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The Unofficial Conclave Zine will be open for pre-orders starting January 20th! Follow us for more updates and sneak peeks into the amazing contributions for this Passion Project started by @yosbin! Pre-order: HERE

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The lock slid back and the door half opened. ‘Your Eminence?’ Benítez was clutching his unbuttoned cassock together at his throat. His thin brown feet were bare. The room behind him was in darkness. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re dressing. May I have a word?’

Conclave, Chapter 12 The Fifth Ballot

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conclave is a very good film made up of cardinal thomas lawrence having three horrible horrible days.

however the one thing it lacks is the consideration of how much worse they could have been if it lasted longer.

day four of conclave and the draw between tedesco and lawrence does not budge.

five days of conclave and at least one of the cardinals whose name got covered up in the trembley report backs lawrence against the wall and tries to threaten him with a kitchen knife before falling to weeping on his shoulder. day six of conclave and cardinal adeyemi and cardinal trembley nearly come to blows in the loggia. day seven of conclave and people start sneaking wine bottles into the sistine chapel.

day eight and they're passing them around covertly during the interminable voting process. day nine and three separate white collar crimes to light because the guilty parties are sweating in their cassocks thinking lawrence has the dirt on them and they can't take the pressure anymore, they just can't.

day ten and vincent benítez is doing quiet prayer catechism hour in the garden after lunch.

day eleven and sabbadin is snorting someone's vicodin in the bathroom.

day twelve and the cardinals for warsaw and budapest are having a terrible breakup everyone is trying to pretend not to notice. day thirteen and lawrence stays in his room the whole day pretending he has a stomach ache and keeps having his nap dreams interrupted by dreams of turtles. day fourteen and aldo bellini has brought his copy of giovanni's room to reread, half-heatedly hidden behind a bible cover.

day fifteen and vincent benítez has lead by example a number of cardinals into helping out in the kitchen at least once a week to frankly terrible culinary results and growing camaraderie. sixteen days of conclave and lawrence has to sit down ray o'malley and actively beg him not to tell him anything else, please, no more info, no more digging into old scandals, no nothing.

tedesco's tax audits may be suspiciously clean but lawrence is a man of god not a forensic attorney and he will not dig deeper. day seventeen and lawnrence tracks o'malley down and asks him to look into tedesco's brother's recent real estate acquisitions.

day eighteen and the new whisper campaign to discredit lawrence keeps trying to bring up his most controversial progressive views but he keeps answering impatiently back with well-thought of biblical references as he did in the homily and accidentally causes a reprise of his canon law school lecture debates. which temporarily brings everyone together and opens the stage for a fierce ideological debate.

wherein lawrence gets accused, not entirely inaccurately, by trembley and adeyemi, united once more in offense, of being the last figurehead for the complacent liberal establishment/a judgemental prig and/or treating the college of cardinals like a group of jumped-up seminarians. aldo bellini implies very loudly that tedesco is ugly, a fascist and too stupid to ever be invited to lecture at the sourbonne even once, and cardinal vincent benítez speaks up with great dignity and strength against american imperialism.

day nineteen and someone actively tries to murder the patriarch of venice. day twenty and it is revealed via sister agnes ex machina and cardinal benítez's disconcerting familiarity with very real and more successful murder attempts that tedesco was trying to frame bellini for it.

the proof is circumstantial and so are any accusations lawrence or anyone could make against him of corruption, but this does prompt him to go on a long speech about how the leftist agenda has thoroughly ruined not only the church but society at least and made any possible unity among men a sham.

day twenty-one and someone actually dies, unrelated to the tedesco fake-plot.

day twenty-two and they elect vincent benítez. lawrence hides in the room of tears having an anxiety attack of relief.

vincent benítez holds his hand tenderly through it and immediately accepts his resignation as dean but not before telling him his secret and having his hands held back tightly, and being told very earnestly that, short of actual unreasonable harm to other people and an extraordinary amount of bribery, he could be made by god's will in any possible variation and still have lawrence's trust. and most importantly, lawrence's papacy.

day one of innocentius xiv's papacy and lawrence finds him in the gardens feeding the turtles instead of taking the next train to a nice monastery in lièges and offers himself as secretary of state. and this is why netflix should hire me.

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Queer people don’t even say ‘I love you’ anymore what the fuck is ‘I voted for you in every ballot’ ???

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TAROT CARDS ✴ HADESTOWN [in/sp]

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ALL I'VE EVER KNOWN  HADESTOWN

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J Antonio Rodriguez and Hannah Whitley in HADESTOWN 📹: @medium-observation

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GRACE HODGETT YOUNG & DÓNAL FINN as Eurydice and Orpheus

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Suddenly there's sunlight, bright and warm... Suddenly I'm holding the world in my arms

Grace Hodgett Young & Dónal Finn as Eurydice and Orpheus

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it might be the cynic in me, but given the parallel to the run-over turtles and benitez, i didn't take the conclave to have a certain happy ending, because at one point all this might just kill him

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i love seeing the woobification of benitez because its literally canon

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luv that part in conclave when bellini is like "what is wrong with you lawrence every cardinal here has his chosen papal name" which sounded a lot like teen girl in comedy telling her friend she’s WEIRD for not having a little scrapbook with all details of her dream wedding

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Something something Sanrio Collab

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okay i need you guys to walk with me for a moment because i was just overwhelmed with a vision and have nowhere else to put it:

hellfire of the hunchback of notre dame fame, but it’s tedesco singing about benitez

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Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger