#which are like. 250 of them at this point? jesus christ

[lumiereswig]

I’m back

What is your personal favorite work for BatB that you have made? Does it differ from the work you’re most proud of? Always love hearing from artists about their art!

-🪶

my favorites are probably:

forgotten—this is the one where the servants lose their memories instead of being cursed, and it's very angsty and 'this is the bad place!'. this actually isn't the one i think is the most well written (it's actually pretty bad in parts lol) but i had a lot of fun planning it, biking around my favorite lake in loops just coming up with more and more drama. and i love the image of lumiere being a sad wet pathetic limp noodle man sorry not sorry

the shane & ryan one—i s2g shane has actually read this one (speaking of pathetic noodle men)

the one where they're all in love with the wrong people—look this is not the best fic on my list but this is the first fic i wrote that had me GIGGLING from start to finish, even after tumblr deleted my draft wholesale so i had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. i fucking love this conceit. it is SO stupid oh my god read it right now

lit by the sun—this is one of the first fics i ever wrote and one i was really proud of having @batbobsession (the og batb 2017 icon) read. it kinda has everything i love about plumiere stuffed into one story, and all my other fics with them constantly refer back to and play off this one story.

but to answer your other question the one i'm proudest of is mémoire! (that's the one where the villagers are forgotten after the curse, leaving everyone unhinged and longing for a home they don't remember.) that one was a real departure for me in tone and one of the few really long ones that I finished. I'm really proud of how I worked through the tricky parts (like literally how to solve the central problem) and some of the wordplay/imagery (the pages of mercutio's death floating through the town out of the empty church).

thanks for this ask <3 i'm glad people are still reading these fics!

[silverislander]

i honestly would drop this fucking writing course if i still could i'm so goddamn frustrated with it, and yall KNOW how bad i wanted this/how much i love to write so that means smth. it's like it was set up to torment me specifically. "oh here's everything you want to learn but it's actively adhd/autism/nd-hostile"

no schedule, prof is LITERALLY making it up in class in front of us from week to week and frequently forgets/gets confused in making them herself

no grading guidelines- i had to ask for a rough idea of how we're getting graded and even then, she didn't give a very informative answer

only received my first grade after doing four assignments already, which isn't exactly fucking helping me improve, esp since our grades are based on continuous improvement

prof doesn't appreciate fantasy or horror... this is a comparatively v small complaint bc she still allows us to submit whatever we want to write but like. man. even the horror i would sort of get, everyone has limits and it can be a tough read, but all of her prompts are really only applicable to modern-day realism bc you have to base them on smth you experienced and "make us question the line between fiction and reality" so.

the amt of work varies WILDLY due to the schedule issues- this week (beginning of midterms!) i have a 2000 word story and at least 10 250 word reviews due by tomorrow, which i've only had a week to complete... during fucking midterm study. IT'S A CREATIVE WRITING COURSE. i get more notice for 2 page essays in any other course jesus fucking christ

has moved physical rooms bc. she didn't like the first one, so now i'm confused half the time and don't remember where to go. she also doesn't have a key to the new room, so we have to call a security guard to unlock it and it frequently makes us late to start and subsequently late getting out, which is Upsetting for me, why can we not stay on schedule i am on campus for 9+hrs

did i mention this class is 7pm-9:30pm. with one less than 10min break.

prof fucking REFUSES to answer emails despite making email the one way to contact her... i emailed her once on a thursday afternoon and didn't get a response until tuesday afternoon, which was one day before the deadline and too fucking late to change shit if i had been wrong

no clear guidelines as to where/how to submit work, which is a weekly struggle

prof is literally making up terms i am NOT KIDDING. she's speaking in fucking riddles my god. nothing she's requested us to write has been a real term, and i've googled them to check

also writes her assignment guidelines in her creative writing style instead of just giving us the basic info, i.e. one page rambling abt the topic, one paragraph of actual vague guidelines

0 forgiveness for missing dates/being unable to make class/etc. one girl said on the first day that she couldn't make next week's deadlines bc she has a full time job and a family and the prof's response was "well, i guess you're going to have to drop this course". and she DID

if you email her a question she Will make it obvious in front of the class who asked

all i wanted was to enjoy meeting other writers and to try to improve my own work but i'm stressed out of my fucking mind bc she can't be assed to actually do her job. i've had genuine actual stress dreams about this fucking class (among others but besides the point). the total lack of consistency is killing me

and i didn't get that one singular grade until after the 75% drop date, which means if i drop it now i at BEST get 25% of my money back, and it's way too late to try to pick up another class as a replacement. this is all bullshit i fucking hate this

[hideyseek]

11.27.2022

ITS DONE AHAHAHAA GOD ITS DONE!!

the NUMBER OF TIMES i had to stop and set my laptop down during this writing session just to tell myself OF COURSE THE READING EXPERIENCE IS JUST OKAY. OF COURSE THERE IS NO PACING AND TENSION. THE STORY DOESNT FUCKING EXIST YET and i simply DO NOT HAVE THE SKILLS TO WEAVE IN PACING AND TENSION WHEN I AM DOING A ROUGH DRAFT which is a NORMAL FUCKING EXPERIENCE TO HAVE JESUS CHRIST. LOL!

ok putting the rest under a readmore bc it suddenly occurs to me that these are really fucking long lol sorry guys

WHEW i will say the main thing i learned from this experience is that word count really doesn’t do it for me. having a roughly 250 wordcount expectation each time i sit down is helpful, but reaching a total wordcount is not nearly as much a feeling of accomplishment for me as i expected / as i think “drafting a full arc” might be. but also!!! it is NOT BAD to gently train myself to recognize and accept markers of progress that are not just “a completed and perfect longfic” bc hello i would only get one milestone at the end and would that sustain me? no!!!!!!! lol i accept that i must constantly fight my brain’s tendency toward perfectionism in every aspect of my life but god its annoying in this one

but it’s DONE and somehow with 150 words to go i suddenly sat down and drafted two full scenes??? well. whatever it’ll be useful. i’m remembering why the birthday party scene isn’t part of the first draft and it is because oh my god i sure do try to shove five or six different plot-relevant scenes into the span of what is probably a two hour event lol. WHATEVER IT IS FINE. I WILL MOVE THEM AROUND TO A LESS INSANE ORGANIZATION IN REVISIONS. WHICH I AM NOT AT YET. BC I AM DRAFTING. GOD.

but yeah if i could just GENTLY ENCOURAGE MYSELF TO ACCEPT that the first draft WILL BE ALL OVER THE PLACE PACING-WISE EVEN THOUGH I AM WORKING WITH A PRETTY DETAILED OUTLINE because IT IS A FIRST FUCKING DRAFT AND IT IS ACCOMPLISHING WHAT THE FIRST DRAFT NEEDS TO DO WHICH IS GODDAMN EXIST ONLY. anything else like characterization or coming up with a plot point or figuring out beats of a character arc or identifying a location for something IS ALL FUCKING BONUSES!!! hidey its BONUSES!!!!

godddddddddddddddd. anyway this is like. completely stream of consciousness this is just how i fucking think btw if u were curious. possibly this is also what the experience of talking to me is like but i wouldnt know

ANYWAY this has been exciting. i was kinda fucking going through it irl this month so only ended up writing maybe half the days? but it’s really encouraging to still have hit my wordcount goal and even if i don’t remember anything i wrote, at least to know the writing exists! i can’t revise nothing after all!!!

ok i am CLOSING THE DOC bc i am FORBIDDEN FROM FUCKING WITH IT but i DID read TWO SENTENCES that seemed like genuinely interesting and functional sentences that conveyed events happening! hurrah! what the fuck is even metrics for good writing? who KNOWS! ok no more looking at the doc however i CAN OPEN A NEW DOC for DECEMBER DRAFTING MATERIAL bc this month by month thing seems GENUINELY DOABLE!!!! GENUINELY SO.

WOW what a relief to have figured this out! of course it might not last which is totally fine but like FOR NOW IT SEEMS DOABLE. AND THEN WE WILL SEE!!!

i definitely leaned a lot into just uh, supplying haiji my direct internal dialogue for several of the scenes from today. what is a scene who FUCKING KNOWS i am just calling it a scene WHO KNOWS OK WHATEVER. french scenes if its a new guy its a new scene WHO KNOWS ok! and i definitely have been leaning A LOT into “telling so goddamn much about haiji’s internal state rather than just showing it” bc i have NO IDEA HOW TO FIGURE OUT THAT BALANCE. how is the reader experiencing it i wonder!! IDK BUT I WILL JUST WAIT AND READ IT OVER AND THAT WILL SOLVE MY PROBLEM GRRR genuinely this advice helpfully stops my brain in its tracks so consistently

ok!!!! yes! its done!!! it is done! i will worry about pacing and foreshadowing and consistent motifs and metaphors and imagery and canonical characterization and ALL THAT STUFF LATER which is NORMAL AND FINE bc those are THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT IN REVISION ANYWAY. first draft just needs to EXIST!!!!!!!!!!! AND IT KIND OF DOES!!

i do think i will want to do a few more things: set up a longer doc to collect all this draft material in order as i create it month by month (reminding myself the goal is semi-consistency and NOT setting a really high bar i cannot meet! 7k mercifully seems to have been a good estimate and yes my brain does want to be a stupid gremlin and say i should shoot for 10k but NO once again we are looking for CONSISTENCY which means it needs to be DOABLE WITHOUT RUINING MY LIFE!), i think i want to organize that doc / my draft material in general by “arc” lol whatever that means, and also paste in the rest of the scenes… actually i wonder if a notion doc would be better NO NO NO MORE FUCKING PLATFORMS GODDAMN JUST GSUITE FOR NOW. lol ok so maybe a doc for the “pre-aotake” section, one for “the bit between that and the birthday party” (?? this section is SUPER LOOSE IN MY MIND), one for “birthday party” if only bc that has like seven scenes in it. lol god i wish there was git diff for google docs …… i KNOW i have a few different versions of a couple scenes and it would be really useful if i could stash them somehow next to each other… OK nevermind just ONE DOC to fit everything together, its not long enough to break google docs yet, i don’t need to make arbitrary buckets when i haven’t even looked at the material. i can trust that the buckets WILL COME and become sharper and more clear in my head over time!

IT IS OKAY FOR ME TO BE IN THE TREES AND NOT LOOKING AT THE FOREST RIGHT NOW SO TO SPEAK. THAT IS WHAT DRAFTING FUCKING IS! aaaaargh!!!

ok i actually think next month i want to have 5k as my goal bc holiday obligations PLUS i will be writing for inception secret saito (!!!!) and relearning how my revision process works at a smaller scale so that will take some time. yeah that seems good!!

ok! and YES i feel like i could keep working THIS IS THE PLACE TO STOP. AND ALSO THE FEELING TO STOP ON. i need to practice NOT DIGGING MYSELF INTO A PIT JUST TO FEEL LIKE I “ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING” there are already things that got done!!! if i end eager to keep working that will possibly carry over into my next session and make everything pleasant and energetic instead of a big fucking drag!!!!

ok GOODBYE this is the longest fucking update in the whole wide world im gonna have to go on desktop to add a read more. if u are still reading here hi mwah i love and appreciate you lets be friends

[midasinc]

les amis and toxic traits (affectionate and derogatory):

-courfeyrac has a bad habit of being on his phone when he's with friends. he's mostly either just swiping through his dating app or texting someone on his dating app and he isn't aware that it's really rude. he's also really bad about borrowing money and not giving it back. if he asks for a couple euro for the metro, you will never get it back. he comes from a rich background and money is something that he forgets not everybody has. feuilly is the only one who holds him accountable for it because "i bought you a drink at the pub two weeks ago and you still owe me and i need to pay rent this week :/"

-enjolras is a pen clicker. oh. my god. he clicks pens at the speed of light and if someone asks him to stop, he'll apologize but then start again like thirty seconds later. it is so. fucking. annoying. also i love him but he's really self-righteous and won't admit when he's wrong. when someone has an opinion that differs his own, he can only see things in black or white. you're on his side, or you're wrong. this also applies to other's and their choices in what they do. he always donates the extra euro when he's checking out at a store for whatever donation project is going and if you don't he will give you the stink eye and publicly ask why you won't. no recyclable grocery bags? he will call you out and badger you until you buy one. you accidentally left the light on when you exited the room? oh my god. he has such good intentions but he forgets that not everybody might be as financially secure as him and not everybody is thinking about it at all times. he wants what's good for the world but it really gets on other people's nerves sometimes

-joly is really similar to enjolras in the sense that he calls people out for their health choices without thinking about their situation. he's getting better about it, but he has criticized grantaire to hell and back about all of his bad habits and not in a nice way. he's really harsh when someone is self-destructive or literally just picks like a soda at a restaurant over water. he wants his friends to be healthy but jesus fucking christ dude. no one asked for your opinion, now is not the time.

-feuilly only eats frozen meals. he only lives on lean cuisines. JEHBJWEHRWJH but also this dude smokes cigs a lot and forgets that smoke and tobacco makes some people feel sick or nauseated. he smokes in his apartment even when people are over and doesn't really think it's that big of a problem. enter: enjolras, who has asthma, and just walked through a cloud and starts hacking. anyway, he also gets really defensive when people call him out on it. it's his choice to smoke and whenever someone is like "hey maybe you might want to cut back" when he's buying a new pack of smokes after buying one three days before, he'll get super snappy and rude because it feels like an attack on him

-speaking of nicotine! jehan vapes and i have no room to speak on this subject bc let's not talk about my juul but they are in denial that it's also a problem. they're like "it's healthy shut up" but will go through pods so fast that it's genuinely comparable to feuilly's same bad habit. they started juuling bc they thought the flavours were yummy and it was cool and oh my god. jehan is also really blunt with their sense of humour and doesn't realize that not everybody thinks its funny. walking into a room and just being like "lmaoooo grantaire you look like shit today" and everybody is kind of like "...hm". combeferre is actually good about calling them out on that sort of stuff, though. if jehan realizes they're in the wrong, they'll apologize

-combeferre is. such. a fucking. movie talker. he just has so much to say at every minute of the movie and it's the worst (this is also me so self-roast). nobody likes to watch movies with him because "dude we just want to watch the fucking movie oh my god". he's also really pretentious and a gatekeeper. if you like the same band as him "oh really? well name three songs-" in a way that makes whoever he's feeling to feel stupid. combeferre really prides himself on his intellect, but it goes too far most of the time and it just comes across as super condescending and a lot of people get annoyed talking with him because it just feels like he's talking down at them the whole time

-marius is also super blunt but not in a way that's meant to be funny. he has absolutely walked into a room and gone "oh enjolras your haircut looks so bad im so sorry :(". and similarly to courfeyrac, he forgets the value of money. he's definitely asked people to go somewhere and has said like "yeah! the concert tickets are like 250 euro which is actually super cheap :)" and feuilly is just. dying inside. he intends to be nice, he just says so much stupid shit. he isn't purposely being a bad guy.

-bossuet never re-fills a roll of toilet paper if he's the last to use it. you do not know how annoying it is to room with this guy. grantaire has absolutely shouted "HOW HARD IS IT TO GRAB ANOTHER TUBE???" from the shitter and bossuet just denies it because it embarrasses him. he's also bad about cleaning dishes and will leave a cup in the sink for weeks if it isn't cleaned by someone else or threateningly left in front of his bedroom door. i love u bae but please clean up after yourself

-grantaire is the fucking worst. i love him but he is the worst. he is so self-deprecating to the point where a lot of people just won't be around him because you can only take so much self-pity before it becomes annoying as hell. he's never accepted a compliment and is one of those "omg no my art is so fucking ugly i hate it so much" when someone says they like a sketch or a painting he did and it is just. so annoying. he's also just super bad about caring about him self. baby forgets to shower and wash his hair and wear deodorant and it's like babe. baby. listen- we are not 13 year old boys anymore, we are men and we need to shower. take your zoloft and let's clean up your room <3

-bahorel is a babe but he's too rough with people. he'll slap someone on the back so hard that they choke on their drink. he's also bad about jokes going too far and just being kind of an asshole he'll snatch up something courfeyrac is holding and hold it up high and courf is 5'5 and bahorel is 6'3 and it is just unfair and unfunny and courfeyrac is not laughing and it just gets old so fast. he thinks people are having fun with him but baby they r not. everybody here is givin you the stink eye, just let the bit die

[creepymagickshop]

Jesus Christ son of God the Most High, in His wisdom everlasting knew that the ears of the satanists could not hear Him or understand anything to which He spoke. 

To those of you who have ears let you hear! This means only those with the intelligence to understand could hear the wisdom He was about to impart. It is a simple concept, one that morons like the fakers and bitches cannot contend with. 

God has always called them fakers, bitches, bird brain morons, this is not a new concept either, found right there in the Holy Books written by Gods own. Only Christs handpicked elites understand this concept as well. 

This message is only for Gods Soldiers, the elite, who have been moving in unity against the darkness. I solute you! 

My previous message was written with a promise to dismantle further the lies of the enemy by showing you the purposeful unhealth and hatred of the very men who have set themselves above you as preachers of Jesus. I spit on them. 

Who ordains preachers and teachers of JEHOVAH? 

Only God does that. 

That means that they, who are ordained, actually hear JEHOVAH speak to them and teach them so that they can impart the wisdom that a REAL God has to impart. A REAL God makes sense. A REAL GOD does not talk in silly circles, He actually goes somewhere with His messages. 

Anyone who ordained themselves or got the nod from the ‘good ol boys club’, anyone who ignores the Bible and makes up their own version, anyone who has been preaching for years and still misquotes and misidentifies the very nature of God is nothing but a satanist who is pretending. Straight from Gods mouth to your ears. 

You as human beings do not get to pick and chose the messengers of God. What kind of arrogance is that? Jumping from one church to another seeing what group you feel resonates with you? That is the way of the devil. You have been taught the devils ways. It’s time to hold accountable all those fake teachers of JEHOVAH and toss them into the abyss where they belong, with the bitch-tards. 

Now lets talk about retards shall we? What is someone who is mentally handicapped from incest? A child of incest will have certain mental capabilities taken from them because of the actions of their parents. This isn’t contested, we have science who in their lagging behind the Holy Book, like usual, have finally found that out, within the last 250 years or so have drawn the correct conclusion that incest is bad, physically and mentally. Hand clap for the scientists! 

Christians, REAL ones, not the ones spoken about above, already knew this. HOW? What does this have to do with God loving people who are called ”gay”? I use that word with unfailing sarcasm. 

Once again reading out of context has stripped those retards bare for all to see.  

Let’s open up the Holy Bible, to thousands of years ago when the Israelites finally left Egypt. The book Exodus chapter one allows you to see within context the relationship that the Pharaoh had with JEHOVAHS people. As you read you will see that things were not only strained but contentious. The term slave within this context can be used whole-heartedly. Now lets jump forward to when God, whos name is JEHOVAH, sends Moses and his brother Aaron to release Gods people from that horrible empire all built on incest, divining of stars and worshiping empty idols. The book of Leviticus, which is the next book in the Holy Bible. 

God starts to teach His people “according to the work of the land of Egypt in which ye have dwelt ye do not, and according to the work of the land of Caanan whither I am bringing you in, ye do not, and in their stautes ye walk not.” Leviticus 18:3 YLT1898

The Israelites were taught a LOT of retarded things by people who knew no God. Incest was one of those things. Reading on, 

“None of you unto any relation of his doth draw near to uncover nakedness; I JEHOVAH.

The nakedness of they father and the nakedness of thy mother thou dost not uncover, she thy mother; thou does not uncover her nakedness.” Leviticus 18: 7 YLT1898

Continuing to read IN CONTEXT, we now understand that this whole chapter is about unclean relations, do not sleep with blood relations so saith your GOD. He also understands the sickness of the people because of who was teaching them so HE made a point to say it is not only about having mentally handicapped children but it also has to do with family relations and the mental health of those people who are hunting the children within their own household. 

Leviticus 18:22 YLT1898

“And with a male thou dost not lie as one lieth with a woman: abomination it.” 

So, you may not sleep with your relations even if no baby will issue from the copulation.  

Everybody understand? 

Good! 

Moving on to the last and final verses that retards have been trying to understand for generations, the book of Romans and Corinthians. Written by Paul hand chosen by Christ and sanctified by JEHOVAH Himself. 

Yeah I said it. 

I stand with Paul and all those who serve GOD alone. There is nothing in the Holy Bible that a REAL Christian need be ashamed of. 

Romans was written to the church in Rome, they were around many fake temples of the Greeks. They worshiped fake gods, slept with their relations, and cheated on their wives and husbands with men and women, saying it wasn’t cheating. Sound like anyone you know? Hello Hollywood. Hello reading in context to the people Paul was writing to. A church with some members who called themselves Christs body and was practicing these unsound doctrines taught by devil worshipers. 

Roman 1:27 YLT1898

“and in like manner also the males having left the natural use of the female, did burn in their longing toward one another; males with males working shame, and the recompense of their error that was fit, in themselves receiving.” 

If you continue to read on to the next letter to Corinth, the book of Corinthians, with the same cultural context in mind, 

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 YLT1898

“have you not known that the unrighteous the reign of God shall not inherit? be not led astray; neither whoremongers [people who prostitute themselves by worshiping false gods and hide it by calling themselves Gods people], not idolaters [who deny God and Christ JESUS loudly], nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites,

nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, the reign of God shall not inherit.”

Understanding that this book was written in another language, you have to simply look up the actual words used in the original letter written by Paul to know that the word ‘sodomite’ means someone from Sodom and Gomora who were rapping strangers and children. That was an insult to be called that, hello Hollywood. 

The word ‘effeminate’ in context to the language can be take multiple ways, one of which means to be spiritually weak. Even the English language has words that mean opposite things and must be read in context to the rest of the sentences before and after. Critical thinking 101. Such as the word ‘cleave’. Self imposed literature geniuses, hello college.  

These verses are used by satanists who have taken it upon themselves to ordain themselves and like minded roaches to preach and teach at the Holy people of God. If the preacher is a satanist who is misusing the Bible, that place is NOT the temple of JEHOVAH. 

Anyone who has taught a class in such a manner you can account as a satanist. JEHOVAH rebukes them and corrects their behavior. They are not confused about what they are teaching so much as they are not privy to the spiritual matters that the Holy Book imparts. 

They sound like bird brain twits trying to preach the Holy Word of God. 

Your ordained Witch, Preacher, and Prophetess, called and hand picked by JEHOVAH,   

- Penelope Summers

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

New episode! I thought I’d be able to watch this one as soon as it came out, but life stuff got in the way, which I suppose is good. Life is happening again. But I’m happy to still have Taskmaster. It’s hard to believe we’re already more than halfway through season twelve. I don’t want this season to end.

Thoughts on Taskmaster s12e06, written as I watch it:

- Oh shit. I think this is literally a Taskmaster first. They’ve never had a prize task in which they have to bring in something that’s specific to the other contestants, or a prize task in which each person was given different instructions. I like this. It’s creative. And I always find it fun when they make the contestants guess things about each other.

- Alan, honey, do you make a habit of buying people books on how to behave properly? It’s a bit backhanded. But I do think getting something based on her American-ness was the best route for Alan to go.

- Oh God. Desiree picked a prize for Guz based on the fact that she actually knows him and happens to know he really wants a particular type of dog. That is so amazingly cute. Look at Guz’s face when she brought it up:

Desiree Burch for Taskmaster champion. Desiree Burch for prime minister.

- Oh God, and now they’re all telling Guz he’ll have the dog painting even if they win, and Guz says to just give Desiree the points. Normally I find Taskmaster to be at its most entertaining when they’re hyper-competitive and at each other’s throats, but I love this so much. I want all five of these people to travel the world together and film it for Channel 4.

- “We have defeated the format of your show.” - Guz Khan

- Did Guz Khan just refer to Morgana Robinson as “my G”?

- Holy shit. Guz switched his gift for Morgana because on some previous recording session she said he she liked his coat. So he brought it in as her prize. Look, let’s just forget about Taskmaster. And I no longer want to wait to do all the logistics of planning a travel show, either. Just bring out a bunch of beer and wine and let us watch these people make friends.

(I do know Guz is Muslim. Not sure what his stance on alcohol is; about 35% of the Muslims I know drink alcohol but about 65% abstain for religious reasons. If Guz is an abstainer, let him have weed or just some really good tea or whatever. Doesn’t matter. Just forget about the tasks and let me see these people hang out with each other.)

- There’s been a bit of sexual tension between VCM and Morgana before. Mostly in the form of the two of them looking and addressing each other with understandable respect and awe. That one time on the Taskmaster podcast, it occurred in the form of VCM explaining that she was very heterosexual but also she’d missed the point of Morgana’s cool toast spreading because Morgana looked too fucking hot for anyone to notice anything but that. Well, it has now taken the form of Morgana curating an outfit to, in her words, “Pimp up her late-night, smutty poker nights.”

Basically, Morgana’s gift for VCM is one I’d expect to come from someone who views VCM similarly to the way I do. As a God damned queen who deserves to look the part at all times.

“Can you imagine [Victoria wearing that jacket with] a big cigar and nothing underneath.” - Morgana Robinson

I... yes. Yes I can imagine that. I would like to see VCM wear that prize. I would also like to have a conversation with Morgana to further discuss her thinking behind that prize, and I think she and I may have some thoughts in common. Jesus Christ.

- I have seen all of QI (well, not season S yet since I’m waiting for the XL versions to be released). Fun fact about that show: Alan has only missed one episode in the show’s history. That was because one time, they filmed during some important Arsenal game. I don’t know what game it was. But I do know Alan must be a very serious, diehard fan for that soccer team to be the reason for the only one he’s missed out of the over 250 QI episodes. And VCM got him a ticket to see a different team. Not just a ticket for the wrong team, but an explanation that’s a direct insult to Alan’s team, saying she thought he’d like to go see a team that wins sometimes.

One time, in high school, I was playing Dungeons and Dragons. I played D&D lots of times in high school, but I’ll always remember this particular night because of something my friend did. We were given the instruction to go to a tavern and hurt a guy’s business in a way that would draw no attention whatsoever to us or to the tavern, we had to figure out the most stealthy way to do it so no one would no anyone had happened. Once we got there, we started looking around, and then my friend went behind the building and set its drapes on fire. I asked him what the fuck he was doing and told our DM to disregard that, but he just said setting shit on fire would hurt business, and the DM said he could do what he wanted with his turn, so the drapes got set on fire.

For years afterwards, my high school friends and I used that as an example if we wanted to describe something that not only failed to follow instructions, but failed epically by doing the exact opposite of the instructions. We’d say it was like setting the drapes on fire in the tavern. You didn’t just do it wrong. You did the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do.

Victoria, honey, you set the drapes on fire in the tavern.

- The dichotomy of prizes in this task is amazing. Alan gets Desiree a book on how to behave appropriately. VCM gets Alan part of a season ticket to see a team he hates. And the three youngest contestants get each other, and VCM, lovely thoughtful gifts. To be more specific, Guz and Desiree get thoughtful gifts for Guz and Morgana, while Morgana gets VCM a fancy jacket with the explanation that VCM would look really hot in that jacket. This is one of my favourite prize tasks in Taskmaster history. Absolutely amazing.

- Land the iron on the ironing board. I like it, classic task. This is basically the teabags in a mug task from season 1. I wonder if anyone will find and use a cardboard box.

- Love that this task harkens back to the days when tasks were simpler, this is one of the most straightforward tasks they’ve done all season, but VCM still can’t understand the instructions.

- Amazing image to start the task. Why did Guz think hiding behind the weird steampunk thing would help?

- I love Guz’s strategy of trying to convince Alex that the two of them are on a team together.

- Oh shit, Alan did kind of do that thing that I wondered if someone would do. He didn’t use a box, but he did the use the fence as a backboard the same way Frank Skinner used a box as a backboard in season 1. Using the basket is a good idea, too. Though I feel like putting something even bigger on there to catch the iron would be better.

- Alan just asked if that’s their fence, or if it belongs to the neighbours. I hope it’s their fence, since it got holes drilled into it in season 7. Though come to think of it, it’s come up in other contexts that the house is a rental.

- Alex was smart to use the basket, but Guz is thinking on my level.

- Damn. That was a genuinely good throw from Guz. I’m not any good at American football (or European football, for that matter), but I know enough about it to know Guz did a proper football throw there.

- Desiree finally figured out that she should put the basket on the ironing board, and then she knocked the basket off. Classic.

- VCM has turned it into a fishing rod. I can’t quite tell whether this is a good idea but I think it might be.

- Why didn’t Morgana just lower the iron onto the board rather than dropping it? Would have been a lot easier to get it to stay on.

- VCM and Morgana came fourth and third. So their systems weren’t necessarily better than just throwing the iron, because they got shorter distances than Alan and Guz. But to be fair, it’s quite possible that neither of those women is any good at throwing and therefore their pulley and leverage setups got them further than their own throws would have.

- Alex: And [the next task is] just so doggone cute. Me: Is there going to be a dog? Alex, is there going to be a dog? Please give me a task with a dog.

- This time Victoria’s thinking on my level.

VCM: Is there going to be a real dog? Alex Horne: Yes, but you will not meet the dog. Me: But I will! The viewers will get to see it!

- All right, they’re just ripping off old tasks all over the place now. This is the toddler task from season 8 but with a dog instead. And I am not complaining about that.

- Alan is complaining that twenty whole minutes is too long for this task. Come on, Taskmaster, give him shorter jobs. Let him get back to his book and cup of tea in the dressing room.

- Well, we’ve just learned that Morgana has a dog named Stinks. That’s a fact that I’m glad I know now.

- Alan just asked if he can soak any of it in food, but we didn’t hear that answer. That seems like an important question to have answered. Because if the answer is “yes”, that’s the obvious route to go. I guess this is an “all the information is on the task” situation. And the task didn’t say your toy can’t just be a sausage. I don’t think it said they have to use the items in the box, just that they can.

- Victoria has said she could pee on the toy, and Guz has looked inexplicably excited by the thought of a “boy dog in heat” meeting a “lady dog”. What is going on with this task?

- Victoria: You and I look at that and see a cat. Alex: Do we?

- I think the most engaged Alan has sounded in any task so far this season is when he said he was giving his dog toy a hat.

- Lovely bit of editing there, cutting right from Alex saying there’s no point in trying to make it look like a cat, to VCM holding up her “cat”. I don’t know which of those was filmed first, but when the second thing happened the producers must have been so pleased.

- Guz seems to think that dogs have been socially distancing due to COVID.

- Dog! There’s a fucking dog! Dog in the Taskmaster house!

- I enjoy that Alex is talking to the dog the same way he talked to the toddler in season 8. Which is also the same way he talks to all the adult humans.

- Aw! Aw! Dog on Victoria’s toy!

- Wow, this is not a great episode for Desiree. Not of the pre-recorded tasks, anyway. She nailed that prize for Guz.

- Morgana: Marco bit your balls, though. Me: Thank you. Honestly, I can’t believe they’ve gotten so far into this task with balls and toys (and... I did almost make a joke a few points up after I referenced VCM’s “cat”, but I decided not to desecrate the sacred name of Victoria Coren Mitchell that way) before anyone made a sexual innuendo that was good enough to make the edit 

- Alex just specified that Alan asked to have a bit of food put on his toy, and the request was granted. So that means they were allowed to put food on it, but no one besides Alan did so. Why the hell not?

- Was that dog trained to leave the room when told its time was up? Because it obeyed that instruction in all cases except Alan’s, when the food in the toy overrode anything else.

- I do agree with Greg that it’s more impressive to engage a dog without food than with food. It’s like in tasks when they have to make a video, I’ll always be more impressed if they achieve an effect without getting the editors to add effects to it later. But I don’t know if Alan should be marked down for that. The dog was engaged with the toy. Though I guess it was actually engaged with the food inside the toy. So I don’t know.

- All that work to make nice toys, and the dog’s favourite thing is just a toilet paper roll. I’ve never owned a dog, but my family always had cats when I was growing up, and I can confirm that this is how pets interact with toys.

- Oh, maybe the dog just leaves the room when that door opens. Unless there is something really engaging happening. Like a fucking toilet paper roll.

- Okay, Guz’s face after watching the dog with his toy is even cuter than the actual dog playing with the toy.

- And we go from two rip-offs of older, simple tasks to a task that’s much more in line with what we’ve seen in the last few seasons. Red chair. Secret room. Can only stand on circles. Can only stand on each circle once. Unless it’s black. I haven’t heard the rest of the instructions yet, I paused the video after that to write this point.

- Immediate question: are they allowed to draw a circle? Even if they don’t have writing implements, can they take off a sweater or something and make it into a circle. What is the definition of a circle? Do James Acaster’s eyes count?

- So you have to go shredder, chair, tower. Make a path that gets you to all those places within the rules. Alternating red, black, red, until you run out of reds, then go with three black ones that you pick up after stepping on them so you never have to go twice in a row. Right? I think that’s how to do it.

- Desiree just expressed anger by saying, “Mother father.” I have not heard that one before and I like it.

- Oh God. I was thinking this task would play to Victoria’s strengths, maybe get her a much needed win. But she didn’t notice the chair on the floor. They weren’t even trying to hide that from the contestants, finding it wasn’t part of the task. It was just sitting there.

- It looks like Desiree did a decent job. I don’t know how everyone else will do, but I feel like going through with only one mistake isn’t bad. And we know the mistake didn’t cost her too much time, since the mistake was taking just over a minute to get to the shredder. So she started over after that, and it seems to have gone smoothly since. She worked out her system pretty quickly. Victoria, meanwhile, is still looking for the chair.

- VCM has just wondered whether the chair might be concealed in a balloon or in a piece of candy.

- “Do... do I have to... make it be in here.” Victoria. You have an absolutely brilliant mind. Why can you not wrap it around concepts like throwing irons or bringing a chair into a room?

- “But there isn’t a red chair! There’s no red chair anywhere.”

Nice camera work, to get this shot that puts the red chair right in the foreground as VCM says that.

- Okay. Victoria did ask Alex early in the task if the sign on the wall said “secret tower”, suggesting she couldn’t read it clearly herself. She does sometimes wear glasses, but she isn’t wearing them now. It’s possible that part of the issue in this situation is her eyesight isn’t good enough without glasses to see things like that. But... it’s a big red chair in the middle of the floor in a mostly empty room. If going without glasses makes her unable to see that, she shouldn’t go anywhere without glasses.

- Well, I thought someone might end up taking liberties with the definition of “circles” during this task. I didn’t expect anyone to have to bend the definition of “chair”.

- I’m watching the studio part now, and Alex did just say that forgetting her glasses was a factor. But... still. Why did she turn up to the task without her glasses on? Why does she do anything without her glasses on if that leaves her unable to see entire pieces of furniture?

- Alan and Guz are up next, so we’re isolating Morgana. Nice. I bet she does something unhinged.

- “You know what I realized? Because this is the kind of person I am. I should have read it one more time before I shredded it, and now I don’t even know what the task is.” - Guz Khan

- Alan has walked away from the chair. But at least he saw the chair and realized his mistake before he got all the way to the secret tower, so he’s doing better than VCM.

- Oh, Alan has slid on the circles a bit. That’s a good idea. Presumably you could do the hole task that way, just put each foot on one circle and then shuffle. It would take a long time, but probably not longer than picking up the circles every time you take a step.

- Guz has gotten to the chair and doesn’t know what to do next. Amazing. What the hell is he going to do?

- “I’ve just eaten two Creme Eggs and I’m not really up for this.” - Alan Davies

- Guz has figured it out!

- Morgana did not do something unhinged! She did that thing Alan did a bit and I thought would be a good idea! A rational and intelligent approach! Good for her.

- Oh... and then she just jumped off the circles for no reason whatsoever. Mograna. Buddy. You were doing so well.

- Morgana just told Alex, “I don’t want to argue with you.” She’s probably the first Taskmaster contestant to ever say that to Alex Horne.

- Oh, when they make a mistake they’re given a new task. I see. So that’s how Guz figured out where he was supposed to go, he got a new copy of the instructions after intentionally making a mistake. That makes sense. Also, I find it absolutely hilarious and also on brand for Morgana to get so focus on one little thing that she forgot about most of the task.

- “This isn’t a secret tower.”

Again, good job with giving a shot that features a contestant complaining that they can’t find something, and also features the thing they’re looking for displayed clearly.

- She’s spotted the secret tower, and she’s off again!

- Well, I didn’t get as much unhinged Morgana as I expected, but her laughing maniacally while shuffling to the tower is pretty good.

- I was right about Desiree doing well, she won! In the words of Alex Horne, “She was quicker than the slide.”

- Oh shit. Oh shit. It’s one of those “select something for the second part of the task” things in which they aren’t told about the second part before they make their selection. I always think this would be so ridiculously stressful if I had to do it as a contestant. I’m not even going to make a guess as to the best way to approach it, because just thinking about that is stressing me out.

- Morgana Robinson is not pleased about this bullshit inscrutable studio task.

- I just heard Alex read part 2 of the task, and I still don’t know what a smart number of sheets would be. I guess it depends whether you’re any good at making and throwing paper airplanes. If you’re really bad at it, you’d be best off just sticking with one sheet and taking a score of negative five. Or even going with zero if that’s an option. But of course they had no way of knowing that before choosing, which was the point of the task. This is stressing me out again.

- I am incredibly unsurprised that VCM does not know how to make a decent paper airplane.

- She has her glasses on now. She probably should have put those on before the task started.

- Guz is trying to show VCM how to make paper airplanes. Adorable.

- Morgana does not know how to throw paper airplanes, but she does look very fucking attractive in this outfit and I’d like to take a moment to celebrate that:

- Morgana, Alan, and Guz have all failed to land a single airplane in a target. Alan was decent at throwing, though. I think he could have gotten one if he hadn’t been so rushed with trying to throw eight airplanes in thirty seconds.

- Desiree just flipped off a paper airplane. With the gesture that does not actually mean anything in North America, where she’s from. I’m glad she agrees with me, a fellow North American who think the Brits are right to have a second way to swear with one’s hands (in addition to the middle finger).

- Everyone is encouraging Victoria during her throws, and Alan even gave her some practical advice (to throw it upwards a bit). I love this. Back to the energy of this episode’s prize task. I mean, I love competitiveness on this show. But I feel like in this season, some of the people are competitive, but they’re mostly interested in defeating Greg and Alex and the game itself and are sort of banding with each other to do that. This is so much fun.

- Victoria has now completed her attempt, and none of the five contestants scored a single point.

- A second episode win in a row for Guz! And he’s leading in the season overall (according to my Taskmaster scores spreadsheet, at the moment it’s Guz with 102, then Morgana with 99, then Alan with 94, then Desiree with 93, then VCM with 73). And he gets his dog painting!

- The first fucking thing Guz did after getting up on stage is give Morgana his coat. God. Lovely, absolutely lovely people.

- Then he passed out the slippers to Victoria and the book to Desiree. Alan did not show interest in going up to collect his partial voucher for a season ticket to see a team he hates.

- This was a fucking awesome episode. This whole season is so very good.

[mrcurrygoestospain]

Camino De Santiago - Round 5

Spain travel log, 2021…

Day One:

September 20 - Depart Seattle for Madrid, by way of London. There were plenty of issues just getting to this point. In addition to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19, or perhaps because of them, I had some serious concerns about whether I could and whether I should do this trip at all. In the end, I think I simply realized that it was totally appropriate for me to go on this trip: I’ve been “responsible” and taken the full round of vaccinations, generally avoided social contacts with people and been diligent about the masks. So I made my reservations and thought everything was fine. About 2 weeks before takeoff, I got an email from Iberia that one of my flights had been changed. When I looked into it, I found that it was the connecting flight from London to Madrid and the schedule had been bumped up by about 6 hours taking me from having a 2 hour layover in Heathrow to needing to be on a plane for Madrid 4 hours before I actually landed in London and would be able to board it… It took attempts at phone calls over several days to get this corrected. Finally, I tried while I was at top work one morning around 5:00 am. I finally got through and a nice lady helped rebook my connecting flight. She found the only available flight on that day that would work; now I have a seven hour layover.

I prepped for my trip, checklists and routes planned. I arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just in case. Although I booked with Iberia, it was a British flight. So standing in line at the BA counter in SeaTac, I saw the sign: “All passengers must show proof of a negative COVID test.” What? I’d already checked multiple times; I only need proof of vaccination to get into Spain. I check the internet. Sure enough, if you’re on a layover in England, you need a negative test…A quick Google search helped me find a testing center at SeaTac airport, so I rushed down to baggage claim number nine to see if I could get a test in time. In all honesty, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it and I’d have to try to contact the airline again to find a way to reschedule my flight. I stood in the line for what seemed like forever, but finally had the privilege of paying $250 for a rapid COVID test. T- minus 2 hours 30 minutes to departure and they promised results in 1-1.5 hours. The test itself was relatively painless. After all of the horror stories I’d heard about the nasal swabs, I was a bit worried. But it didn’t hurt, it just tickled a little bit. I waited, and waited…it seemed like they would never have my results. While I waited, I heard stories from other travelers who had missed flights or rebooking because of these ridiculous COVID-related requirements. One young Canadian lady I spoke to shared that she’d spent over $1000 on COVID tests in the last month due to traveling. I guess my $250 wasn’t so much.

I finally got my negative test results and rushed back to the check in counter, filled out the required government forms and headed through security. The flight was delayed.

After a nine hour flight to London, I had seven or eight hours to kill in Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, before boarding my flight to Madrid. I shopped, I ate, I listened to podcasts. I took a few naps and generally cursed British Airways for changing my original flight. Some Italian guy made quite a scene at the boarding gate for the flight to Madrid. The gate agent handled it quite well and passive-aggressively punished him for his demeanor.

I arrived in Madrid after an easy flight on Iberia, made my way to the metro and on to my Hostel. It was a nice enough place. After 28 hours of travel, I was ready for a shower and bed.

Day 2:

On my one day in Madrid, I walked from my hostel/hotel to the Museo Nacional del Prado. It’s Spain’s greatest art museum. This was my second time there and I spent a lot more of it. There are so many amazing pieces and, for someone who used to truly despise art, it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t been to a whole lot of art museums, but it is, by far, my favorite. I followed that with a walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m sure they’re great when all of the flowers are blooming, but in early fall, it’s just a lot of green. Either way, it was still peaceful. I visited another nearby park, walked around and viewed the statues, and then made my way back towards the hotel and passed it to go to the Cathedral opposite the royal palace. It’s a much more modern cathedral than the ones I’ll see on the Camino, but still impressive.

Day 3:

On the morning of the third day, I got up early and got packed. Took the metro to the train station and purchased a ticket to Leon. After two hours on the train, I took a 20 minute walk to the hotel and dropped off my bag, and then spent the next few hours wandering the city. I found a barber and got a haircut for 9 Euro, quite a bargain. Stopped at the “Taste of America” shop to get a bottle of hot sauce (Cholula, of course), and just meandered around the city until I could get checked in at the hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day, which is just what I needed. I was still very tired from all of the traveling and trying to swap schedules.

Day 4:

I got up late, around 8:00 AM and started walking the city. I stopped for a cafe con leche and met a Scottish couple who had been walking the Camino for the last few weeks. While we waited out the rain under cover, the shared with me some of their other walking adventures, including tales of walking through the Swiss Alps on the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome. I may have to look into that for a future trip. I also shared with them my plans/considerations of taking a walk on the “Great Glen Way” in Scotland. The wife had already done this and highly recommended it, along with the West Highland Way. Both are approximately 5-day walks through some of the wild country of Scotland. When the rain let up, we parted ways and I went to tour the Cathedral, toured the Basilica of Saint Isidore and wandered around town, shopping and eating. Inside the Saint Isidore museum and basilica, i had the opportunity to see what is referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” as well as a gold and silver cup that some historians claim is the “holy grail.”

Day 5:

Didn’t sleep much…I forgot how much they like to party in Spain. It was LOUD all night long. Anyway, started my walk. Today was about 27 km and it rained through about 50% of the day. It was a mix of roads and dirt tracks. I only saw one other pilgrim, a Spaniard who doesn’t speak any English. I got ahead of him and had stopped for a rest at a picnics table on top of a mountain. He showed up a few minutes behind me and I tried to chat for a minute, but the language barrier…. I offered him half of my tangerine and then he took off again. I passed him up later. I had been slightly worried about where to stay for the night as the municipal albergue in this province/state are currently closed due to the ‘Rona, but when I got to town I found a pension with rooms available. The lovely lady named Susana showed me to a room and also worked tirelessly to make me a reservation for the following night. I hadn’t eaten much for the day, so I ordered big: hot dog and patatas oil bravas. Patatas bravas is a traditional dish in Spain which is made of fried potatoe cubes that are covered in a (typically) spicy tomato sauce. Potatoes Ali Oli are the same fried potatoes but with a garlic cream sauce instead of the spicy sauce. This one combined both sauces. It was nice. The inside of the restaurant/bar/cafe was very loud with a bunch of men playing a card game I’m not familiar with, so I went outside to have a beer. An older Spaniard, named Hilario, came out and started trying to talk to me. I explained that I am American and I don’t speak much Spanish, but he disagreed. So he went inside and got another man, a Hungarian who had been in Spain for the last 25 years, named Fernanco(?) who was extremely drunk, to come out and talk to me. He was so drunk, he introduced himself as “muy borracho” or “very drunk” and the proceeded to tell me that he used to be a muy Thai fighter and a coal miner and now he was just a fat drunk who collected money from the government because he got hit in the head too many times. At least I THINK that’s what they were saying…. I went to bed early to get a good rest and let my aching feet and hips recover before a long day tomorrow….from La Robla to Poladura, should be about 25km or so with some very intense climbs. We’ll see.

I’m currently on the Camino San Salvador, which is a route from Leon to Oviedo. They say “whoever goes to Santiago without visiting Oviedo, goes to the servant but not to the Lord.” This is because Oviedo is famous for having a specific relic. While most people are aware of the Shroud of Turin, which is the burial cloth of Jesus, many don’t know (including me, until recently) that traditional Jewish burial included placing a cloth over the face of the deceased immediately after death and until the body was prepared for burial. This cloth would then be removed and the full-body cloth would be applied. So anyway, this Cathedral boasts possession of the face covering that was placed over Jesus’ head, likely immediately after the spear pearled his side and before he was brought down off of the cross. Once I complete the Camino San Salvador (about 5 days, I hope), I will continue on to the Camino Primitivo, one of the many Camino’s de Santiago. So the Camino San Salvador goes to the relics of Christ and the Camino Santiago (Santiago = Saint James) goes to the resting place and remains of Saint James (the major), also known as “Santiago Matamoros” or “Saint James the Moor Slayer”, the patron saint of Spain.

[davidmann95]

Hey David? Why is ours such a cruel and merciless God?

mirrorfalls said: (If you don't know what I'm talking about, your inbox should be filling up with more specific deets riiiiight about now.)

cheerfullynihilistic said: THE SNYDER CUT

Anonymous said: You don’t seem to think Superman’s public rep will take another beating from the Snyder Cut coming out. Honestly I thought you’d be way more upset than you seemed on Twitter.

Anonymous said: So uhh, against all thoughts and logic the Snyder cut is being released? Maybe as a mini series? Thoughts?

Anonymous said: SNYDER CUT!

Bullies. Jocks. Guys angrily asking if we know who their father is. Assorted dudebro nerd-oppressors of America:

You have failed us. You have failed us so hard. What else do we even keep you around for if not to head this shit off at the pass? Shame on you.

Okay, so seriously: I’m actually gonna put most bitching and moaning under a cut, because I know firsthand there are as many as several non-slavering maniacs out there who dug Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and who are simply and entirely reasonably excited that they’re getting this movie after all. I don’t feel like throwing a wall of text at them shitting all over this, so I’ll lead off with I think some fairly even-handed commentary on the real-world circumstances here, rambling speculation regarding the production, and some cautious optimism about the actual movie/s. THEN I’ll get to what I imagine most of you are here to see.

So totally in a vacuum: this is a cool, good thing. I’m the notorious theatrical Justice League-liker, but at best it was a compromised product due to the original creator - who like it or not clearly had an incredibly ambitious personal vision for these characters and their world - suffering a horrific tragedy forcing him off the project, and leaving his final stamp on blockbuster culture and a world he’d devoted years of his life to a flop with his name on it when he couldn’t even truly call it his own anymore. At worst, said tragedy was taken advantage of by suits to ditch him in the home stretch so as to try and shove out something ostensibly more marketable. But now because of a...very loyal fanbase, the man’s getting the opportunity and resources to rise like a phoenix and see at least some of his vision through in a huge way. That’s pretty remarkable.

Not in a vacuum this is fucking horrifying. I’ve already seen folks poo-poohing the reflexive fears that this will ‘set a precedent’, and they were right enough that I deleted my initial tweet on the subject because I didn’t think I could express my own opinion with any nuance in the space of 280 characters. Yeah, nerd whining definitely shaped Rise of Skywalker (another movie I enjoyed in spite of the circumstances of its creation). Hell, Sonic the Hedgehog crunched its CGI team prior to unceremoniously firing them to redesign his model thanks to outcry. That’s already a market force, and just to be clear upfront, if we can’t agree the predominant mode of operation for #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a toxic nerd harassment campaign when they spammed posts memorializing deceased actors and chased Diane Nelson off Twitter, we’re not gonna be able to have this conversation. And director’s cuts are you may have noticed also already a thing. But this isn’t changing direction on a project that’s already going to exist no matter what, this is turning back 3 years later on a commercial flop and dumping tens of millions of dollars into it, explicitly in response to that harassment campaign. It’s not *actually* going back and, say, remaking The Last Jedi, but by god to the naked eye it’s gonna be as good as for plenty of fanboys, and probably to some shortsighted execs as well. This is a new thing, and in this context it is a very, very bad one. Hopefully one that won’t amount to anything.

As for the movie itself: what the hell is this thing going to end up being? I assume with this sort of cashola being pumped into it we’re not getting any slapdash greenscreen or storyboarded sequences, but four hours? Is it really just going to be an expanded and revised version of what we saw in theaters, or is this including content that would have been in the originally planned Justice Leagues 2 and 3? My understanding is that those were already compressed into a single Justice League 2 before plans collapsed altogether, were they maybe filming side-by-side and this’ll be the whole shebang? If not is Snyder going to hedge his bets and end this on a clean note, or keep it ending on a cliffhanger in hopes HBO will throw another $250 million his way to keep going? Does DC want to keep going? Would they give into fan pressure on releasing after all what was widely publicized as the first film of a duology or trilogy with dangling threads if they weren’t going to be at least watching the numbers to see the feasibility of returning to this in a bigger way? Not that I think WB execs would piss into Snyder’s mouth if he were dying of thirst at this point if he simply asked to be able to do Justice League 2, but if he floated that if they instead just give him a liiiiiiiitle more money he can finally deliver unto them their very own Avengers - one that they can work on even during quarantine since it’s mostly just VFX work left - and hey if it works out he’s got a sequel or two cued up and ready to go? Maybe they look at their scattered plans and say the hell with it and end up giving this a theatrical release and sequel with Snyder holding the reigns again if this ends up a killer app; stranger things have happened, if not many, and somehow this is already happening in the first place after all. Alternatively, if this succeeds, could they go “thanks and good on ya, totally do another, but it’s gonna be an HBO exclusive so you’re only getting a hundred million, figure it out”? Would Ben Affleck return? How much reshooting will he be willing to commit to even for this? And most importantly, since this is potentially going to be serialized as six ‘episodes’, will We Got This Covered count this as another ‘win’ since their bullshit rumor mill algorithm spit out “Justice League HBO TV show” recently?

As for the project itself: I ain’t subscribing to HBOMax for this bad boy, but once it becomes more widely available I can’t claim I won’t probably watch it. It’s basically a new movie about the Justice League, and if there’s anything I WOULD wanna see Zack Snyder do in the DCU, it’s the movie finally moving past pseudo-realism (aside from some of those dopey costumes) and leaning all the way into godlike superbeings bludgeoning each other through continents. I absolutely wanna see his aesthetic take on the Green Lantern Corps, and New Genesis, and time travel, and all the other weird promises of where his movies were going to go climaxing in a ridiculous super-war across all spacetime. It’s the same reason J.G. Jones was an exciting choice for Final Crisis before he had to leave, seeing a guy known for his work in an ultra-real grungy superhero style starting there and building up to seeing his version of absolutely wild cosmic spectacle. And no, to respond to one of the initial asks, I’m not worried about the impact on Superman. Everyone seems to have accepted this is its own distinct thing whether they like it or not, I think him getting to complete his ‘arc’ will quiet down many of the folks who like to yell at every other version as retro nonsense since now they’ll be able to be smug about having had the best take rather than pining for a lost finale, and I’m not interested in further Superman movies at the moment anyway with Superman & Lois in the pipe (which I was originally paranoid would be endangered by this when rumors first started floating, but if it’s been brewing since November then if they wanted to strike that down to ‘make room’ according to their Byzantine ever-shifting rules, they would have by now). Far as I’m concerned, as long as the other DC movies get to keep doing what they’re doing during and past this - even Pattinson in his corner, however that works - then totally let Snyder work out all his Wagnerian superhero bullshit for another flick or two. If nothing else, maybe we’ll learn what the hell that diagram up there is supposed to mean. And a plea I want to clarify upfront is wholeheartedly sincere: we’re already down the rabbit hole, so let Snyder to literally whatever he wants with his non-theatrically released Justice League. Zero input or veto power from outside parties. If he wants Flash to hang dong or Superman to say fuck or Batman to learn he’s Steppenwolf’s secret dad or Cyborg to learn he needs to eat babies to fuel his machine parts, let him go for it. Whole point is this is now his thing for people who want his thing.

Okay, beneath the cut the filter comes off, so go ahead if that’s your jam.

Hahahahahahaha this is gonna be such a fuckin’ shitshow you guys, Jesus Christ.

They’re giving the dude who did BvS and wants to make an Ayn Rand adaptation someday $30 million to take another crack at this monstrosity! 30 goddamn million smackaroos for four fucking hours of by many accounts roughly the same basic movie, except now presumably with what little coherency, fun, and clean character work the theatrical cut managed to pull off excised in return for weighty staring, ponderous pseudo-philosophical musings, hackneyed symbolism, aimless mythology teasing, and Steppenwolf I understand being decapitated by Wonder Woman at the end rather than taken back to Apokolips. I didn’t even spoiler mark that shit because don’t you dare pretend you care about the fate of Steppenwolf. I won’t have it.

I used to wonder if I was indeed missing the forest for the trees with these movies, that I was so inflexible in my personal image of these characters - even though I appreciate plenty of alternate takes on them and even some stories that bend or break what I consider their ‘rules’, just not these - that I was incapable of grasping or appreciating these films on their own merits as works of art using those archetypes in wildly different ways; even I could see there were good moments and interesting ideas on display despite seemingly failing to come together. No matter how much I personally deconstructed how and why it wasn’t working, I couldn’t do it to my own satisfaction to the point of stamping out that niggling little worry with how many folks whose opinions I respect love ‘em. Until I finally remembered that the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited is totally the same basic story as BvS, centrally driven by an even worse take on Superman, and that’s still one of the best superhero stories of all time. These just stink by any merits, and while I think Justice League absolutely has the potential to be the most *entertaining* of the bunch, it’s not going to magically become *good* in the eleventh hour. Not to lift up Joss Whedon of all people as some kind of savior, I’m on the record that my love for Justice League as-is is some kind of inexplicable alchemical accident, but I promise that there is not going to be one single addition to this movie that’s going to make up for the removal of “Just save one person”.

Also I’m already not looking forward to dudes tweeting “whoa, he’s splitting it up into a serialized narrative, reflective of the sequential nature of the characters’ primitive native pictorial medium! Or mayhap in ode to the pulp film adventure serials which inspired those in turn! Even the Justice League children’s cartoon for dumb babies, which was itself...made up of episodes! That’s three references in the structure of the thing alone! The man’s operating on an entirely different level!” “God, isn’t it amazing how much better he understands the source material than you”, they shall say, about a man who I understand just very confidently referred to Doomsday in his livestream as having destroyed Krypton in the comics. Again, don’t you say they won’t, just the other day I saw folks tweeting they just realized that since Jor-El wears armor over his bodysuit that technically means Superman’s whole costume is underwear which means Snyder’s totally honoring that without putting him in ugly dumb red panties so checkmate, dorks.

(Okay, in fairness, I know Snyder was saying that’s his take on what happened to the moon in the past of the movies and maybe I only misheard that he thought that also happened in the comics, and it’s trivial information anyway. Still sucks though, that seeming out-of-nowhere Jax-Ur shoutout was like the one thing I liked about that otherwise interminable Krypton sequence. And why is there a second Doomsday? You did Death of Superman already!)

And further SPOILER thoughts below on the reported plots of 2 and 3:

It’s also an amazing, perfect sort of narrative synchronicity that the hypocrisy of Man of Steel in presenting Superman as a savior would (will?) be matched by the movies also rejecting that promise long-term. In there, Jor-El’s musings on the capacity of every living thing being capable of good, the closest the film has to a singular moral statement, are proven wrong when Zod has to be put down like a mad dog, and rather than the one who’ll bring us into the sun, Kal-El’s presence draws ruin from beyond the stars to our world. And again in BvS with Doomsday. And again in Justice League 1-3, where in spite of claims by Snydercutters that it’s okay for Superman to be a really lousy take on Superman because it’s totally supposed to take several movies after putting on the costume and calling himself Superman, including his own death and resurrection, for him to really, like, become Superman, man, he remains a liability to the end. His death lures in Steppenwolf, the Kryponian matrix in his genes is Darkseid’s goal, he becomes the villain of the first act of Justice League 3 - possibly of his own free will depending on which version you’ve heard about - and at the final showdown, it’s Batman who sacrifices himself to stop Darkseid and save the world and inspire the rise of superheroism, because Batman, you see, rules, whereas Superman, stay with me here, drools. A letdown given BvS was just about the one major story of the last 30 years to unambiguously conclude Superman is better than Batman, but not a shocker. None of what I understand goes down in these - iconography from the likes of Fourth World, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death and Return of Superman, Rock of Ages, Final Crisis, and Injustice reused but stripped of all context and thematic weight that gives it meaning (even Injustice is built on the premise of having a ‘good’ Superman to contrast the dictator); Lois being the ‘key’ because of her connections to two men, one she married and one she bears; time travel that even by the very generous suspension of disbelief applied to it in a genre like this operates by two obviously completely different sets of rules in its only two uses, and is then used to write the entire second movie of the trilogy out of continuity in the first act of the third, making one and a half of these movies pointless - is shocking. It’s just more empty notions and unfulfilled promises offered up to a fanbase staking everything on the idea that all the tampering, all the wild swings, all the meandering, it’s all building UP to something, not possibly just a dude who doesn’t understand these characters but wanting to look very clever with them before building up to one more rad punch-up. So yes, make these movies. Let what can be gleaned from them as worthwhile be revealed, leave the rest of it up for examination to be judged as it deserves and let it, finally. Finally. Be done.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 250: Why Is This Family Not in Therapy

Previously on BnHA: Fuyumi invited everyone over to Camp Todovid for a wholesome family meal because what could possibly go wrong. Kacchan and Deku proceeded to spend the evening blinking distress signals at each other in Morse code while Natsu shoved breadsticks into his purse and skedaddled after getting mad at Endeavor in a completely unexpected turn of events which absolutely no one could have foreseen. After dinner, Shouto had a heart to heart with Fuyu (and then Deku) about whether or not he was ready to forgive his dad, and meanwhile Endeavor said a prayer for his very dead son Touya. Poor Touya. He was such a nice boy. You know what he really used to like? Messenger bags. He’d put the oddest things in them, too. I wonder if Touya would still enjoy collecting strange and disturbing things in bags if he was still alive today. Alas. We’ll never know.

Today on BnHA: Some guy named Takami who just got out of prison decides to show up out of the blue and fucking kidnap Natsuo because WHY NOT. But before that happens, we get a nice scene of Kacchan and Deku sitting down with Shouto and Fuyu, who finally decide it’s high time they talked about THEIR SECRET DEAD BROTHER seeing as LET’S BE REAL, THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DINNER TO BEGIN WITH. So basically, (1) he’s definitely dead! For sure! 100% deceased!, and (2) Natsuo apparently blames Endeavor for his death, lol no big. Deku and Kacchan are for some reason super fucking chill about hearing this, and then Endeavor comes over and is all “TIME TO HEAD BACK” and omg I’ve never hated him more. And then as they’re driving away from Todofield Hall, Takami shows up and is all “HEY ENDEAVOR LOOK I KIDNAPPED YOUR CHILD AND I’M GONNA KILL HIM!” and holy shit but Horikoshi is just fucking with us now, though.

(As always, all comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity afterward, and added some  ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

all right manga, do your worst. I’m completely spoiler-free on this one. watch it not even be a flashback, after all of that lmao

(ETA: lol I read these two asks after I read the chapter and they’re pretty great:

honestly this week wasn’t that bad, though! the worst part of it was the whole “only 13 pages again” thing honestly. next week, though, it looks like we’ll be in for some fun times. oh goodness.)

so it appears night has fallen on Todofield Hall, and hoooooooooly shit you guys, are they. are they all gonna have a sleepover at Shouto’s house, because fdszllk I. I’m gonna. ldskfjla

(ETA: [kicks Endeavor in the shins] why do you hate fun!?)

who is talking?? are these prison stripes??

so is this the Takami guy narrating, then? just like we all predicted last week. ???

(ETA: so I saw all these people going “wtf is this Hawks’s dad??” and I was like “lol what” and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to put two and two together, but anyways, long story short, “Takami” just so happens to be Hawks’s recently revealed surname (with the same kanji and everything -- 鹰見). so while every instinct in my body is screaming at me “gtfo no way they’re related”, it is an extremely bizarre coincidence, so uh. ?? I got nothin’, basically.)

WHAT THE FUCK

IS THIS GUY STALKING THE TODOROKI HOUSE. ABOUT TO BREAK INTO TODOFELL IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT WHILE MY CHILDREN ARE ASLEEP!? CAN THEY JUST NOT CATCH A BREAK

also I will never understand villains who get all smug about being captured alive. “your one mistake was not killing me when you should have!” like okay, so you’re admitting you’re a piece of shit who should have died, and that the hero totally could have done it, but they were nice enough not to so SHAME ON THEM, apparently

anyways I really don’t understand what’s going on at all lol. some guy looked up to Endeavor and then got himself captured by him for some reason. let’s continue I guess

oh lord it keeps getting creepier

-- oohhhhhhhh shiiiiiiit, is this fucker about to air Endeavor’s dirty laundry?? is that what this is about?

AHHHHH

NATSU SWEETIE WHERE ARE YOUR SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCTS?? IT IS NOT SAFE! and also what the fuck, does Endeavor just not have any security in his home at all? surely he must, if for no other reason than the fact that HE HAS KIDS and he’s not always at home! I have to imagine that any pro hero with a family understands that they’re a potential target for villains and would take precautions. I wonder if we’re about to see this sneaky guy get wrecked

(ETA: nope, Endeavor really has no security whatsoever and Natsu got snatched while waiting outside for his Uber. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was too busy missing his brother and being sad to remember that he actually has a quirk himself. c’mon Natsu.

-- actually, come to think, props to Horikoshi for once again bucking the trend and having a guy be the one who gets kidnapped and becomes the damsel in distress. I’m just going to assume that had Fuyu been the one to get captured, Endeavor wouldn’t have even heard about it until he received a text from her with a picture of the guy encased in ice and a caption asking “so dad, uh, what should I do with this?”)

BUT FIRST, WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO THE TODOROKI KITCHEN, WHERE TODOBAKUDEKU ARE CURRENTLY HAVING TEA WITH FUYU BECAUSE SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME YESSSSS

hhhglkohhhhh myyyyy godddddd

I KNOW!!! WHAT’S WITH THAT! WE’VE WAITED 250 FUCKING CHAPTERS PUTTING UP WITH YOUR SLY-ASS HINTS ALL “ALL RIGHT THEN, KEEP YOUR SECRETS” but is it finally time now? IS IT??!

Shouto says it’s not exactly an easy topic to bring up, and okay, fair. buuuut also, this is the same child who ambushed Deku in a corridor back when they barely knew each other and was all “let me tell you all about my dad’s quirk marriage and how he abused me and my mom and how I got this scar” so like. what exactly do you consider “easy to bring up” though

OH MY GOD IT’S HAPPENINGGGGGGG

we’re getting DETAILS. ABOUT. TOUYA’S PAST fkdslfh holy motherfucking shitballs someone pinch me

she says it happened right after Rei got hospitalized, which yeah, we all figured based on the middle school uniform in the photo. so that definitely pins down his age then, doesn’t it? Shouto was six when that happened, so if Touya was in middle school he’d have been between 12 and 15. so it’s very likely then that he was 14, the exact same age as Fuyu, so therefore THE TWIN THEORY IS CONFIRMED! WE DID IT TUMBLR

anyways back to being sad though, because

can someone please hug this child?? what are you all even doing?! do you not see his face?? jesus christ

oh no oh my god are you serious are you

okay, before I go on to the next panel and commence FREAKING THE FUCK OUT, I need to stop here though, because the thought that the Todos actually were in the process of healing nine years ago and could have potentially been spared years of additional pain had it not been for this tragedy is. just. I fucking can’t. I need a minute here. god

anyway. so now on to the freaking out though, because

:) :))) :))))))) huh. you don’t say

(ETA: hmm in hindsight I promised freakouts and then all I did was go “:)” but please understand that the “:)” conveys so much more inner freaking out than words could possibly communicate. just picture me screaming and waving my arms around like a Kermit the frog gif okay.)

look at this you guys. this revelation is so stone cold fucking sober that it even got Katsuki to make an actual normal face for the first time in god knows how many chapters, wow

by the way, words can hardly express how much I appreciate that Katsuki is sitting here chilling out drinking tea with the rest of them and listening to this tale of woe and empathizing like a normal, well-adjusted person, though. I will never take that for granted. thank you character development gods. y’all are bros

anyways the face in question that Natsu was making is so fucking sad, and just. THEY ALL NEED HUGS. why is this family not in therapy

NO!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU SON OF A BITCH!! JUST LIKE THAT YOU’RE RIGHT BACK ON MY SHIT LIST, ENDEAVOR!! CHRIST ALMIGHTY ARE YOU SERIOUS, SO WE’RE REALLY JUST GONNA LEAVE OFF THERE? “LOL SO YEAH, NATSU STILL THINKS DAD KILLED OUR BROTHER AND THAT’S WHY ALL THE TENSION” and Deku and Kacchan just nod like that is in any way a satisfying explanation rather than an INCREDIBLY OMINOUS STATEMENT which only goes and raises about A BILLION MORE QUESTIONS OMG. “oh okay, so he hates your dad because he thinks that he murdered your mysterious other brother we’re only just now hearing about. say no more. no further context necessary” fucking -- 

listen, you two. where the fuck are your investigative skills?? SOME SCOOBY SQUAD YOU ARE!!

oh my goodness gracious

listen guys, things I was not expecting to check off my character development bucket list today: Katsuki joining the Fuyumi fanclub and bonding with her over recipes. I wasn’t even aware that was on my list. BUT IT SURE WAS, AND IT’S CHECKED NOW AND I LOVE IT

also love that Shouto tells Fuyu to just text the recipe to him, and then he will share it with Katsuki. because they are best friends

also Deku is the only one here with any manners at all but oh well. we all been knew

(ETA: though to be fair, Katsuki asking for the recipe is about as big a compliment as one can give to a chef, and it kind of serves as a combination “thanks for the meal” and “everything was really good” tbh. shit, now I want her recipe.)

fdlkjfg

... [reaches out to gently touch the panels] so soft

-- BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S EVEN SOFTER?

[faint sound of my heart imploding] ah

oh my god his face

and Katsuki’s face too. boy are you jealous. to think you were all “WHY THOUGH!?” coming here, only to walk away from it all with a kickass new mapo tofu recipe as well as a new person to add to your secret list of people you would literally die for. awwwwwww

and Shouto. omg. this is the most bashful panel I’ve ever seen. what a blessed chapter

anyway so now they’re all driving away (back to school?? I think he said?) and Endeavor’s talking to them about their upcoming schedule. so I guess they are heading back to school, then

anyway so he wants them to work the weekend as well as two weekdays? damn that’s a lot of class to be missing, he’s asking them to skip literally half the school week (since they have Saturday class too)

wow you guys look at this panel

takeaways from this: 1.) I honestly would have thought Deku would be the one tutoring other people in English, if anything. as of the midterms, he was above Shouto in academic rankings, but more importantly he’s also the biggest All Might fan on the planet, and All Might spent a lot of time in America in his youth and presumably speaks decent English himself, so you’d think Deku’s English would be passable just from his obsession alone. but I guess you just can’t beat that fancy private school education

and the other takeaway: Katsuki doesn’t like being squished in the backseat of a cramped Japanese car with Deku and Shouto. this one is absolutely shocking. I’m gonna need a moment to process this for sure. anyways poor Deku, he’s probably getting so many elbows to the ribs right now. I hope he elbows back

(ETA: actually the fact that Katsuki is apparently sticking his head out the window here in addition to complaining about the cramped conditions makes me wonder if he’s actually getting carsick. my poor baby do you need some dramamine.)

guys, meet Endeavor’s chauffeur

so anyway this is a bit sudden but I have a new favorite character now. life is funny like that. does he remind anyone else of Major Armstrong

wow Endeavor is answering the question seriously

okay but shit, I really fucking love this answer, though. he’s so matter-of-fact about it. because the thing is, the question isn’t really “when did you start baby-sitting a bunch of kids”; it’s “when did you actually start caring about something other than yourself?” and the answer is that it happened when he finally reached the top and realized the responsibility that went hand in hand with that role. it forced him to finally look past just himself, and to think about what it really means to be a hero. shit, I feel another essay coming on, but it’ll have to wait for some other time lol. we still have to see if Natsu’s going to make it out of this alive

anyway so now Armstrong is chuckling and saying that status really does change people huh, and they’re driving on into the night

OH SHIT

THAT’S A NICE SON YOU’VE GOT THERE, ENDEAVOR. IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMEONE... okay you know what, I’m not sure where I was headed with that joke, but in any case I can’t finish it because this isn’t funny at all actually, this is actually SO FUCKING BAD oh shit oh shit

NATSUUUUU

oh no he’s so scared oh fuck. fuck. he’s only 19, he’s just a kid still. god. why do I always get so worked up over these parts. what am I doing reading a shounen manga if I can’t handle seeing kids in peril. HORIKOSHI PLEASE BE KIND TO MY BABIES

holy shit

okay, is this implying that Katsuki was sticking his head out of the window in that previous panel?? I realize more important things are happening and this is hardly the time to dwell on this, but jesus christ my kid is out here trying to get himself decapitated. boy what is wrong with you

anyway so now something is going "pop” and I have no idea. ??

(ETA: lol I guess it was Endeavor? you know, how Endeavor sometimes just goes “pop” for no reason. that’s just the sound someone makes when spontaneously bursting into flames.)

oh

far be it from me to start whipping out analogies about a mama bear and her cubs, but. damned if that ain’t what’s happening though. motherfucker, you mess with his kids? so would you like to die fast, or slow

so now some weird fucking shit is happening to the car, and I guess it’s this guy’s quirk again?

wow my man, so you’re really attacking the car with the three protagonists with SOMETHING TO PROVE in the backseat. you really do have a death wish

(ETA: on top of that, attacking the car mere minutes before the winter break ends, and with it, the deadline for “defeating a villain quicker than Endeavor.” HMMM anybody got some popcorn?)

now Endeavor is shouting “LET HIM GO!” because that’s what superheros shout when someone is being kidnapped

lol poor Natsu looks kind of awkward now

like, don’t get him wrong, he’s still scared for his life. but also he’s starting to get a bit of that same feeling that Katsuki and Deku were getting in the last chapter, like he’s suddenly found himself right in the midst of some grade A melodrama from which there is no escape. anyways don’t mind him, he’s just going to chill here in this big pile of bandages and see where this goes

so Endeavor is all “........... YOU’RE FROM SEVEN YEARS AGO!” and honestly that’s impressive. I guess the quirk is a pretty memorable one, though

wow now they’re suddenly being all coy with this guy’s name? what the hell

?? Natsu bud, I feel ya, this really is some awkward shit right here

ohhhh!

that’s the name of the chapter! well all right then, so at least that much makes sense now

so now Ending is apologizing to Endeavor, and wow, tons of essay fuel in these next two panels here

“you had so many things that I could never get” doesn’t this sound remarkably similar to Deku’s speech to Kacchan during their second fight at Ground Beta? huh

and also, I think we are slowly dancing closer and closer to the Thing Katsuki Lacks That He Needs To Learn From His Internship From Endeavor. what do you guys think? I have a lot of thoughts about this, but again, I’ll save it for another post seeing as shit is hitting the fan right now and all

OH SHIT

ARE YOU SERIOUS, OF ALL THE TIMES TO HAVE ANOTHER THIRTEEN PAGE CHAPTER! HORIKOSHI YOU ARE FUCKING KILLING ME HERE

well shit. okay so when he says “don’t make the same mistake twice”, he’s clearly talking about Endeavor letting him live the last time they met, but also I can’t help but feel like there might be some kind of double meaning here as well. the fact that he went from theft to kidnapping and attempted murder, on top of him mentioning earlier about how he went digging into Endeavor’s past, makes me wonder if he could possibly be trying to recreate a specific set of events. or is that crazy??

but just, hear me out. what if something similar to this went down before, with Touya perhaps being taken hostage by a villain (though it couldn’t have been the same guy because the timing is off, and also Endeavor didn’t recognize him right off the bat), and Endeavor making some critical mistake which resulted in him failing to save him, and Natsu then blaming him for that and holding him responsible for the death. honestly that makes the most sense to me, since I would think that “literally murdered his own kid” would be kind of a deal-breaker as far as the rest of the family ever reconciling with him. so yeah, this could get very interesting here

(ETA: hoo boy, so I’ve been browsing the bnha tags a bit, and it seems that a lot of people are interpreting the hints in this chapter very differently from me lol. I admit I could certainly be wrong about the “don’t make the same mistakes” bit having a double meaning. but like, do we really believe that Endeavor just straight up murdered his son and got away with it, or that it was covered up or something? or that he drove Touya to suicide? I think it’s much more likely that Touya pushed himself too hard, or that he accidentally got caught up in one of Endeavor’s attacks, or something along those lines.

what really struck me, though, was that a lot of people actually seem to be hoping for it to come out that Endeavor really is responsible, though. like, to the point where they’re prepared to be outraged if it turns out he’s not, and this part of the story doesn’t end up conforming to the narrative of Endeavor just being a sinister cartoon villain. and like, I don’t really know what to say about that. except that I really hate this idea that if an abuser is ever portrayed as something other than a heartless monster then it’s super-problematic and/or just bad writing. that Endeavor not murdering his son = Horikoshi endorses child abuse. or something. anyways I don’t have the spoons to really throw my hat into the ring here, but basically my opinion is that life is rarely just black and white in that way, and this story reflects that, and I think it’s absolutely the right call to make and is actually very good writing and I respect it. 

and also like, it’s not some all-or-nothing thing here where he’s either a perfect saint, or the worst person to ever exist! what he is is a man who made some terrible choices in the past and abused and hurt the very people he should have loved and protected the most. and what he is, also, is a man who has realized the awfulness of the things he’s done, and is trying his best now to be a good person. what he is is a human being. and acknowledging that doesn’t mean that you condone the abuse; it simply means that you acknowledge that people are made up of more than just the worst things they’ve done in their lives. that’s it.

anyways, for all of my “not gonna through my hat into the ring” nonsense, I’m doing a pretty good impression of exactly that, so I’ll shut up now. damn you Endeavor and your controversy-sparking ways. what kind of psychopath looks at the fucking BnHA fandom and says “not bad, but you know what this place could use? more discourse.” you knew exactly what you were doing, you fiend.)

anyways I’m going to hope and assume that Natsu isn’t actually about to meet his end here at the hands of this bestriped man and his peculiarly thematic villain name and sinister bandage arrows (are they bandages?? maybe not since they seem pretty solid and he’s threatening to stab Natsu in the eye with one. idk). and for all of my joking earlier, this guy actually does appear to have a real, genuine death wish since he keeps talking about how Endeavor should have killed him before. so in addition to all this other drama, toss in an attempted suicide by cop as well! this fucking arc, man. goddamn

[fbdo1986]

idk the only fbdo prompt i can think of is cameron falls asleep on the couch so ferris and sloane have a contest to see how much random shit they can put on him before he wakes up. Besides that, the way you wrote cam & sloane’s 1st kiss was very good, how bout writing ferris and cam’s 1st kiss? Unless that’s gonna be in ur new fic of course. Anyway, i’ll be back if i can think of cuter prompts

yo anon… you’re the best!!!! how about i write both???!! it’s hard for me sometimes to write ferris/cam and i have no idea why?? but i’ll do it for you anon! and honestly i’m not too sure if my fic is gonna involve any kissing tbh! i kinda foster ideas as i go

okay! since i am incapable of putting this one in the same timeline of my sloane/cam fic heres one that goes post the fic im working on, which is an interpretation of that fateful day off! (it’s probably a few days after or so)

warning: slight mention of ab*se bc like. cameron’s dad exists

ALSO SORRY THIS IS SO FUCKING LONG I GOT CARRIED AWAY!

Cameron narrowly escapes to his room, his hands shakily pressing the button to dial up the Bueller residence. He was high of pure adrenaline, and unfortunately, fear. The spiel about how ‘he wouldn’t be pushed around any longer, and seriously doesn’t a teenager deserve to have a life of his own? and how he’s done nothing except nearly exhaust himself to make the man proud and he doesn’t even notice!?’ actually takes old Morris Frye by surprise, and in a good way. He ruffles Cameron’s hair and goes on about how for the longest time he’s been waiting for his son to become a man, and how maybe, he’s proud of Cam. That is, until he realizes Cameron’s mentioned the car. Then all bets are off. It starts with a loud bellowing yell and Cameron can sense it’s only gonna escalate from here. Quickly, Morris is inching his way closer to Cameron and even though Cam is giving an explanation as quickly as words can exit his mouth to try and derail his father, it’s no use for the man who loves his car more than his own family. The man is seeing red, the red of that precious 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California that tumbled to its death from the garage. And Cameron needs to get out of there before he gets any closer. 

So he makes it to his bedroom, and the immediate response is Ferris. There’s no one who can save him like the boy who can get out of trouble in any situation. The line rings and he hears the familiar, moody hello of Jeanie Bueller. “Hey, it’s Cameron. Can you put Ferris on, please?” His voice wavers, and Jeanie immediately understands. Cameron won’t lose it, not like how he used to, but these things build up. 

“Ferris! It’s Cameron!” Jeanie yells, and Mrs. Bueller asks if everything’s alright. Jeanie keeps silent, letting Ferris spill if he decides to.

Ferris has something inside of him that is fine tuned to discussions of Cameron or Sloane. This shout isn’t typical Jeanie tone, and immediate sirens begin to blare in his ears. From across the house he’s at the phone in the hall, immediately replacing Jeanie at the line. “Hey, what’s up?” He keeps his voice light. Maybe it’s nothing. 

“Fer, I need an out. My old man is gonna kill me for this car. I mean it. He’ll find a way to give me hell. If it was his way I’d never come back.” He lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding in. “Please.”

At this point, Ferris has nearly bitten the inside of his cheek raw. He suddenly regrets all the things he’s ever done to put Cameron at risk of being hurt by his old man. Sure, he did think taking the car out was good for Cameron—he always wished Cameron could loosen up and fully enjoy what good things happened to him—but he could’ve never imagined the state it’d be in by the end of the day. He meant it when he said he’d take the heat for this, and he still does. It kills him to know his foolishness could cost Cameron harm. Ever since Ferris Bueller understood just how horrible things get in Cameron’s house he immediately knew he’d always be there for him. It takes a little longer to realize the reverse is true, that he’d be complete and utterly lost without Cameron, and that he needs him to stay sane. He won’t let that show in his words or his tone. He’s gotta be strong right now because that is what Cameron needs.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll get you out of there.” He covers the receiver. “Jeanie, can I use your car?” A silent nod of understanding from his sister. Mrs. Bueller is insisting to take care of it, she’s always liked Cameron, but Ferris wants it all under his control. “I’ll be there soon, alright?” He asks Cameron, hoping he doesn’t know that he’s keeping his voice from shaking. At least he can’t see his hands.

A deep breath. “Thank you, Ferris. Seriously. You don’t understand how much I appreciate this.” Cameron always knows that Ferris is and always will be there for him, but he’s always grateful when he steps up for things like this. 

Like lightning after Jeanie gives him the keys, Ferris races out of his house and hops into his sister’s car. Ferris is thankful for his driver’s license despite his absence of a car. And he’s thankful for Jeanie at this moment, too. And most importantly, for Cameron. He fights every urge to completely speed over there, since he’d never forgive himself for getting a speeding ticket on the way to his best friend’s house. When he gets to Cameron’s he makes his way to Cameron’s window. He’s willing to risk heat from Morris for sneaking Cameron out, and if the man even thinks he’s getting at Cameron for this he’s sorely mistaken. Has Ferris ever fought anyone? Absolutely not, but Morris Frye deserves to have a taste of his own medicine for once in his life. Ferris raps on the window as quietly as he can, his eyes lighting up immediately when Cameron turns to face him. 

Cameron fights a loud, enthusiastic expression of gratitude, but his sentiments remain. “G-d bless Ferris Bueller.” Ferris simply grins. But his eyes widen with concern when he remembers why he’s here. “Wait, Cam. Are you hurt? Did that son of a bitch—” Ferris can’t stop himself from grabbing at Cameron’s arms and getting a bit too close to look at his face.

Cameron chuckles, swatting him away. “I’m fine, Fer. Quit breathing on me. But seriously, I’m alright.” He looks at Ferris, the absolute goof of a best friend right in front of him. Despite his cool exterior, he really does wear his heart on his sleeve. He’s thankful that all those threats that he’d find a new best friend were never serious. Cameron almost embraces him. Almost. He settles for a shared smile. 

“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.” Ferris rocks back onto his heels and Cameron swiftly stands up from his bed. They get out through the window and shut it tight. 

The ride to Ferris’s is awkward. Ferris wants nothing more than to crack a joke and relieve this tension, but he doesn’t want to disrespect what’s just happened to Cameron. The radio is on low, playing the current hits. When they reach the Bueller’s Cameron is bombarded with concerned but sweet proddings from Mrs. Bueller and a comforting look from Jeanie. Cameron feels a bit lighter already, but he only feels like he can fully breathe once they’re in Ferris’ room. The Cars are softly playing from Ferris’s stereo while Cameron flops directly onto the bed and Ferris sits next to him. 

“Jesus Christ.” Cameron’s voice is muffled against the comforter, and he slowly turns to face up and look at the ceiling. “I hate this. I can’t believe I have to run away to solve my problems.”

“To be fair, you’re not running away. You’re literally 10 miles away from your house. Plus, I helped you escape.” Ferris leans back on his palms and looks at the ceiling too. “Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t done it sooner. I wouldn’t last a day there. I don’t know how you do it. Fuck what Morris says, Cam, you’re the bravest man I know.” He breathes out a sigh and wishes he could say more. 

Cameron shifts and turns to Ferris for a moment. “No way, man. That’s you.” They exchange a glance. Despite being friends for seven years, words like these don’t get shared often between them. “Thank you. Again. Not even just for this, Fer.” He looks at Ferris intensely. “My life outside of that house is what it is because of you. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” 

Ferris averts his gaze, but a smile plays on his lips for a moment. He pauses and draws out the phrase, “You, my love, are worth it all.” 

Cameron’s face is immediately drowned in heat. He doesn’t know why this is so significant but all he feels is his heartbeat in his throat and he can’t help but sit up, dumbfounded. He looks at Ferris and there’s nothing that can convince him the boy was joking. Ferris, inversely, however, is turning pale. 

“What?” That’s all that escapes Cameron’s mouth, but it’s not upset or repulsed. Only curious. 

“Look, Cam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it and it just slipped out and you’re just great, okay? That’s it. You’re just great, the problem is how great you are.” The words slip out so fast Cameron is just barely hanging on. 

“I’m what?”

“You’re fantastic. You’re everything I could ask in a friend and more and I’ve just been thinking it over for a few days and I’m so sorry I ever jeopardized your safety. I need you and all of this wouldn’t even matter if it wasn’t for you, Cameron.” His eyes, deep with worry and passion all at once meet Cameron’s. And without a second thought Ferris’s hands are cupping his face and he presses a kiss into Cameron’s lips. Cameron’s caught off guard, insanely surprised, but as his heartbeat slows he can hear Ferris’s breath in an exhale and Cameron presses a kiss back into Ferris. Cameron smiles and after a moment Ferris parts from the kiss and looks up at his best friend. 

“Didn’t mean shit, Bueller.” Cameron laughs and all of a sudden the light is back in Ferris’s eyes and Ferris can’t think of anything to do but tackle Cameron in a hug. It knocks Cameron’s lanky frame over, but they just lay there and continue to laugh.

[lawrenceop]

Holy Land Retrospective - Day 6

Reminder: clicking on the link for each photo (links are all in red text) will take you to the Flickr page where you can see the photo in larger sizes.

Start with DAY 1, or catch up with DAY 2, or DAY 3, or DAY 4, or DAY 5. Or just read on!

PHOTO 26: It was Saturday; the day of the Jewish Shabbat, a holy day when the highlight of the whole pilgrimage took place: we would have Mass at the Empty Tomb of Christ, in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Appropriately, we made our way to the church in silence, processing through deserted city, and the church, too, was nearly empty when we arrived. After all, it was shortly after 4 a.m. (!) when we entered the city through Herod’s Gate and walked through the silent Muslim Quarter to the Franciscan monastery. 

Moving some 250 people in silence through the uneven streets of an ancient city, before daybreak, is an impressive feat! But this silence and secrecy was entirely fitting. For the Gospels, too, are silent about what happened on the Saturday, the day of the Passover, after Jesus was crucified. St John says the following about the Friday on which Jesus died, the “day of Preparation” but concerning the Sabbath, nothing is reported – it is only alluded to:

“Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away... But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water... After this Joseph of Arimathe'a, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight. They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.” (Jn 19:31, 34, 38-42)

From the Franciscan Monastery of the Flagellation, we began our quiet journey on the Via Dolorosa, sleepy but alert, praying the Stations of the Cross as best as we could. Somewhere in the crowd, Jim Caviezel walked with us, as together with him we walked the path of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem. 

At around 5:30 a.m. we prayed the last three stations of the Cross in the courtyard in front of the church of the Holy Sepulchre; in the distance, a cock crowed. 

This photo was taken shortly after everyone had entered the church, looking back towards the way we had come; the minaret of the mosque of Omar looms overhead. For many of our group, it was their first time visiting Calvary and the Empty Tomb so I remained outside and I savoured the cool air of the morning; and soaked in the silence of the holy courtyard, traversed only by a cat or a monk; and I observed the colour of the sky change as the light of the new day came. Dawn at the Holy Sepulchre on an Easter Saturday: what a blessed moment!

PHOTO 27: We had a good hour and a half before the time allocated to us for Mass: time to explore, time to pray and reflect, time for Confession and spiritual preparation for Holy Mass. Ahead of us, saying Mass inside the Empty Tomb with a small group of pilgrims, was the Bishop of a French diocese, hence the doors are closed. During this time, one of our group took photos of these closed doors and she came and showed me the photos. One of them had the clear figure of a man robed in a white Jewish prayer shawl standing in the doorway, even though none of us had seen the doors even open! Take a look here and see what you think!

"I saw the risen Lord appearing to His Blessed Mother on Mount Calvary. He was transcendently beautiful and glorious, His manner full of earnestness. His garment, which was like a white mantle thrown about His limbs, floated in the breeze behind Him as He walked. It glistened blue and white, like smoke curling in the sunshine.” - Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s vision of the Risen Lord. 

The photo above was taken very shortly before we went into the sacristy to prepare for Mass. I had been watching the sunlight of the new day penetrate the darkness of the Holy Sepulchre church. The rays of light enter through the smaller dome of the ‘Catholicon’ (the Greek Orthodox sanctuary in the centre of the building), and then it strikes the little onion dome and cross of the ‘Aedicule’, which is this structure that envelopes and protects the Empty Tomb itself. As the sun ascends in the sky, the rays of light then travel downwards until it reaches the doors of the Aedicule, and penetrate into the Empty Tomb. 

An hour after this photo was taken, I was standing inside the Aedicule, concelebrating the Holy Mass with my brother priests, standing around the very spot where the angel of the Resurrection had hailed the holy women that first Easter morning. And then, stooping to go into the Empty Tomb itself, I received the Eucharistic Body and Blood of the Risen Christ that was lying on the Altar, on top of the stone where Jesus had been laid and from which he had risen from the dead, alleluia!

This single moment, this sun-lit morning, all we had experienced so far on the 4th of May 2019, was probably one of the most unforgettable and spiritually intense moments of my whole life.   

“Do not be afraid... He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead”. (Mt 28:5-7)

However, in every Mass, we encounter the Risen Lord, and we are then sent forth wherever we may be, as though from this Empty Tomb in Jerusalem, to quickly announce the Good News: Χριστός Ανέστη! Surrexit Dominus vere! Christ is risen, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

PHOTO 28: The focus of this photo is the olive tree, for we are on the Mount of Olives, looking towards the Holy City with the iconic Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine built on the very site where the Temple of Jerusalem once stood until the Romans destroyed it, as Christ prophesied, in 70 AD. 

After Mass in the Holy Sepulchre, and after breakfast, we went to the top of the Mount of Olives to take in the view of the city, and then we descended the hill, waving palm branches and singing ‘Hosannas’ as we went; in a few hours we had gone from Easter morning to Palm Sunday! We made our way to the little church of Dominus Flevit where Jesus had beheld the city of Jerusalem, foretold of its destruction, and wept for its people. 

Looking towards the city, one takes in its long and complicated and turbulent history; full of human strife and violence as the One the city had once hailed with ‘Hosannas’ was rejected, taken outside, and executed as a criminal. But, as St Paul says: “In him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:19-20)

In this photo, therefore, I wanted to show the city in its splendour and in its divided history, and also to take in the branches of the trees which the people had cut and waved to hail the coming Messiah. But above all, I wanted to focus on the olive branch, not just because it indicated our location, the Mount of Olives, but because it is a universally recognised emblem of peace. 

“For the peace of Jerusalem pray: "Peace be to your homes! May peace reign in your walls, in your palaces, peace!"” – Psalm 122:6-7

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem. 

 PHOTO 29: Continuing to mark Holy Week in one day, we went to Mount Sion after lunch, to the site of the Upper Room, the cenacle, where Jesus had celebrated the Passover with his disciples, instituting the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and the Priesthood. In the same room, the Holy Spirit had came upon Our Lady and the disciples at Pentecost so that “out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem" (Isa 2:3). 

So, that Saturday afternoon we stood in a 14th-century structure built on various iterations of a church building that has stood here since the earliest days, although it is now sadly just an archeological space, a museum since beneath it is the tomb of King David, a holy shrine for the Jews and I suppose they did not want a church right above. But in the 5th-century, this holy place was called “Sion, Mother of all the Churches”. 

This name is fitting since it is here that the Church was born. As Pope St John Paul II wrote shortly after visiting this place: 

The Church, while pointing to Christ in the mystery of his passion, also reveals her own mystery: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the Church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Triduum paschale, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed and “concentrated' for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. – Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 5.

The photo above is focussed on a carved stone capital from c.1335 that is part of the canopy over the platform where, perhaps, the altar would have once stood. This carving is interesting because of its Eucharistic symbolism. Over the past few days we have seen some other early Christian symbols such as the anchor, and the peacock. Here in the cenacle, in the place where Jesus gave us the Eucharist, we have the pelican. To be precise, two pelicans are shown plucking at the breast of the central pelican, and this symbol is known as the ‘Pelican in piety’. It was believed that pelicans would feed their own young with their own flesh and blood, and so this became an image of Christ feeding the Christian people: the Church receives its life from the Eucharist which is the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood; Ecclesia de Eucharistia. 

So St Thomas Aquinas prayed in his hymn, Adoro Te devote: 

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine, me immundum munda tuo Sanguine: cujus una stilla salvum facere totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Lord Jesus, Good Pelican, wash my filth and cleanse me with Your Blood, one drop of which can free the entire world of all its sins.

PHOTO 30: Standing at the doorway that leads up to the cenacle, we look back towards the tallest building in the area, built on the summit of Mount Sion. This is the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition, which commemorates the fact that Our Lady, the “Daughter of Sion” fittingly ended her earthly life somewhere nearby on Mount Sion. Psalm 87, therefore, although it refers to the holy mountain of Sion has also long been regarded as alluding to Our Lady. For the Lord has preferred her to all others and has dwelt within her; like a city whose walls are never breached, so has she remained ever virgin yet is the abode of the great King: 

On the holy mountain is his city cherished by the Lord. The Lord prefers the gates of Sion to all Jacob's dwellings. Of you are told glorious things, O city of God! – Psalm 87:1-3

Saturdays, of course, are dedicated to Mary, so within the Dormition Abbey, we had gathered to sing glorious things concerning the Mother of God.  As we headed back to the Old City of Jerusalem, passing by the Sion Gate, I stopped to marvel at the many beautiful roses that bloomed here. They were another fitting tribute to Our Lady, and a glorious end to our tour on Lady Day in the Holy Land. 

Tomorrow: Reliving Easter Sunday at dawn by the Empty Tomb; Bethesda and Mary’s birthplace; Bar Mitzvah celebrations.

[pamphletstoinspire]

The oldest Byzantine icon of Mary, c. 600, encaustic, at Saint Catherine's Monastery retains much of Greek realist style.

Meet Mary: Mary In The Early Church

The authors of the New Testament focus the overwhelming majority of their attention on Jesus and his ministry, not on his mother. The reasons for this are obvious: Jesus is God, Mary is not. If Christ’s divine nature and primacy were not clearly and solidly established, devotion to his mother would make no sense; worse, it could morph into the type of goddess worship so common in the ancient Near East.

The same principle held true for the early Church. Establishing Christ’s primacy had to come first; otherwise their claims to be the very Body of Christ, would sound like lunacy. Yet even so, we still find acknowledgment of and devotion to the mother of Jesus from apostolic times.

The oldest historical evidence we have of Marian devotion among early Christians comes from the catacombs. These tombs of the Christian dead, scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, bear witness to their affection for Mary, their hope in her intercession, and their confidence in her place in heaven. As early as the end of the first century after Christ, they began including Mary in frescoes on the walls of the Roman catacombs. At times she is shown with her son; at other times she appears alone. Common images include Mary as the model of virginity and Mary as the orans — the woman at prayer. Scenes of Mary at the Annunciation and the Nativity are also on the walls.

One of the most significant frescoes is in the catacombs of St. Agnes in Rome. There, Mary stands between Peter and Paul, her arms outstretched to both. Dating back to the first years of Christianity, whenever Peter and Paul appear together in religious imagery, they are symbolizing the one Church of Christ, a Church of authority and of evangelization, a Church for both Jew and Gentile. Mary’s prominent position between the two illustrates the Apostolic Church’s understanding of her as “Mother of the Church.”

The many images of Mary, and their location within the catacombs, also make it clear that the early Christians saw Mary not simply as a historical person, but as a source of protection and intercession. This symbolic use of her image points to the reality of their relationship with her. In seeing her as the Mother of the Church, they saw her relating to them, to all Christians, as any good mother would: protecting them, teaching them, and helping them by her prayers.

Then, within about a hundred years of Jesus’ death, the leaders and teachers in the early Church had come to describe Mary as “the New Eve.” What did they mean by this?

In Genesis, when Adam sinned, he did not sin alone. His wife disobeyed God before he did and then tempted him to disobedience as well. Man fell from grace, and Original Sin entered his nature because of Adam’s sin, but Eve had played an instrumental role in that Fall.

So, too, with man’s redemption. When man was given the possibility of being restored to grace and cleansed of Original Sin, that possibility came about through Christ’s saving death on the Cross. But at the foot of that Cross was a woman, a woman who had made Jesus’ death possible by making his life possible. With her yes to the angel Gabriel, Mary, like Eve, played an instrumental, albeit secondary role, in man’s redemption.

St. Justin Martyr (d. 165), the early Church’s first great defender of Christian teaching, made much use of this metaphor, describing Mary as the “obedient virgin” in contrast to Eve, “the disobedient virgin”:

[The son of God] became man through the Virgin [so] that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed in the same way in which it had originated. For Eve, while a virgin incorrupt, conceived the word that proceeded from the serpent, and brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary was filled with faith and joy when the angel Gabriel told her the glad tidings . . . And through her he was born . . .]

St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202), another great defender of Christian orthodoxy, also wrote about Mary as the New Eve who participated in Christ’s work of salvation:

[Just as Eve, wife of Adam, yet still a virgin, became, by herdisobedience, the cause of death for herself and the wholehuman race, so, too, Mary, espoused but yet a virgin, became,by her obedience, the cause of salvation for herselfand the whole human race . . . And so it was that the knotof Eve’s disobedience was loosed by Mary’s obedience. Forwhat the virgin Eve bound fast by her refusal to believe, thisthe Virgin Mary unbound by her belief.]

Later, St. Ambrose (d. 397) further developed the Christian understanding of the New Eve:

[It was through a man and a woman that flesh was cast fromParadise; it was through a virgin that flesh was linked toGod . . . Eve is called mother of the human race, but Marywas mother of salvation.]

St. Jerome (d. 420) neatly summarized the parallel when he wrote, “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”

In addition to this understanding of Mary’s role in salvation history, the first centuries of Christianity also provide us with numerous examples of direct prayer to Mary as a means of intercession for the graces and protection of her son.

St. Irenaeus referred to Mary as Eve’s special “advocate,” interceding through prayer for her foremother’s forgiveness and salvation, while St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. 350) wrote of Mary in heaven praying for those still on Earth.

St. Ephraem (d. 373), one of the great Eastern preachers, prayed to Mary directly in several of his sermons, as did St. Gregory Nanzianzen (d. 389).

From the latter half of the fourth century on, such examples of Marian prayers simply abound, from the sermons of St. Ambrose to those of the Eastern Father St. Epiphanius. The most complete ancient prayer to Mary, however, dates back to an even earlier time, 250 AD. It is called the Sub Tuum:

[We fly to your patronage,O holy Mother of God.Despise not our petitionsin our necessities,but deliver us from all dangers,O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.]

The early Christians knew that the same woman who had rocked the infant Jesus to sleep, picked him up when he fell, and held his broken body in her arms could also be trusted to help them through their own trials, both spiritual and temporal. Their trust in and love for Mary was more than evident by 431 AD, when the Council of Ephesus — an authoritative meeting of Church leaders — formally defended her title as “Mother of God.” Already, there were cathedrals dedicated to her in Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and after the council, devotion to Mary flourished even more in both the East and the West. Marian prayers, Marian liturgical feasts, Marian icons, and Marian paintings were soon everywhere in the Christian world.

The son’s place had been secured, his Church established and fortified. And now, the seeds of truth about his mother, seeds foreshadowed in the Old Testament, planted in the New Testament, and cultivated in the early Church, could finally come to fruition. Nothing that came forth would or could in any way diminish the truth and glory of Christ. Rather, the fruits of authentic Marian devotion could only show more clearly, more beautifully, the possibilities offered to man by Christ’s saving grace.

BY: CHARLIE MCKINNEY

[the-transfeminine-mystique]

do you believe in real presence? i'm unclear how anyone who upholds that doctrine could support desecration of the host, given that after the words of institution and epiklesis (do they have that? idk for sure) the host is not something that belongs to the RCC per se but is rather the flesh of christ. i'm episcopalian personally and have no love for the RCC's positions but this distresses me. i hope this doesn't come across as rude, i don't mean it to

There are a few ways I could answer this. One is by putting Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” in conversation with prophetic actions as a genre, as Ted Smith did in Weird John Brown with the figure of freedom-fighter John Brown. Another is by talking a little bit about real presence in the Eucharist and asking to what extent it is being used as a point of distraction from other real presences that are disavowed. While I did not explicitly bring Benjamin in to bear on this paper (partially because it was a ≤20 minute conference paper to be read aloud), I would say that a combination of the two is essential in looking back at Tom Keane’s actions in 1989 and reading them as a voice of God and not violence against God. 

(This is going to be a slightly long post)

For the question “May I kill?” meets its irreducible answer in the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” This commandment precedes the deed, just as God was “preventing” the deed. But just as it may not be fear of punishment that enforces obedience, the injunction becomes inapplicable, incommensurable, once the deed is accomplished. No judgment of the deed can be derived from the commandment. And so neither the divine judgment nor the grounds for this judgment can be known in advance. Those who base a condemnation of all violent killing of one person by another on the commandment are therefore mistaken. It exists not as a criterion of judgment, but as a guideline for the actions of persons or communities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and, in exceptional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it.

Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. I, 250.

I was perhaps flippant in my last sentence in the post that this is in response to. But I do believe in real presence and view Tom Keane’s desecration of the host as a prophetic and blameless act. Prophetic actions are always breaking actions — if there were no laws or boundaries or codes broken, then it wouldn’t be prophetic. The breaking is, however, oriented towards God. This is the reason why, in the paper I linked, I believe actions like Keane’s fit so well with the liturgical theology of Gordon Lathrop, who emphasizes the juxtapositions, the breakings of meaning, the jagged edges around our symbols which, when taken together, point us towards God as we can know God. There was a prescription for the treatment of the host, and Keane violated it. And the question that Christianity has long since, and increasingly, forgotten since becoming the metaphysical wing of empire in 313, but the question demanded by the action, is “why?” Benjamin’s example with regard to the proscription of killing is killing in self-defense, long recognized halakhically as either a just violation of the commandment or not a true violation at all. What might it mean to ask if Keane was, in a manner of speaking, acting in self-defense? 

The matter of “real presence” in the Eucharist is also of interest, because a focus on it obscures a competing real presence, which is the body of the Church, as well as Christ’s stated affinity, the poor, marginalized, and imprisoned (Matt 25:36–40). From the early church, there was a conception of Christ having a “real body” (corpus verum) and a “mystical body” (corpus mysticum) on earth. Until the Berengar of Tours/Lanfranc dispute in the 11th century, the corpus verum referred unambiguously to the Church and the corpus mysticum referred to the Sacrament. Subsequent to the first widespread articulations of the doctrine of real presence, the two terms switched. But I think it is important to note how late that switch was, and how late even compared to that real presence was to emerge as a formal doctrine (Trent, AD 1551). This isn’t to dismiss out-of-hand concerns about real presence, it is instead to ask whether, when we put so much emphasis on the real presence in the Eucharist, we aren’t obscuring and disrespecting real presence elsewhere.

And that was what the Catholic Church (and, speaking as a fellow Episcopalian, the Episcopal Church) had grown accustomed to doing. The sacrament revolving around the breaking of Christ’s body had grown so pristine and focused upon that the incursion of Christ’s broken body into the Cathedral was viewed as a profaning. After Tom Keane’s action, Christ’s broken body lay on both sides of the altar rail. On one side it was treated with reverence and care, and on the other side it was handcuffed, dragged onto a stretcher, and hauled out by the NYPD. The desecration of the body of Christ in the form of the host needed to happen in order to reveal in explicit terms the carelessness with which the Church desecrated, and regarded the desecration of, the body of Christ in the form of the poor, the sick, and the marginalized.

I’m not sure if you followed the link to the paper, but this is a relevant excerpt from it.

If liturgical meaning is created through juxtaposition, then we might do well to notice parallels between the Eucharistic host on the one hand and Keane’s own body along with all others participating in the die-in on the other: the corpus verum and corpus mysticum respectively. Sacrilege though it might have been, Keane did nothing to the host that the Catholic Church was not already doing to those with AIDS.The violence done to the corpus verum was mirrored by the violence done to the corpus mysticum made present in the cathedral, both really and symbolically, by the die-in. Shortly after the desecrated host fell to the ground, Keane’s body did as well. That the Church identified sacrilege in the desecration of the host but not in the desecration of the bodies of the sick, the poor, and the oppressed — that the host was removed from the ground with honor and reverence while Keane’s body was handcuffed and removed by police — was itself the fundamental theological problem that “Stop the Church” sought to address. The juxtaposition between the two corpora, the juxtaposition insisted on by Tom Keane’s action, served to communicate the central meaning of the liturgy of protest.

...

This is not to argue that “Stop the Church” should be the model for liturgical worship, that die-ins or desecrated hosts should necessarily proliferate (although it cannot with integrity argue that they should not, that this disruption is all well and good because it happened in the past but a similar one today or in our particular congregation would be unacceptable). It is instead to understand the demonstration as having a particular liturgical meaning and to “read [it] with some sympathy,” despite its breaking from known and approved liturgical forms. To read it as a catholic exception is not to bring the entirety of Church practice under its rubric, but rather to accept that the things that it said were things that the Church needed to hear, and it said them in ways that the Church cannot responsibly ignore. It was, in Lathrop’s, words, “a protest corresponding to the iconoclasm of the meeting itself, a protest that can be important for the health of the Christian faith.” Running throughout the demonstration’s radical disruptions of the Mass was an invocation to the Church to take more seriously its actions, both liturgically and politically. It served as an implicit critique of the exclusions of a church founded on Jesus’ radical inclusion of the outsider. The Church, “Stop the Church” said, is happy to pray for those dying of AIDS so long as they are outside its walls, but will have them arrested for trespassing when they come inside. The Church is offended, it said, when Christ’s body is desecrated at theMass, but it is perfectly willing to participate in the desecration of Christ’s body in the streets.

Jane D. Nichols, “ACT UP, "Stop the Church," and the Theological Implications of a Liturgical Protest,” 8–9.

[parkerpeterholland]

12 days of Christmas history pagan holidays vs Christian

Merry Christmas Wishes To you from our team. Enjoy Reading!

The number twelve has an abnormal essentialness in the retribution of time:

There are twelve sun powered months, relating generally to twelve zodiacal houses along the sun's ecliptic way. In the Christian legend, Christ is trailed by 12 missionaries.

There are customarily twelve 'hours' of sunshine, as figured by sun-dials, and subsequently we determine our twenty four hours of light and night which contain our unit of one sun powered 'day'. This is known as 'clear sun oriented time', when contrasted with the clock-time we will in general keep in current occasions, known as 'mean sun powered time'.

There is a distinction of around twelve days between the old 'Julian' and more up to date 'Gregorian' calendric frameworks being used in Europe and Asia Minor. These progressions were organized to counteract the festival of Easter (determined dependent on the Jewish Lunar schedule) from crawling further away from the Spring Equinox into summer.

There are twelve days denoting the conventional European and Eastern 'Christmas' or 'Yule' bubbly midwinter period… These were at times each viewed as speaking to a different month of the sun based year in numerous pre-present day European societies. Yuletide started at the winter solstice (approx. 22nd December) and completed on the third January, though Christmastide was from 25th December to sixth January (Revelation).

Starting points of Christmas Day

The foundation of the date of the Nativity celebration on the 25th December in Christianity was not in reality officially settled upon for a long time after the time of Jesus' alleged life and demise. In the late agnostic Roman Realm, the 25th day of December was praised as Natalis Invicti – the resurrection of the worshipped 'Unconquerable Sun' – Sol Invictus. In spite of the fact that presented as a late Supreme Clique under Aurelian in 274CE (250 years or so after the passing of Jesus) the religion of Sol Invictus was likely in light of the abundance of puzzle cliques all through the Roman Realm which utilized the iconography of a young sunlight based male god, apparently got from the more established delineations of more seasoned divine beings, for example, Apollo, Adonis and Attis. Adonis, etymologically in any event, seems to have a Semitic cause (think about Adonai – 'Master'). These had their causes in the standards of Sunlight based godhood connected to the extraordinary 'static' or 'authority' puzzle cliques of the first thousand years BCE: Those of Delian Apollo, Apollo at Delphi, Eleusis, Samothrace and the secrets of Cybele and Attis in Phrygia, among others. Such cliques by and large endless supply of land loci – fixed religion destinations – and the cooperation in initiatory custom for the reasons for either getting prophets, recuperating or higher information. They themselves may have created from prominent augmentations of the initially more firmly monitored internal puzzle ceremonial conventions encompassing the exclusive classes of rulers and religious hierophants of the prior 'palatial' societies (Minoan and Mycenaean), themselves duplicating the antiquated Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies, which are the most established for which we have proof, and were in coherence until in any event the beginning of the first thousand years CE.

Wars with Carthage and the extraordinary developments of the 'savage' Celts during Rome's Late Republican Period (c.3rdC BCE) prompted the importation of 'outside' riddle religions, for example, that of Cybele and her delighted ministers into Rome during the late Punic wars. Another well known elated religious puzzle faction was that of the Bacchanalia (Dionysia) from Greece. The Celtic obsession towards the sunlight based god Apollo (whom they knew as Belenos) made them really attack Greece and sack Delphi in 179BCE! These occasions, alongside Rome's expanding extension and social cooperation prompted the flood in prominence of riddle religions all in all during the late Republican period, to such an extent that by the 1stC CE Roman Sovereigns were themselves visiting Eleusis and Samothrace to move toward becoming starts. These cliques indicated to clarify the insider facts of the sun, the moon, the planets and stars and the most profound puzzles of nature, passing and recovery. Maybe obviously, the nurturing Sun was a key piece of this, and turned out to be a piece of another 'elementalism' and drive towards rearrangements and 'versatility' of folklore.

As the Roman and Greek social nations extended and thrived, initiatory puzzle religions turned out to be less a guilty pleasure of the elites, and furthermore less joined to fixed topographical areas, forming into a plenty of portable ideological 'establishments' delighted in by increasingly standard people. These very likely copied the insider facts and legendary systems of the more established 'official' puzzles whose (frequently well off) starts and suppliants should stay discreet on torment of death or profound torment, and such secrets were bit by bit purchased out beyond all detectable inhibitions and talked about and conjectured over. This procedure was helped by the dissemination of education and the spread of and improvement of the thoughts of the 'Thinkers 'of traditional and Greek time 'Magna Graecia' who tried to examine the constancies and certainties behind old orally-transmitted folklore.

A genuine case of such reductionist procedures at their apotheosis are the 'Hermetic' and 'Gnostic' religions in Hellenized Asia Minor, Center East and North Africa, of which Christianity was to develop as an early branch inside the irritable and millenarianist Hasmonean-time Jewish world with its critical diaspora. These utilized Pythagorean, Non-romantic and Luxurious reductionist speculations and a talk including the standards of the spirit as a type of undying light in their prophetic religious stories, scarcely concealing such thoughts behind the character accounts of more established folklores.

Such express intellectualism was not to everybody's taste, obviously, and other increasingly semiotic types of riddle factions dependent on custom, fantasy and imagery served the requirements of those with progressively conventional (less orientalised) tastes. Orphism was maybe the most seasoned and best-settled of these customs – conceivably the 'granddaddy' of all, with its inceptions in the primary portion of the first thousand years BCE in any event. Its starts looked to 'filter' themselves so as to accomplish a superior the great beyond. Mithraism was surely the most well known of the more up to date factions, spreading from Asia Minor into the most northern and western degrees of the Roman Realm between the first and third hundreds of years of the BC. Comparative famous secret religions based on the Thracian god Sabazios (a local relative of Dionysus) and European syncretic cliques including the Celtic divine beings, for example, that of the 'Danubian Horsemen' including Epona in Eastern and northern Europe, and an abundance of others all the more ineffectively comprehended because of scarcity of material proof. These all had the regular attribute of underscoring the situation of the characters of 'Sol' and 'Luna' in their iconography – nearly as an 'identification' of their 'puzzle' status.

A Roman alleviation delineating the feast of Sol, Luna and Mithras..

A wonderful case of a plaque delineating the 'Danubian Horsemen' and their focal goddess... apparently a rendition of Epona.

A plaque portraying the 'Danubian Horsemen' and their focal goddess (Epona): Sol Invictus rides his quadriga at the highest point of the picture, which manages the symbolism of the religion's riddles.

Sol and Luna remain above Sabazios in this cultic Roman plaque

A coin of Ruler Constantine I who changed over to Christianity and took the Realm with him. The delineation on the front-side is of Sol Invictus.

The revered sun was conflated in this time with the more established Greek god Apollo, whose character was supported by the Romanised Celtic people groups from the Danube bowl to the Atlantic northwest of Europe, in their very own syncretic religions. Such religions all through the Domain had uprooted those of the more established Capitoline and Olympian Roman and Greek gods among the all inclusive communities, in spite of the fact that these still had a metro task to carry out.

Maybe the most significant, mainstream and long-running faction of the senior Greek divine beings was that of Dionysus, whose most established celebration – the Country Dionysia – concurred with the time of the winter solstice whose Greek month was named out of appreciation for the antiquated ocean god: Poseidonia. This was a celebration of sprucing up in the pretense of the entourage of the god: men as satyrs or silenoi and ladies as maenads. It was additionally, essentially, a celebration of the revelation of Dionysus to humanity, which praised the god's transubstantiation of water into wine and the riddles of growing nature: topics clearly acquired into later christianity. At Delphi, there was a custom that Apollo left to live among the Hyperboreans during the month when Dionysus showed among the individuals at this celebration, at which there was much singing of famous tunes by all classes in Greek society – a convention getting by in the cutting edge European Christmas singing merriments.

After the third century CE the ascent of heathen, proficient, literalised and intellectualized religious propensities in the Hellenized Eastern Domain and North Africa was progressively to obscure the western conventions of baffling non-literal folklore, which had been at the foundation of European religion for centuries. Apollo, Sol, Belenos, Attis, Dionysus and Adonis progressed toward becoming 'Logos' – supplanted by a scholarly man-god who professed to be 'the light of the world', promising – as an end-result of a vow of loyalty – 'recovery' after death into a perfect eternity, safe from the disarray of life. The ideal model of altruistic Majestic power truth be told.

[back-and-totheleft]

The lost ‘Evita’

With Paramount again in default, Jerry Weintraub and Guy McElwaine of the Weintraub Entertainment Group -- with Oliver Stone and Meryl Streep in mind -- moved in and began attempts to buy the rights to "Evita" from the bigger and more established studio. By then, Stone had won the Oscar for directing "Platoon" and the same year had released his stark "Salvador" -- a film with some of the same frenetic Latin American overtones that might be put to good use in "Evita." Stigwood, who signed a three-year deal with the Weintraub group in March 1987, saw "Platoon" and became excited about Stone. 

Paralleling the Hollywood developments were cataclysmic changes in Argentina, paving the way for filming the musical in the country where Eva Peron lived and died. When Stigwood first produced "Evita" on the London stage in 1978, copies of the Rice libretto were banned in Argentina . Several importers of the record were arrested and clapped into jail for sizable terms. RSO's Oakes recalls that when he phoned an agent in Argentina to discuss a Latin American recording of the musical, "at the first mention of the word 'Evita,' the man silenced me and left to call me on another telephone." Argentina was not in a mood for moderation. Stigwood recalls that "when 'Jesus Christ, Superstar,' (the first Webber-Rice opera) opened in Buenos Aires, they bombed the theater." In 1980, a cache of Broadway cast "Evita" albums were publicly burned in the Argentine capital. Then came the failed Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982, and the ouster of Argentina's the ruling military junta in December 1983. Under relaxed rules, a nostalgic wave of Peronism swept the long-repressed country. Though anyone found painting the name "Evita" on a wall could have been killed in the late '70s, banners bearing the picture of the idolized former first lady now blossomed again throughout the land. Not so coincidentally, MCA Records shipped 5,000 copies of the "Evita" score (featuring Patti LuPone) to stores in Buenos Aires. "I sent Oliver Stone and Bill Oakes on a location scouting expedition to Argentina last year," said Stigwood. "And it was wildly successful. The government opened up places which had been closed since Eva Peron died." The party even came back bearing a photo of Stone, hands outstretched, on the balcony from which Eva Peron had greeted huge crowds -- memorialized in the song "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." "Now the government wants that movie made," said WEG's McElwaine. "History has altered their view, and the resurgence of 'Peronism' favors us." 

During the Stone tour, the government promised 100,000 troops as extras for the Nazi-like military crowd scenes that so typified the Peron years. And the film's budget will benefit, as well, from the favorable rate of currency. "We will be able to afford major scenes which would never be possible in other countries," said Oakes, who pointed out that to charter a private plane to Eva's birthplace only cost $250 round trip. "Her birthplace was a lonely spot on immense pampas," Stone recalled, "where she grew up and where I talked to people who still remembered her." But, having failed to film in Spain and later in Mexico, the production team is taking no chances. "We met with both factions in the upcoming election," said Oakes. "And we have guarantees that the project is welcome no matter who wins those contests this May." When Stone signed on just before that scounting trip, "Evita" remained uncast, though Stone was apparently already leaning toward Streep. Stigwood still thought Madonna might work out. "At Stone's first meeting with her, it looked like they might hit it off," he said. "But on the second meeting, it fell apart." RSO chalks the failure up to Madonna's "runaway ego." McElwaine said there was "a major difference of opinion about how the role was interpreted. That was it."

Meryl Streep was in the wings. "Oliver brought her in, and it was a 'great match,' " said McElwaine. At the same time, Patti LuPone, through her representative, the Gresh Agency, made one last bid for the part. "She would have died to play that part," said a spokesman. "But Stone said she was too old. But isn't it ironic: Patti is exactly the same age as Meryl Streep." "She may have 'died to play the part,' but she wouldn't make a screen test," said Stigwood. "Still, I have immense respect for her." To firm up the deal, Streep -- with Stone and the film's musical directors, went into a New York City recording studio and did preliminary dubbings of the score. The results, said Stigwood, were astounding: "She learned the entire score in a week. Not only can she sing, but she's sensational -- absolutely staggering." Streep's singing ability is perhaps her least known talent, though she sang in several New York productions -- "The Happy Time" among them. Her biography points out that she played Ado Annie in a high school production of "Oklahoma" and once wished to "become an opera star." That may be just as well. Stigwood confirmed that "Evita" on screen will remain essentially an opera -- with all dialogue sung -- save for a few spoken transitions.

-Peter H. Brown, "Desperately Seeking Evita," The Washington Post, March 5 1989 [x]

[obannthepunished]

This weeks notes Mostly transcription this week i think, i tried my best for nott’s scene. as usual ignore the asterisks because theyre just notes to myself.

peace

Molly is Nervous (tm) abiut sticking around, or going to the gentleman

theres a fight in the evening nip, beau is fucking excited its thedd (halfling from sewers) and lewis (one of the ones that had run from the research facility)

N: "I got three gold on Thedd" M: Seems a bit late for a wager at this point N: Just you and me! M:.... fair. I'm in.

Thedd wins by standing on lewis' throat til he passes out holy shit M: (drops coins into Nott's hand) N, smug: Thank you :)

oh now Nott and Beau are fighting jesus christ. C: "I cast Haste on Beauregard." Laura: YOU PIECE OF SHIT **

J: Inflict Wounds (17 dmg) ((Fjord, changing his voice: "I GOT 5 GOLD ON THE HORNY ONE)) B: WHAT THE FUCK JESTER, Stunning Strike, (7dmg, jes fails con save (6), she is stunned, extra attack from haste, 6dmg) J: (is stunned for this round, until the end of beaus turn) B: Beaus the shit outta her ( 12dmg, 6dmg) ((MOLLY blinds her)) B: still goin, but misses 2 of em, hits on the third (12dmg) J: (goes down)

caleb: goes for the low five, and Beau just.... ignores him unintentionally bless.

Frumpkin is sent to lick the blood off of jesters face, Beau cleans her up <33

They are called to the gentleman's side

offered a forward of 500gp and a pot of 4500g to travel to Shady Creek Run, the criminals town, and free and bring back Ophelia... something, who corresponds often with the gentleman

the tldr of the second (250 adv, 1750 pot) is that the swamps are dangerous for the gentlemans safehouse which has gone dark.

theyre promised resources for missions from the gentleman

Jester: "IS HE MOIST"(re the gentleman)

they take on both, starting with the swamps. The Gentleman advises they travel the 70 miles above ground.

Fjord is so fuckin smooth talky wtf. they get greater heling potion(s)?? + cure disease? Caleb's gettin some ink + paper, but its not good for spells 8(

Nott keeps making water puns. im counting 4. and a hankie.

Jester wand of smiles Kutha again, poor kutha 8(

Caleb + beau ( + assumedly nott) go to pumat's

have they paid their inn tab??

Cay buys incense for rituals, probably find familiar lbh. he also gets his magical ink+parchment.

Beau is interested in the bracers of defence. Theyre like 1200gp tho arent they??? B: how much PS: 1200 gold B:HOLY SHIT PUMAT. [snip] B: HOLY SHIT PUMAT(S).

C: (tells beau he cast haste) B: YOU SLIP SOMETHIN IN MY DRINK CALEB??? WHAT THE FUCK MAN

they have 6 horses, 2 pulling, 6 solo. Jes is driving thr cart.

Caleb: (brings up the feywild) Jester: oh the traveller has told me about that!!

Frumpkin is (one of) the first cats yasha has seen 8'O shes fuckin loving it **

lots of fucking soldiers heading to war. hundreds, if not thousands.

night falls as they reach the origin of the. road. they cant find a campground because tal rolled SHIT even with advantage.

Jester + Fjord take first watch. (13. Nothing) Yasha + Beau on second watch. (14. Also Nothing.) B: We should huddle together for warmth??? Y: Fr- Frumpkin is keeping me. very warm. are you cold??? do you want my, my cloak? B: No, no my, my (jacket??? cant remember what she said) is fine, its htin, but its warm Then they talk about Yasha ands this is the furthest shes ever been. Y: "i like this stuff. Grass, and, things. you know." B: You appreciate grass?

B: What was your favourite part of xorhas? Y: I... dont know if i HAD a favourite part

this was the CUTEST shit

third watch is Nott + Molly (10, nothing happens) taliesin trying a jester voice makes me the heart eyes emoji

goblins canonically steal children what THE FUCK. And EAT them. But Nott, apparently, has not eaten a child. "My clan, we STOLE from people. money and clothing and things. And when things got tough, we'd steal the people too." Goblins dont do family. "I do not have an urge to kill and eat children" "i have cravings for... rats... cats-" (Caleb snaps) Frumpkin goes back to the feywild Yasha: =(

taliesin taking watch after rolling shit cmon. he gets 16. Noon, broken cloud cover, a tiny distant curl of smoke. oh not again. its a mile away tho so like

the smoke is coming from a small shack.

"For you, Fjord, I will make Frumpkin a bird." He doesn't though but its the sentiment.

Yasha gets shoulder frumpkin back!

The shack door opens to "an elderly fullblood orc" with hair and beard and all that shit.

for 1 (one) gp a month, you TOO can bother a whole old man orc. Jesus christ he had a battleaxe. puts it down, invites yasha and molly in. THIS IS SO UNNECESSARY Molly buys hide armor + 2lb of meat for 16gp. M: Perception check 10. Matt: "Okay." There is sOMETHING SUS about this.

and theyre off again, i am glad for this. i do not like elderly orc man.

yasha and molly double up on that goof "we totally killed him, three times." its very good

M + Y: What kind of meat is this? (fuck their rolls) its meat! its good meat!

M+Y take first watch, its 12. Nothing happens. Yasha collects some flowers to press awww. N+C Second watch, they roll w advantage lmao. 22. something is going to happen. "you hear the snapping of a twig. you see a shifting of shadow. a few things" Cay casts mage armor

Two arrows for Caleb. con saving throw. probably poison. 10. its poison. he is poisoned. fucks frickin sake. is it gnolls?? is it goblins??? hyenas??? furred barking things. wolves.

two ogres, a cluster of wolves, and goblin-like creatures

initiative order:

Beau: Nat20, 24 Goblins Caleb: 18 Fjord, Molly: 16 Ogres Nott: 15 Yasha, Jester: 6 Wolves

B: Jester, puppies!!

Yasha and Jester shrug off poison of those that hit them.

Caleb casts slow on one ogre. unrelated liam is so good???

oh yeah eldritch blast gets two beams of eldritch blast at lv3

Molly radiants once scimitar and cuts RIGHT through one of em. misses the second.

Caleb hit with a javelin, 4-5 inches into his stomach, holding itself upright. Caleb keeps the spell going.

Nott pretends shes one of them and aims for Caleb, hits the book instead. and nails it.

Jester (traumatised): CALEB!!! cure wounds 2nd level. but he is pretty fucked so its ok. he heals to full its ok its ok. Jester cares so much

Yasha pulls necrotic shroud! which as someone who cant watch TM, this is a reveal for me! :D

J: (to cale) Youre alive! How did- C: (monotonous) haha! funny, joke.

Fjord explodes a goblin Molly cuts one in half, vertically

Molly curses the ogre attacking beau

Nott shoots the ogre, and then the goblin next to her... but misses and is fucked

Yash gets the hdywtdt on one of the ogres

Beau @ necrotic shroud!yasha: you look... dope. You look FUCKIN HOT LETS GO.

cay has magic missile!

fjord gets the second hdywtdt w eldritch blast.

cay n molly go to retrieve stolen goods from goblin but apparently just Molly

Yasha necrotic shrouds when shes startled awake. F: Can you fly? Y: ...no J: Have you tried? Y:... yeah.

Yasha n Caleb have a conversation in celestial C: No really, are you an angel? Y: of sorts, i guess [snip] C: You will have to explain this now, or later. do you want to explain this now, or later? Y: i- ill explain it, just, maybe we should clean up first!

i have no idea whats going on but i heard marisha say "bad dragon" and im gonna die

J: Nott, are you okay? Was it weird to fight other goblins? N: it was... rewarding. I'm only sad that... one got away. B: Nott, do you share the same hatred in yourself? [snip] N: Do... do I hate myself? No. I'm... I'm cool. F: You seem excited to hurt your own kind. N: I know, I'm a goblin, for as long as I've been alive I haven't felt comfortable in, in there. I havent felt comfortable in my skin. It feels like I shouldnt be, i dont fit in with them. I feel, this feels WRONG, like I should be in a different body. The way they act, the way they are, it's not ME. They do horrible things to people, and they seem fine with it. I never felt the same with them. It's not that I don't like myself or anything, I think I'm okay, I just don't like how I feel when I see my hands, or my feet. They just feel wrong. I just want to be... different. C: Was there anyone you were close to? N: Not in my clan, but there was... someone. They tried me on different jobs but I was not a soldier, i was not a good cook, not good at sweing, or building, they stuck me with the torturer. I was the torturers assistant. there was a halfling village not far away and they captured someone from the village, they wanted me to kill him, but instead, I was kind to him. And he started talking, and my... fellow gobbies didn't like that, but they allowed it, because i was getting valuable information. [about halflings resources] I became friends with him. He was nice. J: What happened to him? N: I hope he got away J: Did you leave before him? N: We left together [snip J: Did you love him? N: .... I don't know. The halfling taught her how to speak in halfling, taught her about alchemy, when he has taught her everything, the goblins said to kill him. And she didnt want to. so she got REAL drunk, and shot another goblin in the ass. N: I hope he got away. We ran off in separate directions. I've been running ever since.

+1 to the quest log, find Nott's friend.

Beaus trying to be nice i love her.

C: I do not care. I know who you are now. (<333)

B: I think we're all a little bit of island of misfits.

F: You showed a lot of bravery tonight B: Nott, The brave. J: Maybe there is a comma.

Y: Nott, I'm sorry we made fun of you eating children N: I HAVE NOT EATEN CHILDREN

B: What got you locked up with this guy? (Caleb) N: Being me. Stealing food? C: You told me it was cherry wine. N: OKAY IT WAS BOOZE.

it is now raining.

M: Well, I'm sleeping underneath the cart! if anyone wants to join me... J: We wont all fit! M: We'll snuggle. *

Molly + Jester are under the cart.

"i tasted a baby once. ONCE. they were handing around a bowl, I didn't know-" -N Liam takes Sam's flask and takes a swig so i assume caleb does the same in canon C: "Who am I to judge?"