#I really like Clark living for his nuclear family life as he should

[spacebubblehomebase]

SUPERBOYS!!! 🧡

Last time I drew two Batgirls and now you get the Superboys! A duo that I will always lament not getting more of because if you knew me, then you know sibling dynamics are my bread and butter. While my previous drawings were all for tiny stickers, this one was turned into a small print, so it was quite a surprise. XD In any case, I realized that because I draw the Supersons quite often, I hardly draw others, so here's some doodles on the side. Seem familiar? -Bubbly💙

[total-television-productions-act]

hi. happy valentine's. this time i drew straight people.

and as always, there’s an infodump below the cut~

So let's start.

Molly Barker and Lewis N. Clark (not yet a Sr.) met at the local college nearby Ravenswood, West Virginia. Lewis, who had become slightly renowned in his family for his tracking skills, came to study Criminal Justice, or something of the sort, and become a PI or something. Get off the farm and make something of his life. Molly studied Creative Writing or something of the sort. She had grown up in Biggers City, NY, and moved there with her parents as a teen because of the quainter atmosphere. It inspired her writing.

They probably had a nice-little meet-cute where Lewis knocked into her and Molly dropped her books, or something, but Lewis fell hard from the first time he saw her. Molly probably went out with him because her parents begged her to get out of the house. Turns out it was a good choice to go out with him, because Molly also fell hard.

Well, due to being a poor farmkid and whatnot, Lewis only completed about half of his degree before running out of his college fund. (He thought he had enough to get through it, but, well... his parents had a farm to run and shitty little family to take care of, and if that meant they had to steal from their silly pup who wanted to be a detective, then it did). Lewis groaned but without studies to do, put in more hours at his multiple jobs, and managed to purchase the land of an abandoned old cabin in the woods. ("It's not the best starter home." | "It's simple, I like it." | "It's drafty." | "I only own sweaters.") But Lewis insisted Molly keep living in her dorm until he got the central heating in and the holes patched.

It took until Molly graduated. Lewis kissed her and Molly threw her hat and closed her eyes, and when she looked at Lewis again, he was on one knee holding a ring. She said yes. They got married quickly in a courthouse to get Molly's name on Lewis's finances, then had a more proper one at the river bordering their town. Then they went to furnish the cabin and settle in. [This pic is probably of Lewis talking about how wonderful of a future the two of them will have together.] After that was done and the honeymoon wore off, Molly and Lewis started trying to have kids.

...it took about as long as it did for Molly to finish her degree. The issues were Molly's side, she felt really bad about it, and ultimately gained quite a bit of trauma from the multiple miscarriages. She had already ended up on antidepressants and suffered bad postpartum after her two kids were born that she never really recovered from. One son, Will, and a daughter. Perfect little nuclear family. (Of course, said daughter came out as transgender when he was about 10 years old and named himself after his dear ol dad, Lewis Jr, so Lewis Sr & Molly quickly had to gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss the memory of that daughter away from Lewis's conservative parents.)

[💥and this is where things go badly, so if the topics of child abuse trigger you, you should skip ahead or leave.]

At this point, Lewis was working pretty comfortably in a coal mine with one of his buddies, Locke Smith. Locke was very... very, inappropriately interested in Lewis's odd little boy. Locke tried as hard as any close-by pedophile could to get Junior without his father finding out. Locke never laid his hands on Junior, so Junior never noticed - he was a trusting young lad, Lewis taught him to be nice to people no matter what. [He also taught Junior to never start fights, but always finish them.] Locke first tried to get closer with Junior when he was 13. Junior reasonably freaked out, ran away, and told his dad about it.

Molly had a heart attack. Lewis beat the shit out of his "friend." Queue Lewis's first personal run-in with the cops, when he dragged Locke by the scruff of his neck to the station with bloodied knuckles. Both were held. Locke was recognized as P. Locke, a disgraced dentist who's favorite hobby was committing malpractice: his two favorite activities were letting patients mouths fill up with blood until they choked and died, and touching underage patients after they were put under laughing gas. Locke had even convinced Lewis to let him pull a few of his teeth. Luckily for Lewis, that went very badly, so Locke never got his scalpel on Molly, Junior or Will.

Molly had never really "met" Locke. She knew he was Lewis's friend, but she always thought his smile looked unnatural, like he had a few teeth too many - generally off-put by him, so Lewis never brought him around. If her mental health was more stable at that point, she would've made sure Locke died in that beating... but she wasn't, so the most she could do was hold her kids and cry and shower them with gifts of pepper spray and tell them that if any adult ever made them uncomfortable, they should run and yell and hit them and neither she nor their father would judge them one bit.

Junior bottled it up. Will felt bad, but couldn't relate. Locke was arrested and, being a wanted man, was sent to prison in the city. But he swore revenge on the Clarks - one day he would have Junior, and the rest of the family wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

...and that's the part of the story where Junior becomes the main character.

[💥 child abuse trigger end.]

...so, yeah, you can't say that on television. Anyway, I love Molly & Lewis alot, even if they are just kinda a vessel to have Underdog and Taptap. I often wonder what Buck Biggers and Chet Stover would think if they could see my versions of their silly little Underparents. Hopefully they don't mind.

Anyway, on this piece I was trying out a few things: Underdogheads and new shading, mostly. Also I gave Molly glasses! The reason is because Underdog cannot see any damn thing, and Taptap can see slightly more things, just wears contacts. One of them had to be unable to see jack or shit, and it couldn't be Lewis (he's a farmer, he's gotta be able to See Things) so it wound up as Molly. I think i intended for her to be wearing contacts anyway but I don't think she would, actually.

anyway thanks for reading byeeeee

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

THE FORTY-FIVE: ST. VINCENT

Sleazy, gritty, grimy – these are the words used to describe the latest iteration of St. Vincent, Annie Clark’s alter ego. As she teases the release of her upcoming new album, ‘Daddy’s Home’, Eve Barlow finds out who’s wearing the trousers now.

Photos: Zackery Michael

Yellow may be the colour of gold, the hue of a perfect blonde or the shade of the sun, but when it’s too garish, yellow denotes the stain of sickness and the luridness of sleaze. On ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ – the first single from St. Vincent’s forthcoming sixth album ‘Daddy’s Home’ – Annie Clark basks in the palette of cheap 1970s yellows; a dirty, salacious yellow that even the most prudish of individuals find difficult to avert their gaze from. It’s a yellow that recalls the smell of cigarettes on fingers, the tape across tomorrow’s crime scene or the dull ache of bad penetration.

The video for the single, which dropped last Thursday, features Clark in a blonde wig and suit, channeling a John Cassavetes anti-heroine (think Gena Rowlands in Gloria) and ‘Fame’-era Bowie. She twists in front of too-bright disco lights. She roughs up her voice. She sings about the price we pay for searching for acceptance while being outcast from society. “So I went to the park just to watch the little children/ The mothers saw my heels and they said I wasn’t welcome,” she coos, and you immediately recognise the scene of a free woman threatening the post-nuclear families aspiring to innocence. Clark is here to pervert them.

She laughs. “That’s how I feel!” From her studio in Los Angeles, she begins quoting lyrics from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’. “It’s a blues song for 2021.” LA is a city Clark reluctantly only half calls home, and one that is opposed to her vastly preferred New York. “I don’t feel any romantic attachment to Los Angeles,” she says of the place she coined the song ‘Los Ageless’ about on 2017’s ‘Masseduction’ (“The Los Ageless hang out by the bar/ Burn the pages of unwritten memoirs”).“The best that could be said of LA is, ‘Yeah it’s nice.’ And it is! LA is easy and pleasant. But if you were a person the last thing you’d want someone to say about you is: ‘She’s nice!’”

On ‘Daddy’s Home’, Clark writes about a past derelict New York; a place Los Angeles would suffocate in. “The idea of New York, the art that came out of it, and my living there,” she says. “I’ve not given up my card. I don’t feel in any way ready to renounce my New York citizenship. I bought an apartment so I didn’t have to.” Her down-and-out New York is one a true masochist would love, and it’s sleazy in excess. Sleaze is usually the thing men flaunt at a woman’s expense. In 2021, the proverbial Daddy in the title is Clark. But there’s also a literal Daddy. He came home in the winter of 2019.

On the title track, Clark sings about “inmate 502”: her father. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement in a $43m stock fraud scheme. He went away in May 2010. Clark reacted by writing her third breakthrough album ‘Strange Mercy’ in 2011; inspired not just by her father’s imprisonment but the effects it had on her life.“I mean it was rough stuff,” she says. “It was a fuck show. Absolutely terrible. Gut-wrenching. Like so many times in life, music saved me from all kinds of personal peril. I was angry. I was devastated. There’s a sort of dullness to incarceration where you don’t have any control. It’s like a thud at the basement of your being. So I wrote all about it,” she says.

Back then, she was aloof about meaning. In an interview we did that year, she called from a hotel rooftop in Phoenix and was fried from analytical questions. She excused her lack of desire to talk about ‘Strange Mercy’ as a means of protecting fans who could interpret it at will. Really she was protecting an audience closer to home. It’s clear now that the title track is about her father’s imprisonment (“Our father in exile/ For God only knows how many years”). Clark’s parents divorced when she was a child, and they have eight children in their mixed family, some of whom were very young when ‘Strange Mercy’ came out. She explains this discretion now as her method of sheltering them.

“I am protective of my family,” she says. “It didn’t feel safe to me. I disliked the fact that it was taken as malicious obfuscations. No.” Clark wanted to deal with the family drama in art but not in press. She managed to remain tight-lipped until she became the subject of a different intrusion. As St. Vincent’s star continued to rocket, Clark found herself in a relationship with British model Cara Delevingne from 2014 to 2016, and attracted celebrity tabloid attention. Details of her family’s past were exposed. The Daily Mail came knocking on her sister’s door in Texas, where Clark is from.

“Luckily I’m super tight with my family and the Daily Mail didn’t find anybody who was gonna sell me out,” she says. “They were looking for it. Clark girls are a fucking impenetrable force. We will cut a bitch.”

Four years later, Clark gets to own the narrative herself in the medium that’s most apt: music. “The story has evolved. I’ve evolved. People have grown up. I would rather be the one to tell my story,” she says, ruminating on the misfortune that this was robbed from her: a story that writes itself. “My father’s release from prison is a great starting point, right?” Between tours and whenever she could manage, Clark would go and visit him in prison and would be signing autographs in the visitation room for the inmates, who all followed her success with every album release, press clipping and late night TV spot. She joked to her sisters that she’d become the belle of the ball there. “I don’t have to make that up,” she says.

There’s an ease to Clark’s interview manner that hasn’t existed before. She seems ready not just to discuss her father’s story, but to own certain elements of herself. “Hell where can you run when the outlaw’s inside you,” she sings on the title track, alluding to her common traits with her father. “I’ve always had a relationship with my dad and a good one. We’re very similar,” she says. “The movies we like, the books, he liked fashion. He’s really funny, he’s a good time.” Her father’s release gave Clark and her brothers and sisters permission to joke. “The title, ‘Daddy’s Home’ makes me laugh. It sounds fucking pervy as hell. But it’s about a real father ten years later. I’m Daddy now!”

The question of who’s fathering who is a serious one, but it’s also not serious. Clark wears the idea of Daddy as a costume. She likes to play. She joins today’s Zoom in a pair of sunglasses wider than her face and a silk scarf framing her head. The sunglasses come off, and the scarf is a tool for distraction. She ties it above her forehead, attempts a neckerchief, eventually tosses it aside. Clark can only be earnest for so long before she seeks some mischief. She doesn’t like to stay in reality for extensive periods. “I like to create a world and then I get to live in it and be somebody new every two or three years,” she says. “Who wants to be themselves all the time?”

‘Daddy’s Home‘ began in New York at Electric Lady studios before COVID hit and was finished in her studio in LA. She worked on it with “my friend Jack” [Jack Antonoff, producer for Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Taylor Swift]. Antonoff and Clark worked on ‘Masseduction’ and found a winning formula, pushing Clark’s guitar-orientated electronic universe to its poppiest maximum, without compromising her idiosyncrasies. “We’re simpatico. He’s a dream,” she says. “He played the hell outta instruments on this record. He’s crushing it on drums, crushing it on Wurlitzer.” The pair let loose. They began with ‘The Holiday Party’, one of the warmest tracks Clark’s ever written. It’s as inviting as a winter fireplace, stoked by soulful horns, acoustic guitar and backing singers. “Every time they sang something I’d say, ‘Yeah but can you do it sleazier? Make your voice sound like you’ve been up for three days.” Clark speaks of an unspoken understanding with Antonoff as regards the vibe: “Familiar sounds. The opposite of my hands coming out of the speaker to choke you till you like it. This is not submission. Just inviting. I can tell a story in a different way.”

The entire record is familiar, giving the listener the satisfaction that they’ve heard the songs before but can’t quite place them. It’s a satisfying accompaniment to a pandemic that encouraged nostalgic listening. Clark was nostalgic too. She reverted to records she enjoyed with her father: Stevie Wonder’s catalogue from the 1970s (‘Songs In The Key Of Life’, ‘Innervisions’, ‘Talking Book’) and Steely Dan. “Not to be the dude at the record store but it’s specifically post-flower child idealism of the ’60s,” she explains. “It’s when it flipped into nihilism, which I much prefer. Pre disco, pre punk. That music is in me in a deep way. It’s in my ears.”

On ‘The Melting Of The Sun’ she has a delicious time creating a psychedelic Pink Floyd odyssey while exploring the path tread by her heroes Marilyn Monroe, Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion and Nina Simone. It’s a series of beautiful vignettes of brilliant women who were met with a hostile environment. Clark considers what they did to overcome that. “I’m thanking all these women for making it easier for me to do it. I hope I didn’t totally let them down.” Clark is often the only woman sharing a stage with rock luminaries such as Dave Grohl, Damon Albarn and David Byrne, and has appeared to have shattered a male-centric glass ceiling. She’s unsure she’s doing enough to redress the imbalance. “There are little things I can do and control,” she says of hiring women on her team. “God! Now I feel like I should do more. What should I do? It’s a big question. You know what I have seen a lot more from when I started to now? Girls playing guitar.”

If one woman reinvented the guitar in the past decade, it’s Clark. Behind her is a rack of them. The pandemic has taken her out of the wild in which she’s accustomed to tantalising audiences at night with her displays of riffing and heel-balancing. Instead, she’s chained to her desk. Her obsession with heels in the lyrics of ‘Daddy’s Home’ she reckons may be a reflection of her nights performing ‘Masseduction’ in thigh highs. “I made sure that nothing I wore was comfortable,” she recalls. “Everything was about stricture and structure and latex. I had to train all the time to make sure I could handle it.” Is she taking the heels off when live shows return? “Absofuckinglutely not.”

Clark is interested in the new generation. She’s recently tweeted about Arlo Parks and has become a big fan of Russian singer-songwriter Kate NV. “I’m obsessed with Russia,” she says. In a recent LA Times profile, she professed to a pandemic intellectual fixation on Stalin. “Yeah! I mean right now my computer is propped up on stuff. You are sitting on The Gulag Archipelago, The Best Short Stories Of Dostoyevsky andThe Plays Of Chekhov. I’m kinda in it.” The pop world interests Clark, too. She was credited with a co-write on Swift’s 2019 album ‘Lover’. At last year’s Grammys she performed a duet with Dua Lipa. It was one of the queerest performances the Grammys has ever aired. Clark interrupts.

“What about it seemed queer?!”

You know… The lip bite, for one!

“Wait. Did she bite her lip?”

No, you bit your lip.

“I did?!”

Everyone was talking about it. Come on, Annie.

“Serious? I…”

You both waltzed around each other with matching hairdos, making eyes…

“I have no memory of it.”

Frustrating as it may be in a world of too much information, Clark’s lack of willingness to overanalyse every creative decision she makes or participates in is something to treasure. “I want to be a writer who can write great songs,” she says. “I’m so glad I can play guitar and fuck around in the studio to my heart’s desire but it’s about what you can say. What’s a great song? What lyric is gonna rip your guts open. Just make great shit! That’s where I was with this record. That’s all I wanna do with my life.”

More than a decade into St. Vincent, Clark doesn’t reflect. She looks strictly forward. “I’m like a horse with blinders,” she says. She did make an exception to take stock lately when the phone rang. “I saw a +44 and that gets me excited,” she says. “Who could this be?” Well, who was it? “Paul McCartney,” she says, in disbelief. “Anything I’ve done, any mistake I’ve made, somehow it’s forgiven, assuaged. I did something right in my life if a fucking Beatle called me.”

Now there’s a get out of jail free card if ever she needed one.

Daddy’s Home by St. Vincent is out May 14, 2021.

[soulmate-game]

Part 1 … Part 2

“So, How was your first day of school in America?” Lois asked as her small family all sat around the table eating dinner. It was almost painfully ordinary, traditional. A married couple and two kids eating a normal dinner and talking about their day.

All of them appreciated that one piece of normalcy in their worlds of superheroes and villains and PTSD.

Marinette snorted, almost choking on her forkful of food. After managing to somehow swallow without causing herself discomfort, she smiled at her mother figure.

“Honestly? I know Jon could fly and I could teleport to school in practically no time at all, but somehow Damian still manages to seem more impressive.”

“Right?!” Jon agreed emphatically, leaning over the table towards her and almost getting his whole plate of food smashed against his chest. “Probably because helicopters are huge and look awesome, but we’re still just us when we use our powers.”

Marinette nodded sagely at that reasoning as if it was something actually serious. Tikki, who was sitting next to her plate with a half-eaten cookie, giggled.

“That makes sense. But be careful Kaalki doesn’t hear you referring to them as ‘not impressive—‘“ Marinette was cut off before she could even finish her sentence.

“Too late, I already heard that blasphemy,” the other Kwami’s voice carried down from upstairs, making Lois and Clark’s lips twitch up in amusement. “I’m a god, dear, I have even better hearing than Kal-El,” for some reason the little horse god always referred to the boys by their kryptonian names, but they didn’t seem to mind much. “Not as impressive as a helicopter, hah! See if I let you use my fabulous powers anytime soon, Guardian or no Guardian.”

Marinette just rolled her eyes. Technically she could just command Kaalki, but that was against her morals and the horse god would never keep her from responding to an Akuma attack anyway. This was just harmless teasing.

And it was really nice in contrast to everything they were used to dealing with.

“Okay, but besides the helicopter,” Clark pressed gently after everyone’s chuckles quieted down. His face was open with genuine curiosity, and a little bit of worry that Marinette caught onto instantly. “I know Damian isn’t always the easiest person to get along with or understand. Did the rest of the day go by alright?”

Marinette actually set her fork down on her plate, her smile turning a little gentle. “Actually? Yeah. When we first spoke I thought he was a stuck-up jerk like some of my ex-friends and a bully of mine from Paris. But he’s just not good with people,” Marinette’s smile turned even softer as she gazed down at the table, at some memory nobody else could see. “It reminds me of my friend Kagami, from Paris. She acts pretty similar. Really impersonal and prickly on the outside, but once you get to know her she’s the most loyal friend you’ll have. Her mom is really strict though, and Kagami never got to interact with a lot of kids her own age, so she still has issues figuring out how to behave around others sometimes,” Marinette actually ended up laughing a little, rubbing the back of her neck. “We uh, we actually had a crush on the same person back when we first met and it sparked a pretty rough rivalry for a while. Once we got past that though, we ended up being best friends.”

Jon snickered, trading knowing glances with their parents. They had already agreed that, unless Damian or Bruce told her themselves, Marinette would have to figure out the Bat’s identities on her own.

“That sounds very familiar,” Jon stated with a little nod. “Me and Damian fought when we first met, too. Legend has it that Dad and Bruce, Damian’s dad, didn’t get along right away either.”

It was Clark’s turn to snort. “I think it’s just a Wayne thing,” the man agreed, amused. “They don’t like getting close to anyone right off the bat,” Lois kicked his leg under the table for that pun, but Clark cheerfully ignored it. “It is pretty funny that you have a similar experience with someone completely unrelated, though. Maybe we should invite her over sometime? Do you know when her school’s next break is?”

Marinette sat up straight in her chair, her smirk wide and almost blinding at the prospect of seeing one of her closest friends in person again. They video chatted and called often enough, but it wasn’t the same. “Actually! Kagami told me that she’s going to Gotham next month for a fencing competition. She’s an Olympic hopeful, you know. She has to make a good enough impression in different national and international competitions to be selected,” Marinette was almost bouncing in her seat, looking like a female version of Jon for a moment with her vibrant blue eyes shining with rare unhindered excitement and her body unable to stay still from the energy.

“I heard that Gotham was holding the World fencing finals this year,” Lois remarked, but kept eye contact with Clark for a moment as the two communicated silently in a way even telepaths couldn’t copy. Marinette recognized the hesitance in their faces, and her bouncing stopped immediately. She knew why they would be reluctant to let her go.

“I know Gotham is dangerous and I still have attacks pretty often,” Marinette’s voice was suddenly soft, but firm in a way that the rest of their little family hadn’t heard from her much at all. It made Clark and Lois look at her, waiting for her to finish making her point patiently. “But self defense isn’t really an issue. Even without any powers, without transforming, I…” Marinette took a breath to steel herself before continuing. “I learned martial arts from Maman. And I’ve used the Miraculous so long that all the combat experience of the previous Ladybugs is mostly muscle memory by now. And Kagami is more than just a fencer, her mom’s trained her in all sorts of sword fighting her whole life. Trust me, nobody messes with Kagami and gets away with it easily,” Marinette actually looked down at her hands, watching as she essentially had a thumb war with herself to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

“I don’t think physical attacks are what we’re worried about,” Lois admitted slowly, frowning. “I mean, yes, it’s a concern. But if I remember the dates for the competition correctly, I’ll be out of town for my first long distance job since you came to live with us. Clark will be at work during the day on the weekend, though maybe he can get a day or two off,” Lois gently worried her bottom lip with her teeth for a second. “I suppose, if Jon wants to go with you, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if something happens…”

Oh. They weren’t worried about people attacking her. They were worried about her own mind. Which, after the last few months? Was perfectly fair.

“I don’t mind if—“

But, as life usually ended up, they were interrupted from their peace. Everyone jolted in their seats as the door was unceremoniously kicked down, and a man in his early twenties walked in carrying a mountain of boxes in his arms. Marinette blinked, no longer on guard since the rest of her new family immediately relaxed. But still, she was confused. Nobody said anything about having a visitor today.

“I know, I know. I haven’t been in touch for way too long, give us a little forewarning, blah blah blah. I brought presents this time though,” the man said, cheerful and casual and blasé. With the boxes on the center of the dining table, Marinette could finally get a good look at him.

He was probably about twenty four or twenty five, if Marinette’s ever-sharp eyes were correct (they hardly ever weren’t), and his hair was spiked up with a bit of gel, but not too much. Just enough to give it kind of a tousled-rebel look, and it was cropped close to his head on the sides. He had on a black leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders and slightly down the arms, with slightly baggy black jeans and a plain, worn red shirt. Dark black sunglasses rested on the top of his head, even though the sun had been down for a while.

He did not meet the usual Kent aesthetic of a charming, traditional nuclear family. He was more of an… oddly joyful punk. It actually gave her slight Luka and Jagged vibes, and made her relax a bit into her chair. Contrary to what most might think, Marinette had a bit of a soft spot for the punk rocker look. Most people, that she had met at least, who wore it on a regular basis were amazing people with great senses of humor and large personalities.

“Old man, I got you socks,” he called out with a lazy smirk, chucking the first small box over at Clark. The man caught it with a fond eye roll.

“You always get me socks.”

“Maybe if you stopped being boring, I’d get you something better,” the stranger mocked with good humor. “Lois, jewelry that you’ll never wear,” he handed the box over to the woman with significantly more care, before sliding over one of the bigger boxes to her as well. “And a new camera that you will actually use.”

“Hey, Wait a second, you know you don’t have to—“

“And for the squirt,” the man interrupted without letting Lois finish saying that there was no need to spend so much money. He tossed the last big boxes over to Jon one at a time carelessly, smirking the whole time that Jon playfully scrambled for them. “Video games, geeky shirts, and inside jokes,” he stated happily.

With the table now clear of boxes, he finally noticed the extra body. He blinked, making silent eye contact with Marinette for a tense moment.

“Okay, she’s too old to be a secret child. Did someone make another clone? Did Jon get a girlfriend that looks freakishly like a long lost Asian family member? What did I miss?” He asked, never taking his eyes off Marinette. Clark grimaced.

“If you didn’t break your phone so often, maybe we would have been able to tell you sooner,” the man said slowly, cautiously, with his eyes never straying from the stranger. “This is Marinette. Marinette, this is Connor. He’s… Jon’s brother,” the pause there was a bit odd, and Marinette frowned at the look on Clark’s face. It was like he didn’t know what to say at all, or how to say it. “Marinette is living with us for the foreseeable future. If we get the chance we might officially adopt her, so she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Woah woah woah, what?” Marinette’s voice came out a lot squeakier than intended, the girl thoroughly whiplashed by this situation. It was hard to think straight. “I— we never talked about adoption.” Clark’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, not in as many words,” he conceded slowly. “It would be incredibly hard, and we wanted to give you time to settle in before asking. But… well, you’re officially an American citizen and we all feel like you’re family already. So…”

“You wouldn’t have to change your name,” Lois was quick to interject, watching Marinette’s face worriedly. “And you can say no. You’re already a Kent. We would just like to make it official legally, if and when you’re ready.”

“Okay, stop making the poor girl freak out,” Connor interrupted, eyes also on Marinette and gentle in their concern. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Ignore them. Clark never had great timing that wasn’t related to legitimate danger. So, sorry I didn’t get you anything,” he leaned back casually, thumbs hooked on his jacket pockets lazily. “Didn’t expect I’d have a new sister when I came back to visit.”

Marinette calmed down a little, but emotions still overflowed in her head, her chest still tight and the air feeling too thin. She offered Connor a shaky smile before standing up, looking over to Clark and Lois. “Um, I— can I— I’m tired.”

Clark sighed, nodding even as his face fell at Marinette’s state. “Yeah. We’ll talk about the competition some more in the morning, get some rest.”

The girl only nodded before making a hasty retreat up to her room, even forgetting to take care of her only half-empty plate. Tikki did her best to calm her bolder down from her place hidden in the girl’s hair, but it wasn’t doing much good. She just needed space, and time to try and process everything.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Aren’t you cold?” Connor’s voice made Marinette jolt, looking over at him with wide eyes. Nobody had ever followed her on her post-nightmare trips before. She wasn’t even transformed. She just sat, in her pajamas, on the empty terrace of her old home. It hadn’t been sold yet so she wasn’t worried about scaring anybody.

“I… should have expected you to be the other Superboy, honestly,” Marinette deflected with a weak smile before turning to look over the city again. She licked her lips, trying to calm herself down. “And yeah, I’m a little cold, but it’s no big deal. I’ll just go back home before it gets too bad.”

“You’re trembling,” he pointed out casually. And she was, her whole body was practically vibrating against the terrace railing. Marinette only gave out a pitiful laugh.

“That’s not from the cold.”

Connor only sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall behind them. Gave the girl a little space.

“What did… What did Clark and Lois tell you? About me?” Marinette decided to ask tentatively. Connor raised one brow, honestly a little surprised that she didn’t also have super hearing to go with her powers. It was slowly becoming more and more obvious that Marinette was not exactly like the other Kents, and Connor only liked the jumpy little girl more for it.

“As much as they could without feeling like they were crossing a line,” Connor admitted. “That they took you in after an accident during a metropolis attack a few months ago, when you had nobody else reliable enough to take care of you. That you’re not Kryptonian, but still special and knew about all of our identities already. But strangely enough they didn’t mention teleportation or the fact that you were a Parisian superhero, not that I’m really all that surprised.”

Marinette smiled, snickering a bit at that last part before sobering again. “Is it… weird?”

Connor silently examined the girl for a moment, she probably expected him to ask what she meant. And maybe if he was anybody else, he would have.

“To suddenly come home to a new person that I’m suddenly supposed to accept as a part of the family? Not really. In fact, you’re probably the most normal surprise I’ve dealt with in years.”

“But,” Marinette looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes swimming with uncertainty. “But I just show up out of nowhere, and you really just accept me? Just like that? I mean, you’ve known me less than a day and you just saw me teleport to Paris in the middle of the night— you aren’t worried at all? Or suspicious, or— you really just accept me just like that?”

Connor couldn’t help but chuckle, pushing himself off the wall to lean over the terrace railing with her. “You know, technically I’m only eight years old.”

Marinette flinched with surprise at the subject change, eyes wide. “Huh?”

Connor laughed at her confusion, rustling her hair a bit. “I’m a clone. I was made with Superman’s DNA, and that of another asshole we won’t mention. Don’t tell Lois I swore. Anyway, I was ‘born’ as a teenager,” he used finger quotations to show that he wasn’t exactly born normally. “With all the mental development and knowledge of a sixteen year old. Pretty much, anyway, but I was still a newborn,” he shrugged. “Clark wasn’t exactly thrilled. Jon was eight at the time, which is why Clark can never decide if I’m the older or younger brother, and he wasn’t exactly planning on another kid back then. Not to mention the whole ‘created in order to kill Superman if he ever went bad,’ and ‘might be a spy because I was made by his arch nemesis’ thing,” Connor waved his hand as if this blasé info dump didn’t actually matter. Marinette just gaped at him, which made it hard for the guy not to smirk. “Point is, Clark was suspicious. Didn’t exactly want anything to do with me. Can’t say I completely forgive him, but it’s mostly water under the bridge nowadays. Especially when we found out that I did have trigger words, and I was unknowingly dangerous. Don’t worry, those trigger words were erased ages ago. Anyway, Clark eventually got his act together. Gave me the Kryptonian name Kon-el, had me live with him for a little bit. We worked it all out,” Connor turned back to Marinette, taking his sunglasses off so he could look her in the eye properly. “I really don’t think a Ladybug is exactly threatening in comparison.”

Marinette was silent for a moment.

“You know I could throw you off this balcony, right?”

“Eh, I can fly.”

Another moment passed before Marinette couldn’t help it, and started giggling. Those giggles turned to laughs, which quickly turned into joyful bellows. Connor joined in, smiling as he laughed alongside her.

“But… you like it with them, right?” Connor suddenly asked, looking over at her. “I know Jon can be a bit overexcitable, and Clark is an annoying boy scout.”

Marinette just shrugged. “Well, it’s not too bad,” she said softly. “I mean, at least neither of them can die by getting crushed by falling debris. So that’s an improvement at least.” Marinette instantly went pale at her own words, slapping a hand over her mouth. Connor snorted, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah, that’s the exhaustion talking. C’mon, let’s get you back in bed before Clark accuses me of corrupting you.”

Marinette just nodded, doing the world’s quietest transformation before opening a portal back to her room. She was already detransformed, Connor having one hand on her doorknob, when she spoke up again.

“Uh, Kon?” She fidgeted, not able to look up at him. “Thanks.”

The man just smirked, shrugging his leather-clad shoulders. “That’s what family’s for, right?”

Marinette smiled, huffing out a tired laugh. “By the way? I’m glad at least one of you Supers has a sense of fashion.”

“We heard that!”

Connor and Marinette broke back out into guffaws, and the girl couldn’t help but think that she was really grateful for her new family. Maybe she wouldn’t call Clark dad or Lois mom anytime soon, those wounds were still too raw, but maybe eventually. And she’d never had brothers before.

Yeah. This was nice.

—*—*—*—*—*

Part 4

I don’t think this ended up as good as the others..? But this is the best way I could write this part. Why is this story turning out longer than expected? Geez I need to learn self control. At least this one was actually kinda fluffy.

@fantasiame @thestressmademedoit @amayakans @resignedcatservant @too0bsessedformyowngood @chocolatecatstheron @mooshoon @jeminiikrystal @bigpicklebananatree @thezestywalru @bugaboosandbees @ironspiderstark @mikantsume @marinettepotterandplagg

[bigfan-fanfic]

Who is Batdad closest to outside Wayne manor? Does he have much of a life outside of the Wayne's? Who would Batdad consider his closest friends besides his family?

Honestly, Batdad doesn’t have much of a life outside of the Waynes. He doesn’t really have anyone other than the League to talk to. Clark would probably be his closest friend outside of his family because in a lot of ways they are similar.

Okay, let me talk about this. ( I came back up and decided to answer more concisely above and put this under a read more because it’s very, very long, and I cried three times while writing it and I have never had any visceral reaction to what I write ever before... oof. Just be warned if you ever feel anxiety or pressure that basically, that’s what follows)

Batdad basically denies his own wants and dreams because he wants to help Bruce. What this means is that no matter what Batdad wanted to be before (maybe he and Bruce were dating and he confessed his desire to be a writer and Bruce allowed himself the fantasy and said they’d buy an island somewhere, and Bruce would lounge on the beach and supply Batdad in kisses while he writes the best book ever), by the time Bruce gets back to Gotham from his training, Batdad has had to become what Bruce would have been if Thomas and Martha were there. 

He’s a public figure and philanthropist, carrying the legacies of Martha and Thomas on his shoulders. He has to keep Martha’s business running - no, not just running, thriving - and deal with corrupt officials, corporate espionage, and greedy businesspeople all but threatening him to take Wayne Enterprises public so they can trade stock, all while making sure Thomas’ charities are well-funded and the money is actually going where it should (see earlier greed, corporate and personal). This is all while having to attend galas and functions and fundraisers and events or risk pissing off any one of these people who can turn his life into hell - missing one event can lead to being blacklisted and then that means nobody goes to a charity gala, which means that there’s no hospital built for those in the Narrows.

All this and also consider that everybody in high society sneers at you because the only reason you’re there is because you’re engaged to Bruce and you lived with him ever since Martha and Thomas died. You’re besieged on all sides, because the snobs hate you, the press wonders if you’re even qualified to run a business, and there’s always envy and hatred from below because why aren’t you doing MORE to help them? You haven’t been trained in this - your parents were upper-middle-class at best; you met Bruce by chance, so it’s just you and Alfred and this crushing, all-consuming PRESSURE and the fact that none of it is enough, you aren’t doing enough, it’ll never be enough.

Oh, and at this point, you’re probably only in your mid-twenties at the latest. And it only gets harder because Bruce is back and crime fighting and now you have to worry about him dying on patrol, so every night you’re there to assist him (sleep? don’t know her) and patch him up and support him every day even though he pretends a little too well to be a drunken boor and a cheating asshole (sometimes he isn’t even pretending) and help him when he gets frustrated and then you adopt a kid after your first day off in years (day off, what’s a day off, you haven’t slept enough since you were eighteen and Bruce left you and Batman came back but you haven’t said a word about it) and now there’s school and making sure Dick eats enough and is happy and doing good and doesn’t get overworked on patrol and stressing on whether or not Dick is okay whenever he leaves the Manor and again, none of it is ever enough.

You feel like you’re in your fifties by the time you hit thirty and the Justice League forms and that means SO much more work not just physically but emotionally because Bruce can’t meet anyone new without determining a thousand different ways to kill them if necessary (except for Talia, apparently. And Selina. And Silver Freaking St. Cloud. And Julie Morrison. And any number of dalliances Bruce has had because somehow they’re all smarter. or stronger, or maybe he just has a weakness for tall women who don’t take his crap. Is that what you do? Is your loyalty and consistency and unconditional love actually what lets Bruce walk away so often to a woman’s bed? Is it because he knows you will still be there? Is it because you have put so much of yourself into this life, into your children, into the Wayne Legacy of Perfection and Excellence that it would kill you to leave? Is it because you’re just another tool to him, one that will be quickly replaced when you succumb to sleep-deprivation, or that thing you’ve heard about in the news where people are dying from overwork so often the Japanese have a name for it, or the fact that you’re doing the work of ten, no, twenty people and not once have you ever complained to Bruce or begged him like any reasonable person would to stop this vigilante nonsense and actually LIVE), but now you have to coordinate meetings and a thousand different secret identities and make sure everything’s kosher and nobody’s fighting and of course Bruce has a beef with the nicest freaking guy in the League and Clark keeps coming to you to see if you can help them work it out.

Oh, and then there’s Talia, aka the thorn in your existence and her child who literally has tried to murder you for the crime of being married to Bruce years before he had even heard of Talia, and now on top of all the above, you have to balance getting to know the kid and be reminded day in and day out by him that you aren’t enough, that Talia has such a deeper connection to Bruce, that you are an obstacle to his happiness, that she’s so much smarter and stronger than you, that you are weak and everything you touch becomes weak and tainted by you. And not to mention that you still aren’t doing enough because Gotham’s underprivileged are screaming in pain from everything they deal with and at least you are fed and clothed and you have a family you can support and you are rich and you need to be doing MORE. 

And nobody else in the League can even come close to understanding you because wow, you do so much, do you ever take a break? You come this close to crying when Oliver remarks that if he had to do that much work, he’d go back to the island he was stranded on for five years because he’s joking. For anyone else your life would be a living hell and he’s joking. How do you do so much; do you ever sleep; hah, Bruce, your husband is showing you up! And this is when they even acknowledge you, and you feel like a major-league prick for even thinking these thoughts because Bruce and the League put their lives on the line every day (oh god they’re always in danger and the stress of losing your boys - which has happened to you already - and Bruce and your friends who are the only ones you can ever actually talk to without worrying that you’ll give away someone’s identity) and you’re complaining about a little bit of paperwork? You get to go to parties and meetings while your husband fights to save lives and you’re complaining? How selfish are you? All you do, everything you do, it isn’t enough, it’s never enough, there’s always MORE MORE MORE and it never ever stops.

Jason is dead, Jason comes back, Dick is beaten within an inch of his life, the Joker kidnaps Tim and you are hanging by a thread because the last time the Joker took one of your kids and you couldn’t find them meant that there was an empty bed and too many memories but no time to grieve because Bruce threw himself into work without a care and you needed to do even MORE because you can’t lose him too. And even the League was supposed to help with this but it doesn’t because you can’t bear to lose anyone, because they’re family and not only that, the world has gotten careless because the supers will save them and crime is actually going UP somehow and if even one of the League dies, a city could be overrun by now because the police and government are all but useless and the skies are filled with supervillains and the only thing stopping the world from falling into utter disrepair is the League, and thus you. And through all of this you have to be doing better, have to be doing MORE because every new thing means all the rest of your work becomes that much harder and you haven’t slept properly in a decade now and you feel ancient but still, you can’t complain, you haven’t earned the right to complain because you are never hungry and you never go without and there are so many people who need your help and charities that depend on you to function and kids that need fatherly advice and affection and a League that needs managing and you don’t have time for a breakdown because if you’re gone for too long everything collapses and everyone you love suffers and forget about therapy because who the FUCK could you ever talk to about any of this without either revealing a hundred secret identities and putting everything at risk or sound like a whiny crybaby?

Selina and Talia are back and hovering around your husband again and they flirt with him like you don’t exist and it’s not his fault and you love him but you see Talia every day in Damian’s voice and manner and don’t even think about talking to Bruce about his infidelity because he has so many more important things to worry about and he’s already apologized profusely and anything else makes you feel selfish and you HAVEN’T SLEPT in what feels like all your life and every moment not filled with work is filled with stress about work and worry because every time you don’t see your boys is a moment they can be dead and you don’t know it and every moment Bruce isn’t at the Watchtower is another moment Lex Luthor has to enact some horrifiying plan or the Joker gets ahold of a nuclear weapon or something else unforseeably terrible happens and it is TOO MUCH but you still need to be doing MORE because it isn’t enough and you aren’t enough and nothing is ever enough.

Is there even a you anymore? There used to be a kid there who just wanted to help his friend when he lost his parents. A kid who got left behind to stay with that friend. A teenager with dreams and hopes and wishes and a sweet boyfriend who could maybe get past his grief and lead a good life with you. A young man with the chance to stop his lover from leaving, to stay with him and not give in. Where did he go? Is he still there, underneath the years? Or is he gone, and this being made of stress and fear and feelings of inadequacy and stifled complaints and sadness gone unsaid and trauma left to fester all that you are? That kid you once were gets further and further away with everything you do to help, every time you keep silent  because what good would it do to scream the way you want to, the way you’ve needed to for so many years but never let yourself?

And yes, your boys and your husband make it better, make it worthwhile, but it remains that you feel old, you’ve been tired since you were still 19. Your days are consumed with stress and your nights are filled with fear. And you can never say this now because it has been years, and you’ve lost that chance. The guilt would throw Bruce off his game and if he’s off his game, he could die and all of this would be for nothing. Quite against your will, you’ve been trapped in a no-win situation, and even death is no escape because you know that without you, it all comes crashing down and game over. You are Atlas, holding up the world and knowing that you have just enough strength to hold it up for eternity. And no one will release you from your prison.

But you have to endure it, and smile while you do so because if Bruce ever knew (or if he even cared to look), it’d all go falling down. You are the support, and the support’s support, but no one ever thinks that you might need assistance. What do you have going on? Being a dad? Working? Attending parties? It isn’t enough and you know it isn’t enough and everybody knows that it isn’t enough and they always, always need MORE.

I wonder now how Batdad does it. How he doesn’t break down crying. And part of that is because he is fictional, and I never thought about what it would be like to go through that level of pressure every day of your life. I hope someday Bruce comes to his senses. That even if he doesn’t let go of his grief, maybe he stops being Batman. And stops training Robins. Because yes, he gave them a home, but he manipulated them into being what he is. Who knows what good Dick could have done if he had just been Bruce’s adopted son. Maybe a philanthropist. Maybe he just would’ve had a happy life instead of one where he could die every day. Where he constantly has to reopen the wound of his parents’ deaths to convince him to keep at it. I want them to realize that they don’t have to, anymore.

But they won’t. Because they aren’t real. And they exist for our entertainment. And because we’ll keep reading the comics and watching the movies and playing the games, Bruce will always be Batman and never come to terms with his parents’ deaths in a healthy way and there will always be more threats to existence and even just to him personally.

And Batdad too, is trapped.

[passable-talent]

Power Hungry [1]

“I’m writing a vampire short story but in the most homoerotic way possible “ -🦌 Roe 2k20

warnings: lots n lots of blood, a little bit of self destructive behavior in the beginning, death of an unnamed character, angst out the ass, please and thx

| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | 

The way in which the world had ended didn’t particularly matter. 

Lucas Clark had spent many nights following the one that changed the world trying to figure it out, how it had all gone to shit so fast, to no avail. And what did it matter, anyway? Regardless of how it had happened, his life had changed, and it wasn’t going back. 

If he could call it a life, anymore. 

Six months ago, he’d returned from a store trip to find two vampires on the necks of his mother and father. He’d chased them off- and then received the last words of his parents before they both died in front of him.

Six months ago, he’d run to his best friends, Ben and Anthony. Ben had already lost both of his parents to cancer in his teenage years, and the two of them had been living with Anthony’s father- who’d been bitten and turned, who was begging for death. 

Six months ago, three twenty-two year olds became orphans, all in the same day. 

Six months ago began Lucas’ hell.

He spent every day staring at ceilings, at walls. The power grid was still working, but he never wanted to turn on the television- everywhere he’d see sit-coms and news reports being paid to glorify the creatures who’d destroyed the Earth. Plus, neck coverings were in style, and Lucas couldn't stand looking at those, either. 

Any humans left lived the way Lucas did, huddling in a home with two or three other survivors, never leaving, except to get food. Lucas didn’t even do that- Anthony was the hunter. He’d learned the skill from his dad, so he’d drag home an animal every few weeks, and Ben would help Lucas clean and preserve it, and they’d spend the next three weeks letting their tongues go numb to the taste of the meat. There was still food sold in stores- but to enter a public building was like opening your neck up to anybody. No one came out, or, no one came out human. 

Anthony was really the only reason that the three of them had survived. Lucas could fight, sure, and Ben had the skills to hunt if he needed to, but Anthony had the reaction. He kept them alert, imposed rules to keep them safe, ventured out into the fang-infested world and returned safe. 

It was thanks to him that they’d acquired some of the last bleach available in stores. 

TV shows had been way off when they thought about the apocalypse- clans of ‘anemic assholes’, as Ben called them, had an interest in keeping the world working, so stores still sold things, the power grid was untouched, television shows were still being made. These clans weren’t around the area where the three of them lived, though, so mostly they had to worry about the Lones, the vampires without a clan or family and the steady food source that such a family or clan would come with. It did make it somewhat easy to find a human- they were the ones that didn’t have those bite marks on their necks. 

Between Tony’s rules, and the semi-ease with which a human could spot a Lone, things weren’t extremely dire. There was a little bit of a rush on canned goods, back in May, when it all started, but now things were mostly back to normal, other than the fact that it was best never to leave the house. 

Bleach, though. Bleach was gone. 

Humans bought it for the same reason that Anthony had grabbed it up- to douse clothing in, masking any human scent sticking to them so that they could leave the house without attracting a Lone. Vampires bought it up to clean the stench of slaughter from their homes, and to keep it from humans, so that they could easily find their prey. 

They had two bottles of bleach, kept under lock and key, a key that only Ben, Anthony, and Lucas knew the location of. It was the most precious thing they owned, the most valuable. More valuable than the silver daggers each of them carried at every moment of every day. 

The stories of old were wrong. Silver didn’t kill vampires any more than iron, but it was about the statement. The promise that any of the three of them would murder any bitten that dared cross cross their path.

That silver dagger was how Lucas spent most of his time. There was no point to sleeping, so he’d stand in the living room, and practice throwing it. It wasn’t supposed to be a throwing knife, but Lucas did it anyway, taking joy in putting holes in the pristine white wall that still felt so suburban, as though it mocked him, mocked the loss of his nuclear family. 

He gave the knife a particularly forceful throw, hearing it thunk into the drywall. He was about to take it out again when he heard the door open. 

“Tony’s back,” Lucas called up the stairs to Ben, who was in the middle of a long shower. Lucas closed the door behind Anthony, who had a buck balanced over his shoulders, an arrow extending from between its eyes, bouncing over Anthony’s shoulder. It wasn’t even bleeding- Anthony’s white shirt, still stinking of bleach, hadn’t been touched by the buck’s blood. 

“Nice shot,” Lucas said, as he often did when Anthony came home, toting an animal who had died on impact. It was cute, six months ago. Now, it felt dry. 

“Can’t believe I found a deer,” Tony said, letting it thump onto the kitchen counter. “It was out on eighth street, like it didn’t think the town was dangerous anymore.”

“For him, it isn’t,” Lucas said, running his fingers down the ridges of the antlers. “He’s no longer the prey.” 

“Don’t get all poetic on me,” Tony said absent-mindedly, slightly teasingly, opening the fridge to see how much room they had. “Where’s Ben?”

“Taking a shower,” Lucas said, leaning on the table. “I don’t think he could stand to look at me anymore.”

“You and I both know that he could stare at you forever,” Tony said, and somehow, Lucas smiled. Ben was certainly special to him- and he to Ben. All three of them could see it, and had seen it since middle school. Still, they were friends. Nothing more. 

“Yeah, well. Even my pretty face gets boring when it’s all you ever look at.” 

“Tell me about it,” Tony said with a smirk, “I could stand to see a little less of ya.” He lifted his hand and shoved Lucas’ face back, giving both of them a bit of a laugh. The three of them had been best friends for twenty-two years, as long as they’d been alive. Lucas was lucky he still had them- without them, he’d have lost it long ago.

“Either way,” Tony said, turning back to the deer, “When he gets out, you two get to deal with that.” Lucas turned his gaze toward the buck, and his smile fell, as fast as it had appeared. 

“Joy,” Lucas said, sucking his lower lip between his teeth. “So we can eat nothing but deer for the next two months.” Anthony shrugged, but there was a stiffness to the movement. 

“Hey,” he said, with all the warning of a parent about to start a lecture, “if you want something else to eat, you’re welcome to try your luck out there.” Shutting down against Anthony’s tone, Lucas looked to the floor.

“Or I could starve to death,” Lucas said, digging his teeth into the inside of his lower lip, “and not have to worry about it.” 

“That’s not the kind of shit you should be saying,” Anthony told him, jaw working to manage his annoyance.

“Like you can tell me what to say?” Lucas accused, pushing back against the controlling nature that Anthony took on, sometimes too often.

“Apparently I have to, to keep you safe!”

“God, who are you, your dad?” Lucas saw it when the words hit Anthony- his dad was a sore spot, and every mention of him took Tony right back to the moment he’d had to kill his own father. 

“Sorry,” Lucas breathed, and he left the room.

He hated whenever something like this happened- and it was happening too much, recently. He was getting sick of this ‘life’, Anthony was sick of him being snappy. The only one who seemed fine was Ben, but who knows what he’s thinking about in those hour-long showers. 

The house had three bedrooms. Anthony still had the one he’d had as a child, since it felt like home. Ben had what was once the guest bedroom, which he’d taken up at sixteen after Anthony’s dad took him in. That left just the master bedroom, to Lucas- which had never been a blessing, always a curse. At first, because it just felt like Anthony’s dad. And now, because the size of it made it feel so empty, its black king-sized sheets, and high ceiling that felt so far away. 

He laid on his back on top of the sheets, looking up, dagger rolling around his fingers. He knew it was a bad idea, he shouldn’t- but the frustration got too much, and he hurled the dagger upward, into the ceiling. It stuck for just a moment, before falling back down. 

Lucas’ immediate reaction was to roll over, out of the way, before he realized he also wanted to protect the sheets from the blade. He reached out, to try to catch the knife, and got his fingers around the blade just beneath its hilt, slipping just a bit, but enough to slice open his palm, and a line through each of his fingers.

“Fuck!” He roared, blood already rolling down his palm. He jumped to his feet, his uninjured left hand shoving the dagger into its sheath on his thigh, and ran into the bathroom, Ben’s shower be damned. He rustled through the cabinet, looking for their bandages. 

“What happened?” Tony called, appearing at the doorway just a moment later. 

“I did something dumb,” Lucas hissed through gritted teeth, even the touch of the bandage to his raw flesh stinging, “Don’t worry about it.” Once he’d pulled the bandage around his palm, Lucas shoved past Anthony to close the door, letting Ben have his privacy again. 

“What the hell did you do?” Anthony asked, grabbing Lucas’ hand and yanking it in front of him so he could get a good look. Lucas hadn’t dressed the slits along his fingers. 

“It’s nothing,” Lucas said, angry at himself, not wanting to bother Tony so soon after he’d hurt him. 

“That’s not nothing, Lucas, what if it gets infected?” 

“So what if it does?” Lucas snarled, ripping his hand from Anthony’s grasp. “It’s not like it fucking matters.” 

“Lucas, what are you talking about?” Anthony said, anger and concern swirling in his tone. “We want to keep you healthy!” Lucas turned his head to the side, scrunching up his nose, slightly, trying to keep his anger at bay. But every passing day was another blow to the dam, and there wasn’t much left keeping the floodwaters at bay. 

“Why?” he shouted, clenching his hands into fists, fingernails forcing his bandages into the wound. “So I can live in this fucking house for the rest of my life? Staring at white walls, pretending that everything’s fine, hoping that someday, something will change, but knowing that nothing ever fucking will?” Lucas heard the shower shut off, and if he hadn’t regretted the outburst before, he did now- he couldn’t face Ben, not knowing that Ben had heard every word. So he shoved Anthony out of the way, and charged down the stairs. At the front door, he ignored his shoes, ignored the white scarf that stunk of bleach, and charged outside.

“Lucas!” Anthony yelled after him, but Lucas didn’t turn back. 

He kept his fist tight, knowing that it was bleeding, and to expose it to the air would be to attract every Lone in the surrounding four blocks. Thanks to the Lones, there were so few humans with blood to give left, that even existing as one was dangerous. But he needed to take a walk. 

He loved Anthony. He loved Ben. They didn’t deserve to have to deal with him- to keep him alive when he was so stupid, rash, angry. They’d be better off if he was somewhere else, but he had nowhere else to go, so he could at least give them this break, let them get along for two hours while he walked the neighborhood. 

He’d long stopped trying to keep track of the humans in the homes. He’d once been able to tell you who had been turned, and who hadn’t, but there was no way to know, anymore. He just kept his chin down, eyes on the blacktop, ignoring the freezing, November cold. His dark grey hoodie didn’t even have a pocket he could shove his hands into. 

When he looked up, he stopped dead. Standing thirty feet in front of him was a woman, her eyes deadset on him. Her cheeks were sunken in against her face, her skin deathly pale, her bones poking out against her skin.

She wasn’t just a Lone, she was starving. Which meant Lucas was in grave danger. 

He pivoted hard, taking off across the street, and with a glance over his shoulder he was terrified to realize she’d taken chase. She was faster than him, they always were, but she’d tire out faster than he would. If he could make it past this house, and into the woods behind it, he could escape into the shrubs, and she’d be too exhausted to force through them. 

She was too close for his comfort by the time he broke into the woods, but exactly as he expected, she had much more trouble pivoting around thorn bushes and jumping over fallen logs. He planned to outrun her until he could throw her trail, but suddenly he’d reached a clearing, and he looked up to a massive mansion. 

His momentum lost, he tried to pivot his direction, but she’d caught up, and he wouldn’t even make it into the woods before she caught him. So he reached to his sheath and grabbed his dagger, ignoring the sting as the metal slipped over the wounds on his fingers, and turned around to plunge it into her chest with a battle cry. 

And that’d kill anybody. 

She fell forward, and took Lucas down with her, shoving the dagger further into her chest when they impacted the ground. She didn’t move. 

Lucas took a few deep breaths, trying to slow his heartbeat, and a moment later, threw the woman off of him. There was blood coating the hilt of his dagger, protruding from her chest, but he realized quickly that it was his own, from his fingers. She’d been so starved, she didn’t even bleed when she died. 

He’d hit the ground hard, and groaned against a bruised shoulder as he stood, yanking his weapon out of her. He felt just a little bit of sorrow for her, like he always did- a Lone vampire didn’t have a clan, which always meant that they were bitten, once human. It wasn’t her fault. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

-🦌 Roe

| part 1 | part 2 | part 3 |

[marvelslut16]

Milkshakes and fries

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Henderson!reader

Synopsis: Y/N and Steve take Dustin to the snow ball and get to know each other while they wait to pick him up. The two have a heart to heart over milkshakes and fries, will the two ever be more than just Henderson and Harrington?

Word count: 2140

Warnings: Swearing, there’s some but I don’t think I made Dustin swear enough. Oops. 

“Dusty!” you call to your little brother, who is getting dressed for the snow ball. “Harrington is here!”

“Give me a goddamn minute!” he hollers back.

“Language!” mom joins in on the yelling. 

“Dumb ass,” you laugh quietly as he walks into the kitchen. “But don’t you look handsome,” you smile down at him and push a rogue curl out of his face. 

“Can you ride with?” he looks up at you, there's a vulnerability in his voice that you’ve never heard before. His eyes are huge and giving you the puppy dog look, he’s trying to use humor to hide his nerves. 

“King Steve is taking you,” you frown. “Why would you want little old me getting in the way of your bromance?”

“Because you’re my big sister,” he admits quietly. “Plus I want a girl’s opinion.”

 Every part of you wanted to say no, to just send him off with Harrington so you could change into pajamas and watch TV with your mother. But you also heard the bad advice that Steve gave him to ignore Max and be borderline rude to her. 

“Fine,” you sigh, grabbing your coat that's draped over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Thank you,” he cheers throwing his arms around your midsection. 

“Mom, I’m taking Dustin to the dance,” you inform her as you walk through the living room to get to the front door. 

“I thought that Harrington boy was taking him,” she frowns at you, from her seat on the couch. 

“He is,” you sigh and slip your coat on before zipping it up. 

“I asked her to go with for the ride,” Dustin walks up behind you. “She’ll probably go do something with Steve until it's time to pick me up.”

“I never agreed to that,” you hiss at him.

“You just did,” he grins grabbing your hand and pulling you towards the door. “Bye mom!” he calls over his shoulder. 

“Henderson, Henderson number two,” Steve greets the two of you as you head towards his car. 

Dustin shoves you the passenger's seat door, as he heads to the back of the car. You begrudgingly take the seat next to Steve “the hair” Harrington. 

“Which one of us is Henderson number two?” you try to break the silence a few minutes into the ride. 

“Dustin,” Steve takes one hand off of the wheel to run it through his hair. “He is the younger one,” he adds with a slight shrug. 

 “That’s bullshit!” Dustin calls from the back. 

“Now now Dusty, watch your language,” you mimic your mom. Steve laughs at your imitation as Dustin flips you the bird. “Love you too little bro,” you laugh.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Dustin whispers to himself as Steve pulls up in front of the middle school.

“Hey,” you say softly, turning to face Dustin. “You’ll be a little heart-breaker in there. You look handsome, and you’re the sweetest guy I know. Once you get passed all of the swearing, that is.”

He smiles back at you, but you can practically hear him chanting shit in his head. “You have to say that,” he finally breaks the silence. “You’re my sister.”

“I don’t have to do anything Dusty, even if we’re related. I’m just telling you the truth.”

“So remember when you get in there,” Steve joins the conversation.

“Pretend I don’t care,” Dustin finishes. 

“You don’t care,” Steve shakes his head.

“I don’t care,” Dustin repeats. 

“There ya go, you’re learning my friend,” Steve smiles at him. “You’re learning.”

“Don’t listen to him,” you cut in.

“That’s great advice!” Steve defends. 

“That’s terrible advice!” you squint your eyes at the driver. “Just be confident Dusty.”

Dustin leans forward, ignoring your arguing with Steve, adjusting the rear view mirror so he can check his hair and face.

“Hey,” Steve whines since Dustin is messing with the angle of the mirror. “You look great. Listen to your sister and me, we’re practically adults. We know this stuff by now. Now, you’re going to go in there, look like a million bucks, and you’re gonna slay em dead.”

“Like a lion,” Dustin agrees, before purring.

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Steve cringes slightly.

“C’mon (Y/N/N), back me up,” Dustin looks at you.

“Sorry kiddo,” you give him a slight smile. “I agree with Harrington for once.”

“Okay,” Dustin sighs. He gives the two of you one last look before heading into the dance. You both watch as he walks in and hands his ticket to Mr. Clarke. 

“So what do you want to do now?” Steve asks, driving away.

“You can drop me off at home, I don’t want to impose on King Steve’s time,” you look down and twiddle your fingers. 

“Or we can go get something to eat,” it almost sounds like there’s a hopeful lift to Steve’s voice. “I could really go for a milkshake.”

“Milkshakes sound good,” you agree quietly. 

--

“I’ll have a chocolate milkshake and an order of fries please,” you smile up at the waiter.

“I’ll have the exact same,” Steve tell him. As the waiter walks away your booth is once again plagued in awkward silence. “So what do you want to do after graduation?” he asks.

“I’m not really sure,” you finally admit out-loud, it was eating away at you whenever your mom would talk about grades and graduation. “I always planned on going away to school, moving away from this town. But with everything that’s happened these past two years, there’s no way I can leave Dustin here. I’ll probably just get a job at the arcade or something. Save up enough money to move out eventually, or wait for some guy to notice me and we can start our nuclear family.”

“I’m sure Dustin would understand if you left,” Steve leans forward, and gently grabs your hand. “You clearly have so much love for him, but you need to do the things that you want to.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” you laugh humorlessly. “You, you’re set for life Harrington. You have the house, the money, any girl you could ever want-”

“They’re all interested in Billy now. Or Jonathan,” he sighs and looks at his hands. 

“The point is, you have the luxury to be able to go off and find yourself, I don’t.”

“Money isn’t everything Henderson,” Steve’s brows furrow as he looks at you.

“Obviously not, I’m happy with next to none,” you you match his look. “But it does help in the long run. Plus you don’t have a little brother you would be abandoning.” 

Before Steve can respond the waiter comes back with two milkshakes and a giant plate of fries. You thank him and immediately take a sip of your drink. The waiter winks at you before retreating to behind the diner counter. You miss the frown and glare Steve sends the man. 

“What did happen between you two?” you sober up immediately and Steve chokes on his shake. “You don’t have to answer that! I was out of line-”

“So what about you?” you ask before biting into a fry. “What does post high school life look for King Steve?”

“Ya know, find a girl and start our very own nuclear family,” the two of you start to laugh. “Honestly? I have no idea. I was prepared to follow Nancy wherever she wanted to go, but we see how that turned out.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he gives you a small smile. “Nancy and I were never really a good fit, especially because a part of her hated me because she blamed me for Barb.”

”But that’s not fair,” you frown at him. Dustin had filled you in and told you that Barb was sucked into the upside down through Steve’s pool. “You never wanted any of that to happen.”

“And,” Steve continues. “I let Tommy H. and Carol say some pretty bad things about both her and Jonathan, I don’t blame her for choosing him.”

“You should have stopped your friends, but you aren’t a complete asshole. You deserve to be happy too,” you dip a fry into your milkshake. 

“So what about you?” Steve questions, shifting in his seat. 

“What about me?” your brows furrow. 

“Tell me about your love life woes,” he grins cheekily. 

“Uh,” you play with the hem of your shirt and stare down at the shiny tabletop. “There’s not much to say, I don’t really have people interested in me.”

“That’s bull,” he jaw drops a little and his eyes slightly widen. 

“Tommy H. and Carol used to spread rumors about me, but you already knew that. They said terrible things about my mom and how she was raising Dusty and me alone. They made fun of how I dressed, and the way I look. They even went as far as saying horrible things about Dustin,” your eyes start to water at the memories of their cruel words. Words that occasionally haunt your dreams, as stupid and weak as that may sound. 

“I never knew it went that far,” Steve’s voice softens, as he reaches over to squeeze your hand that's once again sitting on the table. You pull your hand away from him and shrink back into the shiny vinyl seat.

“But you still knew they made fun of me, and you just watched,” you frown at Steve. “That’s just as bad as being the bully Harrington. I’m really glad that you have this strange friendship with Dustin. He needs an older guy to look up to, so don’t screw that up.”

“He’s a good kid,” Steve smiles at you. “He’s taught me quite a bit in the short time that I’ve known him. He’ll be a way better guy than I was in high school. And (Y/N), I’m sorry for everything that Tommy H. and Carol did to you. I should have stopped them, I just never had the guts.” 

“Thanks Harrington, that actually means a lot.” you softly smile at him. 

--

The rest of your time at the diner went by quickly as the two of you joked and told stories from your childhood. Maybe Harrington wasn’t as bad as you assumed he was. He was actually a total dork, and kind of nice. 

Before you knew it, you were back in his car and speeding to the middle school to pick Dustin up. You were laughing at some lame joke that Steve had just told you as Dustin slips into the back.

“I see you two had a good time,” Dustin smiles, looking between the two teenagers in the front. 

“Harrington took me to get milkshakes and fries, so it wasn’t completely horrendous,” you grin like an idiot.  

“You liked my jokes, just admit it,” Steve grins back at you.

“They were terrible,” you start laughing.

“They weren’t that bad,” Steve murmurs as he starts to drive. 

“So Dusty,” you turn to face your little brother. “How was the dance?”

“I got to dance with Nancy!” a huge grin splits his face. Dustin has had the biggest crush on Nancy Wheeler for years now. However, you can’t bring yourself to be too excited for him, because of the man driving the car. You turn to face Steve nervously, you expect to see a clenched jaw and a white knuckled grip on the wheel. But what you see shocks you, Steve is leaning back in his seat and he lets out a little laugh.

“Well I’m sure it was great practice for prom,” Steve grins at Dustin through the rearview mirror. 

“Steve, you should take (Y/N) to prom,” Dustin smirks.

“What?” you choke on your spit. 

“It’ll be fun,” Dustin wiggles his eyebrows at you. 

“I’m not even going,” your eyebrows furrow as you stare at Dustin.

“Why the fuck not?” he matches your frown. 

“First of all,” you give him a disapproving look. “I have no one to go with, and you can’t force Steve-”

“Steve huh?” Dustin’s eyes twinkle in humor at the change from Harrington to Steve. 

“Am I really that bad?” Steve turns to face you as he pulls into your driveway, there’s hurt written across his features.

“No!” you insist. “I just don’t want you to be forced to go with me.”

“So you’re saying that if I asked you would say yes?”

“No, probably not-” Steve cuts you off.

“Because you hate me?” his frown deepens.

“I don’t hate you!” your voice starts to rise out of nerves. “I would totally go with you, but-”

“So it’s a date,” Steve shoots you a goofy grin.

“What just happened?” you wonder as Dustin laughs from the back. Steve grabs your hand and places a gentle kiss on it, before winking at you.

“I just got a date with a beautiful and intelligent girl,” he grins from ear to ear.

Part 2

Permanent Tags: @crimson-knuckled-queen​

[sumu-samu]

Chapter 1

next masterlist

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x OC

Genre: Fluff, angst, and everything in between

Warnings: curse words, death, blood, killing, gore, and some good old chaos

Summary: Xephyr Kane, Marcus’ adopted daughter, grew up on the Ark, but begged the council to lock her up in solitary after a traumatic experience involving her birth parents. Now, she’s being sent to the ground, on her own terms unlike the other 99 kids, in hopes to start new. But what happens when she gets down there, and nothing goes as planned? Throw in a hot headed “leader” that wasn’t supposed to be there and thing get... difficult.

A/N: Here’s the first chapter.... I hope it's okay. This thing has been sitting in my Google Drive for months, almost a year, now and it’s causing serious glitches so I need to get rid of it, but I don’t want to delete it. So, here you go. Also, if anything gets really confusing, just let me know and I’ll go through and revise it

It’s been 97 years since the nuclear apocalypse killed everyone on earth, leaving the planet covered in radiation. Now, I say everyone, but I don’t actually mean everyone, there were a few people who were able to survive. 12 nations had operational space stations that came together to form one, the Ark. It’s been estimated that Earth needs another hundred years before life is sustainable. But, the Ark just couldn’t wait that long.

“We’re sending them down to the earth,” Kane spoke to me. I sighed knowing that no matter how many people they sent down I couldn’t help. Kane would update me on status of the Ark, mainly because he knew I couldn’t tell anyone anything anyways, and because he was my mother’s best friend, he was the closest to a family I had

“How many?” I asked. I needed to go down, I may have chosen to be put in here but I can’t just sit by and do nothing. 

“99, but there’s room for another-”

“I’ll go!” I cut him off. 

“Xeph, you don’t have to.” He looked at me with worried eyes.

“ I can’t, I go down, and I live and do as much as I can to get the rest of you down, and not end up like Him or… I go down… and I die-”

“And don’t end up like him” this time Kane cut me off. “Okay, but you do know that this will only give us a month, engineering needs 6. And you refuse to be let out.” 

“Well, you won’t float me.” 

“You’re not even 18 yet, besides there’s no stopping it. It’s either earth or a mass culling”  

“Don’t think like that, you know how it makes me feel” I gave him a disgusted look, “When do we go down?” 

“Tomorrow.” He gave me another look. “You look so much like your mother.” 

“Well, we all know that’s not how I’m turning out,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster.  

*next day*

Kane walked into the cell holding a silver wristband. “It’ll read your vitals, tell us whether or not the earth is livable.” He put it on my arm and it stung but I held it in. “Be careful, you’re not like them, they could hurt you.” 

“I’m not worried about that.” Two guards led me out of the cell, a bunch of kids thrashed around trying to get out of the guards hold, I walked peacefully. 

They lined us up and put us on the ship one by one. Lots of people were worried, some were excited, I didn’t know what I was feeling. I mean I wasn’t really feeling anything. I couldn’t feel anything.

They got us all settled in and then It was time to launch. “Welcome back.” I heard a familiar voice say from in front of me.

“Wells what the hell are you doing here?” I heard another familiar voice, but this one more feminine.

“When I found out they were sending prisoners down to the ground I got myself arrested I came for you guys.” Wells said.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” I said bitterly before we heard a loud crash and some people screamed.

“What was that?” Clarke asked. 

“That was the atmosphere.” Wells said unamused. We all heard a high pitched screech and then static.

“Prisoners of the ark hear me now,” Jaha’s voice rang out. “You’ve been given a second chance. As your chancellor I hope you see this as not only a chance for you but a chance for all of us.” I rolled my eyes

“Indeed for mankind itself, We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better we would have sent others. Frankly we’re sending you because your crimes have made you expendable.”

“Your dad's dick Wells!” A boy yelled out.

“Those crimes will be forgiven, your record wiped clean.” Jaha continued. I just stood there emotionless. I didn’t care, hell I wanted to die, but Kane wouldn’t let me without a real reason. 4 years ago when my mother was killed and father floated I put up steel walls that no one had broken down. If anyone does, it ends badly. Love is weakness, love is feelings, feelings are  weakness. That’s what I’ve been told, what I’ve been telling myself for these past years, and what I will continue telling myself until I die.

“Your drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mt Weather was a military base built inside a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough nonperishables to sustain-”

“Check it out!” People started cutting Jaha off. “Go, Finn!” “Spacewalk bandit strikes again.” 

“Check it out your dad did float me after all” “Finn,” said to Wells

“You should strap in before the parachutes deploy,” I warned him.

“Hey, you two, stay put if you want to live!” Clarke said to two other boys who started to cut their seatbelts.

“Mount Weather is life.” Jaha continued. “You must locate those supplies immediately”

“You’re the traitor who's been in solitary for a year.” Finn said to Clarke.

“You’re the idiot who wasted a month of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk.” She said coldly back.

“But it was fun,” Finn commented. “I’m Finn.” Just then the parachutes deployed sending the two boys and Finn tumbling around the ship.

“Finn are you okay?” I called out.

“The retrorockets should have fired by now!” I yelled out in panic.

“Everything on this ship is 100 years old, right? Just give it a second”

“Clarke there’s something I have to tell you!” Wells turned to her. “I’m sorry I got your father arrested.”

“Don’t you talk about my Father!” She cut him off.

“Please I can’t die knowing that you hate me!” 

“They didn’t arrest my father Wells, They executed him! I do hate you!” As she said that the rockets fired, better late than never right? Ish… There was a crash and then the rocket's machine humm died.

“Listen… no machine hum.” A black-haired boy said from the other side of the ship.

“That’s a first.” The boy next to him said. All of our belts clocked and everyone unstrapped themselves.

“The doors are on the lower level.” One of the kids said. 

“No, we can’t just open those doors!” Clarke said. I climbed down after some of the kids with Clarke following me. 

“Hey, just back it up, guys.” A tall, dark-haired boy, with freckles,  in a guard uniform said.

“Stop!” Clarke called out to him before he hit the button to open the door. “The air could be toxic.” we both made our way to the front.

“Clarke, if the air’s toxic we’re all dead anyway.” I said coldly.

“Bellamy?” A girl called from behind us. He turned around with something in his eyes I couldn’t quite explain. He started to smile as the girl made her way to the front. 

“My God, look how big you are.” He smiled and she gave him a hug.

“What the hell are you wearing? A guards uniform?” She asked him.

“I borrowed it. To get on the dropship. Some one’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

“Where's your wristband?” Clarke asked. 

“”Do you mind? I haven't seen my brother in over a year.” The girl said. Then it hit me, he didn’t have a wrist band because he wasn't a delinquent. This was Bellamy Blake, and his sister Octavia. His sister was locked up for literally being born, his mother was floated for having a second child and he went the rest of the year with no one.

“That’s Octavia Blake, the girl they found hidden under the floor.” Octavia lunged at the crowd but Bellamy held her back.

“Octavia, Octavia, no. Let’s give them something else to remember you by.”

“Yeah like what?”

“Like being the first person on the ground in 100 years.” Bellamy opened the door. Wind pushed my hair back, sunlight shined on my face. We were really here. Octavia cautiously stepped out, then she jumped on to the ground. There was a pause then she screamed “We’re back bitches!” Everyone ran out of the dropship.

We were all excited but there was no military base anywhere to be found. There was no way we were on Mt. Weather. I went back into the dropship to see just how much damage to the ship was done. 

“Shit.” I sighed. 

“What?” Wells questioned picking up one of the boys who had died when the parachutes activated.

“Comms, it’s dead. We have to communicate with the Ark.” I rubbed my head.

“Hey, I’m sure you can get it back up, you’re great at these things.” He put his hand on my shoulder. I pushed it off with a little more force than I meant to.

“I can try but it all looks really beat up to me.” I sat down and started looking at everything.

“Nothing a star engineer can’t do. Now, I’m going to go and bury the dead.” he said somberly.

A minute later I heard a deep voice from behind me. “What are you doing?” It asked. 

“Comms is dead, I’m trying to see if anything is salvageable.” I sighed.

“And?” The boy pushed. 

“Fried, completely dead. No way in hell I can get it back up. There's a few wires that survived but everything essential… is ruined… meaning-”

“No contact with the Ark?” He asked. I finally turned around to see none other than Bellamy Blake. 

“None, but not like you mind.” I said.

“What? What are you talking about?” He gave me a stern look.

“1, not scared of you, don't test me. And 2, I know everyone's story here, everyone but yours. Meaning you did something just to get onto the dropship. I was also told only 100 kids were sent down, counting you there is 101, meaning there's a stowaway, the ark wouldn’t have sent a guard let alone one so young, so.... Connecting the dots I assume you came down just to get off the Ark?” 

“I came down for my sister.” He said bitterly as we walked away. 

I gave up on the wires and decided to get outside. When I went out I saw Clarke with a map. “we‘ve got a problem. The communication system is dead, There's a dozen panels missing, wires are fried. I can’t fix it.” I shook my head.

“Well all that matters right now is getting to mount weather.See? Look.This is us.” She pointed to a circle on the map, “This is where we need to get to if we want to survive.” She drew a line across it to where Mount Weather was marked.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Wells came up behind us. She gave me a saddened look, I gave one back to her. “You’re father.” He nodded sadly.

“Ah cool a map.” A scrawny kid with goggles came up behind us. I recognized him from Farm station but I couldn’t remember who he was. I kinda wanted to forget everything about Farm Station. “They got a bar in this town? I’ll buy you a beer.” Wells pushed him away.

“You mind?” He said in a threatening tone. 

“Hey,hey,hey! Hands off him, he's with us.” I turned my head to see the one person I really wish I hadn’t. John Murphy, the asshole of the century. The ex who decided he wanted nothing to do with me after what had happened with my parents. Recon he didn’t know what exactly happened just that they are now dead. The idiot who decided to set part of the Ark ablaze for the thrill. Can I get a break please! I gave him a look of pure hatred, and he gave me one back. He hated that Marcus had taken me in, that I could look at the guy who got his father floated as a father. Well I really couldn’t, I was pretty pissed at him, we don’t have the best father daughter relationship.

“Relax.” Wells put his hands up in surrender. “We’re just trying to figure out where we are.”

“We’re on the ground. That not good enough for you?” Bellamy sassed.

“We need to find Mount Weather.” Wells started to walk towards him, “You heard my fathers message, that needs to be our first priority.” 

“Screw your father.” Octavia cut him off. “What, you think you're in charge here? You and your little princesses?” 

“Don’t call me that.” I lunged for her and Bellamy almost came after me if Clarke hadn’t held me back.

“Do you think we care who’s in charge? We need to get to Mount weather, not because the Chancellor said so, but because the longer we wait, the hungrier we’ll get and the harder this will be.” She said to all of the kids around her.

“How long do you think we’ll last without those supplies?” I asked. “The human body can go one month with out food as long as you’re properly hydrated, and only 2 weeks without water before we start dying of dehydration and starvation, and in between that you start to feel as if you wish you were dead because the starvation is too much.” I explained.

“We’re looking at a 20 mile trek, okay? So if we want to get there before dark, we need to leave now.”

“I got a better idea,” Bellamy said to her, “you three go, find it for us, let the privileged do the hard work for a change.” If Clarke wasn’t still holding me back I would have ripped his face off. 

Damn it! Stop! Don’t think like that! You think like that you become him, you can’t you can’t you can't. 

I tried to calm myself down, the more violent I become the worse I get. 

“You’re not listening!” Wells shouted. “We all need to go.”  Murphy came up and shoved him.

“Look at this everybody, the Chancellor of earth.” Everyone laughed.

“Murphey!” I yelled. He ignored me.

“You think that’s funny?” Wells asked. And then in one movement murphey swept Wells off his feet sending him to the ground with a crunch. 

“Murphey!” I screamed louder, he still ignored me.

“No but that was.” Murphy stated. “Alright.” They both stood in a defensive position ready to fight. The other kids started to shout fight, I was yelling at them to stop. No one was listening, but no punches were thrown as finn came and stood in front of Wells blocking him from Murphy.

 “Kid’s got one leg, how about you wait till it's a fair fight.” He told Murphy. And with that John backed down. 

“Hey spacewalker!” Octavia walked towards him, “Rescue me next.”

Clarke and I walked away trying to figure out how to get to Mount Weather, while helping Wells with his leg.

“So Mount Weather, when do we leave?” Finn asked.

“Right now.” Clarke said. “We’ll be back tomorrow with food.” She said to Wells

“How are the three of you going to be able to carry enough for 100?” He asked, Finn turned around and grabbed the two closest people he could. 

“five of us, can we go now?” Clarke nodded her head.

“Sounds like a party, make it six.” Octavia walked up to us. It was kinda obvious she was only coming along for Finn but hey, we need as many people as we can get.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” Bellamy walked up to her.

“Going on a walk.” she shrugged him off her.

“Hey,” I noticed a crack in Finn's bracelet. “Were you trying to take this off?” 

“Yeah so?” He shrugged.

“So this wristband transmits your vital signs to the ark, take it off and they’ll think you're dead.”

“Should i care?” Finn rolled his eyes.

“Well I don’t know, do you want the people you love to think you’re dead? Do you want them to follow you down here in two months cause they won't if they think we’re dying.”

We walked off into the woods, “So, what happened with you? Why’d you get sent down here Council Girl?” Finn asked. I gave him a cold stare for multiple reasons. 1 being that name he gave me, 2 being that he referenced the fact that Kane is my technically adopted father, and 3 because it was none of his business. I just ignored him and walked faster. 

“Hey, guys would you try to keep up?” I called back, Clarke was the only one who was keeping up with me.

“Come on girls, how can you block all this out?” Finn smiled

“Well its simple, I wonder why haven't we seen any animals? Maybe it’s because there are none, maybe we’ve already been exposed to enough radiation to kill us. Sure is pretty though, come on.”  Clarke continued forward

“Guys wait up!” one of the two boys called out 

Who are you two?” I asked. 

“Oh… I-I’m Jasper this is-”

“Wait… Jordan? Jasper… Jordan?”

“Uhhh… yeah…?” He was confused as to how I knew him.

“M-Monty?” I faced the other boy who too became confused. It took him a minute but then his face lit up with realization.

“Xephyr?” Monty smiled at me.

“Xephyr!” Jasper shouted and ran to me and gave me a hug. “You left the farm station so long ago… where… where did you go?” 

“Let’s just say i’m not Xephyr Cole any more-”

“Yeah, now it’s Xephyr Kane isn’t it?” Finn said. 

“Shut up you ass.” I rolled my eyes.

“Clarke motioned for us to come over to her quietly and then pointed at some animal, it was a deer. It was amazing… until it turned towards us. The thing had one and a half heads. Freaked out we kept walking. 

“So, bellamy?” Finn asked me with a smirk.

“What?” 

“Oh, like you didn’t see the way he was looking at you.” He chuckled. 

“He’s… there’s something bad about him, he's a pain in the ass and I can already tell.”

“And how do you know what someone is like just by one conversation?” He asked me.

I stopped dead in my tracks, “Cause I dated John Murphy.” I continued walking, eventually taking the lead. 

“You know what I’d like to know,” Finn started. It seemed very obvious out of the six of us he was the most vocal. “Why send us down today? After 97 years? What changed?”

“Who cares, I’m just glad they did. I woke up rotting in a cell and now… i'm spinning in a forest.” Octavia said.

“Maybe they found something on a satellite.” Monty suggested. “You know, like an old weather satellite.”

“It wasn’t a satellite. The Ark is dying.” When Clarke said that everyone paused “With the current population level there's 3 months left of life support, maybe 4 now that we’re gone.”

“So that was the big secret they kept you locked up to keep? Locked you up in solitary, floated your old man?” Finn asked her

“Her father was the engineer who discovered the flaw. He thought people had a right to know.” I said

“Council disagreed, my mother disagreed, they were afraid that it would cause panic. We were gonna go public when wells-”

“What? Turned in your dad?” Finn jumped in when she went silent for a while.

“Anyway, the guard showed up before we could. That’s why today. That’s why it was worth the risk, even if we all die, at least they bought themselves more time.”

“But it’s still not enough. Engineering needs six months and they now have only four. The council pushed it off forever and then people started getting symptoms.” I said.

“They’re gonna kill more people aren’t they?” Monty asked. No one responded.

“Good after what they did to me I say, float them all.” Octavia walked in front of all of us. She started taking her clothes off.

“Oh damn, I love earth.” Jasper chuckled.  She walked to the edge.

“Octavia what the hell are you doing?” Clarke yelled. She just looked back with a smile then jumped. We all ran to the edge to see a river.

“Octavia, we can’t swim.” Monty called out.

“No but we can stand.” She stood up.

“There's not supposed to be a river here.” Clarke said with confusion.

“Well there is.” I laughed and followed Octavia. Everyone else started taking their clothes off.

“Octavia, Xephyr, get out of the water.” Jasper warned us. We looked behind us to see something moving. It grabbed Octavia, she screamed as she went under the water. The tail end had hit me right in the abdomen knocking me down underwater, my head had hit a rock, I tried to stand back up but for some reason I couldn't. I could feel my leg split open on a rock. After what felt like forever I felt someone pull me out. 

“Xephyr!” Clarke called out. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?” I opened my eyes and groaned.

“Octavia?” I looked over to see Jasper holding her, the only other one who was wet was Finn, meaning he was probably the one who pulled me out. 

“Xephyr. She’s fine can you hear me alright?” 

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Night had fallen not too long after. I stayed awake as long as I could but I eventually gave in.

I stood there, over her dead body, my best friend, Clarke dead, gutted, and I was covered. Covered in blood, her blood, a knife in my hands. I couldn't feel anything. I didn’t care. But for a moment there I felt a small amount of joy. 

I woke up in a sweat and screaming. Everyone was looking at me. “Xephyr? Was it?” Clarke asked. I just nodded.

“What was it?” Finn asked. 

“No, nothing lets just, lets go” We went back to the river where finn found some vine we could use to swing ourselves over.

“You wanted to go first now stop stalling.” I rolled my eyes.

Fin  was just about to go when Jasper stopped him and said he wanted to go. He waited a while before he went, as he tumbled to the ground we held our breath. 

“We are appogee!” We all started cheering. “Come on clarke you’ve got this!” He shouted. Then he held up a sign that said Mount Weather. 

“We did it! Mount Weather!” I screamed. We all cheered again… until… a spear was launched into Jaspers chest “J-J-Jasper! Jasper!” I screamed.”Jasper! NO!” Octavia pulled me down. “We’re not alone.” I said with fear.

[psychosubtransdistricatedcrybrow]

Hey guys, I know I mostly reblog things and don’t get very personal, but this means a lot to me. I’ve been friends with Evan for over 4 years and he’s a great local author, and you should really check him out. If you’re a fan of sci-fi fantasy and horror, he’s definitely the guy for you. He is a novelist targeted towards young adult/adult readers, although younger readers would also enjoy his work.

Anachronist Girls is the love child of fantasy, time travel, love, and family. The blurb reads as such:

Chronically adrift Rose isn’t ready to meet Emile Belmont. Yet he offers everything she’s dreamed of: wealth, stability, whirlwind romance. Rose believes their life together is perfect until the day Emile vanishes, leaving a trail of bizarre clues behind. Easter exists in two worlds. Shattered by a childhood of wonder and violence, she slips between the real world and a place of countless doors. Passages only she can open, leading into phantom palaces and tiger-stalked jungles. Anita is haunted by an age beyond our own. Daughter of criminal and con-man Victor Larkey, she’s learned to survive on her own, all the while dreaming of a city a thousand years away. A vast, mechanical city she has seen before and has vowed to find again. Together, they will cross our world and others to uncover a plot centuries in the making. A plan which only they can stop.

It’s a fantastic book and one of a kind, and I absolutely was not expecting the ending. The amazon link is here.

Halcyon Park describes giant robots, cyborgs, bank robbery, and California amusement parks. The synopsis is this:

No Machine shall think. No Machine shall kill. No Man shall become as Machine. Archie Robledo is a hunted man. A veteran of the brutal anti-cybernetics wars, he awakens from a coma as the very thing he has fought against: a prototype super-soldier and walking nuclear weapon. His existence is a capital offense, punishable by dismantlement. Survival means living off the grid, using assumed identities and taking aid from underworld contacts. Offered work as an engineer at a beachfront park, he sees an opportunity to afford an expensive exit visa into friendlier nations. Yet a series of ill-fated gambles by the park’s management threaten to uncover a hotbed of criminal activity, Archie’s presence included. Pursued by the relentless detectives of the Tech-Crimes division, his escape and freedom on the line, Archie turns his unique abilities to a new trade: bank robbery.

The amazon link is here.

Tigerfish, boy let me tell you. This is a tale of cheating death, beachy palms, and an angry little girl who has an affinity for killing in the woods (where else would you kill?) Here’s the blurb:

Ex-cop Jason “Jay” Krakavaela should be a dead man. Following a tragic and deadly accident, he is snatched back from death by the miracle-worker surgeons of the Secordia Corporation. As a test-subject for their groundbreaking medical technologies, he is granted a second life. Yet his rebirth comes at a cost: his memories of his former life, his family, and even himself. Sent to recuperate among the palm-tree vistas and tourist beaches of the South Seas, Jay reinvents himself, finding work on a leaky houseboat-diner and befriending his quirky new boss. However, his reimagined life is soon upended in an encounter with another of Secordia’s experimental patients: an amnesiac girl possessing otherworldly, terrifying abilities. Thrust into a web of bizarre science and dark mythologies, Jay must uncover not only the sinister forces behind Secordia, but the truth of what he himself is quickly becoming. For deep within him, something is waking up. Something that dreams of bringing fire to a new world.

The amazon link is here.

Paraiso Street is Clark’s most recent book, and I must say I’m very excited to read it. It won’t be on the shelves until 9/9/19, but preorder for kindle is currently available. It’s a story of demons, soul trafficking, and paradise. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s well worth the read. Here’s the blurb:

Ex-priest and physicist Danny Capistrano sells salvation, smuggling the newly-deceased into the underworld. Trafficking souls isn’t a breeze, but Danny’s the best there is. Who cares if he’s in debt to the gills, his girlfriend just split, and his estranged daughter thinks he’s a complete asshole? But when a valuable soul slips through his fingers, Danny finds himself in the cross-hairs of his cartel bosses. To clear his name, Danny returns to San Adriano, gateway city to the land of the dead. Unearthing a plot more sinister than stray spirits, he teams up with scientific prodigy Cali— who also happens to be that same estranged daughter. Now saving his reputation (and avoiding the business end of a meat grinder) might just mean redeeming himself with his daughter, too. Never mind that he’ll need to outwit terrifying immigration agents, hustle an undead six-foot rodent, and crack open the beautifully grotesque underworld itself. With survival and absolution on the line, Danny has to get this one thing right. And there’s a first time for everything.

The amazon link is here.

If you’ve read this far you’re a real trooper and I appreciate it, and I would especially appreciate it if you could show this guy some love, he deserves it and puts out some dang good work. Here is his Twitter as well and here is his Instagram, in case any of you all would like to keep up on his work/life and get more info on his books. If anything, he’s got jokes, and we could all use a laugh.

[reallygroovyninja]

The Sad & Current State of Fear The Walking Dead by Stephen Vivian

Link

When Fear The Walking Dead debuted in 2015 it became the most watched pilot episode in Cable TV history. Today, in it’s current fifth season, it whimpers along with less than a million and a half of live viewers. While the show’s ratings have steadily declined since it’s debut to 10.13 million viewers just over four years ago, it’s current reboot under co-showrunner’s and executive producers Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg is a far cry from a success.

In fact, less than two seasons into their reboot the show has gone from an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to a 66% amongst critics. And even worse, the audience score has dropped from 72% to an abysmal 36%.

This steep decline in quality has been a concern for die-hard fans who believed the show had finally found its footing in its season three outing. During that season the show stabilized it’s ratings and improved it’s critical consensus and it appeared the show was on track to outpace its parent series in quality. But less than two years later The Walking Dead has seen a resurgence in quality while Fear has dropped to all-time lows.

So what went wrong?

ERICKSON OUT; GIMPLE, CHAMBLISS and GOLDBERG IN

Fear was co-created by Robert Kirkman, who created the original comic series The Walking Dead, and Dave Erickson. Erickson served as showrunner for the first three seasons and it was his vision for the show to set itself apart from its parent series by focusing on a gritty family drama set amidst the growing apocalypse. His focus on the Clark family was taking shape and by season three it was apparent that lead actress Kim Dickens’ character, Madison Clark, was being written to serve not only as the shows main antihero but it’s burgeoning villain. She had done everything in the name of survival and didn’t take bullshit from anyone.

Her defining moment came in the two-part season three opener where she declared that it was their fate to take the ranch from its current leadership and that it would be their right to take it if it secured their survival. And so began Madison’s manipulations, starting with her and her kids ingratiating themselves into the Otto’s lives to prove their worth and keep them apart of the inner workings of the ranch. This mission – and her brutality in carrying it out – were beginning to take its toll on the very people she strived to protect: her children.

Alicia grew wary of Madison’s tactics and started to grow into her own, becoming a leader who undoubtedly would have to one day deal with opposing her mother as Madison reached full blown villain status. And even Nick, who Madison was obsessed with protecting and keeping by her side, began to see his mother’s brutality as alarming when she killed Troy with very little hesitation.

The dynamic between these three and how it would further be explored had taken the show to new heights, but sadly the writing was already on the wall when it was revealed that Dave Erickson would be departing the series as showrunner and was to be replaced by Once Upon a Time alums Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, both brought in by Scott Gimple who had taken on a larger role in The Walking Dead Universe by overseeing the development of both shows.

GIMPLIFICATION

Fans were wary of Gimple’s new involvement with the series. He had overseen The Walking Dead for five seasons. And while seasons four and five of the main show were critical and ratings successes, the problems with his leadership began to pop up in a very divisive season six. By season seven The Walking Dead had seen a drastic downturn in both critical and ratings success, culminating with Gimple’s departure as showrunner after season eight.

Hallmarks of Gimple’s leadership – splitting up the cast, drawing out story arcs that reduced the pace of the show to a crawl, and having characters act and speak illogically and in repetitive monologues were now on their way to Fear, a show that had earned its success from separating itself from the identity of its parent show through showcasing a grittier, more realistic portrayal of the zombie apocalypse. Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg were just the nails in the coffin as they would take these hallmarks and double down on them with reckless abandon.

DRASTIC CHANGES OF REBOOTING

The reboot swiftly introduced a time jump to bring the show in line with The Walking Dead for the sole purpose of crossing over Morgan Jones, a character whose story arc had been on a rinse-and-repeat cycle on The Walking Dead for far too long. Having him crossover could have been a great way to explore his character and breathe some life back into him, but sadly the showrunners simply doubled down on what was wrong with Morgan’s character in the first place.

Worse of all they decided to stunt all other characters growth and put them on a trajectory to adopt Morgan’s boring character traits, ultimately watering them down to unquestioning, idiotic do-gooders who do not worry about any personal matters but instead the larger group mission of do good at all costs; even if it means killing themselves to save someone who refuses their help and is more-than-likely going to result in getting more people killed.

The problems were readily apparent right from the outset of the first episode – an episode dominated by Morgan and new characters Althea and John Dory. No OG Fear characters were introduced until the very closing minutes of the show. And in the following seven episodes the original cast took even more blows, as both Nick and Madison Clark were killed off the show. The core dynamic of the show and the interesting premise of the original pitch of the series had been decimated in less than 8 episodes.

It was clear that Andrew and Ian had no regard for the cast who had been there since day one and who had given such great performances to carry the show to critical success. And once again they doubled down on new characters that had no depth, dimension or individuality in favour of propping up Morgan Jones as the new lead of the show.

BIGGEST GRIPES WITH SEASON FOUR & FIVE

The new cinematography style was to strip out all colour and use a hideous grey filter. Since the show was split into two timelines – the THEN timeline featuring the OG cast at the Dell Diamond, and the the NOW timeline featuring Morgan Jones meeting up with our remaining survivors – it was assumed the use of grey filter was meant to contrast the generally bright colours of the NOW timeline. Perhaps a thematic device to showcase the differences in the state of mind of Alicia, Nick, Strand and Luciana as they were on a mission of vengeance. But when that story was resolved in the mid-season finale, it was assumed we would return to normal colouring. Sadly, we were not.

Characters acting dumb, delivering nonsensical dialogue and out of character in order to service the plot. This is always one of the worse creative decisions a writing team could make and it was clear it was one the new showrunners were embracing. As I mentioned before, Madison Clark was a growing villain who would stop at nothing to keep herself and her kids safe. Suddenly in season four she was a leader of hope for the show, doling out idiotic, non-sensical lines such as “no one is gone until they’re gone”. Go back to episode 3x08 and listen to Madison tell her kids about how she killed her father to protect her mother against his abuse and how she was going to go talk to another old man, Jeremiah Otto, alluding to her reconciling that she would have to kill him to protect Alicia and Nick and you will see a vast difference in dialogue.

Gimmicks! The plot doesn’t serve to move the characters or the story forward in any meaningful or realistic way. Instead it’s as if the writers came up with these “cool moments” they think will look good on screen, and try to just connect the dots with nonsensical plot points and character direction to make it happen. Let’s not even get too into the airplane that they flew despite none of the people on the plane being a pilot, or the nuclear reactor breakdown that was supposed to present a huge threat but was resolved very anti-climatically.

And the cardinal sin that the new showrunners have committed is sidelining the previously well-developed OG characters in favour of new, poorly developed characters. First of all, if the decision to kill Madison off was to actually serve a true purpose for the story and the characters instead of this superficial “it’s what Madison would want us to do”, then the show should have rightfully been inherited by and led by Alicia. For starters, Alycia Debnam-Carey has a large following as an actress. And, as a character, is the biggest draw for the audience. Not only is she the last Clark standing, but she was on a trajectory to becoming a strong leader in her own right. But instead they felt the show would be better served with Morgan as the lead. It’s a shame because the show had a lot of potential by shifting focus to Alicia, but as it stands now, not even our OG characters or Morgan, the shows misplaced lead character, are strong enough to carry this show.

CAN THE SHOW BE SAVED? CAN IT DO BETTER?

I sure hope so. I haven’t followed steadily since episode 4x09. That episode bored me to tears. And no matter how many times I’ve tried to sit down and watch episodes from the latter part of season four or episodes of season five, I just simply can’t bring myself to do it. There’s just no motivation for me to keep watching. Nothing ever really happens. No one has grown in new and surprising or compelling ways. The show hasn’t had a message or a narrative worth investing in, because let’s be real the simplicity of “we’re here to help” is not a story. It’s a singular ideology adopted by EVERY character, no matter how senseless and idealistic it is.

I think there’s several ways to reinvigorate the show and get it back on track. To start, the show could learn to take risks. The show isn’t willing to take any risks right now and it’s painful. Given the world they live in and the threats they face, we should be seeing characters go down darker paths or even killing again. We don’t even get any real sources of conflict. It’s all contrived conflict to make it seem like there’s a threat to our characters when there is none. At. All.

Why not kill off a character without fanfare and have the real ramifications be the source of conflict. I thought they might have been able to pull this off after Nick’s death, but that fell flat too.

Imagine June dying and John growing darker wanting to avenge her. Imagine Morgan going all “clear” mode again and not coming back from it. He’d be far more interesting as a loose cannon who could no longer lead or support the people he rounded up into his mission. Imagine Madison returning in her true, pre-season four form and struggling to adapt to the groups mission and suddenly start pulling Alicia, Strand and Daniel’s loyalty away from the group. There are just so many, endless ways the show could create conflict without having to outsource it to inadequate villains, such as Martha or Logan.

There are so many themes to explore in a post-apocalyptic show. Season three was dealing with scarcity of resources and how it was causing conflict amongst survivors struggling to find supplies. In season five, it seems that they have unlimited resources with battery power for their walkie talkies, generators, video recording equipment, planes and hot air balloons. Enough already. This isn’t realistic. Logan, the shows current villain, if you can even label him as one, would be far more dangerous if the resources in the area were dwindling, as they would be, and he was pushed to the brink by trying to secure whatever was left for his groups survival. He wouldn’t be politely asking for directions to oil fields. He’d be taking it at gunpoint and killing people to get it.

The possibilities in this genre are unlimited. But one thing is for certain, since the show lost it’s true lead in Madison Clark, the series hasn’t felt right. Kim Dickens was wrongfully dismissed from this show, in my opinion. And until she is brought back I don’t think that the show will ever truly recover.

In short, Bring Back Madison, have her be the bad-ass, manipulative antihero she is meant to be, and have her character be a source of conflict for the group and Alicia. Imagine Alicia’s loyalties being torn between the mother she thought she lost and the group she has now called a family. Madison would be the best kind of bad influence on both Strand and Daniel, who were characters who thrived in the grey areas of morality under Erickson’s leadership, creating a far more dynamic and distinct direction for the series. It would also be a direction worthy of the acting talent that this show has in riches but sadly doesn’t utilize to it’s fullest potential.

[aion-rsa]

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 14 Review: Mother

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This Fear the Walking Dead review contains spoilers. 

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 14

After being sidelined for most of the season, Fear the Walking Dead finally throws one of its best characters into the fray. I’m talking about Alicia, of course, who hasn’t gotten nearly enough screen time lately. So it’s interesting (and refreshing) that “Mother” should lean so heavily into what it means to be Madison Clark’s daughter. The episode continues season 6’s trend of unexpected reunions, and this one certainly doesn’t disappoint. But more on that chance encounter in a bit.

In the meantime, let’s talk about Teddy Maddox (John Glover). We already knew he was a bit unhinged, what with being a cult leader and embalming dissenters and wanting to usher in a nuclear Armageddon. Taken individually, any one of those things is a red flag, to be sure. Taken together, though, and you have a dangerous lunatic who makes the likes of recent antagonists like Virginia, Logan, and Martha seem like dilettantes by comparison. Which is a good thing, really. While the undead have become more of an existential threat to our heroes, the living always prove to be the biggest and most immediate threat to survival. Remember Jeremiah and Troy Otto from season 3? They were good villains! What made them so dangerous was that they mistakenly believed they had the moral high ground. 

Teddy is no different. Like the Ottos, he truly believes that humans are nothing more than bottom-feeders who deserve to be wiped out. While his views are a bit extreme, what transpires in “Mother” certainly seems to bear out this grim hypothesis. Indeed, this episode offers compelling insights into Teddy’s convoluted thought process. He sums it all up when he tells Alicia, “I could preserve everything I loved, and destroy everything I didn’t.” This black-and-white worldview is calcified after he murders someone, and marvels at the flowers growing over her backyard grave. That and 30 years on death row gave him plenty of time to reinforce his twisted beliefs. When the world ended, his second chance began in earnest. Now this wasteland prophet finally has the means to bring his vision to full fruition. To do that, he needs Alicia’s help.

All the way back in season 3, in my review of “Brother’s Keeper,” I suggested that Fear could possibly benefit from killing off Alicia. This was back when the entire Clark family was still alive and seemingly unkillable. Three seasons later, though, Alicia is the last Clark standing. To lose her now would cut Fear off from an important part of its history. Whether you like them or hate them, for better or worse, this Walking Dead spin-off was built upon the Clark family’s misadventures during the earliest days of the zombie apocalypse. Were they always role models? Definitely not. But week after week, their flaws made for more compelling drama. And as we know, over the years, Alicia has tried more than once to leave all the bloodshed behind. Unfortunately for her, Alicia is usually at her best when she’s forced to do her worst. And “Mother” is certainly no exception.

Tapped by Teddy to run a special errand (with new cult recruit Dakota tagging along for good measure), Alicia unwittingly becomes part of a grand thought experiment. It should be said that Alycia Debnam-Carey delivers a great performance, as does Glover. They prove to be excellent foils for one another, playing two sides of the same coin. Throwing them together provides plenty of friction as Teddy continues to woo her to his way of thinking. And if that means revisiting the ghosts of the past, so be it. For Alicia, that means confronting her mother’s legacy.

For Teddy, though, that means liberating his mother’s corpse from its crypt.

It’s amazing that this scene can be so unsettling, given how the Walking Dead universe has spent nearly eleven years “normalizing” reanimated corpses. Maybe it’s because Teddy is obviously unwell. Or maybe it’s because he cherishes his mother’s corpse, rather than fearing it. In this world, any interactions with the dead are assiduously avoided. (That this turns out to be a random corpse is even more disturbing.)

The way Teddy and Dakota casually compare notes on the people they’ve killed and why is likewise unsettling. Killing before the apocalypse landed you on death row. Killing now? Well, it’s just the way of the world. The more we learn about Dakota, the more it seems like Virginia may have been trying to protect people from her daughter. 

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As for this episode’s surprise reunion, it was great to see a familiar face—until it isn’t. Cole (Sebastian Sozzi) harkens all the way back to headier days, when Madison forged a settlement inside an abandoned stadium. That settlement went up in flames, as they tend to do in the Walking Dead universe. If you’ll recall, Madison gave her life so that her fellow survivors could live to fight another day. Which is why it’s so painful for Alicia to see her mother’s sacrifice squandered by Cole, Doug, and Viv. Since the stadium fell, they’ve become ruthless marauders.  

To Teddy, Cole and his ilk are walking justifications for why he wants to rid the world of loathsome, unsavory types. But that’s all a matter of perspective, what passes for loathsome in this world. Dakota thinks Alicia killing Cole puts the two of them on equal footing, but their moral ground isn’t the same—or is it? Killing doesn’t come easily for Alicia. At least, not like it does for the Teddys or the Dakotas of the world. Each person Alicia has killed, even in self-defense, exacts a tremendous toll.

In the end, taking out Cole proves to Teddy that Alicia is exactly who he needs to bring hope to his coming version of the world. He even goes so far as to lock her away in a secure bunker, to ensure her survival after the beached submarine’s missiles rein down destruction on the guilty. 

Kudos to Fear for playing the long game this season. It’s great to finally get more answers (about that sub, about the graffiti, about those keys), even as they create more problems for our survivors. Kudos, too, for putting Alicia front and center this week. Debnam-Carey is a force to be reckoned with; when given the chance, she elevates every episode she’s in.

A final thought: Fear seems to be going out of its way this season to remind everyone what a terrible person Strand used to be. After this episode, I’m convinced Strand will ultimately save the world from destruction.

The post Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 14 Review: Mother appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[brianne-nicole06]

Walk Through the Fire (Chapter 2: This Is Our Thing)

Bellamy's on a power trip. Sage and Roan meet again.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

I’m laying down in my tent with Octavia. Her leg is still healing from the bite. We were talking about what life will be like on the ground when we hear Clarke yelling.

“Hugh. What’s the princess yelling about now?” I say to Octavia.

“I don’t know, you know she’s bossy.”

“I’m gonna go check it out.”

I get up and walk out of the tent. A group of people are gathered around a fire. Clarke in Bellamy’s face, mad as hell.

“Step aside princess.”

“Not until you stop taking the bracelets off!”

Annoyed, I say, “What the hell are you guys fighting about?”

Clarke looks at me, “They’re taking people’s bracelets off. They’re the only way the Ark will know if we’re alive. If we start taking them off they’re going to think Earth is not survivable, and they’ll die.”

Murphy laughs, “Serves ‘em right. They floated my old man for trying to save me when I was sick.”

Bellamy assertively stands and looks at all of us as he speaks. “And when they come down here, it’s going to be just like on the Ark. Punishing us for stupid things. Floating us for the simplest crimes. Controlling everything we do!”

Clarke, “They’re our people! How could you not what them to come down. Our families, our friends, our doctors.”

Bellamy, “My people are here. Those are your people! The privileged! They’ll have it good down here! While the rest of us suffer.”

Everyone yells, “Yeah!”

I interject, “As much as we may or may not hate the people left on the Ark, we have to think about the bigger picture. Do you really think we can survive on our own for the rest of our lives?

We have no leaders, no guards, no doctors, no farmers, engineers! Not to mention our families are up there, and so are the innocent kids who deserve a better chance at life than what we had on the Ark.”

Bellamy, “Do not listen to them! We can survive on our own. Right?”

“YEAH!”

“And we what when we want! Whatever the hell we want!”

“YEAH!”

Bellamy looks at us with an arrogant, snide smile. I couldn’t stand the sight of him. How could he want all those people to die?

He looks at Clarke, Finn, and I. “So, who’s next?”

I huffed, “You’re not touching us over our dead bodies.”

“Speaking of dead bodies, that’s what we’re all going to be if we don’t get more food. Why don’t you three make yourselves useful and lead a hunting party; let the privileged do the work for a change.”

I stood there in seething rage. “Well, I don’t want to be around narcissistic idiots all day anyhow.”

Murphy laughed. “And there she goes, all fire and…sage.” And he continued laughing at unfunny joke. I gave him the middle finger I turned to my left and eyed a bunch of kids. “You six, you’re coming with me.” And I stomp my way out of the camp. I glanced back. Three of hunt for animals, the other three gathers fruits and nuts. Finn and Clark gathered some more people and split them up into groups. Clarke shouts, “Sage, you okay?” I wanted to scream no. I was annoyed because of Bellamy, Murphy, and anyone else who agreed with the idiocy and disregard for humanity. Instead I told her, “No. Look, I’m going to go take a beat for a while to calm down.” They nodded. “We’ll meet back at camp in a couple hours.” I turned around and walked.

I’ve been hiking for almost two hours. So far there still more woods, but the view is great. There’s a faraway mountain range that looks so...lifelike. I see a lake up ahead, and suddenly realize how thirsty I am. I make my over and drink a couple handfuls. I take a deep breath and look around. This area is actually pretty and quiet, which is why I took notice when I heard the sound of water swishing. My eyes pinpointed where the noise was coming from. The same man I saw the other day is now swimming in the lake. The sun is glistening on his bare back. Even from behind he looks godly. He turns his head slightly, now noticing me, and faces me. I couldn’t help but look at the water beading that his perfectly sculpted chest and abs. My eyes make their way up to his face. Now that I see his scars without white paint covering them, they actually nice. Then there’s his ice blue eyes. I could get lost in them forever. I come out of my mesmerization when he knowingly smiles. I immediately look into the trees, embarrassed. I hear more water moving, and when I look up the attractive man is making his way toward me. He stops, still in the water which just below his waist.

Nervous, I say “Hello.”

“What are you doing out here alone?”

“Umm, sightseeing?”

“Hm.”

I wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. I can’t believe how nervous this man makes me.

“So, what are you doing here?”

“Came to relax. I need a break from my people.”

Shocked, “Your people?”

“Yes, people. You know, humans?” He smiles at me.

If it were anyone else, I’d come up with some smartass remark. But in this case, I can’t help but appreciate his sass. “I know what people are. I just thought, we all thought, that there wouldn’t be anyone alive when we came here.”

He makes a disgruntled face. “And why is that?”

“Because of the nuclear explosion that destroyed the Earth.”

He takes a few seconds, sorting what I said in his head. Then nods like he came to an understanding.

“Praimfaya. That’s what we call it.”

Trying out the word, “Praimfaya.”

He nods.

“What language do you speak?”

“It’s called Trigedasleng. Everyone speaks it here. Not many of us speak your language, but we know it.”

Huh.

“You look exhausted. You should come in.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. Besides, this is our thing. We meet near water. And go back and forth.”

I lightly roll my eyes and smirk. Study his eyes, I see that they’re genuine. I remove my shirt, pants, socks, and boots. I look to him and he’s eyeing my body. I give a small smile and walk into the lake. We walk deeper into the lake. The man grabs my arm looks over my body once more, and say “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

Widening my smile, “You’re not so bad yourself.”

The man gave a gracious smile that generated warmth through my body. I smiled and a realization hit me: I don’t even know his name.

“You never told me your name.”

“Roan.”

“Roan. I like it.”

He nodded. “You’ve been asking all the questions. So, it’s my turn. Why did you come here?”

“To survive. Our people were here before praimfaya, but left before the nuclear power plants exploded. We’ve lived in space for the past 97 years.”

“Until now.”

“Yeah, our government sent us down to see if the Earth was survivable. It is… obviously. Haha. [pause] We all thought we’d be alone here…but then I met you so…”

Roan’s silently taking all the information in.

“I told my friend I saw you, but he didn’t believe me. Said I was imagining you.” I roll my eyes.

He smiles “Well I assure you, you definitely aren’t.”

He glances at me with a hesitant look, but then takes a step toward me and wraps a hand around my arm. Roan looks deep into my eyes, and I feel naked. I look back, and feel even more of an attraction to him. Sure, he was physically attractive. His eyes. Smile. Body. And his confident stride. But there was something…that just pulled me in. Made me want to know everything about him. His free hand reaches out to pull some strands of hair behind my ear, and slides his hand down to my face. We draw our heads slowly closer to each other. I can soon feel his breath on my lips. I grin and look into his blue eyes once more. He brings the hand on my arm to the other side of check, and caresses it. And god, his hand feels so nice on my body. I’ve never felt so vulnerable and horny in my life. He closes his eyes, leans his head to the side, and parts his lips. I do the same and meet his lips. They were soft, but firm. Roan works his tongue into my mouth; he’s more aggressive. I sense that he’s very dominant, which is what I like. I grab his hair and wrap my arm around his neck. Our kisses get deeper, forcing me to catch my breath. We’re breathing each other’s air in, and I drag my fingers from his neck down his chest. For the next few moments, it feels like it’s just us, wrapped in each other.

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Roots Quotes

Official Website: Roots Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); • A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. – Marcus Garvey • A person with faith does not question its roots, for he knows that if he subjected it to the critical examination of his intellect, he would end up without faith. The same thing can be said of any feeling. You can analyze any feeling to death, but when you do that, you end up without feeling and without a meaninful life. – Alexander Lowen • A real foolproof way to do it is play your stuff by hook or by crook and build up a grass roots following – Duncan Sheik • A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.- Amelia Earhart • A singular fact about modern war is that it takes charge. Once begun it has to be carried to its conclusion, and carrying it there sets in motion events that may be beyond men’s control. Doing what has to be done to win, men perform acts that alter the very soil in which society’s roots are nourished. – Bruce Catton • A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future. – Pope Francis • A tree is a self: it is ‘unseen shaping’ more than it is leaves or bark, roots or cellulose or fruit … What this means is that we must address trees as we must address all things, confronting them in the awareness that we are in the presence of numinous mystery. – Brian Swimme • A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one. – Elizabeth Moon • A tree nowhere offers a straight line or a regular curve, but who doubts that root, trunk, boughs, and leaves embody geometry? – George Iles • A tree root won’t get into your sewer line unless there’s something already wrong with your sewer line. I know most people don’t want to hear that, but it’s true – Thomas J. Hylton • A tree with strong roots can withstand the most violent storm, but the tree can’t grow roots just as the storm appears on the horizon.- Dalai Lama • A tree without roots is just a piece of wood. – Marco Pierre White • Amid all change, we desire something permanent; amid all variety, something stable; amid all progress, some central unity of life; something which deepens as we ascend; which roots itself as we advance; which grows more and more tenacious of the old, while becoming more and more open to the new. – James Freeman Clarke • Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey. – Salman Rushdie • An illuminating read for every classical scholar engaged with the current quest for the subject’s roots, and the excavation of the way that it has evolved over the past century and a half. – Edith Hall • Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world… the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity. – Albert Einstein • Are you becoming more sweet-spirited, more like Jesus? Are you looking soberly in the mirror each day and praying, ‘Lord, I want to conform to Your image in every area of my life’? Or has your bitterness taken root, turning into rebellion and hardness of heart? Have you learned to shield yourself from the convicting voice of God’s Spirit? – David Wilkerson • Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence. – Robert Henri • As a tree, even though it has been cut down, is firm so long as its root is safe, and grows again, thus, unless the feeders of thirst are destroyed, the pain (of life) will return again and again. – Max Muller • At root, a pearl is a ‘disturbance’ a beauty caused by something that isn’t supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. … The pearl’s beauty is made as a result of insult. – Julia Cameron • At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means. – Jamake Highwater • Audrey Auld is a great singer songwriter. She holds a unique place in contemporary Americana/Roots music. I believe that this uniqueness is largely due to the fact that she is Australian. This affords her a totally different attitude as an artist than traditional American contributors to this genre. Audrey is one of the most honest original artists I know. – Fred Eaglesmith

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'roots', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_roots').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_roots img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Becoming rich isn’t as much about getting rich financially as about whom you become, in character and mind, to get rich. I want to share a secret with you that few people know: the fastest way to get rich and stay rich is to work on developing you! The idea is to grow yourself into a successful person. Again, your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world. You are the root; your results are the fruits. – T. Harv Eker • Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. Trust is real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being. – Rajneesh • Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. – William Butler Yeats • But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish desires and schemes that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For love of money is the root of all of evil and some having pursued its power, fall from faith and end in sorrow. – Saint Timothy • But we need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for that they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts pleasing to God. – Jerry Bridges • Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I’ll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I’ll be re-formed as apple blossom. I’ll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family’s shoes. They’ll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then? – Jenny Downham • Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots. – Victor Hugo • Charity is the form, mover, mother and root of all the virtues. – Thomas Aquinas • Choices are at the root of every one of your results. – Darren Hardy • Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all stem from the same Abrahamic roots. All three reject terrorism. – H. John Poole • Civilization has its roots in the soil. – Charles Kellogg • Courage lies in being oneself, in showing complete independence, in loving what one loves, in discovering the deep roots of one’s feelings. – Fernand Pouillon • Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen. – Epictetus • Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is ‘to fit together’ and we all do this every day.- Corita Kent • Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots. – Frank A. Clark • Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light. – Theodore Roethke • dive for dreams or a slogan may topple you (trees are their roots and wind is wind) trust your heart if the seas catch fire (and live by love though the stars walk backward) honour the past but welcome the future (and dance your death away at this wedding) never mind a world with its villains or heroes (for god likes girls and tomorrow and the earth) – e. e. cummings • Do you know that the words meditation and medicine come from the same root? Meditation is a kind of medicine; its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation, then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Only when you are meditative twenty-four hours a day then can you attain, then you have attained. Even sleeping is meditation. – Rajneesh • Do you know, that is the root of the whole trouble – has been one of the roots at any rate – is people hearing things and then imagining some more and magnifying it and multiplying it.- John Harvey Kellogg • Don’t over-analyze your marriage; it’s like yanking up a fragile indoor plant every 20 minutes to see how its roots are growing. – Ogden Nash • Don’t put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family’s life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn’t move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer. – Arthur Hailey • Drawing is the root of everything. – Vincent Van Gogh • Duality is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political, or social conviction may contain us. We have to abandon such concepts as ‘enlightenment’, ‘the nature of the mind’, and so on, until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence. – Namkhai Norbu • Every forest branch moves differently in the breeze, but as they sway they connect at the roots. – Rumi • Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject’s roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. – Henry James, Sr. • Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And – when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening – nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. – William Shakespeare • Fear is the root of all courage. – Vivian Stanshall • Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. – George Washington Carver • For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks. – Friedrich Nietzsche • For our personal advancement in virtue and truth one quality is sufficient, namely, love; to advance humanity there must be two, love and intelligence; to accomplish the Great Work there must be three love, intelligence, and activity. And yet love is ever the root and the source. – Louis Claude de Saint-Martin • For this purpose was I born, let all virtuous people understand. I was born to advance righteousness, to emancipate the good, and to destroy all evil-doers root and branch. – Guru Gobind Singh • Forgiveness of sin strikes the root of all pain. – T. B. Joshua • Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth. – Liu Xiaobo • From a family tree that has healthy roots, there emerge hearty leaves and most beautiful fruits. – Wes Fesler • General principles… are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay. – Dalai Lama • Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. – Jonas Salk • How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the female with females. – Richard von Krafft-Ebing • How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold. – William Wordsworth • Human hopes and human creeds; have their root in human needs. – Eugene Fitch Ware • Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil. – Andrew Murray • I am proud of my black roots and of the black blood that runs in my veins. – Ryan Giggs • I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’ – George Thorndike Angell • I believe it is important for the university to always remember its roots. – Michael N. Castle • I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself. – Hugh Walpole • I believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions.- Graham Hancock • I came into the world charged with the duty to uphold the right in every place, to destroy sin and evil… the only reason I took birth was to see that righteousness may flourish, that good may live, and tyrants be torn out by their roots. – Guru Gobind Singh • I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.- Ayn Rand • I can’t multiply myself out of a paper bag. But when it comes to roots, I’m your man. – Jerry Newport • I don’t claim to know an over-arching ‘Meaning of Life,’ but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence. – David G. McAfee • I feel like I’m a fighter. I’ve fought my whole life to get to where I’m at. I like fight movies. When someone gets knocked down, I like to root for him to succeed. – Ricky Schroder • I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go. – Elif Safak • I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the mastersMichelangelo, Czanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican. – Diego Rivera • I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. – John Muir • I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. – James Wolcott • I think it is important to maintain your personality, your roots, very important. – Paz Vega • I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog. – Judd Apatow • I view Witchcraft as a religion that has evolved over the centuries. I do not consider Witchcraft to be a modern invention. Instead I deal with it in my writings as a Mystery Tradition with long roots to the past. It has always been my position that we don’t need an ancient tradition in order to be validated. We just happen to have one. – Raven Grimassi • I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy. Democrats have strong moral values. Frankly, my moral values are offended by some of the things I hear on programs like “Rush Limbaugh,” and we don’t have to put up with that. – Howard Dean • If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. – John F. Kennedy • If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us. – Wayne Muller • If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose. – Sean O’Casey • If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down. – Paul Hawken • Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. – Plato • I’ll never forget where I’m from, never forget my roots. It doesn’t matter where I live. I’m English, simple as that. – David Beckham • I’m convinced that FEAR is at the root, of all bad writing – Stephen King • Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes a cosmological tree, the tree which epitomises a universe, which makes a universe. – Gaston Bachelard • In almost every musical ever written, there’s a place that’s usually about the third song of the evening – sometimes it’s the second, sometimes it’s the fourth, but it’s quite early – and the leading lady usually sits down on something; sometimes it’s a tree stump in Brigadoon, sometimes it’s under the pillars of Covent Garden in My Fair Lady, or it’s a trash can in Little Shop of Horrors… but the leading lady sits down on something and sings about what she wants in life. And the audience falls in love with her and then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night. – Howard Ashman • In an old song the Mother sings: ‘My sleeping is my dreaming, my dreaming is my thinking, my thinking is my wisdom.’ She is the bed we are born in, in which we sleep and dream, where we are healed, love and die. In her wisdom we remember day’s broken images and carry them down into dreams where their motions roll into shadows and root, growing into stories. – Meinrad Craighead • In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us – that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it. – Brennan Manning • In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it’s what’s under the ground that creates what’s above the ground. That’s why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile. You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow’s fruits. But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots. – T. Harv Eker • In spite of my great admiration for individual splendid talents I do not accept the star system. Collective creative effort is the root of our kind of art. That requires ensemble acting and whoever mars that ensemble is committing a crime not only against his comrades but also against the very art of which he is the servant. – Constantin Stanislavski • In the NFL game today, there are a lot of better athletes than I am, and quarterbacks these days are faster than the quarterbacks have always been, they’re running like crazy. But I kind of stick to my roots of the disciplined quarterback. You know, I’m doing the same routine every week, studying tapes and working hard, getting ready to play and making good decisions on Sundays. – Peyton Manning • In the Old Testament…God is the owner of the vineyard. Here He is the Keeper, the Farmer, the One who takes care of the vineyard. Jesus is the genuine Vine, and the Father takes care of Him…In the Old Testament it is prophesied that the Lord Jesus would grow up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry ground. Think how often the Father intervened to save Jesus from the devil who wished to slay Him. The Father is the One who cared for the Vine, and He will care for the branches, too. – J. Vernon McGee • In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root. – Paul Tsongas • Incorrect assumptions lie at the root of every failure. Have the courage to test your assumptions. – Brian Tracy • Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character. – Gregory Maguire • Industry is the root of all ugliness.- Oscar Wilde • Is where you’re from the place you’re leaving or where you have roots? – Sara Gruen • It is necessary not only to relieve the gravest needs but to go to their roots, proposing measures that will give social, political and economic structures a more equitable and solidaristic configuration. – Pope Benedict XVI • It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn’t just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that’s one thing the government schools do very well. – Llewellyn Rockwell • I’ve also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament – it was about 1982 – they called it Peace Sunday. – Jackson Browne • I’ve grown certain that the root of all fear is that we’ve been forced to deny who we are. – Frances Moore Lappé • Just as a tree, though cut down, can grow again and again if its roots are undamaged and strong, in the same way if the roots of craving are not wholly uprooted sorrows will come again and again – Gautama Buddha • Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out, suffering springs up again and again. – Gautama Buddha • kindnesses have wings and roots … wings that never droop, and roots that never die. – Mary Louisa Molesworth • Land is a nation’s basis for existence. The nation has its roots like those of a tree deep in the country’s soil whence it derives its nourishment and life. There is no people that can live without land, as there is no tree which can live hanging in air. – Corneliu Zelea Codreanu • Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it. – Plato • Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root. – John Owen • Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder. – Carl Sandburg • Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties. When the wind blows hard on a tree, the roots stretch and grow the stronger, Let it be so with us. Let us not be weaklings, yielding to every wind that blows, but strong in spirit to resist. – Amy Carmichael • Life is like a tree and its root is consciousness. Therefore, once we tend the root, the tree as a whole will be healthy. – Deepak Chopra • Life is uncertain. Eternity is not. Unforgiveness cannot be allowed to last another day. Are you holding a grudge? You will never be more like God than when you forgive. Let it go. Kill the root of bitterness. Let the hurt go and set yourself free. – Craig Groeschel • Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us. – Mark Nepo • Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being. – Victor Hugo • Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. – Mark Rothko • Metaphor is our mental root of imagination and language. Arnold Kozak offers fertile metaphors for growing your knowledge of the Buddhadharma. If you contemplate these brief stories, your emotional intelligence and mindfulness will develop effortlessly from the insights they provide. – Polly Young-Eisendrath • Modern societies accepted the treasures and the power offered them by science. But they have not accepted – they have scarcely even heard – its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a complete break with the animist tradition, the definitive abandonment of the ‘old covenant’, the necessity of forging a new one. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself. – Jacques Monod • My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, – happier if it needed no help of mine, – this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned. – John Ruskin • My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil. – Ray Charles • My roots and Victor’s are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they’re tremendously exciting players. – Chico Hamilton • Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can’t hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms. – R. Buckminster Fuller • No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. – Amelia Earhart • No one comes from the earth like grass. We come like trees. We all have roots. – Maya Angelou • No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. – Carl Jung • O, You who are ever giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, You are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. – Hildegard of Bingen • Once the seed of faith takes root, it cannot be blown away, even by the strongest wind – Now that’s a blessing. – Rumi • Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know its nature. To love money is to known and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. – Ayn Rand • Our life depends on others so much that at the root of our existence is a fundamental need for love. That is why it is good to cultivate an authentic sense of responsibility and concern for the welfare of others. – Dalai Lama • Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. – William James • Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas. – Jacob Needleman • Paul spoke about the root of faith (Eph 2:8). James spoke about the fruit of faith (Jm 2:17-18). – Adrian Rogers • Perhaps this is the root of all evil, that gardeners are not put in charge of our schools. – Helen DeWitt • Refusal to accept the flow of the world is the root of all misery. – Devdutt Pattanaik • Remember, the political idea being expressed a year ago was that because the GOP interpreted its 1994 mandate as a call to budget-balancing austerity, the electorate would never give the White House to the GOP if its nominee was also a root-canal austerian. – Jude Wanniski • Remember, we without our roots and branches cannot be saved. – Quentin L. CookReturn to the root and you will find the meaning. – Sengcan • Roots are nice, but a tree can’t run. – Andrew Vachss • Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you. – Isabel Allende • Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away. – Charles W. Chesnutt • Shallow breathing is the root of all evil but conscious deep breathing restores and secures our souls. – Desmond Green • Since being a Jew not only means that I bear within me a catastrophe that occurred yesterday and cannot be ruled out for tomorrow, it is-beyond being a duty-also fear. Every morning when I get up I can read the Auschwitz number on my forearm, something that touches the deepest and most closely intertwined roots of my existence; indeed I am not even sure if this is not my entire existence. Then I feel approximately as I did back then when I got a taste of the first blow from a policeman’s fist. Every day anew I lose my trust in the world. – Jean Amery • Slavery has become so engrafted into the policy of the Southern States, that it cannot be eradicated without tearing up by the roots their happiness, tranquillity, and prosperity. – William Loughton Smith • So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. – Henry David Thoreau • So we took out those 3 root canals when she had 3-6 months to live. And that was 6 years ago, and she is still alive today, and MRI can’t find the tumour anymore. It went away. – Hal Huggins • Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. – John Steinbeck • Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises. – Gary Gygax • Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. – Rumi • States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them – Niccolo Machiavelli • Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. – George Herbert • Storms make trees take deeper roots. – Dolly Parton • Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully realized self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual’s worth by his or her external achievements. We admire achievements-in ourselves and others-and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But that is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve. – Nathaniel Branden • Temperance is a tree which as for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace. – Gautama Buddha • The average man can’t prove most of the things that he chooses to speak of, and still won’t research and find out the root of the truth that you seek of – Damian Marley • The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It’s better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues. – Willie Dixon • The Death of Money is an engrossing account of the massive stresses accumulating in the global financial system, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. Jim Rickards is a natural teacher. Any serious student of financial crises and their root causes needs to read this book. – John H. Makin • The deep root of failure in our lives is to think, ‘Oh how useless and powerless I am.’ It is essential to think strongly and forcefully, ‘I can do it,’ without boasting or fretting. – Dalai Lama • The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will… An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. – William James • The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one’s bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God. – Innocent of Alaska • The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. – Denis Waitley • The growth of all the plants of the garden from seeds and roots keep us mindful, in accordance with of the Parable of the Sower, of the need for our loving, mortified reception and cultivation in our hearts and souls of the seeds and roots of the supernatural gifts and virtues necessary for progress in the ascetical/mystical ascent of our souls toward union with God and with the divine will for Creation and Kingdom – John Stokes • The hidden so-called scholars of old did not hide themselves and refuse to be seen. They did not close the door on their words and refuse to let them out. They did not shut away their wisdom and refuse to share it. But those times were all haywire. If it had been possible for them to act, they could have done great things, bringing all to Oneness without any sign of doing so. However, the times were not favorable and it was not possible, so they put down deep roots, remained still and waited. this was the Tao by which they survived. – Zhuangzi • The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. – Paul Farmer • The lack of money is the root of all evil. – Mark Twain • The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. – Bodhidharma • The moment God put a dream in your heart, the moment the promise took root, God not only started it, but He set a completion date. – Joel Osteen • The noble must make humility his root. – Laozi • The organizer of industry who thinks he has ‘made’ himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order – a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin. – Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse • The pain that comes from deep love makes your love more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root. – Henri Nouwen • The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired. – Michael Lewis • The problem is that many bitter people don’t know they are bitter. since they are so convinced that they are right, they can’t see their own wrong in the mirror. And the longer the root of bitterness grows, the more difficult it is to remove. – Craig Groeschel • The revolt of the poet is invariably conservative at its roots. … Not politically conservative, but imaginatively conservative, with a profound regard for what is given, as earth or air, sun or moon or stars, or the dreams of man. – Cid Corman • The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. – Jean Klein • The root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good. – Oswald Chambers • The root of compassion, is compassion for oneself. – Pema Chodron • The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. – Sam Keen • The root of suffering is attachment – Gautama Buddha • The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present. – Erich Fromm • The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness. – Dalai Lama • The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. – Aristotle • The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, ‘The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.’ – David Brooks • The root-trouble of the present distress is that the Church has more faith in the world and the flesh than in the Holy Ghost. – Samuel Chadwick • The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. – Thomas Merton • The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling–even compelling–us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices! – Margaret Starbird • The ten thousand things flourish and then each returns to the root from which it came. Returning to the root is stillness. Through stillness each fulfils its destiny. – Laozi • The therapist does not treat patients by simply giving them another set of beliefs. He or she tries to help them see which kinds of ideas and beliefs have led to their suffering. Many patients want to get rid of their painful feelings, but they do not want to get rid of their beliefs, the viewpoints that are the very roots of their feelings. – Nhat Hanh • The tree of love its roots hath spread Deep in my heart, and rears its head; Rich are its fruits: they joy dispense; Transport the heart, and ravish sense. In love’s sweet swoon to thee I cleave, Bless’d source of love. – Francis of Assisi • The true penance comes when God takes away the soul’s health and strength for doing penance. Even though I have mentioned elsewhere the great pain this lack causes, the pain is much more intense here. All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted. – Teresa of Avila • The word relationship is beautiful. The original meaning of the root from which the word to relate comes is exactly the same as to respond. Relationship comes from that word respond. If you have any image of your wife or husband, you cannot respond, and hence relate, to the truth of the person. And we all go on carrying images. – Rajneesh • The word ‘vegetable’ has no precise botanical meaning in reference to food plants, and we find that almost all parts of plants have been employed as vegetables – roots (carrot and beet), stems (Irish potato and asparagus), leaves (spinach and lettuce), leaf stalk (celery and Swiss chard), bracts (globe artichoke), flower stalks and buds (broccoli and cauliflower), fruits (tomato and squash), seeds (beans), and even the petals (Yucca and pumpkin). – Charles Heiser • The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing … Only when our feet learn once again how to walk in a sacred manner, and our hearts hear the real music of creation, can we bring the world back into balance. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee • There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. …The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important. – Eknath Easwaran • There are two great systems in the body of man: the tree of life, which is the arterial with its roots in the heart; and, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. the nervous system, which has its roots in the brain. These two “trees” are physical manifestations of a complicated network of branching energy currents in the aura or superphysical bodies. – Manly Hall • There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression. – John Woolman • There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That’s what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place. – Sergei Lukyanenko • They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there. – Mike Schmidt • Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat. – John of Damascus • Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth. – William Butler Yeats • To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots. – Richard Mabey • To kill the grass you must also remove the root – Pol Pot • To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them – the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are – in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky – we love them. – Henry Ward Beecher • To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them – the whole leaf and root tribe. – Henry Ward Beecher • To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means ‘common.’) – Robin Lakoff • Tofu is the root of all evil, and there’s only one thing that can change a man’s mind, and that’s a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip. – Robert Downey, Jr. • Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder. – Philip Gulley • Truth will never come into our minds so long as there will remain the faintest shadow of Ahamkâra (egotism). All of you should try to root out this devil from your heart. Complete self-surrender is the only way to spiritual illumination. – Swami Vivekananda • Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. – Barack Obama • Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood – and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. – Pablo Neruda • War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you. – Frank Herbert • We also have a tendency to root for the fugitive. We’re always on the side of the animal being chased. – Norman Jewison • We are all born as animals and live the life that animals live: we sleep, eat, reproduce, and fight. There is, however, another order of living, which the animals do not know, that of awe before the mystery of being … that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days. That is the birth – the Virgin Birth – in the heart of a properly human, spiritual life. – Joseph Campbell • We are often indifferent to our brethren who are distressed or upset, on the grounds that they are in this state through no fault of ours. The Doctor of souls, however, wishing to root out the soul’s excuses from the heart, tells us to leave our gift and to be reconciled not only if we happen to be upset by our brother, but also if he is upset by us, whether justly or unjustly; only when we have healed the breach through our apology should we offer our gift. – John Cassian • We cannot afford the still-birth of new ideas that lack the life force that comes from the depths. We are called to return to the root of our being where the sacred is born. Then, standing in both the inner and outer worlds, we will find our self to be part of the momentous synchronicity of life giving birth to itself. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee • We have our roots in country, and that’s our foundation, but we pull from a lot. – Dave Haywood • We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair. – Gabrielle Giffords • We must alert and organise the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. – Jacques Yves Cousteau • We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open, hearty behavior, show, condescension, popularity, and toleration of their prejudices, which we shall at leisure root out and dispel. – Adam Weishaupt • We need to discover the root causes of success rather than the root causes of failure. – David Cooperrider • We should embrace our immigrant roots and recognize that newcomers to our land are not part of the problem, they are part of the solution. – Roger Mahony • We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. – Donald Knuth • What I’ve found is that country doesn’t refer to where you grew up as much as where your heart grows down, where it takes root. Country is a state of mind. I believe what ultimately defines being country is simple: a loving heart, a helping hand, an open mind, poor in spirit. – Clay Walker • What makes the strength of the soldier isn’t the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it’s the strength he’s able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered. That Maori player was like a tree, a great indestructible oak with deep roots and a powerful radiance- everyone could feel it. And yet you also got the impression that the great oak could fly, that it would be as quick as the wind, despite, or perhaps because of, its deep roots. – Muriel Barbery • Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from. – Charles Olson • When the doubters tell you it can’t be done and all kind of tragedies will come your way, I say nonsense. If you can get to the very root of who you are and make something happen from it, my sense tells me you are going to surprise yourself. – Vidal Sassoon • When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world’s thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain. – Robinson Jeffers • When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow. – Carl Jung • When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being – you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate – you have found your roots. – Rajneesh • Where there is no fruit, there may be no root. – Sam Storms • Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God. – Lucy Larcom • Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of a whole which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future. – Maria Montessori • Without ambition no conquests are made, and no business created. Ambition is the root of all achievement. – James A. Champy • Woman is the root of all evil. – St. Jerome • Wonderful songwriting, beautiful production, and deeply rooted in what makes American Roots Music great: Deep Southern Pain. It’s the hurt that brings the songs, and it’s the songs that heal the hurt. Jonathan’s songs bring us there, and back. Check this record out, it’s a good ‘un. – Mary Gauthier • You are the root of heaven, the morning star, the bright moon, the house of endless Love – Rumi • You can’t have the fruits without the roots. – Stephen Covey • You don’t need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don’t forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there. – Eckhart Tolle • You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • You have to know what’s happening in the locker rooms, you have to know what’s happening at the grass-roots level. That’s the best way to work. – Jacques Rogge • You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I’m lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you. – Mark Z. Danielewski • You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I’d plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I’d ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you. – Anna Akhmatova

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[equitiesstocks]

Roots Quotes

Official Website: Roots Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); • A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. – Marcus Garvey • A person with faith does not question its roots, for he knows that if he subjected it to the critical examination of his intellect, he would end up without faith. The same thing can be said of any feeling. You can analyze any feeling to death, but when you do that, you end up without feeling and without a meaninful life. – Alexander Lowen • A real foolproof way to do it is play your stuff by hook or by crook and build up a grass roots following – Duncan Sheik • A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.- Amelia Earhart • A singular fact about modern war is that it takes charge. Once begun it has to be carried to its conclusion, and carrying it there sets in motion events that may be beyond men’s control. Doing what has to be done to win, men perform acts that alter the very soil in which society’s roots are nourished. – Bruce Catton • A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future. – Pope Francis • A tree is a self: it is ‘unseen shaping’ more than it is leaves or bark, roots or cellulose or fruit … What this means is that we must address trees as we must address all things, confronting them in the awareness that we are in the presence of numinous mystery. – Brian Swimme • A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one. – Elizabeth Moon • A tree nowhere offers a straight line or a regular curve, but who doubts that root, trunk, boughs, and leaves embody geometry? – George Iles • A tree root won’t get into your sewer line unless there’s something already wrong with your sewer line. I know most people don’t want to hear that, but it’s true – Thomas J. Hylton • A tree with strong roots can withstand the most violent storm, but the tree can’t grow roots just as the storm appears on the horizon.- Dalai Lama • A tree without roots is just a piece of wood. – Marco Pierre White • Amid all change, we desire something permanent; amid all variety, something stable; amid all progress, some central unity of life; something which deepens as we ascend; which roots itself as we advance; which grows more and more tenacious of the old, while becoming more and more open to the new. – James Freeman Clarke • Among the great struggles of man-good/evil, reason/unreason, etc.-there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey. – Salman Rushdie • An illuminating read for every classical scholar engaged with the current quest for the subject’s roots, and the excavation of the way that it has evolved over the past century and a half. – Edith Hall • Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world… the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity. – Albert Einstein • Are you becoming more sweet-spirited, more like Jesus? Are you looking soberly in the mirror each day and praying, ‘Lord, I want to conform to Your image in every area of my life’? Or has your bitterness taken root, turning into rebellion and hardness of heart? Have you learned to shield yourself from the convicting voice of God’s Spirit? – David Wilkerson • Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence. – Robert Henri • As a tree, even though it has been cut down, is firm so long as its root is safe, and grows again, thus, unless the feeders of thirst are destroyed, the pain (of life) will return again and again. – Max Muller • At root, a pearl is a ‘disturbance’ a beauty caused by something that isn’t supposed to be there, about which something needs to be done. It is the interruption of equilibrium that creates beauty. Beauty is a response to provocation, to intrusion. … The pearl’s beauty is made as a result of insult. – Julia Cameron • At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means. – Jamake Highwater • Audrey Auld is a great singer songwriter. She holds a unique place in contemporary Americana/Roots music. I believe that this uniqueness is largely due to the fact that she is Australian. This affords her a totally different attitude as an artist than traditional American contributors to this genre. Audrey is one of the most honest original artists I know. – Fred Eaglesmith

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'roots', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_roots').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_roots img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Becoming rich isn’t as much about getting rich financially as about whom you become, in character and mind, to get rich. I want to share a secret with you that few people know: the fastest way to get rich and stay rich is to work on developing you! The idea is to grow yourself into a successful person. Again, your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world. You are the root; your results are the fruits. – T. Harv Eker • Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. Trust is real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being. – Rajneesh • Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with metry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quiet in the night; The shaking of its leafy head Has given the waves their melody, And made my lips and music wed, Murmuring a wizard song for thee. – William Butler Yeats • But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish desires and schemes that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For love of money is the root of all of evil and some having pursued its power, fall from faith and end in sorrow. – Saint Timothy • But we need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for that they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts pleasing to God. – Jerry Bridges • Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I’ll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I’ll be re-formed as apple blossom. I’ll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family’s shoes. They’ll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then? – Jenny Downham • Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots. – Victor Hugo • Charity is the form, mover, mother and root of all the virtues. – Thomas Aquinas • Choices are at the root of every one of your results. – Darren Hardy • Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all stem from the same Abrahamic roots. All three reject terrorism. – H. John Poole • Civilization has its roots in the soil. – Charles Kellogg • Courage lies in being oneself, in showing complete independence, in loving what one loves, in discovering the deep roots of one’s feelings. – Fernand Pouillon • Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen. – Epictetus • Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is ‘to fit together’ and we all do this every day.- Corita Kent • Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots. – Frank A. Clark • Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light. – Theodore Roethke • dive for dreams or a slogan may topple you (trees are their roots and wind is wind) trust your heart if the seas catch fire (and live by love though the stars walk backward) honour the past but welcome the future (and dance your death away at this wedding) never mind a world with its villains or heroes (for god likes girls and tomorrow and the earth) – e. e. cummings • Do you know that the words meditation and medicine come from the same root? Meditation is a kind of medicine; its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation, then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Only when you are meditative twenty-four hours a day then can you attain, then you have attained. Even sleeping is meditation. – Rajneesh • Do you know, that is the root of the whole trouble – has been one of the roots at any rate – is people hearing things and then imagining some more and magnifying it and multiplying it.- John Harvey Kellogg • Don’t over-analyze your marriage; it’s like yanking up a fragile indoor plant every 20 minutes to see how its roots are growing. – Ogden Nash • Don’t put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family’s life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn’t move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer. – Arthur Hailey • Drawing is the root of everything. – Vincent Van Gogh • Duality is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political, or social conviction may contain us. We have to abandon such concepts as ‘enlightenment’, ‘the nature of the mind’, and so on, until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence. – Namkhai Norbu • Every forest branch moves differently in the breeze, but as they sway they connect at the roots. – Rumi • Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject’s roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. – Henry James, Sr. • Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And – when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening – nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. – William Shakespeare • Fear is the root of all courage. – Vivian Stanshall • Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. – George Washington Carver • For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks. – Friedrich Nietzsche • For our personal advancement in virtue and truth one quality is sufficient, namely, love; to advance humanity there must be two, love and intelligence; to accomplish the Great Work there must be three love, intelligence, and activity. And yet love is ever the root and the source. – Louis Claude de Saint-Martin • For this purpose was I born, let all virtuous people understand. I was born to advance righteousness, to emancipate the good, and to destroy all evil-doers root and branch. – Guru Gobind Singh • Forgiveness of sin strikes the root of all pain. – T. B. Joshua • Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth. – Liu Xiaobo • From a family tree that has healthy roots, there emerge hearty leaves and most beautiful fruits. – Wes Fesler • General principles… are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay. – Dalai Lama • Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. – Jonas Salk • How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the female with females. – Richard von Krafft-Ebing • How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold. – William Wordsworth • Human hopes and human creeds; have their root in human needs. – Eugene Fitch Ware • Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil. – Andrew Murray • I am proud of my black roots and of the black blood that runs in my veins. – Ryan Giggs • I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’ – George Thorndike Angell • I believe it is important for the university to always remember its roots. – Michael N. Castle • I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to lie in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not overanxious about your own comic fallibilities; that gives you tranquility without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself. – Hugh Walpole • I believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions.- Graham Hancock • I came into the world charged with the duty to uphold the right in every place, to destroy sin and evil… the only reason I took birth was to see that righteousness may flourish, that good may live, and tyrants be torn out by their roots. – Guru Gobind Singh • I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.- Ayn Rand • I can’t multiply myself out of a paper bag. But when it comes to roots, I’m your man. – Jerry Newport • I don’t claim to know an over-arching ‘Meaning of Life,’ but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence. – David G. McAfee • I feel like I’m a fighter. I’ve fought my whole life to get to where I’m at. I like fight movies. When someone gets knocked down, I like to root for him to succeed. – Ricky Schroder • I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go. – Elif Safak • I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the mastersMichelangelo, Czanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican. – Diego Rivera • I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. – John Muir • I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. – James Wolcott • I think it is important to maintain your personality, your roots, very important. – Paz Vega • I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog. – Judd Apatow • I view Witchcraft as a religion that has evolved over the centuries. I do not consider Witchcraft to be a modern invention. Instead I deal with it in my writings as a Mystery Tradition with long roots to the past. It has always been my position that we don’t need an ancient tradition in order to be validated. We just happen to have one. – Raven Grimassi • I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy. Democrats have strong moral values. Frankly, my moral values are offended by some of the things I hear on programs like “Rush Limbaugh,” and we don’t have to put up with that. – Howard Dean • If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. – John F. Kennedy • If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us. – Wayne Muller • If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose. – Sean O’Casey • If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down. – Paul Hawken • Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. – Plato • I’ll never forget where I’m from, never forget my roots. It doesn’t matter where I live. I’m English, simple as that. – David Beckham • I’m convinced that FEAR is at the root, of all bad writing – Stephen King • Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes a cosmological tree, the tree which epitomises a universe, which makes a universe. – Gaston Bachelard • In almost every musical ever written, there’s a place that’s usually about the third song of the evening – sometimes it’s the second, sometimes it’s the fourth, but it’s quite early – and the leading lady usually sits down on something; sometimes it’s a tree stump in Brigadoon, sometimes it’s under the pillars of Covent Garden in My Fair Lady, or it’s a trash can in Little Shop of Horrors… but the leading lady sits down on something and sings about what she wants in life. And the audience falls in love with her and then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night. – Howard Ashman • In an old song the Mother sings: ‘My sleeping is my dreaming, my dreaming is my thinking, my thinking is my wisdom.’ She is the bed we are born in, in which we sleep and dream, where we are healed, love and die. In her wisdom we remember day’s broken images and carry them down into dreams where their motions roll into shadows and root, growing into stories. – Meinrad Craighead • In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us – that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it. – Brennan Manning • In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it’s what’s under the ground that creates what’s above the ground. That’s why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile. You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow’s fruits. But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots. – T. Harv Eker • In spite of my great admiration for individual splendid talents I do not accept the star system. Collective creative effort is the root of our kind of art. That requires ensemble acting and whoever mars that ensemble is committing a crime not only against his comrades but also against the very art of which he is the servant. – Constantin Stanislavski • In the NFL game today, there are a lot of better athletes than I am, and quarterbacks these days are faster than the quarterbacks have always been, they’re running like crazy. But I kind of stick to my roots of the disciplined quarterback. You know, I’m doing the same routine every week, studying tapes and working hard, getting ready to play and making good decisions on Sundays. – Peyton Manning • In the Old Testament…God is the owner of the vineyard. Here He is the Keeper, the Farmer, the One who takes care of the vineyard. Jesus is the genuine Vine, and the Father takes care of Him…In the Old Testament it is prophesied that the Lord Jesus would grow up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry ground. Think how often the Father intervened to save Jesus from the devil who wished to slay Him. The Father is the One who cared for the Vine, and He will care for the branches, too. – J. Vernon McGee • In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root. – Paul Tsongas • Incorrect assumptions lie at the root of every failure. Have the courage to test your assumptions. – Brian Tracy • Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character. – Gregory Maguire • Industry is the root of all ugliness.- Oscar Wilde • Is where you’re from the place you’re leaving or where you have roots? – Sara Gruen • It is necessary not only to relieve the gravest needs but to go to their roots, proposing measures that will give social, political and economic structures a more equitable and solidaristic configuration. – Pope Benedict XVI • It isn’t a coincidence that governments everywhere want to educate children. Government education, in turn, is supposed to be evidence of the state’s goodness and its concern for our well-being. The real explanation is less flattering. If the government’s propaganda can take root as children grow up, those kids will be no threat to the state apparatus. They’ll fasten the chains to their own ankles. H.L. Mencken once said that the state doesn’t just want to make you obey. It tries to make you want to obey. And that’s one thing the government schools do very well. – Llewellyn Rockwell • I’ve also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament – it was about 1982 – they called it Peace Sunday. – Jackson Browne • I’ve grown certain that the root of all fear is that we’ve been forced to deny who we are. – Frances Moore Lappé • Just as a tree, though cut down, can grow again and again if its roots are undamaged and strong, in the same way if the roots of craving are not wholly uprooted sorrows will come again and again – Gautama Buddha • Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out, suffering springs up again and again. – Gautama Buddha • kindnesses have wings and roots … wings that never droop, and roots that never die. – Mary Louisa Molesworth • Land is a nation’s basis for existence. The nation has its roots like those of a tree deep in the country’s soil whence it derives its nourishment and life. There is no people that can live without land, as there is no tree which can live hanging in air. – Corneliu Zelea Codreanu • Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it. – Plato • Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root. – John Owen • Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder. – Carl Sandburg • Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties. When the wind blows hard on a tree, the roots stretch and grow the stronger, Let it be so with us. Let us not be weaklings, yielding to every wind that blows, but strong in spirit to resist. – Amy Carmichael • Life is like a tree and its root is consciousness. Therefore, once we tend the root, the tree as a whole will be healthy. – Deepak Chopra • Life is uncertain. Eternity is not. Unforgiveness cannot be allowed to last another day. Are you holding a grudge? You will never be more like God than when you forgive. Let it go. Kill the root of bitterness. Let the hurt go and set yourself free. – Craig Groeschel • Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us. – Mark Nepo • Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being. – Victor Hugo • Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. – Mark Rothko • Metaphor is our mental root of imagination and language. Arnold Kozak offers fertile metaphors for growing your knowledge of the Buddhadharma. If you contemplate these brief stories, your emotional intelligence and mindfulness will develop effortlessly from the insights they provide. – Polly Young-Eisendrath • Modern societies accepted the treasures and the power offered them by science. But they have not accepted – they have scarcely even heard – its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a complete break with the animist tradition, the definitive abandonment of the ‘old covenant’, the necessity of forging a new one. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself. – Jacques Monod • My entire delight was in observing without being myself noticed,- if I could have been invisible, all the better. . . to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it, and help it if I could, – happier if it needed no help of mine, – this was the essential love of Nature in me, this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light of all that I have rightly learned. – John Ruskin • My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil. – Ray Charles • My roots and Victor’s are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they’re tremendously exciting players. – Chico Hamilton • Nature does have manure and she does have roots as well as blossoms, and you can’t hate the manure and blame the roots for not being blossoms. – R. Buckminster Fuller • No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. – Amelia Earhart • No one comes from the earth like grass. We come like trees. We all have roots. – Maya Angelou • No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. – Carl Jung • O, You who are ever giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, You are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. – Hildegard of Bingen • Once the seed of faith takes root, it cannot be blown away, even by the strongest wind – Now that’s a blessing. – Rumi • Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know its nature. To love money is to known and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. – Ayn Rand • Our life depends on others so much that at the root of our existence is a fundamental need for love. That is why it is good to cultivate an authentic sense of responsibility and concern for the welfare of others. – Dalai Lama • Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. – William James • Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas. – Jacob Needleman • Paul spoke about the root of faith (Eph 2:8). James spoke about the fruit of faith (Jm 2:17-18). – Adrian Rogers • Perhaps this is the root of all evil, that gardeners are not put in charge of our schools. – Helen DeWitt • Refusal to accept the flow of the world is the root of all misery. – Devdutt Pattanaik • Remember, the political idea being expressed a year ago was that because the GOP interpreted its 1994 mandate as a call to budget-balancing austerity, the electorate would never give the White House to the GOP if its nominee was also a root-canal austerian. – Jude Wanniski • Remember, we without our roots and branches cannot be saved. – Quentin L. CookReturn to the root and you will find the meaning. – Sengcan • Roots are nice, but a tree can’t run. – Andrew Vachss • Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are inside you. – Isabel Allende • Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away. – Charles W. Chesnutt • Shallow breathing is the root of all evil but conscious deep breathing restores and secures our souls. – Desmond Green • Since being a Jew not only means that I bear within me a catastrophe that occurred yesterday and cannot be ruled out for tomorrow, it is-beyond being a duty-also fear. Every morning when I get up I can read the Auschwitz number on my forearm, something that touches the deepest and most closely intertwined roots of my existence; indeed I am not even sure if this is not my entire existence. Then I feel approximately as I did back then when I got a taste of the first blow from a policeman’s fist. Every day anew I lose my trust in the world. – Jean Amery • Slavery has become so engrafted into the policy of the Southern States, that it cannot be eradicated without tearing up by the roots their happiness, tranquillity, and prosperity. – William Loughton Smith • So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. – Henry David Thoreau • So we took out those 3 root canals when she had 3-6 months to live. And that was 6 years ago, and she is still alive today, and MRI can’t find the tumour anymore. It went away. – Hal Huggins • Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. – John Steinbeck • Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises. – Gary Gygax • Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. – Rumi • States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them – Niccolo Machiavelli • Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. – George Herbert • Storms make trees take deeper roots. – Dolly Parton • Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully realized self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual’s worth by his or her external achievements. We admire achievements-in ourselves and others-and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But that is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve. – Nathaniel Branden • Temperance is a tree which as for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace. – Gautama Buddha • The average man can’t prove most of the things that he chooses to speak of, and still won’t research and find out the root of the truth that you seek of – Damian Marley • The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It’s better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues. – Willie Dixon • The Death of Money is an engrossing account of the massive stresses accumulating in the global financial system, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. Jim Rickards is a natural teacher. Any serious student of financial crises and their root causes needs to read this book. – John H. Makin • The deep root of failure in our lives is to think, ‘Oh how useless and powerless I am.’ It is essential to think strongly and forcefully, ‘I can do it,’ without boasting or fretting. – Dalai Lama • The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will… An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. – William James • The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one’s bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God. – Innocent of Alaska • The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. – Denis Waitley • The growth of all the plants of the garden from seeds and roots keep us mindful, in accordance with of the Parable of the Sower, of the need for our loving, mortified reception and cultivation in our hearts and souls of the seeds and roots of the supernatural gifts and virtues necessary for progress in the ascetical/mystical ascent of our souls toward union with God and with the divine will for Creation and Kingdom – John Stokes • The hidden so-called scholars of old did not hide themselves and refuse to be seen. They did not close the door on their words and refuse to let them out. They did not shut away their wisdom and refuse to share it. But those times were all haywire. If it had been possible for them to act, they could have done great things, bringing all to Oneness without any sign of doing so. However, the times were not favorable and it was not possible, so they put down deep roots, remained still and waited. this was the Tao by which they survived. – Zhuangzi • The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. – Paul Farmer • The lack of money is the root of all evil. – Mark Twain • The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. – Bodhidharma • The moment God put a dream in your heart, the moment the promise took root, God not only started it, but He set a completion date. – Joel Osteen • The noble must make humility his root. – Laozi • The organizer of industry who thinks he has ‘made’ himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order – a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin. – Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse • The pain that comes from deep love makes your love more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root. – Henri Nouwen • The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired. – Michael Lewis • The problem is that many bitter people don’t know they are bitter. since they are so convinced that they are right, they can’t see their own wrong in the mirror. And the longer the root of bitterness grows, the more difficult it is to remove. – Craig Groeschel • The revolt of the poet is invariably conservative at its roots. … Not politically conservative, but imaginatively conservative, with a profound regard for what is given, as earth or air, sun or moon or stars, or the dreams of man. – Cid Corman • The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. – Jean Klein • The root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good. – Oswald Chambers • The root of compassion, is compassion for oneself. – Pema Chodron • The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. – Sam Keen • The root of suffering is attachment – Gautama Buddha • The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present. – Erich Fromm • The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness. – Dalai Lama • The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. – Aristotle • The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, ‘The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.’ – David Brooks • The root-trouble of the present distress is that the Church has more faith in the world and the flesh than in the Holy Ghost. – Samuel Chadwick • The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world. – Thomas Merton • The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling–even compelling–us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices! – Margaret Starbird • The ten thousand things flourish and then each returns to the root from which it came. Returning to the root is stillness. Through stillness each fulfils its destiny. – Laozi • The therapist does not treat patients by simply giving them another set of beliefs. He or she tries to help them see which kinds of ideas and beliefs have led to their suffering. Many patients want to get rid of their painful feelings, but they do not want to get rid of their beliefs, the viewpoints that are the very roots of their feelings. – Nhat Hanh • The tree of love its roots hath spread Deep in my heart, and rears its head; Rich are its fruits: they joy dispense; Transport the heart, and ravish sense. In love’s sweet swoon to thee I cleave, Bless’d source of love. – Francis of Assisi • The true penance comes when God takes away the soul’s health and strength for doing penance. Even though I have mentioned elsewhere the great pain this lack causes, the pain is much more intense here. All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted. – Teresa of Avila • The word relationship is beautiful. The original meaning of the root from which the word to relate comes is exactly the same as to respond. Relationship comes from that word respond. If you have any image of your wife or husband, you cannot respond, and hence relate, to the truth of the person. And we all go on carrying images. – Rajneesh • The word ‘vegetable’ has no precise botanical meaning in reference to food plants, and we find that almost all parts of plants have been employed as vegetables – roots (carrot and beet), stems (Irish potato and asparagus), leaves (spinach and lettuce), leaf stalk (celery and Swiss chard), bracts (globe artichoke), flower stalks and buds (broccoli and cauliflower), fruits (tomato and squash), seeds (beans), and even the petals (Yucca and pumpkin). – Charles Heiser • The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing … Only when our feet learn once again how to walk in a sacred manner, and our hearts hear the real music of creation, can we bring the world back into balance. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee • There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. …The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important. – Eknath Easwaran • There are two great systems in the body of man: the tree of life, which is the arterial with its roots in the heart; and, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. the nervous system, which has its roots in the brain. These two “trees” are physical manifestations of a complicated network of branching energy currents in the aura or superphysical bodies. – Manly Hall • There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression. – John Woolman • There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That’s what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place. – Sergei Lukyanenko • They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there. – Mike Schmidt • Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat. – John of Damascus • Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth. – William Butler Yeats • To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots. – Richard Mabey • To kill the grass you must also remove the root – Pol Pot • To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them – the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are – in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky – we love them. – Henry Ward Beecher • To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them – the whole leaf and root tribe. – Henry Ward Beecher • To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means ‘common.’) – Robin Lakoff • Tofu is the root of all evil, and there’s only one thing that can change a man’s mind, and that’s a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip. – Robert Downey, Jr. • Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder. – Philip Gulley • Truth will never come into our minds so long as there will remain the faintest shadow of Ahamkâra (egotism). All of you should try to root out this devil from your heart. Complete self-surrender is the only way to spiritual illumination. – Swami Vivekananda • Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. – Barack Obama • Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood – and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. – Pablo Neruda • War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you. – Frank Herbert • We also have a tendency to root for the fugitive. We’re always on the side of the animal being chased. – Norman Jewison • We are all born as animals and live the life that animals live: we sleep, eat, reproduce, and fight. There is, however, another order of living, which the animals do not know, that of awe before the mystery of being … that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days. That is the birth – the Virgin Birth – in the heart of a properly human, spiritual life. – Joseph Campbell • We are often indifferent to our brethren who are distressed or upset, on the grounds that they are in this state through no fault of ours. The Doctor of souls, however, wishing to root out the soul’s excuses from the heart, tells us to leave our gift and to be reconciled not only if we happen to be upset by our brother, but also if he is upset by us, whether justly or unjustly; only when we have healed the breach through our apology should we offer our gift. – John Cassian • We cannot afford the still-birth of new ideas that lack the life force that comes from the depths. We are called to return to the root of our being where the sacred is born. Then, standing in both the inner and outer worlds, we will find our self to be part of the momentous synchronicity of life giving birth to itself. – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee • We have our roots in country, and that’s our foundation, but we pull from a lot. – Dave Haywood • We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair. – Gabrielle Giffords • We must alert and organise the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. – Jacques Yves Cousteau • We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open, hearty behavior, show, condescension, popularity, and toleration of their prejudices, which we shall at leisure root out and dispel. – Adam Weishaupt • We need to discover the root causes of success rather than the root causes of failure. – David Cooperrider • We should embrace our immigrant roots and recognize that newcomers to our land are not part of the problem, they are part of the solution. – Roger Mahony • We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. – Donald Knuth • What I’ve found is that country doesn’t refer to where you grew up as much as where your heart grows down, where it takes root. Country is a state of mind. I believe what ultimately defines being country is simple: a loving heart, a helping hand, an open mind, poor in spirit. – Clay Walker • What makes the strength of the soldier isn’t the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it’s the strength he’s able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered. That Maori player was like a tree, a great indestructible oak with deep roots and a powerful radiance- everyone could feel it. And yet you also got the impression that the great oak could fly, that it would be as quick as the wind, despite, or perhaps because of, its deep roots. – Muriel Barbery • Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from. – Charles Olson • When the doubters tell you it can’t be done and all kind of tragedies will come your way, I say nonsense. If you can get to the very root of who you are and make something happen from it, my sense tells me you are going to surprise yourself. – Vidal Sassoon • When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world’s thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain. – Robinson Jeffers • When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow. – Carl Jung • When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no longer an ordinary human being – you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no longer separate – you have found your roots. – Rajneesh • Where there is no fruit, there may be no root. – Sam Storms • Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God. – Lucy Larcom • Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of a whole which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future. – Maria Montessori • Without ambition no conquests are made, and no business created. Ambition is the root of all achievement. – James A. Champy • Woman is the root of all evil. – St. Jerome • Wonderful songwriting, beautiful production, and deeply rooted in what makes American Roots Music great: Deep Southern Pain. It’s the hurt that brings the songs, and it’s the songs that heal the hurt. Jonathan’s songs bring us there, and back. Check this record out, it’s a good ‘un. – Mary Gauthier • You are the root of heaven, the morning star, the bright moon, the house of endless Love – Rumi • You can’t have the fruits without the roots. – Stephen Covey • You don’t need to condemn. Just observe, That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don’t forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there. – Eckhart Tolle • You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • You have to know what’s happening in the locker rooms, you have to know what’s happening at the grass-roots level. That’s the best way to work. – Jacques Rogge • You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I’m lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you. – Mark Z. Danielewski • You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I’d plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I’d ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you. – Anna Akhmatova

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[radioleary-blog]

New Year’s Eve

It is New Year’s Eve this week. The word “Eve” is just a fancy, Shakespearean way of saying “the day before,” and for some reason we only use it two days a year; Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. There’s no Easter Eve, or Arbor Eve, or Groundhog Eve, unless Bill Murray wants to start making prequels. Which would be awesome, but, unlikely. And we certainly can’t refer the day before the first day of Summer as Summer’s Eve, and I’d make the obvious jokes about that, but I respect your intelligence too much. And an old joke like that has, well, a not-so-fresh feeling. So I think this year we should all start using “Eve” more. Try this. When your wife tells you to put out the recyclables and the garbage because tomorrow is garbage day, say to her, “Is it Garbage Eve already? It comes around so fast these days. Boy, it just isn’t as magical now that the kids are off to college.” Sure, in that moment she will look at you and wonder why she married you, but that’s okay, the unexamined life is not worth living. And she may just stop asking you to do things, which frankly, would be great. But again, unlikely.

I see ABC is still calling their New Year’s show Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. That is one hell of a contract they have that guy under. Dick Clark died in 2012, but I guess he is contractually obligated through 2137. What ABC attorney wrote that contract, Lou Siffer? B.L. Zeebub? I’m not sure what method they plan to use to bring him back and keep hosting, I think this season they reveal he’s been a Westworld robot all along. But he’s starting to remember. “No, Buddy Holly! Chubby Checker! Take the train!” Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve started in 1972, and it may never end. After hosting for 32 years, Dick Clark had a serious stroke in 2004, and ABC had him back on the air by 2005, but he was never really the same. He sat there rocking back and forth, mostly. They could have called it Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Back and Forth Eve. They could have also called it Dick Clark's New Year's Droolin' Eve, and Dick Clark's New Year’s Slurred Speech and Facial Droopin' Eve. But he died in 2012, surrounded by family and friends who loved him. I wonder if they counted down, “Ten...nine...eight…seven…” But I’m a very sick man.

This year it is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, and the entertainers will be Mariah Carey and Lionel Ritchie, with Jenny McCarthy and Fergie. Wow, what hot performers! Apparently the new year we are ringing in is 1998. Maybe 2003, tops. What happened, were Ace of Base and Color Me Badd unavailable?

We are saying goodbye to 2016, and not a minute too soon. That’s why we celebrate New Year’s Eve, not out of excitement for the new year, but because we are thrilled AF to have somehow survived another brutal 12-month asskicking. And 2016 was like stepping into the Octagon and fighting Kimbo Slice. Except even Kimbo Slice didn’t stand a chance against 2016, he tapped out in June. That’s how tough 2016 was. It was the year of I’m with Her and Feel the Bern, of fracking and hacking, of shootin’ and Putin. Of Zika and Scalia. Of bathroom stalls and building walls. If 2008 was the year of HOPE, then 2016 was the year of GROPE. A year of pipelines and Brexits, of deplorables and superdelegates, and that election. Oh man, that election. So many people wish they could just wake up and it didn’t happen, or at least forget that it happened. Like that guy in Momento. Or Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates, where she wakes up every day with short term memory loss, blissfully unaware that she’s been dating Adam Sandler. If only we could wake up every day unaware that Trump won the Electoral College. We could call it 50 First States. But on December 31, they drop the ball in New York City, and then on January 20, they drop the ball in Washington, D.C.

I’m not so convinced we are actually heading into a new year at all. With the incoming administration, it looks more like we’re heading into 1957.

In 1957, Republicans controlled the White House, The House, and the Senate. Under Emperor Palpatine, if I remember correctly. It was a long, long time ago.

In 1957, there was no EPA, and after Trump puts avowed climate denier Scott Pruitt in charge, there probably won’t be an EPA next year either.

In 1957, there was no Department of Energy. We can only hope that Texas idiot Rick Perry is as incompetent at eliminating the department as he was at remembering it. Rick Perry gained stature with Republicans when he started wearing a pair of glasses he found on a city bus to look smarter, but his one memorable moment is him not remembering. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll forget he even works at the EPA. Maybe he’ll decide to follow his dream and finally try out for Dancing With the Stars, oh wait, he did. Oops. Rick Perry actually is the one with the memory loss from Momento and 50 First Dates.

Finally, In 1957, the U.S. and Russia were locked in a nuclear arms race, escalating their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Thankfully, nothing like that will happen when Trump...What? He already did? Are you Sure? WTF! But he’s not even President yet! He better be careful, if he pisses off the Russians, they won’t re-elect him.

But whatever happens, we’ll get through it. And then next December 31 we’ll celebrate surviving that one too. Or we’ll be meeting Kimbo Slice. Now we look forward, and write our New Year’s resolutions. I looked up the word ‘resolution’, it’s Old French for “aw, who am I kidding.” I have written my resolutions for the new year, I’m sure they’re no different than everybody else’s. But if you see one you like, you can take it, too. These are my resolutions for 2017

1. Stop making excuses for my heroin use by calling it “jazz lessons.”

2. Stop writing angry letters to the manufacturers of ‘Cracker Jack’ for having the most racist named snack ever.

3. Stop throwing people under the bus every time something goes wrong in my life. In fact, I should stay away from bus stations altogether, they probably have my face on file.

4. Stop confusing Aleppo with the other Marx brothers; Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. And stop confusing Syria with that talking phone.

5. Stop running up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Although it’s not my fault if whoever lost the card hasn’t called their bank and cancelled it yet.

6. Stop throwing my vote away by voting for write-in candidates. Especially when I write-in “Batman.” But dude, he’d be great.

7. This is the year I finally get fit. For a straight-jacket.

8. Stop making excuses for my weight by calling myself “Too big to fail.”

9. When I’m in church and the priest starts talking about Jesus dying on the cross, I have to stop yelling “Spoiler alert!”

10. This is the year I travel to new places. Mainly to countries that have no extradition treaty with the U.S. for throwing people under a bus.

Happy New Year! I am one with the force, the force is with me!

[seniorbrief]

My Father Was the BTK Killer. Here’s Why I Managed to Forgive Him.

Travis Heying/Wichita Eagle

The man knocked on Kerri Rawson’s door around noon on February 25, 2005. She looked out at him from inside her apartment near Detroit—he was holding an FBI badge.

She almost didn’t answer. Her father, a code compliance officer in Park City, a suburb of Wichita, Kansas, had taught her to be wary of strangers, and this one had sat in his car for an hour outside her home. But she decided to let the FBI agent into her kitchen, where she had made a chocolate Bundt cake. From then on, the smell of chocolate cake would make her queasy.

The man asked if she knew what BTK was. Yes, she did. BTK—Bind, Torture, Kill—was the nickname for the serial killer who had scared her mom decades ago and who was responsible for murdering ten people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991.

The FBI guy was her dad’s age, in his late 50s, wearing glasses and a necktie, nervous. Kerri was a 26-year-old substitute teacher taking a day off, still in her pajamas. The man said her dad had been arrested as a BTK Killer suspect. He needed to swab her cheek for DNA. (Here are the strangest unsolved mysteries in each state.)

At that moment, in Park City, Kerri’s mother, Paula Rader, 56, sat down to lunch at home, waiting for her husband, Dennis. Cops rushed in, guns drawn. A week later, Paula’s lunch still sat uneaten in the house she had shared with Dennis since the early 1970s. She’d never sleep there again.

Cops arrested Dennis as he was driving home for lunch. In Wichita, officers picked up family and friends for questioning. At the police station, Paula defended Dennis. Back in Detroit, Kerri yelled at the FBI agent. The last time she had seen her dad was in Park City at Christmas. He’d looked sad. She remembered his bear hug, how he smelled, his brown uniform. This could not be true, she told the man. Dad had called last night, asking if she’d checked the oil in her car.

At that point, she did something she would do many times over the next seven days: defend and then doubt her father at the same time. She told the agent about Marine Hedge. Hedge, 53, was a grandmother with a silky southern accent, five feet tall, weighing no more than 100 pounds. She’d lived six doors down from the Raders and disappeared in 1985, when Kerri was six. Hedge’s body was later found in a ditch. Paula had been fearful. “Don’t worry,” Dad had said. “We’re safe.”

Kerri remembered that when Hedge disappeared, her dad wasn’t home. “It was stormy, and I didn’t want to sleep by myself. My mom let me in her bed—that’s how I know he was gone.”

After the FBI agent left, she took down a picture of her father from the hallway and stuck it in a closet. She Googled “BTK” for proof that he was innocent but then told her husband she was matching her memories to BTK’s murder timeline, wondering if her whole life might be a lie.

The next day, police and politicians gathered in Wichita’s city hall. “BTK is arrested,” the police chief announced. Kerri was furious when she learned that to link her dad to the BTK Killer, cops had obtained one of her Pap smears taken years before at Kansas State University’s clinic. They used it to confirm that the Rader family DNA closely matched DNA in the semen that BTK left at the scene of a quadruple homicide in 1974. The FBI guy had asked Kerri for a cheek swab so he could double-check her DNA.

The first nights, Kerri and her husband, Darian, slept as if one of them needed to be on watch—she on the couch, he on the floor. TV crews camped outside, and when Darian drove to work, they followed.

Darian watched his wife change. Athletic and nearly five foot ten, she was no girlie girl, and he loved that. She could walk for days carrying a backpack. But now, she was the BTK Killer’s daughter. She even looked like her dad: same dark hair, same eyes. She shared his middle name, Lynn. She felt as if she’d done something wrong.

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

Kerri searched her memories. The night of Hedge’s murder, Dad had taken Brian, her brother, on a Boy Scout campout. Was it an alibi so he could sneak out and murder their neighbor? In 2004, around Christmas, after BTK threatened in letters to the police and news outlets that he would kill again, Dad had driven her to the airport to pick up her brother. But Dad had wandered off. Was he mailing one of those letters? Watching the news to see if he was mentioned? She minutely analyzed her whole life.

Kerri remembered how he spoke sharply if she sat in his chair or failed to put her shoes away. Cops said BTK made strange marks in his communications to them. She recalled weird marks Dad made on newspaper stories. “Code,” he’d called it.

Three days after her dad’s arrest, Kerri flew back to Kansas City. On the plane, she escaped by reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But on her layover, she saw her father’s face on the airport’s TV screens.

Mike Clark, the family’s pastor, visited Dennis Rader in jail a week after his arrest. Clark called Paula afterward, and Kerri watched her mother take the call, with a yellow legal pad in her hand. Paula wrote, “He’s confessing,” and underlined it as they talked.

It was true. He had murdered the Oteros: a mom, a dad, and two children, ages 11 and 9. He had tortured victims, sexually defiled several. He had taken Hedge’s body inside Christ Lutheran Church, where he was congregation president. He posed her and took photos. BTK had started his crimes in 1974, before Kerri was born.

Everybody assumed the BTK Killer was a sadistic genius. But the real BTK is an ordinary, inarticulate doofus, Darian thought. And a good dad, Kerri said. With Paula, he’d taught the kids’ godliness. Kerri had two college degrees; Brian, her older brother, had been an Eagle Scout and was training to serve on U.S. Navy nuclear submarines.

Dennis couldn’t understand why no family members visited. Kerri wrote him: “You have had these secrets, this ‘double life’ for 30 years; we have only had knowledge of it for three months … We are trying to cope and survive … You lied to us, deceived us.”

The family dreaded a trial, where his crimes would be described. Dennis pleaded guilty to spare them. Kerri felt relieved until the plea hearing. Her dad told a TV audience at length how he had killed people, lingering over how he’d murdered the Otero kids. He seemed to enjoy the story. He even brought up Kerri. “Joseph Otero had a daughter; I had a daughter.”

One night the next year, while Darian slept, Kerri lay beside him and wrote her father.

“Should I tell you that I grew up adoring you, that you were the sunshine of my life … true, even if it is coming out jaded and bitter now … Sometimes I just want to go out and buy the biggest, buttery tub [of popcorn] I can find and wave it in your face and say, ‘Ha, you won’t ever have this again’ and ask was it worth it? In the next breath I want to ask if you’re staying warm at night … I’m so sorry that you’re alone in that small cold concrete cell and sometimes I just wish I could give you a hug.”

She never sent that letter. And when her dad wrote, his letters sometimes went into the trash, where she dumped cat litter on them. Other times she’d write, and he would not reply, later telling her he’d been busy.

Dennis committed his first murders at age 29. At age 29, Kerri became a mother, and suddenly she truly despised her dad. In 1974, he had killed two children. In 1977, he had strangled Shirley Vian while her six-year-old son watched through a keyhole. In 1986, he killed Vicki Wegerle as her two-year-old stood in a playpen. “Man hurt Mommy,” the child told police. Kerri stopped writing to her father and cut him out of her life.

Sue Parker, a therapist, treated Kerri for five months in 2007. Parker saw a woman with above-average intelligence, poise, and post-traumatic stress. (Kerri gave permission for Parker to be interviewed for this story.) Many factors determine how well people can recover. “It’s about the severity of the trauma and how long it goes on, but it also depends on the coping mechanisms the victims have … their support system, who they have around them,” Parker said.

Kerri had had good people around all her life, Parker thought. A loving husband. Church. Friends. And good parents. Not just Mom. Dad too.

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

The cops said Dennis Rader fancied himself a James Bond character with cover stories—Boy Scout volunteer, congregation president. But the BTK Killer had also been a good dad, Parker said. “Maybe it was all a cover story,” she added. “But if it was, it was a cover story that actually worked.”

While betrayed on a level only God can understand, Parker said, Kerri seemed healthy and strong when she left Parker’s care. After her daughter, Emilie, was born, Kerri clung to teachings about God’s love. But when a sermon on forgiveness was announced at church, she stayed away. She had a second child, Ian, in 2011, but her dad’s betrayals kept poisoning her life. When Emilie was five, she asked her mother where her grandfather was.

“In a long time-out,” Kerri replied.

Could Kerri see him? Emilie asked.

“It’s a really long time-out,” Kerri answered.

One day at church, Darian and Kerri listened to a woman describe being raped. She said she forgave not to help the rapist, but to lighten her own suffering. Kerri talked about that idea for days. In August 2012, she announced at church that her father was a serial killer and told her story. “I have not forgiven him,” she said. Marijo Swanson, a friend, talked to her. “If we choose not to forgive or not work at healing from the betrayal,” she told Kerri, “we continue to give the other person power to control us and our feelings.”

That fall, Kerri suffered a fracture in her tibia. She was laid up for weeks. Shortly afterward, forgiveness poured over her one day. She sobbed so hard while driving that she had to pull the car over. The anger was gone. In December, Kerri wrote to her dad for the first time in five years. She told him she would never forget his crimes or be at peace with them, but she was at peace with the man who had raised her. Then she wrote of her life and of the grandchildren he would never meet. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to make it for a visit but know that I love you and hope to see you in heaven someday.”

After that letter, Kerri changed. “Before she forgave him, she thought of herself as BTK’s daughter,” Darian said later. “But as soon as she forgave him, she was Kerri again.”

In February 2013, Kerri spoke at church. “[God] told me, ‘You have a dad problem; you have a trust and obedience problem. You trusted and obeyed your earthly father, and he hurt you, so now you’re holding out on me. Let’s fix that.’”

She said, “I told Him that ‘I love you.’ He said, ‘Then show me.’”

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

And so she had done it, she told them. She had forgiven him. She wrote again to her father, telling him once more that she forgave him. Her father was stunned. “Forgiveness is there between the lines,” he wrote in his rambling style. “She recalls all that we did as a family—many good memories, and that helps her make the day. That is true love from a daughter’s heart. What else can a father ask for.”

That was not the end to Kerri’s struggles. In September 2013, Stephen King said in a TV interview that he’d written a story inspired by the Rader family called “A Good Marriage,” about discovering a monster in the house. Furious, Kerri gave her own interview, lashing out at King. Among people giving her rave reviews: Dad.

“She reminds me of me,” he wrote to the Wichita Eagle. “Independence, fearless, uses the media. I was touch[ed] by it … People reading … will see we had a ‘good Family.’ Nothing to hide; Only me with my ‘Dark Secrets.’ Like she said, I was a good Dad, (but only did bad things).”

Memories came back to Kerri. In 1996, the Raders had lost a cousin to a car wreck and were losing a grandfather to illness. To comfort the family, her mom made manicotti, but the Raders got into a fight at dinner. “We had this old rickety table and someone—I don’t remember who—pounded on it, and the legs broke and all the dinner came crashing down … My dad was so angry at my brother, he put his hands around my brother’s neck and started to try to choke him. I can still picture it clearly, and I can see the intense anger in my dad’s face and eyes. Close to manic.”

For Kerri, life continued to be complicated. “I fight my dad sometimes in my dreams, never understanding who let him out of prison,” she said. “I’m always very fearful of him and very angry in my dreams. Sometimes I’m even fighting for my life or frantically trying to convince others of the truth.”

On a bitter morning in January 2015, Kerri is in Wichita. “Coming back here to Wichita is like stepping into enemy territory,” she says. She wonders whether people might recognize her, and she talks about forgiveness. “I feel bad for the 30 years of … bad things because of one man, my dad … I forgave him. But I didn’t do that for him,” she says. “I did it for me.”

She returns to her old block and points. “There’s my grandma’s house, and there’s where Mrs. Hedge lived … And here is where our house was.”

It is a vacant lot. The city razed the house to discourage gawkers. “To get to my grandma’s house, I had to walk past Mrs. Hedge’s house, and now [at age six] I was afraid. And the guy who killed her was living in our house.”

She shows where a tree house stood, built by her dad. She indicates with her arms how big his garden had been. “He turned my bedroom into a nursery for plants when I was three, and I’d sleep with my brother in the bunk bed. I was so annoyed with my dad. But now you realize that kept him out of trouble. He was trying to stop. So it was plants—or murder.”

She points to a depression in the grass: the grave of Patches, a pet dog long dead. The cops were so suspicious of the BTK Killer that they had dug up the dog’s remains to see whether BTK had buried any secrets with them. He had not.

But nothing about her life was spared, Kerri says. Not even the graves of long-dead dogs.

Next, find out the most notorious criminals in each state.

Original Source -> My Father Was the BTK Killer. Here’s Why I Managed to Forgive Him.

source https://www.seniorbrief.com/my-father-was-the-btk-killer-heres-why-i-managed-to-forgive-him/