him say something similar before.

“Why do you ask?” Kitsune looked at Ford with a slightly-cocked head, almost like an animal that had spotted something curious.

Ford paused. “I wanted to know if -- since you ran in...similar circles, for a time -- if you knew of a mercenary known as Fish.”

Maria’s brow furrowed, and she closed one eye as Kitsune’s left ear twitched.

“Fish? I don’t-- Oh. Oh, you mean Pirana.” Kitsune nodded a little. “I heard of him, but I never met him myself. Considering he hunts us down for sport, it was more than likely that he would have killed me on sight, so we were kept out of each other’s way.” He paused. “Although, now, there’s no doubt that he’s coming after me.”

“Ho-ly scrap,” Maria squeaked as she opened her eye again. “Holy scrap I do not think I’d do much against him.”

“Interdimensional database?” Ford guessed, not sure how the World Jumper would have been able to gain such an expression so fast.

“Tumblr,” Maria replied flatly. “Any alternate universe that exists, there’s a chance there’s something for it on Tumblr.”

“Considering that you’ve heard of him, you must have had times where he passed you by for another--”

“I’ve had him chase me five times.” Ford’s interruption caused Kitsune’s eyes to widen sharply. “Joshua saved my life the fifth time.”

“...you must be quite lucky, then,” Kitsune said.

“How bad is this Fish guy?” Stan asked.

“He’d kill the entire town without a second thought, so long as he could get to your brother -- and then he’d kill him, too.” The grim tone in Kitsune’s voice caused Stan to stiffen. “He is not someone that people can stand toe-to-toe against -- not unless you can appeal to his sense of humanity, somehow, but the chance of that is silmmer than Cipher when he’s looked at from the side.”

“Who?” Dipper asked in confusion.

“No one you have to worry about,” Maria replied quickly.

“And to hear that you’ve gotten away from him five times, I can’t say I--” Kitsune stopped short. “Wait. Lucky.” His eyes widened slowly. “That’s you, isn’t it? The luckiest of us?”

“...so I’ve been told,” Ford replied carefully as Maria and his family stared at him with wide eyes. “But that was only once, from Jheselbraum -- how do you know about--”

“I think I was the one who gave you that moniker.” An excited smile started to spread across Kitsune’s face. “You remember -- in the marketplace? Your translator wasn’t working but you knew enough of the language to barter with one of the shopkeepers for--”

“A part of the Quantum Destabilizer while barely keeping in his good graces, yes.” That was a memory that stuck out in Ford’s mind clear as day. It had been early on in his journey across the Multiverse, when he had still been getting his bearings and trying to figure out how in the world he was going to survive with Bill constantly on his tail. A figure with salt-and-pepper hair and a covered face had found him after a nearly-botched trade with a tradesman and had offered to repair his translator and give him a little advice.

“Well, Lucky, I’m surprised you managed to get away from him without losing a finger!”

“That was you?” Ford stared at Kitsune.

Maria was looking back and forth between the two of them with a wide-eyed expression, a grin crossing her face as Kitsune nodded.

“Yes; it was!” Kitsune laughed. “It must have been...oh, five years before I’d managed to gather all the parts I needed. I’m glad you managed to return home safely after that, and with a surprising turn of your luck then, as well. Your luck should certainly hold now.” He looked at Maria. “I think we’ll be all right leaving them as they are.”

Maria laughed. “All right.” She looked at Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Ford in turn and gave them a thumbs-up. “I’m glad you guys don’t have to go through what your counterparts did in other dimensions. Hopefully Gideon Gleeful will get a swift kick to the pants some other way.” She clapped her hands together, and a shimmering blue, flat disk of a portal appeared in the air next to her -- a doorway between dimensions.

“Wait!” Dipper moved closer. “I have so many questions!”

“We don’t have much time to answer them, I’m afraid.” Maria rubbed Dipper’s cap-covered head. “You’ll get your answers eventually; maybe your Grunkle Ford will be willing to tell you stories one day, when you’re a little older. Until then, you kids stay safe, don’t read any weird cave inscriptions aloud, and try to teach Gideon a lesson in a way that will get him to see reason without putting you all in a life-or-death situation. The kid needs guidance, not to be turned into an outcast.”

Mabel fidgeted as Kitsune slid his tail out from under her fingers. “But...but Gideon--”

“I know what he did, sweetheart, but he can change. It’ll take time, and probably more lessons that he had to learn in other dimensions, but he will eventually become less stalker-ish. Eventually.” Maria ruffled Mabel’s hair as well. “Don’t ever tell him he’s good boyfriend material, though; I wouldn’t trust someone with a stalker past to get in a relationship with me.”

Kitsune chuckled, his tails curling at the tips. Ford found the display odd, but he didn’t get the chance to ask what it meant, because the next thing they knew, Maria and Kitsune had stepped through the portal and out of their dimension.

Leaving Ford to be stared at by Mabel and Dipper.

“Why didn’t you tell us you knew another you?” Mabel asked, eyes shining. “Are other ones gonna show up now?”

“Highly unlikely,” Ford replied.

“I find it hard to believe that you’re the luckiest you out there,” Stan said with a snort. “There’s no way that’s possible; you’ve never beaten me at poker.”

“Because you cheat, and besides, my luck only seems to work when it’s to my advantage somewhere in the future,” Ford hissed back.

Stan huffed, took a step, and stumbled. Ford quickly caught him and pulled Stan’s left arm over his shoulders.

“Let’s get you back to the Shack and looked over properly,” Ford muttered. He started to move back towards the house, Stan limping in step with him and Dipper and Mabel moving ahead of them.

“C-could you tell us about the other dimensions?” Dipper asked, hesitant and hopeful.

“Oo! Oo! Did you find a dimension made of cotton candy?” Mabel asked.

Something about Mabel’s eagerness made Ford laugh a little. “No, no.” His face scrunched up as he thought back to some of the dimensions he’d been to. “Although, there was this one where everything was shaped like the letter ‘M.’” He shuddered.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Mabel commented.

“Every single word they spoke started with the letter ‘m,’” Ford said. “I was considering ‘mommitting muicide’ if I never found a natural rift away from there.”

“Ford!” Stan looked at him sharply as Dipper and Mabel stared at him with wide eyes. “Lay off that kinda talk, will ya? Lighten up for once, geez.”

Ford ducked his head a little at that, but a slight smile appeared on his face. “All right, all right. Let me try to think of a different one….”

[drbor]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Learn English through Story Subtitles

Learning English through Story Subtitles is one of the most efficient methods. You will also learn new things at the same time.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the seventh and final novel of the Harry Potter series. The novel chronicles the events directly following Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the final confrontation between the wizards Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. Throughout the six previous novels in the series, the main character Harry Potter has struggled with the difficulties of adolescence along with being famous as the only person ever to survive the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra. What the wizarding community found most impressive was that he was just a baby when this curse was inflicted. The curse was cast by the evil Tom Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort, a powerful evil wizard who murdered Harry's parents and attempted to kill Harry as a baby in the belief this would frustrate a prophecy that Harry would become his equal. Lord Voldemort had not heard the full prophecy, so he did not know attacking Harry Potter would transfer power to him. As an orphan, Harry was placed in the care of his Muggle relatives Petunia Dursley and Vernon Dursley. In The Philosopher's Stone, Harry re-enters the wizarding world at age 11 and enrolls in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He makes friends with fellow students Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and is mentored by the school's headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. He also meets Professor Severus Snape, who intensely dislikes and bullies him. Harry fights Voldemort several times while at school as the wizard tries to regain a physical form. In Goblet of Fire, Harry is mysteriously entered in a dangerous magical competition called the Triwizard Tournament, which he discovers is a trap designed to allow the return of Lord Voldemort to full strength. During Order of the Phoenix, Harry and several of his friends face off against Voldemort's Death Eaters, a group of Dark witches and wizards, and narrowly defeat them. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry learns that Voldemort has divided his soul into several parts, creating "Horcruxes" from various unknown objects to contain them. In this way, he has ensured his immortality as long as at least one of the Horcruxes still exists. Two of these had already been destroyed: a diary destroyed by Harry in Chamber of Secrets and a ring destroyed by Dumbledore shortly before the events of Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore takes Harry along in the attempt to destroy a third Horcrux contained in a locket. However, the Horcrux had been taken by an unknown wizard, and upon their return, Dumbledore is ambushed and disarmed by Draco Malfoy, although Draco cannot bring himself to kill Dumbledore. Dumbledore is subsequently killed by Snape, who finishes what Malfoy started. Following Albus Dumbledore's death, Voldemort consolidates support and power, including by attempting to take control of the Ministry of Magic. Meanwhile, Harry is about to turn seventeen, at which time he will lose the protection of his home. Members of the Order of the Phoenix explain the situation to the Dursleys and move them to a new location for protection. Using several of Harry's peers and friends as decoys, the Order plans to move Harry to the Burrow under protection. However, the Death Eaters have been tipped off about this plan, and the group is attacked upon departure. In the ensuing battle, "Mad-Eye" Moody and Hedwig are killed and George Weasley severely wounded. Voldemort himself arrives to kill Harry, but Harry's wand fends him off of its own accord. At the Burrow, Harry, Ron, and Hermione make preparations to abandon Hogwarts and hunt down Voldemort's four remaining Horcruxes but have few clues as to their identities and locations. They also inherit strange bequests from among Dumbledore's possessions: a Golden Snitch for Harry, a Deluminator for Ron, and a book of short tales collectively called The Tales of Beedle the Bard for Hermione. During Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour's wedding, the Ministry of Magic finally falls to Voldemort, with a Death Eater assuming the position of Minister for Magic, and the wedding is attacked by Death Eaters. Harry, Ron, and Hermione flee to 12 Grimmauld Place in London, the family home of Sirius Black that Harry inherited a year before. With the help of house-elf Kreacher, they identify R.A.B. as Sirius's deceased brother Regulus and learn that Slytherin's locket was stolen from the house and ultimately seized by Dolores Umbridge of the Ministry of Magic. They infiltrate the Ministry in disguise and steal back the locket but accidentally break the protection of 12 Grimmauld Place during their escape, forcing them to go on the run in the countryside. With no way to destroy the locket, they argue frequently under the object's evil influence, culminating in Ron abandoning Harry and Hermione. Meanwhile, Harry has visions of Voldemort visiting wand shops and torturing wandmakers, attempting to understand the reason behind Harry's wand's abilities while also mysteriously seeking another wand. Harry and Hermione continue the quest for the Horcruxes, discovering more about Dumbledore's past, including the death of Dumbledore's younger sister and his connection to the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. They travel to Godric's Hollow, Harry's birthplace, and meet the elderly magical historian Bathilda Bagshot. However, they discover that the real Bathilda has been killed, and it is instead Nagini in disguise. The snake attacks, and they barely escape to Forest of Dean, but Harry's wand is damaged beyond repair in the fight. A mysterious silver doe Patronus guides Harry to a pond containing the Sword of Hogwarts co-founder Godric Gryffindor, one of the few objects able to destroy Horcruxes. When Harry tries to recover the sword, the locket Horcrux tries to kill him. Ron, who was guided back to Harry and Hermione by the Deluminator, saves him and destroys the locket using the sword. Hermione identifies in Dumbledore's book a symbol also worn at Bill and Fleur's wedding by Xenophilius Lovegood, the father of fellow Hogwarts student Luna Lovegood. They visit Xenophilius and are told the symbol represents the mythical Deathly Hallows, three objects from an old fairy tale titled The Tale of the Three Brothers: the Elder Wand, an unbeatable wand; the Resurrection Stone, which is able to summon the dead; and an infallible Invisibility Cloak. Although Ron and Hermione are skeptical, Harry believes the Hallows are real and suspects Voldemort is hunting the Elder Wand, believing it to be in Dumbledore's possession after defeating Grindelwald. The description of the third Hallow also matches that of his own inherited Invisibility Cloak. Harry's suspicions are confirmed when he has a vision of Voldemort breaking open Dumbledore's tomb and stealing the Elder Wand.The trio are captured by Snatchers and taken to Malfoy Manor. Ron and Harry are imprisoned, and Bellatrix tortures Hermione, believing they stole Gryffindor's sword from her vault at Gringotts. With the help of Dobby the house-elf, they escape to Bill and Fleur's house along with fellow prisoners Luna Lovegood, wandmaker Mr. Ollivander, Dean Thomas, and the goblin Griphook. During the escape, Peter Pettigrew is strangled by his own silver hand after Harry reminds him of his debts, and Dobby is killed by Bellatrix. At Bill and Fleur's, they devise a plan to break into Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts, believing another Horcrux to be hidden there as well. With Griphook's help, they succeed in breaking in, retrieving Hufflepuff's golden cup, and escape on a dragon that was guarding Bellatrix's vault. In the chaos, Griphook steals the Sword of Gryffindor from them. Harry has another vision of Voldemort and sees that Voldemort now understands their plan and intends to protect the Horcruxes even further but also confirms the unidentified Horcrux is at Hogwarts. They enter the school through a secret entrance in the Hog's Head, a bar in Hogsmeade owned by Dumbledore's brother Aberforth. Harry alerts the teachers that Voldemort is planning an assault on the school, and they mobilize the student body to defend Hogwarts and buy Harry time to locate the Horcrux. After speaking with the ghost of Ravenclaw, Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter, Harry confirms that the Horcrux is Ravenclaw's lost diadem, and he recalls such a diadem being hidden in the Room of Requirement. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione destroy Hufflepuff's cup with basilisk fangs taken from the Chamber of Secrets as Voldemort and his army besiege the castle. They find the diadem but are ambushed by Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe tries to kill them using Fiendfyre, a cursed fire, but is unable to control it; the fire destroys the diadem and kills Crabbe. Meanwhile, many are killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, including Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Colin Creevey, and Fred Weasley. In his encampment, Voldemort feels the Elder Wand is not performing as he expected. Reasoning that Snape, having killed Dumbledore is the true owner of the Elder Wand, Voldemort murders Snape. Harry arrives as Snape is dying, and Snape passes him memories to view in the Pensieve. They reveal Snape had a lifelong love for Harry's mother, and despite hating Harry's father, he agreed at Dumbledore's request to act as a double agent against Voldemort. He had been watching over the trio as they searched for the Horcruxes, conjuring the doe Patronus. It is also revealed that Dumbledore was slowly dying after mishandling the ring Horcrux, and his "murder" by Snape was planned to prove Snape's allegiance to Voldemort. The memories also explain that Harry himself is a Horcrux, and therefore he must die at Voldemort's hands if Voldemort is to become mortal, which Voldemort does not know. Harry accepts his death and gives himself up to Voldemort, telling Neville Longbottom that Voldemort's snake Nagini, another Horcrux, must be killed. On the way, he finally manages to open the Snitch and uses the Resurrection Stone within to seek comfort and courage from his dead loved ones. Voldemort uses the Killing Curse, and Harry does not defend himself. Harry awakens in a dreamlike location resembling King's Cross station and is greeted by Dumbledore. He explains that Voldemort's original Killing Curse left a fragment of Voldemort's soul in Harry, which caused the connection they felt and made Harry an unintended Horcrux. The fragment had been destroyed by the Killing Curse, allowing Harry the choice to return to life or to "go on." Dumbledore also admits some of his mysterious history, in which his friendship with Gellert Grindelwald resulted in the murder of his younger sister Ariana and estrangement from Aberforth. Harry chooses to return to life and feigns death. Voldemort calls for a truce at Hogwarts and displays Harry's body, offering to spare most of the defenders if they surrender. Neville, however, pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat and uses it to behead Nagini, leaving Voldemort unprotected by Horcruxes.Harry escapes under his cloak as the battle resumes. In a final onslaught, Bellatrix is killed by Molly Weasley, and Harry reveals himself to Voldemort. He explains to Voldemort the Elder Wand's loyalty transfers upon the defeat, not necessarily the killing, of its previous master. Harry also reveals that Snape had never been the Elder Wand's master because Draco Malfoy had disarmed Dumbledore before Snape arrived to kill him, and Harry had disarmed Draco at Malfoy Manor weeks prior. Voldemort attempts one final Killing Curse on Harry, but the Elder Wand refuses to act against its true master and the spell rebounds, killing Voldemort. Harry uses the Elder Wand to repair his original wand, intending to return the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's tomb, where its power will vanish if Harry dies undefeated. However, he plans to keep the Invisibility Cloak he inherited. The wizarding world returns to peace once more. In an epilogue set in King's Cross station 19 years later, the primary characters are seeing their own children off to Hogwarts. Harry and Ginny have three children: James Sirius, Albus Severus, and Lily Luna. Ron and Hermione also have two children, Rose and Hugo. Harry's godson Teddy Lupin is found kissing Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour's daughter Victoire; Neville Longbottom is now a Hogwarts professor; and Draco Malfoy and his wife are also at the station to send off their son, Scorpius. Albus is departing for his first year at Hogwarts and worries he will be placed in Slytherin House. Harry reassures him by telling his son he is named after two Hogwarts headmasters, one of them a Slytherin and "the bravest man he had ever met," and that the Sorting Hat could also take account of personal preferences as it did for Harry. Harry also notes that his scar has not hurt in nineteen years and all is well. Want to hear more stories like this?

[realmonstersrp]

INTRODUCING JI GUNWOO, OUR NEWEST STUDENT WITH THE POWER OF FERROKINESIS

WELCOME TO GUMI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE POWERED.

WHO ARE THEY?

PERSONALITY

(+) Steadfast, obstinate, reliable (–) Distant, unsympathetic, haughty

BACKGROUND

born on the first day of spring, he is a flower child—of some sorts—whose stem was cut off at the roots, whose petals broke off before they even bloomed.

happiness is a thing of the past, a forgotten memory amidst a family filled with secrets and shame. only child to two seemingly perfect parents, how funny it is to be tossed aside just as fast to be embraced.

it is not to say that he asked for this, that he—at such a young age—fully understood the clear difference between life and death, that previous actions would lead to such future consequences—a curse upon their daughters, extended family would murmur under hushed breath, would mumble with scorn and sneer. what’s the point of them if they keep dying?

mother dearest, though, is a cracked piece of china, a beautiful work of artistry—only capable of being crafted by the gods—whose chips and chinks originate from the core, whose fractures may be well-hidden but, as gunwoo knows, are not fully healed. it is not as if he thought he could fill the missing gaps in their hearts, could replace the emptiness in their souls. no, it is a companionship reliant on trust, silence, and shared misery—for it is only children who completely understand what it truly means to be alone.

she died with a smile on her face—and for that, he should be grateful … right?

it is then that a transition occurs, of home-life and lifestyle. hide father’s secret could he not anymore, not when it threatened his ability to sleep soundly at night, to walk through a crowd without mother’s ghost looming over his right shoulder.

they say college is supposed to be the best four years of your life; gumi university, priding itself for being the safe haven for mutants and all alike. pfft. didn’t they know that lying was a sin?

for a sanctuary it could be not, when its asylum teased him with the nostalgia of being cared for. of being appreciated. of being normal. they greeted him with opens arms, and for that he is appreciative, but never will he allow himself to be thankful.

as gumi university is a personal prison of his own, perfectly orchestrated and fine-tuned by father himself, as its walls remind him of such nightmares, of his plague of guilt.

he figured out her name—the woman father spent questionable amounts of time with, the woman father preferred over dying-wife in hospital bed; and so gunwoo confronts him, though, high expectations and determined expression were only met with laughter, with threats. you tell your mother, and i won’t pay her hospital bills anymore. how would that make you feel, hm? to know that you killed her?

it is then that gunwoo’s wrapped around father’s finger, seemingly until forever as the blame—for keeping her protected, for preventing her heart from breaking—runs deeper in veins than hatred, than contempt. obedient son he remains to be—follows in alpha alum’s footsteps to become vice-captain of said legacy, ranks near-top of class, excels in monster games—for father expects nothing less.

and yet, he’s the only one who remembers to visit her grave every year, to light candles on her birthday, for mother is simply dead, not forgotten.

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

DEFINITION

gunwoo has the power of ferrokinesis, or metal manipulation, which causes him able to create, shape and manipulate metal, typically in its solid shape. metals are generally malleable—they can be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking—as well as fusible and ductile, so the possibilities are endless with his ability. his mutation isn’t strong enough to manipulate metal on that of a pure elemental-level, so he generally only deals with the substance in its alloy-form; though, he has had trouble controlling that of which is ores, rather than already smelted or constructed materials. that aside, however, the type of metal at hand does not hinder any of his applications, so there is no difference between brass, copper, gold, etc. in his book. though, just for safe measures, he keeps an iron chain worn at all times just so he has some source of metal to bend at his will.

WEAKNESSES

unfortunately, gunwoo is unable to create metal himself, being strictly limited to manipulating only that from already-existing sources. moreover, he cannot alter any of the innate properties of metal, and, as such, the substance is affected by everything that normal metals would be e.g. melting under extreme heat, turning brittle and shatter from intense cold, rusting from overexposure to water. likewise, that also leaves his ability extremely vulnerable to any other powers that can affect metal with this taken into account.

physical flaw gunwoo’s capability to manipulate metal can, for some reason, be directed correlated to the iron levels in his blood—whenever he uses his mutation, he inadvertently “consumes” the iron in his blood which, when overexerting himself, can lead to iron deficiencies in his system and can, as a result, lower his overall physical performance, forcing him to eat more foods that can easily replenish his iron levels.

time limit similarly, such iron deficiencies cause fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath, etc. thus, he’s confined to applying his ability for no more than twenty minutes, or else he faces serious (and possibly permanent) health issues.

range he can only access metal that is within sight. correspondingly, he can also only move it as far as the eye can clearly see.

DID YOU KNOW?

even though he’s already six-feet tall, he’s still growing.

[beautifullybrokensblog-blog]

Life Imatating art. Im a warrior. Dont get it wrong i have survived, but im not a survivor IM A WARRIOR!

#evenMorriganwascrushbylove, #homewreckerthisallyou #owie

  Are you proud of Who You Are. Do you like Who You Are. I don’t know how you could! I couldn’t like somebody  who purposely hurts children and ruins their homes. I couldn’t like someone who would knowingly cause pain 4 no reason other then she had a ache in her crotch. Did it make you feel accomplished or strong, 2 get your hands on my husband. Real strength is in doing what’s right. Strong women get their own man,  not act like sneaky whoring holes that cant understand right from wrong. How do you sleep at night I ask because my children can’t they keep having nightmares about a divorce or if I leave.   You took their security way.  Shame on you curse you they dont deserve someone like you taking there home and family from them on a whim, how alful. You put them through this only because you want to see if you could, just some game to you, a challenge but its nothing, you dont even really cared about anyone. you have destroyed seven people my family is shattered your affair with my husband has stripped my home of joy so I asked you are you proud? it doesn’t seem right that you get to smile well my adult children worry about a mother that seems empty anymore they watch me fight for so long just to live now i wish i hadnt.  Why did you walk in and take what little bit of joy and hope and happiness I had. Take the pride of family and make it a joke. You took form him to my husband, he lost the respect, lost the trust of his children wife nieghbors church.  You stole from the children the sleep and carefree youth,   the younger two keep having nightmares since this happened they’re afraid if I leave or we get divorced what will happen to them,they  remember what it was like before me and they know what it’s been like   up until now the short lived happiness of family and wholeness and none of us are sure we can do that anymore and here’s a really screwed-up thing if you cared about him you would have thought about these things you would have thought about the fact that if I don’t pay the rent and I’m not here if I leave my husband he will lose this house because he cannot even afford the rent on his income  muchless add electrinity Child Care  food xcetera.   I on the other hand would be just fine my monthly annuity would go up by $450 my medical would be reinstated at full free and I have family here now. I am heartbroken I truly have lost everything I love my family but you don’t care about that you just wanted to get laid. I want you to fully understand the situation you caused the selfishness of your actions I hope someday that you feel the anguish of having to go on while  simultaneously know that the happiness  the joy and the trust, everything you believed has dissolved just suddenly gone. because some girl walked into your life ripped your family like you did mine. I hope that you have to hit your knees like I do and that you pray you wont wake up the next morning  because these nothing worth the pain you gonna feel.  and I hope you feel the crushing despair of waking up the next morning and knowing you’re still there and the situation still exist and then the other woman still exist but she’s smiling and you’ve got  no smiles only uncertainty there is no choices left really, cant leave without children lossing everything, dont want stay anymore because now there is nothing to stay for. And you cant just get over it and forgive because you nolonger have a heart to forgive with.  I hope you have to come to a decision for sake of the children because without you they won’t have a home they won’t have their care because you’re the only mother they’ve ever had and see it’s a little different than other children because these kids have already gone through being abandoned these kids have already been shipped from foster home to foster home.  and while your head spins and you can’t think straight and all you hear is your own silent screaming inside. you have to paste on a smile and you have to do day-to-day life and you have to see doctors and therapist and help your children and you have to pretend everything’s okay even though you’re dead inside. The love you felt is fire that only burns you tourtures you.  they emptiness were your faith in love and husband were  is now dark cold ugly  impossising and swallows all hope all of  you like black whole devoring your soul .And the pain spreads he looses frieds and his family, then three verry good people who called him dad nolonger can look at him with out shame and anger. we are all stuck in a Time Loop of endless imploding doom what gives you the right to be so flippent with other people lives and well being.  You devastated me in a way ( I have to give you credit because you did to me but cancer couldn’t, being raped couldn’t, losing family couldn’t) your actions brought me to my knees your actions have taken form my kids their sense of values our sense of family their belief in wedding vows loyalty and honesty. you ruined the respect for their father and you’ve left them wondering if relationships never work. If anybody is ever faithful because I mean Dad couldn’t do it,  oh but I did and there witnessed to what i got for it.   All I can do is think about the whole situation over and over and there is no going backwards no matter what I do there’s no fixing it it’s just too smashed up. One of the things I thought of since my husband wasn’t exactly faithful honest or trustworthy wasn’t exactly respectful of our marriage. Maybe he wasn’t completely honest with you either about me. So I introduce myself I am the woman the wife the mother you so casually took all hope from. the ones whose foundest memories are now only painful I am his wife we have been for 8 years you probably don’t know. But when I met him he had nowhere to live is children were in foster care and about to be adopted out his oldest son had already been adopted . He was struggling to get sober, he had court issues and fines and a record. but I fell in love so I gave him a place to live with me and my children in my home and I filed all the paperwork with the courts to get his kids back I took him to all of his DUI classes & parenting classes, anger management things that he had to do for the courts. I took him for his drug testing I got him his Sr 29 I paid for his alcohol classes and I made sure that he was able to go through with every hoop CPS through at him. and then together we went back to court with CPS and we got custody now something you should know is his little daughter Mia and Andrew had been in the foster care system being bounced around for almost 1&½ yrs at that point they were only 33mo and six when I brought them home.  It was hard those first 6 years I was the sole provider. So he could do all the things that the courts and CPS wanted him to do. Then there was his criminal history he was unable to get a job so I got all the paperwork and I wrote his dissertation for his judge and I got a lawyer to stand in court with him so he had an opportunity actually talk to the judge and I expunged his record. now he has been working for just over a year. And this last month March was the first month in 8 years that my husband’s pay any rent we split it.  he has contributed to electric bill twice in 8 years. so you see I keep the roof over our heads and his children I keep the power on I get them to school I take them to doctors to therapy I do the all the homework I clean the whole house, he doesn’t do housework at least never has I do the laundry I watch the children this is my day. I get up at 5:30 I have half hour to make coffee take a shower and come to life before I wake up the kids they get on a school bus at 6:30 then I clean the house I start whatever laundry check to see what bills need to be paid or what appointments need to be kept and then my husband rolls out of bed at 10 I drop him off at work we leave here at 11:30 I get back home at 12:30 I now have two hours to clean other people’s toilets to subsidize our income so I can put food on the table because at 2:30 somebody has to be here to get Andrew off the bus because if you don’t know Andrew is physically and mentally disabled and he requires 24/7 care it does not go to regular school he’s in a day program Mia gets home at 4:30 usually I’ve gotten Andrews homework done by then I know it’s time to Mia. Next I have to make dinner so it can be served at 6:30 cuz one of the things with Andrew is autism and he has to have a schedule thats consistent or it throws him into episode he also has ADHD and oppositional Defiance disorder which means that any day the school can call me to come pick him up because he’s not getting along. if im not here what happens to them.  I can make it with out him I do have my annuity from the cancer.  A long fought lawsuit after years ago the government put a magnesium plant at the bottom of the hill we lived on. my mother, father, three Sisters two brothers and my grandmother have all died from cancer I am sole Survivor after 12 surgerys so I get paid every month a breakup of award from the lawsuit that’s what Shawn lives off my misfortunes. I have to stay up and get him after work, and am expected to have time together while he unwinds after work im lucky if i get more than 4 hrs a sleep a day. I havent had a day with out his kids in yrs.  I was home with his kids, paying his way, loosing my medical care while him and his kid get free medical through state, because the kids are not my bio.  so i nolonger have depents and his income is held against me but i get no bennifits or bills paid from him no it gose to his games and nights out with friends, and fucking around with you. You two get drunk and go dancing at the bar, and full around in front of all my nieghbors.  He gets pulled over and gose to jail for dui and i get all your fucked off inappropriate sex text to him.  So for all my doing “the right thing” for being his rock and wife in every sense possible.  Along comes you and 1000’s of dollars in fines and court fees and impound fees. As it is he only sees his kids while they are awke for 8 hrs wk after school on Thursday and Friday. The rest of the time hes asleep when there leaving for school and they’re already asleep when he gets home.  But you two can go out on the town?  I have only been out with my husband with out his kids 3 x in 6 yrs.  How dare you how dare both of you.  That is some shady shit, you two did to this family so dirty AND YOU HAD NO RIGHT OR REASON TOO. If there is any justice in this world i hope it finds you. I hope you get a taste of my life. I hope you get cancer, i hope you get so sick and your teath fall out from it the chemo and the puking. I home the treatment robes your bones of strenght and you get degenerate disc disease and loose use of different extremities all the time with no warning,. and you get to feel the pain of neuropathy from having a stroke. Be cause your so physically over extended and exhausted from doing it all for your family.  And I hope you fall madley deeply in love with some that you would do everything for them and you get to be a mom but to kid that are his not yours and then i hope someone like you comes along and and suduces your husband and it ruins everything and you have to hold those kids why they cry and beg you make it work cause there scared to death of the life had before you, and everyone including that other woman knows, if you go thats exactly were they will be.  So you really cant do any thing but struggle to breath and cry and hurt in ways no one ever should.  And i want you know i mean really understand what a selfish awful person you are. i want you to beg for death like i do because of you.  The only difference between us then will be you will have deserved it.

Amy cannday and your little check out friend now the world knows what you are

[how2to18]

MANY PEOPLE have heard of Nietzsche, Plato, and Hegel, but Marx is perhaps unique among philosophers in his ability to inspire fully formed opinions among people who haven’t read him.

The dominant image of Marx that one is confronted with today, in philosophy classrooms, discussions on Reddit forums, and countless editorials, is not simply distorted but inverted. It is possible to argue that the image has the same relationship to Marx’s thought as Bizarro does to Superman, covering the same points in an absolutely inverted way. In place of the exhortation for the workers of the world to rise up and discard their chains, today his opponents allege that Marx wants to wrest away the fruits of the workers’ labor, rewarding the lazy and unproductive with the workers’ hard-earned spoils.

The figure of the worker has shifted from the exploited, from people with nothing to lose but their chains, to those whose hard work needs protecting from the would-be Marxists and socialists in government eager to redistribute wealth. In this respect, Marx is not the one who would end exploitation, returning the value of production to the producers, but is the specter behind every new attempt to exploit and enslave humanity.

The opposite side of class struggle is no less distorted: the capitalist is no longer the parasite living off of the wealth of the workers, but the “job creator”; not only the hardest worker, but the benevolent creator of work. Of course the history of this distortion is a long and complex one, passing through the formation of welfare programs and the corresponding backlash. Thus, it is possible to write a history of this inversion, examining the rhetorics and politics behind such figures as the “welfare queen” and “forgotten man.” What I want to argue, however, is that it is Marx’s own philosophy that makes possible an understanding of this distorted world.

Marx was, after all, very interested in distortions. His writing is riddled with such figures of illusion as the camera obscura and mystics’ table-turning. Very often these distortions take on the shape of inversions; the world is not only skewed but upside down; ideas rather than material forces drive history, and the market appears as the zenith of freedom rather than the nadir of alienation. Moreover, Marx’s central concepts of ideology and fetishism are attempts to understand the distortions of the world; through ideology the ideas of the ruling class become the ruling ideas, so that everyone, irrespective of class position, sees the world through the perspective of the wealthy; while through fetishism the world of things appears to have more value than the workers who create them.

Essentially there are three types of distortion in Marx’s thought, each building on the other to create an increasingly upside-down world.

The first, and trickiest, opens the first volume of Capital. It is the famous discussion of commodity fetishism. Freud’s writings and a century of consumer capitalism have obscured the meaning of this phrase. Marx did not mean, as we might think, a particular libidinal or erotic attachment to commodities, the sort of thing encouraged by the world of advertising. Marx meant something simultaneously more mundane and more fundamental, shaping our very way of looking at the world; namely, that value appears as an attribute of commodities, something they possess along with their physical characteristics, rather than as a product of labor. This is the fetish, whereby social relations appear as a relation between things. Marx argues that this happens because workers work in isolation, only seeing the relation between their different labors in the form of finished commodities.

But another way to understand this is that labor is effaced, obscured, and what we see instead is the commodity. The paradox of capitalist society is that although our days are spent working (or searching for work) it is consumption that dominates our consciousness. Entertainment is not only underwritten by commercials but is itself a series of commercials. It is “consumer confidence,” not workers’ satisfaction, that drives the political agenda. Framed in this way we can see the convergence of the concepts of ideology and fetishism, even though the former was developed in relation to the politics of class conflict and hegemony, and the latter concerns the appearance of the economy.

The centrality of consumption, of the figure of the consumer, is not just a representation of the economy that obscures the world of work, it is also one slanted in favor of the interests of those with the luxury to live as consumers. Marx ends his discussion of the commodity with a cartoon-like image of commodities speaking among themselves; only the fantasies of animation can possibly capture a world where inanimate things have personalized characteristics, and workers are increasingly thing-like, inert objects to be used up.

It is important not to confuse Marx’s point with any moralizing declaration of the value of people versus the value of things. To say that labor is the source of value is not the same as saying that workers are truly valuable and should be treated as such. To be the source of value in a capitalist society is more a curse than a blessing. First, this value, labor power, exists only in relation to its opposite, capital. Workers cannot consume their own labor power: it has no value outside of this relation, which means that workers must necessarily sell it, sell their capacity to work, the effort of their bodies and the faculty of their minds, in order to live. This sale or exchange is fundamentally different from any other market transaction. It has its price on the labor market like all other commodities, but no sooner than it’s sold the capitalist can extract as much value as possible from it. The entire history of labor relations under capitalism, from the division of labor in Smith’s pin factory to Taylor’s scientific management, is an attempt to extract more work, more value, from workers.

Common sense tells us that the harder we work the more money we earn; it’s the American way, after all. But the world we inhabit is closer to a Bizarro World inversion of this: not only is there no direct correlation between increased productivity and increased wages, the two often diverge.

Ordinarily, when something is sold, the seller parts with it and remains indifferent to whatever use it acquires. But this is not true of one’s labor power. Under capitalism one is forced to live as someone else’s commodity. Labor power is a paradoxical commodity: first, in the sense that it produces more value than it costs to employ; and, second, in that it is never actually parted with once sold. One has to live with the labor one sells, living under someone else’s rules, time, and goals. The first of these paradoxes explains exploitation, while the second underlies alienation. As much as labor is the opposite of the commodity, in the sense that the latter obscures the former, it is not outside of capitalism. Labor is thoroughly shaped by its opposite: inversions transform their terms.

The second inversion is perhaps even more immediate, so much so that, like the proverbial fish in water, we cannot see it. It is the relation between value and money. If you were to ask anyone the question Marx poses in the opening pages of Capital — how is it that we are able to treat disparate and diverse things as being equal and interchangeable, deciding to spend 20 dollars on either a tank of gas or a new shirt? — the answer most people would give is: because they cost the same. We do not ask about value, where it comes from, or how it is produced, because money appears as the all-too-obvious solution to why something has value and how much value it possesses. Money is the fetish personified, in that it seems not simply to possess value, as is the case with all other commodities, but itself seems to be the very source of value. As much as paper currency may declare its conventional social status with a barrage of stately iconography on every bill and coin, it still appears as the physical instantiation of value. Even though money appears in Marx’s text as the commodity par excellence, the one that is able to express the value of any other, it is the logical culmination of fetishism.

On some level we all know that money is just a convention, something that possesses value only because we treat it as general currency. But that does not prevent it from simultaneously taking precedence over and being more valuable than all the other commodities. After all, the uses of particular commodities only apply to particular situations: coats are only useful when it is cold, umbrellas when it rains. But money has value that exceeds any particular situation. In money the very abstract idea of value receives its supposed material basis, appearing as a physical bill or coin, and in doing so is able to more effectively obscure the actual material basis of capitalism, namely labor.

This brings us to the third inversion, the inversion that relates not just to value, but to capital itself. Capitalism, it must be remembered, is not just commodities, things for sale on the market, or even the accumulation of money. Both of these preexist capitalism by millennia. Capitalism, or the capitalist mode of production, begins when value produces value, when wealth becomes the basis for the accumulation of wealth. It is this capacity for money to produce money that creates the grand illusion. If one turns from the first volume of Capital, which expounds the theory of commodity fetishism, to the dense and obscure third volume, one finds an odd but provocative formulation: “It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things.”

Capital, money, and the earth (land), here appear as the source of all wealth and value. Labor, for its part, is out of the picture. Marx refers to this as a “religion of daily life,” but we can see it as the culmination of the inversions discussed above. Once value appears in the form of commodities and money appears as the source of all value, then the appearance of money begetting money, of capital generating itself, soon follows.

Marx’s phrase “the religion of daily life” is quite telling. This illusion is not, as in the case of ideology, generated by some ruling class, propagating its views to the point where they become the ruling ideas. Instead, the illusion is ingrained in everyday practices and institutions.

When we walk into a Walmart we see prices jumping out at us, forgetting that labor, and the particular social relations of labor, are their source. In the store money stands as the tangible embodiment of value, just as our everyday experience of capital is one in which value appears to generate value. The mundane sight of the stock ticker that runs, seemingly with a mind of its own, on the nightly news, presents the accumulation of capital as a magic process. Stock prices go up or down, with little reference to the labor processes or conflicts that make such things possible. To the extent that such things happen at all, strikes and wage hikes are interpreted not from the perspective of the workers and their demands for a better life, but from their effect on the convenience and pocketbooks of consumers.

The past year has been rife with an overarching sense of some inverted world, to use Hegel’s phrase, or a Bizarro World, to cite the comic book version. From the rebranding of capitalists as “job creators” to a US president who went from playing a capitalist on television to becoming the voice of the working class, the world seems to be fundamentally upside down. Reading Marx is a reminder that this inversion is not new; it did not start with the internet and “fake news,” but is integral to the capitalist mode of production itself, which effaces labor and valorizes money.

Marx famously wrote that philosophers have only interpreted the world, when it was high time to change it. But this advice is much more complicated than it seems. In order to change the world we must also see it differently, interpret it, and this interpretation necessarily presupposes a change in our ways of seeing and thinking. One thinks of Occupy Wall Street and the recasting of inequality as a divide between the 99 percent and one percent. In this example it is hard to distinguish between a new way of seeing the world and actually changing it. They emerge together, as do their limitations, limitations that become the basis of new interpretations and new attempts to change the world. This is the vicious circle that we must break: finding the connection between creating different interpretations of the world and actually changing it.

¤

Jason Read is associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He is author of The Politics of Transindividuality.

The post Marx in Bizarro World appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[ceaselessly-into-the-past]

the return

Today’s the first time I’m going home since I’ve come here. On a similar note, I’ve been nauseous and more anxious than usual for the past twelve or so hours.

Most of the fear comes from the fact that my parents and older brother - just as an introduction to his character, keep in mind the words Harvard, successful, hyperintelligent, Harvard, and malicious dickwad - visited me in my room last week unannounced. All I knew at the time was that I was to meet my dad outside in the car, which I’d agreed to because my father is reasonable and tolerable, but when I went to see him there were two extras that demanded to follow me back up to my dorm. I didn’t have a choice.

The first thing my brother did was walk over to my shelves, where I keep my shower basket, books, medical care sets and so on, and picked out my shampoo bottle, asking if I was able to figure out how to use it. I politely responded ‘yes,’ recalling that I had asked my mom, who had bought the thing, about it before I left home and hadn’t been given a proper response.

He then proceeded to deliberately push down on the dispenser and leak shampoo on my carpeted floor.

He comes into my room and on purpose dumps my fucking shampoo on my fucking floor.

‘Out,’ I said. ‘Get out, all of you. right now.’ The curse words that I would’ve used stuck in my throat like bloated cysts. ‘You can’t stay here.’

My parents sided with him. ‘Oh come on, it’s just shampoo. You won’t even see it in an hour.’ ‘You should thank him, he basically cleaned your floor for you, haha!’ ‘Why do you get so jumpy about stupid things? Grow up, Kei.’ ‘Yeah, you’re being childish and rude. We’re your family you know.’ ‘Stop being so unpleasant. You should be grateful that we even want to come here.’ ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You should go see the school counselor, there’s something wrong with you.’ ‘There’s something wrong with you.’ ‘There’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong with you.There’s something wrong with you.There’s something wrong with youThere’s something wrongwithyouThere’ssomethingwrongwithyouThere’s somethingwrongwithyouthere’ssomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyoutheressomethingwrongwithyouTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETIHINGWRONGWITHYOUTHERESSOMETHINGWRONGWITHYOU

I am the ungrateful runt; the disobedient, petulant, disfigured and undesirable animal. I am invited into the house only for the sport and amusement of humans.

I’ve had to speak to my mom over the phone a few times leading up to today to get things in order - what I need to bring home, when and were to meet, that she’ll force feed me if I haven’t eaten enough.

Her voice makes me feel as though someone has jammed a cigarette between my lips and forced me to take my first drag as I stare down the length of the rolled-up paper, looking down and into my lungs filling with a thousand toxins. I’ve never smoked a cigarette before but somehow that’s exactly how it feels. The acrid smoke of her words and the faces I know she’s making on the other end sting my throat and make my eyes water. My stomach trembles and quietly churns as the information she shoves through the phone line comes down, down down and meets the acid and pepsin leaking desperately from the gastric walls.

The sight of her feels like a violation and never fails to rouse the urge in me to beat her to death just so she’ll stop existing.

Of course, I’d never do that. She’d be too insulted and haunt me until I killed myself out of a more malignant version of unbearable insanity she’s planted in my own brain. And though I’m not sure, I feel like that would be worse. With a human mother, at least you know where they are. A ghost mother could be anywhere because you can’t see them.

It’s the old horror movie principle - the less you see the monster, the scarier and more dangerous it feels.

I think I’m losing my mind.

I feel so suffocatingly small and the noises are too much and every second I spend in my room I can feel like a slow-burning, excruciating heat wave the intimidating forces that are the two roommates in the neighboring room, both Curtis Institute acceptees and the two only Kovner full scholarship recipients this year here, far more talented and skilled and experienced than I am and better in every way. Personable and amicable and capable and sharp-minded and everything that I am not.

I am a gnat in the Juilliard tableau. They are one of the many godlike figures, depicted in pristine poses. Perfect form and immaculate physicality. Real humans. People. They are people and I am not.

They sightread music like they’ve been fucking it for the last five years. Sightreading dries my eyes and gives me a migraine and draws the pitiful looks of everyone present. One day it’ll spell the end of my fucking career.

I despise this body and I wish I could strip it away and build it from scratch. Like how you completely remodel a room. I’ve hated it so intensely that I know every single detail I’d change and why and how I’d change it. Every single fucking detail is filed in the part of my brain that constantly burns with self-hate.

I can’t talk to people here. I can tell that they want to back away from me and that they just want me to go away and that inside they also feel guilty for feeling that way. So I just don’t talk to them. I spare them those feelings and I keep to myself.

Homeless people, though, don’t react that way. So I talk to them. I leave this building at night every so often and find and talk to them. And that’s the extent of my social life.

They treat me like a person and they try and listen. They’re more friends to me than anyone here.

Perhaps it’s from their hardship. and the fact that so many others shun them, that they find the capacity for empathy.

Two nights ago I met a man named Phil at the Times Square subway station. He’s 61 and both his mother and brother had died in the last three weeks. He’d heard of this through the gang that he’s a member of. 

‘You don’t fuck with us, we don’t fuck with you,’ he told me, using the general ‘you’. ‘But if you fuck with us, you be sure you gonna get the fuckin’ shit beat outta you.’

I gave him a dollar and 73 cents - the only money I had outside of my debit card - and he said that he’d buy a coffee with it the next morning. He was friends with a coffee shop manager. I also gave him my name and a piece of paper on which was written a promise to meet him on Friday at 9:30 pm with my cello.

I have plans to meet him on Friday at 9:30 pm with my cello. He’d told me that musicians can make a fair amount in that area, and his idea was that we’d stick together to watch each other’s stuff so that it doesn’t get stolen.

I also have plans to give him half of what I earn. Unless I don’t earn shit, in which case I’ll just give it all to him. He doesn’t have a cup like many homeless people do - he has a red fanny pack he keeps around his wast that has multiple pockets. He put the money I gave him in his pack meticulously, sticking the dollar bill in the big main pouch and the coins in a smaller outside pocket. He kept my note where he kept the change.

I’m putting together a small bag of things for Phil.I’m bringing it to him in an old Starbucks paper bag, and inside I’ve put a list written on an index card:

 I found a perfectly good Zoribushi thermos container near the train station entrance yesterday. It had a little bit of iced tea left in it. I cleaned it with a decent amount of dish soap and I let it dry overnight. 

I’m going to make two filters’ worth of coffee and bring it to him on Friday and let him keep the thermos. 

I also have some small jelly packs that I don’t intend on eating that I’ll bring to him. 

I’m contemplating finding a cheap place to buy a drawstring bag for him - he didn’t have a backpack. 

A nice salad from the store on the way there.

I haven’t engaged this closely to anyone I’ve met here in the city so far. I’ve met a woman called Nada, whose family was from Slovenia and now lived in Chicago; and Aaron, who was from New Jersey and was trying to get an apartment there. 

But Phil is now in the wake of his loss. I’m sure his gang member friends support him in some way but when I met him, he was alone.

‘I stick around, right here,’ he said. ‘From 9 to 5. It’s like the opposite of a work day. 9 PM to 5 AM.’

‘It’s like your job,’ I commented. He liked that I said that.

So I feel compelled, by some force, to extend some form of kindness to him.

Meeting Phil this Friday at 9:30 PM is what’s getting me through this week. It’s what helps me in trying to ignore everything that threatens my self-esteem and sanity.

I have a friend now. There were a few people here that I thought were friends but I realize now that they’re just paper. They melt snd burn away at the slightest sign of difficulty with me. They haven’t spoken to me since the Brooklyn incident. 

Now, I have some kind of centerpoint in my social life.

(If only I could repeat that process with someone my own age.)

Phil is what’s going to keep me on my path when I go home today.

When I see or hear her, I’ll just close my eyes and remember:

Hey, this Friday maybe, you should come play. Musicians do good here, you know. You could do pretty good, eh? And we’ll watch each other’s shit, you know what I mean? Fuckers around here trying and stealing shit. But we’ll make sure they don’t steal our shit.

I hope that this lasts.

[featherwriting]

Whatya Want From Me...? - Ch. 4 : In The Shadows

Read on Archive Of Our Own

A while after Eryn’s 18th birthday, Bill and her took a break on their research. They had been working during the whole winter’s holiday, and they were still in a dead end. Even Eryn had started skipping sleep in order to keep searching, hoping to finally found something.

Bill hadn’t said anything but Eryn had the feeling that he was losing hope. It was kinda strange, feeling him like that. It was letting Eryn with a bitter taste in her mouth. She hated feeling so helpless, especially toward Bill. A part of their cohabiting was that Bill often shut himself down from her body in certain moment of her life. He had basically explained her how this worked: he was still in her body, but he could manage to contain himself to her mind only with some effort, shutting himself from her senses and so allowing her some privacy. She’d have to call him mentally to reach him, and it was not always easy when he was not focusing on hearing her, so they usually just agree on how long he would be gone before he’d came back. He used to do that only when she had to go to the bathroom or change clothes, but lately he had been shutting himself down without apparent reason, like he just wanted to be alone. Eryn hated that. Not only because she felt helpless toward him, but also because she was feeling uneasy staying too long without him now. The silence in her head was painful, and she couldn’t help but feel terrified at the idea that she would have to live without him for good one day. He had made her addicted to him. And she hated it. She hated him for that. And still, she loved him so much.

She took a sip of her peppermint tea and sighed while looking at the book she was reading. It was a collection of small novel about fantastic creature that she had found on her school’s library. She had first took it because she thought that she could find something in it to help Bill but it was just kind of a goofy work actually. She was clearly not going to find anything in a book that was telling “The Wonderful Tale of the Leprecorn” or “The Curse of the Truth Telling Teeth”. But some of the stories were fun to read, and so she was just reading the book to kill time before Bill decided he was willing to come back.

She turned the page. Uh, a new novel already? She barely remembered what the last was about. Something about gnomes assembling to create a giant gnome, of something. Honestly she wasn’t really paying attention to all of this… – She turned another page – She was too worried about Bill to enjoy her book, actually. She wasn’t even sure why she was trying to read, but it was better than just staying on her bed, doing nothing and just worrying for that damn triangle. – She turned a page – Beside, Bill would probably make fun of her if he found her waiting for him. She sighed. The illustration on the right page was looking a lot like Bill. – She turned the page – That was ridiculous. Even when she tried not to think about him, she ended up doing only that, at a point that she was seeing him on this silly book. Wait a minute, what?

She went back to the last page. No. way. That was not just her mind playing with her there, it was Bill on the illustration!

-Shit, Bill! Look at this!

No answer. She groaned. Of course, he had shut himself down. He couldn’t hear her. And she had no idea when he would deign come back. She went back to the beginning of the novel and started reading it, this time giving it her full attention. It was called “Fear the Beast With Just one Eye” and was talking of a powerful being, living on earth long ago. He was bringing madness on the world, playing with the law of nature by making the waterfall flowing toward the sky on the snow falling on summer. His favorite place on the world back then was Egypt, where he even fused human and animals for fun. He managed to make people believed those were gods and used them as a pretext to make Egyptians do whatever he wanted, even making them build huge monument shaped like him.

Eryn sighed and chuckled. Damn, she had understood by then that Bill was an asshole but this was a bit too much. Still, the very idea that he had made Egyptians build the pyramid for him made her laugh. That triangle was a fucking megalomaniac. She went back to her reading.

According to the book, a group of powerful human sorcerer eventually got tired of his shit and trapped him with the help of a zodiac, banishing his mind to the nightmare realm and sealing his body in a nearby mountain. Damn, there was even a map! She checked on her computer. The place on the map did exist, and there was even legend about it being cursed because a lot of people went missing there.

She bit her lips. All right, this might not be true, but for know, it was the first time they had a trail. Bill had to see this. She closed her eye and try to empty her mind, focusing only on the idea of reaching him. “Bill?”. No answer.  “Bill, please”. Still no answer. She took a deep breath and focused a bit more. Reaching him was always difficult. “Bill. Come on, where are you?”. She heard a muffled sigh. He had heard her, but clearly he didn’t want to listen to her. “Bill, you have to come back. I’ve found something.”

He groaned, and Eryn was relieved to realize the sound was coming from her throat.

~All right girl, I’m here. What is it?

She looked at the book and opened it at the page with the first illustration. She could suddenly feel his excitement. This clearly had gotten his attention. He started reading and turning the pages, eventually reaching new pages that Eryn’s hadn’t even seen because she was such in a hurry to show him what’s she’d find. He was a fast reader so she had barely the time to read those pages, but apparently he had managed to break free and gained a new physical form, and then caused quite a mess in a small town called “Gravity Falls”, before being defeated. The novel was ending with Bill’s death.

~How in hell… he mumbled

He closed the book, keeping a finger inside it to not lose to page, and looked at the back of it. Eryn’s realized he was looking for the name of the author, and he quickly found what he wanted.

Tyrone Pinetree.

There were a few seconds where in didn’t say anything before he started laughing.

~Oh my god this is too good!

He was unable to hold himself. Apparently, this was something hilarious. His laugh started being hysterical. He was laughing so much they couldn’t breath anymore.

“Bill, we have to breath damn it” she told him mentally, unable to speak out loud because of his laugh.

He took a deep breath and started to calm down, but Eryn could still feel his delight everywhere inside her mind.

~I can’t believe it, you did it. You really did. I swear, I’d hug you if I could, girl.

She felt her face reddening. Feeling him so pleased and so happy was heartwarming. And it was thanks to her. She had done it! She managed to help him. And she had done it by herself, while he was not there. It was some kind of a victory for Eryn. But the simple fact of feeling him so overwhelmed with joy was the best reward, even if she wouldn’t have mind a hug from him.

-So… The stuff on this book are true?

~Hum, yeah, about that… he started, tensing up a bit, you know…

-The frigging pyramids, Bill, seriously? Do you need help to carry your ego?

~That’s… The only thing you have to say after reading this?

-Listen, Triangle Boy, I’ve known for a while that you weren’t really the good guy you pretended to be when we met. Of course, I didn’t think it was that bad but... Seriously Bill, I don’t care.

Bill stood still for a few seconds, and then dropped the book before grabbing the cushion on her back and held it tight against her.

-Huu, what are you doing?

~Keep quiet and just pretend I’m hugging you, Little Deer…

She blushed and started holding to cushion too, and everything around us disappeared. There was only the two of them, hugging, and nothing else mattered for the next minutes. Eventually, Bill released his grip on the cushion and break their connection.

~And just so you know, my ego is fine, thank you.

-I have no doubt about it. So, now what?

Bill picked up the book and managed to find back the pages of the novel. He showed her one of the illustration, where he was circled by some kind of wheel covered in signs.

~See this? That’s the zodiac they used to trap me. It’s also with that thing that they’ve sealed my body. We need to get rid of it in order for my body to be freed. But I have no idea how.

-Hum. Maybe we could try to find the author of that book? See if he knows anything else?

~You’re right, I’m pretty sure the little fuckers know how to do it, but I doubt he’d tell me.

-Wait, you know him? She asked

~Damn yes. He’s not using his real name but it’s not like he was really subtle there. He could as well have called himself “Not Dipper Pine”.

-How can you be sure, then?

~He always wished his name was Tyrone. And Pinetree? Damn, I’m the one who came with that nickname. And the fact that he know so much is a pretty big clue. He’s great uncles are the one who nearly killed me.

-Oh, wow. Not a big friend of yours then.

~Definitely.

Eryn keep quiet a while. She had learned quite a lot of stuff about Bill the last hour, and they were closer than ever to free his body. They couldn’t stop there. Sure, Tyrone Pinetree – or Dipper Pine, whatever his name was – wouldn’t give answer to Bill, but she was not Bill. Maybe they could somehow trap him into giving the information they needed?

-Would you be able to tell where he’d be?

~Well, sure, but I’ve told you, he will surely not be willing to help me.

-Seriously Bill, have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately? You’re not exactly “you” right now you know.

~That’s… Hum. Yeah, you’re right. What are you suggesting?

-Maybe I could pretend I’m some kind of fan? Start talking to him like I’m just trying to figure stuff out because I’m interested by the back story or stuff. Or told him I’m writing a fanfiction and want to get a little bit more information?

~Going for flattery, he? Wouldn’t be the first time a Pine falls for that… You know what? This might work. All right, girl, let’s do this.

-Bill, wait. She stopped him, feeling that he was going a bit too optimistic, even if you find him, we still have to manage to go to him.

~Don’t worry about that, this won’t be a problem. Get dressed while I’m looking for him and we’ll leave as soon as I’ve localized the boy. And don’t worry about my eye, I’ll take care of it myself.

-The boy? So he’s young then?

~He’s barely older than you, yes.

Eryn went to her dresser. If he was about the same age as her, this could even be easier than she thought. She smiled when she noticed the blue dress Bill had offered her for her birthday. She would have love to wear it, but it was probably a bit too much. She took a white blouse and a tight jean, and started tying her hair in a ponytail. She looked at herself, not completely satisfied. There was a blue blaze around her, and she had a blue blazer over her blouse. She smiled at the sight of a little rhinestone deer on her pocket.

-Thank, Bill, that’s exactly what I needed. She said while taking a bag before stuffing the book in it.

~You’re welcome. Ready to go?

-Well, yes but how-

~Just let me do my things.

Bill snapped her fingers and she was completely wrapped in blue flames. When they disappeared, she was in an alley she didn’t know. She gasped. Oh god, did he just teleported them?

~That’s right, teleportation. It’s really useful.

That was awesome. But Eryn was suddenly feeling quite uneasy.

-You’ve, hu, catch quite a lot of my thought without me wanting to, lately…

~You’ve probably been a bit less focused. Why, you have stuff you want to hide?

-Of course not, what could I possibly have to hide from you?! She answered, a bit nervous

~Well, whatever. I’ve managed to find Pinetree. He’s heading to that cafe across the road. You just have to go there and find a way to start a conversation. So, the second you leave this alley, I’m letting you handle the situation.

She nodded, and felt her eye burning with Bill’s magic. She moaned.

-Seriously Bill, that’s really not my favorite way of hiding your eye...

He didn’t bother answering and she sighed. She didn’t know what he had in mind but fine, if he wanted to do it like that… She went out of the alley and crossed the road, entering the cafe. The place was relatively empty, except for a young man at the counter.

“Yep, that’s definitely him.” Bill’s voice echoed in her head.

“Let’s do this then”

[Start from the beggining]

[Chapter 3] - [Chapter 5]