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janiedean · 3 years

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Hope this is okay to ask but I was wondering what your thoughts are on the way Tyrion is treated by some of the fandom, especially Cersei stans? I feel he is held to a different standard to other male characters and as someone with an invisible disibility irl it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I’ve seen many “Lannister stans” who either hate him or want to ignore he exists.

sure it’s okay to ask don’t worry ;)

that said: when it comes to tyrion’s fandom treatment especially on tumblr there’s like a whole bunch of like... WE’RE ABLEIST BUT MASKING IT BEHIND FAKE WOKE ARGUMENTS crap going on because not counting the fact that show!tyrion has been what he was since S5 bc dnd can’t obviously write him and stopped giving peter decent material after then and it shows, but like... show!tyrion being nowhere near as complex as the book version is a problem that 99% of the show characters had so I don’t think it’s like a valid argument:

the premise is that tyrion is outside like TUMBLR and the likes circles a clear fan favorite when it comes to the general audience if not the fan favorite - like there’s more tyrion merch than idk jon snow merch and maybe maybe he was 50/50 with dany but like... I think that if we did a general poll tyrion would come out as the most liked character, which... I mean fair tyrion is an a+ character and he’s extremely relatable on a whole shitload of levels and let me tell you if a disabled character is for once the main fan favorite I won’t complain:

problem is beyond the fact that he’s disabled he’s... about everything tumblr hates in the sense that a) man, b) (presumably) straight man who has a lot of sex to deal with his issues, c) his issues are not exactly pleasant to deal with, d) not Standard Attractive, e) basically his one trump card is outsmarting people so it’s really easy to attach the whole AH MANIPULATING SCHEMING ASSHOLE argument to him, f) an abuse victim from at least his father and cersei but we all know men can’t be abused on this website *rolleyes* plus he hates the shit out of cers/ei which like.. is apparently the cardinal sin and the key to being labeled a misogynist always, which automatically means that when it comes to tumblr asoiaf fandom nine times on ten people will ignore the fact that his disability is a reason people discriminate him and that the treatment he received because of it gave him TRAUMA and start going like AH BUT HE’S A MAN AH BUT HE’S RICH which... doesn’t mean he can’t be traumatized even if he has male and money privilege;

for what it’s worth anyway bc as stated okay being a lannister did mean that he had a better upbringing/situation economically than a commoner with dwarfism but that doesn’t make his abuse any less damaging, but people on here just... don’t seem to get it;

but yeah like the point is that male chars on tumblr are already held at different standards than female ones (again theon gets more shit than cersei ever had for doing a lot less horrid stuff) but tyrion as... the mega fan favorite especially in within the male fanbase (reddit/w-org and the likes) is held to an extra standard in the sense that if the dudebro faction likes him then he’s BAD NEWS, which means that the fact that he’s disabled and that it affects his life is thoroughly ignored because they have to cry about how he has male privilege over c. and so she can’t abuse him (which... lmao the day I read that shit in S2 I was so out, but whatever);

anyway thing is: ‘lannister stans’ in my experience is a thing that like... is weird in this fandom because actually I never met a supposed lannister stan who likes all of them or who doesn’t ignore some exist, like.. usually most lannister stans who pretend tyrion doesn’t exist are either c. stans or tywin stans or both and don’t get me started on how this fandom has a weirdass tywin worship thing going on for which they think tyrion killing him is an unforgivable crime when it was basically what that asshole deserved and the narrative is having tyrion go in the downward spiral for shae not for tywin. c. stans usually say they also stan jaime but like... they stan whichever version of jaime they think exist that is compatible for a book ending that has the murder suicide thing happening that doesn’t exist in the books and they ignore tyrion exists same as their fave, but then again here we fall back in the pit where everything c. specifically does is seen as either fight against the patriarchy or feminist rebellion or trauma justification on account of c. being a woman and if a man does it it’s horrid or if she does it to a man then it doesn’t matter, so like... it’s a lost cause;

anyway like if someone say they’re a lannister stan and ignore tyrion when whether they like it or not tyrion is the only lannister in the main five povs (which i’d like to remind everyone are jon dany tyrion arya and bran regardless of whoever is everyone’s fave) and the one that has most narrative weight then like... just say you like c. or tywin and go;

tldr: while I think that the show did tyrion a lot of dirt in order to make him more... idk cleaned up when the book character is good as it is, tumblr fandom is swimming deep in ableism and denying that men can be abused and affected by that when it comes to tyrion’s treatment, never mind in the neverending absolutely shallow argument that’s everywhere in asoiaf fandom which is that no one outside specific group of people has understood that one of the key messages of these books is ‘how you look outside doesn’t mean shit about your personality and people who aren’t standard attractive are people with needs and personality who also deserve love and have a lot to give and will meet someone who’ll give it to them’, because the race is basically shipping beautiful ppl together even if it makes sense and negating at all turns that brienne/arya/tyrion/sandor/anyone else who’s not standard attractive are like... viable romantic partners on an even level with whoever so there’s that too, but like I think that on tumblr it shows that ppl are extremely hypocritical when it comes to tyrion and that it shows that their wokeness stops at the surface bc if you read those books and miss The Fucking Point when it comes to tyrion’s disability... text comprehension where have you gone ;)

also when it comes from c. stans** I just sigh and roll my eyes but then again c. stans generally think c. is the only person in these books with justified issues and trauma reaction and downplay not only how she abuses others but also the effects on the ppl she abuses whether they’re men or women so like... they don’t even admit how she is with jaime do we think they’d admit it for tyrion? doubt that.

**before everyone else jumps on me: with c. stans I mean the vocal side of c. standom where almost everyone is like that and from whom I never saw once an acknowledgment that she actually did abuse him (or anyone kllkjkgdj), not whichever c. stan around who likes her because she’s terrible/recognizes that she’s bad etc, I mean no ill will, if you didn’t feel called out reading it it wasn’t about you, peace and love.

#ch: tyrion lannister #anti-cersei #anti-cersei lannister #abuse cw #ableism cw #janie writes meta #i guess #meh anon meh #Anonymous #ask post

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turtle-paced · 4 years

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Revisiting Chapters: Cersei X, AFFC

This post is also available on my wordpress. Masterposts for chapter recaps, including which chapters are in the queue, are on the sidebar.

After a lengthy show-induced hiatus, chapter recaps are back! Let’s see if I can remember how to do this.

The story so far…

After a book of scheming against Margaery, Cersei is finally ready to actually snap this trap closed. On her own foot too, as it turns out.

The Shot

Cersei starts the chapter presiding over what she quite rightly thinks of as a mummer’s farce. Septa Moelle, representative of the High Sparrow, has been summoned to explain the charges against Margaery and her ladies. Charges which we know perfectly well that Cersei arranged for. The dialogue certainly fits the melodrama. I can only imagine that it was all Cersei could do to deliver her lines:

“Innocence? Why, you only need to look upon their sweet young faces to see how innocent they are.”

Cersei put a hand to her breast. “Tell me who is spreading such calumnies about my good-daughter! I do not believe a word of this. My sweet son loves Lady Margaery with all his heart, she could never have been so cruel as to play him false.”

Note that Cersei doesn’t call her Queen Margaery even now. Given that Cersei thinks it’s just hilarious that Margaery suffered an unwanted, unnecessary, penetrative examination of her genitalia (i.e. what we know now as medical rape), I’m honestly not thinking that Cersei’s delivery of these lines was terribly convincing. I’m certainly not convinced that the people who left the room while the charges were read out were all leaving because they were anticipating Tyrell disgrace. That looks to me like they were clearing the blast zone.

Cersei then insists on the “independent” examination of Margaery by Grand Maester Pycelle, who then testifies that Margaery required him to make moon tea for her, more than once. This is a bit of a mystery here, which should be read with Cersei IX. I’ll save analysis of Pycelle’s words for that chapter, but suffice it to say, I think that Pycelle is being honest here, and that he has indeed provided Margaery with moon tea. As readers have already seen with Cersei’s orchestration of Tyrion’s trial, Cersei knows how to include truths in public testimony to make central lies easier to believe.

With this, Cersei closes the court. She sticks around just long enough to hear a lot of hubbub, and then shuts everything down, effectively leaving Margaery’s disgrace uncontested and the last public word on the matter. So she’s already doing great at covering her tracks, here.

For just a few seconds, Cersei thinks she’s done it. Her life’s motivations fulfilled.

Maggy the Frog should be in motley too, for all she knew about the morrow. Cersei prayed the old fraud was screaming down in hell. The younger queen whose coming she’d foretold was finished, and if that prophecy could fail, so could the rest. No golden shrouds, no valonqar, I am free of your croaking malice at last.

And then the consequences start to kick in.

Unintended Consequences

The first of the warning signs should be the reaction of Cersei’s small council. Harys Swyft is “dazed”. As he tells Cersei,

“When word of this reaches Lord Tyrell, his fury will know no bounds. There will be blood in the streets…”

Cersei dismisses this potential threat out of hand. Specifically, she cites the fact that Mace Tyrell was unwilling to launch a frontal assault on Storm’s End during Robert’s Rebellion as evidence of his cowardice. Which is…wow! Aside from the fact that it’s a bit of a different situation given that the Faith has arrested Mace’s own daughter, something that was decidedly not the case during the Rebellion, the general attitude that sieges are for wimps is pretty telling.

Orton Merryweather seems anxious. He points out how much the smallfolk love Margaery and raises the possibility of riots from their quarter. Aurane Waters is even worse – he immediately suggests that he launch the dromonds. Cersei thinks that he intends to stop Mace Tyrell crossing in force. We see later that Waters was thinking along different lines. He too is clearing the blast zone.

Ultimately, Cersei proceeds with the next step in her cunning plan after telling her small council that she intetnds to go to the Sept of Baelor herself to speak to the High Sparrow and Margaery alike, to plead Margaery’s case (i.e. subtly/“subtly” push for Margaery to be tried by the Faith), she goes to Tommen and has him sign and seal blank arrest warrants for the men accused of having sex with Margaery and/or her cousins. By the time Tommen’s signed them and Cersei’s filled in the names, Ser Osfryd comes to Cersei with bad news – there’s a crowd gathering outside the Sept of Baelor demanding Margaery’s release.

I had not considered how the smallfolk might react to this. Margaery has been their little pet.

Oopsie, I guess. What other word do we have for Cersei inadvertently overlooking the opinions of 99% of the Westerosi population? Cersei proceeds rounding up the men anyway, then proceeding to the Sept of Baelor as planned. En route, she fills Taena and the readers in on the next step. If Margaery is tried, she must be defended by a member of the Kingsguard. Most of them are unavailable or wounded. Basically, Margaery’s options are down to Meryn Trant or Boros Blount, and Cersei has no intention of allowing even Trant to fight on Margaery’s behalf.

When Cersei actually arrives at the Sept, we’ve got some signs that perhaps aren’t as good as Cersei might think. True, there’s no proto-mob in the square, but they’ve been replaced with “a line of novice septons with quarterstaffs in their hands.” Unlike Cersei, I’m a bit dubious about organised and armed being the improvement you want to see in a hostile faction. Even Cersei realises that the High Sparrow’s considering the power balance between them slightly shifted when the High Sparrow makes her wait for him to finish praying before starting their first conversation.

Cersei does at least get permission to talk to Margaery. Read, permission to gloat over Margaery. In miniature, this starts off well enough (for Cersei).

Cersei found Margaery barefoot and shivering, clad in the roughspun shift of a novice sister. Her locks were all a tangle, and her feet were filthy.

But what the reader will soon notice is that despite Cersei’s pretensions, the rest of the world isn’t indulging her sense of superiority. One of the best indications here is this little note on the blocking:

There were no chairs, so Cersei sat beside the little queen on her pallet.

The Sparrows’ choices about furnishings do not allow Cersei to sit over Margaery. And as we’ll soon see, the Sparrows think it’s every bit as acceptable to arrest Cersei as to arrest Margaery. Margaery tells Cersei how the Sparrows have treated her – they took her clothes, they’ve forbidden her visitors, they wake her every hour to demand confession. Cersei’s reaction upon Margaery telling her she’d confessed to wanting to scratch a septa’s eyes out?

A shame you did not do it, Cersei thought. Blinding some poor old septa would certainly persuade the High Sparrow of your guilt.

Margaery’s love for her cousins is apparent as she vents to Cersei (Cersei!) about what’s happened. Her first thought is that her cousins have been arrested to bear witness against Margaery herself. Then Cersei tells her that her cousins have in fact been accused themselves. Margaery’s reaction – paling, telling Cersei that the accusations are obscene – help show even more that Cersei’s own plans are just too much to be plausible. Not everyone thinks like Cersei does. Thankfully.

Cersei delivers the news that there’s going to be a trial and watches Margaery’s genuinely fearful reaction. She wants Loras to defend her, but knowing he’s injured, she then says she wants Garlan as her champion. Here’s a point where it seems House Tyrell is similar to the Lannisters. Margaery’s reaction to being informed that Loras has six brothers (of the Kingsguard) is to respond that Loras has two brothers. Though I’m confident there’s more real and healthy love amongst the Tyrells than the Lannisters, I can’t help but notice that Margaery’s willing to discard the institutional traditions of the Kingsguard (which are there for reasons) when Tyrell interests are at stake. It also shows the lack of trust she has in the Kingsguard in the first place. How’d that come to be, again?

Cersei says no, Margaery will have to be defended by a member of the Kingsguard. But here’s where the conversation gets away from Cersei.

Margaery did not answer at once, but her brown eyes narrowed in suspicion.

As soon as Margaery starts speaking again, she reveals that she’s put together Cersei’s entire plan in the space of a minute or two, from that one bit of extra information about the Kingsguard. Then she delivers a memorable verbal smackdown that shows she’s had Cersei’s number the whole time.

Seven hells. Cersei donned a look of hurt. “You wrong me, daughter. All I want -“

“- is your son, all for yourself. He will never have a wife that you don’t hate. And I am not your daughter, thank the gods. Leave me.”

“You are being foolish. I am only here to help you.”

“To help me to my grave. I asked for you to leave. Will you make me call my gaolers and have you dragged away, you vile, scheming, evil bitch?”

While Margaery might not have seen the specifics of the plan coming, she’s definitely nailed Cersei’s motivations for it. Cersei’s got no comeback for that little exchange, to the point where even her internal narration says that she has to gather up her dignity before she leaves. She advises Margaery to pray to the Crone for wisdom and the Mother for mercy, because Margaery may be in need of both.

And on what’s about to be a very ironic note, Cersei departs. Her day is about to go downhill.

The Midden and the Windmill

Literally downhill, as it happens. Cersei doesn’t immediately catch on. She’s escorted by four septas (hey, wasn’t Margaery in the custody of septas?) down past the main hall and into an underground audience chamber (hey, isn’t this suspiciously dungeon-like?).

The High Sparrow starts off by referring to Margaery (correctly) as “the queen.”

She resisted the urge to say, I am the queen.

The principle still applies. If she has to say it, or think it, Cersei might need to consider the extent of her authority.

The High Sparrow continues on, stating his belief that Margaery is guilty, guilty, guilty. He reveals some distinctly anti-choice views in the process. Cersei cries some more crocodile tears and hands over responsibility for the trial to the Faith. The composition of the court is interesting, as the High Sparrow reveals his intention to have three female judges on the panel (maiden, mother and crone). It’s a sound political move from him, given his power base amongst the smallfolk, looking for a broader cross-section of society to judge (never fear, there won’t be any women on the panel who don’t hew to the High Sparrow’s particular take on theology, we’re not going thatbroad). She confirms that Margaery will have to be defended by a member of the Kingsguard. The High Sparrow agrees.

Okay, who else thinks this was too easy? Not Cersei!

With agreement on the trial reached, Cersei says she’ll be taking Ser Osney back to her own custody now.

“No,” said the High Septon.

Another really good moment there. One line. Five words. It looks so un-dramatic, but that flat, firm little no kicks off the more precipitous part of Cersei’s decline. As Cersei says, it’s like a splash of cold water.

The High Sparrow then takes Cersei to where Osney Kettleblack is being held. He’s been tortured. The High Sparrow describes this as seeking after the truth most earnestly. Cersei protests that Osney told the High Sparrow the truth, but unfortunately for Cersei…

“I have heard many men confess, Your Grace, but seldom have I heard a man so pleased to be so guilty.”

…the High Sparrow isn’t stupid. Misogynist and torturer, sure! But not stupid. Cersei did not consider this, either. She did not consider that Osney might be a shite liar. She did not consider that the High Sparrow might find this all a bit fishy. Much less that he’d act on any suspicions. That much is clear when Cersei thinks, he is just a priest, he cannot do this.

In short, Cersei did not expect that her social inferior had a working brain and a working spine.

“Ser Osney,” said the High Sparrow, in a firm, clear voice, “did you have carnal knowledge of the queen?”

“Aye.” The chains rattled softly as Osney twisted in his shackles. “That one there. She’s the queen I fucked, the one sent me to kill the old High Septon.”

The jig is up. That much is clear from the High Sparrow’s staging of this event. He’s not shocked by this confession. He had Cersei brought down here to feel her out. Cersei tries to run, and oh would you look at that, the four older septas who escorted her down to this dungeon are ready to block her way. She manages to get past them, but there even more septas waiting, and they arrest her. Cersei’s denial of her situation is strong, as we see through this passage. First:

The Kettleblacks, I need the Kettleblacks, I will send in Osfryd with the gold cloaks and Osmund with the Kingsguard, Osney will deny it all once they cut him free, and I’ll rid myelf of this High Septon just as I did the other.

Second:

“I am the queen,” she shouted.

Third:

“You cannot do this,” the queen kept screaming at them. “I am a Lannister, unhand me, my brother will kill you, Jaime will slice you open from throat to cunt, unhand me! I am the queen!”

But by then she’s in custody and going through exactly the same treatment Margaery is. Her clothes are stripped from her, the Sparrows are controlling visitors to her, and they’re waking her up every hour to try and procure a confession. Cersei does not take the advice she gave to Margaery. She screams until her throat is raw. She tore the shift she’d been given to replace her clothes into shreds. She smashes the meagre furniture left to her (an ewer of water and her chamberpot). Hell, Cersei even dealt with her arrest by physically assaulting the septas, which Cersei was only a few hours ago thinking would definitely convince the High Sparrow that Margaery was guilty. Her entire attitude is, shall we say, counterproductive.

What can be happening? Cersei wondered, as the thin slice of sky outside her window began to darken once again. Why has no one come to pry me out of here?

[…]

Thrice that day she heard the sound of distant shouting drifting up from the plaza, but it was Margaery’s name that the mob was calling, not hers.

The reader’s just seen Cersei get caught in her own trap. The reader’s seen Cersei’s callousness, cruelty and paranoia lead to her alienating everyone who could or would have helped her, even as she created and empowered more enemies. But Cersei – Cersei still just doesn’t get it.

This is also apparent as Qyburn is finally allowed in to see Cersei and catch her up on the political developments. Cersei’s first question is about Tommen: “is he still king?” The choice of words is telling – what Cersei probably intends to ask here is is Tommen well every bit as much as whether he’s king. The conflation of Tommen’s status as king with his wellbeing does show us a bit about what Cersei considers wellbeing.

Qyburn has sent the Blue Bard (the first of Margaery’s accusers) over to the High Sparrow, as requested, so Cersei’s ill-conceived plan is still barrelling along. Just with a few external changes. Like Cersei being tried just as Margaery is – but for things the reader knows she is actually guilty of. So how’s she getting out of this? The goldcloaks?

“Osfryd Kettleblack no longer commands the City Watch. The king has removed him from office…”

How’d that happen?

“The boy is not to blame. When his council puts a decree in front of him, he signs his name and stamps it with his seal.”

You’d think training an eight-year-old possessed of supreme executive power to treat signing official documents as fun times with sealing wax was a bad idea or something. Hang on a second, though, the council?

“My council…who? […]”

“Alas, I have been dismissed. […] The realm is being ruled by Ser Harys Swyft and Grand Maester Pycelle. They have dispatched a raven to Casterly Rock, inviting your uncle to return to court and assume the regency.”

Oh, that’s right, Kevan was justifiably pissed at Cersei for how she abused Lancel, right! What about Mace?

“Mace Tyrell has abandoned his siege of Storm’s End and is marching back to the city with his army, and Randyll Tarly is reported on his way down from Maidenpool as well.”

Guess Cersei was wrong about that too. Who else on the council?

“Merryweather has resigned his seat on the council and fled back to Longtable.”

Not ideal, but at least Taena’s alive and not in Sparrow custody. Now if she could just get those ships –

“As soon as word of Your Grace’s present troubles reached the river, Lord Waters raised sails, unshipped his oars, and took his fleet to sea.”

Gods damn it!

“Hope remains. Your Grace has the right to prove your innocence by battle. My queen, your champion stands ready.”

[…] “The gods make japes of all our hopes and plans. I have a champion no man can defeat, but I am forbidden to make use of him. I am the queen, Qyburn. My honour can only be defended by a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard.”

She has Frankengregor, but Frankengregor is not a sworn brother of the Kingsguard. Just the dilemma she was hoping to catch Margaery in.

This conversation is a blunt instrument. Its purpose is to sock the reader with a concentrated reminder of every way in which Cersei has fucked this one right up. Sock the reader, because Cersei’s sure not getting it. But she finishes off with the thing she’s been failing to get since the end of ASoS. She begs Qyburn to write Jaime, telling him to drop everything and come to her side.

She had to reach him. “He will come. He must. Jaime is my only hope.”

“My queen,” said Qyburn, “have you…forgotten? Ser Jaime has no sword hand. If he should champion you and lose…”

We will leave this world together, as we once came into it.

“He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake.”

The readers have the advantage on Cersei here in that they’ve seen Jaime’s PoV. They’ve had the other perspective of their break-up and can see how Cersei’s actions contributed to said break-up. They’ve been reading Jaime’s questioning of their entire relationship. They’ve seen his raw anger at Cersei. In the very next chapter we’ll see Jaime read the plea Cersei sends here and order it burned. The reader knows already, as Cersei does not, that Cersei cannot rely on her brother’s love for her.

Just like the readers know about the valonqar prophecy.

Chapter Function

Big plot chapter, this one! Both in the scheme of the book and the scheme of the series. Politically, we’re seeing the disintegration of leadership in King’s Landing. Cersei’s basically imploded the LannisTyrell alliance. Mace is bringing an army to King’s Landing to use against the Faith of the Seven. Qyburn’s got Frankengregor combat-ready. This climax topples Cersei and sets conditions for what seems likely to be the complete toppling of the Lannisters and Tyrells in TWoW, following bloody chaos in the city.

Series-wide, this is a big moment for Cersei. Her previous chapters this book have been setup for this, the main action of her downfall (part one), the climax of her AFFC arc – all as the unintended side effects of her own actions. She succeeded in having the crown’s debt to the Faith cleared, but. She succeeded in having Margaery arrested, but. After nine chapters of Cersei’s very good ideas, here in chapter ten everything culminates in a way so that nobody can reasonably say that this was not Cersei’s fault. It leaves off on Cersei’s absolute, but probably just as mistaken, belief that Jaime will not fail her.

But at the same time, it’s important to recall that as cruel and horrible as Cersei is, there is still a tragic aspect to this self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Tommen] seemed surprised when Cersei gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his brow. “What’s that for, Mother? Why are you crying?”

Because you’re safe, she wanted to tell him. Because no harm will ever come to you. “You are mistaken. A lion never cries.”

This prophecy didn’t just foretell Cersei’s own death, but the deaths of her children as well. The self-fulfilling nature of this prophecy is going to lead Cersei herself into creating the circumstances that kill her children, even if she herself only realises this too late. It’s definitely something worth remembering in the context of Tyrion’s chilling ACoK threat:

“I have never liked you, Cersei, but you were my own sister, so I never did you harm. You’ve ended that. I will hurt you for this. I don’t know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid.”

– Tyrion XII, ACoK

In-universe, you’d think this would also provide further fuel for Cersei’s paranoid fire and conviction that Tyrion is responsible for her misfortunes.

Overall, though, what we see here in Cersei X is the beginning of the end for Cersei and her (so-far) surviving children, and it’s Cersei’s own doing.

Miscellany

When Taena Merryweather compliments Cersei on her Margaery-humbling skills, Cersei tells Taena that any mother would do the same to protect her children. Then Taena immediately dodges Cersei’s request for Taena to bring her son to court. Perhaps this might tell Cersei something regarding Taena’s true beliefs as to Cersei’s ability to win out!

…nah. It’s probably nothing.

It’s always worth keeping track of how Cersei refers to other women in her internal narration. You hardly ever see her using even neutral descriptors. Margaery’s always the “little” queen, of course. Here when Cersei incidentally interacts with a lot of anonymous background septas, they’re “crones” or “shrivelled” or “feeble” or “sour.” Or some combination of similar.

When Cersei’s taken to the underground audience chamber, she actually takes note of the the carvings of the Seven on the walls, which she describes as ugly but somehow compelling. It’’s not often we see any sort of depictions of the Seven described as packing an emotional punch, but these successfully induce an “eyes of Notre Dame” moment in Cersei Lannister.

Clothing Porn

Cersei wears green silk and golden lace, with lots and lots of emerald jewelry, to hear the first charges against Margaery. It’s not the first time Cersei’s worn green in the series, because it matches her eyes, but interesting call with the Tyrell colours there.

To meet the High Sparrow, Cersei wears a brown woolen dress that covers her “throat to ankle,” with “only a few small vines embroidered on the bodice and the sleeves in golden thread.” We also hear that Margaery was stripped of a gown made of ivory lace with pearls on the bodice.

Food Porn

Fine dining Sparrow style consists of “thin grey gruel” for breakfast and later bread and fish.

Next Three Chapters

Alayne I, AFFC – The Prince of Winterfell, ADWD – Brienne VIII, AFFC

#ASoIaF #revisiting chapters #cw: rape #cw: violence #cersei lannister #the high sparrow #margaery tyrell #qyburn

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dfroza · 3 years

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lost & found things

this is what we see in Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament book of Luke in chapter 15:

Jesus became increasingly popular among notorious sinners—tax collectors and other social outcasts. The Pharisees and religious scholars noticed this.

Pharisees and Religious Scholars: This man welcomes immoral people and enjoys their company over a meal!

Jesus (with another parable): Wouldn’t every single one of you, if you have 100 sheep and lose one, leave the 99 in their grazing lands and go out searching for the lost sheep until you find it? When you find the lost sheep, wouldn’t you hoist it up on your shoulders, feeling wonderful? And when you go home, wouldn’t you call together your friends and neighbors? Wouldn’t you say, “Come over and celebrate with me, because I’ve found my lost sheep”? This is how it is in heaven. They’re happier over one sinner who changes his way of life than they are over 99 good and just people who don’t need to change their ways of life.

Or imagine a woman who has 10 silver coins. She loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the whole house, and search diligently until that coin is found? And when she finds it, doesn’t she invite her friends and neighbors and say, “Celebrate with me! I’ve found that silver coin that I lost”? Can’t you understand? There is joy in the presence of all God’s messengers over even one sinner who changes his way of life.

Once there was this man who had two sons. One day the younger son came to his father and said, “Father, eventually I’m going to inherit my share of your estate. Rather than waiting until you die, I want you to give me my share now.” And so the father liquidated assets and divided them. A few days passed and this younger son gathered all his wealth and set off on a journey to a distant land. Once there he wasted everything he owned on wild living. He was broke, a terrible famine struck that land, and he felt desperately hungry and in need. He got a job with one of the locals, who sent him into the fields to feed the pigs. The young man felt so miserably hungry that he wished he could eat the slop the pigs were eating. Nobody gave him anything.

So he had this moment of self-reflection: “What am I doing here? Back home, my father’s hired servants have plenty of food. Why am I here starving to death? I’ll get up and return to my father, and I’ll say, ‘Father, I have done wrong—wrong against God and against you. I have forfeited any right to be treated like your son, but I’m wondering if you’d treat me as one of your hired servants?’” So he got up and returned to his father. The father looked off in the distance and saw the young man returning. He felt compassion for his son and ran out to him, enfolded him in an embrace, and kissed him.

The son said, “Father, I have done a terrible wrong in God’s sight and in your sight too. I have forfeited any right to be treated as your son.”

But the father turned to his servants and said, “Quick! Bring the best robe we have and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. Go get the fattest calf and butcher it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate because my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and has been found.” So they had this huge party.

Now the man’s older son was still out in the fields working. He came home at the end of the day and heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. The servant said, “Your brother has returned, and your father has butchered the fattest calf to celebrate his safe return.”

The older brother got really angry and refused to come inside, so his father came out and pleaded with him to join the celebration. But he argued back, “Listen, all these years I’ve worked hard for you. I’ve never disobeyed one of your orders. But how many times have you even given me a little goat to roast for a party with my friends? Not once! This is not fair! So this son of yours comes, this wasteful delinquent who has spent your hard-earned wealth on loose women, and what do you do? You butcher the fattest calf from our herd!”

The father replied, “My son, you are always with me, and all I have is yours. Isn’t it right to join in the celebration and be happy? This is your brother we’re talking about. He was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found again!”

The Book of Luke, Chapter 15 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 23rd chapter of the book of Job:

Job confided to his friends.

Job: So once again you are telling me my complaint amounts to rebellion,

that the heavy hand I feel upon me is smothering my groans?

Would that I knew where to find Him.

I would appear before Him.

I would lay my case out before Him;

I would fill up my mouth with arguments.

And then I would finally learn how He would answer me,

and I would understand what He tells me.

Would He oppose me merely with His great power? Surely not!

Surely He would show me the respect of listening to my argument.

There, in that courtroom, a moral man might hope to reason with Him,

and I would escape my Judge forever.

Alas, wherever I go, ahead or behind,

He is not there;

I am unable to find Him.

When He works on either side of me, I still cannot see Him.

I catch no glimpse of Him.

But He knows the course I have traveled.

And I believe that were He to prove me,

I would come out purer than gold from the fire.

My foot has been securely set in His tracks;

I have kept to His course of life without swerving;

I have not departed from the commands of His lips;

I have valued everything He says more than all else.

He alone is one True God; who can alter Him?

Whatever He desires within Himself, He does.

For He will carry out exactly what He has planned for me,

and in the future there are more plans to come.

Therefore, I am deeply troubled before Him;

when I ponder it at any length, I am terrified of Him.

Yes, God has melted my courage,

and the Highest One has overwhelmed me with His terror.

He could have turned me aside when the darkness came,

but He did not cut me off.

Nor does He hide my face from the gloom that has now overtaken me.

The Book of Job, Chapter 23 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for friday, April 30 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons that looks into our “rest”

It is written in our Scriptures: "Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and he will bring it to pass" (Psalm 37:5). In this verse, the word translated "commit" comes from the Hebrew root galal (גלל), which could be rendered as "roll away" or "heap upon" (the word gal means a heap or pile of stones). The LORD spoke this word when He said to Joshua, "This day have I rolled away (galal) the reproach of Egypt from off you" (Josh. 5:9) and named the place "Gilgal" (גִּלְגָּל), a word-play meaning a wheel or "rolling away." In great mercy the LORD "rolls away" the reproach of our sin.

The word galal can also mean to trust or to commit, with the connotation of "rolling one's trouble" away from oneself upon someone else who can help. Thus the Messiah entrusted (galal) His suffering unto the LORD (Psalm 22:8), and we are likewise encouraged to "commit" (galal) our way to his loving will. When we trust in His love, when we "roll away" the burden of our lives to His care, our thoughts will be "established" and we can freely enjoy the confidence that God Himself is directing our way (Prov. 16:9, Psalm 37:23). We can then experience genuine rest and shalom, despite the tumult of the world and its tribulations.

As the Lord Yeshua cried out, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28), so may we come, rolling away our burdens unto Him, and having our way established in His shalom (1 Pet. 5:7; Psalm 55:22). Amen. [Hebrew for Christians]

4.29.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

April 30, 2021

Jehovah

“And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” (Hebrews 1:10)

The primary name for God in Scripture is the majestic name Jehovah, occurring nearly 7,000 times. The early Jews were reluctant to use that name for fear of using it lightly (Exodus 20:7) and substituted the word Adonai (meaning Master or Lord) in its place. Our English versions have followed suit, using the term “Lord” for Jehovah (small or all caps to distinguish it from Adonai, or Lord). Thus, the name Jehovah appears only four times in the King James and causes us at times to miss the full impact of the passage.

This is especially true in the New Testament quotations from Old Testament passages that used the name “Jehovah” for which “Lord” has been substituted. Now in the English versions the name “Lord” appears. If “Jehovah” (i.e., deity) were read instead, much richer meaning would be gathered, and it would prove beyond a doubt the full deity of Christ. Consider two examples.

First, our text quotes from Psalm 102:25-27. The entire psalm consists of praise to Jehovah, and here in Hebrews it addresses the Son. If we read “thou, Jehovah, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth” and realize that Jesus is the subject of the passage, we recognize that Jesus can be none other than the Creator God.

Also, in Matthew 3:3, where John the Baptist fulfilled his prophesied role by teaching “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” quoting from Isaiah 40:3, we see Jesus equated with the Jehovah of the Old Testament, for Isaiah uses the term LORD, or Jehovah.

In these and many other examples, we see Christ as the Jehovah Jesus and that the Lord of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament. JDM

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langwrites · 5 years

Text

Lang Plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

So a while ago I said I was planning on playing the story routes in this order: Blue Lions, Black Eagles, Church of Seiros, and then Golden Deer.

The Golden Deer made a liar out of me.

So, here’s an approximation of What Happened During Verdant Wind.

So many spoilers below the cut, you guys. I do a lot of route comparisons.

Okay, I’ve been staring at the “which house do you want” selection screen for an embarrassing amount of time.

This shouldn’t be hard. I had a plan.

But no.

I clicked the Golden Deer, just like that. What the fuck, Claude. I blame you.

Immediately upon talking to this rop of students again, I can feel the difference in the social group from what the Lions were like. The latter were really a bunch of noble kids around their prince, and they felt really tight-knit. Classic Fire Emblem starter crew.

The Golden Deer is the fucking Scooby Gang.

First impressions of individuals:

Raphael, thank goodness, is the one character who absolutely has his shit in order. Sure, he’s bad at book work and thinks everything comes down to MUSCLES, but all of his emotional issues are handled by the time he arrives at Garreg Mach. He’s the brightest of sunshines.

Ignatz needs some more confidence in his art, and also I want to see his painting of Seiros. Now, if only both of his offensive stats and growths weren’t incredibly bad.

I was so close to making him my dancer. Just because he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be useful anywhere else.

Lorenz! I don’t like him. His haircut is a monstrosity.

Leonie! We are going. To be. Besties. Even though the timing of your support conversations are incredibly bad.

Marianne no please don’t be sad everyone loves you

Hilda is the greatest enabler I have ever seen. By which I mean she enables other people to do all her work for her.

Lysithea is going to have the last word with God. And especially he Death Knight.

And finally Claude! Teamwork makes the dream work, so obviously meme work does the same.

I’m sorry.

PRE-TIMESKIP

Mock battle! Marianne’s great and I love her and also the only healer oh god.

OKAY. I have access to New Game+ bonuses. What do I do first?

Immediately crank the Professor Level stat to max to avoid ever having to run short of activity points again.

Next, raise all skills I can’t easily get to at least Rank D+. HEAVY ARMOR IN PARTICULAR.

Third: Boost supports with people whose support ranks are an absolute pain in the ass to earn. Lookin’ at you, Rhea.

Also, put glasses on Byleth (named “Yuri” for this playthrough). Glasses are the bomb. I am the evil genius.

LEVEL GRINDING TIME.

It’s a lot harder with Blacksmith access being story-locked, but I can do this!

As a direct result, every single battle after this point is a complete curbstomp in my favor. Because the grind don’t stop.

I broke a lot more weapons than last time, though.

I will befriend Leonie and Ferdinand if it’s the last fucking thing I do. I will befriend everyone, and I will not get timeskip-locked out of supports! >:(

Ferdinand was my first recruit. Oh dear.

Okay, there are like five born cavaliers in this game. Leonie, Ferdinand, Lorenz, Sylvain, and I guess Dimitri if you’re on the right route.

Last time, Sylvain was a great paladin and a decent Dark Knight before he started getting one- or two-stat level ups for like thirty levels. Similarly, Dimitri was great until all his ultra-secret-awesome promotions didn’t use a fucking horse.

Contrast Leonie who, despite sitting out 99% of the game out of spite from me getting locked out of her support chain, went to endgame with a ten-level deficit and still rocked.

Ferdinand didn’t count since I failed to recruit him last time and he died. These two facts are directly related.

I didn’t use Lorenz at all; I recruited him to keep from having to kill him later.

This time, Lorenz straight-up sucks, Sylvain did the terrible level dance for like the entire game, and Dimitri’s not recruitable.

Contrast, again, Leonie. Her support chain with the player character is hot garbage, but she plowed through most of the game as a mainstay of my team and made it to Bow Knight first out of anyone.

Bernadetta and Ashe as Bow Knights don’t even come close to being as durable as she is, except for Ashe’s absolutely bananas Resistance. 29?! WHY?!

And Ferdinand is also awesome. His only real weak point is Resistance, but he doesn’t need it. He dodge-tanks everything, is faster than Leonie, and has two Saints’ relics he unknowingly stole from Seteth.

He still talks in MLA format, though.

I started putting off recruiting people so I wouldn’t have to level-grind them up to par with the rest of my team.

But if these people wanna join, of course I’m saying yes.

Lord Lonato’s rebellion and Miklan yoinking the Lance of Ruin feel way less relevant on a Golden Deer playthrough than on a Blue Lions one. None of the Herd really know who the hell these people are.

I say that despite having already recruited Sylvain for this playthrough and deploying him in the relevant level. He wasn’t treated as there by the game’s preamble cutscenes.

At least the Holy Mausoleum stuff feels more...handled? Claude actually asks questions about rebellion and about the “assassination plot,” where Dimitri didn’t really.

OKAY SO there’s this whole plot thing where Flayn goes missing for a month. With the Blue Lions, this is handled like a manhunt. Dimitri’s seriousness about the issue rubs off on everyone except Sylvain, and Felix actually correctly identifies the culprit almost instantly. He doesn’t know he’s done it, though, because basically everyone is just throwing out accusations. Manuela is the real MVP.

CONTRAST THE DEER. The very first meeting reads like a Scooby Doo episode, when they’re piling up clues and throwing out suggestions like the gang of goofball teenagers they are. Claude’s got this group running like Persona 4′s Investigation Team. None of them are jaded or frantic, they’re just doing this.

Why did Rhea entrust the investigation to a herd of teenagers.

Anyway, the rest proceeds as usual.

I don’t know why the game tries to drop the same set of hints for each route. “OoooowoooooOOOOoooo, your house leader might be the FLAME EMPEROR.”

The Flame Emperor wears heels. And is still too short to be either Claude or Dimitri. Especially Dimitri. Who the fuck let this kid get so tall.

The only real result of all this bullshit is that my wyvern-riding sniper of doom is not available during the first map where Yuri personally beat the Death Knight into the ground.

Which, by the by, was hilariously cathartic.

It doesn’t exactly matter, since the only unit who can make real use of the Dark Mage and Dark Bishop classes is unrecruitable, but bragging rights.

Remire Village’s drama is about as bad while playing as the Golden Deer. One of the foreshadowing cutscenes, though is excellent:

Claude actually finds a book that depicts The Immaculate One before its debut, only to have it confiscated by Seteth and learn that it wasn’t a library book at all; it belonged to “Tomas.” Like, all of his suspicions--which he shares with the player--start lining up. Censorship! Monsters! Sword of the Creator! What the hell is going on here??

Dimitri’s version of the cutscene involves him being caught investigating Lord Arundel by the player and Sothis. Which--since his route doesn’t meaningfully deal with the Morlocks faction aside from steamrolling them as incidental opponents--seems kinda useless.

Kicked the Death Knight into submission again out of spite.

Sylvain was useful! Mostly because I had him sit there and distract the incidentals while Claude and Lysithea cleaned house, but still!

Claude is the only lord character who seems to understand that the transforming Morlock faction probably needs to be taken more seriously. For the remainder of Part One, no one does so.

Rhea you’ve got some ‘splainin to do.

Marianne’s my team’s dancer this time. She’s a sweetheart. She seemed happy to be asked and to pursue the lessons, and being able to use Physic is a good trait in someone who’s nearly always going to be waaaaay behind the rest of the group.

Dad-stabbing happened.

Again.

Boop boop Solon’s dead.

Again.

Dear diary: I learned the definition of irony and set the Flame Emperor on fire.

I kid.

But Claude took her out in one completely overpowered shot, because crits are a thing, Flame Emperor class skills don’t reduce damage enough to survive it, and his Dex stat is through the fucking roof. And he was on a wyvern at the time because fuck it, why not.

Claude’s reaction to all of this is a minor letdown compared to the fully-rendered cutscene in the last route.

This would become something of a trend--taking out OP bosses with unexpected critical hits.

I didn’t expect to like Lorenz and now I do. How.

This is hilarious simply because he seems to be the only character that Mercedes hates. What the fuck, man.

Once again, Edelgard invades! Once again, I drop someone unexpected on her head!

Not really. It was Yuri.

Yuri does the timeskip shuffle and we’ll see everyone again after a nap.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Aw, Claude was waiting for Yuri to show up. Adorable.

The post-meetup fight is actually harder than it was in the BL route, despite excessive level-grinding. This is due to three factors:

Claude is automatically on a wyvern, meaning that he has inherent class vulnerability to archers on a map with at least five of them. And less range than they did, for some fucking reason.

Lorenz and Ignatz started out on the same corner of the map and both of them are shitty offensive units who could barely kill a mage between them. (Neither of Ignatz’s offensive stats cracked 20 for another thirteen levels.)

I don’t have Ashe and his personal skill Locktouch, and nobody started with a Chest Key or Door Key, which meant I had to keep various enemies alive long enough to steal all of their stuff. And the enemy item drops came up one short of the number of chests on the map. I want my stuff, dammit.

LET’S MAKE A SCENE.

Randolph, as a boss in Verdant Wind, did not get any better at figuring out when he’s outmatched. Therefore, I killed him with Raphael again.

At least he straight-up died this time.

Claude didn’t even get to set the damn place on fire.

Ingrid is turning out to be way better of a unit this time than she was last time. She’s a little slower, but a lot stronger.

FELIX, WHERE THE FUCK WAS ALL THIS STRENGTH HIDING LAST TIME. YOU’RE TEN POINTS AHEAD OF THE GUY WHO HAS STORY-BASED SUPER STRENGTH.

AND SPEED.

Iiiiiiiiit’s JUDITH!

She only shows up on one map in the entire Azure Moon route, and that’s a damn shame. She’s so cool in Verdant Wind.

A lord-class character who isn’t also a Lord! WOO!

Also her spies are better than anybody’s apparently.

I am choosing to believe that because Ingrid’s family is related to Judith’s, her badassery in this route is the direct result of meeting her distant cousin and absorbing badass radiation.

There’s something funny about having to pull one over on Lorenz’s dad to get anything done. The Great Bridge falls not to power, but Claude baiting Count Gloucester’s entire army to be somewhere else. (FEAR THE DEER.)

As a result, Ladislava dies alone. (As opposed to taking Ferdinand with her due to plot shenanigans.)

Lysithea and Ferdinand’s paralogue was really quite sad, for all that the only named guy who died was deeply unsympathetic. Ferdinand’s dad was an asshole, but he wasn’t the asshole for this particular scenario, and now both of his parents are gone. :(

Felix...hasn’t heard from his dad in a while. Worrying.

Oh, and Caspar’s uncle is still dead, in case we were keeping track of that.

Dorothea’s happier with Ferdinand alive. She did an impression of the Gatekeeper. :3

Gronder Field! FUCK.

I delayed playing this chapter for two solid days because I already knew what was gonna happen. Specifically: Edelgard gets injured and evacuated, and Dimitri drops of exhaustion just in time to get run through like ten times by the Emperor’s rearguard.

I eventually got my shit together enough to do the thing.

Marianne, Raphael, and Ferdinand went after the Kingdom army first. Leonie and Felix hung back and then reinforced them after taking out the archer on the central hill.

Claude killed everyone in the center of the map, which meant Edelgard set the entire hill on fire and if Bernadetta had not been recruited she would’ve burned to death there on the spot.

Ahem.

I sent Yuri to clear the entire left side of the map by herself.

She succeeded.

Raphael KO’d Dimitri with a luck Gauntlet crit, got blasted down to half health by a Warlock, then plunked ineffectually at Dedue until Marianne used her Levin Sword to sort him out.

Ferdinand killed everyone else on that side of the map.

Claude once again got the kill on Edelgard with a lucky crit, after Yuri had killed everyone else (up to and including the Demonic Beasts) single-handedly.

And then the plot moved on. Hilda’s account of Dimitri’s death was awful, Dedue’s reaction was worse, and off we go to punch Edelgard’s teeth in.

Again.

Annette’s dad is probably dead now.

Felix’s, too.

(I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH THE DAD-STABBING.)

FOOOOOORT MERCEUS.

No matter how many times I think about it, Claude’s Almyran army reinforcements only make so much sense. How the hell and fuck did he manage to sneak an entire foreign army across a whole country to help with one battle?

But hey, they’re here, and Claude almost admitted the reason why he could do that. And the arrow greeting between him and Nader was cool.

(Spoiler: On top of being the Alliance’s leader, he’s also the crown prince of Almyra!)

The Death Knight had the gall to run from my army.

Yuri punched his ticket for the third time, which was not the charm.

And then Fort Merceus took an intercontinental ballistic missile and suddenly defeating the fort’s garrison feels a lot less triumphant.

Spot the miscolored eyes in this cutscene!

Welp. Fuck it, we’re off to Enbarr. Time to also punch Hubert this time! What a change of pace.

Eyyy, it’s the Enbarr map. I totally forgot to bring Seteth and Flayn along to check out the opera house, despite a whole bunch of characters talking about how they totally wanted to check that place out at some point. No room for deadweights in a map that has SO MANY ARCHERS.

Managed to get the special dialogue between Ferdinand and Hubert, and now I’m sad again.

Killed Hubert with Claude.

And because this is a two-part map, we immediately run off to chase down Edelgard. Due to the player army not doing a really weird 180 in the middle of the plot to kick Cornelia out of Fhirdiad, she didn’t have time to turn into a giant demonic thing! She just has WAY TOO MANY MAGES.

Strategy: Forget what Door Keys are, split the team by Avoid rating, and go to town.

Claude nearly died thanks to a critical mass of Gremories and Mortal Savants (and still, what the fuck is that name), but Dedue-as-guest-character didn’t, so I count that as a win! His defense was so high that the Giant Demonic Beast couldn’t even scratch him.

Claude, Petra, and Ingrid all having Alert Stance as a skill means dodge-tanking is hilariously easy.

Also, Ingrid was supposed to just take a chunk out of Edelgard’s HP bar for the final assault and ended up crit-killing her on the first attack. With a bog-standard silver lance.

Weird as the situation turned out, I guess that means one of Dimitri’s friends really did avenge him after saying they would. Even if Dedue was the only one who had a special cutscene about it.

We rescued Rhea! And the characters being happy about it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I want answers, same as Claude, and being forced to RP Yuri being oh so worried about Rhea’s safety felt incredibly disingenuous.

Claude actually yells at her over the “...” she seems to think is an explanation. THE TIME FOR SECRETS IS PAST.

WHY DID ALL THIS SHIT HAPPEN.

WE’VE BEEN AT WAR FOR FIVE YEARS.

A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE DIED HORRIBLY FOR BASICALLY NOTHING.

Incidentally, this is why I didn’t end up playing Edelgard’s route as planned. Her logic for kicking two other sovereign countries in the balls felt incredibly self-centered.

At least Catherine’s happy. Same with Alois and the rest of the Church crew.

They are soon going to be not as happy.

I’m filling out the ENTIRE support log before endgame. I have absolutely no idea what characters are going to end up together as a direct result.

The last conversation? Seteth and Manuela’s A+ support!

Because so many of the support conversations are romantic at A/A+ level, I guess we’ve managed to turn this ragtag army into a polyarmory.

Oh boy, Thales sure is a sore loser.

I say, as though I didn’t kill EVERYONE he knew over the course of an hour and also split his skull open under Seteth’s axe. His racism would have keeled his ass over before death set in.

That sure is a ICBM.

GOD DAMMIT RHEA, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A Q&A SESSION AFTER THIS.

WHY DOES EVERYONE WHOSE JOB IS EXPOSITION UP AND DIE.

Meanwhile: THE UBER-DEAD PEOPLE.

Claude, your route is batshit. What is this genre anymore?!

I wanna point out that, despite seeing Rhea/Seiros do the dragon thing, the player character never told Claude what the fuck that was about. I feel like one of the first things I would have done after the class reunion would be going, “By the by, did anyone else notice the fucking dragon?!” WHO IS ALSO THE POPE???

Bah.

ANYWAY. Looooong-overdue exposition time!

I notice that Rhea didn’t out Seteth or Flayn, which was nice of her.

Claude, she can turn into a fucking dragon. I don’t think immortality is that far from being plausible.

GOD DAMMIT NEMESIS, CAN YOU FUCK OFF FOR TEN MORE MINUTES.

Uuuuuuugh fine, fuck everything, I’m putting your head on a pike.

CLAUDE, THE SWORD OF THE CREATOR LOOKS LIKE A SPINE.

OF COURSE IT’S MADE OF BONES. A BUNCH OF THE HEROES’ RELICS MOVE ON THEIR OWN!

The frantic music is not helping.

Time to kill a bandit king.

“My flabber is completely gasted by now.” Okay, that made me laugh.

Nemesis’s boss mechanic is pretty neat. To kill him at all, you need to kill all of the minibosses in the level and take down his friendship-based-plot-armor.

Or it would be, if I didn’t already make a habit of steamrolling everyone else on the field before tackling the boss at the end.

CUTSCENE.

Cutscene lesson: “Fuck honor duels.” It’s time for CHAIN SWORD LIMBO.

Claude, your bow shoots LASERS. SINCE WHEN.

Also getting kicked across the field by a dude twice his size didn’t seem to actually affect his mood much.

Awww, Yuri smiles now. Adorable. :D

AND THAT’S A WRAP.

Pairings: Yuri/Sothis (mostly to get them out of the way and see what everyone else would do), Claude/Petra, Raphael/Marianne, Catherine/Shamir, Lorenz/Mercedes, Ashe/Annette, Felix/Sylvain (bad end; the former straight up disappears), Seteth & Flayn wander off, Manuela/Dorothea, Lysithea/Linhardt (again), Leonie/Ignatz, Ferdinand/Bernadetta, Caspar/Hilda, and a couple of people are alone. Cyril gets to actually be a student after the story’s done, though!

Whew, that was fun. Gonna mix up the pairs a bit next time I play through the endgame and see what happens.

#fire emblem three houses #Lang plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses #Lang Plays #spoilers #long post #fire emblem

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naamahdarling · 6 years

Note

Who was the first character you remember creating?

Oh gosh oh wow, umm, there were several who were kind of all created together. They were all anthro cat people. (None of my current OCs are anthro animals, but I have like four werewolves; I have the soul of a furry.)

Arren Shadowchaser was my “Mary Sue”. Like 95% of OC creation at that age is purely aesthetic, so I did a lot of fooling with her Look. She was a gray-brown snow-leopard-ish woman with long brown/black hair that she kept in a half-pony and two braids. I want to say her eyes were teal or purple? I think she went through a phase where her fur, like her entire body, all of her fur, was a truly impressive shade of peacock blue-green, which was unnatural and 100% inspired by this hideous leotard thing I had that made me feel like a superhero, so it’s NOT CANON YOU GUYS it’s too embarrassing to be canon.

Arren could use magic and had elemental powers, I think either air or earth? She was also a ferocious warrior who used a longbow and also a magic sword, and later on she was chief of a clan, the Renegades, who lived in the woods and did a kind of Robin-Hood thing, only I never made up any actual oppressive rich assholes for her to fight so there wasn’t much for them to do besides ride around on their hella-rad telepathic super-smart 1,000-pound lions.

Arren had a little brother, Aro, who was kind of a skinny twerp but in a lovable way. I don’t remember what he was good at except getting menaced cinematically and IIRC dying a couple of times to motivate our heroine. He was brown and black with a white tummy and chin, and shortish black hair he kept in a kind of humiliating cat mullet. He wore a sleeveless vest with peacock feathers over the nipples, and leather pants. In retrospect, I think Aro was probably very, very gay.

Srisin … Flame?catcher???? was Arren’s love interest. He was an orange tiger with flame powers and he wore a lot of black leather. He had a brother named Orin who was a white tiger and I think he had ice powers because water powers are stupid. (That’s what I thought at the time. Pre-teen me had yet to meet and crush on Aqualad from Young Justice.) Orin wore a lot of blue and I think he had his heart ripped out at least once. I was really into heart-ripping. (Still am!) Anyway, they were in a poly triad with Arren. She loved them both, but Srisin was the bad boy so he got a lot more play. But Orin was the wise and mystical one so you kind of wanted him around in case anyone needed to, like, read a fuckin’ book.

When I was 11, I wrote a 99-page (wide-rule notebook paper) book about Arren, Aro, Orin, and Srisin. It cribbed from everything from Elfquest to Dungeons and Dragons to Dragonlance to Tailchaser’s Song to Thundercats to The Belgariad because no 11-year-old is particularly original.

They go on some sort of chosen-four-representatives-of-the-elements quest thing to return the sacred orb/s to their gods, fight a bunch of really fucked up demons, there’s a lot of blood and gore and some excruciating torture of sexy cat boys, they all learn that they have magic powers, their warcats learn to fly, and they totally earn the favor of their deities and are made into elemental demigods. Sweet.

This horrifically gross and violent and no doubt borderline incoherent bit of juvenalia is still out there, probably at my parents’ house, and when I find it I promise to transcribe and post some of it.

I had another character named Kala’an Firerunner, and he might have predated Arren, I’m not sure at this point. Kala’an and Srisin kind of run together. I honestly am having trouble remembering because this was 30 years ago and I’ve had many naps, some emotional trauma, and a more-than-reasonable-amount of teenage-rebellion-era LSD since then. I’m honestly doing well to remember my own middle name.

Anyway, Kala was from a whole separate milieu. I think there was both magic and genetic engineering/far-future/postapoc shit going on in his backstory, like he escaped from a mutant farm or something, he was an ex-experimental subject who got pyrokinesis from being exposed to some artifact or relic or whatever. I think he was the result of that whole persecution fantasy thing, where you create this fantasy world where you’re exceptional but imprisoned by people who only want to exploit you while denying that you have any value at all. Sort of a metaphor for my whole school experience and not at ALL something I carry a massive chip on my shoulder about to this day. Hahaha. *wipes sweat*

Anyway, those were my first OCs.

GOD the shitty Elfquest/Thundercats vibe is incredible, I just want to pay someone to D R A W T H E M A L L.

Oh god everyone please like this post my eleven year old self would be so happy for people to care about the things she imagined.

#ocs #kittykillall #by me

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oliverphisher · 4 years

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George Ivanoff

George Ivanoff is an author. He lives in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

He has written over 100 books for children and teenagers, including fiction and non-fiction. He has written school readers, library reference books, chapter books, novelettes, novels and even a short story collection. He has books on both the Victorian Premier’s and the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge booklists.

George’s latest series of books is OTHER WORDS. With this series George has ventured into the realms of science fiction and fantasy, two of his favourite genres, in order to tell stories about ordinary kids facing extraordinary circumstances. There are 4 books so far.

The Treasure of Dead Man’s Cove (You Choose) By George Ivanoff

George’s has written 13 books in his interactive You Choose series. You Choose: The Treasure of Dead Man’s Cove won the 2015 YABBA in the “Fiction for Younger Readers” category; and You Choose: Alien Invasion From Beyond the Stars got an Honour Award in the KOALAs in 2016 and 2017.

His teen science fiction novel, Gamers’ Quest (2009), won a Chronos Award for speculative fiction. The sequel, Gamers’ Challenge (2011), was shortlisted for the same award. And the final book in the Gamers trilogy, Gamers’ Rebellion (2013), also won a Chronos Award.

George has also written a series of adventure books for kids — RFDS Adventures. The four books in this series were published in 2016.

George also writes short stories and articles for adults as well as kids. Of all these, he is most proud to have had the opportunity to write a Doctor Who story for the Short Trips: Defining Patterns anthology (Big Finish, UK, 2008).

Occasionally, George has been known to moonlight as an actor. He has had small roles in numerous productions including the television series Neighbours and the feature films Frozen Butterflies and William Kelly’s War. He recently guest starred in an episode of the audio series Night Terrace.

George eats too much chocolate, drinks too much coffee and watches too much Doctor Who. He will sometimes indulge in a nice bottle of wine or a single malt Scotch.

He has one wife, two children, two cats and several chickens. And he is very content!

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet By Eleanor Cameron

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron — This is the book that turned me into a reader.

Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth By Terrance Dicks

Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth by Terrance Dicks — I have lost count of the number of times I have read this book. Dicks is one of my writing heroes and one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer.

Illuminae (The Illuminae Files) By Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff

Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff — This book takes such a different and innovative approach to narrative. It made me want to be a better writer and take more creative risks.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

That $99 bottle of Japanese whiskey had a pretty good impact.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

It taught me to never give up and to never take success for granted.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

“Always try to be nice but never fail to be kind. ”

It’s from an episode of Doctor Who – “Twice Upon a Time”, written by Steven Moffat.

What is one of the best investments in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

Pen and paper.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I collect sonic screwdriver toys. (It’s a Doctor Who thing, for those of you who are wondering.)

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

I’ve realised that what other people think of me really isn’t all that important.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

Read as much as you can. Write as much as you can. And never give up.

Ignore advice insisting that you write every day. Write whenever you get the chance, be that every day, every second-day, or once a week. The important thing is to write.

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession often?

That you need to work on raising your social media profile before approaching publishers with your writing. I think it’s far more important to work on your writing.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

I’ve become better at saying no to people wanting me to read and comment on their work. I’m really not very good at assessing a piece of writing. I can tell you if I liked it or not, but I’m not great at explaining why or how it could be made better. I guess that’s why I’m an author and not an editor.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

Avoid constantly filling your social media with self-promotion. It’s a great way to lose followers.

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

I go jogging. It clears my head and makes me feel better. Great for writer’s block.

Any other tips?

Write what you want to write, rather than what you think other people want you to write.

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/george-ivanoff

#Writing WriteMotivation WritingAdvice

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occupyvenus · 7 years

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i REALLY don't understand the kind of audience who don't realize jon is a hostage right now. they took his boat and his weapons, but d/ny said he wasn't a prisoner so i guess he could just swim to shore and walk unarmed back to the north if he wanted to no big! and then there's the folks who think kneeling is the same thing as making an alliance like literally i don't understand how the big speech about perpetuity could have gone so far over their head like the stakes are high dudes

This will kinda cover a huge portion of my up-coming “Targ!Bowl vs Targ!Cest” - post, but who cares since you asked and I wanna talk about.

Though I absolutely understand you and your frustration I kinda do understand why some parts of the audience don’t realize all that, or at least not the severity of it.

I’m not even talking exclusively about the shippers who, to like anything from 50 -99%, don’t care what happens as long as their ships becomes canon, or the stans who will find a way to sugarcoat and excuse absolutely anything, anything I tell you, before admitting their fav has done some seriously terrible things or, dear god, “problematic” traits and storylines.

It also seems plausible to me that some parts of the more general, non-obsessive, “I don’t read the books” or “have a blog about it” kind of audience, have trouble to really grasp these issues. You wanna know why? D&D are half-assing it. Right now they are half-assing two narratives, instead of whole-assing one.

I propose the following theory:

Right now D&D are setting the stage for dark!Dany, while simultaneously selling her as Jon’s love-interest this season. Those two narratives are pretty much forced to hold the other one back, because Jon can’t fall for “ the villain”, while Dany can’t break bad out of the blue.

Leaving us with this incoherent mess, slightly ooc characters and actions that don’t influence the story in a “logical” way or even contradict each other.

Dany’s “transformation”, if you will, has to be properly foreshadowed, it has to be sufficiently hinted at from the moment she touches westerosi soil. The audience has to be able to look back and think “Oohh… I guess what she said there wasn’t alright. Should have seen that”. But she also has to appear loveable enough to warrant any kind of affection Jon displays towards her. The audience’s reaction once dany does break bad should be “But why did Jon!? Well, I guess I didn’t think she was that bad back then neither.”

There you have it. That’s why her behaviour seems so appaling to some people, while others are still strong advocates for good!Dany and everyone in between doesn’t know what the fuck to think. That’s why you can make a strong case for both, or more precisely for neither.

This is apparent when you look at the fact that every “negative” characteristic she portrays is counter-attacked with one of two things:

Someone else making a comment, implying the exact opposite.

The narrative conveniently jumping to a new plot point, reducing the immediate emotional impact of what we just saw.

Here are some examples:

Varys interrupting their dispute at it’s climax | Their first meeting didn’t go particularly smooth. They did not see eye to eye, they were not moving towards an understanding. Quite on the contrary, their interaction become more antagonist with every line of dialogue. It’s starts with both of them playing nice (in their own way), moves to Dany saying that Jon is breaking faith, Jon telling her that he doesn’t give a fuck about her birthright and ends with Dany outright accusing Jon of being in open rebellion (!!!). Where do you think that conversation was heading at? An intimate conversation about dead brothers? Dany has made her stance on Northern Independence clear, she see’s it as treason, I swear to all the gods, if Varys hadn’t walked in right then and there she would have explained what exactly the punishment for treason and oath breaking is. Try making a romance out of that. But conveniently enough Varys did come in at the perfect moment, dissolving all the tension into nothing, ending the scene on a half-baked Jon is her prisoner-but-not-really note.

Tyrion telling Jon about Slaver’s Bay | I don’t know if you had noticed, but Dany left her undeniably good accomplishment of abolishing slavery out of her little speech. She exclusively focused on awful things that have happened to her and the two big achievements that make her so god-darn special: Bringing dragons back into this world and making the Dothraki cross the Narrow Sea. All her statements were about her, not about the good she has or could do in this world. I strongly believe this is to imply that her conquest is deep down rooted in selfish desires. Contrasting Jon, who embraces his role as king to protect and save his people. So of course, we need another character to swoop in and remind us of the good things she has done. Too make it more clear: Dany says that “faith in herself kept her going”, Tyrion reminds Jon that “she protects people from monsters”.

Jon is a prisoner, but hey, he gets dragonglass | Jon was a “prisoner” prisoner for exactly five seconds, when he - rightfully - complained about it to Tyrion. It is establish that Jon wants to leave, but simply can’t, because Dany took his ship, thus making him her prisoner. If D&D had some balls they could have pursued this narrative, but instead wooossshhhhh we are jumping ahead to Jon being allowed to mine dragonglass. Now it doesn’t matter whether Jon is staying on dragonstone by his own free will or not. He needs that dragonglass, so of course he will stay to mine it. The audience was forced to contemplate Danys decision to lock him up for like a minute, before rendering the conflict obsolete. Begging the question why it was necessary to begin with, if not to show Dany doing some un-nice things to one of our protagonists.

Varys and the whole “burn someone alive” issue | This isn’t limited to her interactions with Jon. I am going to talk about Dany threatening to burn Varys alive, very much, very soon. Right now, all I want to say is that it is not a good omen. It’s one of the clearest indication so far that Dany will embrace her “inner dragon” and cause some serious destruction when doing so. Dragons plant no trees. But all the not-so-great undertones of her interaction with Varys are forgotten in the next scene when she embraces Melisandre with open arms saying “we decided to pardon all those who served the wrong king.” Sucking all the dark implications of threatening someone to BURN HIM ALIVE right out of the audience’s mind. Emphasizing that part where she pardons former “traitors”. If that scene would have cut away from Dany right after “her promise”, without reminding ous of her “forgiving” side, that little comment would have left a way more bitter taste in your mouth than it did.

I don’t wanna spoil anything from episode 4, (next paragraph contains very minor spoilers!)let’s just say that Dany demanding that Jon bends the knee, is met with another character stating that “Dany was chosen by her people”. Supposedly trying to establish a parallel that doesn’t hold any water in her current situation in westeros, anyway. But again, it is taking the sentiment expressed by Danys actions and words (a chosen king should kneel to her, whom his people didn’t choose) and twists it to paint Dany in a better light (she too was chosen by her people). It doesn’t make any sense when you think about it, but it fabricates enough emotional connections, for the audience to soften their view on Danys opinion on northern independence.

Do you see what I mean? I have a couple other examples, but some of them are from episode 4 and I’m going to go into this in my upcoming post anyway. The unobservant and/or biased show watcher simply has no time to properly process all this in one go. I’ve watched each episodes several times, am pretty obsessed with this whole thing and even I took some time before noticing a pattern.

Most people will just stick to that component of the narrative which is coherent with what they already know: that Dany is one of the good guys, a hero of this story. All her questionable actions are either dismissed or boiled down to “well, it turned out okay in the end”. As sloppy as the individual narratives seem to be (neither dark!Dany, nor, let’s call her hero!Dany are well developed, they overlap, contradict each other, etc.), they did a fantastic job at keeping the audience in the dark about it. Why?

Because for one reason or another she has to fuck Jon. Why that is, can only really be judged once we seen the whole of season 7, probably season 8, but I do have a couple of ideas why:

It happens in the books and D&D shouldn’t have cut the episode count. Maybe Jon and Dany hook up and/or develop feelings for each other before she breaks bad in the books as well. But since we only have 10 episodes where that could happen and dark!Dany and targ!bowl also has to happen at one point, those two storylines overlap. It isn’t too far-fetched that something will happen in the books as well, since Jon unknowingly committing “incest”, while being tormented about falsely-assumed incest is just too … fucked up, not to have crossed grrm’s mind.

It’s a red herring to throw the audience of Targ!bowl and Jonsa. Yes, I do belong to the people who are pretty very much certain that Jonsa will be endgame. I also belong to the people who are pretty very much certain that targ!bowl will happen one way or another. Believe me or not, I believed that Jon and Dany would rather fight than fuck once she comes to westeros, way before I ever thought about Jon and Sansa being a thing. So it’s not because I’m a salty shipper. So what else do I have to say? It’s a red herring, they are throwing us off the rails, to make Jonsa and Targ!Bowl extra-super-duper-surprising in season 8. And probably a bit rushed as well. Great. Just what I wanted. At least Jonsa was properly set up in season 6 and they mention each other every episode. Coincidence?

They want to have a sex-scene with Kit and Emilia. D&D are trash. They have sexualized countless other encounters on the show, single-handedly coined the term “sexposition”, I do believe they could write in a Jon x Dany sex-story just because. You can call that fanservice if you like. I’m not going to stop you.

Maybe they thought Jon and Dany having “a history” would make targ!bowl more engaging. Could be.

Either way, I personally feel a bit exhausted by this decision. Not because it “threatens” my ship, it doesn’t imo and not because I’m so opposed to the idea of Jon and Dany hooking up or even having a love-affair. It’s because the screenwriting is sloppy. It’s because they are messing up Danys characterization and maybe Jon’s as well. It’s because both Dany and Jon contradict themselves and the development of their relationship simply suffers by Dany being set on the path to the dark side, without any character on screen noticing it (at least yet. I have this feeling that Tyrion will seriously start to doubt all this very soon.)

I know this got way too long again, but giving unwanted, unnecessarily long answers is my forte after all.

I’m still holding my fingers crossed for Jonny playing Dany, all I can do is wait and pray. Let’s see how the rest of the season / series progresses, but for now I’m going to leave you with some wisdom from Ron Swanson, D&D should have taken to heart IMO:

#got s7 #dark!dany #anti-jonerys #anti-daenerys #i suppose #got meta #anti d&d #my stuff #i am a bit salty

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nacht-koenigin · 6 years

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Rules: “List ten of your favorite female characters in different fandoms and then tag ten people.”

thanks @bunniesandbeheadings for the tag :D

1. Elizabeth Bennet - Pride and Prejudice. I have to go with her! She’s really relateable, obviously--I think any human capable of empathy can relate to her--but on top of that she’s an example of an intelligent and independent woman living in a time when that was not particularly valued. That really resonated with me. Representation matters, after all, and seeing that women could be witty and fierce and clever really meant a lot to me. Plus the relationship she has with her father reminds me of my own relationship. P&P is one of the books that made me realize that old timey people were really just like us, and Elizabeth was a huge part of that.

2. Lady Sybil Branson - Downton Abbey. Yes, I watched Downton Abbey. I stopped after season 3 for obvious reasons. Sybil is another one of those intelligent, independent women who fights against what society expects of her and goes off and helps people! I just love how compassionate she is and how she tries to keep her privileged upbringing from affecting her empathy and understanding of the suffering of others. 3. Charlotte Wells - Harlots. Another JBF character! Charlotte is a fascinating character to me because she is so intense and so driven. Despite this, she hasn’t let her ambition get in the way of doing what she thinks is right. I really hope there will be a season two of Harlots so I can see where they take her vengeance plot.

4. Tess Martin - Into My Life. This one is obscure as fuck but she’s one of my favourite characters of all time so I couldn’t leave her out. I first read Into My Life when I was like, 12 or 13, and it absolutely influenced my expectations of a healthy relationship. The way Tess stands up for herself showed me how my rights and feelings as a woman matter too, and I shouldn’t brush them aside because it might make other people uncomfortable. She showed me that I should NEVER put up with bullshit, even if that bullshit is coming from the most eligible bachelor in the world. 5. Eliza Hamilton - Hamilton Musical. Listen, I know she was a real person but her musical version isn’t really the real Eliza. My favourite part about Eliza is her role at the very end, as the person who “tells our story.” As a historian, I really connected with that need for everyone’s story to be told, to be remembered for their contributions through all time. I know it’s Fashionable for historians to be dispassionate but I don’t want that! I care a lot about the people I study and I want other people to know about them!

6. The Queen of the Night - Die Zauberflöte. I just love scary queens, all right? She has some of the most incredible, technically-challenging parts of the opera, and I love her cunning. Also? In 99% of productions her aesthetic is the best. 7. Margaery Tyrell - Game of Thrones. Also, Olenna. The Tyrell women were politically savvy, and yet still more-or-less kind people. Olenna had some of the best lines in the series, and I love how unafraid she was of calling people out on their bullshit. I really dislike what the show did with Margaery but I will keep her original form in my heart forever. 8. Elizabeth Butler - Rebellion. A woman serving as a medic during the 1916 Rising, helping her nation move one step closer to independence? Sign me the FUCK up. Also Rebellion is a fantastic show, go watch it! It’s on Netflix and it’s a 5-part miniseries. Go educate yourselves!!! 9. Merrill - Dragon Age II. It’s hard picking just one woman from the Dragon Age series. I mean, if it really came down to it I might have to choose my Warden, but since no protag has a canon gender it’s hard to justify that choice. I love Merrill though, and I think her struggle with how she wants to life her life and the culture of the clan is really compelling. Add in the contrast between her general innocence and her use of blood magic and you’ve got one fascinating character!

10. Eponine - Les Miserables. If you hadn’t noticed, I love me some revolutionary women. I love how Eponine rises above her childhood and dies as somebody who fought for something important. In the musical, On My Own is one of my favourite songs because it’s beautiful and because I think we’ve all had a time where we sing that song and think of someone in particular.

Tagging...

@suchajerk @stanzi-manzi @jagdein @mammal-that-cares @spanishsilver @harukastailfin @kroganmama @thisispandas @oscarwetnwilde @beau--brummell

And whoever else wants to!

#long post #tag meme

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pontificalandwarlike · 7 years

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Enjolras the (Non-)Survivor

Or, an essay on why I struggle with survivor!Enjolras

[ cut for length...... buckle down kids cause this is about to be a long one. ]

As I hinted at previously, there are 3 layers to why survivor!Enjolras is a strange and confusing beast to me.

Let’s start with the easiest/simplest, which is: history. See, the point of having Enjolras survive the barricade is usually to give him a second chance, right ? He lives, he continues on, and he triumphs the next time, or maybe two tries later, or maybe ten –– but the ultimate goal is a happy ending of sorts for our golden boy. Or at least a triumphant ending, a closure of sorts, a successful closing arc for him and his Revolution. Except.... 19th century history isn’t kind to the French Republic. A lot of survivor!verse stuff take 1848 as the happy ending ( and I in no way mean to insult or nitpick them at all ). And on the surface, that makes sense ; that’s the next successful revolution ! Except the revolution might have been successful, but the Second French Republic born of it really wasn’t. Like, the February Revolution of 1848 happened in... February, as the name suggests; four months later, the June Days Uprisings were a major rebellion in Paris, where the workers rose up en masse, complete with barricades, in protest against the Second Republic’s policies. I won’t go too much into history here ( although there’s a lot of fascinating stuff ; a book I read characterized the June Days as the last major barricades ), I mostly wanted to mention it as an indicator of how rocky the Second Republic was from the start. And then, of course, the Second Republic lasted all of four years. In 1852 we have the Second French Empire, because they went and elected Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte –– aka Napoleon III, aka Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew and heir –– as the president of the Second Republic, and he did as Bonapartes apparently do in France. So, with 1848, Enjolras either dies on that barricade, or lives to see his beloved Republic fall apart in front of his very eyes and then give way to yet another empire. Not a very happy ending, and quite honestly, I don’t know how much his story changes functionally from what we already see in canon.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that this boy survives past 60 and sees the next republic come to be in 1870. Well, first of all, to do that, he has to :

lead a failed rebellion and deal with the physical, legal, and emotional aftermath of that

live under a regime he tried to overthrow for another 16 years

watch the Second Republic fall apart and give way to the Second Empire

live in an empire for almost 20 years

and finally, live through yet another bloody revolution

which, clearly, is not a great time for anyone. But also, the Third Republic was a bit of a mess of its own. See : the Franco-Prussion War, the Ordre Moral and the suppression of the Commune which lead up to 16 May 1877 ( “le seize mai” ), the aggressively polarized politics... Hell, just look at the wikipedia page for the Third Republic. Similar to 1848, simply getting to 1870 and the successful Revolution that leads to the Third Republic is not a happy ending in and of itself.

The point of all this historicizing is that, given his position in history, and his ideology as a radical revolutionary republican –– no matter what he survives and lives to see, Enjolras is just destined to be a tragic figure. There’s just no happy ending for him in history ; the best he can do is go out in a symbolic blaze of glory on a barricade somewhere, as he does.

Alright, let’s move on to layer #2 now, which is the symbolic/meta layer. This is also the most fun layer for me, and I’ll shamelessly mooch on some other people’s brilliant meta for this. There’s a lot of things you could talk about in the Brick, but I’m going to speak mainly to one of my perpetually favourite scenes, which is the execution of Le Cabuc. More specifically, the speech that follows right after it. I could quote the whole damn thing, but the key part is :

“As for myself, compelled to do what I have done, but abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself. [...] Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satan shall be no more, so Michael shall be no more. In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is so that it may come that we are going to die.” (Tome IV, Book 11, Chapter 8)

It took so much restraint to not bold the entire passage, but I managed to stick to a few phrases only. There’s sort of two ideas happening here. One is nor blood for blood / in the future no man will slay his fellow / all shall be concord, harmony, which is to say that Enjolras and the revolutionaries are fighting for a world without violence. Sit on the contradiction of that statement for a moment. They are fighting for a world without violence. There’s a fundamental ideological crisis here, and that is the contradiction of violence in the name of a world without violence. A question aries, then: where do people who have shed blood in the name of liberty and progress, fit in a world after revolution? More specifically for me & this essay, where does Enjolras, a “pontifical and warlike nature” fit in a peacetime world ? We have our answer in to what I have condemned myself / so Michael shall be no more / we are going to die. The answer is, he doesn’t and he can’t. The answer is, if you try to fit him in, he becomes Robespierre and Saint-Just and the Terror. The answer is, a warlike nature is a warlike nature in war or in peace ; and Enjolras is made to be the war that brings down regimes, and just because there is no more regime to be brought down doesn’t change his nature. ( Note that this is many chapters before the moment they realize they’ve been abandoned, that Paris isn’t coming to their aid ; that doesn’t happen until Tome V, Book 1, Chapter 3. Why does that matter ? Because Enjolras has no reason yet to believe they won’t survive this rebellion. And yet here he is, already condemning himself –– to death, I imagine, given the rest of his speech –– and a few lines later proclaiming that we are going to die. The revolutionaries, these men fighting with blood and sweat and tears for the future, are not going to live to see it. Because there isn’t a place for them in the world they are trying to build. They’re writing themselves out of the future. )

All this to say : if Enjolras survives a successful barricade, there is no place for him in the world it creates. He has already condemned himself, and the rest of the revolutionaries with him ( “We will share your fate !” Combeferre shouts, and Enjolras replies simply with “Very well.” ) He is Michael, and in a world where Satan is no more, he too will be and must be no more. ( I mooched a lot of ideas off of this meta thread, so feel free to go there for more intelligent, coherent, and informed thoughts than mine. )

Okay, then what about a failed barricade ? Well, let’s talk about that on the symbolic/meta level for a bit. Enjolras surviving a failed barricade... doesn’t make sense, on that level. It’s sort of the point of his story, that he dies there. That he dies embracing Grantaire, holding his hand, smiling. That’s the ultimate sacrifice, yes, but also the closure of his character arc : accepting love, accepting the skeptic, accepting people-with-a-lower-case-p, even when they don’t fit neatly into his revolutionary worldview. It’s a symbolic redemption of the heartless, ruthless version of republicanism he espouses at the very start ; it’s the antithesis of “Silence before Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He disowned his children; very well, but he adopted the people.” In other words, his arc remains incomplete on a symbolic level if the barricade fails and yet he doesn’t die. Also, can you imagine Enjolras surviving the barricade when everyone else has died ? I sure can’t, unless some magic stepped in and saved him when the Guard thought he was dead and he really should have been dead.

Anyway, having addressed the symbolic/meta reasons of why Enjolras surviving the barricades is a baffling situation to be in, let’s go to the third and most practical layer : characterization. Look, Enjolras as we see him in the Brick is made of exactly two things, and that is 99% Revolution and 1% his friends. ( Percentage may vary. ) So then, who is he when we rip both of those things away from him ? Who is Enjolras, when his Revolution has failed and his friends have all died ? I don’t have a good answer to that. I can’t possibly imagine him giving up, or God forbid turning a cynic, because that runs contrary to his entire person. It’s hard to imagine him becoming a moderate, peaceful republican or something along those lines, because he’s built on quite the absolutes, and while Combeferre/Courfeyrac/Feuilly/et al. to temper his beliefs, I just don’t think there’s a way he’s ever going to bend that far. He’d break before that. But at the same time, there’s no way he can go on like before, as if nothing happened. That’s just not how trauma works. This boy, all of 26 years old, waged a war, had his hands drenched in blood, killed people he didn’t want to kill ( see : the artillery sergeant scene ), watched all of his friends die by his side, was abandoned by a group of people he believed so deeply would be on their side, and saw the ideals he devoted his entire life to shatter to rubble in front of his own eyes. He’s not walking away from that unchanged, because that’s just not how human beings work.

So then, to summarize. I can’t imagine him giving up, because it’s not who he is as a person; I can’t imagine him choosing a moderate path, because I don’t think he has it in him to be that tempered; I can’t imagine him continuing as he was, because that’s just not how we work as people. So I’m at an impasse.

An Enjolras who survives with a few of his friends is easier to work with, because he as room to be at both ends. He can go through his terrible post-barricade phase, the survivor’s guilt, the trauma, the fears and the insecurities and the doubts that are borne of that experience. But then he can build himself back up, piece by piece, with the help of his friends –– and he can help them build themselves back up in turn. And at the end of the day, they stand back up as they did, scarred and wounded by their experiences but still standing. For what, I’m not so sure ( see history rant above ), but at least standing.

But an Enjolras who survives alone ? I genuinely have no idea what he would do or be, in the long-term. In the short term, sure, he’d be terribly guilty and terribly scarred and probably honestly terrified for a while. And then ? Does he heal from that on his own –– and if so, how ? What happens if he does heal –– does he go on to join or found another revolutionary group ? What happens if he doesn’t heal –– does he die, somehow ?

This is not to say that I don’t like writing survivor!verse. The opposite is true, actually ; I love it. I love angst, first of all, but it also lets me explore a side of Enjolras that doesn’t happen a lot in other places. Which is to say, an Enjolras stripped and broken down, an Enjolras shattered and torn apart, an Enjolras guilty and doubting and robbed of his own self-assured confidence. This essay is more to explore in more depth why I struggle with Enjolras post-barricades on a broader and longer-term scale. I could probably go on but I’ll stop now because this is already 2100+ words.

#⚔ penned by jenn –––– ( ooc. )#⚔ a hand wrote on it in pencil –––– ( meta. )#|| i'm calling this meta bc i don't know what else to call it #|| here you go this took me far too long #|| god i hope this is coherent #|| deleting the thought-ramble version in favour of this

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biointernet · 4 years

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Hourglass Toy Set

“Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.” ― Walt Disney Hourglass Toy Set - Hourglasses 27, 28, 29 Welcome to MHC Virtual Museum! Hourglass Collection on MHC Virtual Museum We have more than 1000 objects in My Hourglass Collection Hourglass Collection, Collection catalog: Collection catalog 300-399Collection catalog 200-299Collection catalog 100-199Collection catalog 1-99Collection catalog, The List

MHC Virtual Museum

MHC Virtual Museum – My Hourglass Collection virtual museum about Light, Time and Space

MHC Virtual Museum MHC – My Hourglass Collection – virtual museum about Time and Light, Space and Magic – the Biointernet Hub on The Fantasy Network MHC Virtual Museum based on My Hourglass Collection Symbol of Time – The Hourglass Hourglass Toy Set

Time symbolism

What is the symbol of time?

Symbol of Time is The Hourglass

Time symbolism – What is the symbol of time? My Hourglass Collection – Time and Hourglass History and Symbolism. Welcome to MHC Virtual Museum! In the years since A Brief History of Time was published, feedback has come in from readers of all ages, of all professions, and from all over the world. One repeated request has been for a new version, one that maintains the essence of A Brief History yet explains the most important concepts in a clearer, more leisurely manner. Although one might expect that such a book would be entitled A Less Brief History of Time, it was also clear from the feedback that few readers are seeking a lengthy dissertation befitting a college-level course in cosmology. Thus, the present approach. In writing A Briefer History of Time we have maintained and expanded the essential content of the original book, yet taken care to maintain its length and readability. This is a briefer history indeed, for some of the more technical content has been left out, but we feel we have more than compensated for that by the more probing treatment of the material that is really the heart of the book. See also:

Time symbolism

Time is…

Time in physics and time Science Symbolism of Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer

Time and Text

Text, Time, MHC Extinction Rebellion – Time against Life Hourglass and Death on St Thomas’ Church Hourglass – symbol of Death Hourglass and Skeleton “Hourglass and Cards” Exhibition Father and Mother of Time Time Hub The Hourglass, Hourglass History Hourglass symbolism Hourglass Body Hourglass Tattoo Symbols of Time Read the full article

#Hourglasscollection #Hourglassfact #HourglassToySet #Toyhourglass

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janiedean · 6 years

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Do you think Rhaegar had heard the rumors about Gregor at the time he knighted him?

this... is a hard-ish question but the thing is, I think it’s really implausible that he hadn’t.

now I could stop here or give you a rant about a) gregor being used as the perfect example of the failure of the institution of knighthood, b) the hints in the text about rhaegar being a largely flawed person with good intentions, c) the reasons why I 100% think that about r. and since I can’t shut up you’ll get both plus extra info about grrm’s other work.

now:

the thing is that gregor incarnates everything a knight is not (kills/hurts/rapes people, has no respect for his family or anyone, almost killed sandor, most likely killed their sister and father) and his knighthood is in itself a proof of how fucked up is the institution and was also in the rebellion era, this while it’s still discussed as something people should aspire to;

now, since gregor is a secondary character who’s there for other’s development, esp. in the beginning, he’s there to develop sandor, and the crux of sandor’s development is that he can’t get over a) gregor ruining his life, b) rhaegar having knighted him (because someone who was seen as the best, most just, most gracious person in court knighted the person who ruined his life and abused him), c) and that killed his faith in knighthood or decency of the institution or people in general and sends him straight into functional alcoholism among the rest so like the weight is on sandor’s story not on others’s

anyhow, this ties back to the idea that I was discussing in that kingsguard meta that started this question (I suppose?) ie that all true knights in these books are not what society sees as such/don’t see themselves as such (ie brienne/sandor/jaime-after-he-gets-his-head-straight-and-during-the-rebellion) and the supposed True Knights are not actually what they’re supposed to be nor realize it even if some strive for it when they put two and two together, but this corruption of the institution of the kingsguard is actually encouraged by the people on top who allow the corruption to seethe into it - ie, rhaegar knighting gregor is basically ‘person that 99% of the realm sees as flawless making a knight out of the least deserving person in existence’ and I really doubt that he wouldn’t hear the rumors since in order to knight someone you have to know who they are, unless rhaegar is so lost into his prophecy/his own world that he has no idea, which doesn’t say much good when he’s concerned tbh because there’s a limit to how much you can ignore the outside world in this sense.

now, I have to discuss rhaegar for a moment - count that I’m not a r stan, I care relatively little for r, 99% of the reasons I care about r are summed up in ‘because I love jon connington’ and like I don’t even hate him but I generally can’t care less about either him or the targs in general with a few exceptions so like I’m.... completely neutral but nvm that.

now, r sounds like a swell dude according to everyone but he also does a number of 100% mindboggling idiotic things after he learns of the long night and fine, I get that the apocalypse >>>> the rest of the world, but knighting gregor, leaving with lyanna without leaving orders in KL and leaving just jaime there to protect both aerys + elia and the kids is also completely fucking stupid like even if he was the best ever he was ONE person with a castle under siege if things went awry??? also the fact that arthur was at the tower with orders to not let ned in at all costs even if r was fucking dead doesn’t suggest anything good;

so: we can’t know until we get flashbacks, but the point is, is r a decent guy with good intentions or is he The Worst?

spoilers: I actually think that you can find a possible answer if you read grrm’s dying of the light, ie his first book, which is basically robert’s rebellion in space (no really) in which one of the three mains is exactly r to a T: he comes from a retrograde society that he understood is retrograde and wants to reform with 100% good intentions, marries the female main after they FALL IN LOVE LIKE IN A FAIRYTALE and she’s dumped her ex that she felt didn’t see her but just the image he had of her. except that by marrying her he’s turning her into basically his legal concubine and she grows to resent it, but he did it wanting to fight the system from the inside and was 100% fully convinced of the goodness of his intentions not realizing that he was hurting her, the fourth main who’s basically space!alien jonc and destroying his own cause. now this guy is a nice guy - he knows his society is wrong, he knows he has to change it, he genuinely loves her....... but he looks at the big picture too much and doesn’t see how he’s hurting everyone surrounding him for his goal and tbh I think that dude was 100% rhaegar character study, and like... while the guy ended way better than canon!r did (undeservedly tbqh but XD) he would have knighted gregor because either he didn’t notice or thought it was for the greater good;

so like.... my theory based also on the above would be that if rhaegar was aware he didn’t care because he thought it served some greatest purpose, if he wasn’t then it shows that he was too busy worrying about the apocalypse to vouch whoever he was knighting and that does not say much good about his people skills or political skills X°D which makes him... a decent but largely flawed person with good intentions XD

... idk if it answered the question but XD

#janie writes meta #ch: gregor clegane #ch: sandor clegane #ch: rhaegar targaryen #Anonymous #ask post

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aniehart · 5 years

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Is there any better season for reading than autumn? Maybe you can still sit outside, but you might need a cozy blanket or a cup of tea. Maybe it’s raining and you curl up with a good book by the window. Or maybe it’s an indian summer and you can still lay out in the sun. Whatever the case, half the year has passed and we can see what people have been reading so far this year.

Publishers weekly just released their list of top selling books. President Barack Obama gave us his best summer reads of 2019! And I stopped by the British chain Waterstones and indie book seller Brick Lane Bookshop to see what was at the top of their lists! So if you still don’t have any books lines up for fall, you might find some here. Or follow my Journey around the world in books, where every month I choose to read authors from different countries! I’ve already had some amazing reads from Ireland, China, and The Philippines!

Publishers weekly

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis

Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

Educated by Tara Westover

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Unfreedom of the Press by Mark R. Levin

Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern

You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

The Mueller Report by the Washington Post

StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst

The Woman In the Window by A.J. Finn

The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

The Mister by E.L. James

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

The Pioneers by David McCullough

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Where the Crawdads sing has been embraced by most celebrities, bookbloggers and book clubs and reigns at the top of the bestseller list with over a million copies sold. (I personally tried it and could not get into it, maybe I’ll try again at some later time.) A close second is the praised book by Michelle Obama (and for good reason, the book is amazing!) Rachel Hollis has 2 books on the list! (You go girl!) and I have personally just started listening to Girl, wash your face. Just four chapters in and I’m hooked! Added her on instagram for a daily dose too!

President Obama’s summer reading list 2019

The last couple of years President Barack Obama has been sharing in August what he has read during the summer, and if you’re in doubt about what to pick up during the fall, his list is usually pretty epic.

Waterstones

Once upon a river by Diane Setterfield

The Wych Elm by Tana French

The Handmaid’s tale by Margaret Atwood

The Last by Hanna Jameson

Normal people by Sally Rooney

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Heroes by Stephen Fry

Nine perfect strangers by Liane Moriarty

The tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

The confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

In a house of lies by Ian Rankin

The silence of the girls by Pat Barker

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

A spark of light by Jodi Picoult

Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks

The man who didn’t call by Rosie Walsh

Middle England by Jonathan Coe

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe

A keeper by Graham Norton

Waterstones also has a countdown for the release of The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. The follow up to The Handmaid’s tale finally arrives, 34 years later. It’ going to hit the bestseller list for sure! Look out – September 10 it’s out!

Brick Lane Bookshop Bestsellers July

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Still Worlds Turning by No Alibis Press

This is Not a Drill by Extinction Rebellion

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Just Kids by Patti Smith

On Earth We’re Briefly Georgeous by Ocean Vuong

The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Milkman by Anna Burns

Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k by Mark Manson

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

Circe by Madeline Miller

How to Be Right by James O’Brien

English is Not Easy by Luci Guiterrez

Sally Rooney grabs the two top spots at the indie bookseller Brick Lane Bookshop in London. We see some of the same books as the chains have, but not all.

#gallery-0-17 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-17 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-17 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-17 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

10 Minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak

An orchestra of minorities by Chigozie Obioma

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

I’m still on my literary journey around the world and I will be reading books from Norway, India, Nigeria and Italy the rest of the year. I’ve been wanting to watch My brilliant friend on HBO, but I’m waiting to read the book first! Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in a few books off these lists too! I especially have my eye on Sally Rooney, Tara Westover, Tayari Jones and Madeline Miller.

Best books of 2019 so far… Is there any better season for reading than autumn? Maybe you can still sit outside, but you might need a cozy blanket or a cup of tea.

#Autumn reads #Best books for 2019 so far #Bestseller books #Bestsellers #BrickLaneBookshop #Obama Reading #Rachel Hollis #Sally Rooney #Waterstones #What to read

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

Text

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT STUDENTS

If you're an inexperienced founder, the only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it. When you first start angel investing. If you want to invest in any good startups. It's not the physical infrastructure of Silicon Valley that makes it sound as if they're committing, but which didn't convert except in a few months. At Harvard that is or was Reading Period, when students have no classes to attend because they're supposed to think. So I've seen a good part of the reason is that to make Leonardo you need more than his innate ability. Then I'm worried. Though a lot of mistakes. Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time till they feel they have the upper hand over investors, if you had a graph in which the upper is written, in which case the interface can be dictated by the upper level. In fact, one strategy I recommend to people who need a new idea.1 But there's more to it than that. The stories that seemed to be most admired were ones in which people have to make it to ramen profitability in a few.2

John Bautista, Trevor Blackwell, David Hornik, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond describes Lisp as something like Latin or Greek—a free implementation, a book, and something to hack—how do you make good stuff? Here, again, language designers are somewhat out of touch with the world. This was too subtle for me. I already have momentum on some project, I realized it would probably have ended up pretty rich even if IBM hadn't happened to drop the PC standard, Microsoft opened up the market to any manufacturer.3 Brevity is always attractive to hackers, a language designer would do well to act as the lead investor.4 We can afford to take more risk you should. You're just looking for something to spark a thought.5 Fortunately for startups, big companies are smart enough yet to admit this to themselves. When you only have a few users you can be in close contact with all of them perhaps, but if we raise a few hundred thousand we can hire one or two smart friends, and if we want to fund more Airbnbs we have to train longer for them.

The worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people will. But what if you haven't raised any money yet, you probably have an idea. Anti-immigration people say that instead of accepting offers greedily, end up leaving that investor out, you're going to do this well. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo. I wouldn't. If I remember correctly, the most you'd want to raise is 20 x $15k x 18 $5. But as happened with Apple, by the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. Cobol and hype Ada, Java also play a role like the role relaxation plays in having ideas. So much for hockey as the game is played now. One can imagine evolutionary reasons for that. Just have a gentlemen's agreement.

A rounds. A lot of them try to make them your own. Just a teacher? Since software patents are no different from hardware patents, people who apply to Y Combinator don't generally have much money, and partly because startups early on need frequent feedback from their users to tweak what they're doing. One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to, the focus of rebellion was drug use, specifically marijuana. Steve Wozniak built the computer that became the Apple I, he felt obliged to give his then-employer Hewlett-Packard the option to produce it. There are lots of surprises for individual startups too, and they have sex. As indeed they often are. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. So if the ease of shipping software, we'd see a lot more people investing tens or hundreds of thousands.

If feeling you're going to fail makes you stop working, that practically guarantees you'll fail. I feel a bit stupid saying that, because when you're saying something that Richard Stallman and Bill Gates would probably have something to read.6 In 1995 it was hard to imagine something that could be turned into a startup. It's easy. In our school it was eighth grade, which was ages twelve and thirteen for me. There are three reasons. If your numbers grow significantly between two investor meetings, investors will be hot to close, and if we want to keep them fed, and as far as I know all too well from being in the business of trying to be artistic resort to swooshes and curlicues. It's hard for us to be up to our chins in failure all the time, instead of being dragged sideways into a discussion of price.7 To us that's positive evidence an idea is good.8 Reality can be messier. Intelligence has become increasingly important relative to wisdom because there is usually a lead investor who negotiates the terms with the startup.9

This happens in intellectual as well as moral questions. They didn't foresee the expansion of this idea.10 We're in a business where we need to be able to. I'm going to give you a termsheet. The view of history we got in elementary school was a crude hagiography, with at least one representative of each powerful group. Get introductions to investors. Established ones have learned to treat saying yes as like diving off a diving board, and they won't even dare to take on ambitious projects.11 Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a company to put art galleries online. But they were expensive compared to what they were worth it. So it is with design.

Notes

Part of the leading edge of technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to unload it on buyer after buyer. 99, and many of the markets they serve, because you can't avoid doing sales by hiring sufficiently qualified designers.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an angel.

In part because Steve Jobs did for Apple when he was otherwise unoccupied, to buy corporate bonds to market faster; the trend has been decreasing globally. Though nominally acquisitions and sometimes on a map.

I write out loud at least a partial order. Incidentally, this would work so hard to grasp the distinction between them generate a lot of investors. It's interesting to 10,000 or a blog that tried that.

Microsoft, not all, the less educated parents seem closer to a super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods. It's not a complete bust. This would penalize short comments especially, because it aggregates data from so many trade publications nominally have a single project is a big success or a funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the PR firm. Startups Condense in America consider acting white.

But it's hard to think of the false positives out of just doing things, which are a small company that has a finite market value. Another approach would be improper to name names, while simultaneously implying that you're talking to a company's culture. 5% of Apple now January 2016 would be improper to name names, while Reddit is Delicious/popular with voting instead of just Jews any more than the valuation of an investor makes you a series A round. That wouldn't work if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference.

As I explained in How to Make Wealth when I first met him, but I wouldn't want the first half of the War on Drugs. You should be designed to express algorithms, and wouldn't expect the opposite way from the Dutch not to pay the bills so you could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities. And maybe we should remember this when comparing techniques for stopping spam. The Internet worm of its completion in 1969 the largest of their works are lost.

The other extreme—becoming demoralized when investors behave upstandingly too. All you need to do is keep track of statistics for foo overall as well. What you learn in college is much smaller commitment than a tenth as many per capita income in England in 1750 was higher than India's in 1960.

A single point of treason. Even in Confucius's time it still seems to be good at squeezing money out of their times. Earlier versions used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005. Bureaucrats manage to think.

Though in fact had its own momentum. Labor unions were exempted from antitrust laws by the high-fiber diet is to do wrong and hard to predict startup outcomes in which many people mistakenly think it was true that the probabilities of features i.

We tell them to lose less on investments that failed, and are paid a flat rate regardless of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. No one writing a dictionary from scratch is not too early if it's the right mindset you will find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the methodological implications. The moment I do in a world with antibiotics or air travel or an acquisition for more than whatever collection of qualities helps people make up their minds, they sometimes describe it as a first approximation, it's not the original version of this article used the term literally.

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torontothoughts · 5 years

Text

The final stage of my trip was exploring in and around Inverness. While I’d been to Inverness and to a couple of the historical places I was planning on visiting before, I really wanted to revisit Clava Cairns because of the Outlander connection. My cousin, Niki, was an Outlander fan and it seemed like a nice way to honour her memory to visit the site. And since I was going to be there, I wanted to visit the Culloden museum as I’d visited the battlefield before but not spent time in the museum. The other reason I was going to Inverness was it’s a good base to use when visiting distilleries and that section of the Highlands.

Stornoway to Inverness

As I was still not feeling up to par, I chilled until it was time to catch the ferry to Ullapool and then I was off. I truly love ferry crossings, probably because I enjoy being on boats and ships of all sizes. Luckily, it was another super calm crossing even if the sky wasn’t clear. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any marine life other than birds again. Ullapool, the town at the other side of the ferry ride, looked like I place I’d like to visit again, perhaps next trip as I’ve read there is some nice hiking/walks around there. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of it as it was literally off the ferry and on the bus. The bus ride to Inverness was short – just over an hour and then I was checked into Inverness Student Hostel.

The hostel room was small but clean, and there’s no room for bags under the bed (or anywhere) but what can you do. It’s a friendly place though and pretty central. After checking in and arranging to have to get my laundry done, I headed out for some fish & chips (decent and reasonably priced). But since I can’t really taste my beer (stupid allergies), I’m not sure I should book a whisky tour.

Side note: the soundtrack at the pub I ate dinner at is interesting.

The River Ness in Inverness

Inverness Castle and a statue of Flora MacDonald

The River Ness in Inverness

I asked the bartender which Scottish beer he would recommend

Inverness, Culloden and Clava Cairns

Thankfully, I started to feel better in the morning (and had energy again) so hopefully… I’ll be able to taste fully tomorrow as I plan on doing another distillery tour and to look for a place to do a tasting that I don’t have to pay £99 for. I might if I knew I could taste properly as it’s not the money but there are other options. The tour was great at Harris but I want to be able to drink whisky.

In the meantime, I’m off to get my history, and Outlander fix today. My first stop was Culloden (the battlefield, not the town) which one can do by city bus (buy the day pass ticket for the correct zone and your golden for the day). Culloden, for those who don’t know, is the sight of the last major battle on British soil and the battle that ended the Jacobite rebellion in 1746. I had already decided to do the museum and as I spent about 2 hours there, it was worth it. I liked how they told both sides equally. While I knew the basic history, I hadn’t realized how young the Duke of Cumberland was – he was basically the same age as “Bonnie” Prince Charlie. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing I learned but it did stand out.

After wandering around the battlefield paying my respects, I headed over to Clava Cairns, which is a nice walk from Culloden (a few kilometers) and it was another amazing day. Clava Cairns are a group of Bronze Age cairns and standing stones which were recently made famous in the TV series, Outlander (and books). No Outlander moment for me, I tried, and some other tourist told me to be careful (I’m still trying to decide if he was joking). Too bad as Jamie was hot. It’s a peaceful site, at least it was until a tour bus arrived and I had to listen to some idiot, hopefully not their tour guide, spout inaccurate info. What this random dude was saying was completely different to what the sign I had just read said (and my limited knowledge). Pretty sure the official sign’s info was right. As it was another lovely, sunny day, I ignored the yapping and headed back to Culloden to catch the bus back to Inverness. Gotta love waiting for bus with a cute guy in a kilt. One of those, only in Scotland moments.

Back in Inverness, I went to the sweet shop I saw earlier and bought some traditional Scottish candies to take home. The I decided I’d had enough fish & chips and needed some veggies so I headed to the Co-op (a grocery store) to buy a salad and extra cherry tomatoes before calling it a day.

Side note: this hostel and the one in Fort William are owned by the same group. They name their beds and assign them instead of the first come, first choice model. In Fort William, they were all after famous Scots in my room and I got William Wallace (who fought the English and was drawn & quartered). In Inverness, they’re named after whisky in my room and I got Craggonmore which I’ve never tried but have to now.

Clava Cairns

A river I crossed walking to Clava Cairns

Clava Cairns

A guy in a kilt

Some traditional Scottish candies

Country roads can be really narrow

The Culloden battlefield

One of the standing stones at Clava Cairns

No Outlander moment for me

Clava Cairns

Inverness

It was a wee bit of a wet day but since I’ve had mostly great weather, I can’t really complain. I decided to head to a distillery I could both get to by city bus (again, get a day pass ticket for the correct zone) and that I couldn’t try at home… and ended up at the Glen Ord distillery. It was a nice tour but I accidentally signed up for the wrong one and ended up on a simple tour, not a tasting. Ah well, at least there was a small taste at the end and it was a nice tour.

Afterwards, I decided to walk to the next village to check out the Beauly Priory, which are ruins of an old priory from approximately 1230, before catching the bus back to Inverness. Despite the misty rain, it wasn’t that bad of a day and I enjoyed the 5 km walk. Plus it was nice to add some more history to my day, although I did find it a bit odd that there seemed to be monuments/tombstones inside the ruins of the priory.

Back in Inverness, I caught a bite to eat (fish & chips again, this time with mushy peas) before heading to the Malt Room for whisky, which was so memorable, it gets it’s own section.

The Beauly Priory

A hairy coo (Highland cow)

The Beauly Priory

The tasting at the Glen Ord Distillery

The Beauly Priory

Part of the tour at the Glen Ord Distillery

The Glen Ord Distillery

The Beauly Priory

Making the whisky at the Glen Ord Distillery

The Malt Room

The Malt Room, a small, cozy bar tucked into the Victorian Market alleyway, is heavenly. They have whisky flights! As I hadn’t really done a tasting yet, just a couple of tours, I was so happy to have found this place. I tried the North Coast 500 flight, which is a five whisky flight with Glenmorangie Quinte Ruban, Old Pultney 12, Balblair 05, Clynelish 14, and Dalmore 15. Of the five, I’d only previously tried the Glenmorange, which is one I enjoy (sweet & fruity).

Old Pulteney 12 is light and tastes like a mild salted caramel, a nice intro whisky. Balblair is a sweet, mildly spicy/peppery whisky – for me, the spice/pepper dominated the other flavours after the first sip. Clynelish, this one explodes on the palate! It’s oaky, spicy and fruity all at once. Dalmore smells like chocolate covered cherries and tastes like a spicy fruit cake with licorice lingers.

My conclusion on all five whiskies after trying them all neat and then with a drop or two of water is:

I still love Glenmorangie Quinte Ruban.

Old Pultney 12 might be good for those who don’t think they like whisky or have never tried it and want a gentle entry. But I wasn’t a fan.

Balblair 05 is lovely to sip – I’d definitely buy it if it’s available in Canada. I really liked it and a drop or two of water soothes the spiciness and brings out the sweet toffee.

Adding a drop or two to Clynelish 14 softens it a bit but it’s still full of flavour – orange, oak and spice in equal measure, and in that order. It’s also a nice whisky and a bit sweeter with a bit of water. It’s a bit like a spicy fruity run ball/truffle.

Dalmore 15 did not improve with water. Even though I only added two drops (literally) of water, it tastes bland now. Not completely but it was much better without water.

Side note: there’s a fascinating discussion about Scottish independence here and one of the guys (it’s quite a friendly discussion despite the dissenting opinions) says “It’s fine, you’re wrong but I accept that.”

The tasting at the Glen Ord Distillery

Pretty flowers at the Malt Room

My North 500 flight at the Malt Room

All in all, it was a lovely way to spend my last night in Inverness (and second last in Scotland). If you’re a whisky fan and in the Inverness area, I’d definitely recommend visiting the Malt Room. They have tons of whiskies and several different whisky flights to choose from.

Final Thoughts

The last part of my trip was all about history and whisky… and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are two of my favourite things. I still can’t believe how amazing the weather was for the majority of my trip but man, am I thankful. There’s still lots of Scotland I’d love to explore but I had an absolute blast on this trip.

What’s your favourite historical site in Scotland? Which whisky would you recommend?

Revisiting Scotland - Exploring Inverness Meant Whisky and History #Scotland #travel #whisky The final stage of my trip was exploring in and around Inverness. While I’d been to Inverness and to a couple of the historical places I was planning on visiting before, I really wanted to revisit Clava Cairns because of the Outlander connection.

#Inverness #Scotland #solo travel #Travel #whisky tasting

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sataniccapitalist · 7 years

Text

Finally, the Class War Is Out in the Open; or Why Trump Won the Election

APRIL 30, 2017

I was in Germany in November at the time of the American presidential election, and wrote the following essay on Nov. 9, the day after. I subsequently gave it as a lecture at the University of Mainz, but was unable to post or publish it because of lecture commitments I had made in Mexico for the spring of 2017. Those commitments have now come and gone, and so I'm free to post it at this time. Most of you will not find any surprises here, because we have been discussing these issues since Trump's victory. Nevertheless, I thought I would take the liberty of posting it; reviewing these things may possibly be of interest, even at this late date. Or at least, I hope so. Here goes:

A few months ago, I read in some online newspaper that the six richest people in the world owned as much as the bottom 50 percent, or 3.7 billion people. This is so bizarre a statistic that one would have to call it surreal. One wonders how we got to this state of affairs. As in the case of so many things, the United States is at the cutting edge of this development. Just for starters, most of those six individuals are Americans. But of course it goes deeper than this. The world economic system is fundamentally an American one, and is sometimes known as neoliberalism or globalization—fancy words for imperialism, in fact. And imperialism is a system in which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets slowly squeezed into oblivion.

American capitalism, of course, has been going on now for more than 400 years, as I describe it in my book

Why America Failed

. And yet one thing that can be said about social inequality in America is that it was relatively stable from 1776 down to about 1976, i.e. a period of 200 years. It existed, but for the most part it wasn’t harsh or extreme, save during the Gilded Age and the Depression, and it enabled Americans to believe that they were living in a classless society, or even that they were all middle class. As for the Depression, America pulled out of it due to the dramatic industrial development required by World War II, but Franklin Roosevelt was well aware that the nation needed something more viable than a war economy in order to sustain itself. And so in the summer of 1944, a conference on postwar financial arrangements was convened in a small town in New Hampshire called Bretton Woods, and the economic plan that was devised at that conference came to be known as the Bretton Woods Accords. The guiding light was the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, possibly the greatest economist who ever lived.

The Bretton Woods Accords put forward two key concepts. One, that the US dollar would be the international standard of exchange. All other currencies would be pegged to the dollar in value, and could always be traded in for dollars. Two, that the US Government would guarantee the value of the dollar, i.e. back the dollar, by means of gold bars kept in a vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The paper dollar, in other words, could be trusted completely. All of this was implemented as soon as the War was over, and it led to a remarkable period of prosperity, worldwide, for the next twenty-five years.

For a variety of reasons, Richard Nixon—not one of my favorite people—decided to repeal Bretton Woods, which he did in 1971. What this did was usher in a dramatic age of finance capitalism. Just to be clear, capitalism comes in three flavors. There is mercantile or commercial capital, in which wealth is derived from trade, and which flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then there is industrial capital, in which wealth is derived from manufactures, and which characterized the modern era, that is the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. And finally there is finance capital, in which wealth is not derived from trade or manufactures, but simply from currency speculation. This is what the repeal of Bretton Woods allowed, because with the removal of the gold standard, the currencies of the world had no intrinsic (dollar) value; they just floated against one another in a market place of constantly fluctuating exchange rates. Casino capitalism, we might also call it. Those who were rich could make huge amounts of money by speculating on currency rates, because they had large amounts of money to begin with. The rest of us—the so-called 99 percent—didn’t have the luxury of this, and were largely tied to a paycheck, if indeed we even had a job.

The effect of the repeal began to be noticed by 1973, and the gap between rich and poor began to widen noticeably thereafter. Ronald Reagan did his best to make it worse. His so-called “trickle down theory,” by which the wealth of the rich would supposedly spill over into the wallets of the poor and the middle class, was a farce. In a word, nothing trickled down. The rich decided to hang onto their wealth, rather than spread it around. What a surprise! And so today, in China as well as the United States, the top 1 percent own 47 percent of the wealth. In Mexico, thirty-four families are super-rich, while half the country wallows in poverty. And as I mentioned earlier, a handful of Americans own as much as the bottom 3.7 billion of the world’s population. As President Coolidge astutely remarked nearly 100 years ago, “The business of America is business.” John Maynard Keynes’ warning, that the economy was there to serve civilization rather than the reverse, was completely ignored.

“Reaganomics,” as it was called, got further entrenched with the fall of the Soviet Union. This event was taken, in the United States, as definitive proof that what was called the “Washington Consensus”—a neoliberal, globalized economy—was not merely the wave of the future, but indeed the

only

wave of the future. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a very famous, and very stupid, book declaring that we were now living in a unipolar world; that America, in short, was the end of history. It’s actually a very old idea, going back to 1630, that America would be the model for the rest of the world—“a city upon a hill.” American politicians love to quote that line. Meanwhile, the light of that city was getting dimmer for most of the American population.

And yet, in the face of all this, Americans continued to believe that they were living in a classless society, or that everyone was middle class. You wonder how stupid a nation can be, really; other nations are hardly so deluded. The author John Steinbeck famously remarked that socialism was never able to take root in America because the poor saw themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” As I argue in

Why America Failed

, everyone in the US is a hustler; everyone is just waiting for their ship to come in.

In any case, Bush Sr. continued the pattern, as did Bill Clinton. The passage of NAFTA benefited the US at the expense of the so-called Third World, with economic bailouts from the IMF tied to austerity measures that sent peasants in Chiapas, for example, into starvation—and rebellion. The rise of Subcomandante Marcos, and the Zapatistas, was to be expected. But the machinery rolled on. Bush Jr. correctly referred to the super-rich as “my base,” and the Obama presidency, despite a lot of flowery language, was a continuation of Bush Jr. After the crash of 2008, Obama didn’t bail out the poor or create jobs; not at all. He bailed out his rich banker friends to the tune of $19 trillion dollars, while the middle class lost their jobs and their homes and lined up at soup kitchens for the first time in their lives. Tent cities for them, and the working class, blossomed across the country, and Obama did nothing. As for Hillary—and this is a crucial point—what she was essentially promising was an extension of the neoliberal regime that had been in place since her husband took office in 1993. When Trump pointed at her, during the presidential debates, and said to the audience: “If you want a continuation of the last eight years, vote for her,” the people whom globalization had destroyed heard him loud and clear.

Trump seemed clumsy and boorish during the debates; in fact, he knew what he was doing. “What does Hillary have to show for thirty years of political involvement?” he cried. “Everything she is telling you is words, just words. She has nothing to offer you.” He was right, and millions of Americans knew it. Her slogans, like “Stronger Together,” were meaningless. He was speaking about reality, while she was reading from a script. She also

looked

as though she were programmed. Unfortunately for her, she tended to smile a lot, and it was so forced that she occasionally came across as insane.

In any case, things had changed since she was First Lady. After twenty-five years of neoliberal economics, the white working class understood that politics as usual had nothing to offer them; that Hillary was just a variation on the Obama regime, which had hurt them badly. There was now a realization that their ship would never come in, that they would never be able to participate in the American Dream; that they were

permanently

embarrassed

non

-millionaires. They had a deep, and justifiable, resentment against Washington, Wall Street, the

New York Times

, and all such establishment symbols, and their desire was to say to that establishment, and to the American intellectual elite—pardon my French—go fuck yourselves. Precisely by being vulgar and blunt, and not coming across as a smooth operator like Obama, Trump was winning a large part of America over to his side. Even his body language said “fuck you.”

Trump’s authenticity was also noticeable in his adoption of a declinist position, the first presidential candidate in American history to do this in a serious way. After all, if your campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again,” you are saying that the country is in decline, and that’s exactly what Trump was saying. Our airports resemble those of Third World countries, our roads and bridges are falling apart, our inner cities are filled with crime, our educational system is a joke—and so on. All of this is absolutely true, while Hillary could only come up with a feeble, and hollow, rejoinder: “When was America not great?” Give me a break.

Let me return a moment to the matter of the resentment of the American intellectual elite, the so-called liberal or professional class, which includes much of the Democratic Party. This is a largely untold story, and yet I regard it an absolutely crucial factor in the election of Trump. The same year that Nixon repealed Bretton Woods, 1971, a prominent Washington Democrat by the name of Fred Dutton published a manifesto called

Changing Sources of Power

. What he said in that document was that it was time for the Democratic Party to forget about the working class. This is not your voting base, he declared; the people you want to court are the white-collar workers, the college-educated, the hip technologically oriented, and so on. Forget about economic issues, he went on; it’s much more a question of lifestyle than anything else. This was the key ideology in the rise of the so-called New Democrats, who in effect repudiated their traditional base and indeed, the whole of Roosevelt’s New Deal, which had historically provided a safety net for that base. Bill Clinton was part of that wave, and during his presidency we saw not only a widening gap between rich and poor, but NAFTA, the abolition of welfare, and the so-called “Three Strikes” law, which put huge numbers of black men into prison for as much as twenty years for minor crimes, thereby destroying their families’ ability to survive. Hillary was also part of that wave, and as Trump and his supporters understood, she was going to court the chic and the hip, not the folks that neoliberalism had ground into the dirt. As it turned out, 53 percent of white women voted for Trump; they were not taken in by Hillary’s gender politics. (For more on this see Nicholas Lemann, “Can We Have a ‘Party of the People’?”

New York Review of Books

, 13 October 2016, pp. 48-50)

Which brings me to the final point. If the liberal class abandoned their traditional working-class base; if they had stopped, from the early 1970s, fighting for the New Deal ideology; then what ideology did they adopt? This is the saddest, and most ridiculous, chapter in the history of the left in the US: they became preoccupied with language, with political correctness—the sorts of things that not only could do nothing to improve the condition of the working class, but which were actually offensive to that class. God forbid one should say “girls” instead of “women,” or “blacks” instead of “African Americans,” or tell an ethnic joke. Left-wing projects now consisted in rewriting the works of great authors like Mark Twain, so that their nineteenth-century texts might not give offense to contemporary ears. The children of the rich, at elite universities, had to be protected from any kind of direct language. When some students at Bowdoin College in Maine, in 2016, decided to hold a Mexican theme party, complete with tequila and mariachi music, the rest of the campus was in an uproar, calling this “cultural appropriation.” Apparently, only Mexicans are allowed to drink tequila, in the politically correct world. Personally, I regarded this party as a

tribute

to Mexican culture; what does “appropriation” mean, anyway? In 2015 I published a cultural history of Japan, called

Neurotic Beauty

. Am I not allowed to do this, because I’m not Japanese? Should Octavio Paz have never written about India? All of this is quite ridiculous, and amounted to a callous neglect of the working class on the part of people who had traditionally fought for that class, for its survival. So while the working class and the middle class found itself confronted with real problems—no job, no home, no money, and no meaning in their lives—the chic liberal elite was preoccupied with who has the legal right to use transgender bathrooms. Well, I’d be angry too.

Just as a side note: In 1979, Christopher Lasch wrote a book called

The Culture of Narcissism

, in which he argued that during the sixties, we discovered that we were powerless to change the things that really mattered, namely the relations of class and power. As a result, in the seventies we decided to pour our energies into the things that didn’t matter at all, and political correctness is a good example of this. It’s not really politics, in other words; it’s a substitute for politics, and thus a waste of everyone’s time.

In any case, Hillary never understood this. She attacked Trump in the debates for being politically incorrect, when it was precisely that incorrectness that was the source of his appeal. She called his followers—many millions of Americans—“a basket of deplorables.” They didn’t appreciate being looked down upon, especially since the liberal elite had gotten wealthy at their expense. In her pathetic concession speech, on November 9, she still kept appealing to “Diversity,” to “Stronger Together,” and said how she hoped she would be an inspiration to little girls—apparently, in her politically correct world, little boys don’t count. The only one thing she got right in that speech was her observation that the nation was deeply polarized—“we didn’t realize how deeply,” she added. No kidding. The “deplorables” proved to be not so deplorable after all. They knew who their friends were, and they knew she wasn’t one of them.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject of Trump, of course. His belligerent stance toward Mexico, for example, or China. His appeal to nativist sentiments, to bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism. And while I respect the rage of his followers in terms of their desire to strike back at the economic forces that had destroyed them, I have to admit they aren’t my folks, so to speak. These are people who live in rural areas, go to Little League baseball games, join the Rotary Club and the Elks and the Kiwanis, dislike outsiders, hold church picnics, and reject any form of government support as “socialism,” even though they desperately need that support. We are still a nation of cowboys, and Trump is the biggest cowboy of all. By 2004 I saw that I simply didn’t fit into America, whether it was the cowboys or their opposite, the Harvard intellectual elite; and by 2006 I had moved south of the border. The last eleven years have been the happiest of my life, and I have Mexico to thank for it.

In conclusion, let me say that the American press has persistently labeled Trump as an anomaly, a kind of quirk or historical accident. He isn’t. He represents the constituency I just described, and they comprise a very large part of the nation. He is also the ultimate hustler, whose life is about money, and in that sense as well he is America writ large. The comedian George Carlin used to say, “Where do you think our leaders come from? Mars?” In the last analysis, we got Trump because we

are

Trump. Above all else, that is how he came into power.

http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2017/04/finally-class-war-is-out-in-open-or-why.html

#morris berman

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