#Doris Lessing opere

[pier-carlo-universe]

Gatti molto speciali di Doris Lessing: Un viaggio nell'animo felino e umano. Recensione di Alessandria today

L'ammaliante connessione tra l'autrice premio Nobel e i suoi amati gatti

L’ammaliante connessione tra l’autrice premio Nobel e i suoi amati gatti Recensione Gatti molto speciali è un’opera in cui Doris Lessing, Premio Nobel per la Letteratura, esplora il profondo legame tra esseri umani e gatti. Questo libro, intriso di affetto e ironia, racconta le esperienze dell’autrice con i suoi compagni felini, offrendo uno spaccato intimo e divertente di una relazione che va…

[z-nightshade]

One has to rewrite the entire little garden arc once more

Han Sooyoung would tag along Luffy and Vivi when going out to explore Little Garden. They made Dory of course and Han Sooyoung is more concerned than Luffy on their 100-year duel but less concerned than Vivi. She thinks that they have way too much homoerotic tension currently and that they need to kiss it out immediately. While she's in front of course she needs to take notes for future writing projects. She is one of the people that gets trapped in the wax birthday cake thingy and attempt - keyword attempts - to use her avatars to break her free. Unfortunately she has not accounted for Miss Goldenweek who paints on all her clones and forces them to have a tea party.

Kim Dokja is saddled with babysitting Usopp and Nami. When chased after the dinosaur he goes after Nami because she's the one being chased or whatever. He obliterates the dinosaur and is flabbergasted to see Nami trapped on the wax birthday cake along with Vivi, Zoro and Han Sooyoung. He of course bullies Han Sooyoung relentlessly for this before getting painted on by Miss Goldenweek. Of course the paint wouldn't work because of the Fourth Wall. He then proceeds to decimate Mr.3

Cass would be the one taking out Miss Goldenweek since I doubt they'd be able to follow Sanji when he's out hunting for a competition and they also wouldn't be able to know that Yoo Joonghyuk would also find the wax base, so really where else would they be?

Yoo Joonghyuk is out hunting like a normal person not as a competition because they need the food. He is the first to come across the wax base of operations of Baroque works and definitely starts inspecting the place for any hint as to what the structure might be, whose it is and so on. When Sanji arrives and Crocodile calls, he's flabbergasted that no one has noticed that Mr.0 is Crocodile because the snails mimic the faces of the speaker. He's not flabbergasted that the snails are a form of long distance communication because he's already seen it with cash on the ship when they call sabo, talia, unwin and other friends.

Yoo Joonghyuk when he arrives with Sanji in the aftermath of the battle (more like decimation of the enemy) is the most concerned about Zoro's self-inflicted leg injury and is the one to carry him back to the Merry. (I like to think that Zorro is so delirious from blood loss that he calls Yoo Joonghyuk "Mom". Nobody ever let them live it down. Never.)

Luffy and Usopp and Karoo arrive too late for the fight and Luffy is hella disappointed. Like immensely so.

Yoo Joonghyuk and begrudgingly Han Sooyoung are very proud that Usopp has found an idol to look up to. (Kim Dokja also cares but it's too busy hiding behind the Fourth Wall as of right now)

Extra notes!

Talia and Han Sooyoung would get along great over the Den Den Mushi. They definitely tease Cass a lot. Kim Dokja is very curious about Sabo but won't let it show and Sabo doesn't really trust him. Yoo Joonghyuk is very disappointed that Cass is this self destructive over a man they haven't even met.

Yoo Joonghyuk: I know brats your age have complicated feelings about these things, but at least let him take you out for dinner first

Cass: That's not-

I think Yoo Joonghyuk would definitely misunderstand Cass and Ace's relationship at first. I just think it's funny. Such a mom thing to do honestly.

I fucking did it gang. I rewrote the thang. And added new stuff.

v,hvb;AEHKLBDfljhaelriuho;q;u;

THE NOISE I MADE WHEN I READ IT THROUGH

HILARIOUS

Han Sooyoung is definitely right. Dory and Brogy have too much sexual tension and frankly, making out would have prevented this. Dare I say she says it reminds her of a certain eternally bickering duo

Kim Dokja would absolutely make fun of Han Sooyoung for getting caught relentlessly. I also want someone to point out that Han Sooyoung has flame powers

She could have melted them out

(Perhaps Cass says it, accidentally flexing their knowledge. When asked how they knew that, they get either "wouldn't you like to know, weather boy" or "I just know shit" and no further explanation)

Cass knows Miss Goldenweek's powers well enough to decide a one shot sneak attack is the best option and they are more than willing to do so

(Cass also gives Kim Dokja compliments. But like, the super sincere melt in your mouth sweet kind. Because they know how terrible his self esteem is and decides that until they come up with a better plan and a way to deal with the Fourth Wall, compliments will be given)

ZORO CALLING YOO JOONGHYUK MOM!!!!!!! I LOVE IT

Talia and Han Sooyoung are besties. I see the vision, and sadly, so does Cass. But they will endure the torment because Talia is happy

Sabo doesn't just not trust Kim Dokja. He actively distrusts him. Kim Dokja is like Cass but apathetic and with no regard for Ace or Luffy in any personal way (which was what gets Sabo to trust Cass at least a little). I can already imagine the way the two would grate on each other

Yoo Joonghyuk completely misunderstanding Cass and Ace is hilarious. And honestly? Given how oblivious Cass can be, Yoo Joonghyuk could probably get through a whole lecture before Cass realizes what he's thinking and tries to correct him.

They'd also be a little lowkey offended on both theirs and Ace's behalf. They've been in contact for nearly a year. Plus Ace is more than worth every bit of pain Cass puts themself through in their humble opinion

Now, Little Garden Arc spoilers for An Oracle's Odyssey under the cut

So this is technically the aftermath but I think it'd be interesting to think about in this au

In AOO, Cass plans to dowse everyone else in bug spray so they're the one who gets sick instead of Nami. That way they can still pick up Chopper and keep Nami safe

Their reasoning (excuse) is that they're vaccinated and therefore more likely to have the proper antibodies to fight off a virus more efficiently than Nami

Except Fate isn't all that happy to be played, so instead of the virus Nami got, Cass gets something much more aggressive and harmful and overall more miserable

It's not enough to kill them, obviously, but it sure can give them a bad time

Now with this au, I think Yoo Joonghyuk and perhaps Kim Dokja realize what Cass did in terms of getting themself sick over someone else and they (at least Yoo Joonghyuk) are not happy about it

Cass better expect the scolding of a lifetime after this, plus the disaster trio get the first real look at Cass's self destructive tendencies and Kim Dokja gets his wake up call when Yoo Joonghyuk says Cass is just like him

[idkwhatimdoinghere1655]

Australian GP 2024!

Mads' Race Recap!

Oh my jesus lord christ alive this was a goddamn good day. OK, I'll try to remain calm, but that is VERY difficult under the circumstances of my 3 best boys getting the podiums. But, I shall do this in order of constructors. Also, thanks to @lipringlrh for edging me through the entire bloody race cause she knew what happened, I swore I was going to be sick.

Red Bull - Nice qualis from Max, and I can't say I wasn't happy with Checo's three place penalty, just because I definitely think it helped the main race. Everything was all honky dory, then Carlos overtook and I was just like 'OK Carlitos, sure'. Then Max was slowing down... Then Lando and Charles passed, and the everyone else. The brakes were smoking, I was screaming out of pure joy. Now, don't take this the wrong way, I love Max. BUT, this provided my boys some very good opportunities. I reckon if Checo hadn't gotten the penalty, he could've tried to pip in front, but I won't dwell on what didn't happen.

Ferrari - WE GOT A FUCKING FERRARI 1-2 BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHEN I TELL YOU I LOST MY GODDAMN MIND IT IS UNPARALLELED! Anyway, I'll be constructive, for a moment, at least. Charles and Carlos had some mental quali pace, so how they didn't get pole is a little crazy to me. Alas, none of that matters now. The second I saw Max go, I was like 'oh fuck we've got it'. Carlos DOTD and race winner, barely 2 weeks after having his appendix out and he doesn't have a seat?! Absolutely diabolical. It was sweet how he went back to singing Smooth Operator, I was waiting for it. When I heard the commentators saying that they may swap the positions so that Charles could lead the WDC, I was shitting it. Yes, I wanted Charles to win, but I didn't want it to be because of something stupid like team orders. Charles can win without needing it handing to him, and it would've been so damn disrespectful to Carlos. Every year that a team has finished 1-2 in Melbourne, they've gone on to win both championships... It's our year, I'm telling you.

So happy to see them back at the top, both of them did incredibly, Charles was pulling pace out of God knows where for that fastest lap. And the strategy was good???? Like, bringing Charles in when he said he needed to? Listening??? Nice stuff. Hearing the Spanish and Italian anthems was absolutely amazing. Also, I feel like this really highlights how special Ferrari is. The team were screaming that Italian anthem like there was nothing more important to them, and they were all hugging and having a whale of a time. It was just so fucking nice to see Charlandos up there, so fucking good. So so so so so happy, Forza Ferrari. Everyone is a Ferrari fan.

McLaren - OK, so, quali wise, Lando kinda came out of nowhere. I feel like Oscar was just... There? We were racing, it was the 'rarri 1-2 with Oscar in P3 at his home race, it was lovely stuff. Then they swapped the positions. Can someone please tell me why they swapped the positions? Pretty sure it was something to do with either less pace or more recent pitting or something, but I'm not 100% sure. As much as I love Lando, I wanted him to stay down in P3 just for that Ferrari 1-2. I needed it. The last few laps, I was looking at the delta between Charles and Lando, and I was relieved to see that it wasn't changing. Super happy for Lando, Oscar did loads better at his home race, nice one for all.

Mercedes - What the hell is going on here? Like, Lewis' qualis weren't good, George's were fine, nothing bad but nothing spectacular. Now the race was something else. I can't really blame Lewis for his problem, since it was a mechanical issue obviously as opposed to driver error. From what I saw of George, he didn't even do anything that bad. One minute he was fine, the next he was turned on his side. I may not want Merc to get points, but I don't want a crash to be the reason why. He's OK, so that's all that really matters. But, as for the car in general, there's something wrong with it. It's not just a one week thing where it's a bit off, this has been consistent. Yes, George had a nice P3 in qualis the other week, but the pace just wasn't there at all in the race. I just don't know what's going on with them at the minute, and the fact that they're so behind the Ferraris and McLarens is concerning.

Aston Martin - Pretty mediocre all together, I've seen varied opinions on Fernando's 20 second pen. Some said he was kinda to blame for George's crash, from what I saw, he was just avoiding George after the fact. I don't really know, so I won't comment until I watch another replay. But yeah, nothing too special, but they do need to up their game.

VCARB/RB/REDBULLSHITTYEDITION - Yuki Tsunoda. Well bloody done babe. Got extra points thanks to the Fernando penalty, even if I didn't really see him during the race like... at all. But, he must've done a pretty damn good job to end up all the way in eighth before the end of the race. Now, Daniel. What is this man doing? 12th is not bad, but when your teammate with less experience in the same car is doing that much better than you in your home race, you know something's up. I love Danny Ric, but Carlos is more likely to get that Red Bull seat than he is at this rate. Slightly disappointed, I won't lie.

Haas - Both drivers getting points? OK, OK. I actually think Kevin could've gotten higher in qualis if Checo hadn't impeded, but I'm glad Checo was put down on the grid. Overall though, nice drive from both, nice to see them get points.

Williams - Right, realistically, what harm would it have done to let Logan drive? It wasn't his fault, Alex has fucked it at that circuit so many times at the same place, and Alex didn't even get points. It wasn't fair, and he took it like an absolute champ. #justiceforlogiebear #cancelwilliams

Kick Sauber - These guys need to fix their pitstops I swear to God. How many times are they going to get that wheel nut stuck on? They did 1 good one for Valtteri, but they screwed up all the others. Zhou's pitlane start was unfortunate after it looked like his front wing just... fell off. Someone said the car reminds them of a wheelie bin, I completely agree and can't see it any differently.

Alpine - Pierre 's fault for getting the 5 second penalty, but other than that, they were shit as usual. Pierre was running pretty high for a little while, then just kind of... fell back. I can't help but laugh at them, I know it's mean, I just find it so bloody comical. I think FC Versailles is just a distraction, but he has just invested in a Tier 3 league, unheard of French football team... Nice one, I guess.

[wyverndollface96]

Adaman x Female Reader: No Time For Wisdom

Adaman had to have his wisdom teeth removed while you and him were in Pasio. Wait ‘till he becomes loopy.

You and Adaman had been in Pasio for three weeks now. It had been interesting for the both of you to explore around the region in this time frame. Though as you, he and one other teammate battled against another team, Adaman began to notice discomfort in his mouth. Your team still beat the opposing team, but decided to call it done after that.

You recalled seeing a dental clinic on your journey, so you took Adaman there to have his mouth looked at.

He was in a chair with an X-Ray in his mouth. The dentists then shows him what was going on. “Wisdom teeth,” she said, “you have all four. And telling by the discomfort you’re feeling, they are gonna need to be surgically removed as soon as possible. So we’ll schedule you for the extraction tomorrow.”

Adaman was beyond nervous. But he would feel even less if you would be there for him. There wasn’t much going on for tomorrow as far as Pokémon battles, so it works out well.

The next day, you took Adaman back to the clinic. You told him he’ll only have a few days to a week to recover from the surgery and you’ll help him eat. Adaman takes a deep breath as he goes into the operating room. “I’ll be out here.” you said.

An hour later, the doctor comes out. “He’s done,” she says, “he should be waking up any second now.” “Got it.” you said as you contacted a taxi to take you and Adaman back to your shared apartment. As you waited, you got his medication and care sheet; containing the suggested times Adaman can take the meds.

Soon later, the taxi came and picked you and the goofy and loopy Adaman up. He was a little giggly on the ride to the apartment; just slowly moving his head side to side. “You must be having a good time, huh, sweetie?” you asked.

Adaman looks at you with tired eyes. “I’m-ughh-hunky dory.” he slurs with gauze in his mouth. He then continues giggling. You were giggling, too, seeing he was a goofy mess from the drugs he was given.

Once you both got to the apartment, you helped Adaman out of his haori and shoes and lay him down on the couch. You put an extra pillow under his head and looked at the sheet.

“So I’ll fix you a shake and give you your pills with it in a few hours.” you tell him. You sit by him; on a chair beside the couch and rest a hand on his shoulder as you put on a soothing video on PokéTube for him to watch.

You carefully took the gauze out of Adaman’s mouth and rinsed it out. There wasn’t much bleeding from his wounds since the gauze was removed; just a teeny bit.

You made Adaman a shake and helped spoon feed him when he took his medicine after a while of him napping. You made sure the shake was strained of any bits to not upset the wounds in Adaman’s mouth. Poor man looked sad when he had puffy cheeks and sleepy eyes. You felt bad, but you needed to help him.

“It’s gonna be okay, Adaman,” you tell him calmly, “those pills are going to help you. And if you need, when you’re done with your shake, I can get you an ice pack to put on your cheeks. That sound okay?” Adaman nodded. So you went to go grab an ice pack from the freezer and you brought it to him.

“Switch to the other cheek when you think the one side doesn’t hurt as much anymore.” you said, placing the pack gently on Adaman’s left cheek. Adaman held it there; his hand tiredly trembling. He looks at you; giving you the derpiest smile. You tilt your head curiously.

“Is that a smile?” you asked. Adaman nods, managing to say, “I apprethiate what you do, my wuv. I weally do. Fank you.” His voice sounded tired. You put your arms around his shoulders, but not fully hugging him since you needed to be careful with him.

“Of course, dear,” you said, kissing him on his head, “how are you feeling, otherwise?” “Nnngh….tired and woothy,” Adaman groans, “like Alakathaam uthed Hypnothith on me. Mayyyyyybe Confuthion.” His tongue was shivering as the ice pack was freezing his swollen face.

He lay back down to rest and continue watching those soothing PokéTube videos while icing his face. You sat with him for a while. A couple hours later, you helped get him to bed. It’s gonna be a long week for him, but he’ll soon be smiling bright again.

Yeah, I’m highly nervous about my wisdom teeth and when I need to have them out. Couldn’t help but write about our beloved characters and main characters undergoing the extractions. But, either way, hope you enjoyed them.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Major Kirk and the Women's Army Corps

By Jonathan Monfiletto

When Uncle Sam called, a young woman from Penn Yan – much like many of the young men all around her – answered. And she not only rose to the call but went above and beyond it during her nearly three and a half years of service in World War II.

Less than six months after the United States of America entered the global conflict following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, the U.S. government – through a bill approved by Congress and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt – established the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps on May 15, 1942 “for the purpose,” officially, “of making available to the national defense the knowledge, skill, and special training of women of the nation.” In actuality, it took a Congresswomen – U.S. Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers, of Massachusetts, who introduced the bill a year before it became law – to ensure women would receive all the rights and benefits afforded to male service members when they supported the Army, after she had witnessed the status of women in World War I.

Less than three months after the WAAC was formed, in September 1942, Carlotta “Kirk” Crosier became Yates County’s first woman to enlist in this new military organization. Having been employed as a physical education teacher in Owego public schools at the time, she joined through the Binghamton recruiting office. In fact, though she taught at Owego Free Academy for two years by that point, a newspaper article from the time indicates she did not return for the 1942-1943 school year because she anticipated a call to service.

From Binghamton, Crosier reported to Des Moines, Iowa for basic training at the rank of private. With her experience in physical education, she helped the platoon leader teach the other recruits how to march. Perhaps as a result, she was one of two privates selected for the first officers training course for women.

Upon completion of this officer candidate school, 2nd Lt. Crosier served as executive officer for an all-female company stationed in Daytona Beach, Florida but preparing for duty in England. When the unit was transferred to Fort Devon, Massachusetts and then Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, Crosier was promoted to company commander. When Crosier and her fellow women reached England in July 1943 – the first WAAC battalion to do so, with three to five companies – they were assigned to the 3rd Division of the 8th Air Force. Here, Crosier worked as a company commander under Gen. Curtis LeMay.

Initially, WAACs worked only as clerks, cooks, drivers, and medical personnel. Indeed, a newspaper report quoting an article by Doris Fleeson in the Woman’s Home Companion speaks of female troops under Crosier’s command performing clerical communications and mess duties.

In September 1943, though, Congress and the President – again, through the work of Rep. Rogers – authorized the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), shortening the acronym by a letter and allowing women to serve overseas with the regular Army. Now, women began to take on roles as cryptologists, radio operators, photographers, mechanics, and more.

At this point, it seems, 1st Lt. Crosier was transferred to the 8th Air Force Headquarters Operations Section commanded by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle. Later promoted to captain, she served as the first female operations watch officer in the history of the U.S. military. In this role, working in the operations room in a bombproof, underground structure, Crosier helped coordinate the missions that sent U.S. warplanes on the attack.

Listening to pre-mission discussions among Doolittle and his staff, Crosier helped supply such information as the weather and direct such decisions as the target, the time, the bombload, and the number of planes. When the group made its final decisions for the mission, it was Crosier’s job to write the field order containing all of the pertinent information, send it out by teletype to the bomber divisions, and alert allied agencies of the upcoming attack.

A newspaper article, with the date of March 9, 1944 handwritten on it, calls to attention Crosier’s role in the bombing raids over Berlin, Germany. According to the article, the London Daily Sketch of February 23, 1944 carried a 12-square-inch photograph of Crosier and had this to say about her: “The girl who knows ‘The Gen.’ She is Lt. Carlotta Crosier, U.S. Women’s Army corps, operations watch officer at Eighth Air Force H.Q. On her accuracy depends much of the co-ordination that sends U.S. planes out on attacks. When her chief, Major-General Jimmy Doolittle, asks: ‘How many bombers will we be able to put up tomorrow?’ she supplies the answer.”

Another newspaper article, handwritten with the year of 1945, noted in its headline then-Capt. Crosier “Continues as Watch Officer” and indicated she was among the WACs “contributing considerably toward the successful completion of air attacks against Nazi Europe.” These women kept a constant check on each air mission as it was flown and kept records and plans for future information. Crosier specifically informed generals and other officers who planned air operations on the progress and reports of the current missions and prepared them for any emergencies in which information must be relayed to the proper channels.

Yet another newspaper article dates presumably from about the spring or summer of 1945, as it states Crosier had returned home to Penn Yan after two and a half years of service. Then, she didn’t expect to be out of uniform until almost another year. Indeed, she was discharged as Maj. Crosier in January 1946. Upon her return, she noted how her with bombing missions over enemy territory turned into such missions as dropping supplies over the Netherlands. Then, with little work for the WACs to do but wait to go home, Crosier volunteered to assist with the filming of a documentary about what she and her fellow women did in the European theater. In fact, she was in Paris the day the French held a parade to celebrate V-E, or Victory in Europe, Day.

In a V-mail letter home that was printed in a 1943 report in The Chronicle-Express, Crosier commented on receiving the hometown newspaper overseas and finding fellow soldiers with ties to Penn Yan and the Finger Lakes region. She also seemed to sum up the mission of her fellow women during the war.

“I believe I’m very fortunate in being over here and all of the Wacs are hard at work now and doing a fine job,” she wrote. “I’m very proud of the girls in my command. We are attached to the air force and are very proud of that. … I was very fortunate in being given an opportunity of going up in a Flying Fortress and it sure was a wonderful ship. As you know we are all part of the army of the United States and are regularly G.I.’s now.”

[mariacallous]

Scores of books go into print in Iran every year. Data from 2018 puts the number of published titles at 102,691, positioning Iran as one of the top 10 nations with the most books released annually. The figures have slightly fluctuated ever since, but Iran has remained loyal to its publishing bonanza.

A tradition of translating literature from English, as well as other European languages, into Persian has long animated Iran’s cultural scene, accounting for the lion’s share of Iranians’ reading preferences. Some of the country’s most celebrated intellectuals rose to fame courtesy of their translation work, which the middle-class treasures as a bridge to the rest of the world, facilitated by elites who understand the nuances of exotic cultures and interpret them for the inhabitants of a hermit kingdom.

As different realms of artistic practice continue to be constrained by the hard-line conservative administration of President Ebrahim Raisi and independent artists find themselves hard-pressed to subsist under heightened levels of fear and inhibition, Iran’s vibrant tradition of literature translation is becoming the collateral damage of a retrograde cultural agenda. For a government that is overtly opposed to anything that resembles the relics of the modern world, clamping down on translated books that showcase the best of Western literature appears entirely justified.

The introduction of some of the finest translated classic literature predates the Islamic Republic. Still, the translation of contemporary U.S., British, and other European novels and nonfiction into Persian gained currency following the 1997 ascent of the reform-minded President Mohammad Khatami, who ventured to reverse the country’s self-inflicted isolation and initiated a fresh national introspection on the relatively alien concepts of press freedom and civil liberties. Along with dozens of progressive newspapers that were issued licenses to operate, new publishing houses were founded that specialized in translated literature.

After years of cultural strangulation in which newspapers, books, music, and other forms of artistic expression languished, the birth of a nascent reform movement meant Iranians were afforded propitious opportunities to explore the outside world. International travel became trendy, and many families started sending their children to language institutions to prime them for educational programs overseas. At the same time, literary translators provided enchanting insights into Western life by making the masterpieces of U.S. and European literature accessible to Iranian readers.

As the rules on vetting cultural products were eased and censorship mutated into subtle forms, young, middle-class Iranians gained better access to the works of writers such as Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison, Harold Pinter, J. D. Salinger, and Kurt Vonnegut, and exposures that were previously unthinkable were made possible piecemeal. The internet had not yet evolved into a dominant mode of communication, and people were still circumscribed in their ability to broaden their global experiences. The translated books would give them a glimpse of what distinct cultures and lifestyles looked like, especially regarding mundane particulars.

The year Khatami was elected president, no more than 2,450 titles out of a total of 14,386 books published were works of translation. When his presidential term expired in 2005, nearly 39,000 books were published, and 9,146 of them were translations. The significant rise in the number of translated books signaled that literary practitioners were orienting Iranian readers to the best of world literature and also that the market was receptive to that sort of output.

That doesn’t mean that every work of Western literature could be translated and published freely, though, or that those that survived the purgatory of censorship at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance were faithful, verbatim reproductions.

First, with Iran being an outlier of the 1886 Berne Convention on copyright, most books are translated in Iran without the authors’ and primary publishers’ permission, at times spawning international disputes.

Translated works were also plagued by bowdlerization. During the various stages of translation and preparation, any passage construed as having a political message that could be potentially unfavorable to the government was typically expunged preemptively by translators or eventually omitted by the stern reviewers based at the culture ministry, and the erotic innuendos that are fixtures of many novels were hardly ever tolerated. It was thus common to see poorly sanitized and redacted translations of Nobel Prize-winning books and other literary masterpieces for sale at bookstores and seasonal exhibitions.

Yet the window of cultural familiarization was open wider than it had been since immediately after the revolution, catapulting a number of prolific translators to national acclaim. Reading translated books came to be seen as a mark of intellectual sophistication and refinement. In cozy cafes in Tehran and other large cities, some of which had emerged as literary hangouts, passionate young people, including female university students, discussed the latest U.S. and European literature they had read, both as a departure from the vicissitudes of life and to flaunt their artistic know-how.

A career in translation soon became so esteemed that Iranian publishers featured the names of translators on the book covers with the same font size and stature as the authors, and usually included brief biographical blurbs of the translators somewhere on the back cover or before the preamble. However, translation work never matured into a profitable enterprise. Book circulations are notoriously low, and some titles are printed in as few as 1,000 copies. And despite near-universal adult literacy, which the government says stands at 97 percent (UNESCO puts it at 85.5 percent), reading is not ubiquitous across generations. This kept translators’ financial prospects within bounds.

With the advent of the internet and social media, the reliance on translated books as the primary conduit of learning about what lies beyond the national boundaries was challenged and supplanted with new availabilities, but the books didn’t lose their luster. Indeed, reading translated literature continues to be an emblem of enlightenment and cosmopolitan, pro-Western attitudes.

This is largely why resistance to translation has been a hallmark of the cultural policies of the various conservative, hard-line administrations that have been in power on and off since 1979—including the current government of Raisi.

Censorship has been the most effective tool used by hard-line administrations to sideline translation and stymie the intimate cultural connections that Iranians could have forged with unfamiliar Western cultures, even when those bonds were solely cognitive and cerebral. At times, translators complained that entire paragraphs or even chapters were eliminated from their drafts, often convincing them to withdraw the manuscripts in favor of their own reputation or that of their publishers.

Conservative administrations also often teamed up with like-minded publishers, earmarking substantial funds to purchase their books written by Iranian authors en masse, both as an economic stimulus and to proselytize a specific cultural and political viewpoint. The outcome was that in a barely competitive book market, publishers that primarily produced translated works were inevitably marginalized.

Since coming to power in August 2021, the Raisi government has been defined by its Orwellian aversion to civil liberties, women’s rights, and artistic expression. And translated literature has not been spared. Although no official road map has been announced on curtailing translation, it’s clear that the administration and its allies have been quietly working to thwart Western literature from influencing Iranian hearts and minds.

According to local media reports, in the three-month period ending on Sept. 22, 2022, a total of 1,431 translated books were published in Iran—a 37 percent decline compared to the summer of 2021, when 2,258 works of translation were printed over the same three-month period. In the first three months of the current Persian calendar year, 5,713 translated books have been released, while the number stood at 7,936 for the corresponding period last year, suggesting a steep decrease.

The administration doesn’t have the means to directly outlaw the translation of Western literature, though it’s likely it would have done so if it did have a legal mandate. But its top officials don’t shy away from publicly lamenting the notion of translation as something morally reprehensible.

Raisi explicitly told publishers at a recent book exhibit in Tehran that translated works should not be allowed to “overtake” domestically written books, and his minister of culture, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, said last year that “a stack of translated work has captured the minds and spirit of our children” and that this situation should change so that books written about the “rich Iranian, Islamic culture” become the focus of attention. He didn’t forget to mention that the “ideals and norms of the Islamic Revolution” should be preserved by the members of the book supervisory committee, which is in charge of ideologically screening manuscripts before they can be circulated.

During the 34th Tehran International Book Fair that wrapped up in May, books by Iranian authors were sold with a special discount of 25 percent, while translated books were offered with just a 15 percent price cut.

One of the members of the policymaking committee at the 2021 edition of the  book fair, the country’s largest cultural event sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and usually visited in person by the supreme leader, is on the record saying the prevalence of translated books can bring about “cultural invasion.”

He also argued that subscribing to the international copyright convention and translating treatises into Persian after securing permission from Western publishing houses is “extremely dangerous and illogical.” He didn’t elaborate on why Iran complying with its copyright obligations would be dangerous, but it is probably the case that, in the thinking of the Islamic Republic authorities, upholding copyright would necessitate refusing to arbitrarily abridge or alter the content of the books, and this is something they won’t acquiesce to.

Mohammad Hosseini, the vice president for parliamentary affairs and a former culture minister under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in April that the translation of written texts from other languages during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras induced “infatuation, alienation, and Westernization” among Iranians. In a conference dedicated to what is billed as the “reverse translation movement,” he gloated about the government’s plans to have the books of Iranian authors translated into the world’s most commonly spoken languages. He claimed that “from China to the United States and from Russia to Africa,” people around the world are curious to read the works of Iranian writers and intellectuals, which is why the government is going to invest in encouraging “reverse translation” as opposed to financing the translation of Western literature into Persian.

It’s not a bad idea to promote books by Iranian writers and make them available to readers internationally. But as long as they are merely works of a religious nature or otherwise ideologically charged materials that the government wishes to popularize, rather than the best works of modern Iranian literature, the reverse translation campaign will remain a lost cause.

Many young Iranians are still avid fans of Western literature, and however determined the Islamic Republic is in monopolizing the public’s media diet and cultural interests, most no longer wish to adhere to the government-mandated way of seeing things. A silent crackdown on translation may deprive some Iranians of the chance to access what their counterparts are reading elsewhere in the world, but it is hardly practical to cordon off a population that has never lost its appetite for international connectivity.

[elisaenglish]

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on Redeeming Humanity

This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open question of what makes us and keeps us human, and human together. 

This is also the history of the world: artists—those lighthouses of the spirit—speaking truth to power, placing imagination ahead of ideology, the soul above the self, unselfing us into seeing each other, into remembering, as James Baldwin told Margaret Mead in their epochal conversation, that “we are still each other’s only hope.”

Born in Iran months after the end of the First World War and raised by farming parents in present-day Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing (October 22, 1919–November 17, 2013) was still a girl when she sensed something deeply wrong with the unquestioned colonial system of her world, with the oppression that was the axis of that world. By the time she was a young woman—a time when our urge to rebel against the broken system is fiery but we don’t yet have the tools to rebel intelligently, don’t yet know the right questions to ask in order to tell whether the answer we are holding up as an alternative is any better or worse—she rebelled by embracing Communism as “an interesting manifestation of popular will.” Working by that point as a telephone operator in England, she joined the Communist Party. “It was a conversion, apparently sudden, and total (though short-lived),” she would later recall. “Communism was in fact a germ or virus that had already been at work in me for a long time… because of my rejection of the repressive and unjust society of old white-dominated Africa.” It didn’t take her long to see the cracks in Communism. She left the party, discovered Sufism, grew fascinated with the nascent field of behavioural psychology and its revelatory, often disquieting findings about the inner workings of the mind, of its formidable powers to act and its immense vulnerabilities to being acted upon. But she found no ready-made answer to the problem of social harmony.

And so, in that way artists have of complaining by creating, she devoted her life—almost a century of life, a century of world wars and violent uprisings, of changes unimaginable to her parents—to asking the difficult, clarifying questions that help us better understand what makes us human, how we allow ourselves to dehumanise others, and what it takes to cohere, as individuals and as societies. At 87, she became the oldest person to receive the Nobel Prize, awarded her for writing that “with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.”

In 1985, months after I was born under Bulgaria’s Communist dictatorship, Doris Lessing delivered Canada’s esteemed annual Massey Lectures, later adapted into a series of short essays under the haunting title Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (public library)—a searching look at how it is that “we (the human race) are now in possession of a great deal of hard information about ourselves, but we do not use it to improve our institutions and therefore our lives,” lensed through a lucid faith that we have all the power, urgency, and dignity we need to choose otherwise, to use what we have learned about the worst of our nature to nurture and magnify the best of our nature, to figure out “how we behave so that we control the society and the society does not control us.” 

In a sentiment Rebecca Solnit would echo three decades later in her modern classic Hope in the Dark, Lessing writes:

“This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that—a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotised, and do not notice—or if we notice, belittle—equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilisation.”

To be realistic about our own nature, Lessing argues, requires attentiveness to both of these strands—the destructive and the creative. This is the cosmic mirror Maya Angelou held up to humanity in her stunning space-bound poem, urging us to “learn that we are neither devils nor divines.” An epoch before her, Bertrand Russell—also a Nobel laureate in Literature, though trained as a scientist—reckoned with our twin capacities to define them in elemental terms—“We construct when we increase the potential energy of the system in which we are interested, and we destroy when we diminish the potential energy.”—and in existential terms: “Construction and destruction alike satisfy the will to power, but construction is more difficult as a rule, and therefore gives more satisfaction to the person who can achieve it.” 

Our sanity, Lessing observes, lies in “our capacity to be detached and unflattering about ourselves”—and in the understanding that our selves are not islanded in time but lineages of beliefs and tendencies with roots much longer than our lifetimes, not sovereign but contiguous with all the other selves that occupy the particular patch of spacetime we have been born into. It is vital, she insists, that we examine ourselves—our selves, and the constellation of selves that is our given society—from various elsewheres.

This is why we need writers—those professional observers, in Susan Sontag’s splendid definition, whose job it is to “pay attention to the world” and shine the light of that attention on every side of the kaleidoscope that is a given culture at a given time. A decade after Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb reckoning with the role of literature in democracy that “tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify,” Lessing writes:

“In totalitarian societies writers are distrusted for precisely this reason… Writers everywhere are aspects of each other, aspects of a function that has been evolved by society… Literature is one of the most useful ways we have of achieving this “other eye,” this detached manner of seeing ourselves; history is another.”

Because we are the future of our own past, the posterity of our ancestors, looking back on history from our present vantage point offers fertile training ground for looking forward, for shaping the world of tomorrow. Lessing writes:

“Anyone who reads history at all knows that the passionate and powerful convictions of one century usually seem absurd, extraordinary, to the next. There is no epoch in history that seems to us as it must have to the people who lived through it. What we live through, in any age, is the effect on us of mass emotions and of social conditions from which it is almost impossible to detach ourselves. […] There is no such thing as my being in the right, my side being in the right, because within a generation or two, my present way of thinking is bound to be found perhaps faintly ludicrous, perhaps quite outmoded by new development—at the best, something that has been changed, all passion spent, into a small part of a great process, a development.”

In consonance with Carl Sagan’s admonition against “the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth” and with Joan Didion’s admonition against mistaking self-righteousness for morality, Lessing offers:

“This business of seeing ourselves as in the right, others in the wrong; our cause as right, theirs as wrong; our ideas as correct, theirs as nonsense, if not as downright evil… Well, in our sober moments, our human moments, the times when we think, reflect, and allow our rational minds to dominate us, we all of us suspect that this “I am right, you are wrong” is, quite simply, nonsense. All history, development goes on through interaction and mutual influence, and even the most violent extremes of thought, of behaviour, become woven into the general texture of human life, as one strand of it. This process can be seen over and over again in history. In fact, it is as if what is real in human development—the main current of social evolution—cannot tolerate extremes, so it seeks to expel extremes and extremists, or to get rid of them by absorbing them into the general stream.”

Looking back on the colonialist Zimbabwe of her childhood, on the “prejudiced, ugly, ignorant” attitudes of the ruling whites, she reflects:

“These attitudes were assumed to be unchallengeable and unalterable, though the merest glance at history would have told them (and many of them were educated people) that it was inevitable their rule would pass, that their certitudes were temporary.”

At the centre of Lessing’s inquiry is the paradox of how seemingly sound-minded, kind-hearted people get enlisted in ideologies of oppression. Kierkegaard had written in the Golden Age of European revolutions—those idealistic but imperfect attempts to unify fractured feudal duchies into free nations, attempts that modelled the possibility of a United States of America—that “the evolution of the world tends to show the absolute importance of the category of the individual apart from the crowd,” that “truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because… the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion.” An epoch and a world order later, Lessing considers how regimes of terror take hold:

“Nearly everyone in such situations behaves automatically. But there is always the minority who do not, and it seems to me that our future, the future of everybody, depends on this minority. And that we should be thinking of ways to educate our children to strengthen this minority and not, as we mostly do now, to revere the pack.”

The mess we have made, she intimates, may be the most effective teaching tool we have—a living admonition against doing the same, a clarion call to rebel by doing otherwise:

“Perhaps it is not too much to say that in these violent times the kindest, wisest wish we have for the young must be: “We hope that your period of immersion in group lunacy, group self-righteousness, will not coincide with some period of your country’s history when you can put your murderous and stupid ideas into practice. “If you are lucky, you will emerge much enlarged by your experience of what you are capable of in the way of bigotry and intolerance. You will understand absolutely how sane people, in periods of public insanity, can murder, destroy, lie, swear black is white.”

As for us, here in the roiling mess, our sole salvation lies in learning to “live our lives with minds free of violent and passionate commitment, but in a condition of intelligent doubt about ourselves and our lives, a state of quiet, tentative, dispassionate curiosity.” Lessing writes:

“While all these boilings and upheavals go on, at the same time, parallel, continues this other revolution: the quiet revolution, based on sober and accurate observation of ourselves, our behaviour, our capacities… If we decided to use it, [we may] transform the world we live in. But it means making that deliberate step into objectivity and away from wild emotionalism, deliberately choosing to see ourselves as, perhaps, a visitor from another planet might see us.”

This, in fact, was the conditional clause in Baldwin’s words to Mead—in order to be “each other’s only hope,” he said, we ought to be “as clear-headed about human beings as possible.” This, too, was Maya Angelou’s conditional optimism for humanity: “That is when, and only when, we come to it”—to that “Brave and Startling Truth,” balanced on the fulcrum of our conflicted capacities, “that we are the possible, we are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world.”

Source: Maria Popova, themarginalian.org (11th November 2024)

[zak-writes]

Shamrock

dori told me to spin the wheel and it landed on Shamrock! so here you go

Shamrock is a character from my series 'warning lights'. He is an infamous smuggler and bootlegger in the city and can often be found hanging around the docks. He also likes to orchestrate elaborate heists, although he mostly does this for fun rather than money

He has a younger brother named Tadhg who he prefers to keep away from his less-than-legal operations. He frequently wears an earpiece that connects him to his partner in crime, Ada.

Shamrock is not his real name. He is usually called Sham by his friends (or Rocky by Jack). While he insists otherwise, some people refer to him as The Shamrock.

In the original version of the story, he is killed in an explosion during a heist, and his death is the catalyst for the rest of the story. In the current canon, he gets to live a little bit longer

[wildfirehq]

character information: 

CHARACTER NAME : bruce wayne ( alias is ‘paul’ — no surname, won’t reveal his actual name to anyone )

CHARACTER FACECLAIM : robert pattinson

CHARACTER AGE/DOB : november 11th 1986 ( 37 years old )

CHARACTER PRONOUNS/GENDER IDENTITY/SEXUALITY ETC : he / him, cis male, bisexual

CHARACTER FANDOM (if relevant) : the batman ( 2022 )

OC OR CANON :  canon

IF RELEVANT, PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY IMPORTANT CANON DIVERGENCES : n/a

WHERE THEY ARE CURRENTLY LOCATED & ANY IMPORTANT ALLIANCES OF NOTE : primarily in gotham, although scavenging runs are taken semi-frequently as resources are sparse / controlled by gangs within gotham. bruce hasn’t allowed himself to become close with any one group, preferring to work on the sidelines or alone ( especially since losing contact with alfred ).

IMPORTANT CHARACTER INFORMATION TO NOTE AND SHARE :

1986 : born.

1992 ( 6 years old ) : moved from wayne manor to wayne tower in the centre of gotham city.

1996 ( 10 years old ) : death of his parents.

1999 ( 13 years old ) : finds wayne terminus.

2004 ( 18 years old ) : graduates boarding school at the top of his class.

2004 - 2010 ( 18 - 24 years old ) : travels the world, switching colleges on a whim, following the best professors around in different subjects. studies various forms of martial arts from masters in multiple countries.

august 2010 ( 24 years old ) : bruce is studying physics at the university of tokyo when the global pandemic is declared. closed air space means nothing for a wayne — his private jet awaits him that evening, flying him directly back to the airport closest to gotham and back within city limits in less than 24 hours. alfred looks the most haggard he’s ever seen for a man so proper, and the car ride back to wayne tower is heavy with words they don’t speak. riots have started. smoke consumes the gloomy skyline. gotham is beginning to fall.

september 2010 ( 24 years old ) : operation cobalt. alfred’s words strike like hammer blows, holed up as they are at the top of wayne tower watching the world burn below. their emergency generators are still supplying electricity but they preserve it — the candle light casts deep shadows on alfred’s face as he talks of military contacts and contingency plans, of how the bridges around gotham will be blown out within days. the city will be cut off from the mainland and people left to fend for themselves by order of the president. dory’s voice breaks the silence, asking a question bruce wants to voice but can’t, the words sticking in his throat like tar, ‘so, we have to leave?’ 

a few hours later sees bags packed with gear — mostly food and water, but also torches, rope, medical supplies — and they begin the descent to wayne terminus. there have been riots outside, people who, led by fear-driven anger, protest at the sole wayne heir’s reluctance to open his doors and help, to provide sanctuary within his ivory tower. bruce can only see things going badly if they leave via the usual route, instead choosing to reveal the existence of the terminal he found as a teenager. his first sports car is kept safe there — ‘it’ll be faster than yours, alfred’ — and they all cram inside, bruce at the wheel much to alfred’s protestations. 

what they see upon emerging above ground will stick in bruce’s mind forever. bodies litter the ground, bodies being feasted on by people with viscera dripping from teeth-bared mouths. once they catch sight of the vehicle they move as one, bruce driving as fast as he can from the scene, knuckles white on the wheel. they’re close to the city limits — one of the bridges in sight — when they can go no further, roads blocked in every direction by abandoned cars left by those that tried to flee. between leaving the vehicle and making it to the other side of the bridge bruce’s hands are stained red with blood, the phantom feeling of dory’s fingers gripping his as she’s pulled from him still present. it’s just the two of them now — bruce and alfred — leaving a decaying gotham behind. 

september 2010 - august 2021 ( 24 - 34 years old ) : ( left this section deliberately vague so as to plot connections ). ten years in an apocalypse wears bruce down to the bone, stripping him of any connection to the wayne legacy and leaving a caricature in its place. paul, he introduces himself as, never bruce. that part of him died in gotham with dory, left behind when the bombs fell. they are slow to trust, alfred’s background in the british secret service and bruce’s own martial arts skills meaning they are capable of holding their own for a while — until their supplies run out. groups are joined and left on a whim, alfred pushing bruce to make connections but bruce insisting they cut ties when he feels they’re getting too close. there are too many close calls, too many opportunities for people to exploit them for them to have a reason to stay. the more time passes the more bruce retreats into himself and goes somewhere alfred can’t follow. 

september 2021 ( 34 years old ) : they slip up. an argument reveals their real names to someone eavesdropping : edward nashton. unbeknownst to bruce and alfred, edward had had his suspicions on who bruce really was for months after they joined the very group he was in and had been plotting a very historic revenge, one that had been in the making ever since being shunned back in gotham orphanage by bruce himself. a routine supply run turns into a game : a riddle for their lives, a maze filled with the undead. except there is no way out, a lose-lose situation that ends when bruce — having answered all the riddles correctly — is separated from alfred by an explosion meant to “teach him another lesson”. all he can hear is laughter, the sound grating in his ears as his vision clears. by the time he stumbles over to the rubble, edward is gone, saving his own skin while the groans of the undead grow ever closer. bruce has to make the hardest decision of his life then : stay and find alfred, pitting himself against a wall of walkers that were drawn by the explosion, or leave with his life. he chooses the latter. 

october 2021 - 2024 ( 34 - 37 years old ) : losing alfred ( or so he thinks ) was the tipping point. bruce’s anger, which had been simmering beneath the surface for years, is the driving force for his need for revenge. he sets his sights back on the city that raised him, determined to cleanse it of people like nashton, those particular living no better than the dead. a makeshift bridge had already been made by people escaping from ( or to ? ) gotham, the city no longer unreachable. wayne terminus is still wonderfully intact, hidden from walker and human alike, and so becomes bruce’s base of operations as he begins to re-familiarise himself with his city. an old wayne enterprise warehouse — security protocols still in place, drawing minimal energy reserves for years — yields a treasure trove of equipment, most importantly the prototype body armour he remembered alfred mentioning years before, an off-hand comment made when lamenting on how such resources were gone to them now.

it’s now his second year back living in gotham and the streets are worse than ever, the city controlled by gangs with leaders such as falcone hoarding resources and exploiting what is left of humanity. but bruce helps where he can, shepherding people to groups he knows are safe outside of gotham, single-handedly stealing and interrupting supply routes. he’s determined to make a difference — he has to. for his parents. for alfred.

ONE SONG THAT HAS YOUR CHARACTER VIBES : BLOOD / KLOUD.

ooc information: 

NAME/ALIAS : rey

AGE : 30

TRIGGERS : none !

[dnaamericaapp]

Head Start Preschools Aim To Fight Poverty, But Their Teachers Struggle To Make Ends Meet

In some ways, Doris Milton is a Head Start success story. She was a student in one of Chicago’s inaugural Head Start classes, when the antipoverty program, which aimed to help children succeed by providing them a first-rate preschool education, was in its infancy.

Milton loved her teacher so much that she decided to follow in her footsteps. She now works as a Head Start teacher in Chicago.

After four decades on the job, Milton, 63, earns $22.18 an hour. Her pay puts her above the poverty line, but she is far from financially secure. She needs a dental procedure she cannot afford, and she is paying down $65,000 of student loan debt from National Louis University, where she came within two classes of getting her bachelor’s degree. She dropped out in 2019 when she fell ill.

Head Start teachers — 70% of whom have bachelor’s degrees — earn $39,000 a year on average, far less than public school teachers with similar credentials. President Joe Biden wants to raise their pay, but Congress has no plans to expand the Head Start budget.

Many have left the job — about one in five teachers turned over in 2022 — for higher-paying positions at restaurants or in retail. But if Head Start centers are required to raise teacher pay without additional money, operators say they would have to cut how many kids they serve.

The Biden administration says the program is already turning kids away because so many teachers have left, and not enough workers are lining up to take their places. -(source: ap)

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

[rentalincentraltokyo]

Finding Rentals in Central Tokyo - Azabu Juban and Shirokane

Finding the right place to live in Tokyo is a big challenge. The best way is to do some research online and familiarize yourself with the main real estate agents in your chosen neighborhood. Most sites are user-friendly and offer you a good overview of what is available in your price range. You can also filter for rental properties by room type and number of bedrooms. This is really handy, as it saves you from scrolling through endless results that don't fit your criteria. Check their site to know more details 東京都心の賃貸.

Rentals in central Tokyo like Azabu Juban and Shirokane are popular with foreigners looking for high-end living near some of the city's most famous attractions. For example, Roppongi Hills is home to luxury shopping and restaurants, while the fashionable Meguro-dori and Platinum-dori areas boast designer boutiques. The Take-no-Yu onsen in the heart of Azabu-juban is a hidden gem that has been in operation for over a century, and its hot spring water is famed for healing the skin.

If you are looking for a more affordable option, consider the suburban areas of Tokyo. They are much less expensive than the central six wards, but still have easy access to the main train lines and plenty of stores.

The cheapest districts (or "ku") are those further north and east of the city center, including Adachi-ku, Arakawa-ku, Kita-ku, Itabashi-ku, Nerima-ku, and Suginami-ku. They are also less densely populated, so there is more space to spread out. They are also home to some of the most famous parks in Tokyo, such as Meguro-ku and Nerima-ku Park.

Another option is to find a share house or private flat in the suburbs. This is a great option for families or those who prefer a more home-like environment. However, it's worth noting that share houses are more expensive than renting a normal apartment in the suburbs, and you will usually need to pay a guarantor fee of 0.5-1 month's rent.

When it comes to longer-term apartment rentals, the most important factor is location. You should try to get as close to your local train station as possible, since this will allow you to travel easily into central Tokyo without paying too much for transport. Also, try to choose a area that has a unique downtown or shopping district, so you'll have more options for dining and nightlife.

If you are not planning on buying property, renting an apartment for a long period of time in Japan is the most cost-effective option. Unlike in the West, most apartments in Japan are unfurnished and you'll need to furnish them yourself, so be sure to budget for this. In addition to the monthly rent, you'll need to pay a deposit, key money and an agent or guarantor fee. However, many rental agencies or shared homes offer all-inclusive packages where you can avoid these start-up costs.

[grandhotelabyss]

Thoughts on Norman Rush? I've started Mating and am pretty impressed so far. And what do you think it could mean that this trendily rediscovered novel about white researchers in Botswana gets discussed almost exclusively in terms of sex and gender, not race/colonialism?

Tried it once, didn't like it, found the heroine's celebrated voice quite grating. Maybe I was wrong! Honestly, I tried it so long ago—this was during its last revival in the mid-2000s; I think James Wood had raved about it—that I hadn't even yet read Hemingway's Africa stories or anything by Doris Lessing or Henderson the Rain King, which are I assume the most relevant intertext-precursors, so I'm sure I should try again. (Henderson the Rain King is so good; obviously contemporary readers won't be able to deal with it; the baby witches of BookTok will put a curse on your lit-bro ass for even mentioning it once they find out what it is; but, once again, it's still so good. Anne Sexton loved it, Joni Mitchell wrote "Both Sides, Now" in homage to it! I was reminded today, because I'm currently reading Operation Shylock for what I hope are obvious reasons—it's top-tier Roth, by the way—and Roth mentions Henderson as Jewish literature's ultimate example of a gentile hero.) Anyway, the crew doing the Rush revival now is comprised of not-really-woke and mostly white left-libs with elite educations, basically The Point, The Drift, the new semi-based Paris Review, and all that extended coterie, with its refurbished Martha Nussbaumist or Elaine Scarryist genteel ethical aestheticism. I'm not sure this genre of literary intellectual ever got the postcolonial memo, or not in a way that stuck, that became internal to their sense of the novel's history.

[ssr-archives]

*

Here’s the thing. Rose has always had an eye for a good-looking fella. She always figured that after the war was over she’s find a man, settle down, raise a family.

That was before she joined up with the WAC as a switchboard operator and… well. Got her horizons expanded just a touch by a string of pretty hard-edged gals in uniform.

Of course, none of those affairs were ever going to last, but it was good to have a little bit of fun in a miserable situation, especially since none of that sort of fun was going to end up with her in a family way. Just about everybody got up to some kind of nonsense over on the front. Half the men, too, although of course she wasn’t meant to know anything about that.

The point is, she never expected any of it to follow her back home, but with Doris… well. One afternoon of splashing in the shallows and sharing the large picnic lunch Rose packed under her umbrella turned into two, and then three, and then before she knows it they’re meeting for shopping trips down in Studio City, and lunch dates that ramble into dinner dates without anyone paying attention, and by the time two weeks later when Doris leans across the towel they’re sharing on the empty beach at dawn and kissed her on the mouth, Rose already knows she’s done for.

It can’t last. She knows it can’t. But Doris is here, and she’s beautiful, and Rose didn’t survive the war without learning how to hang onto any good thing she can get with both hands for as long as she can.

She knows it’ll hurt when it ends, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having while it lasts.

*

She’s right. It hurts.

It’s not even a fight that does it, which might have been easier. Doris’s mother back in La Crosse gets sick, and Doris goes home to take care of her. She even offers for Rose to come with her, but Rose has the SSR, and she knows, she knows that if she gives that up she’ll end up resenting Doris until she poisons everything between them and is left with nothing.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less, but she kisses Doris before dropping her off at the train station, and smiles through her tears when Doris turns to wave with one white-gloved hand, her polka-dot skirt swirling around her legs, and she knows she’s made the right choice.

It’s just going to sting for a while, but Rose is a big girl and she’s lived through worse. She knows how to move on.

*

She never means to tell anyone, after. She doesn’t really date much--or, well, she does, she goes out dancing for a night, lets the other agents and scientists and the occasional civilian buy her a drink and spend a few minutes spinning her across the dance floor to Duke Ellington, but it’s never any more than that. She’s learned her lesson, she thinks. Spinsterhood is starting to look mighty fine.

And then Michael happens.

He’s the last thing she ever expected. None of them, even Peggy, were expecting him to be alive, so that’s a shock, and then he’s tall and blond and handsome and...gentle in a way that Peggy isn’t. Rose figures it has to be an act. She’s read his service files, after all. She knows what he’s done. What he’s capable of. She’s watched Peggy slap him across the face in the middle of the SSR bullpen and tell him that she never wants to see him again.

She’s sure as hell not expecting him to ask her out to dinner a few weeks later when he stops by the office. She’s definitely not expecting to say yes.

Rose Edith Roberts is not known for making smart decisions when it comes to her personal life, though, so she doesn’t exactly know why she’s surprised at herself.

He’s charming at dinner and over cocktails later. He doesn’t ask her to dance, which is probably to be expected. He doesn’t use a crutch like Chief Sousa, but he’s still got a stiff leg, a limp that he hides well enough that she’s not even sure anyone else notices it.

“You can go,” he says, smiling, and nods his chin at the dance floor. “Honestly. I don’t mind. I’m just not one for dancing these days.”

Rose gives him a long look, then lies cheerfully, “Yeah, well, me neither. You wanna buy me another gin and tonic and finish that story about the faked briefcase instead? You didn’t really jam some stiff into army clothes and dump him for the Krauts to find, did you?”

“You know, that’s really supposed to be top-secret,” Michael says, but he’s smiling.

Rose shrugs. “I have clearance. If you don’t want to tell me, though, you can just buy me another drink.”

“What about both?” Michael asks, and the way he’s smiling leaves her no choice but to smile back.

*

So, yeah. Michael Carter. Didn’t see that one coming.

She doesn’t let him kiss her that first night, or the next date when he takes her out to the boardwalk and buys her a cotton candy like they’re a couple of school-kids enjoying their summer break instead of a rather battered pair of spies. Former spies, in Michael’s case.

He doesn’t mention Peggy, and she doesn’t bring it up. Peggy herself has been tight-lipped about the whole business, which isn’t unusual for her, and Rose has a pretty good nose for figuring out when to push and when to leave it alone. This is a time to leave it alone.

But Michael is charming, and when he helps her into a cab later and asks if she’d like to take a picnic to the beach sometime later in the week, she barely even hesitates before she says yes.

She’s been over Doris for a while now, but something about picnics at the beach just always get to her. But she looks at Michael, his blond hair gleaming under the street lamps, his soft blue eyes and the curl of his smile, and she thinks, yeah. Yeah, she can do this.

“Sure thing,” she says. “Maybe I can teach you how to surf.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have much luck with that,” Michael says, but he’s smiling. As the cab pulls away onto the street, she leans out the window to wave, and then to watch the shape of him grow smaller as they pull away until the cab turns a corner toward her apartment and he’s gone.

*

She takes him out to Will Rogers Beach that weekend. It hasn’t changed much in the year since she’s been there. Still choked with tourists, the white sand shifting beneath her bare feet as she slips her sandals off. Michael offers her his arm and she takes it, but she doesn’t let him take the picnic basket. He doesn’t protest, which is a point in his favor.

It’s not until they’re sprawled out on the red and white checkered blanket, their picnic lunch demolished between them, passing a bottle of wine back and forth like a pair of teenagers, that Rose leans back on her elbows and looks over at him, at his bare feet buried in the sand and his sunglasses tilted on his nose and the pink beginnings of a burn across his shoulders, his blonde hair disarranged by the salt breeze, and thinks— oh.

She never really has noticed the fall, has she? Not until it’s too late.

Michael glances over at her, quizzical. “Have I got something on my face?”

“No,” Rose says. Michael is still looking at her, the beginnings of a smile starting to curve his mouth, and it seems like the easiest thing in the world to lean across the blanket and kiss him.

It’s just a kiss, nothing special. Just a sweet first kiss, entirely proper because they’re out in public. There’s no reason for her heart to flutter like it does when they pull apart, when Michael cups her cheek and smiles at her, when he says, “I’m so glad you did that. I don’t think I would have had the courage.”

“Aren’t you some kind of war hero?” Rose asks, grinning.

“Hardly a hero.” Shadows flicker in his eyes, then vanish as if they were never there at all. She doesn’t ask. She’s got a good idea at their causes, and she was in the same war as him. She knows how it is.

And anyway, they’re both here now, on this warm beach full of tourists with the ocean spread out before them and Michael’s hand still warm on her cheek. He’s close enough that she can smell his cologne, see the faint crinkles in the corners of his eyes, and there’s really nowhere else in the world she’d rather be right now.

“Thank you,” he says, “for coming out with me.”

“Thank you for asking,” Rose murmurs, and closes her eyes when he kisses her again. It’s another soft, sweet one, but there’s a hint of promise there now that makes her flush. When they break apart, she says, “I haven’t been here in so long. Not since—”

She breaks off. She’s not ashamed of everything that happened with Doris, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing you bring up on a third date. Even if she gets the feeling that Michael might actually understand. He has that look about him.

“Not since what?” he asks softly.

Finally, she opens her eyes. He’s so close, and his blue eyes are so pretty, his expression gentle.

You can trust him, she thinks suddenly. You can tell him.

So she does.

Nothing Fancy, Nothing Much

Title: Nothing Fancy, Nothing Much Link: On AO3 Fandom: Agent Carter Pairing: Rose/OFC, Rose/Michael Warnings: None Other tags: Character Study, Wistful Summary:  Rose Roberts takes a job in L.A., and eventually finds her feet and her place in the world.

Written as part of the Fandom Supporting Migrants fic exchange for @musiclmaiden who donated to RAICES.

*

What with one thing and another, Rose has been in LA for more than a month before she actually makes it out to the beach. Surprisingly, she doesn’t actually mind that much, even though the beach was half the reason she decided to take the job when Agent–well, Chief, now–Sousa offered back in July.

Okay, more like a third of the reason. She really does like Chief Sousa, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that whatever Peggy managed to pull off back in New York, the options for a gal like her were…well. Limited.

Besides, LA is like a dream. Scorching hot, sure, but it’s a dry heat, and the shop down the street from her new apartment sells these adorable little parasols to keep her from breaking out too badly in freckles. She’s been able to relax her wardrobe a bit, she’s stocked up on bathing suits, and even Chief Sousa has taken to wearing a string of increasingly outrageous Hawaiian shirts, although she’s pretty sure that pretty blonde he’s been stepping out with has something to do with that.

Hard luck on Peggy, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Anyway, it’s mid-September before she makes it out to Will Rogers Beach. In New York, it would be getting too cold for swimming this time of year, but here in California it’s just as scorchingly hot as ever, and by the time she gets her towel and umbrella and picnic lunch arranged on the white sand, she’s all over sweat and ready for a dip.

Despite the heat, the ocean is still icy; she’s not quite sure what she was expecting. She shrieks, splashes, and topples over on her fanny, and someone laughs nearby, a small warm hand reaching down to help her up before she can be too put out about it, and she looks up to see warm brown eyes sparkling in a pretty sun-browned face, blonde curls pulled behind a bright red bandanna.

“You all right?” the woman asks, white teeth flashing bright.

“Fine,” Rose says faintly. She feels a little faint, and she’s pretty sure it’s not the heat or the tumble she just took.

And that’s how she meets Doris.

Keep reading

[spockiguess]

Business Report - The Batman Oneshot

Warnings: Smut, Power Imbalance

Pairing: Robert! Bruce Wayne x Female Reader

Rating: Explicit

Notes: saw the movie and literally cannot stop thinking about it... I had to SERVE MY COUNTRY WITH THIS FIC!!

My breath shallowed as I approached Mr. Wayne’s imposing office doors, the blood in my skin ran a little cooler and my hands shook just a bit more. 

“Come in.” His voice was hushed and raspy as if he had been using it all day. The thought was ironic considering he rarely left the manor. 

Pushing the doors open, Mr. Wayne’s room was starkly colder than the rest of the house, making my entire body shiver. Mr. Wayne hadn’t even looked up as I scampered over to his desk like a mouse approaching a beast. 

Every time I had to come here, (I rarely came here of my own volition), it put me at an oddly specific unease. I knew, in reality, he’d never hurt me– hell, working for him was one of the best jobs I ever had, but something always felt off. 

Mr. Wayne never went out unless absolutely necessary, opting to stay by himself, sometimes changing the rhythm by eating breakfast with Alfred or asking Dory about her day, but other than that, he was near entirely solitary. 

Except on occasions like this, when Mr. Wayne makes such a critical error in his work required to keep Wayne Enterprises up and running that I have to come and let him know. Sure, I could change it myself, but when I tried that before, he made it clear to never do that again. 

So here I stand, my heels starting to feel like daggers poking into my soles and my body painfully rigid as Mr. Wayne looks the paper over. 

I didn’t even realize it, but I had been holding my breath when he spoke, “I don’t see a problem with this.” Finally, he looked up at me. My imperfect façade nearly broke down then, partly startled by his intense gaze. 

Breathing in a deep breath, I crossed over the polished wood floors to his desk, leaning over to point at one of the paragraphs of his report meant for shareholders. 

“You said here when discussing the downturned trends of sales and heightened costs of manufacturing and producing that, “Overall, Wayne Enterprises seems to be operating well. There is work to be done, but nothing of note at the moment,” but our sales have been plummeting this last quarter. We’ve barely been able to make a profit, much less keep up the production costs required of us right now.” 

I pointed to another part, “And here when discussing company morale, you say it’s “Satisfactory at the moment,” I paused, a dry laugh escaping my throat, “I don’t know if the operation managers have been lying to you, but most everyone working under Wayne Enterprises is miserable, only staying for the pay and healthcare.” 

The room was eerily silent, and it was then I realized what exactly I had said. I had chastised the man employing me currently, the man who gives me the paycheck that keeps the lights on and the food in the fridge. 

My stomach churned as I back away slowly, “I am so sorry, Mr. Wayne. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I didn’t even-” 

“Thank you for being honest with me.” His face had softened, his eyes much less icy and his overall demeanor shifting slightly. 

I bumbled, “Excuse me?” 

Mr. Wayne stood from his chair, reminding me just how domineering he was. Sure, I wasn’t small, but I certainly felt it when he came nearer, the report in his hands. 

“You know, I value honesty above all else. I suspected someone was lying to me, I just didn’t realize how many.” He laughed, and I felt a little more at ease seeing this mostly alien being turn more human in front of me. 

“Of course, Mr. Wayne. I’d never lie to you. You, you pay my bills.” We both chuckled then, me being mostly glad I hadn’t landed myself in hot steaming shit. 

Mr. Wayne looked at me then, looking directly into me, “Oh, I know. I’ve kept you here this long, haven’t I?” 

The stories of thrown-out secretaries flooded my mind. My friend had told me them all right after I sent in my application, causing me to dry-heave for most of the night. Hearing all those women come in and leave in less than three months, some in only a week, I prayed my application would be rejected. 

But it wasn’t, and now I stand across from the figure of Bruce Wayne. One of those most powerful men in Gotham, or the most if you disqualify crime lords. I had never been this close to him, and he smelt like musk and dark earth. 

His presence was all-consuming, and I felt like I wasn’t even in control of my own body when I stepped closer, leaning into him. His hands tentatively reached around my waist, gripping and pulling me flush against his hard body. 

“Is this okay?” Mr. Wayne’s voice was soft now, much different from the stone-cold man I had encountered earlier. 

Nodding, his lips approached mine and I closed the distance. It started soft, explorative, and timid before he attacked mine, harsh and claiming. Now his hands roamed to my ass, gripping it hard as I moaned into his mouth. Mr. Wayne grunted as a wordless affirmation, grinding into me as he did so.

He started to push me until my back hit his desk, farther still, taking my feet off of the floor and causing me to hold onto him tighter. His hands were rabid, all over me, mapping and staking claim. 

Mr. Wayne’s hands rode my black pencil skirt up until it pooled just above my waist, exposing my lace garter belt and matching lace underwear. His nails raked against the skin of my thighs, leaving bright red marks in its path. 

“You are so beautiful. Ever since Alfred introduced me, I couldn’t stop thinking of you.” He brushed his lips against my throat, biting into the skin before laving over the spot, no doubt leaving a mark. 

“You’re mine,” he paused, breathing me in, “All mine.” His voice rumbled like an oncoming storm, “Say it.”

His authority was non-wavering, and I couldn’t even try to deny him, “Yes. Yes. I’m all yours.” 

“Good girl.” 

And before I could fully process it, he was going down and pushing my legs apart, “Wait, Mr. Wayne, you don’t have to.” 

Mr. Wayne pressed his thumb against the thin fabric, rubbing slightly, “Oh, but I want to.” 

He pushed the fabric to the side, spreading me apart and licking a hot stripe up the length of my cunt. His straight-edge nose rubbed my clit and I threw my head back, one of my hands automatically planting itself in his hair. 

His tongue circled my clit as one of his fingers inched closer to my core, finally pushing it in to the knuckle and curling up. 

I tried to suppress a moan with the back of my hand when he came back up, pulling it away. 

Slick wetness coated his chin when he spoke, “No, no, I wanna hear you.” His speaking was slightly slurred as if he were intoxicated. 

I nodded and he went back down, now eating me out in fervor with wet sounds filling the once lonely office. Mr. Wayne began to work in a second finger, curling into my g-spot alongside the first. I yelled out, begging for more. 

“Please, please, please, I need, please, Mr. Wayne.” Mr. Wayne lifted his head, continuing to finger me. 

“Tell me what you want.” His eyes were half-lidded as he wiped some of the wetness from his face. 

“I want you. I want– I want you.” I could barely get the words out, my whole body was thrumming with sparking-hot electricity. 

“You have me.” I groaned in frustration as he kept me hanging on a thread, slowing his ministrations and laying his head on my thigh, looking up at me with a cocky grin. 

“Please, Mr. Wayne, please.” My body started gravitating to his mouth, searching for that pleasure again. Mr. Wayne pushed my waist down, laughing quietly. 

“So cute.” He kept his focus on me, watching with rapt attention. “But you’re going to have to use your words.” 

I couldn’t take the teasing anymore, so I relented, “Please, Mr. Wayne. Make me cum.” 

That was all it took. He took to me immediately, a predator-like growl erupted from his throat, diving in once again. 

His tongue was hot and wet, his fingers so filling, his moans drove me further to that edge, and I was so ready to fall. Then, he added a third, stretching me so wide, so much more than I could ever achieve on my own. 

“Come on, baby, cum for me.” My toes curled in as violent quakes rippled through my body, I could barely hear the scream I let out. Mr. Wayne’s hands kept me spread so he could watch it all, watch the cum leak out from inside of me. 

Nearing the end, Mr. Wayne licked into me, getting a taste. I let my back hit the desk, barely able to support myself when Mr. Wayne crawled up from his position and grabbed my face for a forceful kiss. 

“Cancel my meeting tomorrow.” 

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/19/2022: THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)

"PLEASE…LET ME DIE!"

I have a slightly fraught relationship with Mystery Science Theater 3000. For the most part, my feelings are highly positive: Especially in the Joel Hodgson era, the show oozes love, finds pleasure in maligned and forgotten movies, and only veers into negativity when the film is really insulting. In some cases (many, possibly even most!), MST3K renders the unwatchable watchable, opening the viewers' eyes to a whole world of production that they might otherwise consider unthinkable. Occasionally, though, I worry about some of the programming choices. I don't think that the beguiling oddity PHASE IV really deserves to be riffed upon; ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE may be ridiculous, but it knows that and enjoys itself accordingly without anyone's help; and when we get into the territory of a gorgeous work of art like DANGER: DIABOLIK!, it's really like…what the hell are you guys thinking?!

Anyway. Just in case you're worried that I'm about to try to hot take-ify the infamous BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, that's not what's going on here. This is a perfectly absurd, surprisingly gory and sleazy movie with about one page worth of original content couched in enough padding to protect it from a nuclear holocaust. It's the perfect movie for MST3K, and it's a good thing that so many people have seen it that way. Still, I think it has a little more to offer than just being mindbogglingly dumb and incompetent. A little.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, which crawled so FRANKENHOOKER could run, concerns the exploits of cold-hearted surgeon Bill Cortner (Jason Evers), who is frustrated by the cowardice of colleagues who won't let him randomly experiment on the patients who enter his operating theater. He gets a golden opportunity to dick around in God's domain when his shitty driving decapitates his fiancée Jan (Virginia Leith); he hauls her noggin off to his country estate, where he is fully prepared to preserve her consciousness until a suitable replacement body can be had. While Bill cruises strip clubs and bikini contests for transplant material, Jan discovers that his reanimation techniques have given her psychic powers, and she forms a deadly bond with a Thing (Eddie Carmel) locked in a nearby closet. The two monstrosities plot their bloody revenge amid an avalanche of exciting monologues from Jan about her horrific existence.

In spite of its astounding cheapness and its shred of a plot, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE has a certain amount of chutzpah that makes it endearing, perhaps even uplifting in some perverse way. You think for sure that when Jan wakes up in the pan, it's going to break her heart, but she immediately downshifts to righteous wrath. Virginia Leith reportedly hated this movie, but you wouldn't know it from the gumption she gives her bombastic tirades about how nothing could be more horrifying, and thus more powerful, than herself. Meanwhile, Bill encounters a string of hardboiled adult entertainers who are so streetwise, and so fiercely protective of themselves, that it's actually kind of affecting to watch this seemingly well-heeled doctor slip around their defenses with his veneer of normality in order to do something awful to them.

Adele Lamont in the much shorter, less gory, less nude cut of the movie. Always check your running times!

Of particular interest is poor Doris (Adele Lamont), implied to be a lesbian with the most beautiful body anyone has ever seen, but with a hideously scarred face courtesy of a man who she once "trusted—all the way!" It's painful to watch Bill maneuver relentlessly to gain Doris' hard-won trust, especially since they used to know one another; back in school, Bill defended the disfigured Doris from male mockery after her "accident", and now he's leveraging his heroic track record to fuck up her life even worse. Bill has a Patrick Bateman-like habit of speaking so frankly as to appear to be kidding, escaping all suspicion. He plies Doris with the promise of an experimental makeover, not-joking, "I'm gonna make your face beautiful again. Cut it off and give your body away." Finding this threat impossible to take seriously, Doris relaxes, and heads off to her potentially tragic fate. In this sequence, the padding and repetition almost work to the film's benefit; Doris tries so hard, over and over, to get rid of Bill, that you really wind up feeling like it's not her fault that he eventually bends her to his will. Especially if you've ever been worn down by an ill-intentioned man like this, you gotta feel for Doris.

"A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y." Diane Arbus, 1970

The other cast member you might feel for is the "mass of flesh" made of "broken limbs and amputated arms" that Bill keeps in the closet, played by sideshow performer Eddie Carmel. The "Jewish Giant", made most famous by Diane Arbus, is caked in makeup to make him look optimally freakish, even though "freak" was once an official job title for the actor. Carmel is an interesting guy who also held titles such as mutual funds salesman, standup comedian, and rock singer in the band Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons. He's worth looking up, even if his presence in this exploitation movie is limited to the finale.

The last thing I'll say about THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE is that it is occasionally stylish, much to my surprise. In between the endless monologues and meandering-around, there are shots that look like cinematographer Stephen Hajnal actually enjoyed setting them up—and there is occasional evidence of some form of humor, like the Grecian-style bust that foregrounds Bill's entrance to the country lab with Jan's severed head under his arm. Just because I noticed this, today I am going to find out if Jennifer Lynch's art house shocker BOXING HELENA would make a good double-bill with THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. I actually feel slightly worse about that movie, since Lynch made it when she was very young, laboring under her own immaturity and her father's towering reputation, which is apt to magnify her youthful mistakes. Somehow that feels just as grim to me as what happens to poor Doris.

Forgive my shitty picture of my TV, I have limited means here!

PS Jennifer Lynch's SURVEILLANCE is one of my absolute favorite recent genre films, in case it sounds like I'm dismissing her outright! It has my highest recommendation.

[ellena-asg]

Imagine H50 episode where...

It's Halloween. And there is a case. A big one. Idk... the Navy and CIA want to catch dangerous guys but something something and there is Joe, Wade, Doris, Cath, Mick and even Frank Bama but of course they all need five-O team. These dangerous guys are at Halloween party (let's say it's a big charity party on the beach and there is governor Denning and so on and all Ohana members - yeah, Sang Min, Odell etc. too). You know, some undercover operation is needed. "Ok, I'm going with Danno", says Steve. But then Doris is like "no". Doris says that they need "a couple" to look less suspicious and something something. Doris of course is looking at Catherine. "Mom, I said. I'm going with Danno. We're the best team", Steve tries but Joe is like "no, Doris is right". And Cath is like "oh come on, Steve, be professional, we've got mission". Jerry is like "cool, you can be a couple of vampires, like Edward and Bella!". Steve is quiet. He's got the feeling that Doris and Joe still ship him with Cath and think that he really loves her and oh they think that after all of that Steve will forget. Cath smiles like a devil. Doris says "That's great! Thank you, Jerry" and "Ok, now go buy your costumes". Wade adds: "Be on the beach at eight". Cath smiles again: "So... shopping? It will be fun". "Sorry, Cath", Steve says, "but I'll do it on my own".

***

Beach Halloween Party, 8 pm.

Ohana is having fun. "Where's Danny?", Adam asks. "At home. Some issues with Grace. He didn't tell more", Chin answers. Five-O, Doris and others are waiting for Steve. Cath is waiting in her Bella Swan costume. "You look good, sister", Kamekona smiles, "Oh, there he is! Your Ed...". Steve is coming, in a noble robes, he's wearing long light wig. "That's not Edward, brah!". "Indeed", says Max, "That hair is too long and too light for Edward Cullen and that costume... Who are you?". Steve smiles: "Oh, I'm Lestat". Then suddenly Gracie comes, she is wearing long blue dress and a big curly blonde wig. "Hello, daddy", she says to Steve. Steve smiles more: "And this, this is my daughter, Claudia". Everyone is like WTF. And then... Danny comes, slowly - but he comes. He too looks like a noble vampire, his wig hair is long and dark. "Uhm, good evening?", Danny says (and whispers to Steve: "You'll pay me for that. In money"). Steve's smile is so fucking wide now: "And THIS is my Louis". Everyone is like OMG. Cath is like "Excuse me, WHAT?!". Then Gracie says to Doris: "Daddies need to go catch someone. Will you stay with me, grandma?". Max laughs and when Danny and Steve finally go for their mission he says to all (but he is looking at Cath): "Well, it's just a fact. The interview with a vampire is a lot better than Twilight".