#*          ━━          ask  memes       ›        w. wagner.
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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wolfie, fmk: isaak, maria, chai
fuck:   isaak. maria. marry:  — kill:  chai.
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supercantaloupe · 1 year ago
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Can we get some unpopular opera opinions?
i find wagner's operas are too drawn out and self important to enjoy and even though occasionally his composition style produces moments of sheer genius more of the time it's uninteresting shlock. i respect wagnerites who can see smth in his operas to appreciate that i cannot/don't but also i think the guy was a cunt and if someone is a self professed fan of his writings/Opinions™ outside of the stage itself i do not trust that person within a mile of me
also i don't know what it is about verdi that i'm not quite Getting. like his music is good but it never sticks with me as being memorable like mozart or overly evocative like puccini. there's a chorus or an aria here or there that stick out but it's kind of a wash overall for me with his scores, even when he's working with a good plot/characters. and his orchestrations are solid but often Too Much for me; would love to see how verdi would work as a chamber opera piece... la traviata is probably my favorite of his works that i've seen so far still which unfortunately is the boring answer i know (rigoletto and il trovatore have better, like, Themes but traviata is a more solid total package) but my more hashtag controversial one is that don carlo(s) is a mess and not very good even going beyond my personal taste issues with verdi's compositional sound.
and norma was really boring sorry.
[ask meme]
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mikeellee · 4 years ago
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@djinmer4​
N/A: Ok. This is Kurt D and Kurt W.
One of the many things Kurt Darkholme has to face in this dimension is a valuable lesson of an open mind, which means, in the 616 anything can happen. Literally. Kurt saw Jean Grey of this universe dying and resurrecting as if it wasn´t a big deal-in fact, people are so used by this event that is a meme and Kurt Darkholme wonders if Jean of his universe is alive as well but hiding and well, he can conclude, after mulling over for 2 minutes, that if she is indeed alive...maybe it would be better to stay low forever-  and Kitty warned him-still a bit bitter from their first encounter and the fact Kurt D only apologize because Ariel forced him- about demons and possessions.
And Kurt Darkholme was sure it was a joke. Kurt Darkholme wished it was a joke. "Well, no time to cry about the stab wound" Kurt speaks as he takes the frosting and starts to write on the cake. With big red letters. "Uhm, I think is fine now" and putting the said cake in a box Kurt Darkholme teleported to where Kurt Wagner was.
The man is on the bed with bandages around his torso and vague recollections about what happened. "I was possessed?" he asked Kitty and she had no time to explain much as Kurt Darkholme shows up and offer him a cake.
It would be a sweet gesture if the said cake wasn´t also added with the words "sorry you got stab" and Kurt Wagner looks at the words and then up to Darkholme. "What happened to me last night?"
"A witch tried to control your body...and I ended up stabbing you until Yana cleanse your body and defeat the witch"
"You stab me?!"
"Yes"
"And made a cake?"
"Pretty much"
"Ok....not the strangest thing ever happened to me"
"And that´s saying a lot priest...should I be concerned for your well being?"
Visual Writing Prompt #382
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words-writ-in-starlight · 7 years ago
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W for the fandom meme?
From this ask meme!
W: List five favorite characters from five different fandoms
Does this mean...one character per fandom, or five characters per fandom?  I’m doing five characters per fandom.  Plus some rampant cheating.
MCU
Jessica Jones
Luke Cage
Claire Temple
Steve Rogers
Natasha Romanoff
+ Elektra Natchios as Honorable Mention since I just spent eight hours of Defenders crooning over my murder girl
Animorphs
RACHEL, A THOUSAND TIMES RACHEL
Tobias
Ax tied with Jake
Eva
...Cassie but she and I have some major ethical differences, thus the tie with Marco
+ Elfangor and Loren as Honorable Mention because I will take any opportunity to remind the whole world how much I love them
Star Wars
Rey
Finn
Poe Dameron
Leia Organa
...and all of Rogue One because I am a filthy cheater
Star Trek
JANEWAY
Jim Kirk
Nyota Uhura
Seven of Nine
Spock tied with Bones McCoy
X-Men
Rogue
Kitty Pryde
Storm (Ororo Munroe)
Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner)
Gambit (Remy LaBeau) tied with Colossus (Piotr Rasputin)
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junker-town · 6 years ago
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Every Seahawks game of 2018, ranked by how well they Established The Run
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The Seahawks ran their way right out of the playoffs — but when did it actually work for them?
It started Week 1, after the Seahawks lost to the Broncos by three points despite staying close for the entire game. “Not enough [rushing],” Pete Carroll told reporters by way of explanation for the loss. “The reason was we didn’t covert on third down. It’s just football. That leaves you where you don’t get your next series.”
Wait, no — it started after the draft, where the Seahawks took running back Rashaad Penny with the 27th overall pick. “We wanted to make sure we’re at the core of who we want to be, and the running game is a lot of that,” Carroll said in a post-draft press conference.
Or maybe it started in 1994, when Carroll was the head coach of the New York Jets. “Coach Pete Carroll believes that in order for the Jets to be successful, they have to establish their running game, something they have had trouble doing this season,” wrote Jason Diamos in the New York Times.
Whenever it began, the 2018 Seahawks were certainly on an explicit, season-long mission to Establish The Run — an ironic goal for a team, at least in the Carroll era, best known for a play when they didn’t run the ball. In an era when NFL offenses are scoring at an unprecedented rate, the Seahawks preferred to grind out points despite the absence of an A-list back (Chris Carson, you are incredible, but it’s true). “You know, I don’t mind being different at all,” Carroll insisted in a press conference that followed the midseason Chiefs/Rams Monday Night Football spectacle. Free to be you and me, the Seahawks way.
But as Seahawks fans would soon learn, in the post-Marshawn Lynch era, the run game was to be treated like a beautiful, delicate flower that required careful and often counterintuitive cultivation.
If the team was having success running the ball, one simply kept running, running like a million Pats fans with Super Bowl XLIX goal-line interception GIFs were chasing them. If the team wasn’t having success running the ball, all that meant was that the run had not yet been established; that it was necessary to keep running it until, like Cris Collinsworth into Sunday Night Football camera frame, it appeared, fully realized and ready to take on the world.
Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer alone holds the secret to this process, one that remains opaque to much of football Twitter. During the Wild Card game versus the Cowboys, for example, a sequence during which Schotty abandoned his preferred run-run-pass sequence for the rarely seen run-run-run-pass inspired vocal chagrin, even beyond the self-referential bounds of Seahawks Twitter. Previously, that rag-tag group had been able to focus their ire on former offensive line coach Tom Cable; now, the whims and wiles of the younger Schottenheimer (who brings up his father more often than is entirely reasonable) — and accordingly, the relative merits of running the ball — are their primary object of discussion.
As is now abundantly clear, the Seahawks failed to Establish The Run in the playoffs — but not for lack of trying. Though they didn’t actually run the most in the NFL (that title belongs to the Ravens, who are also out of the playoffs), they ran ... a lot. Here are all 17 regular and postseason Seahawks games, ranked by how well the run was established from “Wow, we really had 5 yards on offense in a quarter” to “We’re never throwing again!!!*(#*!”
17. The Wild Card Game, Dallas Cowboys
The Seahawks rushed and rushed and rushed some more, for a sum total of 3 yards per carry. The run briefly appeared to be Established when Russell Wilson ran for a touchdown, and then Carson ran for the two-point conversion — but it was a mirage. In total, they ran 73 yards and threw for 226 to wind up losing by ... two points.
16. Week 1, Denver Broncos
So much passing, so little rushing: a paltry 64 yards, almost half of which was the result of one long run by Penny. For shame — a loss was (checks notes) inevitable.
15. Week 2, Chicago Bears
Trying to run the ball against Khalil Mack is a challenge, to put it mildly. But the Seahawks persisted — even after a fourth-quarter touchdown to Tyler Lockett made a win possible, they kept running because if you let up for even a minute the run might unestablish itself and that, my friends, would be a disaster. They lost.
14. Week 12, Carolina Panthers
The run was decidedly not Established, as the Seahawks had just 2.7 yards per carry. And yet — and yet — they won. Incomprehensible.
“On a day when we couldn’t run the ball like we had been, we needed the throwing game, and Russ came through and had a great day throwing the football,” Carroll said afterwards. “He just found so many key plays in crucial situations, and did a wonderful job of making plays down the stretch when we had to have them. Guys made the catches, and the pass protection was there for us. We love to run the football, but balance is what’s really the essence of this thing, and I’m thrilled we were able to do that.”
In other words, the run was so well-Established from the previous games that it actually held over into the Panthers game, casting a magical protective aura around the team that allowed them to have a successful offensive performance. The power of the run simply cannot be understated.
Russell Wilson's 4th & 3 throw was incredible... Dropped it right into David Moore's lap for the touchdown. #Seahawkspic.twitter.com/sx4lN2I09S
— Samuel Gold (@SamuelRGold) November 27, 2018
13. Week 3, Dallas Cowboys
The run was only very tenuously Established — 2.9 yards per carry — but the team got its first win of the season. Perverse.
12. Week 9, Los Angeles Chargers
It was a home game, and Carroll and Schottenheimer knew what the fans wanted: The Run. And so it was very, very Established — so Established that when the fourth quarter came around, the team felt that it was safe to throw to the Seahawks’ best receiver, running back Mike Davis, five times. They lost — an important lesson to those who might consider throwing.
11. Week 6, Oakland Raiders
Establishing The Run worked, in the sense that the Seahawks threw for three touchdowns which is the ultimate purpose of Establishing The Run: to run so often that you can throw successfully. But a win against the Raiders only sort of counts.
10 & 9. Weeks 13 and 15, San Francisco 49ers
There might be no better illustration of the agony and the ecstasy of The Run than the Seahawks’ games versus the Niners. They ran for the exact same number of yards — 168 — in both games, resulting in one win and one loss. “How is this possible?”, you might ask. Well, in Week 13 Bobby Wagner had a 98-yard interception return, which is something of an Establishing The Run cheat code.
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8 & 7. Weeks 5 and 10, Los Angeles Rams
The Seahawks ran a lot — Carson had 116 yards in Week 5, and Penny had 108 in Week 10. But, inexplicably, the Rams threw more. It’s an unorthodox strategy but it paid off, for despite the fact that the Seahawks Established The Run (and weirdly scored exactly 31 points in both games), the Rams still won.
6. Week 4, Arizona Cardinals
This was when the Seahawks Established The Run for what felt like the first time in a millennium. The Cardinals win marked two games in a row where Seahawks running backs had had 100-yard games. “We really needed to focus and establish that we could run the football and find our offensive line’s nature,” said Carroll. “I think we’ve really tapped into that. That’s really important and it’s a long, long season.”
5. Week 8, Detroit Lions
The Seahawks averaged 4.2 yards per carry, and even punting savant Michael Dickson had a 9-yard carry — needless to say, the Run was Established. This game, a classic run-down-their-throat Seahawks W, was also the inspiration for the first Cable Thanos (the Tom Cable-inspired online moniker of Seahawks Twitter’s most enterprising meme-maker) video, the most important milestone of the season.
4. Week 11, Green Bay Packers
So you think you have one of the best quarterbacks of all time — but have you Established The Run? NOPE. Another win for the Runaround Hawks.
3. Week 17, Arizona Cardinals
The Run was real, and she was spectacular — a Carson touchdown and a Davis touchdown fueled the team’s postseason dreams.
Mike Davis follows Chris Carson's 61-yard run with a 17-yard TD run. Seahawks up 21-13. #Seahawks #AZvsSEA pic.twitter.com/xlF2Xkg9rW
— SeahawksUnited (@SeahawksUnited_) December 30, 2018
2. Week 14, Minnesota Vikings
Who needs throwing when you have Carson and Sebastian Janikowski, honestly? Russ even had a 40-yard run, because it was just that Established.
40-yard run by Russell Wilson to most likely ice the game pic.twitter.com/3o5eOuI0ql
— Jimmy Clarke (@JimmyClarke) December 11, 2018
1. Week 16, Kansas City Chiefs
Imagine having one of the best offenses in the league, one of the most innovative playcallers around, and a QB in the middle of a record-setting season — and still losing. Has Andy Reid even heard of Establishing The Run? Perhaps Schotty can give him a few tips before this weekend.
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queen-of-carbs-blog · 7 years ago
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1-50
BOY OH BOY ALRIGHT
1: What are you wearing? my school uniform (brown and blue skirt, brown tights, white shirt, lmao it’s disgusting)2: Ever been in love? yes3: Ever had a terrible breakup? very recently4: How tall are you? 160cm5: How much do you weigh? 65kg6: Any tattoos do you want? my mum gave me earring with cupids on them that she wore when she was a teenager and I want the design tattooed on my arm7: Any piercings that you want? I already have eleven, but I’d like another one, I just don’t know which one!8: OTP? my mum and dad9: Favorite Show? the office (us) and lost10: Favorite bands? The Smith Street Band, Modern Baseball, The Front Bottoms, and The Hard Aches11: Something you miss? my older brother! he moved out for uni12: Favorite song? at the moment, tummy ache by diet cig. of all time, 1997 passing in the hallway by martha13: How old are you? 1714: Zodiac sign? virgo15: Hair Color? black and pink16: Favorite Quote? ‘pity for the loss of roses’ from Mrs Dalloway17: Favorite singer? wil wagner18: Favorite color? green19: Loud music or soft? loud20: Where do you go when you’re sad? the supermarket, the shower, or the library21: How long does it take you to shower? ten minutes22: How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? five minutes for school, twenty minutes if I’m going anywhere else23: Ever been in a physical fight? only with my brother24: Turn on? dudes in doc martens lmao25: Turn off? cigarettes26: The reason I joined Tumblr? memes27: Fears? that no one will ever fall in love with me28: Last thing that made you cry? deleting all the photos of my ex off my phone29: Last time you cried? sunday30: Meaning behind your url? I have to count carbs because I have diabetes, I’m getting over an eating disorder, and I also just love carbs31: Last book you read? A Doll’s House32: Last song you listened to? 25 by The Smith Street Band33: Last show you watched? lost34: Last person you talked to? my best friend, Claudia35: The relationship between you and the person you last texted? my mama!!36: Favorite food? roast pumpkin37: Place you want to visit? scotland38: Last place you were? school39: Do you have a crush? yes!40: Last time you kissed someone? two weeks ago, the day my boyfriend dumped me41: Last time you were insulted and what was it? on the phone last week my ex told me I made him feel like he couldn’t ask for things42: What color underwear are you wearing? black43: What color shirt are you wearing? white with blue and brown pin stripes44: What color bottoms are you wearing? brown and blue skirt and brown tights45: Wearing any bracelets? no46: Last sport you played? water aerobics last night47: Last song you sang? 25 by The Smith Street Band48: Last prank call you remember doing? I CAN’T REMEMBER49: Last time you hung out with anyone? im w my friends at school right now50: Favorite movie? A Series of Unfortunate Events and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp one)
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ofxwonder-moved · 8 years ago
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O N E 🍎
NAME: Kenzi NICKNAME: Riku ZODIAC SIGN: Gemini HEIGHT: 5′2″ ORIENTATION: Heterosexual  ETHNICITY: White/Hispanic FAVORITE FRUIT: Strawberries FAVORITE SEASON: Autumn FAVORITE BOOK: Unwind by Neal Shusterman  FAVORITE FLOWER: Water Lilies  FAVORITE SCENT: Fresh baked bread and heavy rain FAVORITE ANIMAL: Wolf COFFEE, TEA, OR HOT COCOA? Tea
AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP: 8 CATS OR DOGS? Dogs. FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER: Peter Parker   WHEN WAS YOUR BLOG CREATED? March 18th, 2017 WHAT DO YOU POST ABOUT? RPs, memes, gifsets DO YOU GET ASKS ON A REGULAR BASIS? More or less, yeah AESTHETIC: DC/Marvel but mainly Diana Prince  FAVORITE BAND/ARTIST? Too tough to decide but we’ll go with Lacey Sturm to name one.  FICTIONAL CHARACTERS I’D DATE: Peter Parker, Barry Allen, Bruce Wayne, Jaime Reyes, Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes, Conner Kent, Dick Grayson, Kurt Wagner HOGWARTS HOUSE: Hufflepuff
T W O 🍏
COUNTRIES I’VE LIVED IN: United States FAVORITE FANDOM: I love all my fandoms. LANGUAGES YOU SPEAK: English, limited Spanish. (I am the worst Mexican ever tbh) FAVORITE FILM OF 2016: It’s a tie between CA: Civil War, Doctor Strange, and Moana tbh LAST ARTICLE YOU READ: CHECK IT OUT: Chris Pine’s TOS Sketch from SNL SHUFFLE YOUR MUSIC LIBRARY AND PUT YOUR FIRST THREE SONGS HERE: Morning Light by Wilderado, Smile by Vitamin C, Emperor’s New Clothes by Panic! At The Disco  LAST THING YOU BOUGHT ONLINE: DC’s Blue Beetle (New 52) Volume One: Metamorphosis (Via Comixology) HOW WOULD YOUR FRIENDS DESCRIBE YOU? Sweet, Funny, Honest to a fault HOW WOULD YOUR ENEMIES DESCRIBE YOU?  I’m not sure, but I bet they could recall the beverage I dumped on them last we spoke  WHO WOULD YOU TAKE A BULLET FOR? My family & my friends  Tagged by: @theflashofearth46 Tagging: @unreliable-hero @acepilotstevetrevor @metahuman-mutanthuman @loisxxlanerps @doctorharleymd @captainiissm  @heroesmakesacrifices @xusedtoberussianx @russianonzebridge
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nothingman · 7 years ago
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In trying to reckon with Donald Trump’s bizarre speech in Poland on Thursday, which was among the most troubling events of his troubling presidency, I couldn’t help thinking about Mahatma Gandhi’s supposed quip when asked by a British reporter what he thought of Western civilization: He thought it sounded like a good idea. As with so many famous quotations, the story is almost certainly apocryphal: It did not appear anywhere until almost 20 years after Gandhi’s death. But it endures for a reason, because it reflects the profound ambivalence and self-regard that lie at the very heart of the Western intellectual tradition.
President Trump professes no such ambivalence. He apparently thinks Western civilization is a good idea too, although it’s by no means clear what he thinks he means by that term and he is constitutionally incapable of irony or double meaning. Various commentators, including Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, have already pointed out that the propagandistic mishmash Trump delivered in Warsaw was aimed as usual at his most virulent supporters, and channeled a current of racism and white nationalism so overt it can hardly be called subtext.
THE WEST WILL NEVER BE BROKEN. Our values will PREVAIL. Our people will THRIVE and our civilization will TRIUMPH! http://pic.twitter.com/sozuVgdp5T
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2017
In this context, “Western civilization” presumably means the culture of white people in Europe and North America, as if that could be described as one coherent and continuous phenomenon, and as if any of those terms could be clearly defined. On one hand, Trump is deploying a false and dangerous form of mythology for narrow-minded, present-tense political purposes. (Breaking news, I know!)
Of course he doesn’t understand anything about the long and complicated legacy of what is conventionally called Western civilization, and if he did he would be against it. Trump’s self-appointed status as defender of the West is primarily about excluding or vilifying Muslims and other immigrant groups, and secondarily about marginalizing those Westerners who believe that pluralism and cultural diversity are in fact central values of our civilization (at least in its better moments).
On the other hand, there is a deeper level of historical irony at work here, one that Trump cannot possibly perceive. It’s possible that Steve Bannon, the supposed Svengali in his supposed doghouse, has some awareness of this irony, filtered through his discount-store, conspiracy-theory understanding of history. One could indeed perceive Donald Trump as the symbolic end point of Western civilization, or at least as the fulfillment of its most diminished and malicious tendencies. After Plato, Shakespeare and Descartes — after all the Dead White Males who did terrible things or magnificent things but were undeniably Important ��� we wind up here, with an orange reality-TV troll as the democratically elected leader of the most powerful nation in history.
It’s tempting to say that Donald Trump rose to his current position by way of a massive historical accident, despite the fact that he knows nothing and understands nothing. But I think that’s almost entirely upside down, and is another way of insisting that the current situation in the United States isn’t as bad as it looks, and can be remedied with a few replacement parts. Trump was elected president precisely because he is an arrogant ignoramus who spews out “politically incorrect” bigotry unsupported by any evidence. Furthermore, he has an unparalleled understanding of our culture’s most central elements: the marketing and branding of fame, the power of mass media, and the extent to which image and rhetoric can reshape or even replace reality.
I am reminded again of historian Joachim Fest’s famous discussion of whether it was acceptable to describe Adolf Hitler as a great figure in world history, despite all the obvious reasons one might not want to. Fest argued, in effect, that those in postwar Germany who sought to minimize Hitler’s importance were also trying to deny the extent to which Hitler had outwitted, manipulated and dominated them.
Hitler’s peculiar greatness is essentially linked to the quality of excess. It was a tremendous eruption of energy that shattered all existing standards. Granted, gigantic scale is not necessarily equivalent to historic greatness; there is power in triviality also. But he was not only gigantic and not only trivial. The eruption he unleashed was stamped throughout almost every one of its stages, down to its final collapse, by his guiding will. …
He also had an amazing instinct for what forces could be mobilized at all and did not allow prevailing trends to deceive him. The period of his entry into politics was wholly dominated by the liberal bourgeois system. But he grasped the latent oppositions to it and by bold and wayward combinations seized upon these factors and incorporated them into his program. His conduct seemed foolish to political minds, and for years the arrogant Zeitgeist did not take him seriously. The mockery he earned was justified by his appearance, his rhetorical flights, and the theatrical atmosphere he deliberately created. Yet in a manner difficult to describe he always stood above his banal and dull-witted aspects.
As I have previously observed, if you update the terminology here and there, Fest’s description appears to describe our current president with uncanny accuracy. (Although the “final collapse” of the Trump phenomenon remains in the unknown future, and further away than many wish-casting Democrats hope.)
Trump has never sounded more like Hitler than he did the other day in Warsaw, where the historical irony fell from the sky like a fluke summer snowstorm. Poland was of course the first nation invaded by Hitler’s troops in the opening chapter of World War II, and the home of the worst of Hitler’s death camps devoted to exterminating the Jewish people. Trump was supposedly there to celebrate the Poles’ resistance to Hitler, and the only fair thing to say about that is that some did and some definitely didn’t. Every moment of that peculiar spectacle had at least a double meaning, none of them salutary.
To be clear, drawing the rhetorical and ideological parallels is not to say that Trump is Hitler, or that he is like Hitler in the most important ways. At worst, Trump is a third-generation photocopy with the background washed out, or a bad actor playing a character he has glimpsed on TV but does not understand.
Hitler presented himself as the defender of Western civilization too, although the alien invaders who were said to be destroying it from within were of course not Muslims but members of another religious and cultural minority. As Frankfurt School cultural critics like Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued, Hitler could be understood to embody certain insidious tendencies that ran just below the surface of European civilization and were especially strong in Germany, which viewed itself (with some justification) as home to the finest poets, philosophers and musicians of the modern age.
In their landmark work “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” Horkheimer and Adorno suggested that the mythology of the Dark Ages had never been conquered by the supposed Enlightenment, only repressed, and that it had reappeared in spectacular fashion, circa 1932, in the personage of the little Austrian corporal with the ridiculous mustache. Our situation in America circa 2017 is not quite like that: We have no dialectic and no enlightenment, only myth.
Hitler and the Nazis claimed to be huge fans and defenders of Western high art and high culture, in a middlebrow, anti-modernist vein, as exemplified by their embrace of composer Richard Wagner. (Who was a vicious anti-Semite and a generally terrible person, but also died six years before Hitler was born and cannot be held responsible for the latter’s crimes.) No such branding maneuver is necessary today.
It is inconceivable that Donald Trump has ever willingly sat through a Wagner opera or any other taxing work of old-school high culture. For that matter, if he ingests anything from the cultural sphere at all except endless amounts of cable news and hilarious right-wing internet memes, we don’t hear about it. Even Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush felt obliged to express enthusiasm for various bland and deracinated forms of art, literature and music. (You know: The Gershwin songbook at the Kennedy Center; concerts by some old guys in Hawaiian shirts with a halfway plausible claim to be the Beach Boys.) Trump, perhaps to his credit, doesn’t even fake it.
So what exactly the president means when he praises the strength and resilience of Western civilization is deliberately left unclear. Since he self-evidently doesn’t give a crap about any of that tradition’s cultural, philosophical and artistic accomplishments — and would no doubt deem most of them to be fake news and/or pretentious bullshit — we are left with other possibilities. It’s all about consumer capitalism and white rage, pretty much. The president of the United States sending angry tweets from his gold-plated toilet seat, with an empty tub of Häagen-Dazs beside him. There’s Western civilization for you.
Trump offers nothing remotely close to the elaborate pseudo-scientific racism of the Nazis, under which the so-called Aryans would rule the world but various lesser grades of white folks with northern European backgrounds would also get a sweet deal. Maybe some of his alt-right nerd followers still obsess about that stuff — but who needs it? Trumpian racism is simply rooted in a dumbass, anti-historical vision of the past, a vaguely articulated fiction that until some relatively recent point (probably the 1960s) “our” countries were a certain way — i.e., overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Christian, culturally homogeneous and dominated by men — and had been that way forever.
It probably does no good to observe that while the fantasy of a lost “golden age” recurs throughout history, this dad-shorts, #MAGA iteration is beyond any serious doubt the dumbest version ever constructed. It is quintessentially American, in the sense that it is too naive and weak-minded to acknowledge its innate cruelty. The Nazis, who if they had nothing else had a theory of history, would have found it hilarious and childish.
To start with, there is no country in Europe or the Americas or anywhere else in the world that has not been shaped and reshaped by waves of migration and immigration, or by conflict, conquest, turmoil and change. The island nation where my grandparents were born provides a valuable case in point. Although Ireland is often presented, in the most simplistic variety of nationalism, as the home of an ancient, homogeneous and ethnically unitary civilization, that is more myth than history. (If the myth often seems like harmless tribal romance, it has also had darker consequences.) In reality, the people of modern Ireland largely resulted from centuries of violent collision between Celtic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and Norman cultures, and the full story is considerably more complicated than that.
Traces of Iberian and North African DNA can be found to this day among people on the southwestern coast of Ireland. (Folk wisdom has long held that such influences accounted for the “black Irish” combination of dark hair and olive skin.) As for Celtic culture, the source of so many bad American tattoos, it isn’t as ancient as all that and did not originate in Ireland. The Celts first appear in the archaeological record around 3,000 years ago in central Europe, roughly in present-day Austria or Slovakia. Of course they had come from someplace else before that, and when they were driven west into France, Spain and the British Isles they conquered or displaced the people who lived in those places, about whom not much is known. Recent genetic research suggests there may in fact have been multiple waves of pre-Celtic people, some with roots in the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, others who came from the steppes of Russia or Ukraine.
So if I describe myself as a white person of largely Irish ancestry, it’s a statement of fact with an extremely limited horizon of information. It does not connect me to some essential, pure and unchanging culture but to a little green island that has seen lots of turbulent history. Go back more than a few generations, and like everyone alive today I could have ancestors almost anywhere: Sardinia? Lebanon? Some village of mud huts on the Danube? If linguistics is any guide, everyone of European ancestry ultimately has roots on the Indian subcontinent — and, of course, you and I and everyone else on this planet evidently share an African foremother.
As Gandhi apparently did not say (but probably believed), Western civilization is something of a mixed bag. But if the term can be said to describe anything, it describes a process of constant change, of conflict, ferment, fusion, cross-pollination and evolution. It has never prospered by erecting barriers between itself and the rest of the world. Indeed, the fundamental nature of Western civilization — it is curious, acquisitive, voracious, questioning — means it can never really do that.
Donald Trump may pay lip service to Western civilization as a pallid, steady-state realm of Great Men writing Great Books he has not read and making Important Speeches he does not understand. But that’s no more than a thin veneer pasted on top of the version his followers really want, a racial fantasyland of full employment for white men and zero immigration. Neither of those things has ever existed in the past or will ever exist in the future. They have nothing to do with civilization, except insofar as they misinterpret it as a fortress rather than a process. They have nothing to do with history, except as an attempt to stop it from happening. That won’t work, of course. But this moment is likely to shape our history and our civilization, and not in a good way.
via Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture Salon
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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wolf . fmk : sasha, othello, andrés
fuck:  andrés.   marry:  no.  sasha. kill:  othello, he's already halfway there.
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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🗣 ( wolfie & amin heheheheeh)
❛ butter fingers over there needs a tighter grip on his father's leash. know what they say though, dogs & their handlers are spitting images of each other.  ❜ 
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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for muses of your choice !! 😈 👚👛🌸
🌸 — picking flowers !  for a headcanon about a time my muse went out of their way to pick and then give someone flowers, who was it and why ?
vero de la rosa .
the first time had been two decades prior in a village he'd been taken to, a last stop before their final destination; meeting with the king & receiving punishment ( a life of incarceration or eternal sleep ). they'd been sailing long enough for diego to develop mercy, removing the cuffs that had embedded themselves into vero's wrists, fingers flexing as they hovered over each & every gem that market sellers offered up with boastful roars. shockingly, he hadn't taken a single thing, much to diego's confusion as he confronted him with the intention of stern lecture. in the midst of his speech, vero had removed his hands from his back, revealing a dainty flower that had been picked from a nearby bush, leaving the prince quiet as he placed it behind his ear. in a bout of mockery, lips parting & ready to comment with snide, he's instead, silencing himself. a heat would curl in his gut as a soft breeze brushed away soft curls, brown eyes staring right back at him. suffice to say, it's a sight vero's never forgotten, tattooed at the very forefront of his brain; took everything in him not to plant a very different seed right then & there. as their children grew into toddlers, he'd lift them up & make them hide an array of florals in their father's hair, placing bets on how many they could leave in before he noticed.
👚 — pretty in pink !  for a headcanon about my muses wardrobe looks like and what their favourite colour to wear is.
salvador najafi .
the grand vizier is not modest in the slightest & therefore, doesn't shy away from bright colors. perhaps even a not - so - subtle reveal of skin ( unlaced undershirts with collarbones in sight, unbuckled pants with a flash of pelvic muscles, etc ). he doesn't particularly have a favorite color, however red & white have become engraved in each physical representation of the ottoman empire, symbols worn against pressed uniform during business affairs. when attending matters of war or rebellion he wears black in a subtle nod of respect for his people, especially those who have been lost due to mustafa's greed & lust for supremacy.
👛 — personal effects ! for a headcanon about what my muse keeps on them ( in their bag or similar carry item ), and why they always have these things on their person day - to - day.
oksana markov .
the dowager is most known for her broody aura so it certainly shouldn't come as a surprise that if push comes to shove during an altercation & she skirts a long manicured palm up her thigh, a dagger will find itself at the small of their throat. she doesn't have a bag, instead, keeps it tucked & hidden away in a leather slot hooked around the meat of her leg. apart from this she has the locks of her children's first ever haircuts in a small metal bottle around her neck that she keeps as a spiritual spell for luck & safety among them.
😈 — something chaotic this way comes ! for a headcanon about a time where my muse acted mischievously or ‘chaotically.’
wolfram wagner .
some would say threatening to kill &/or gravely injure the sultan, sultana & prince of iran has to be somewhere on that list. but if you asked on a genuine note, shoving your tongue down a certain felonious russian lord's throat despite never indulging in certain actions, much less thoughts about the opposite sex doesn't compare in the slightest & is at best, child's play.
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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🗣 the raccoons . 🤪
❛ like those art pieces that don't make any fuckin' sense. you look at it and wonder what the hell the artist was smokin' when they made it. shit, whatever it is i want in on it. they still put it up on the walls so it's got somethin' to it, i guess.   ❜ 
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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💋 ( any of your muses )
💋  —  never been kissed ?  a headcanon about my muses first kiss, who it was with & how they felt about it.
wolfram wagner .
to absolutely no one's surprise wolfram has only allowed a select few people to come in close contact with him — not for reasons expected, however. arrogance does not play a factor in his decision to steer clear of intimacy. his first kiss had been a childhood friend growing up. someone who'd taught him how to behave like an actual person: eating with proper utensils & not your fingers, acknowledging those who've acknowledged you first when entering a room, not speaking everything that comes to mind ( though unfortunately, this remains a work in progress ). ❝ i want to make sure that the first person who kisses you, loves you. okay ? ❞ a line spoken before she'd kissed him & left prussia the night thereafter. to this day he's unsure what to make of it, never truly allowing himself to think about it too much for fear of forgotten feelings that might resurface.
salvador najafi .
it had been during one of his training lessons. freshly fifteen & angry at himself about the sultan's lecture moments prior. not good enough. harder. faster. progress he believed to have made flushed down the drain with a simple word: ❝ disappointing. ❞ he'd been given new sparring partners, now soldiers at the very frontline of the empire's growing army. a girl, soft brown eyes that'd hypnotized him from the right & the black curls of a shorter boy flanking him at the left. mind frazzled within seconds as they overpowered him with ease, the hilt of his sword at salva's throat & the sole of her boot against the warmth pitting in his stomach. and well, the rest is history. suffice to say it's one of the best coming - of - age memories he has.
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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be honest wolfie ... r u a lil fruity ?
 ❛    wrong twin.   ❜
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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rumor has it prince wolfram's a lil fruity
 ❛     the   fuck    does    that    even    mean ?      ❜
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aresenics · 1 year ago
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Rumor has it Wolfie is the least impressive Wagner twin
 ❛     rumour has it you're a little freak that loves to watch. when i undress should i do it a little slower for you ?    ❜
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