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shinygoku · 3 years

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James for the character ask

Ahh, the ✨Splendid Engine✨ himself!

First impression

...Red Thomas? :v

Impression now

Honestly, James may be one of the more interesting characters if you really get in close and examine him and his dynamics with the other characters. And maybe this is me having drawn the wrong conclusion, but my own reading into him has me find him actually rather misunderstood, in and out of universe. You've heard of The Sad Story of Henry? You better be ready for the Tragic Tale of James!

So, at a basic, surface level look, James is The Vain One. He's the only Red [Standard Gauge] Engine on the Island (somehow??) and won't let anyone forget about it. He obsesses over the condition and colour of his coat. He resents having to pull trucks, which are often dirty and full of contents that would make him dirtier still. He's astonishingly rude to anyone near him who isn't sufficiently clean but he'll also get jealous of someone who has fresher paint than him.

What if I told you that his Shiny Colouration to the NWR livery is but a small part of the larger picture?

Peering closer, and it's more overt in the books than the show, but of the 7 deadly sins, he's arguably less Prideful (than say, Gordon) and instead, more Wrath?

James has one [red] hot temper, it doesn't take much to set him off and he simmers in resentment for a long time afterwards. While he started it, his tiff with Toby resulted in a completely avoidable headlong crash into the Tar Tankers, all because he was too busy fuming to pay attention to his job. What got him so mad in the first place there? The Bootlace Incident.

Poor James! Much like Henry and the Tunnel, the Bootlaces is one thing that continues to hound him even long after the event, and it seems a bit unfair for that card to get played so much, as he was a total noob at the time with Coaches, but when that button is pressed we always see his angry face.

Even without that particular old saw, he is testy about a lot of things. The aforementioned "DIRTY trucks in DIRTY sidings!" comes to mind. He’s (predicted by the Fat Controller himself!) in a bad mood when he suddenly has to pick up Donald’s work after the latter crashed into the signal box. Sometimes he just snaps when the others are talking (to be fair, often Griping) amongst themselves.

Let's rewind all the way back to James' first day on Sodor. He's in his black livery and has wooden brake blocks. Predictably, these don't last and it only takes some trucks shoving him down the hill for them to burn up and him to spill out in a field. Thomas comes by to save him, but that's still one helluva bumpy start to your new home! After that incident, The Fat Controller offers him a new paint colour and allows him to have Red, completely unique (even moreso if you're in a canon where Henry was blue at the time, meaning James isn't just the only one with Red, but the only one to not follow the Blue uniform).

There's still a bit more!

So, he won't shut up about his distinctive paint? He wants to be seen by passengers and have a nice time pulling coaches? He's the smallest of the "Big 3" Tender Engines? He's a one-off deviation from his class with the extended front end, but the difference wasn't significant so none of the others got the same treatment? He’s anxious the whole day after unintentionally wheeshing steam on FC1 (which is sadly not baseless!)?

James, to me, is a character with a pretty huge Inferiority Complex, and his various posturing and claims that he's the best are him trying very hard to believe it.

Unfortunately, he's so obnoxious about the faking it, generally the others ignore what may be lying beneath.

One last bit here! His attitude definitely declined after he buddied up with Gordon and sometimes pulls the Express, so Big G was something of a toxic (but oblivious) influence.

Favourite moment

His overcoming the trucks, complete with a fab remix of his already dope theme! After his disaster of a first day where trucks ran him off the rails, and then his very bumpy few days after being painted with the Coach Break Fluid Pipe and the Steam and being very unfairly punished, he gets to show some of his worth and ability!

He also gets a number of very funny lines in exchanges which are a bit butchered when I put them up here lol, like “Hello, Gordon! Is it tomorrow~? [...] Must have been Instinct!” or (Percy, taking a metaphor literally: The sky’s empty...) “Like your smokebox, Percy!”

Idea for a story

I would Enjoy something where, as is often the case with these asks, someone examines subjects I’ve been rambling about lol. So yeah, a character who isn’t fooled by his dazzling red coat and sees who he is inside, and the possibilities that spring from that would be real neat!

I also have a more silly [albeit Current Events based] idea which is more shallow, but here it is anyway:

In the time(s) of a pandemic (remember Spanish flu? James would), Engines who pull passenger coaches would be given decorative engine size face masks to show a good example to the customers. Some of them feel Rather Silly but regular passenger trains like Thomas on his branch line, and Mr Express Gordon don’t really get to refuse. They just quietly roll their eyes as their lack of ears or a back of their smokeboxes mean the cloth has to be physically taped to the sides of their head and try to maintain their dignity. 😷

Suddenly, James is uncharacteristically eager to pull goods trains, as these engines are much further away from the passengers and visitors to the railway, and thus don’t need to wear them lol

Unpopular opinion

Not sure how unpopular it is, but I really like Angelis’ Liverpool voice coming through much more strongly for James. His read on “Why are you always complaining all the time??” is just excellent, and other Scouse Moments just sound Right to me. Also gotta mention Ringo’s take on James’ sarcastic, very angry HAR HAR in one of the weird Toby episodes, and thanks to ytp splicing that with the word Harbour I think of it a lot haha

Maybe his voice should be more Yorkshire or Lancaster, as that’s where he was made? But (also applies to Thomas) I vibe with Liverpudlian James.

Favourite relationship

It’s actually a bit hard to think of a particular engine, James tends to get grouped with Gordon and Henry (The Big Engines, The Jerk Trio, etc) but as I’ve said, I think him palling up with Gordon was actually pretty bad for James in hindsight. For merch and prolly in the CGI eps, he’s grouped with Thomas and Percy, because Primary Colours I think (though the same colours as Gordon and Henry offered!) but More Marketable. But I dunno, does James really fit in with either group that well?

I think what James needs is less to hang out in the fringe of a clique, and to instead have a real, frank, genuine connection with someone. Then maybe he can make his friendships with the others a bit healthier, too. I just can’t think of any cast members who fill that role at the mo... 🤔

Favourite headcanon

As he is a Mixed Traffic Engine, he’s a Jack of All Tasks (he just prefers some to others!), also under the issues he has, he’s absolutely trying to be a good engine and friend, he just needs some guidance and tons of patience to get there.

#this is ttte #ttte talk #TTTE James #TTTE #James the Red Engine #Thomas the Tank Engine #this is after cutting a fair bit out of the 2nd section and it's still ruddy long! lol

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tyrantisterror · 3 years

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I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun! You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like. I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points. I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece. It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences. It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it. Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so. It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom. Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison. It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei! Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone. Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations. From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well. It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore. Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond! It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight. My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers. READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out. Read at your own peril! YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song. “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis! Tyrantis! Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers. The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper. I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song. I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one. Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya. Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout. So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera. His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.” It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by. AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc. In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions. This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing. Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick. I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong! I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women. Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies. Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong. Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions. Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes. Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile. Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human. Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat. On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset. There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars. The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there). Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years. Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion. There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis. Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim. There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out! Oh wait you did. I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein. Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM. I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy. His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park. John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit. There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right? One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2. Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong. Got that? Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this). Ok? Ok. So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1. There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.” And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently. I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters. Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.” Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger. Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster. The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey. It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me. Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head. He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis. He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle. That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference. Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan. I opted for something a little more toned down here.

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM. Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness. See? Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral. I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen. I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way. They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did. But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown. I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though. We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM. I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion. Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates. During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win. Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero. Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here. As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions. There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go. An ending, if not THE END.

#The Atomic Time of Monsters #A.T.O.M. Trivia

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spiritofmultitudes · 4 years

Text

Metoo until it’s your guy

I’m pretty conflicted and confused about the AH situation. I’m also dealing with some heavy personal stuff and some days this is a great distraction and other days it adds to my misery about the world.

I have questions:

I don’t understand the pap walks during the pandemic - what were they promoting -a strongly heterosexual vibe?

Why in the middle of divorce and custody, did he start so many relationships? Why have the multiple papped walks with 3 different women - why not just one relationship for the paps?

Who organised these and why?

Who leaked his finsta and why?

If they were contracted to do the pap walks (as opposed to choosing to them without a contract), why have most of these women been Instagram influencers and not models/women he worked with (looking at you TC and LRD)?

A plausible theory is don’t shit in your own nest. Keep the messy personal stuff away from work. Or did he choose younger Influencers to irritate his ex?

If he was exploring his sexuality post separation then good for him. If the women were loving the publicity, it sounds like it was mutually advantageous.

So what’s been the trigger here?

I strongly abhor the language and tone of his defenders here- so much of it seems bullying, trolling..I know this is sad. I didn’t want to believe the accusations when I first read them, then I found them plausible and hard to read ... some of the language defending him is screechy and hysterical and really antifeminist (which is what some in his fandom accuse HIS accusers of). So language and tone aside, are there shades of truth here? Could he be guilty of these accusations?

He could be.

Accusations such as these are-almost impossible to prove in a court of law, so most cases never get to court and that’s why the powerless use SM to hold abusers (often rich white and privileged) to account.

Could he be innocent?

He could be.

Anyone who has followed him on SM and during the CMBYN years, is aware that his ex wife was very liberal with the truth whereas he was damnably frank and always putting his foot in his mouth due to his authenticity. She was desperate for fame and HE WAS HER BRAND. “He” has now tarnished it so much that she will never be able to escape it. It’s self destructive behaviour on AH’s part but maybe there’s a grain of satisfaction for him and secondary gain.

She was very right wing and maga, he was a registered republican who was very liberal. Rumours were their marriage was very strained by BLM. He was wildly passionate about it on SM. She was trying make profits from a wholesome Christian island life aspirational brand. They were appealing to 2 very different demographics and his endorsement of BLM would not have gone down well with her conservative mommy blogger followers (who prefer law and order to social unrest due to genocidal racism, unless you’re taking a knee which deserves very bad things happening to black people). She can still profit from white female victimhood if this narrative is embraced by her white Christian maga followers (ahem Johnson and Johnson).She was using her kids on every post ...

And this all exploded after a)he booked several prestigious high profile jobs and b)he declared on SM that he wouldn’t post pictures of his kids for their safety. (He was back on the caymans and had the kids with him.) He threatened her brand - stopping posting their children, tarnishing the “Armie wife” and reduced her to just another Instagram influencer. She can parlay this into a real housewives reality career, except I think Andy Cohen is tight with Armie.

While I think some of the less outlandish allegations might be true, I am aware that Deuxmois cultivates publicists (eg Shailene Woodley and her latest “romance”) & needs scandals like these to distinguish themselves in the competitive tabloid/SM market. The daily mail peddlles right wing racist trash (see MM) so is a perfect place for her to claim “woe is me, he did me wrong, I am a good Christian wife”. But many watching his career know there is nothing she wouldn’t peddle- kids being ill, mocking her husband in bed reading seriously, mocking him dressing up for his kids, mocking him for face painting at a kids party. She used to gaslight him, they were frequently hideous to each other on SM and then he would come out and gush all over her on weird posts that were obviously not written by him. It was incongruous , inconsistent and dissonant. He and E must have had a marriage made in hell. Neither of them had the grace to walk away when it was clear it was going badly. They were barely civil to one another on red carpets but they stayed married for some complex personal reasons I guess . Messy.

I hope these young Instagram influencers weren’t taken advantage of. I suspect they were contractually joined in some cases, but they are now benefitting from publicity.. (PL had a very messy relationship with KK and like many hockey adjacent women, really enjoys the attention and seems to have reality-show-levels of dysfunction...) .

Messy is E’s own brand. She’s been dishonest and misleading on SM for a long time, so when I see her defending the accusers, when I had believed their allegations of manipulations and coercion, plot twist -I suddenly doubt them. It’s like Lindsay graham liking your tweets. You suddenly have insight that there’s something you’ve missed and you’re in the middle of something much bigger and you’re on the wrong side.

These awful awful allegations must be so painful for people who have been traumatised and abused previously, so many will have to look away because they can’t bear it. Does that mean they should be labeled “defectors” and “traitors”? That’s fandom toxicity and that’s not on Armie. Good for them walking away from SM when it’s harming them and shame on those who are shaming them.

What is on him is his part in connecting, exploiting these women (even who entered the contract voluntarily) especially if consent was coerced or they were manipulated. If he didn’t, then I hope to god, he learns these pap setups aren’t worth doing because of the transactional nature of these relationships. They feed vultures and trolls.

He hasn’t abused anyone in his workplace (hello Tom cruise, Adam driver, Christian bale, countless actors+directors). He’s not a paedophile (Roman Polanski, Woody Allen) and he’s not embezzled money or cheated anyone (college admission scandal). That we know. And all those allegations on SM, well whites from the military and police invaded the capitol and killed people, when 45’s lies tallied with their own racist victimhood beliefs. So it doesn’t matter how many people believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

If he’s assaulted someone, I hope they bring charges and can prove it. Iit will be hard but he wasn’t shake that stain. If he’s another white male privilege star using his fame to escape justice he’s lost me as a fan - but he doesn’t know I exist therefore won’t have any fucks to give.

But what I’m seriously disappointed in- that leaked Instagram. He’s under a lot of strain and is suffering from mental ill health maybe. The drug testing and the jokes about it. Also the (consensual) recording of that woman on the bed upsets me, because that woman shouldn’t have been jokingly identified as anywhere near the Cayman Islands. It should have been completely deidentified .

I hope he gets the help he needs and FFS keep your kids and their locations off SM. Fight a bloody bitter divorce but get it done. Stop posting pics that clickbait paedophiles and protect your children. With the amount of misinformation and propaganda on SM and on so called news sites, truth is so hard to find. I can’t see it right now. But when the daily mail and E are in your side, it makes me look much closer at the story and now I smell a rat. Before, I believed it and was disheartened by it. Deuxmois has a close relationship with publicists and the daily mail with prince Williams’s office - who leaked anti MEghan and Harry stories. They also just had to settle with Prince Harry for their lies.

I hope you’re all ok. Remember choose tolerance unless it’s hate speech and discrimination, don’t tolerate that.

We’re living in propaganda Cold War in a pandemic. When the dust clears don’t forget - pursue the truth and hold people accountable esp the liars - they should be made to acknowledge their lies. Someone is lying here, and maybe more than one person. As yet none of us know the truth.

Also please unfollow me if you disagree or don’t want this in your feed. Life is too short. Don’t repost please. This isn’t for anyone else except me and maybe 2 others.

#she used to gaslight him #don’t repost #personal #off my chest now so I can exhale

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eldritchamy · 4 years

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Having now watched them back to back I have to say Wonder Woman 84 is hands down better than the first movie. There are two major issues I have with it (not discussed in this post for spoiler reasons), but everything else about it was unequivocally better.

The first movie is pretty slow to start up and even though Diana’s backstory strongly supports and explains all of the things she doesn’t understand about the world, she is very much a Born Sexy Yesterday character for almost the entire movie, and while the TWIST about who Ares was was DEFINITELY well done, Ares himself as an antagonist was incredibly lackluster and forgettable. The first movie did some things really well, like setting it in World War ONE where there was really no obvious morally superior side, it was just an absolute clusterfuck of human tragedy and moral ambiguity on all sides and that fit the narrative perfectly. But in retrospect? It missed the mark in some ways too. Diana’s innocence was really overplayed, and her sheltered childhood with an overly protective mother on an island isolated from the rest of the world accounts for SOME of that, but the framing of the character overall suffers from a lot of the film’s shortcomings.

I still like the first movie for what it is. But what it is is a female power fantasy. It was refreshing because it was a story of a woman being told she couldn’t do things and succeeding anyway. We DO deserve more stories like that. I’ll take it over yet another male power fantasy movie any day. But god the bar was so goddamn low, and 84 REALLY shows how much higher that bar could be. I truly, truly hope that’s the new bar that movies like this try to aim for.

The sequel reverses the Steve and Diana dynamic in a way that’s believable for the characters and genuinely CHARMING. I was completely shocked that Steve being in the second movie A) WASN’T horribly convoluted shoehorned bullshit as an excuse to shove her 5 day love interest (I literally mapped out the timeline, it is 5 days from the plane crash to the end of the movie) into the sequel, and B) Steve being there not only fit perfectly into Diana’s character arc for the movie but was actually ENJOYABLE. I enjoyed Steve as a character ten times more in the sequel and was actually glad he was there, and felt the emotional impact of all the story beats involving him, which was CRITICAL to selling Diana’s arc, which was absolutely the highlight of the film.

And on that point, the smaller core cast and better overall writing REALLY did wonders for fleshing out the character arcs. The plot structure was constructed beautifully and played into the development of each character’s story in a way the first movie didn’t. Every character’s arc felt complete and satisfying, with the possible exception of one of them not getting as much resolution as they deserved. But overall, compared to the first movie, Diana feels WAY more like a fleshed out complete character and she is absolutely the heart and soul of the movie. And the antagonists in particular were handled SO MUCH BETTER in terms of their own stories and motivations. It did way more show don’t tell. The first movie gives you a lengthy backstory about the gods and amazons and Ares in particular and then throws him into the story at the end as this overhyped flat villain. WW84 shows you where the antagonists are coming from and they have their own stories alongside Diana’s which makes the plot better, the movie more fleshed out, and motivations deeper, the conflicts and stakes far more real. It is flat superior in every regard.

Gal Gadot’s acting is a little bit inconsistent and some of her line deliveries are a little bit off, but the sequel ALSO has, bar none, the best acting moments I’ve seen from her, nearly back to back in the two most powerful scenes of the movie (imho). The emotional impact of the pivotal plot moments is outstanding. The visual framing of two particular shots without question sold the entire movie. The characters’ choices had SO MUCH INFLUENCE on the plot. The movie was driven by consequences for CHARACTER ACTIONS, not just “this big mystical thing happened thousands of years ago”. You get to see and feel all of the story beats. And the story beats, critically, are GOOD.

The ending was a little bit overextended. It tried to reach a little too far and it kind of flopped imo. It felt a little flat after how POWERFUL the late-middle character moments were. And it was a LOT less of a visual spectacle and badass moment compared to the lightning blast in the first movie (which, in some ways, is a good thing). But the overall character arcs, especially Diana’s, more than make up for that. It was just a better movie, without question. The writing was better, the acting was (mostly) better, the stakes felt FAR more significant without there being ANY power creep from trying to follow up the god of war, the character arcs were more fleshed out and actually SHOWN in a complete way, the emotion was deeper, the character DYNAMICS were better, etc etc etc.

Wonder Woman was not a bad movie. It was INCREDIBLY refreshing from the superhero genre compared to everything else that had come out by that point, and it still holds up as better than anything Marvel has done other than Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. But now that the sequel is out, it’s become really clear how much higher the bar should be.

We really deserve better from the media we consume. And while WW84 isn’t perfect, it’s a hell of a step forward.

I know everyone loves the No Man’s Land sequence, but honestly there’s a sequence in 84 that I felt was WAY more powerful as both a story beat and as part of Diana’s character development. No Man’s Land, by comparison, feels like a power fantasy with no further depth, it’s JUST “I am no man” as an 8 minute action sequence. The pivotal character sequence in 84 felt so much better because of how perfectly it tied into the emotion of its story beat and the consequence of choice.

Despite the two major flaws I feel it has, WW84 is a much better movie.

I don’t want to come off as overly critical of the first movie, because I loved it and I still think it’s good in a lot of ways, and is certainly fun to watch. And I would LOVE more female power fantasy movies. But it’s really not much more than that, in retrospect. I just ALSO really, really, REALLY want more like the sequel, because god damn did it raise the bar.

#eldritchreviews

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eirabach · 5 years

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For @gumnut-logic 's FabFiveFeb Challenge

Prompt Two - Gordon

[Can't / No clothes]

Also inspired by Nutty's TAG ages meta, because it gave me *emotions*. I'm super sorry. Added Vance Joy because it’s Gordon.

---

Under the surface you don't know what you'll find,

Until it's your time.

---

The night that Jeff Tracy took humanity's first step on the surface of Mars, he had three little boys watching at home. Gordon, he liked to say, was born of the fall out. A child created in a whirlwind of press tours and ticker tape and eventually brought home to that quiet little homestead that would never be truly quiet or homely again.

By the time Gordon became a Tracy being a Tracy mattered. And sure money's great and influence is better, but Gordon's sixteen years old with sunlight in his hair and his eyes and his soul, and for him, for him the best part of being a Tracy is that no one ever tells you you can't.

Not that Gordon would listen if they did.

Because the other important thing to know about being a Tracy, is that Gordon isn't very good at it.

He's uninterested in physics or engineering or math. He has minimal desire to blow things up or shoot people or study space dust. He likes a party and he loves people, but he's miserable in a cummerbund and he kinda never understood capitalism.

When you're fourth, you gotta find your own way to be first. And all right Scott's a fighter pilot and John's a genius and Virgil's some sort of goddamn savant, but at least Alan can't even tie his shoelaces yet so Gordon's got one up on him. Gordon doesn't even wear shoes. Doesn't wear much of anything at all except teeny weeny trunks splattered red, white and blue.

Gordon won't be a hero, won't have a theory named after him, but what Gordon will have will be his.

Gordon's going for gold.

His muscles burn and his hair turns green and he sweats chlorine into his sheets every night, but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the next millisecond, the turn, the cleanness of his touch. He can't care about anything but his coach's thumb hovering over the stopwatch and the crest of his fly because it's coming. Gold. It's coming, and it's everything.

Everything.

---

Dad calls on Wednesdays at three. Alan calls at midnight just to hear him swear. He gets weekly updates on daring-do from Scott and a monthly serving of sarcasm and space babble from John.

Virgil calls because they tend to forget.

"You gonna come home, you think? Before?"

Virgil looks different, his floppy black hair cropped short, band shirts exchanged for some weird quasi military uniform. He's still watching Gordon shovel food down his throat with an expression of disgusted awe, though, so some things never change.

"Dunno." Gordon shrugs, mouth full. "Gotta keep training. Four months to go, can't lose form now."

"You should come, there's -- there's a lot changed around here," says Virgil, like that's a reason. Then, when Gordon just chews at him in reply, "Dad built you a pool."

And maybe that's a reason, after all.

Cause sure, his dad's never told him he can't, but Gordon's been gone a long time, and he's not sure he remembers the last time his dad told him he could.

---

Home's not the farm anymore, or the ranch, or the townhouse in Manhattan. Home is some island a billion miles from anywhere, where huge portraits of his older brothers stare expressionlessly down at him and his shoes squeak on the super shiny floor, humidity making his tracksuit stick to his back.

Gordon has only really spent a few weeks here, his training all taking place under the eagle eye of Uncle Sam and sponsored entirely by Old Glory, but he doesn't remember it like this.

The decor is still retro spy movie meets crazy billionaire with paranoia problems, and his bedroom is pretty much as he left it, but nothing else seems familiar at all. He'd left Tracy Two in a great cavernous hanger that would have been overkill even for one of dad's crazy projects, Kyrano had rushed him past huge shadowy behemoths that suggested, pretty damn strongly, that Jeff Tracy is in the midst of another too easily financed midlife crisis.

"Please tell me he isn't planning world domination," Gordon had only half joked as they’d emerged into the brightness of the villa proper. "He'd look awful in lycra."

Kyrano had glared at him, swirled back into the bowels of the island, and left him with Scott.

Scott is wearing lycra.

He's sitting behind their dad's desk, two high points of colour in his cheeks and his eyes bright with something Gordon can't name as he pours over datasets. All he's missing to complete the look is a fluffy white cat and a maniacal laugh.

"Hey. Hey." Nothing. Scott mutters to himself as he sweeps his fingers through warning signs. "Scotty, hey!"

Scott looks up. Blinks. Blinks again.

"Gordon?"

"The one and only."

Scott stands, still grossly tall, and moves to ruffle Gordon's hair. It's not as easy as it used to be, there's an actual lift of his hand, and Gordon can't help but feel satisfaction creep into his bones.

"You grew."

"Hear it happens."

"Got a girlfriend?"

"Got a pillow."

"Tragic."

"That's me." Gordon throws his arm across his eyes and flops backwards onto the sofa. "Sacrificing everything in pursuit of a noble goal. Hold tight, beautiful people. Only three more months and I'm yours."

He peeks out from behalf of his elbow to see Scott standing over him, arms folded, lips twisted into something a bit like a fond smile. A bit.

Something unpleasant settles in Gordon's stomach.

"What are you doing desk work for? I thought you were out there --" He gestures to the cloudless sky beyond the glass wall. "Y'know. Saving the world."

Scott opens his mouth, but then there's a chime from the desk and Alan hollering from the staircase and Grandma crushing him to her chest, and Gordon is left to wonder.

---

Scott isn't the only thing that's strange.

There's a fish tank in the corner, empty but for a little model sub from that docudrama he and John used to love to watch with Mom, but when he lays his hand on the glass it hums beneath his fingers and makes his teeth ache.

John's not here, replaced as resident super nerd by some guy they call Brains who makes John look dumb. Dad isn't there, either, but that's okay. Nor is Gordon, really.

He's lived apart from his family for the best part of two years, he shouldn't be surprised that they've changed. That's he's changed. But somehow, it doesn't feel like he has.

Alan's finally learned to tie his laces but still never bothers, Virgil's taken out his piercing, Grandma is being followed by a robot dog, but Gordon is still the same kid with the same dreams and he isn't sure what anybody else's dreams are anymore. Virgil's in a uniform and Scott's out of his and John is gone and Alan's looking at him like he knows stuff.

This is impossible, of course. Alan is an infant. This is the abiding certainty of Gordon's life and he intends to prove it this evening with three rubber spiders and a trapeze but whatever.

It's just that Gordon isn't quite sure where he fits, just like he doesn't know where to sit when holograms of the great and the good appear in his living room. Doesn't quite know what to make of the way their eyes skip over him to rest on Scott, or Virgil, and where the hell is John, anyway?

"Top secret," Alan says, all pre-teen smugness, "can't tell you."

"Dad'll be home soon," Virgil adds, ever the peacekeeper, "I'm sure he'll tell you everything."

Gordon's not so sure and Scott says nothing at all except a vehement 'no!' when Gordon dares to suggest going for a swim.

So much for the pool, then.

---

Night is falling and Gordon's already ready for bed when the roar of engines fills the air and the whole family dart for the window, faces pressed against the glass. Gordon hovers behind them, unsure of his place, until Scott grabs him bodily by the elbow and drags him downstairs to where the deck leads down to the pool.

"Come on! You got to see this!"

It's a thing to see, all right. The pool withdraws beneath the villa itself, leaving a great gaping hole in the earth into which a great silver plane descends, jets first. And Gordon remembers the TV-21 and his father's fascination with speed and grace and more speed -- it's the one thing they have in common after all -- but this, this is something else.

She disappears into the ground, and the pool sweeps over her, only the sway of the water left as evidence. Scott turns to him with an almost hysterical glee.

"Did you see that!?"

Gordon would have pointed out that he'd have to have been dead blind and comatose not to have seen it, but Scott's practically bouncing on his toes, his expression full of what Gordon recognises as real, true love.

"Isn't she beautiful? Come on, come on, Dad's gotta debrief and then --"

"Scott!" They both snap to attention, immediately turning to where their father stands, towering over both of them from the top of the stairs. "Debrief can wait. Let me see your brother."

Scott darts off, probably to hump the shiny thing, and Dad approaches Gordon, his eyes shining, dirt on his cheek.

"What do you think of her, son?"

"I think you've safely guaranteed Scotty won't be bringing you home any surprise grandbabies."

Dad snorts, clapping Gordon on the shoulder and turning him back toward the pool. They head out across the deck together, Gordon barefoot in only his sleep shorts, Jeff in a uniform like Scott's only gently singed.

"I've missed you. How's training?"

Gordon half shrugs. "Wet. Good. Pretty tiring."

Jeff looks him up and down with a critical eye "So I imagine. It looks good on you."

Gordon stretches and grins. "No more noodle arms, right?"

Jeff blinks, and for a moment Gordon almost thinks he sees something like sadness in his eyes, but it's soon gone and his dad's turning him to face the pool again.

"Will it do? I know it's not Olympic standard but we needed some room for the house and --"

"Dad," he says, because his dad is rambling and his dad never rambles. "Dad what's going on?"

Jeff looks down into the pool. The stars flicker into being in his reflection.

"Forest fire. Family home was cut off."

"Your rescue thing. You saved them."

Jeff looks at him, Gordon watches in the water as he schools his features, tightens his jaw. "This time.

"Scott and Virgil?"

"Are involved, yes."

"And John?"

Jeff looks up then, up to the darkening sky, and points. "We built a satellite. It monitors distress calls from all over the world - and beyond."

"Makes sense. Space case."

"Play to your strengths, isn't that what they say?"

"What about Alan?"

"Alan's eleven, Gordon. Even my insanity has its limits."

"And you built me a pool?"

"And I built you a pool. Is it -- " a breath where Gordon wouldn't expect to hear one "is it all right?"

"All right?" Gordon turns to him and grins. "It's perfect."

Because okay, so it's only a short course, and it occasionally has a supersonic plane blasting through it, but it's a pool and it's for him, and that's better than Scotty's super special plane.

His dad's clapping him on the back again and smiling and that's better than any top secret technology.

It makes a strange island full of strange things feel a little bit more like home.

Jeff's off again already though, gesturing to the round building above the villa and going on about blast radius and Gordon's content to just watch for a moment, to bask in that feeling for as long as it lasts. Then the subject changes.

"We'll be in Cape Town for the opening ceremony, of course, and I've made arrangements to ensure we can all make your races. I'm sure it won't shock you to hear Alan's made t shirts and John's bringing a banner. I hope it's safe for television."

His eyes snap to his dad's.

"John's coming?"

His dad's eyebrows twitch. "You think he'd miss it? Gordon, none of us will miss this. Not for the world. And as you now know, I mean that quite literally."

Gordon nods, mutely. There's a build up of something in his chest. Lactic acid squeezing his heart. His dad takes pity.

"What about September? Are you still planning on marine biology?"

Gordon scuffs at the tile with his bare heel. This is a conversation he's been avoiding for a long time, now. The after.

"Yeah. UCLA."

"California?"

Gordon shrugs.

"You don't seem keen? Sydney have an excellent program, do you --" Gordon feels more than hears the shudder in his dad's exhale. "No, no Jeff stop it. You tell me, Gordy. What do you want to do?"

Gordon's voice is never small, but it's as close as it's ever been. "Was thinking WASP."

Both of his dad's eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "The military? You?"

It's not an unexpected reaction. Gordon scoffs. "You wound me, Dad. Maybe I have hidden depths."

"I don't doubt that for a moment," his dad says, then he looks up, right up, to where the milky way swirls and John sits. “You’re not old enough.”

“Yeah, I know, I thought, college first - couple of years of credits and I can join as an officer.”

“You’re my son, you can join as whatever you damn well please.”

“Dad--”

"Sorry, sorry.” And his Dad’s looking into space and Gordon’s looking down at the water and it’s kinda always been like this, between them. Gordon suspects his dad hates it even more than he does.”You know I'll support you, if that's what you really want."

Gordon finally follows his gaze, imagines John in the vacuum of space, alone with his books and his stars. He wonders if Dad had had this conversation with him, before sending him up there. "That sounds kinda like a don't do it, Dad, I'm not gonna lie."

"Can I be honest?" Gordon nods, because saying no seems kinda harsh, but his heart is thundering faster than after a sprint. "Gordon, when I designed International Rescue, I designed it for you boys. A legacy, I suppose. I wanted --" he shakes his head. "I'm getting to be a selfish old man."

Gordon scowls. "You're the least selfish man I've ever met. Pretty sure those people whose lives you saved today would agree."

Jeff shakes his head.

"I want you to know," he says, "that there will always be a place for you, here, with us, if you want it. But only if you want it." A twitch of Jeff’s lips. “God knows, I could never make you anyway.”

"Thanks, Dad." Then, a wicked grin pulling at the corner of his mouth, "Race you?"

A splash, a shout, laughter rings out into the night and hell it's cheesy but it's true; for a moment Gordon kinda feels like he's already won.

---

The Olympics are due to start in June.

May, and his father dies.

Gordon flies home immediately, thirty thousand feet over Cape Town without even looking down.

He can't.

He has a place in a legacy.

---

#fabfivefeb #fabfivefeb2020 #thunderbirds are go #gordon tracy #jeff tracy #oh look its angsty #theres a wild shock #idek #there might be a part 2

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jonsafan-blog · 6 years

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GOT Season 8 Teaser Analysis

HBO has released a new teaser for the final season of Game of Thrones, and I am going to analyze what this trailer might mean.

But first, if you have not already watched it, I suggest doing it now by watching the video below.

youtube

The Difference Between Teaser and Trailer

The footage used in this video is not footage from the primary narrative. Rather, it appears specifically shot which non-narrative footage to invoke anticipation.

This is common in a lot of shows, but the majority of teasers are little more than pretty, animated slideshows that introduce a theme for the next season.

That is not what is happening here.

Rather, the directors of the show have chosen to pull some of the biggest actors of the series for a very expensive commercial which requires blocking, lighting, and CGI. Kit, Sophie, and Maisie do not talk, but there is dialogue from three dead actors, two of which have not been on the show for many seasons, and all which would require payment (or previous contractual agreement) for using their likeness.

That means this is not just a simple anticipatory teaser, but something which required days or even weeks on planning, filming, and editing all combined.

The Previous Teaser Is Important Too

That said, this is not the first teaser of the season, as that goes to the Dragonstone teaser, which you can rewatch below:

youtube

The Dragonstone teaser is exactly what most people think of high production teasers, and they are usually used by studios to hype their projects before editing is complete. In it, the winds of winter descend upon the North, freezing the Direwolf piece on the chessboard near a castle, presumably Winterfell, before moving further south. It is difficult for me to see exactly where but almost certainly still in the North, but it appears as if a dragon is frozen.

However, what is most interesting about this trailer is what happens next: the South is not frozen, but set aflame, seemingly from King’s Landing... as if it had self-immolated. That fire travels towards the Neck where it collides with the coming winter and creating a black wall.

Teasers are essentially metaphors - sort of like visual poetry that implies themes for the coming season. Shows with better budgets, like Game of Thrones can make a lot out of their teasers, and this teaser suggests that Game of Thrones is now a song of Ice and Fire (like the name of the book series).

Speaking of visual poetry, the title of the book series actually comes from a poem by Robert Frost, called Fire and Ice:

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

This poem is interesting because there is this general idea that the worst sort of destruction comes from fire, and we actually do see that in the south with its traditional way of self-destruction through Cersei Lannister (what is clearly being implied in the teaser and prior seasons). However, that is not the only danger to Westeros, as the Winter itself is creating victims, and in a very particular order - first the Starks, and then the Targaryens.

But, if you go back to the poem that is alluded to in the series title, fire and ice are equal in its ability to destroy, and in the teaser what happens? They collide, but neither overtake the other. Rather, their war creates a wall ... and that wall appears to be made of Dragonglass.

You can be burned by fire. You can also be burned by ice.

This is a war on two fronts, and the fronts will collide and a weapon will be created that can kill. An article on Fansided by David Harris actually detailed the boundaries created in this collision. While I think some of what he says is wrong, I will post what I think is most relevant to my post.

None of what I am saying is unrelated to the new teaser - I will get there in a moment - but you need to understand the previous teaser to better appreciate what is happening in the new one.

But, back to what Harris said, the wall is created in a very particular geography. I mean like... super particular.

The Dragonglass Wall begins at Dragonstone and extends to Ironman’s Bay, effectively creating a new boundary... which wars tend to do. Harris also points out that fire and ice first collide on camera at the Trident, which is where Rhaegar Targaryen was defeated by Robert Baratheon.

This was a decisive battle that was decided by the figureheads of two opposing sides. It resulted in a terrible loss for the Targaryens, and prompted Aerys to send his pregnant wife Rhaella (with unborn Daenerys) to Dragonstone with Viserys. However, he kept Elia Martell’s children as hostages in King’s Landing to secure Dornish loyalty.

Robert Baratheon was wounded in battle, which meant Ned Stark had to lead Stark forces to King’s Landing to win the throne. Jaime later implies in the show that Ned could have taken the throne at that moment, but didn’t. However, it was not the Starks which sacked King’s Landing - that honor went to the Lannisters, who also ended up killing the King and Elia’s family.

I bring this all up because there is a heavy link of metaphor in alluding to this event. First, there will be another decisive battle, possibly at the Trident, and in that battle, if we remember the poem... then in this second touch of death it will be ice that is chosen.

But again... that wall is not breached... right?

Look at that map again. Here is what we know about that region before Season 8:

Everything North of the rivers are lands that Robb Stark easily defended in the War of Five Kings until he made poor decisions of alliance and leadership

The families with the most negative feelings towards the Starks, the Boltons and the Freys, have been eradicated to the last man.

The North and the Vale are definitely within the borders entirely. However, it is strongly implied by the teaser and the dividing line that Dragonstone may also be included in that wall, and since we know that the dragon was frozen in the teaser, something Targaryen is on that side, so either Daenerys is their ally, or Dragonstone is within Jon’s Targish hands.

The Starks have possible allies in the tenous lands that border what is solidly under their control: the Iron Islands and the Riverlands. Not secure allies, but possible allies.

To put it another way... all the lands in that dominion have some sort of familial tie to the Starks. The Starks have the North, but Sansa and Arya are also related to the Riverlands and the Vale. Theon is from the Iron Islands, and his loyalty seemed to be shifting back towards the Starks. And Jon is, of course, half Targaryen.

So let’s consider what happens when fire and ice collide again - what is the result?

I do not think an actual wall of dragonglass is going to be constructed - teasers are essentially extended metaphors after all. So what is this metaphor saying, exactly?

Metaphors, Poetry, and Teasers

Remember the poem? Because George R. R. Martin does, and he explains in this interview what he thinks about it, that informs the series:

Why your saga is called A Song of Ice and Fire, because of the Wall and the dragons or is something more beyond that?

Oh! That’s the obvious thing but yes, there’s more. People say I was influenced by Robert Frost’s poem, and of course I was, I mean... Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.

In the poem, the speaker says that “From what I’ve tasted of desire / I hold with those who favor fire” but this is the second battle at the Trident... and what happens the second time?: “But if I had to perish twice, / I think I know enough of hate / To say that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice.”

There are only two families involved in the Trident in the past and in the future: The Starks and the Targaryens. Martin says that he sees fire as love and passion, but ice is betrayal and revenge - specifically the “cold inhumanity and all that stuff that is being played out in the books.”

The first war was about love. The Fiery Rhaegar Targaryen fell in love with Lyanna Stark, who essentially and icily betrayed her betrothed, Robert Baratheon. Robert Baratheon got his cold inhuman revenge against Rhaegar.

The second war?

First, let us remember that the Trident was seemingly about two mega forces, but in the end, resulted in the Ned Stark almost taking the throne. It was also a battle on behalf of a Stark woman who fell in love with the wrong man.

My theory is that the expanse of snow and the dragonglass wall does not represent the end of the North, but the renewal of it. The Starks took back the North from the Wall. Then... they commandeered a dragon for their cause.

And then?

They set their sights on the south to secure their kingdom, and from that conflict was a boundary protected by a weapon which symbolizes the struggle of the North: dragonglass. And what does dragonglass do?

Eradicate two enemies to their sovereignty: the White Walkers and Daenerys Targaryen. However, just like with the Battle of the Trident during Robert’s Rebellion, the war did not end there. Ned Stark had to go south in order to free his sister from King’s Landing... only she was not there.

In Robert’s Rebellion and in the War of the Five Kings the Starks were interested in taking King’s Landing.

My theory is that the wall represents a heroic figure created out of the conflict - a weapon personified: that weapon is Jon Snow.

Some have suggested he will carry lightbringer, but what I think the myth of Lightbringer tells us is that it is a weapon used against a series of three enemies.

And three enemies are what the Starks have.

Heroes are Forged, Not Born

When lightbringer was crafted, it was first tempered in water, but broke, and then tempered through the heart of a captured lion, but broke, and finally successfully crafted out of the heart of his wife, Nissa Nissa. Her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon.

So are you noticing some interesting parallels?

Jon is first tempered in water. Or rather, after his resurrection, he fights against the undead in the poorly considered wight hunt and fails. When he returns to the wall after being narrowly rescued an onboard Daenerys’s ship he bends the knee... something he did not look too happy about. All of his scenes with Daenerys are near the sea, by the way, and that position left him vulnerable. However, it was necessary in order to procure the power he needs to protect the North.

We know going into Season 8 that Jon will encounter more Lannisters. He has yet to see a captured Lion, but I am willing to bet that this next season will result in something of that sort. Either Tyrion, who appears to be growing more upset with Daenerys, Cersei, who will Cersei something, or even Jaime - perhaps repeating what Robb did by capturing him. Either way, I think what is really going to happen is that Jon is going to have to take a decisive action against the Lannisters even before the Dragonglass wall is forged.

However, the third time is the most interesting, because it will be in this moment that the metaphorical dragonglass wall is raised and Jon becomes the central hero of the story - and I think it requires betraying Daenerys.

Speaking of betraying Daenerys, isn’t she supposed to be betrayed three times? Once for blood, once for gold, and once for love?

What is those three betrayals line up with the decisions Jon makes in the war? Daenerys thinks Jon is falling in love with her, but really, he just needs her dragons. And perhaps Jon will act against the Lannisters in a way which will hurt her. After all, in the teaser, the lions on the board are not just on fire, but melting. And third... the third betrayal is for love. And not for her.

I think that in the penultimate moment of the series, Jon will betray Daenerys for a girl stranded south of the Trident. This will result in her death, but Jon’s rise to power since he will then control her dragons.

In season one, her handmaiden Doreah tells her that dragons came from two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. From this, a “thousand thousand” dragons poured forth and drank the fire of the sun, allowing them to breathe flame.

If Jon is going to wield Lightbringer, he is going to be wielding a flaming sword, and if Doreah’s story is a metaphor about Daenerys getting too close to another Targaryen (Jon in this case) it will not end well for her. Jon will essentially be wielding her dragons... and her heritage.

And let us not forget - that is Aegon’s the Conqueror’s painted table. What is Jon’s real name? Aegon.

But how does this relate to the new teaser?

In the last season there was another teaser which was rather on the money in regards to its metaphors. Most of the teasers are ambiguous, but the Long Walk was anything but:

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Jon had just been crowned King in the North, and in the teaser he was not happy with his rule, unlike Daenerys and Cersei. But like Daenerys and Cersei, he was functionally isolated because of his decisions, though for entirely different reasons.

Daenerys and Cersei isolated themselves out of pride, but Jon isolated himself out of need for the North. And if you listen to the lyrics of this song, Jon ends up having to ally himself with these very prideful rulers.

And this is exactly what happened.

Why?

If you take the singer as a metaphorical allusion to Jon’s thoughts, it is clear that he spends the entire season trying to convince Daenerys and Cersei to join him out of sympathy for others. We know from the lyrics that Daenerys eventually does agree with this after seeing how powerful the Night King was, but the Queen “touched by madness” (literally in the song) has a special scene at the end where she breathes cool air. And ice represents betrayal. And in that betrayal? The struggle begins.

This promo teaser is similar in that it brought in actors and had a teasing narrative almost identical to what happened in the actual season it teased.

So let’s get to the “Crypts of Winterfell Teaser.”

The Crypts of Winterfell and the Haunting of Past Regrets

The new teaser has three characters walking through the crypts of Winterfell and encountering winter - Jon, Sansa, and Arya. Interestingly, and this is not a coincidence, the first person we see is Jon holding a lighted torch. Sansa and Arya do not. Jon is literally the lightbringer.

Jon, alone, walks past Lyanna Stark’s statue as she holds the feather. We hear the actress of Lyanna telling Ned “You have to protect him.” Jon does not notice her, and the feather falls behind him as he passes. When it falls to the ground, he turns, as if he heard something... but you never hear a feather falling.

We know that Lyanna Stark died in childbirth, and that what she wanted most in the world was for Jon (whom she named Aegon) to be protected.

At this point she likely knew that Rhaegar was dead and Robert now commanded a lot of power. At best, Jon would be allowed to live as a bastard, but in all likelihood, she feared he might be hurt for his claim to the throne.

Interestingly, Lyanna and her feather have been seen multiple times.

The first time we see Lyanna’s statue and that feather is when Robert arrives at Winterfell. He leaves a feather at her statue, a call back in the books history of him giving her feathers of an exotic southern bird, and then bemoaning Ned’s decision to bury her in Winterfell instead of on a hill with the sun. He then says he dreams of killing Rhaegar every night.

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So clearly Robert was not the kind of man who just let things go.

However, the next time we see Lyanna and her statue is in season five.

Sansa has just lit the statue of her father, likely doing it for many of the recently deceased Starks since the Boltons certainly will not, and comes upon Lyanna. She lights her statue, no doubt considering how similar their situations were. Sansa was under the house of an enemy, just as she believed Lyanna was.

But then she notices the feather that Robert’s left and picks it up. Its dusty, meaning it has been on the ground for a while.

Littlefinger then appears and tells her the story of Lyanna meeting Rhaegar at Harrenhal. Rhaegar ended up snubbing his wife, and this resulted in a war because Rhaegar fell in love with the wrong woman.

Interestingly, the feather that Robert gives Lyanna is not related to any of her own interests, nor is she symbolized by a bird, though it could be argued she was rather uncaged. However, “Little Bird” Sansa is symbolized by birds... and frequently. That she picks up the feather of Lyanna is as if she is picking up her own symbol and dusting it off is pretty important.

We never see Sansa putting it back, but she does continue using feathers as motifs in some of her costumes, and the end of this scene has Littlefinger telling her she is taking control of her own destiny now. Remember - Lyanna, in reality, was not an unwilling participant in her abduction, but a willing instigator.

I have seen some people suggest that the feather being knocked down on Lyanna’s statue represents the false romance between Robert and Lyanna being knocked down. I like that theory too, but it disregards Sansa’s clear connection to Lyanna.

When Arya returns, she does not go to Lyanna statue, but Ned’s.

However, we do see Lyanna’s statue again. When you watch the clip below, pay attention to Littlefinger’s entrance. He comes between Jon and Lyanna’s statue in the background, and then when they talk (essentially about Sansa via Catelyn) Lyanna’s statue is in the background, blurry but there... between them. Not an accident.

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Near the end, when Littlefinger declares his love for Sansa, Jon attacks Littlefinger, Lyanna between them, and then behind Jon as he pushes Littlefinger further out of frame. We know that later Sansa ends up executing Littlefinger, but this is an interesting directing choice.

No matter what you have to say about Jonsa, Jon has very strong feelings for his sister. However, the point is that it may not be so platonic, given that the undercurrent of this entire situation is that Jon is not actually Ned’s son. He thinks he represents Ned, but he also represents his father, Rhaegar Targaryen, and his lower, Lyanna, is behind him.

Jon knows that Sansa was forced into an unwanted marriage by Littlefinger and that they owe Littlefinger a lot. If unchecked, this could have been another forced marriage... and unlike Ned, I do not think Jon would have left this kind of Robert-Baratheon inspired betrothal happen to his sister.

Sansa Walks into the Teaser

But speaking on Sansa being weirdly connected to Jon through Lyanna, the next person to appear in the teaser is Sansa, walking directly toward the camera in a straight shot (Jon is tilted upward, we see Arya first from the back in a more anonymous shot).

Sansa’s introduction in the teaser is sequentially after Lyanna saying that Jon needs to be protected and the feather falling. Sansa is essentially the answer to Lyanna’s wish, and the direction of the camera suggests this. We also see her braided hair. Though not identical to Lyanna, it is very similar.

I think Sansa’s scene is very clever. She walks past Catelyn who inadvertently fanned the flames of war, bringing horror upon her family. Sansa also did the same - alerting Sansa to the Stark flight from King’s Landing. It is possible Cersei may have still found out, but Sansa ensured it would happen, and I am certain it is something she rued.

However, what Catelyn says is this: “All this horror that has come to my family... is all because I couldn’t love... a motherless child.”

I put in those ellipses because Sansa’s scene is cut to Arya’s anonmyously walking down the hall on the second set of lines, “is all because I couldn’t love” and then us seeing her face “a motherless child.”

When editors cut a scene they try to cut it to represent the characters as best as it can. Clearly Catelyn loved Arya, but I think what that shot is meant to represent is Arya being “no one.” She never walks past a statue of a character who represents some part of her past. And she is a “motherless child.”

I think Sansa and Arya’s storyline will be intermingled here, but ultimately what Catelyn was saying needs to be answered by loving Jon. This can be platonic, no doubt, and shared by Sansa and Arya, but all things being equal... I think it ultimately leads back to Sansa because of all the other connections.

Sansa is represented by both Lyanna and Catelyn in the show. Lyanna by implication and Catelyn by direct reference.

Catelyn feels haunted by her mistreatment of Jon in Winterfell. She did not hurt him, but she did not love him like her own. Sansa (and Arya) will do that, but I think they will do that in different ways.

That mistreatment still haunts the crypts of Winterfell though, because Jon likely does not feel like a full Stark, as he talks about this a number of times in the show, even though Sansa reminds him that she is a Stark to her (fulfilling Catelyn’s desire, ironically).

Ned’s Statue

Like Sansa, Jon walks past another statue and actually looks at it. This time, it is Ned. Because of the short distance between the Ned and Lyanna statues, this meant he must have taken only a few more steps before turning to look to at it. But he does not glance, he stops.

We hear Ned saying, “You are a Stark. You may not have my name, but you have my blood.”

We know that Ned was haunted by his decisions about Jon. A lot of his feelings were ambiguous, but we know he regretted some of the ways he went about it - and it was something he thought about a lot before he died in the dungeons of the Red Keep.

But the way Jon reacts is as if he heard Ned’s (though he likely just remembered it). This is an important reaction, because the next shot is Arya and Sansa standing in front of each other and Jon walking up between them, Arya and Sansa looking at him.

He is bringing the light, by the way. I think here the teaser is implying that Jon may be the one to bring the news to Arya and Sansa, or at the very least, it will not be either of his sisters learning the truth before him, even though they feel he is a Stark anyway. They look at him in unison. The Starks are united.

By the way... where is Bran?

Something is in the Crypts

Arya turns to look at something, and then Sansa, with Jon appearing behind Sansa with the light. The camera switches to the three walking side by side, again, united, in this order: Arya, Sansa, and Jon.

Jon has the torch in his dominant hand, which he then switches to his non-dominant hand as the three look at states of themselves.

The crypts of Winterfell only ever put statues for their deceased members, so this would be unsettling.

Arya sees a statue of her holding Needle in front of her face, while Jon and Sansa are standing side by side without weapons held out. It makes sense why Sansa would not be wielding a weapon, but strange that Arya would and Jon would not.

Jon once joked that Arya would die with a needle clutched between her frozen fingers. So these creepy statues, which are already bad, are worse for Arya who no doubt remembers this.

However, that is not the only thing in the crypts. A wind blows, and the torch in Jon’s hand blows out as he is looking at his statue.

Metaphorically, the truth will not matter when winter descends on them. It is also possible that Daenerys’s fire may not be there when Winterfell is attacked.

The feather, lying on the ground further down the crypt, is then frozen. The truth, as it were, is literally frozen. And so too is Sansa threatened, as she is represented in that same feather.

Jon and Arya draw their swords, stepping forward and getting ready to fight. Everyone believes this will happen, but if you pay attention to this scene Jon actually steps in front of Sansa more than he needs to as he draws.

Some suggest Jon and Arya are protecting their queen. I like that idea, but they would do that even if she was just their sister. That said, it is interesting that Sansa is placed in the middle, and while this could be done because of her height, it is just as likely the director wants Sansa to in the center frame.

The three stand there, preparing to greet their enemy... and it is a wind of winter.

Which some of the Internet thinks is Bran, but I digress.

What Does This Teaser Mean?

This teaser is meant to be more literal than Dragonstone, but we can use Dragonstone to aid her comprehension.

First, this teaser is very much about the truth and what is haunting the Starks of Winterfell.

The truth is that Jon is Aegon Targaryen.

What is haunting the Starks is:

Lyanna wanted Jon to be protected from Robert’s wrath.

Catelyn regretted not treating Jon as a loved Stark.

Ned regretted the way he chose to carry out Lyanna’s wishes.

But this trailer is also about a lot of resolutions for the Starks too... specifically what is haunting the family.

The major resolution is that they stand united as Starks... despite the truth that Jon brings them, and in the end, Jon abandons that truth to stand with the Starks... not as a Targaryen.

Which is exactly what the Dragonstone teaser was saying. The story will not end with Jon as a Targaryen on a throne, but Jon as a Stark on the throne. And the only way he can become a Stark is through his sisters.

Or specifically, his cousin Sansa Stark. She has the name, whereas Arya is “no one.”

But it is not just past hauntings in the crypts... Jon, Sansa, and Arya have their own haunted nightmares.

Every Stark needs to play by different rules. They are now backed into a corner, and if they do not fight their way out, it will become their tombs.

Arya is haunted by her desire to be someone.

Sansa is haunted by her fear of being alone.

Jon is haunted by the fear of the unknown.

When they see themselves, they see their worst nightmares reflected back at them. Arya sees a fighter memorialized as a heroic statue. Sansa sees a dead woman, reminding us of Lyanna. Jon sees himself - and all the things his identity implies.

Going Forward

We will see a repeat of Robert’s Rebellion but with a different turn of events. The South is setting itself on fire with a mad Queen hell-bent on getting revenge on the Starks and distrusting a Targaryen from Dragonstone with a claim to the throne dallying with a Stark.

It is believed by some that Sansa will be kidnapped by Cersei, and I think that could incentivize Jon to act in ways that would result in betrayal against Daenerys. After all, Jon wanted to leave the North after he was resurrected. He only stayed for Sansa - who stubbornly refuses to leave Winterfell for any reason.

In the first Battle of the Trident, “Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

Sansa tells Jon that they need to be smarter than Robb and their father to survive - they need to play the Game of Thrones. It is not enough to fight, they have to fight dirty. And that is what is going to happen on the road to the Trident because Jon has no other recourse.

And due to that, Rhaegar’s son will not die like his father did, allowing the Starks to survive the war and retain their independence... possibly even taking the Iron Throne and being reunited with the woman he loves - Sansa.

Because the battle does not end at the trident, and the Dragonstone teaser only teased the collision of two fronts, not the end of a war, but I think it suggests a bittersweet ending that favors the Starks and favors Jonsa.

#jonsa #meta #jon snow #sansa stark #game of thrones

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readingraebow · 6 years

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Boardwalk Empire Section Two

Chapters 7-Afterword

1. How were Taggart and Hap’s childhoods different? Who ended up succeeding Nucky and why? Taggart was born into an upper class family. His father was Atlantic City's chief surgeon 25 years and his mother came from old wealth. Taggart attended law school and opened his own law practice with his family's backing. But he immediately gravitated toward politics and began helping out on campaigns. However, he was never really "one of the boys". Taggart was a closeted homosexual. So basically he grew up with a ~fairly easy life except he could never openly be himself. Hap, on the other hand, was the last born of ten children. His family was super poor and constantly struggled to keep everyone fed and clothed. They lived on the Northside next to blacks and a red light district. As a child, Hap delivered newspapers and proofread for the local newspaper. However, Hap's father was secretary to the local fire department and ended up being a part of both the Kuehnle and Johnson machines. He used his friendships to help several of his sons obtain positions of note within the community. Hap, though, was smart and his sister convinced him to go to college. He, too, went to law school. And Hap is the one who ended up succeeding Nucky. Basically Hap made important friends and he helped all of his opponents obtain jobs that were better suited for their desires. And then Taggart basically put the nail in his own coffin when he started turning on the system and leading raids on gambling dens. Taggart was eventually removed from power and Hap took over as Nucky's successor.

2. How did Hap say he got his start in politics? What was the real cause? He said that, while in law school, he'd taken up the cause of his basketball team which had been locked out of the school gym. And while Hap did lead a movement for better facilities for young athletes, that wasn't really how he got his start in politics. His true influence was years of going nowhere in his law practice and struggling to survive while he watched his brothers, who were far less educated, rise through the ranks of Johnson's machine into well-paying, secure jobs. This was the true inspiration for Hap and he realized that to make it in Atlantic City, he'd have to follow the same path.

3. What were some of the contributions to Atlantic City’s decline in the 50s and 60s? Postwar modernization was one of the biggest reasons for Atlantic City's decline. Air conditioning and swimming pools meant that people didn't have to leave home to enjoy themselves. It also created more competition by Southern resorts. And with air travel becoming affordable, more were willing to save their money and travel long distances rather than take weekend trips to Atlantic City. And the invention that did the most damage to Atlantic City was the automobile. Atlantic City wasn't super easy to get to and relied mostly on the railroad. But with cars, people could just hop in and go wherever they wanted and weren't a slave to train schedules. To top it all off, because Atlantic City hadn't been doing well, the entire place was rundown. They didn't have any money for modernizations and most people wouldn't travel to such an antiquated place. Or, if they did visit, they wouldn't come back. Atlantic City was mostly a place for nostalgia and those who came back, wanting to see the place where they'd stayed as children, found that it wasn't the same as they remembered. And they didn't come back.

4. What did the bumper sticker say that summed up the town’s situation? It read, "Last one off the island, turn out the lights."

5. What did Weiner learn from his telephone polls regarding the casino issue? Through the telephone polls, Weiner learned that nearly eight out of ten voters believed that casinos had the potential to generate large amounts of revenue for the state government. They didn't know how much revenue gambling would produce but they felt strongly that it had to be a lot of money. They also believed that gambling would strongly impact them because it would lower their state tax rates and leave them with more money in their pockets.

6. Who was Matthew Micheals? He was the mayor of Atlantic City but he was basically only interested in the position because he wanted to be famous. And he behaved like there were no limits to his power. He basically just wanted to be the life of every party and, as a result, was a terrible mayor. And he believed in himself so highly that he was literally caught by having dinner with an undercover FBI agent who was wearing a wire and literally bragging about all of his misdeeds. He then accepted a $100,000 bribe in marked bills. So he wrote his own death warrant and was removed from his office in handcuffs.

7. What was Fred Trump’s early life like and how did he start his business? Fred Trump's dad began a real estate venture in New York City but he died when Fred was 11 and Fred's mother then struggled to provide for her three children. However, Fred went to work shortly after his father's death as a "horse helper" which meant during the winter months, when it was icy and the horses couldn't make it up steep hills with loads of lumber, Fred and other young, strong boys would carry the loads to construction sites instead of the horses. Then, as a teenager, Fred became a carpenter himself. He was self employed by 18 and, too young to sign checks or enter into contracts by himself, did business as "Elizabeth Trump and Son". He began building houses to sell and, eventually, built rental properties. Because he built them himself and didn't have any financial backers, he made all of the profits off of all of his properties. Fred Trump became the city's largest landlord.

8. What did you think of this book? So I don't exactly know how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I liked what this book was trying to do and I did learn a lot from it. But I honestly didn't like the way it tried to do it. Because this book was honestly kind of boring and I fell asleep quite a lot reading it. And that's disappointing because this book really did have a lot of information and I honestly feel like I know a lot about Atlantic City now. So I liked this book but I didn't like this book, if that makes sense? I liked the idea of this book, I just wish it had been executed a little bit better.

Section Two Reading Journal

Okay, so. Let’s first talk about this book in reference to the show. Because wow that’s a different world. And honestly that fascinated me a lot. So Nucky’s reign is only about two chapters in this book and it’s the entire basis of the show. And most of the show’s characters aren’t in this book (and most apparently also are not based on real people; except Arnold Rothstein which, why isn’t he in this book??? I’m upset). So I honestly found that really interesting. Nucky’s reign is, arguably, the most interesting part of this book since that seems to be the most “glamorous” era for Atlantic City.

That being said, I really did enjoy learning more about Atlantic City through this book. Because I honestly didn’t know anything about it except that it’s basically the East Coast Vegas. But it’s definitely interesting that there was such a long period between the glamour of the 20s and when gambling was finally legalized in 1978 and it finally started to restructure. I totally didn’t know any of that.

So I really do like what this book was trying to do and I did find it interesting. But it also took me three years to get back to this book and as soon as I was done, I was so glad I could finally cross it off my list. So even though I found it interesting, it wasn’t a book I actually enjoyed reading. And while that is pretty standard with most history books, it’s also disappointing. I guess I just wanted this to be a little less dry? Because Atlantic City is fascinating. I just wish this had been more fun to read.

But. Glad to finally have read it and, wow, that last chapter was, uh, fascinating. Especially since Trump was not even running for president yet (I don’t think?), when I originally started this book. So reading it now, after he’s been president for a while, was, uh, doubly fascinating. (I also groaned quite a bit when I saw the title of that chapter but here we are.) So I find it super interesting that one of the people who ended up saving Atlantic City was Donald Trump. That honestly just blows my mind for some reason.

So, I’m really interested in visiting Atlantic City at some point. I know a lot has changed since the eras in the contents of this book. It sounds like most of the buildings that were there during Nucky Johnson’s (so hard for me not to type Thompson, wow) time are gone or have been remodeled. And it sounds like most of the casinos that were built originally have also been gutted and remodeled (even the Taj Mahal is not the same anymore???? And that’s honestly the one I was really interested in visiting). So hopefully I get to visit Atlantic City some day. From a historical perspective, I’m definitely interested in seeing it and seeing how much it has changed from what I read in this book, haha.

I’m honestly also ready to go back and rewatch the show and, uh, actually finish it. (I still don’t think I made it much past season two. I think I made it just a little ways into season three. Because all of my babies die. Whhyyyyyy??) OH. Also. It seems like everyone dies far more dramatically in the show than they did in this book? Because Nucky died of old age. And it seems like most of the gang violence in the show wasn’t actually a thing. Or, at least, this book didn’t really cover that. So. Found that interesting as well.

Okay I’ll stop thinking of more things to add now, haha. I’m glad to have finally finished this book and I can’t wait to continue finishing other books that I should’ve read a long time ago. Yay!!!

#trcbooks #2015: boardwalk empire #2015 reading challenge

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hieronymusdosh · 6 years

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my advice for new witchlings

Here is a list of all the things I wish someone would have told me as a beginner witch!

Keep a journal.

Write down your thoughts, or any little experience no matter how insignificant you might think it is. Takes notes on things you’ve learned, and write down your thoughts on it. Keep a dream journal. Meditate and write down any flashes of insight you might get. This will help you learn more about your craft, more about yourself, as well as help jumpstart your intuition.

Magick won’t work unless you do.

Magick will help move obstacles out of the way, and make achieving your goals easier. You have to get off your ass and do what’s necessary on the physical plane to make it happen. This is the Law of Action -- one of the 12 Metaphysical Laws of the Universe.

You don’t need to only have ~Positive Vibes~ at all times.

You’re not a magickal failure if you don’t exude positive energy all the time. We all have bad days, days where we feel blah, or annoyed, sick and cranky, etc. Not only will they pass, but negativity can also be used as a learning experience.

You don’t have to be Wiccan.

If Wicca is how you found witchcraft/paganism/magick then cool, but keep in mind, you don’t need to be Wiccan to be a Witch. Wicca is a specific religion. Witchcraft and Magick are not affiliated with any one religion, but they can be part of a religion or spiritual practice. If you’ve looked into Wicca and love it, then by all means.

Read, research and fact check.

You should never stop learning! Read, experiment, practice, repeat. Make it fun. There are a ton of videos on YouTube that actually have a lot of educational value. I’ve listened to audio books on Witchcraft while doing boring things. Check the library and used book stores. I’ve also found free books online that were pretty cool! Dig everywhere for more knowledge.

Here is a list of recommended reading for beginner witches!

Learn about your local wildlife and plantlife.

This isn’t totally necessary, but it may save you money if you plan on using herbs in your spells. There might be a weed growing in your backyard that has the same magickal properties as a more well known but expensive herb that you would need to buy. You should also look into how to forage responsibly.

Keep some indoor plants, or an herb garden.

Again, this will be very helpful if you’re interested in working with herbs! Research how to grow them, their magickal correspondences, etc. Plus it’s always nice to have their presence in your house -- they clean the air and emit beautiful natural energy.

Trust yourself.

A big part of being a Witch is trusting yourself. Trust in your abilities. Trust your intuition. If you don’t trust yourself, you will need to learn how. This is where the journal helps. Do some soul searching and find your confidence.

You don’t need a god/goddess.

You don’t need to worship any deity to do witchcraft or to be a witch, unless of course, you want to!. You could draw energy from the elements in the universe, or refer to the concept of “god” as Spirit. The term “Spirit” is an all-encompassing term used for the intelligent power sources that flow through everything.

Energy is everything and everything is energy.

A rock carries a slow and dense energy, but energy nonetheless. The air going in and out of your lungs is a much faster, lighter energy. Your thoughts are composed of energy. The elements are the building blocks of the physical plane, and the energy of Spirit surrounds all of it.

Everything is connected.

Everything is made of energy, and it’s all interconnected. Our plane of existence is connected to other dimensions, and our consciousness can take trips to these other dimensions through meditation, pathworking, and in dreams. I recommend learning as much as you can about “Flying the Hedge” or Journeying before trying it… it can actually be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Protect yourself.

That being said, it’s important to put up energy shields to protect yourself. Most of the time you’re safe, but negative energies can be insidious. Don’t be scared, just shield yourself! You can put an enchantment on your car to prevent theft. You can place a line of salt around your yard, or along the windows and doors to keep negativity out. Sage your living space and/or use Palo Santo. Selenite and black tourmaline around your windows make great guardians, as well.

Ground yourself.

Your energy is a lot like electricity, and electrical currents need a ground. Ground your energy on a regular basis to feel balanced. You’ll know when you’re grounded and in balance when you feel peaceful and aware. Ground yourself before and after a spell or ritual, and on any day that ends in Y.

Visualization is important.

Since your thoughts are made of energy, you can build up the energy around a certain thought to make it exist in the ethereal realm. Visualization takes practice, but it’s not hard to do. To practice, just sit quietly and hold an image in your mind for as long as you can. Try holding it for at least 5 minutes to start with. This will strengthen your ability to focus on your intent, which is crucial to spells.

Psyching yourself out is important.

Psyching yourself out helps an incredible amount with visualizing and focusing intent. That’s where tools and other tangible things help -- they help put you in the right state of mind! Having representations of the elements with you during a spell helps you draw the energy from that element to help you with a spell, by being a symbol of it. Our minds respond strongly but subtly to symbols and sounds.

The future is not absolute.

Keep this in mind especially when doing any kind of divination. The future is full of different pathways to take, depending on the choices you make. You can’t ask the Tarot yes or no questions, because it gives no yes or no answers. Divination offers a sneak peek into questions like “what would happen if….”.

If you don’t feel magickal, don’t do magick.

There will be days when you don’t even want to do anything magickal. Take the day off. Take a whole year off if you need it. Don’t force it, or it won’t work. Come back to it when your energy feels right for it again.

No witch is an island, not even a solitary witch.

We’re all influenced by the people around us. If you don’t have any witchy friends IRL, seek them out on the internet. Facebook groups are a good place to start. Ask questions and jump into the conversations. I’ve learned SO many new things from just reading comments on Facebook.

You only need a few basic tools.

Tools are there to help you, but none of your spells will work without a solid intent, or without the raising and releasing of energy to back it up.

Spells don’t need to be fancy, but…

… you DO need to be very specific about what you’re trying to accomplish. The universe will take you literally, so don’t be vague. Before you decide to do a spell, make a list of the things you want. Think about all the specifics and have that list solid in your mind when you do your spell.

You can’t make anyone love you.

If that was true, the world would be even scarier than it already is. You have to love yourself and build yourself up, focus on your own life and the people already in it. What qualities do you want in a significant other? Cultivate those qualities in yourself, so you can attract the right kind of love.

Don’t be afraid to your own ways of doing things.

Once you’ve learned the basics of how energy works, you can start coming up with your own methods of working magick. If you’ve devised a way to create sigils and it’s not the way you’ve learned online or in books, then do you! Did you come up with a new tarot card spread that works great? Use it. They call it WitchCRAFT because you can get creative with it!

Remember that other witches are humans, too.

That means none of them are perfect, and they’re not always right. Be respectful, but always get a second opinion, especially when you’re learning something new. Humans also have opinions, and you definitely don’t need to listen to someone’s opinion and let it influence you.

There is always a way.

If you run into a roadblock, remember that there are ways around it. Be creative and look at the possibilities. Use what you know to blaze new pathways!

#baby witches #advice for new witches #my advice #witchlings #witchcraft 101

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airadam · 4 years

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Episode 136 : Protection

"I'm a walking heart attack, looking for somebody to happen..."

- Boogieman

Still shut up in the house for the most part, which at least gives me a chance to really dig through my crates, vinyl and otherwise! This month's selection has some great recent records, some older underground favourites, and a mix segment I've been wanting to do for ages - figured this episode was as good a time as any!

Twitter : @airadam13

Twitch : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Mac Ayres : Shadows

If nothing else, this enforced time spent in the house has yielded some great musical discoveries. I heard this cut on a DJ Jazzy Jeff Twitch session, and bought it immediately as soon as I found out what it was! Mac Ayers is a singer/songwriter/instrumentalist from Long Island, and if he's already turning out material like this in his early 20s, I can only imagine what it'll be with more experience. This is a highlight on last year's "Juicebox" album, and one that those who enjoy the modern soul sound will almost certainly enjoy!

[DJ Premier] Prhyme : My Calling (Instrumental)

This beat from "Prhyme 2" is so, so good. DJ Premier continues to turn out fresh creations over thirty years since his debut, with more different styles than he's often given credit for. The pianos sound like falling rain, the low end is the solid ground, and everything else fits perfectly around them.

Ski Beatz & Stalley : Gentlemen's Quarterly

Smooth from the lyrics to Ski Beatz' sophisticated production, this is a cut I'd managed to forget about until I rediscovered it in my collection recently. Find it on the "Ski Beatz 24 Hour Karate School Presents Twilight" (snappy!) LP, if you can find a reasonably-priced copy!

LL Cool J ft. Keith Murray, Prodigy, Fat Joe, and Foxy Brown : I Shot Ya (Remix)

A classic from the mid-90s. LL brought in some of the hottest MCs of the time alongside a young Foxy Brown making her on-record debut for a Trackmasters-produced street banger. The "Mr. Smith" album is the source for this often-sampled gem.

O.C. & Organized Konfusion : You Won't Go Far

Unapologetic boom-bap from this all-NYC combination, taken from the second volume of the "New Jersey Drive" soundtrack. Of all the tracks on that release, it's the one that hews closest to the plot of the film itself, which itself makes it a standout in the world of 90s Hip-Hop/R&B soundtracks! OK self-produced this one, and rather than give each MC a verse each, they split each verse between the three of them for more of a tag-team feel.

Rise : Make Sure That We Win

Note: I got this wrong on the voiceover - this is a Beatminerz beat, not DJ Spinna. Spinna produced the excellent "Part of the Game" on the same EP.

Rise is an MC out of Brooklyn and the Demigodz crew, who has a knack for punchlines and quotables within a laid back style - he just seems puzzled by wack MCs most of the time! The Beatminerz provide the beat with the fuzzbox guitars moving all over the soundscape and the classic boom-bap drum style and some sub bass to give it the heft. DJ Evil Dee of Da Beatminerz rounds things out with his cuts for the hook. Grab this and a couple of other great tracks on the 2003 "The Intro..." EP.

Pete Rock : Air Smoove

"Petestrumentals 2" may not become the low-key icon that the first instalment did, but don't sleep on it - it's still Pete Rock on the beats, after all. I keep going back to it and finding myself enjoying tracks more and more, with this being a prime example.

Above The Law ft. 2Pac and Money B : Call It What U Want

I once nearly got into a fight (the other guy was heated) when I off-handedly mentioned that I remembered when 2Pac had been a dancer for Digital Underground - but it was true, and there was never any shame in it! Anyway, it was also with that crew that he made initial strides onto the mic, and after going solo himself, this was one of his first features, alongside Money B from DU. Above The Law's "Black Mafia Life", from which this is taken, is one of the most overlooked albums that could claim the accolade of "classic" when you listen to how it sounded and how early it was made - I strongly recommend that every listener seeks it out for an end-to-end hearing. It's striking to realise that of the four MCs on this cut, only two are still with us today - RIP 2Pac and KMG.

DJ Quik ft. Pharoahe Monch & K.K. : Murda 1 Case

An absolute stomper from Compton's finest, leading with the piano, keeping the drums hard but simple (kicks on 1 and 3 only, snares on 2 and 4), and three MCs going at it. On this clear standout on 2002's "Under Tha Influence", the underrated Quik holds his own against one of the best to pick up a mic, and shows the confidence and intelligence as a producer to know that this was the man to bring in for the closing verse.

De La Soul : Verbal Clap

Many years after their debut, De La remind you that they can get busy on a state-of-the-art thumping beat with no problem - in this case, a masterful creation by J Dilla, one of two on 2004's "The Grind Date". Dave's rhyme style here is extra raw and he dominates by sheer brute force, standing out even on an album where De La sound highly-motivated overall. If you don't yet know it, it's well worth your while to search it out and have a proper listen.

Mr. Scruff ft. Broke 'n' English : Listen Up

Manchester all the way on this track, with the DJ and producer Mr Scruff getting the drumline mad active with a nice bassline, and Strategy and DRS of Broke 'n' English bringing all the local flavour on the mic. This great cut is on the flip of the also-excellent "Nice Up The Function" 12", which is now available digitally - so no difficulty in finding a copy!

[The Neptunes] Busta Rhymes : Pass The Courvoisier, Part II (Instrumental)

A great party beat, one to get people moving even without Busta and Pharrell's vocals!

AZ : Take Care Of Me

From his very first LP, AZ was flowing over soul/R&B samples, so it wasn't a reach for him to make a track like this for "Aziatic", his fourth. Precision soundtracks it with a "no samples" approach which for the non-Bad Boy producers tended to be the move for the club/radio tracks, and it's aged fairly well. AZ's lyrics are definitely reflective of the time - cellphones are so unremarkable in 2020!

Krumb Snatcha ft. Boogieman : Oxygen

Krumb Snatcha is pretty much as rugged as it gets, but here he shows that while he can give you an underground street classic like "Closer To God", there's still time to have fun! This track from his second LP "Respect All, Fear None" isn't what you might expect from KS but I think he did a solid job here. Nottz' beat bumps and burbles with a solid low end, and the guest MC Boogieman, who's already collaborated with him previously, steals the show with a casually disrespectful closing verse - not a particularly technical one, but entertaining!

Mic Geronimo : Nothin' Move But The Money

This record was hated when it came out, of all the tracks in this section, it was the most blatant pander to the pop audience - after all, Puffy (now Diddy) was the producer! This was amplified by the fact that Queens' own Mic Geronimo was a darling of the underground scene after his excellent debut LP "The Natural", and this is a million miles away stylistically. "Vendetta" was a big change, and arguably a bit of a career killer because of it. Have a look at the video - every so often, Mic actually looks pretty uncomfortable!

Goodie Mob ft. Big Boi and Backbone : Get Rich To This

This was the next most derided track when it was released - if someone else had recorded it, it may have been received for what it was, but again, this was a serious sonic whiplash for anyone who had heard "Soul Food" or "Still Standing". It was still Organized Noize on production, still the same MCs (plus guests), but definitely not what people were expecting, by and large. I can't front though - I kind of liked it even then! The "World Party" LP is the source for this one.

[Kenny Dope] L Swift : Ride This (Instrumental)

Crispy clean drums and a nice guitar line are the highlights of this beat from a 2000 12" by one of the MCs from the incredible Natural Elements (now reformed, with L Swift as Swigga). The vocal version features A Butta from NE and the B-side is produced by Spinna, so well worth picking up if you see it!

Toots & The Maytals : Funky Kingston

We close the episode with the title track of the 1973 album by the reggae legend "Toots" Hibbert, who passed away this month at the age of 77, and his band. The throatiness of his delivery on this classic cut does bring to mind the American funk godfather James Brown, but the message and the groove is pure yard. It may be almost fifty years old now, but still moves a dancefloor with ease!

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

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moviestorian · 7 years

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what do you think Theon and George Warleggan have in common?

Hi!

First of all, I am so SO very sorry it took me ages toreply. I’ve had plenty of different things to do, and I thought this is such aninteresting question that deserves a fully developed reply. Finally, I’mreplying, and the final result is over 3000 words. :P

Disclaimer: my interpretation is basedon both show and book Theon, but almost entirely show version of George (he’sslightly different than his book counterpart, and also I’m reading The BlackMoon, so I wouldn’t even have a full context to discuss book George, so…)

I briefly outlined the topic at the endof this post, but it’s really short, and I will try to be moreprecise here. Ok, let’s start!

George& Theon vs. fandom

I will start with something which may not be a typicalparallel and is not directly connected with George/Theon’s personality (I mean,it could be refered to many other characters), but I still find it strikingenough to consider. I’m talking about the fandom’s most usual reaction to bothof these characters. Theon and George are (probably) equally disliked byPoldark/GoT fandoms. There are (rather small)groups of their fans of course,but there are definitely many more of those who - to put it mildly - dislikethem. Quite frankly, I think Theon’s fanbase is actually bigger than George’s,but this may be because GoT/Asoiaf fandom outnumbers the Poldark one.

Coming back to the fandoms’ reaction, George and Theonare commonly perceived as “evil”. George is rather frequently calleda “villain” (I kinda get why people think so but I’d argue with that, tome he’s more of an antagonist, just like Javert or Frollo), and while I don’tsee people using the same term to describe Theon that often, I’ve come acrosssuch opinions as well (also…I believe GRRM called him a villain…). Finally,they both receive a fair amount of hate, and well… this hatred can be very nasty(selective empathy, maybe?). I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but I’mstill quite astounded how awful things people can write… (I’m talking aboutposts in which you can find such gems as “Theon deserved to be tortured”,castration jokes etc., or “George should be flayed alive” and that Rossshould’ve put his face in fire.

Identityproblem

George Warleggan and Theon Greyjoy, as Inoticed, deal with the “I don’t belong anywhere” problem, even thoughtheir issues come from slightly different backgrounds (btw, they are both quiteshitty at solving their problems). George, as a wealthy and powerful banker whois grandson of a blacksmith, does belong to neither aristocracy nor commonfolk,and isn’t actually being accepted by either of these groups. When it comes toTheon, he is neither fully a Stark nor fully a Greyjoy. His arc is more of anidentity arc than anything else, I would say. As a hostage in Winterfell, he isreally close to the Stark family (as he admitted himself, Robb was more of a brotherto him than Rodrick and Marron) but he’s not one of them and he always remainsa Greyjoy in the Northerners’ eyes (and apart from Robb, he is rather indifferentto other Starks, definitely not one of them). However, he’s been in Winterfellfor so long that he doesn’t fit the Iron Islands, too - and hence, hissupposedly glorious return in A Clash of the Kings is one huge disappointment for him.

As a direct result of this problem, Georgeand Theon are doing their best to “prove themselves” - Warleggan is tryingreally hard to become a member of aristocracy, and Greyjoy wants to showeveryone that he is a true Ironborn. With pretty unfortunate results. Theirmain problem is, though, that they are not people they’re pretending to be, andI think they both know it deeply in their hearts, so it becomes some sort of acomplex for them. In early season 2, when Demelza asks him what’s thedifference between being a miner’s daughter and a blacksmith’s grandson Georgeangrily responds that “she will always beminer’s daughter, while he is a gentleman”. And it is not the only timewhen George reacts very (let’s say)sensitively when somebody brings up thematter of his origin. I think this is because he knows that no matter how many times he’ll deny it, he will always beblacksmith’s grandson. It’s pretty similar in Theon’s case, and although I disagreewith statements that the Starks were/are his true family, many GoT characterstend to think so. However, I can’t deny that he is strongly attached to theStarks and is influenced by what he experienced in Winterfell. Yet even beforethat, when he was just a child, he was not a “typical” Ironborn, he was a shy,sensitive child.

Acceptance & isolation issues

Something strongly related to the pointabove. I already mentioned the problem of not being accepted by theNortherners/Greyjoys (Theon) or commonfolk/aristocracy (George). No matter howmuch Theon and George will try, and let’s face it: both of them, yet especiallyGeorge, do stuff that not only don’t help them but actually makes the problemworse, they will always remain somewhere inbetween. Theon will always be “thatStark hostage” or, even worse, “Starks’ dog” in Ironmen’s eyes, and George willalways be “that upstart (poodle)” in aristocracy’s eyes.

Because of this acceptance problem thereappears an isolation problem, too. I find it quite striking how lonely Georgeand Theon are. In Theon’s case it may not be that obvious because of the maskhe wears (smiling a lot, etc.), but in my opinion there’s no doubt he IS lonely. In George’s case it’sactually both pretty ironic and interesting about the TV characterization ofhim, because he seems more introverted than Theon, but at the same time he shows his loneliness quite often – butin a subtle way. Even in public places a viewer can frequently spot him beingalone. Because of this loneliness, Theon and George have this one person theystrongly rely on psychologically – I’m talking about Robb Stark and ElizabethChynoweth-Poldark. I already mentioned how Theon treats Robb as his youngerbrother, and I will also say that I think Robb is also the closest personequivalent to a true family member he ever had. When it comes to George, hecares about Elizabeth very much, to the point of obsessiveness (one couldwonder, who is George more obsessed with: Ross or Elizabeth?), and she isactually the only person (at least as far as I remember, correct me if I’m wrong)he speaks openly to about how lonelyhe feels (“Loneliness is not one-sided,Elizabeth. A man may feel it, too”).

Difficult family relationships/(poor) interpersonalskills

This partially comes as a result ofidentity/acceptance problems, and partially affects the mentioned issues aswell. I will start with saying that George is an orphan in the show (we don’tknow when exactly he lost his parents, though) and while technically both BalonGreyjoy and Alannys Harlaw are alive (well, Balon dies in AFFC, but Theon stillgot to see him in ACOK), Theon is so isolated from them since he was takenprisoner that he basically don’t have parents, too. I assume he was quite closeto his mother when he was a child, but his relationship with Balon wasextremely cold and this never changed. So, as consequence to them not reallyhaving fathers, George and Theon’s personalities are shaped by father figuresthat are not exactly very positive for them – Cary Warleggan and Ned Stark (ohmy, I never thought I will be comparing Ned to Cary, but here I am).

Let me start with Cary. Even in thebooks it was noted several times that Cary has too big of an influence onGeorge, but I promised to stick with the show and so I will. From season 2 Caryhas been less and less significant character in George’s arc, but I’d say it’sstrongly visible how many of George’s actions are somehowinfluenced/strengthened by Cary in s1 (happened once or twice in s2 as well,but George is already very independent by that time and usually decides to dowhat he wants). Cary is really, really cold and pretty amoral (he gives offthis vibe of not having much empathy, if any) and seems to have no problemswith doing harm at all, when even George seems to hesitate. One of such momentsare when Cary is absolutely not moved by Julia Poldark’s death and literally raises a toast (!) for “Ross Poldark’sdownfall” after his little daughter’s death and dissolving Carnmore CopperCompany (note that George slightly raises his glass but doesn’t drink, anddoesn’t look happy in the slightest). To be honest, he doesn’t seem very closeto his nephew in emotional terms, too – they are more like business partnersthan relatives, and allow me to emphasize: before marrying Elizabeth Cary isthe closest family member George has; the onlyfamily member he has. Taking this into account, what kind of person George issupposed to be? In some aspects he is similar to his uncle – distant and cold,and where does he get it from? Again, we don’t know how old was George when hisparents died so we’re moving a little bit into a headcanon zone (at the sametime, we don’t know what Nicholas Warleggan was like, and it’s probable that hewas similar to Cary to a certain extent, they were brothers after all).Assuming it happened when George was a child/teenager – then Cary definitely had a strong influence onhis personality and perception of other people/emotions in general. Then,assuming it happened when George was in his late teens/early twenties, thatinfluence would be way less significant, but it doesn’t mean there would be noinfluence at all. George still could have tried to somehow “stick” to the onlyfamily member he has and sought for his approval, at least in how to deal with business and make investments.

Before I will explain similiaritiesbetween Cary/George relationship and Ned/Theon relationship, let me emphasizethat Cary and Ned are not the same. Eddard is loving to his family and capableof showing his affection, while Cary is not. Where I see a parallel is how Nedis cold towards Theon, and Theon isliterally quite scared of him, which does influence him negatively. Let mequote the books to present how Greyjoy felt about Ned Stark (bolded by me foremphasis):

“As if ten years in Winterfellcould make a Stark. Lord Eddard had raised him amonghis own children, but Theon had neverbeen one of them. The whole castle, from Lady Stark to the lowliest kitchen scullion, knew he was hostage to his father’s good behavior,and treated him accordingly. Eventhe bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor than he had.

Lord Eddard had tried to play the father from time to time, but to Theon he had always remained the manwho’d brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from his home. As a boy, hehad lived in fear of Stark’s stern face and great dark sword. His wife was,if anything, even more distant and suspicious.” (GRRM, A Clash of Kings, Theon I)

Or here:

“This was never my home. I was a hostage here. Lord Stark had not treated him cruelly, but the long steel shadow of his greatsword had always been between them.He was kind to me, but never warm.He knew that one day he might need toput me to death.” (GRRM, A Dance with Dragons, The Prince of Winterfell)

These quotes alsohighlight Theon’s acceptance problem pretty well, but let’s go back to therelationship issue. Theon was taken prisoner when he was, if I remembercorrectly, 9 years old and stayed there until he was 19. So, his teenage yearswere shaped by: a) being isolated from his parents; b) having “parent figures”that are distant and make him literally insecure; c) feeling isolated by hissurroundings. This is not a healthy environment for a growing child. Theon had,undoubtedly, far worse than George Warleggan (who at least did not feel thathis life was on threat), but what I see they have in common here is that theyboth hardly had someone to truly rely on, and if you don’t have support in yourown family (or what is close to your family), why should you expect suchsupport from others (that’s why George seems a bit paranoid at times, as ifeveryone was against him personally)? Therefore, they develop very poorinterpersonal skills.

Because they don’t havevery positive and supporting family relationships, they can’t create veryhealthy relationships with women (at least I believe this may be the case). Bythe way, I can’t unsee some similarities between Ros/Theon(show only) andMargaret/George relationships, but I guess it’s a discussion for another post. WhatI think they have again in common is that Theon has huge problems withdeveloping relationships with women other than having sex with them (it startschanging in ADWD, when he helps Jeyne Poole), and usually objectifies them.George technically doesn’t do that (he treats Elizabeth with huge courtesy),but disrespecting Demelza, in a sense, makes him feel superior (especiallysince he is technically a lowborn, too. Demelza just highlights his insecurityabout his origin) – he constantly calls her “a kitchen maid” and tells theguards in Bodmin that she is a harlot to prevent her from trying to save Rossfrom hanging. Theon doesn’t treat lowborn women well, too, and his insecuritiesprevent him from creating a long-lasting and loving relationship. George kindamanages to make that with Elizabeth, but their marriage (and pre-marriageperiod) is far from perfection – he can be obsessive and (sometimes, but still)manipulative, but then is gentle and loving.

Compensatory narcissistic personality disorder

Alright, I am not the most competentperson to discuss this, and @incblackbird wrote an amazing book in which shedescribed Theon’s formation of his identity and defense mechanism he uses, so Iwill be rather brief here. So, what Theon and George share psychologically isthat they are both hella insecure, and they try to hide it behind the mask ofarrogance (in the series it’s brilliantly acted by Alfie Allen and JackFarthing, I honestly think they make one of the most nuanced performances inthe show they’re in). In case of Theon it’s his “constant smile” (it’smentioned many times in the books), and in George’s – his general posture,especially how he tends to hold his chin very high and proudly. I love thescene in 1x08 when he’s going to Trenwith very quickly, silently crying, andthen he just stops and put his usual mask on, to hide his emotion and makeimpression of having full control over himself. Another scene when you can seehim “posing” is in s2 (episode 3, I believe?) when he’s “training” in front ofthe mirror.

Theon and George also seem to havesuperiority complex, often being expressed by them downplaying or hurtingothers to make them feel better. However read ASOIAF or seen GoT/Poldark knowwhat I’m talking about. ;)

Capability of doing terrible things

A side effect of what described above.Both of these characters did some really horrible things (and that’s mostly whythe fandoms dislike them), in order to prove themselves (esp. Theon) or getwhat they want (George trying to get closer to aristocracy). Theon definitelyregrets what he did, and in the show I get the impression that sometimes Georgedoes too, although he would never admit it (I think his behavior shows that hisconscience is not quite clear, he’s not Cary after all). To illustrate whatthey did I will give some examples: Theon abused Kyra (left her crying aftersleeping with her), turned on Robb and killed the farm boys and burned theirbodies, while George tried to have Ross hanged and forced Morwenna to marryWhitworth against her will.

Tendency to like “pretty things”

Alright, that’s the last thing :). Theonand George have, in a manner of speaking, quite interesting fashion sense, Imean that they like to wear/be surrounded by pretty things. This is noticed byBalon Greyjoy (probably other Ironborn too), Ross Poldark and aunt Agatha, andat the same time serves as a mean to highlight their identity problems – thatTheon is not fully a Greyjoy and George is not fully an aristocrat. Once again,allow me to use quotation from ASOIAF to show what was Balon’s reaction toTheon wearing jewellery:

“His father slid his fingers under thenecklace and gave it a yank so hard it was like to take Theon’s head off, hadthe chain not snapped first. “My daughter has taken an axe for alover,“ Lord Balon said. “I will not have my sonbedeck himself like a whore.” He dropped the broken chain onto thebrazier, where it slid down among the coals. “It is as I feared. The green lands have made you soft, andthe Starks have madeyou theirs.”(GRRM, A Clash of Kings, Theon I)

And now let’s compareit to George’s case. It’s a bit more visible in the books, but I promised tostick with the show and I’m going to keep my promise. ;) In 2x03, when Rossstarts a fight with George, George is wearing a ruby on his stock tie, and I maybe wrong, but I haven’t noticed any other male character in Poldark wearingjewellery on their stock ties. Obviously it was not the reason why Ross startedthe fight, but later in the same episode Andrew Blamey and Francis ask him forthe cause of this conflict, and he responds that he didn’t like his stock tie,which means that he noticed that anddidn’t like it (possibly reminded him of George being a nouveau riche, who’sricher than all Poldarks together). Another scene is George’s conversation withaunt Agatha she tells him:

“I remember the first time Francis brought you here! Fligged out in yourfrills and fallallery! (…)Velvets andsilks you wore. ‘Twas plain your mother had no taste.(…) And you, staring about like abull-calf that had strayed from its stall.”

That was the final one. :) I hope you are satisfied with my answer,anon! I know it’s very long, but I hope it’s at least a bit interesting!Obviously what I wrote here is by no means everything that can be said on thistopic and I’m pretty sure there’s something I missed. ;)

#text poldark #george warleggan #asoiaf #text got #theon greyjoy #parallels #wera speaks #long post #answered #anonymous

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sapphirestream · 7 years

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So I’ve been watching Thrilling Intent and I just need to get a rant out or I’m going to stay mad at Gregor forever. I know that’s not a valid solution because he’s a lovable character most of the time and he sticks around and needs to be forgiven if I still want to continue to enjoy watching the show. I don’t really trust the formatting to give the issue space to breath and be properly addressed rather than just falling into the background due to the serialized nature, so I’m going to get out all my feelings here and hopefully get some catharsis doing so. I WILL acknowledge that I am a bit biased, because Ashe is my favorite character so far, and she’s the one who has the most conflict with Gregor on these issues. I still think I would hold these same opinions if the positions were flipped though. The first big conflict between Ashe and Gregor was, of course, the Charoth issue. At first, I agreed with Gregor’s stance. “Cool motive, still murder” and all that. And sometimes the only option to stop the killing IS to slay the monster even if it is hungry or just being itself. And if regular slaying would have done anything, I would have agreed that it was the right thing to do, especially since we couldn’t fully gauge Charoth’s mental state at the time and had no way to know of its childlike understanding of the world.

HOWEVER. However. Killing Charoth would not have done anything productive, and the only way to permanently slay it was to destroy it’s literally immortal soul. Just on an ethical level, that is a step so extreme it SHOULD be a last resort, as Markus stated. Even with all the monsters and even people they have killed before, this is not a step that they had taken. It is striking it beyond all chance of redemption, even after a complete wipe of identity. Other methods should be tried before it, even if they don’t ‘punish’ the creature for its wrongdoings or are risky. Fighting it is risky anyway. You don’t slay a creature because you want to punish them, you slay them to STOP them. Ideally, in the real world you relocate them before they hurt somebody, but even if a bear or something is put down, it's because you can’t control the risk, not because the bear is inherently evil and need to be punished for its sins. The goal is to STOP the monster, not get vengeance for those lost. It also bothers me on a practical level as well. Gregor did have a point that this could lead to future troubles if something happens to Ashe, but honestly, it was the option that mitigated the consequences the most. Especially after they had already talked him down! Kylil even said she had experience coaxing spirit folk back from their wispy state, and Charoth had an entire island to socialize with now that he wasn’t locked in the temple by a short-sighted father figure. Even before they decided to set up shop in the Nine Shrines bar, Charoth had the beginnings of a loving childhood and a budding support network to help him work through his grief. Also, if you ever wanted justice or remorse for those who died, this would be the only option. Charoth will eventually have to face what he did during these times, but if you kill him he will truly be a new person. Some of the spirit folk will surely still blame him and be scared of him, but as it is now he has the framework to deal with that guilt and would deserve it. He could come to regret what he did during this time and work through that fear and try to earn forgiveness, rather than being unfairly blamed for a previous incarnation. If he has to grow up surrounded by fear for something he no longer is responsible for, that can only breed resentment rather than healing. Killing him would have only put the danger off into the future, and erased whatever ground they had gained. He MIGHT have been ok, if Kylil had still taken a hand in his raising and the spirit folk had a good handle on separating out previous incarnation’s misdeeds. But you would have erased whatever good work and morals his father had managed to instill in him for twenty years. And he certainly would no longer have any love for humans and would take his cue of humanity from the clearly biased (rightly so! they’ve been burned before and we can be pretty awful) spirit folk. No way would Ashe have wanted to stick around on the island after that (nor would I blame her considering her backstory), so Charoth would have grown up with no human influence at all. Which doesn’t sound too great for humanity later, does it, if later it decides to continue wrecking ships, this time on behalf of the spirit folk? They might not have the temperament to do so, but Charoth would certainly have no qualms about it if they asked him in this scenario. This would not have helped the spirit folks goodwill toward humanity either, ESPECIALLY if Gregor had killed Charoth after a peaceful solution had been reached. And destroying him utterly? Besides it being the most morally dubious way to go, it would also have potentially the worst consequences! Charoth is a GOD. He is the line between life and death! What happens when you erase that!? Does anyone even know? BEST CASE you just get a new one forming anyway, with an entirely unknown temperament. Alternatively, everyone could be stuck on the island forever, metaphysics fucked from the missing death god. There’s no saying that death itself wouldn’t be royally fucked in the localized area, and we already saw that even just Charoth stoppering it was causing problems. That’s not even mentioning if an unfriendly death god neighbor saw that the Shrouded Isles were undefended and decided to take over! This is only an option if you care about no one and nothing on the island, because this fucks them over hard. This is NOT a good deed, nor does it save anyone but humans. The party would just be one in a long line of people who have screwed over the natives and left them the worse for wear. Legen’s Eye is actually what prompted this rant, as I had to take a break after watching the conclusion of Wizard Highschool. I have a lot less to say about it because it’s been percolating in my mind for a lot less long, but it was HIGHLY frustrating to watch Gregor shut down all discussion and go straight for destroying it. I’m still not sure whether they should have kept the artifact, but they CERTAINLY should have had a thorough talk about it without Inian and taken more than two seconds to decide. Inian should have been excluded not because she wasn’t part of the group or whatever, but because she was *actively shutting down discussion as well* If she had been willing to sit down and actually talk through everything then I would have been fine with her participating. If they felt that strongly in their convictions, they should have trusted them to shine through and convince the others. The group honestly probably would not have been able to put it to good use, but even if they had shoved it in a corner and let no one know they had it, it would have been a better option. Even setting aside if more magic would be better for equality, you never know if humanity+ is going to face some kind of natural or supernatural disaster down the line where that artifact could make a difference. You can never un-destroy something, and that's a decision that should at least have been talked about rather than decided by one person. They talk about not having the right to make those kinds of decisions, but they made a decision not just against their own party, but humanities(+) entire future, and banked against them EVER figuring out a way to use it wisely, or even the possibility of the necessity of its use. As an example, I once had a dnd game where the players went into a timestop for hundreds of years and emerged in a world overrun by demons. The gates of hell had busted open and there was a war between the celestial and hellish planes with humanity being the unfortunate battleground. Do they think such things are impossible? Do they think cataclysmic events will never happen where something like Legen’s Eye could make a difference in the material plane’s survival? No, it might not be the answer to all the world’s social ills, nothing simple will be. There is no magic bullet for our own weakness and greed. But this is the kind of artifact that should have been entrusted to future generations, as an ace in the hole if nothing else. Overall I am just extremely disappointed in Gregor’s unwillingness to talk things out and his black and white thinking. I know it comes with the territory of a Lawful Good character, and kudos to his player for a doing a good job with him, but damn is it frustrating to watch. This show is so good and so investing that I just want to reach into the screen and argue my own viewpoints with the characters, and I’m glad they cover these hard issues that other shows would skip over entirely. I really appreciate how willing they are to tackle things like this, and we wouldn’t even have had a discussion without varying viewpoints. I know Gregor’s in the hard spot of being devil’s advocate a lot of the time. (ironically it’s not Markus! Isn't he a Demon AND a ‘lawyer’?). Still. Still. I guess the counterpoint to being so invested and tackling hard moral issues is sometimes your viewers are just going to have to go rant on social media to get in their own two cents. God damn do I need a friend who watches this show.

#Thrilling Intent #Charoth #Legen's eye #Gregor Hartway #Aesling #Hit me up if you want to talk about this #though I would ask kindly for no spoilers #I wish I could convince one of my friends to watch this show too #But I think I used up a lot of my cred on Higurashi #Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it #and then I remember their face and think ah yes it was lol #(also a lot of my nerdy interests just don't align with the person most likely to actually take me up on media suggestions)#(they didnt even like fma what the heck)

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sanguineaurora · 8 years

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Bellflower and Blue Bird (Chapter 1 of ?)

Hi! I’ve been working on this fic for a while but I never get around to posting it. Its Lapithyst so it’s dedicated to @goopy-amethyst because she loves lapithyst!

Warning: There will be mentions of past abuse and very slight very brief verbal abuse. Alcohol and smoking mention also.

Living your life with constant fear of being rejected is definitely not the greatest. The need for validation, trust, and love is a very hard thing to get. Unless you meet the right person. It might not even be in the most romantic place you can imagine. And you might even have to break rules.

Lapis had been standing in the cosmetics and hair aisle in a cheap drugstore for ten minutes now. She’d gone back and forth between fierce blue or sapphire blue, same color but different brand. The chemical infused hair dye would damage her fragile scalp either way; she went with fierce blue. Dying your hair all the colors of the rainbow was particularly hard, especially because not all colors look good on her. Green for example made it look like Lapis had failed at dyeing her hair blond and the brand that was the cheapest gave her lots of dandruff. She shrugged to herself and checked out, just after she gave the store clerk an uncivil look when he told her to smile.

As she began her walk home, a mother was yelling at her kid, he looked about six and terrified. Streams of tears ran down his face as his irritated mother screamed in his face in public with another child in a stroller next to her. Lapis wanted to beat sense into that woman, especially when the boy looked at her with slight hope in his eyes. She sighed and kept walking, all the while mentally calling herself a coward or not doing anything.

Lapis hadn’t lived the best life, her parents practically ruined it when she was fourteen. Her mother was an alcoholic and drank and smoked when she was pregnant with Lapis, causing her to be born prematurely with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. And of course her parents didn’t care enough to take her to a support group of any kind when she was old enough. Her parents were abusive, both verbally and physically, to her and left bruises, cuts, and burns in open areas. Which caused her to often earn concerning and almost scared looks from strangers and teachers. Once her seventh grade science teacher asked why she had a black eye, but to avoid her parents getting angry at her, she told the teacher that she’s a very clumsy person and often accidentally hurts herself by tripping. That specific adult asked if she was okay a lot during the school year and Lapis refrained herself from telling the truth. And seeing the ‘Stop Abuse’ posters with a domestic violence hotlines didn’t help her either.

Lapis ran away at age fifteen and lived off the free candy at corner stores and the best looking food out of the dumpster behind any restaurant she could find. She did that for a half a year before a very tall women, maybe in her early thirties, found her under an exit bridge. Alex, she had learned her name when they began walking to her car, had taken her in and nursed her back to almost perfect health. Alex is a tall woman, at least six foot, with teal dyed hair and cool tattoos. She was often very quiet but showed emotions strongly with facial expressions and her voice would change the tone depending on the situation.

Alex acted like a mother to Lapis ever since, she even discovered that Alex had a son. Well he wasn’t actually hers and she was technically his aunt, but she took custody when his actual mother died. Greg, his father, lived in a van but came over to hang out a lot. He had a kind heart and Alex treated him as a good friend. Obviously since he lives in a van, you’d think he didn’t have much money but he wins lotterys a lot and maybe every once in awhile he’d take Alex to New York City, we lived in Brooklyn (specifically Coney Island), and gamble.

“Hello,” Alex greeted her as she shut the front door of their beach house. Lapis replied with a grunt as she swinged her heavy backpack off her shoulders and set the bag with the hair dye down next to it.

“How was school today?” Alex is the tenth grade science teacher at the high school, and during class is possibly the most someone will hear her talk, and everyone loves her class because she does the most dangerous experiments, with supervision just in case. One year she lit her dream team students on fire. Lapis has been in her class long enough to know that she can also do strange things during class such as knitting a giant blanket with the class and hanging student-made atoms on the ceiling. It’s a fire hazard and once there were fire marshals waiting in the office to find any fire hazards. Alex had two students guard her classroom door as she and her students frantically cut down the atoms while laughing with genuine amusement. Her lectures aren’t half assed either, most people usually end up with A’s in her class. Lapis is seventeen now but had school to catch up on, so she had Alex for fourth period.

“It was good, I think,” Lapis paused, “In all honesty, I don’t remember much of what happened.” Alex chuckled and turned back to the stove. Lapis briefly smiled and walked to the island in the kitchen. She sighed quietly as she sat down and laid her head on her arms. She felt Alex turn back and look at her.

“Do you feel like going to group tonight?” Oh right. Once Alex found out more about Lapis’ past she asked if she would like to go a support group. They met every Thursday at six o’clock to seven thirty. It hadn’t been helping Lapis as much so she missed going the past month. In fact, it’d often bring back more memories than she’d like. Once she started going she started to crave abuse but couldn’t figure out why. Those people, her shitty parents who are probably enjoying their brat free life right now, had hurt her, they’d done so much and now that she doesn’t experience the pain anymore she wants it.

“Uh,” she actually thought about it. It’s not like anything interesting would happen. But then again, she did want to go when she was younger, and Alex had given her the chance to go now. “Yeah, I think i’ll go now.” She ate a carrot laying in front of her and heard bare footsteps running down the stairs. She smiled and greeted Steven, Alex’s nephew, as he ran to hug her.

Lapis immediately regretted going as Alex dropped her off, and was tempted to call Alex and have her turn around and come back. She walked up the stairs to the room unwillingly after barely deciding she didn’t want to bother Alex again. Lapis thought about the stairs as she walked up them, there sure is a lot what the hell. About forty maybe, and they were narrow. She began testing herself and skipped steps, more than the last and repeated the action. Well, before she almost fell down the stairs.

The room she walked into was occupied with about fifteen teenagers, some sitting on bean bag chairs or on the ground. There was this one girl that she learned to tolerate when she started going. She cut her hair on her own while under the influence and had harmed herself in numerous places the same night. She dyed her hair a peach color about two weeks after against her parents wishes and ended up moving in with her cousin to avoid wanting to drink or smoke again. She hadn’t done it for a year so far. She was tall and skinny, long pale legs and scarred arms. Her blue eyes also complimented her skin and hair color well.

“Hey,” Lapis said quietly and sat next to her on the purple leather couch, leaving space between them. She looked at Lapis and smiled.

“I was getting lonely without you here.” Pearl, that was her name, didn’t have anyone to talk to in this group besides Lapis. They didn’t talk much but enjoyed each other’s company.

The girls sat in silence for approximately five minutes before the group director called everyone to sit in a circle in the middle of the room. The girls got up and obliged.

“Aha, I see someone has come back,” the director smiled at Lapis and raised an eyebrow. “Have you prayed these four weeks?”

“Yes,” She said. No I haven’t. He believed her and smiled. He began talking about behavioral issues and Lapis looked around at the other teens. She hadn’t put much thought into talking with anyone else. The people in this group don’t look like those people in support groups on television. These people have actual problems, they didn’t get hired to come to this room and listen to this crazy guy.

Lapis’ eyes stopped on one girl across from her. She had lavender hair and chub. She had leggings with stars cut in at the knee and a white shirt. The short girl also had her hair in a ponytail. Cute. She was pretty. Lapis shook her head and looked down at her lap. Damn you, she’s probably straight. Lapis also briefly thought about the rules she agreed to when she first joined. No sexual or romantic relationships with any other peers in the group. She groaned internally and spaced out, only hearing every other word their director was saying.

“Who would like to lead us in prayer tonight?” She snapped back into reality hoping to god he doesn’t pick her if no one volunteers. Pearl raised her hand and Lapis felt a feeling of relief spread throughout her. He nodded and everyone held hands and prayer was done within a minute.

The support group felt more like a wednesday night youth group religious people went to. Lapis isn’t a christian but other than prayers and talk about God here and there, she felt a little better by the end of their sessions. She went to pick up her bag by the couch thinking about what Pearl had said in prayer but stopped when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and the girl with purple hair looked up at her slightly.

“Hey I noticed you kept spacing out, you okay?” Lapis’ eyes widened at the simple question, and was half ready to punch this girl in the face or run away from embarrassment.

“It was that obvious?” Was all that came out of her mouth. Lapis mentally cursed at herself before apologizing to the girl, “Sorry, uh yeah, yeah everythings fine. Just tired I guess.” She shrugged and straightened her back. The girl nodded. She must’ve been new because no one really talked to Lapis in this group except Pearl.

“I know how it is,” she said, “I’m Amethyst by the way.” She gave Lapis a crooked smile and somehow made Lapis become more awestruck and obsessed with her.

"Lapis." she smiled back slightly.

#Lapithyst #Lapis lazuli #lapis #amethyst #steven universe #su #my writing #ask to tag

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samuelcarveraccidentman · 5 years

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Jimmy Clements, a Wuradjuri man from down Gundagai way, walked all the way up to Canberra on hearing that the Duke and Duchess of York were set to open the new federal parliament.

It was May 1927, and Jimmy was pretty well known around the Limestone Plains, the natural amphitheatre on which the new federation’s national capital had been imposed. Like other Aboriginal men whom the whitefellas regarded as amenable, harmless or both, he wore a copper breastplate around his neck bearing the name ‘King Billy’. Supposedly symbolising the white man’s respect for the blacks, the breastplate was little more than another testimony to the Indigenous man’s subjugation to the invader.

For decades explorers, anthropologists, historians and newspaper writers claimed that the blacks of the Limestone Plains were extinct—killed by disease and grog, by settlers, police and soldiers. OnYong, the last chief of the local tribe, the Ngambri, in which Canberra’s etymology is cradled, died in an inter-tribal clash in about 1850.

He was buried ceremonially in an upright sitting position. But soon afterwards the settlers dug him up, stole his cranium and fashioned it into an ashtray. I’m pretty sure I know who still has OnYong’s skull. But that bloke never returns my calls. That’s another story, really—and a digression from how blackfellas were viewed around the national capital when the parliament first opened. Which is to say they were pretty well thought of as non-existent—gone. Frederick Watson, in his A Brief History of Canberra (published in 1927 to coincide with the opening of the new interim Australian Parliament) wrote that ‘virtually nothing’ remained to indicate the ‘former existence’ of the original inhabitants. In Canberra, even ahead of elsewhere, they seemed to wish the disappearance complete.

Jimmy Clements died a few months after winning his wish to meet and welcome the royals to Canberra. They buried him on the furthest border of Queanbeyan Cemetery, for a black man could not, even less than 90 years ago, be put to rest in consecrated ground. And there he was forgotten.

Alf Stafford with the prime minister’s car, ‘C 1’. He worked for 11 Australian prime ministers and was a confidant to one in particular, Robert Menzies. (picture: AIATSIS Collection, courtesy Michelle Flynn.)

Australia’s new federated democracy was the toast of the world for its progressiveness on minimum wages and working conditions, women’s suffrage and social security. But make no mistake, this was a country for the man of European extraction and Canberra was the capital intended to serve and strengthen White Australia.

And it was the town to which, just a few years later in 1930, a 24-year-old ex-soldier and talented cricketer, Alfred (Alf) George Stafford, arrived. A Gamilaroi and Darug man, born one of 12 children in Binnaway, New South Wales, he came to visit a friend briefly after being discharged from the Australian Army. He stayed forever after finding a job and subsequently opening a billiard parlour in Kingston, where he hosted the later world billiards champion, Horace Lindrum.

In 1937 he joined the Commonwealth Transport Department as one of its earliest ‘transport officers’—early bureaucratese for public service drivers. Over 35 years until his retirement in 1972, Stafford drove countless politicians, among them opposition leaders and 11 prime ministers, including Joe Lyons, Earle Page, Arthur Fadden, John Curtin, Frank Forde, Billy Hughes, Arthur Calwell, Ben Chifley, Robert Menzies (during two stints as PM), Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton, Billy McMahon and Gough Whitlam.

Stafford first drove Menzies—whom he always referred to as ‘Sir Robert’—in 1939, during the brief, deeply flawed first prime ministership of the Liberal Party founder. And while this Aboriginal man from the bush was evidently fond of most of those he drove or otherwise worked for, it was to the waspish Menzies that Stafford, perhaps improbably to outsiders, became closest.

During Menzies’ 16-year postwar tenure Stafford, the former first-grade cricketer or St George and the Australian Capital Territory, served as adviser for the selection of the Prime Minister’s XI, beginning with the match against the West Indies in 1951. It was a duty for which Stafford, a left-handed batsman and leg-break bowler, was eminently qualified; in the 1920s he opened the batting for St George’s first XI. At number three was Donald Bradman with whom, it seems, Stafford had a relationship that is perhaps best described as ambivalent.

The Menzies–Stafford relationship extended well beyond cricket, however. The two were lifelong friends and confidants. When Stafford’s first wife Edith became ill with cancer in the early 1950s, Menzies—perhaps at the insistence of his wife, Dame Pattie, determined that driving the PM was keeping ‘Alf’ away from his increasingly onerous family responsibilities. So Menzies insisted that a job be fashioned for Stafford as a ‘Cabinet officer’. This was effectively a position as a personal assistant to the prime minister, a messenger for ministers stuck in meetings and their butler, who’d make the tea and pour the drinks when Cabinet rose.

All the while, after the death of Edith in 1954, Stafford and his two youngest children, David and Diana, periodically lived in the Lodge. They did so at the insistence of the Menzies, so that Alf, with the help of one of the housekeepers, could better support his children as a sole parent. For the Menzies, who travelled on official business often, there was the added advantage that the Staffords could serve as caretakers at the Lodge while they were away. In 1956 Alf Stafford married another of the Menzies’ housekeepers, Heather Nesbitt. The Menzies threw a wedding reception for the couple at the Lodge.

Journalists, it is said, write the first drafts of history. This may be true, notwithstanding the compromises that pre-eminent speed of delivery imposes on accuracy. Academic historians, meanwhile, warily draw clues from these first drafts then rake the archives for other, often more reliable, documentary ‘fact’. Others, like Stafford, will incidentally find themselves in the front row—or the driver’s seat—as history unfolds all around them.

Stafford sat metres from Menzies, both in the car and in the prime minister’s office, during a time of postwar stability, prosperity and social change. He was there as Menzies (with too much help from Labor’s leader, Herb Evatt) fomented anti-communist hysteria, then as Australia began fighting the ultimately divisive Vietnam War. The growth of Australian industry and burgeoning middle-class satisfaction throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s coincided with the advent of the Indigenous rights movement that led to the successful 1967 referendum, which gave the federal parliament the power to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Given that Stafford’s service to prime ministers from Lyons to Whitlam points to a largely hitherto unrecognised Indigenous presence at the epicentre of Australian federal political life for a significant proportion of the twentieth century, it’s reasonable to ponder whether he used his influence to try to further the lot of Indigenous Australians. But even among his own family Stafford exercised great discretion, so we may never know.

The Menzies’ daughter, Heather Henderson—who recalls Alf well—has apparently told Stafford’s children that it had not occurred to her that this confidant to her father was Indigenous.

Stafford’s extensive personal archive—including photographs of him with (and signed by) various prime ministers, personal and official correspondence, voice recordings and ephemera—is now held at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Stafford’s granddaughter, Michelle Flynn, the custodian of this archive, gave the collection to the institute in 2014.

The institute’s director of collections, Lyndall Osborne, said the collection demonstrated a strong historical Aboriginal presence at the highest level of federal politics. It is, she said, an ‘important story for future generations to explore and learn about a man with Aboriginal heritage who was not only a close personal friend of a much loved former prime minister of Australia, Sir Robert Menzies, but also lived at the Lodge’.

This is certainly true. But besides a family tree tracing the Stafford lineage to early European convict and Indigenous antecedents, there is little evidence of any sort of preoccupation by Stafford with his own Indigenous heritage. Asked if Alf strongly identified with his Aboriginality, granddaughter Michelle Flynn says: ‘No, not outwardly—just within the family … I suppose if someone had asked him he wouldn’t have had a problem telling them. But I don’t think that he advertised it.’

His daughter Diana Griffiths says he usually only broached his Indigenous heritage incidentally:

I would have to say he never hid it. But we didn’t talk about it and quite often we’d ask questions and … he’d say ‘Look at my nose, of course I am.’ And we just grew up thinking he was joking, I think. He was a very keen fisherman and he would say, ‘I don’t really need to have a fishing licence because I’m an Aboriginal.’ This was his way of identifying with it culturally. Of course he looks Aboriginal—particularly as a young man in those early photographs. But we just didn’t see it.

Alf Stafford’s youngest son David, meanwhile, says: ‘In some ways it’s almost odd that we were not conscious of dad’s Aboriginality. I wasn’t until after he’d died. Michelle says that he used to talk to her about it. But myself and my brother, to a large extent, weren’t particularly conscious of it.’ David says his father would make occasional comments about the Aboriginal side of his identity being displayed through his various pursuits, like gardening and fishing.

And we’d just sort of think that he was joking about the fact that he was a mad gardener or he was out fishing and he’d keep little fish that were too small and he’d say ‘little fish are sweet’ and we’d keep telling him they were also small. Down at the coast he’d be out on the breakwater with a screwdriver getting the oysters … he would just make that sort of comment from time to time and we just thought it was a throwaway.

Menzies was busy running the country. So when the renowned Australian portrait painter (and mate of Menzies) Sir William Dargie came to Canberra to paint the prime minister in 1963, Menzies asked Stafford to sit in for him.

Dargie, an eight-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture, painted Menzies at least four times. In two of the portraits Menzies wore the elaborate green velvet robes and heavy medallion of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle that the Queen had conferred on him in 1963. During 1963 and 1964 Dargie painted one of the portraits on commission to the London-based Clothworkers Company, where the painting still hangs. It is likely that this is the portrait for which Stafford sat in (or rather more accurately agreed to stand in) for Menzies. In one of several interviews for a Canberra community radio station towards the end of his life, Stafford—who was significantly shorter than Menzies—said:

I stood in for Sir Robert when William Dargie did his painting … of his, his Order of the Thistle. And … Dargie painted the thing (medallion) around my chest … And I sat there for a couple of hours because he (Menzies) was so busy he couldn’t make it so he made me do it, which I enjoyed—it was quite interesting. He painted in the face later.

Stafford’s daughter Diana observes: ‘Sir Robert Menzies was a lot taller and a lot bigger than my dad. But they were both stout men and so you know the robes fitted on dad very nicely.’

This incident entices so many metaphors: of the Indigenous heart that beats, too often undetected and unacknowledged, at the core of national identity; of sovereignty’s black core defying the white face; of the capacity for symbiosis between men with ostensibly little in common. At its simplest, the story behind this painting belies complex interpretation; it is simply a subordinate dutifully doing what a boss ‘made me do’.

Regardless, the story was apparently sufficient to render John Howard—Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister, and a devotee of and political biographer of Menzies—momentarily speechless when it was recounted during a visit to the Stafford archive at AIATSIS. Howard visited the archive in the course of his research for his forthcoming ABC television documentary about Menzies. A cricket tragic and Bradman aficionado, Howard interviewed Stafford’s family for the documentary. He was, according to David Stafford, apparently captivated with a cricket bat that Alf won in a raffle to mark the first Prime Minister’s XI match at Manuka Oval, Canberra, in 1951.

At each subsequent PM’s XI match, Stafford—who would attend the matches with Menzies, having advised him on team selection—would ask the Australian and overseas international team members to sign the bat. It carries dozens of signatures in pen of greats from Hassett and Benaud to Colin Cowdrey. Alf ultimately bequeathed the bat to his grandson—David’s son, Andrew—after he took five wickets in a schoolboy match. (Neither David not his elder brother ever made the century that would have earned them the famous bat, so it skipped a generation to Andrew.)

David Stafford recalls that when he showed Howard the bat with its fading signatures, ‘I almost had to prise his fingers off it to get it back.’ Of course, Howard would have noted the glaring omission of one signature—that of Bradman.

Bradman came out of retirement in 1962–63 to play for Menzies’ XI. Despite great anticipation, he was dismissed for four by Brian Statham. It seems curious, given that Stafford and Bradman had known each other for almost four decades at the time of that match between the PM’s XI and the Marylebone Cricket Club, that Bradman would not lend his signature to the bat.

Why not? David Stafford says: ‘This cricket bat had the autographs of almost all the great legendary Australian players and English and South Africans and West Indians … But Bradman’s signature is not on there. And we said to dad … “Why didn’t you get Bradman to sign it?” Dad said, “He wouldn’t sign it and I wouldn’t ask him.”’

Which begs a question that will, for a moment, be left to hang.

Alf Stafford, according to his son David, ‘admired Bradman as a cricketer. He did not, I think, like Bradman very much as a person.’ If this was the case, Stafford never publicly said as much when he was interviewed about Bradman on community radio. He was as characteristically generous to and discreet about Bradman as he was regarding most of the politicians for whom he worked, saying: ‘I was lucky enough to be … in a few of the teams when Sir Donald Bradman was there. So I had quite a few times with Don. And I even played golf with him at Cronulla and tennis—he was really a brilliant all-round sportsman.’

This was as close as he came to being barbed about Bradman: ‘I was an opening batsman and my boys, when they were about eight or ten, they reckoned I must’ve been better than Bradman because I went in before him.’

There was, however, one indiscreet recollection that Stafford shared with his family. The night before the PM’s XI matches at Manuka, Menzies would host a dinner for his team at the Lodge. In 1954 the PM’s team enjoyed what David Stafford said Alf recalled as ‘a fairly rowdy sort of a night’ at the Lodge that ‘got a bit out of hand’ when the captain, Lindsay Hassett, demonstrated his batting on the dining room table.

Alf Stafford, a Gamilaroi and Darug man, opened the batting for St George, First Grade, in the 1920s while Donald Bradman batted at number three. Their relationship, perhaps because of Stafford’s Indigenous heritage, was ambivalent. (picture: AIATSIS Collection, courtesy Michelle Flynn)

Heather Henderson was an adult by the time Alf and his children began staying at the Lodge. But she well remembers him and the special relationship he had with her father. ‘Alf used to pour the drinks [after Cabinet meetings] and they did like to talk about cricket together,’ she says. Recalling the circumstances under which the Staffords came to stay at the Lodge, she says: ‘My mother would have insisted on it. They were very fond of Alf. He and dad had a very easy and close relationship that endured, from what I remember.’

Indeed, Alf’s daughter Diana Griffiths says that as a child around the time of her mother’s death, she considered Dame Pattie to be a ‘surrogate mother’. ‘Nothing was too much trouble for her. You could tell her your problems and tell her if someone was picking on you at school, and she would say, “Well, I’ll fix that, darling.”’

She says that she moved into the Lodge, where they lived in the staff quarters, with her father and David perhaps a month after her mother died:

When things settled down a bit and when things started to get back to normal then dad was away a lot and travelling and so they took us under their wings. Then they went overseas and we stayed in the Lodge almost as a caretaker role. And so we had the prime minister’s driver drive us to school and pick us up after school. We’d say ‘Just stop at Kingston, Wally, and get us some ice cream’. My friends were very impressed and the teachers were very impressed when C Star One [the Commonwealth car with the number plates reading ‘C✩1’] used to pull up at school. I have different memories. David says that we weren’t there [at the Lodge] for as long as I remember being there. But we were there on and off. We’d sort of come and go. Dame Pattie would ring and say, ‘I want you here,’ and we’d have a month or so and off we’d go. I always had birthday parties and play dates. All of my friends came to the Lodge to play.

Mr Menzies—I mean he used to come home from work and we’d be there at the door to meet him. Just like our dad coming home. And we’d go in and we’d sit in the little drawing room and he’d ask us all about our day and what we’d done at school and what we’d learnt. And he’d always read me a story.’

Menzies and his wife travelled extensively in the mid 1950s to places including England, the Netherlands, Greece, Germany, the Philippines, Malta and Japan. During their absence, Stafford and his two youngest children often stayed in the Lodge as de facto caretakers. David Stafford says:

After my mother had died, Dame Patty had said it was no good dad driving Menzies—‘Alf gets home too late for the kids,’ she told Sir Robert, ‘he needs a job at Parliament House.’ Menzies, effectively, I think, got the prime minister’s department to create this job as a cabinet officer. All of which meant that dad got home five minutes earlier because he didn’t leave … Parliament House until Menzies left and instead of driving Menzies to the Lodge and back down home in the Cadillac in those days … he’d just come straight home from Parliament House.

She [Dame Pattie] suggested that it might be helpful for dad to get settled if we moved into the Lodge because the housekeeper was still there. And they were going over to England by ship (away for six months) … which meant dad didn’t have to cook meals—she was there for the children. And we knew her well. As kids we were often up at the Lodge with dad when he was driving Menzies. We were in and out of the kitchen. It was a different world. There was no big fences around the Lodge, there was a wire fence … all the back part was just like a farm-wire fence, a couple of strands of wire.

Stafford’s descendants emphasise just how discreet he was about his years of driving prime ministers and ministers, and of servicing the prosaic needs of Cabinet members (meals and drinks, messages and phone calls) when they met at Parliament House. While there were some MPs, prime ministers and ministers he may well have disliked, Stafford tended to be generous, even in private, to most of them. Stafford strongly indicated he did not like Billy Hughes (who changed parties five times during a long political career). In retirement, however, he never criticised Hughes, just mimicked his tinny, quavering voice instead. David Stafford says:

He would impersonate his [Hughes’] voice sometimes. But … never really said anything derogatory about anyone that I can recall. He used to defend all of them to my brother and myself. John Gorton he used to defend when we used to say we’re not too concerned about his relationship with [principal private secretary] Ainslie Gotto as to what he’s doing to the country. And dad’d say ‘She’s a lovely person.’ I think … he wasn’t terribly fussed about Billy McMahon though.

As a driver to prime ministers and ministers, Alf Stafford had too many adventures to count. After drinking whisky with Hughes one wet night after the long, treacherous drive from Canberra, Stafford got bogged in the rose garden while reversing out of the then former PM’s driveway in Sydney.

For a while Stafford drove the minister for the interior, the Western Australian MP Herbert ‘Vic’ Johnston. Johnston, also a keen fisherman, insisted Stafford drive him to the Gudgenby River, out past Tharwa from Canberra. Stafford would park the Commonwealth Buick on the narrow Glendale Crossing while Johnston fished out of the car window.

It is likely that Indigenous man Alf Stafford sat in for this portrait by eight-time Archibald prize winner William Dargie of Sir Robert Menzies, commissioned by the Clothworkers Company, London, in the 1960s. (picture courtesy Clothworkers Company, London)

One wet night Menzies despatched Stafford to collect the government whip, Jo Gullett, from his family property Lambrigg at Tharwa, ahead of a pending urgent parliamentary debate and vote. Stafford had his younger son in the car. David recalls the Cadillac reaching 100 miles per hour on the unmade, muddy Point Hutt Road. Alf Stafford, it is said, also held the record for the fastest driving time from Canberra to Melbourne of six and a half hours (on today’s highway, a good time might be seven hours, 45 minutes).

In one of those late-life radio interviews, Stafford recounted driving the Labor information minister, Arthur Calwell, through central west New South Wales on a freezing night in August 1944. Both were unaware that 1100 Japanese prisoners of war had just escaped from a prison in nearby Cowra. Four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese died in the breakout:

We were pulled up by a military convoy … they asked us if we saw any Japs on the road and we said no, and of course we didn’t know what was going on. Just after that there was six little Japs walked down the road just behind us. I dare say if they’d wanted the car they could’ve knocked us off pretty easily.

Arthur Calwell then got out of the car—it was the middle of June … freezing… and he went up on the hills and it was just like a miniature war really, there was machineguns going and searchlights all around. And I had a good look at them and there was Japanese who’d hung themselves in trees with fencing wire and that sort of thing, others had knives and forks through their chests—they’d stabbed themselves in the heart… And there was about eight of them the next morning who got under the railway bridge because the train was coming to Cowra and they all jumped out and committed suicide under the train. It was a very dramatic sort of a show… harikari (ritual suicide), yes… There was quite a few Australian soldiers killed, which we saw there. By accident we were there in the middle of it. I must say that Calwell did a mighty job. He got on the phone and got through to the papers in Sydney and asked them not to print anything on the show because we had prisoners of war in Japan.

In Stafford’s archive, Menzies emerges as his favourite boss. ‘And also Chifley was a grand man. And Curtin. They were outstanding prime ministers. You could say those three,’ he said when asked to name his favourite PMs. He spoke reverentially of a humble Chifley, the former locomotive engine driver who became Australia’s wartime treasurer and, later, Australia’s sixteenth prime minister. Chifley’s humility was evidenced by his willingness, during the Second World War when charcoal burners were used on rural car trips instead of headlights, to get out of the car to help stoke and light the lamps. ‘He said, “It reminds you of the old [train] engine, Alf.”’

Alf Stafford retired shortly after the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, the same year he was awarded an Order of the British Empire. The week before Christmas in 1972, Whitlam wrote to Stafford:

I understand you will be finishing up on Friday after twenty-two years of personal service in Parliament House to Prime Ministers.

What a record!

I have been a recipient of your services for only a brief week, but I have already come to appreciate your personal watchfulness over my needs. Your reputation is outstandingly high and I now understand by experience how well-merited it is.

You have presided over six Australian Prime Ministers! And not only that, you have ministered in your excellent way to a number of Prime Ministers and Heads of Government and, indeed, Heads of State from elsewhere. They would all support me in this appreciation of your services.

Of course the great virtue of Stafford’s long service, as both driver and (in the words of his son) as something of ‘a glorified butler’ to the Cabinet, was his discretion and loyalty to whichever prime minister he drove or served, and his effective invisibility to eyes beyond the old Parliament House or the driving pool.

Well known in Canberra for captaining the ACT representative cricket side (he faced the first ball ever bowled at the PM’s XI match venue, Manuka Oval, in 1930) and as a foundation member of the Canberra Racing Club (the Alf Stafford Guineas is raced in his name), officialdom cruelly overlooked him when the new Parliament House opened in 1988.

‘With great regret, I must advise that we will not be able to meet your request that you receive an official invitation to the opening of the new Parliament House,’ Jan McGuinness, an official of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, wrote to Stafford with cool efficiency. ‘As several thousand persons have requested official invitations, you will appreciate that we have not been able to include all of them on the official guest list.’

Indeed. Bureaucracy may have overlooked Alf Stafford on this occasion. But the prime ministers he served did not forget him, as evidenced by the correspondence in his archive. In October 1974, as Senate hostility, scandal and ministerial ineptitude plagued the Whitlam government, the ageing, increasingly frail Menzies wrote to his old confidant, the Indigenous man from Binnaway:

I think we saw the best times, both in cricket and politics and living. Everything seems in turmoil at present and the cricketers even seem to be ordinary run of the mill, without any spark in them.

I trust you and your wife are well. You may have heard that I am unable to go far from home these days. My legs are letting me down. My wife is as spry as ever … We often think of you both, and the days in Canberra.

Three of Alf Stafford’s brothers served as light horsemen in—and returned from—the First World War at a time when Indigenous Australians were not permitted to join up. Another brother served in the Second World War. Alf, meanwhile, served briefly in the Australian Army when Indigenous Australians still faced obstacles in joining up (he said his skills as a cricketer made enlisting easy). It is clear that Alf Stafford identified with his Aboriginal heritage just as his granddaughter, Michelle, strongly does with hers—though more publicly than Alf did. She continues to research her background and plans a book on a remarkable heritage that illustrates the early colonial connections between convict settlers and First Australians. Of Alf’s Aboriginal heritage Michelle says:

Grandpa always told us about our Aboriginality but I became more interested not long before he died. Of course, I wish I had asked him a whole lot more about it all than I did. But we used to talk about it all of the time … and it immediately resonated and meant a lot to me in terms of who I am. When he died I got all of his papers which made it much easier to piece together—but I’m still on the journey, tracing new elements of our Indigenous history.

For 35 years Alfred George Stafford was the obvious—but unspoken—Indigenous presence in the cars and offices of 11 prime ministers from Lyons to Whitlam. David Stafford says that when he and Diana reunited recently with Heather Henderson, they asked her if she or her father ever realised that Alf was an Aboriginal man. ‘I mean, when we look back at photos of my father … you think, of course he was. But back then you didn’t even give it a thought. And Menzies was no fool—he could probably work it out for himself. But Heather just said it never occurred to her: “Alf was just Alf.”’ But he was a lot more, too, you’d have to say.

Which leads us back to the question that hangs, awkwardly, over his relationship with Bradman and that refusal by ‘The Don’ to sign Alf Stafford’s precious PM’s XI bat. Nobody knows for certain, but David Stafford has given it quite some thought over the years:

This is a bloke that he played first-grade cricket with at St George. Same team—better than Bradman because he was the opening batsman and Bradman was number three and even the kids know that—the best ones go in first, don’t they? Of course they do. But he wouldn’t ask him [to sign the bat]. Now we thought … having read a lot more about Bradman’s personality and his view about signing things, knowing the value of his signature and being pretty reluctant to sign anything, you draw a conclusion that may or may not be entirely fair. The impression I certainly got was that [Alf] didn’t particularly like him. Who knows where that may have come from? Dad in his younger days definitely looked quite Aboriginal. Is that a possibility? Who knows? This may be … the sort of reasons why he didn’t sort of identify [as Aboriginal] particularly.

To me it’s no particularly big deal. I grew up being just a normal kid and I’m not in any way perturbed by it—it’s terrific. Also there’s a bit of convict there too. You are who you are … Thinking about it later, you think, did dad not make anything of this or not comment about this because it may have affected his life and achievements, where you get to, what you do in life? I mean he was an extremely good cricketer. But would he have been playing first-grade cricket for St George, captaining the ACT cricket team … if he identified as Aboriginal? Back in those days I mean those sorts of things did matter. Who knows? Would he have been driving the prime minister? Or would he have just become a bus driver?

Alf Stafford died, aged 90, in 1996. Towards the end of his life, he remarked: ‘In 29 years of working for the Cabinet I’ve seen and heard a lot. They used to say, “Prime ministers come and go but Alf Stafford goes on forever.” I wish it were true.’

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years

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Don't Believe the Media Hype. Progressives Are Struggling in New York Races. – InsideSources

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=7603

Don't Believe the Media Hype. Progressives Are Struggling in New York Races. – InsideSources

There’s a fierce battle being waged nationwide for the soul of the Democratic Party. Is it the the party of Andrea Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders; self-styled Democratic Socialists fighting to reverse income inequality, proliferate the tenets of social justice, and empower workers? Or is it the party of Hillary Clinton and, say, Dianne Feinstein: pragmatic moderates and liberals tacking to the center–business friendly, socially liberal but inoffensive–in an effort to create a big tent party and attract moderates and independents to their cause?

This dynamic was on full display in June, when Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the House, was unseated by Andrea Ocasio-Cortez. Cortez, a Democratic Socialist and a political neophyte, alleged that Crowley failed to adequately represent his constituents as an establishment liberal and a party power broker. The voters agreed, handing Ocasio-Cortez the nomination with a surprisingly strong 15-point margin of victory, though in a low turnout primary.

Now, a slate of progressive candidates are trying to recreate Ocasio-Cortez’s success on the state level in the primary on September 13th. But, despite how it may appear, and despite how progressives may frame it, that same ideological clash just doesn’t seem to have materialized in the state primary.

In the gubernatorial primary, Cynthia Nixon, an actress of Sex and the City fame is, like Ocasio-Cortez, making her first run at public office. She is challenging two-term incumbent Andrew Cuomo. Nixon is trying to flank Cuomo from the left and, in somewhat similar form to Ocasio-Cortez, making the race a referendum on what she claims is his relatively moderate governing style as she also points to the corruption scandals surrounding his administration. “The Nixon campaign has been arguing that Cuomo has been johnny come-lately on a lot of issues,” says SUNY New Paltz government professor Gerald Benjamin. One prominent example of this is Cuomo’s opposition to Donald Trump.

In 2017, Cuomo was seen as something of a relative soft-liner on opposing the Trump administration. But as election season has heated up, so to have Cuomo’s excoriations of the president. Now he is widely seen as one of Trump’s fiercest critics. But that, it seems, was more a product of opportunism than ideology.

Benjamin posits that, at first, Cuomo may have seen Trump as something of a political asset, if not an outright ally. “A Governor [of New York] might think, even though they’re from different parties, ‘it might be useful to have a President from New York,” he says. This is in line with the attitudes of many who saw Trump as something of a moderate in the 2016 election. But like those voters, Cuomo sees that Trump is governing hyper-conservatively. Now, Benjamin says, “It’s almost as if he’s running against the president for governor.”

Jim Battista, a professor of political science at SUNY Buffalo and an expert on New York State politics, notes that while resistance to Trump could explain a lot of Cuomo’s recent policy shifts, it could also be attributed to Nixon’s influence. “The past year or so has seen Cuomo adopting some more liberal positions on a raft of issues,” he says, but “it’s more-or-less impossible to know how much of that is to counterpressure Nixon and how much is just that he’s been taking a more combative and clearly liberal or progressive attitude since Trump’s election.”

Nixon has taken firmly progressive stances on everything from education to housing to drug laws. She has made transportation a cornerstone of her campaign, hammering Cuomo on recent MTA calamities such as 2017’s “summer of hell,” a period fraught with delays, track fires and complete apathy towards New York’s transportation system. She has even gone so far as to align herself with the emerging Democratic Socialist movement. Put simply, she is doing everything she can to make herself the left-wing alternative to Cuomo.

But Cuomo was already widely seen as not only one of the most liberal governors in the United States, but also a pretty good ideological representative of New York voters. The New York electorate is liberal, no doubt, but they’re not quite Vermont liberal. Progressivism in the vein of Bernie Sanders doesn’t tend to play well in New York City, the heart of New York’s Democratic population. Many of those voters are black and hispanic: demographic groups which tend to be more moderate than progressive. Battista points out that “Democratic Socialists seem to be a substantially whiter party than the Democrats overall.” For that reason, Sanders-style progressivism and Democratic Socialism only really plays in the sparsely populated rural, and predominantly white, areas of upstate New York.

Nixon is also a pretty weak candidate, and probably isn’t the best standard-bearer for progressivism in New York. She has been bashed for a lack of substantial experience in government or management of any kind. Those criticisms, the ideological makeup of New York and the difficulty of unseating an incumbent, especially one as powerful as Cuomo, have made it difficult for her to make a dent in the polls.

According to a recent poll by Siena Research Institute, an Albany research firm, Cuomo leads Nixon by a factor of two-to-one, 60 percent to 29 percent–meaning the election could be more media hype than a genuinely close race. Unsurprisingly, Cuomo’s strongest numbers come from self-identified “moderates,” while Nixon is strongest with liberals. Cuomo also holds a resounding lead in NYC and the NYC suburbs, which tend to favor establishment candidates, and Black and Latino voters. Nixon’s strength is among white voters and those in the more rural upstate areas. At the end of the day, however, Cuomo still holds healthy leads in every category.

The story doesn’t change much when you look down-ballot.

Several candidates have lined up to replace acting Attorney General Barbara Underwood. Underwood stepped into the top job after the resignation of her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, following a New Yorker report of his alleged sexual abuse of several women. Three of the four major candidates running to are women. This race, though somewhat more competitive than the gubernatorial race, is still pretty much decided against the candidate furthest to the left.

The leader of the pack is New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, a black woman who was handpicked by Cuomo and has garnered the endorsements of powerful politicians and public officials across the state. She is facing Sean Patrick Maloney, the first openly gay Congressman from the New York and a Hudson Valley moderate who ran for Attorney General back in 2006 (full disclosure: I interned for Maloney several years ago); Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham Law Professor who previously challenged Cuomo in the 2014 gubernatorial primary and who ran for Congress in 2016; and Leecia Eve, an attorney and ex-aide to Cuomo and Senator Hillary Clinton, from Buffalo.

The Siena poll shows James leading with 25 percent, followed by Maloney with 16 percent, Teachout with 13 percent and Eve with just 4 percent. James, like Cuomo, is strongest amongst moderates and conservatives, NYC residents, and voters of color. Maloney leads narrowly among suburban, upstate and white voters, while Teachout is nearly tied with James among liberals and with Maloney among white voters. 42 percent are still undecided.

Teachout is clearly the most progressive of the three candidates. She is running the most heavily anti-Trump campaign, while advocating strongly for campaign finance reform. She is cross-campaigning with Nixon and Ocasio-Cortez. She is hampered a bit by the fact that a significant portion of her donations have come from outside New York State, as well as the fact that she has run for so many offices in so short a time. As Benjamin puts it: “She seems to want to run for anything that’s available.”

Like Nixon, Teachout suffers from a lack of support outside rural, upstate communities. “You can’t have a win as a Democrat with an upstate-based strategy,” says Benjamin, “You got to hunt where the ducks are.” In this case, the ducks, Democratic voters, are heavily clustered in New York City.

Maloney has run into a similar demographic problem. His moderate reputation and a massive $3 million war chest have allowed him to make inroads with the affluent communities of Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley, but that’s about as far as a moderate–who has voted with Trump 34% of the time–can get in New York. Maloney has also failed to get significant in-state endorsements due to the fact that he’s been working on the federal level. Both he and Teachout seem to be shut out of the New York City game.

Contrast that with James, who, thanks to Cuomo’s backing, has racked up endorsements from of a wide network of powerful politicians, unions, and party organizations across the state. Both she and Cuomo were easily nominated to get on the primary ballot at the state Democratic convention back in May, winning 85% and 95% of delegates respectively. Also like Cuomo, James has higher name recognition than her opponents and is popular in New York City thanks to her work as a solidly liberal Public Advocate. With pretty solid polling leads, it seems that, barring any unforeseen events, she and Cuomo will cruise to victory on primary day.

While this race could be looked upon with an ideological lens, the takeaway would ultimately be that progressivism isn’t ready for prime time in urban states. Perhaps New Yorkers just aren’t ready for Vermont-style politics.

Read full story here

#Democrats

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samuelcarveraccidentman · 6 years

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Driving Mr MenziesPaul DaleyAutumn 2016

Jimmy Clements, a Wuradjuri man from down Gundagai way, walked all the way up to Canberra on hearing that the Duke and Duchess of York were set to open the new federal parliament.

With his bare feet, wild hair and his dusty, patched-up clobber, old Jimmy was a sight the police thought best kept from the royals. But when they shooed him away some of the locals protested. Jimmy won his way. He met George and Elizabeth. Then he shuffled off with his mate John Noble. For decades explorers, anthropologists, historians and newspaper writers claimed that the blacks of the Limestone Plains were extinct—killed by disease and grog, by settlers, police and soldiers. OnYong, the last chief of the local tribe, the Ngambri, in which Canberra’s etymology is cradled, died in an inter-tribal clash in about 1850.

The Menzies’ daughter, Heather Henderson—who recalls Alf well—has apparently told Stafford’s children that it had not occurred to her that this confidant to her father was Indigenous.

His daughter Diana Griffiths says he usually only broached his Indigenous heritage incidentally:

Stafford’s daughter Diana observes: ‘Sir Robert Menzies was a lot taller and a lot bigger than my dad. But they were both stout men and so you know the robes fitted on dad very nicely.’

Which begs a question that will, for a moment, be left to hang.

She says that she moved into the Lodge, where they lived in the staff quarters, with her father and David perhaps a month after her mother died:

I understand you will be finishing up on Friday after twenty-two years of personal service in Parliament House to Prime Ministers.

What a record!

I think we saw the best times, both in cricket and politics and living. Everything seems in turmoil at present and the cricketers even seem to be ordinary run of the mill, without any spark in them.

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