#Eric L

[youthchronical]

Eric Adams’s Fund-Raising in Last Two Months Plummets to $19,000

Mr. Adams said at a news conference on Monday that he was not worried. “Everyone is catching up to me,” he said. “I started raising early.” The mayor actually received $36,000 in contributions, but he ended up netting only $19,000 after adjustments and $21,000 in refunds, including $3,700 to Brock Pierce, a cryptocurrency investor who was recently photographed with Mr. Adams at President Trump’s…

[sgtlucychen]

THE CHENFORD DIARIES ⤷ The Rookie 7x06 | The Hotel Room

[protrudingribs]

Every time I read “Adam Lanza,” I hear Lasagna instead of Lanza.

[oldschoolfrp]

Deep in the Underdark in Sloopdilmonpolop, the City of Pools, Va-Poolgol Dagagoorg the mad high priest/king tends the kuo-toa's Sacred Pool of the Sea Mother, Blibdoolpoolp, under the protection of Gapolploorg the commander of the priest/thieves and Oorg-Poolgoop Gibupgagool the priest-duke of war. (Michael Collins, Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark by Eric L Boyd, TSR, 1999)

[nofatclips]

Lessons by The Cinematic Orchestra, live in studio

[metalljellyphish]

Sketched a quick concept for Eric/Irene for the vampire AU cause Marjorine need a friend to talk J Fashion with and Bad Irene gyaru enthusiast gives me life.

Now is he a hunter moonlighting as a drag performer, or a drag queen who does some monster hunting on the side 😉

[shallowseeker]

Up and down the stairs; away and towards safety

"Run. Take your brother and go! Now, Dean!"

(The story is after us, Dean. It's after Sam.)

We hear the warning again later in the episode, with the overlaid message from John: "I can never go home" & "We're all in danger!"

And the thing is, they are in danger—all of them—from the story itself. The road, then, becomes armor, and motion becomes safety, insisting that they keep moving. Being in one place? That's what kills them. The idea of going off-road functions like a temptation, a lure. The safety of home is just an illusion.

///

Shelter is down

Even in the pilot, Dean is quite literally a marked impala, a prey animal, always on the run. I really love the contrast of Mary and John running "up" towards the fire and little Dean running away, visually "down," away from the fire.

In trying to escape the fire, Dean descends to safety. It is this need for safety (and the safety of his loved ones) that in a very real sense eventually drives him towards Hell.

///

Later in the episode, we see Dean descend the stairs again, when he's leading Sam away from Sam's apartment (an apartment that has been, unbeknownst to them, marked for death by Azazel).

"Going down" will be a mode of movement that follows Dean pretty much his whole life. Dean goes down into the valley, into the shelter, into Hell.

Dean remains on the move for much of his life, but when he does get a true home of his own, it's underground. When he's on the run from Billie/Death in 15x18, he plunges further still, deeper underground, until he loses the love of his life in his safest spot: the bunker's dungeon.

///

Until then, the car is the safest spot they've got.

But the narrative is at work, trying to take control of the car; trying to chisel and shape its targets the way Constance tries to chisel and shape her targets.

When the car charges them on the bridge, Dean is frantic to get out of the way, diving "down" off the bridge, into the safety of another road—into movement, the churning river.

Meanwhile, Sam keeps hanging on. Sam's Taurus-like personality and stubbornness means that he's always trying to cheat a rigged game. Sam tries to stay in the "high place" and not get burned.

Sam monkey-arms and contorts himself to stay on the bridge...

...and Dean comes crawling out of the river like a drowned rat.

///

We see ups and downs for Constance's family, too.

Sam forces her to go home, taking control of the car (narrative) and hurling her into her ruined, dilapidated house.

Inside, she's faced with her guilt: and her guilt is up.

The deceased family members are upstairs. They went up, but they never came down.

These children have obviously been paralleled to the pain that Sam and Dean go through at the hands of John's cruel overpreparedness, but these two are also an off-key echo of John and Mary's innocence.

The narrative killed its "first children." Mary's body was consumed alongside John's faith in the future. They are the ones who went "up" and were murdered (Mary) and damaged (John).

///

In many ways, Constance's story is a study of opposites to the Winchesters.

Her first children were drowned. The narrative burned its first children.

Dean's mother Mary ran towards the danger (and we will see she continues to haunt her house as a supreme protector of children). In contrast, Constance runs away from her house. She killed her children.

Constance's ghost is out to prove that deep down, everyone is flawed, operating in a Luciferian mode of engineered hopelessness. She haunts the road in a Trickster-tempter-style of hunting, not just preying on "unfaithful men," but trying to prove that in fact, all men are scum, i.e. "Even if you're still faithful, I'll make you unfaithful."

Many of SPN's villains are out to bring out the worst in people; the writer's task is to prove that anyone (everyone) will break under the right circumstances:

KEVIN TRAN (APOCALYPSE): Michael doesn't want to kill you. He wants to break you. He said for me to tell you that, 'Even if you win, you still lose.' I'm sorry. 13x20 Unfinished Business

We get this from Chuck too in 15x09 The Trap, as he works to drain Sam of all hope.

CHUCK: Um, short version – Sammy lost hope, and now I'm free. Hey, take it easy on the kid. It took a lot to beat it out of him. [Chuck crushes the sphere, destroying the spell] 15x09 The Trap

We also see this attitude reflected in many of the angel characters, reaching all the way into SPNwin The Winchesters, with the OG mindset of Gabriel/The Trickster wanting to prove how horrible humans are:

GABRIEL (unhinged): When the chips are down, humanity always chooses the selfish way out! Always! 1x08 Hang on to Your Life

//

As we learn more about Mary, we unravel that she did do some running of her own—running from hunting, from her parents, from her own childhood home. But here, at least, despite being dressed in white, Mary is in many ways Constance's opposite.

John are Dean are the ones doing the running, afraid to go home. In some ways, Constance is more like John than she is Mary, as John is victimized by Mary's lies and mistakes. John, like Constance, is driven into madness and despair. And of course, John breaks so hard that he hurts his own children.

After what happened, Constance went out on the road, looking for monsters. Making monsters, too.

//

The off-key parallels continue:

A married couple burns upstairs; a pair of siblings drowns upstairs.

The Winchester family faces tragedy in the comfort of their pajamas, while Constance's family are in their daily school uniforms—the period clothing giving off an eerie feeling that they're in "work clothes." (The suit and tie on the boy, especially!)

When Constance faces them, they embrace her, loving her as they bring her to justice.

Dean and Sam are "below." Safe. Looking on as the family is reunited and can finally rest together.

//

Sam goes home.

When Sam ascends up the stairs to his apartment, he leaves safety. There are horrors waiting for him "above," as Jess too is on the ceiling, a sacrifice to the narrative gods (the audience).

Like how Zachariah had to put extra pressure on Dean in 4x17 It's a Terrible Life to get Dean back on the road, Azazel has to burn down Sam's home to get him to play ball.

Sam had roots in this little apartment; he was even looking for a way to stay nearby with regards to his interview:

LUIS: So there you go. You are a first-round draft pick. You can go to any law school you want! SAM: Actually, I got an interview here. 

So, Azazel burns the garden.

///

Meanwhile, after he notices his watch stop, Dean rushes back and kicks open the door, much like a firefighter coming to the rescue. Dean is running into the fire the same way both of his parents did, acting in his parents' stead to save Sam:

Dean quickly spots Jess, and susses out that Sam's destiny is after him, and he works immediately to get him to safety—down the stairs.

Afterward, with the memory of Mary heavy on his mind, Dean turns, knowing.

He got Sam out, but like John, Sam isn't okay.

Sam is "down and out," the light of his happiness snuffed out. This was foreshadowed by "Sam's light going out" in the headlight scene:

(We will later see Dean lose his light too, in season 7, after Cas dies.)

Sam is safe from the fire, but he's, in a very real sense, no longer the same Sam. Despite that Dean is the one wearing John's jacket, it is Sam who is now set on the path to revenge, to "becoming" Azazel.

Sam's broken.

SAM: Yeah. I kinda mean, well, like ever since my head broke, and we lost Cas. You ever feel like he's going through the same motions but he's not the same Dean, ya know? 7x09 How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

Sam's season 7 self could be talking about his season 1 self here! Loss does things to people. (But the narrative did it to Sam so early!)

///

DEAN: So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it? SAM: No. Not normal. Safe. DEAN: And that's why you ran away. 1x01 Pilot

Despite his extreme efforts, John couldn't keep Sam safe from Azazel's designs.

And Dean can't either.

[xx-amphibian-puke-xx]

[z0mb13lynn]

I’m so sleepy

[demifiendrsa]

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction hit theaters nationwide on October 14, 1994. Happy 30th anniversary!

[youthchronical]

Mayor Adams’s Biggest Backer in the State Capitol Endorses Cuomo

On Sunday, an assemblywoman who leads the Brooklyn Democratic Party and who has been a key backer of Mayor Eric Adams endorsed his main rival in the upcoming mayoral election, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The decision by the assemblywoman, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, is one of the clearest signs yet that the winning coalition Mr. Adams built in 2021 has been completely fractured. She is not only…

[uwmspeccoll]

Classic Lessons in Love

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC-AD 17/18), more familiarly known as Ovid, was a Roman poet most famously known for his mythological history of the world, Metamorphoses. His satirical and sometimes dark take on all the intricacies of love and relationships is exhibited in Ars Amatoria. The Art of Love is a 1971 English translation edition of Ars Amatoria, translated by English classicist and scholar of Latin poetry B. P. Moore (1877-1955), with pen and ink illustrations by British artist Eric Fraser (1902-1983). The edition was designed by Robert L. Dothard and printed at the Press of A. Colish in Mount Vernon, NY, for members of the Limited Editions Club in an edition of 1500 copies on specially-made, oyster-white, mould-made paper crafted at the Arches mill in France.

In the first book of Ars Amatoria, Ovid guides men on how to successfully find a woman. In the second book, we see Ovid's advice shift towards maintaining a healthy relationship with one's partner. The third and final book, produced two years after the first two, focuses on advice for women on how to win and keep the love of a man. The work, however, was considered salacious and was banned by Emperor Augustus, with the charge of it being immoral, and is one of the few examples of the Roman government censoring a Roman author’s writing.

The topic's typical scenarios are presented engagingly, incorporating elements from Greek mythology, daily life in ancient Rome, and universal human experiences. Ovid offers hilarious advice, such as how women can keep their lovers from becoming neglectful by making them artificially jealous. He also advises men to never argue with their mistresses, as it could lead to expensive gift-giving in order to reconcile. When it comes to the sexes, it seems some things never change!

-Melissa, Special Collections Classics Intern

View other Classics posts.

View more posts from the Limited Editions Club.

[goobysnack]

Yay yay 30th celebration of my crime cuties

[oldschoolfrp]

Merchants argue about the qualities of metals in the Guild Halls of Iltkazar, far to the south of Menzoberranzan in the Underdark, beneath the surface realm of Calimshan. "While Iltkazarn miners are quite capable of mining common ore such as copper, iron, gold, silver, and tin, they excel in discovering and working with rarer metals." (Michael Collins, Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark by Eric L Boyd, TSR, 1999)

This also might represent the Hall of Runestones temple described on the next page, but it was printed directly within the paragraph on mining and ores, and I know how much Tumblr likes ancient arguments about ores inscribed on tablets.

[girl4music]

ERIC: "That's why it worked so well. It was grounded in the sense of who these characters were and what they were going through at the time and if you did it just to do it, that makes no sense."

R.J.: "[Xena] clearly allows the circumstances of personalities in her life to dictate to a certain extent who she is. She'd like to be stronger. One of her great attractions to Gabrielle is that Gabrielle doesn't."

Nailed it! These white straight men know exactly what WLW representation is or what it's supposed to be. They're 100% right.

The reason why Xena and Gabrielle works so well and is so beloved in the LGBTQ community even to this day is because they're rooted in reality and authenticity even when they live in an environment of the mythical and fantastical. What they have between them is rooted in so much feeling, emotion and action and it's really difficult to come across a canon WLW ship that isn't just ticking off representation boxes because they have to. The thing is is the XENA lot didn't have to. In fact they were told not to. But they did it anyway because they wanted to. Because they knew it was right for their characters and their relationship. Their natural progression. That's why you see a real relationship and partnership there. It's because they refused to just make it a "give the queer fans a bone to chew on" type of thing that so many TV shows today do because they don't really care about it. They don't care about WLW/queer representation. They don't care about queer female characters and queer narratives. They don't care at all.

These people cared. These straight white men cared. You watch the way they talk about these characters and their relationship together and it's just something that I still have great difficulty finding today. The sincerity and conscientiousness with which they represent Xena and Gabrielle and the intimacy of their relationship. It's astounding.

I will always be so fucking grateful to all of them for just the simple fact that they cared to represent the truth of women loving women. For just the simple fact that they knew what representation is and they endeavoured to showcase it in a time when it was much more beneficial not to. When it was in their best interests to not do that. Yet they did it because they knew it was most right for their characters. Two lead female characters. The only two lead characters credited in the main titles. And they still made it a love story. Think about that.

Dancing between the lines of maintext and subtext because you HAVE to and not because you want to is so much different to forcing and contriving two female characters to have a queer relationship just because it ticks off the "representation" boxes people want ticked. You know, I often think about what it would be like if XENA had been created for and aired on network television or on a streaming service in this day and age and I physically visibly cringe every time because I know it would be awful. These men had it down no problem in a day and age when it was severely censored. You've got to respect them.

[balu8]

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz #1

adapted by Eric Shanower; Skottie Young; Jean-Francois Beaulieu and Jeff Eckleberry

Marvel