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scotianostra · 2 months ago

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The Construction of Rosslyn chapel began on 20th September 1456.

Properly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, this is just a couple of miles from where I grew up.

The building of the chapel is sometimes incorrectly given as ten years before, but that date comes from the chapel’s receiving its founding charter from Rome.

We are very lucky that Rosslyn Chapel remains intact, as we see it today, you only have to look around Scotland at the ruins of our Abbeys destroyed during the Reformation, Rosslyn was closed from around 1560,The chapel’s altars were destroyed in 1592 but the main structure is thought to have survived and any real damage was avoided.

The chapel was built by The Sinclair family and has been linked with the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, that’s the Knights Templar to you and I, the order was disbanded around 150 years before construction but symbols, such as the “Two riders on a single horse” that appear on the Seal of the Knights Templar, can be found on the building.

Rosslyn Chapel was constructed almost entirely in stone, with no structural timber except within the much later Victorian baptistery added to the west end of the chapel. The chapel is thought to be only part of what was intended to be a much larger church, and it exhibits immense historic, architectural and cultural value. The extent of carved stonework both internally and externally makes this little chapel truly unique. Though incomplete, it took around 40 years to build, and has the largest number of Green Man carvings of any medieval chapel in Europe.

The carvings of the chapel have been the subject of much speculation and conjecture, as Christian symbolism and other references are interspersed throughout the building. In 1630, Sir William Sinclair of Rosslyn was granted the charters from the Masons of Scotland, which confirms that the St Clairs were traditional Grand Masters of the Masons of Scotland. Accordingly, Rosslyn Chapel is of considerable interest to Masonic groups. Other carvings at Rosslyn Chapel are of religious, natural, or decorative nature, such as the Apprentice Pillar and the Seven Acts of Mercy panel.

Following the Reformation, services stopped being held in 1592 and did not begin again until the Chapel was re-dedicated in Victorian times.

Oliver Cromwell had his men stable their horses in the chapel in 1650 when he and General George Monck conquered nearby Roslin Castle.

Queen Victoria visited the site during her reign and was instrumental in restoring the Chapel to it’s original state for worship according to Protestant rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church and was re-dedicated as a place of worship on 22nd April 1862

I remember my mum talking about the Apprentice Pillar and how there was speculation that The Holy Grail is possibly encased within it, she talked about this in the 1970′s, about 30 years before the Chapel became more famous due to Dan Brown’s novel and film The Da Vinci Code.

I got the majority of the pics from the Alamy website, they date from the mid 19the century, some are from around 1852 while the one with the two figures walking through the church is from a book printed in 1859. Note most of these are before Queen Victoria's visit, so it shows the building was still in a good state of repair then. The top pic is from John Slezer's 'Theatrum Scotiae' is an important record of Scottish towns, castles and palaces in the 17th century. For most of these places, it contains some of the earliest views that survive. The first edition was 1693 so I think I am safe in saying it is the oldest depiction of Rosslyn Chapel.

Theatrum Scotiae also included written information on the drawings featured, the noted Scottish physician and antiquarian Robert Sibbald wrote;

Rosslyn Chapel

To the Right Honourable GEORGE Earl of Caithness, Lord Biridall, &c.

Roslin Chapel

This Chapel lies in Mid-Lothian, Four Miles from Edinburgh, and is one of the most curious Pieces of Workman-ship in Europe. The Foundation of this rare Building was laid Anno 1440 by William St Clair, Prince of Orkney, Duke of Holdenburgh, &c. A Man as considerable for the publick Works which he erected, as for the Lands which he possess'd, and the Honours which were conferred upon him by several of the greatest Princes of Europe. It is remarkable that in all this Work there are not two Cuts of one fort. The most curious Part of the Building is the Vault of the Quire, and that which is called the Prince's Pillar so much talk'd of. This Chapel was possess'd by a Provost, and Seven Cannons Regular, who were endued with several considerable Revenues through the Liberality of the Lairds of Roslin.

Here lies buried George Earl of Caithness, who lived about the Beginning of the Reformation, Alexander Earl of Sutherland, great Grand-Child to King Robert de Bruce, Three Earls of Orkney, and Nine Barons of Roslin.

The last lay in a Vault, so dry that their Bodies have been found intire after Fourscore Years, and as fresh as when they were first buried. There goes a Tradition, That before the Death of any of the Family of Roslin, this Chapel appears all in Fire.

#scotland #scottish #history #Roslin #Rosslyn

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m-rtif · 2 years ago

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Ebenezer Scrooge is an Antisemetic Stereotype

Oz, Nov 21st 2020

In this essay, I will be investigating whether or not the character Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' is based off antisemitic stereotypes. I am writing this instead of doing my homework as I cannot think of a character I don't like that I can compare to Scrooge; I tend to analyse characters and the only characters that are actually unlikeable are the one-dimensional ones with only 'good' or 'bad' traits and no comedic value. Now, I will be addressing the origin of several anti-Jewish stereotypes in history and linking them to Scrooge's character with evidence.

To start, what is antisemitism? Anti-semitism is a serious issue that is still relevant to this day. It is hateful acts against the Jewish ethno-religion. Antisemitism has been around for hundreds of years. Many people believe that antisemitism only started in the 1900s, due to the holocaust. This is fair, due to the holocaust being such a mammoth, grotesque, pivitol, event in human history. It is one of the most widely known events in human history.

Some of the most easy to identify forms of antisemitism are the depictions of physical and behavioural stereotypes of Jewish people. For hundreds of years, the [typically presented in a loathsome light] characteristics of a stereotypical Jew are a large hooked nose, dark or red hair and dark, beady, drooping eyes. They are often depicted as greedy, power-hungry, dislikeable and go against Christian values. I am going to go through the most present stereotypes in the most detail to show their importance.

Firstly, the earliest record of anti-Jewish characture is a detailed doodle depicted in the upper margin of the Exchequer Receipt Roll [English royal tax record] in 1233. It shows three demented Jews inside a castle with large noses. The castle is being attacked by a group of hook-nosed demons. The largest of the demons is poking at the noses of two of the Jews, as if to compare the nose of himself [a demon] to that of a Jew. Ebenezer Scrooge is described as having a pointed nose at the top of page 3. Scrooge’s nose is almost always drawn or depicted in a specific way on book covers or in drawings; large, hooked, pointed and/or having a large bump in the middle, like the stereotypical Jewish nose. This could also be seen as a mock of Roma/Romani people as they have also historically been heavily discriminated against and also mocked for their noses[the Gypsy Horse, originally named an Irish Cobb, was given its name as a way to make fun of Roma people for having large noses, like horses].

Secondly, Jewish people have historically been depicted as greedy and money-hungry. This originated in the middle-ages as lending money whilst charging interest, or usury, went against the Christian Church’s values and those of the Jewish population were legally only allowed to apply to jobs not available to Christians. Therefore, many Jews went into money-lending which sprouted the notion that Jewish people were stingy, misley and penny-pinching. Ebenezer Scrooge runs a money-lending business named ‘Scrooge and Marley’ during the book and is reportedly extremely money-hungry and never spends more money than he absolutely must. For example, in response to Bob Cratchit asking for a day off work on Christmas, Scrooge says; “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” which shows that, even at the expense of his employee and his family’s happiness, he is extremely upset by the notion of making less money for a single day. Ebenezer also, slightly earlier on in that scene, refuses to donate even a single penny to the poor. The things in his home, such as his bed curtains, are described as cheap. He doesn’t even spend very much money on himself, despite being rather wealthy.

Ebenezer Scrooge also applies to several other Jewish stereotypes or other Jewish characteristics. The name ‘Ebenezer’ is a Hebrew name [the language commonly practiced among Jewishfolk] meaning ‘stone of the help’. Scrooge only becomes kind and likeable when presented with the joy of Christmas by the Ghost of Christmas Present - he watches how happy Bob Cratchit’s family is on Christmas day, despite how poor they are and how weak their son is. Scrooge’s most defining characteristic is that he hates Christmas which is a Christian holiday. This is significant because Jewish and Christian people, beliefs and practices used to be extremely divided, as shown previously with the money-lending businesses. Charles Dickens has also made a stereotypical Jewish character in the past[Fagin from Oliver Twist]. Dickens was a man of Christian faith which may have been his reasoning for creating a seemingly Jewish character that only became ‘good’ when he embraced and began to love a Christian holiday.

In conclusion, I personally believe that Ebenezer Scrooge is definitely a negative stereotype of Jewish people due to his appearance, behaviours and name. I do think this makes him somewhat of a badly-written character as he goes from not having any good traits at all to not having any bad traits at all so he is technically still a one-dimensional character, however, the whole point of Ebenezer’s character is how he is taught to change for the ‘better’ so the 100% bad to 100% good makes a lot of sense and works for his character. I personally like his character and the book but Scrooge is a very dubious character. Thank you for reading.

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cursmudgeon · 3 years ago

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For the random questions: 17, 19, 33, 38

17. an earliest obsession you remember?

Digimon for sure. I didn’t have tv as a kid cause we lived in the middle of nowhere so the only way I could watch things was if my grandma sent us tapes she recorded since she had cable. Every week I would wait for the next VHS of Saturday morning cartoons and when they did an 8 hour marathon of digimon episodes I think I rewatched those tapes every single day for months.

19. zombies or vampires?

Vampires.

33. a song that gets stuck in your head?

There’s so many things I could pick for this but I’m gonna go with this one cause I’ve had pirates on the brain. Plus it’s just a good song.

38. what’s the meaning behind your url?

My url is real old. I used to be very grumpy and draw with a lot of charcoal pencils that smudged easily. I was a smudgey curmudgeon. Combined its cursmudgeon. Now neither of those things are really true but I haven’t wanted to change it.

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sourbat · 4 years ago

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Here’s a little ficlet I wrote today. Please give it a little glance, and let me know what you think :)

Summary: Nathan listens in on an intimate conversation and becomes increasingly jealous over it.

Pair: Magnus/Toki

Toki’s never been one to leave his door closed for long. Nathan is used to passing by the small room, sometimes at the earliest hours of the morning, and finds the door agape, lighting aglow and showing off the interworking of Toki’s short, erratic attention span. He’s seen Toki hunched at his desk, indulged in the time-consuming process of building model planes, and he’s seen Toki rolling all over the floor, tossing his controller and screaming at the television screen. There is Toki coloring, tossing his crayons against the wall and complaining about the mess he made with his stuffed animals. Front row seats to Toki rocking. Toki dissecting his actions figures. Toki purposefully breaking his things. There are nights where Toki frantically rearranges his room, and times where Nathan approaches the stretched light and hears the young man muttering, but often pitifully whining, in another language. There are cold, silent nights where the door is closed, and Nathan can still pick up the sounds of whimpers and stifled cries. There are instances where Nathan knocks, fewer where he enters and talks to the guy. Sometimes Nathan cleans. Picks up robots with missing legs, or ones that contain screws where they shouldn’t be. Most of the time, Nathan continues onward, leaving Toki to his devices.

It’s nearing one in the morning when Nathan’s throat tires, and concludes another successful night recording lines with Pickles. After they split, Nathan enters the familiar hallway that eventually leads to his room, and on his way, finds the long, dim light emitting from Toki’s bedroom. Like before, he thinks little of the dimly lit room, but notices a gentle sound emitting from it as he approaches.

Kid is sleep at the desk, he thinks when he catches something muffled, something that sounds like slow breathing. The thought to turn off the lamplight and let Toki sleep uninterrupted arises, and Nathan considers it as he reaches the room, figuring if the floor isn’t covered with too much crap, he’ll give Toki a break this time. His pace slows as he heads for the door, footsteps adjusting and soles rolling to muffle his sounds, and when he gets close, Nathan picks up on a conversation.

“…milks and apples?”

Toki’s talking. He’s whispering to someone. A conversation centered on food.

Nathan readies his hand, already thinking to tell Toki it’s getting late, too late for a midnight snack, but a raspy chuckle stops him.

“Hold up, dude. We got one paragraph left.”

It’s Magnus’ voice.

Nathan’s chest tightens, muscles instinctively bracing for an incoming attack that won’t happen. Magnus isn’t here, not really, but his mere presence taking the form of some voice over the phone is enough to make Nathan’s bottom jaw ache from the subconscious grind.

Nathan withdraws from the door, furthers himself away until he can barely register the conversation taking place. No, not a conversation. He picks up on Magnus’ voice, the solidity and clarity as he carefully pronounces each word. It’s a recital. It’s him narrating. It’s Magnus telling Toki the story of a bunch of dumb animals trying to run a farm, and in all likelihood, it’s also Magnus trying to induct Toki in his bullshit philosophy.

It’s a few sentences of Magnus gently concluding a chapter to a fatigued Toki, and by the time Nathan remembers the finer details, the windmill and Magnus ranting about how their country will end up in the same sad state as the farm, it’s over. There’s silence, the sounds of Toki shifting in his bed, and Nathan draws closer.

“Alright, we’re done with chapter 3. What do you think?”

A pause. Nathan worries Toki will confess to a lack of understanding, but then he suddenly speaks up. “Don’t thinks it ams fair the pigs gets all the apples.”

Another chuckle. “Well, I don’t think it’s fair either.”

A blanket kicks up. Something folds. The mattress groans. “I thinks all the animals should be sharins,” he hears Toki say into the phone.

“I feel the same way, Toke.”

“Why didn’ts them pigs share, Magnus?”

A simple, but foolish question, Nathan thinks. It suggests more than a lack of understanding, but gives away that Toki doesn’t comprehend the deeper layers, and that this is just a story about talking animals for him. Nathan’s bottom lip curls inward as he relives a memory of Magnus lying on top of the sofa, pages held open with thumb and pinky. Magnus tells him of a dystopian future where everyone’s at the bottom, where there are worker bees and handful of queens at the very top. Metaphor after metaphor, and Magnus peeling off his jacket because he’s so excited, tongue tripping at the increasing velocity of his words.

Nathan remembers, and admired that side of Magnus. Magnus, who always had something to say, who unleashed a crashing wave of information that, although incomprehensible to Nathan, sounded good. The man had passion, to say the least. Only problem was him constantly trying to insert it, to force it into Nathan’s head, his thoughts and his message. Cram. Shove. Jam. Hammer it all in, and when none of it stuck, and Nathan never applied, Manus got mad. Grew cold, distant and resentful.

Poor Toki, Nathan thinks, and awaits Magnus’ vengeful attack on the kid’s lack of intelligence.

“Well... why do you think the pigs won’t share?”

The question takes Nathan by surprise. He almost second guesses, thinks maybe it was Toki who asked, but then hears Toki hum aloud and guess it’s because the pigs want to keep the good tasting food for themselves, which is why they lied in the first place. Nathan hears another chuckle, this one louder, and approving.

“So, you know they’re lying?”

There’s a giggle from Toki. “Ams not a very good excuse,” he says. Magnus agrees, tells Toki he’s on to something, and the compliment earns stupid little noise from Toki. “I wonder if them animals will change their minds abouts them pigs…”

“You’ll have to wait later, man.”

“Oh, why nots now?”

“My break ends in about five,” Magnus replies. Nathan hears the disappointing sigh emitting from Toki. He hates to hear it. He hates knowing the rise it gives Magnus knowing Toki wants him to continue reading. The silence in the air hangs low, affecting everyone. “We’ll talk more about apples and the farm later, when you’re awake, alright?”

“Oh, okays.” More blankets shift as Toki nears the phone. Or maybe he’s holding on to the phone. Nathan has his back to the wall, eyes looking away from the light, from the intimate scene he never should’ve listened in on. “I likes the story so far. Even though them pigs ams kinda fishy, the horses and other animals ams nice.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

Strange to hear his voice so soft, so gentle and accepting of another man’s limitations. Even weirder to hear Magnus compliment the horse. Last he remembered, Magnus hated the horse. Nathan grimaces at yet another memory that dared to rise from his personal, repressed storage. He crushes it before it can take form, but Nathans still wonders where the hell was this version of Magnus 17 years ago?

“Well, time’s almost up.”

“Thanks you for readins to me,” Toki chirps. Magnus tells the kid no problem, and Nathan silently gags at the sound Toki makes. A loud, audible smack. He’s kissing the damn phone. Really, Toki? “G’night, Magnus.”

“Sweet dreams, Toki.”

Nathan stares out, mind dwelling on the conversation. Where’s the damn cross comparison, the conspiracy and literary theories, and that long rave about how ignorant Toki was for not considering the “bigger picture?” Why wasn’t Magnus mad at Toki for asking such a dumb question? Why was it that he got yelled at for not understanding Magnus, for crushing his vision, for not appreciating his contribution and message, but Toki gets to be read to, gets to ask stupid questions and earns warm appraisals for coming up with half-assed responses? Where is the fairness in that?

Nathan blinks, and realizes it’s silent. The air is still and lacking the warm glow from before, and the stone wall pressed against his back emits its solid, unforgiving chill. The light in Toki’s room is off, and was likely turned off the moment the call ended, and now it’s just him, standing alone in the dark, obsessed over the memory of a man who no longer existed.

Nathan hangs his head low. No fair. I at least knew it wasn’t about animals.

#magnus hammersmith #toki wartooth #nathan explosion #magtok #hammertooth #implied magnate???#metalocalypse #fanfic #needs editing

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carewyncromwell · 4 years ago

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10 facts about Ru? 🌊 🐴

My kelpie kid~!! ^.^

1) Ru isn’t a picky eater and will generally eat just about anything, but while disguised as a human, they gain quite the taste for apples and things made from them, such as apple juice and apple pie. One thing they never take to, however, is chocolate -- they can enjoy just about any sweet as long as it isn’t made of chocolate.

2) One of Ru’s greatest loves is animation. Most of their earliest drawing projects involve human models, as Ru finds the way the human body moves very interesting, but their initial drawings are hardly glamorous. One of their very first successful animations mimicked how one of their classmates picked her nose with her pinky finger.

3) One of Ru’s more frequent models for their animations, however, becomes their “keeper” and ttly-not-girlfriend-you-guys-geez Estrid Soelberg @that-ravenpuff-witch. Ru often draws her dancing, since they enjoy the way her limbs move while she’s doing ballet. Sometimes, though, they’ll also pull Estrid off to the side at random just so she can move her hands a certain way that they can use as reference.

4) Speaking of dancing, though, Ru actually does learn how to ballroom dance in large part because of Estrid. When Ru actually starts becoming more fond of her (but is still at the point where they refuse to admit it), they work to improve their skills so that they can “whisk Estrid away” from anyone she’s uncomfortable around during social events. Ru claims, however, that they merely studied it so that they’d have a better grasp of the terminology when talking to any dancers he chose to photograph, film, or draw.

5) Ru has a wide assortment of large, dangling earrings. It was quite a scandal at Hogwarts when they first pierced their ears, since it was really not a fashionable thing for men to do in that era. Even few women wore such large, flamboyant earrings. That was nothing, however, compared to the Ollivander family’s reaction -- Ru took a dark kind of amusement in Mrs. Ollivander dropping to the floor like a stone in her horrified faint. “I daresay those two never took half so much notice of their youngest son, when he was still alive,” the kelpie thought to themselves at the time.

6) Some of the ways that Ru shows affection is by standing/sitting closer to that person, exhaling into the person’s nose or mouth, and grooming the person’s hair and clothes. These are actually three things that real-life horses also do to express affection.

7) Ru greatly enjoys going out in the middle of rainstorms and walking and/or running around in the rain. Not only do they enjoy getting away from everyone else, but they enjoy the feeling of the rain on their skin. They’re always quite a sight afterwards when they come back inside with their soaked clothes and hair, their white collared shirt nearly see-through and their bangs dripping.

8) Ru’s best subjects are Care of Magical Creatures, History of Magic, and Herbology. Because they themselves are an animal, they’ve always had a knack for communicating with them and sussing out what they’re thinking, and because they’re so academically curious and enamored of reading, History of Magic has always been up their alley. Ru’s talent for Herbology actually extends to them having a small water garden in the pond next to the cottage they end up owning with Estrid post-Hogwarts.

9) Speaking of Ru and Estrid’s life post-Hogwarts, after the death of Estrid’s beloved grandfather Maynard Soelberg, Ru helps Estrid with her grief by creating a 30-minute-long tribute to Maynard, containing both the film reels they’d made of him in life as well as several new custom color animations Ru had drawn based on old family photographs. They finally finish the project -- which was longer and more taxing than anything else they’d made previously -- in time for Estrid’s birthday, and the finished product brings her to tears.

10) Ru sadly as a kelpie is doomed to live a rather short life, but they are ultimately memorialized for their advancements in the realm of wizard photography. It’s thanks to Ru that magical photography as a whole becomes cleaner, longer-lasting, and easier to develop, and although film as a medium never takes off in the Wizarding World the way it does in the Muggle world, quite a few of Ru’s short films are later placed in wizarding museums as records.

10 Facts!

#10 facts #ru ollivander #estrid soelberg #other people's mcs #about ru

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piermanwalter · 4 years ago

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Thief’s Apprentice: Popular Fiction in Surenia

As many revenants no longer have the mental faculty to keep track of stories and reality at the same time, these stories are mostly for the living to rationalise their plague-ridden surroundings. Common themes of the oldest and most well-known stories are escaping the plague and love that lasts after death. These stories usually follow someone as they travel across Surenia, and serve as escapist fantasy for bedridden plaguebearers as they look forward to all the travelling they can do as revenants and wait to die.

CURE QUEST

Hearing of the revenant plague spreading to their kingdom, instead of hoarding food and barricading themselves in fortresses like neighboring kingdoms, Prince Orto and his mother Queen Mavia set out to investigate the cause of the plague and find a cure with their court mage Ovid. The story is allegedly the writings of Ovid himself as he recorded their adventures, but Cure Quest is so fantastic and implausible that most people now believe it’s complete fiction.

The basic story structure of Cure Quest is Ovid receiving cryptic messages from the Gods to guide the Prince and the Queen, then they encounter a weird guy in the wilderness that Prince Orto fights and/or befriends, then they rescue a town from some disaster and are allowed to rest there in thanks, and then Ovid finds some town specialty herb or potion that alleviates the plague a bit, but doesn’t totally cure it, so they have to keep going, and then they get captured by another kingdom or mage or giant gryphon that is too strong for them to beat, then Queen Mavia sings their captors to sleep or distracts them while Ovid comes up with an escape plan. By doing this many times, they eventually build up a huge procession.

There are many versions of Cure Quest, but they all feature Prince Orto making friends with wandering knights with extremely specific superpowers, such as a knight who can eat mountains of food, a knight who can steal anything that can fit in the palm of his hand, a knight who draws blood every time his sword is unsheathed, a knight who can turn into a flock of sparrows, etc. Most versions of Cure Quest are also known for huge epic battles between the royal knights and hordes of insane revenants, knights of rival kingdoms, monsters, and evil mages.

However, there are also Cure Quest versions that address how a plague-ridden land can’t realistically support full-scale wars all the time, so the problems are instead solved with cunning tricks, political leverage, and magic.

In all versions of Cure Quest, the royal procession follows Ovid to The Fountain of Life, which can cure any disease or injury, but the Gods have led them to the end of The World. It turns out The Fountain of Life is on a separate land mass floating off the edge of The World, and while everyone is deciding how to get there, Prince Orto becomes impatient and jumps off the edge, but he misses and falls through space for all eternity. The rest of the procession builds a bridge to The Fountain, but as soon as they all cross, The World flies away.

It’s widely believed that Cure Quest originated from Beringians in Surenia, since knights and dedicated soldier classes in general don’t exist in local cultures, and the effects of plague described in the story are hilariously wrong. Some people believe Cure Quest must have been first spun in the early years of the plague when people didn’t know exactly how it worked and genuinely had no idea revenants could be sane and articulate. Since different locations in Surenia are mentioned in many versions of Cure Quest, there is much literary debate over which city produced the earliest version of Cure Quest.

This story is the most popular among the living and not very well liked among revenants because all of the named characters are alive and all revenants are mindless shambling wrecks. However, the continued popularity of Cure Quest comes from there being a version anyone can enjoy. Children are told the version where Prince Orto is their age and Mavia is a beautiful young queen, and everyone aside from Orto, who was too impatient, got to live on an amazing new World. Once they outgrow that story, they can find another version where Prince Orto is a callous Machiavellian adult and Queen Mavia is wise and elderly, and they finally accept the plague has no cure, so they kill themselves to become the revenants they once so reviled. And if there’s no version to you liking, you can always make your own.

Most Surenians see leaving The World as a metaphor for death, and Prince Orto missing The Fountain as a metaphor for those who die before their time and go mad.

Muireland has coopted Cure Quest as an embellished retelling of their own kingdom’s founding and claims jumping off the edge of The World is a metaphor for establishing a new homeland on the edge of sea cliffs, and their own royal family is descended from Queen Mavia.

Despite getting blown up and occupied by Gehennans, many Veilheimers are still struck by, “Wow! Real Prince! Real knights! This is just like Cure Quest!”

WANDERING GONOT

He wakes his shirt covered in dirt and thinks, “How rude to pitch dirt upon a sleeping man! Dare they do this to I, the... I... know not mine own name.” A wooden signpost reads GO NOT. PLAGUE LAINS HERE. “Lo! My name. Gonot... Plague... Lainshere. I do not like the middle part! Bolfred Miller be called Bolfred Cheating Miller, but his name be not Cheating though he be cheating. A fool’s title on us both. My name is Gonot Lainshere.”

Gonot stands and leaves and sees a milkmaid. “Holla maid! There be dirt on my shirt, but not on my heart. Knows you the-” The maid cries like a hawk and runs. Dirt on a shirt be so vile? Gonot bends to clean and Horror! Skin is flaying off his legs! Nails torn from his fingers, but not a drop of blood! Bowels spilling from his belly! Gonot is dead! He is walking and speaking but he is dead!

Gonot is chased out of town with torches and pitchforks and wanders aimlessly around Surenia, getting into shenanigans and witnessing all sorts of interesting things. Wandering Gonot is a very relatable story about one of the first sane revenants figuring out basic things that every modern revenant knows, like seeing through solid objects, eating, or kitbashing your own metal prosthetics.

Unlike Cure Quest, there is only one version of Wandering Gonot written over 600 years ago. Some attempts were made by other writers to add to the story, but the syntax and style of the original writer are so distinct that imitations are easy to detect. Wandering Gonot is historically important because it’s set when Surenians were most afraid of the plague, now that symptoms and epidemiology were better understood, but revenants were not. Earlier stories in Cure Quest had knights charging fearlessly into combat with supernaturally strong revenants that caused crushing bruises with the slightest touch, but by the time this story was written, it was known that massive inexplicable bruises were the first sign of plague infection, so Gonot empties towns and ends battles just by showing up. This time period is also significant because there was once so many people that Gonot could find a new town after one day of walking, but now revenants could wander for months and not encounter anything but thousands of miles of wasteland.

After wandering Surenia, barely holding himself together, trying to make friends, and killing thousands by accident, Gonot gets hit by a mudslide and sinks to the bottom of a lake, which dries up and traps him underground, so Gonot decides to Lainshere until the lake floods again. The story ends with a plea for the listeners to make their communities kinder and more peaceful so when Gonot wanders again, he won’t have to suffer.

Gonot probably never existed, since he is written as too preoccupied and destitute to record his own travels or tell them all to someone else. It’s believed that another early sane revenant wrote Wandering Gonot as a compilation of real events that happened to many different sane revenants in attempt to prove their sanity and humanise them to the hostile and suspicious living. It worked, because the story has been preserved for all this time, and the living like the story because it makes revenants funny and understandable, and revenants like it because many of Gonot’s struggles match their own. Most city dwellers, living and dead, are grateful because they don’t suffer from lack of basic understanding like the characters in Wandering Gonot do.

Although Wandering Gonot is meant to be funny, many stories have an undercurrent of inescapable loneliness, such as “Priest of Harus” where Gonot meets another sane revenant but he’s a High Priest of a different God than he prayed to, so they could never be friends, and “Bone Mare” where Gonot finds a horse revenant and tries to catch it, but no matter what it always runs faster than he can so it slowly gets smaller and smaller in the distance until it disappears, except for one extremely divisive story that has since spun off into its own separate thing.

MERCIFUL DEATH

Gonot is hanging out in an orchard after harvest, because it’s a nostalgic place close to civilization, but nobody is there because all the remaining fruit is rotten. He sees a living maiden in a tree and tries to leave before she sees him and raises the alarm, but she isn’t afraid, introducing herself like he was any normal person. Gonot climbs the tree and has the first conversation with a living person he can remember. Goblinder asks how he was able to stay sane, then asks Gonot to strangle her. It is her town custom for plague bearers to do penance by starvation, and once they know she has the plague, they will wall her into a room. Goblinder would rather die quickly at the hands of a stranger than slowly by the hands of her friends.

Gonot doesn’t want to strangle her, so he pulls an arrow out of his back and stabs her in the heart with it. After Goblinder dies, Gonot climbs down and thinks about how plaguebearers are like rotten fruit because nobody wants them, and sane revenants are like good wine because it is a rare state that not all rotten fruit can reach.

20 stories later, Gonot encounters a sane revenant with an arrow sticking out of her chest. It’s Goblinder.

Although the original story wasn’t explicitly romantic, a lot of motifs from it, such as a heart pierced by arrows, fruit wine, and being in a tree with someone, became symbols of romance. There have been several rewrites and expansions of Merciful Death, usually with Goblinder deciding to travel with Gonot after either their first or second meeting. The archetype of a revenant killing someone begging for death and later falling in love with them was used for countless other stories. One Merciful Death subgenre exploded in popularity 300-400 years ago, because this was the time Veilheim was finally prosperous enough to support fine art and literature, and also relationships between the dead and the living weren’t taboo yet.

One Merciful Death rewrite in this subgenre became so popular that it superseded the original and when people talk about Merciful Death, it’s usually in reference to this one. In this version, Gonot is a Gore Mage royal doctor and Goblinder is a Princess, and instead of everything being over and done in a single conversation, Gonot agonises over whether or not to kill Goblinder and what it means for her kingdom to lose their last heir while trying not to think about what she means to him, and Goblinder tries to live what remains of her life by taking scented baths, suffering elegantly from plague, hunting, and throwing huge parties while screaming inside because she truly doesn’t want to die. Whenever they meet, Gonot tries to stay professional while Goblinder tries to act resolute. After several emotional breakdowns and dramatic confessions, Goblinder finally loves Gonot enough to trust him to kill her. What tragic heartbreak! If Goblinder didn’t love him, she could yet live! Gonot uses Gore Magic to pull all of Goblinder’s blood out of a few small cuts so she can die painlessly.

Gonot is depressed and wandering aimlessly outside for medicinal herbs to avoid the royal palace as much as possible and suddenly gets shot in the chest with an arrow. A hunter runs up and apologises for mistaking him for a wild animal. It’s Goblinder.

Detractors hate this version of Merciful Death because the original was about two ordinary people calmly choosing to kill and die because this was the only way to survive in a world that feared them, and Merciful Death is basically set in Veilheim. Gonot and Goblinder are rich assholes wasting everyone’s time and money on interpersonal drama and killing and dying out of laziness and cowardice. This story is also hated for public health reasons now that romance between the dead and living is taboo, and also how it’s creepy to kill someone right as they are most in love, forcing them to stay in love forever.

Enthusiasts love this version of Merciful Death because it portrays the wild and opulent zeitgeist of Veilheim 400 years ago, and regardless of how it’s seen now, there really were romantic scandals between revenants and the living at that time, and Gonot would surely rather be a rich educated Gore Mage doctor in a kingdom where revenants are accepted than a terrified and confused peasant where almost everyone is trying to kill him. The whole point is that society has finally become kind and peaceful enough that outrageous luxury and interpersonal drama are the driving forces of people’s lives instead of survival.

Merciful Death Enthusiasts and Detractors are basically political parties. The Mayor of Veilheim stays neutral because he is a foreigner and wouldn’t have as much knowledge and attachment of Merciful Death as a born and raised Veilheimer.

Master Courtesan is a huge public Merciful Death stan because it’s expected of her, but her dark secret is that she doesn’t think it’s very good. Also she killed the author centuries ago for entirely different reasons.

Tax Collector has the political leanings of a Merciful Death stan but is a Merciful Death hater, because his job involves stabbing and being stabbed and he’s sick of people seeing it in a romantic context.

THAES

Unlike the huge rambling epics above, Thaes doesn’t exist in a specific story and instead serves as a mouthpiece for social commentary. Thaes is witty enough to make interesting observations, but is also oblivious enough to say them out loud. Thaes blunders her way to success via blind luck and coincidence, or she could just be resourceful. Depending on the story, she may be living or dead, anywhere on The World, set in any time. In a more contemporary setting, if Thaes is dead, she is instead called Careless Weaver. If you don’t want to reveal where you got information, you can say, “I heard it from Thaes.” Naming your children Gonot and Goblinder is universally seen as cringe, but Thaes is always a popular name for girls.

Thaes got the plague and had to leave the living district. She sees a stubborn donkey, refusing to take a single step and braying so loudly no one else can speak. “Good morning, The Mayor! How brightly Veilheim shines under your rule!” Thaes sees a towering lumbering ox, pulling ten times its own weight but moving as slowly as a snail. “Good morning, Noble Porter! Any important deliveries today?” Thaes sees a wild ass, kicking high and menacing its handlers with its horns. “Good morning, Tax Collector! Surely not everyone owes you money!”

Thaes is deciding which prosthetics to save for before she dies. She visits Noble Engineer and he says, “Your carpometacarpal and distal phalanges are gone! Do you want 32-2 cobalt steel? Do you want 56-1 lead steel? Do you-” Thaes interrupts, “You speak too quickly and I don’t understand what you are asking! I will ask someone else.” Thaes visits a Principian and he says, “I won’t let the Veilheimers make a carcass out of you. Why don’t you become a bronze statue like me?” Thaes says, “I may not look like a carcass in a statue, but it’s so heavy! I will feel like a carcass.” Thaes visits a Cyrenean and he says, “Don’t get prosthetics. Let yourself fall to pieces.”

Careless Weaver stands in the market with her wares, yelling, “Tubes! Get your metal tubes! Use them for anything you want! Water pipes! Prosthetics! Augers! Opium cooling!”. A guard asks, “Say, Careless Weaver. You are not an Industrial Mage. Where did you get these metal tubes?” Thaes says, “We got new spring-powered looms put into the textile factory. We revenants had a go, and now look at them. Post-hole diggers! Pastry stamps! Rolling pins!”

Although Thaes stories are mostly told in person, and their format ensures a ton of them are extremely horrible, there are some written compilations of them, and Thaes will probably become a character in the distant future the same way Gonot is a character now.

ROSANGELA AND BENDANIEL

In a world where the plague is a fact of life, it’s fitting that the most popular horror story portrays being plague-free as alienating and unnatural. As the plague reaches the western shore of Surenia, the royal family escaped by sea to Sidra, but burned all the ships they left behind. Rosangela and her husband Bendaniel are imploring a powerful mage to save them and their children, and before he leaves to Sidra, he gives them a book of instructions for a magic ritual that allows them to be plague-free while they are conducting it and live forever, free from revenants once it’s finished.

By the end of the month, the plague has hit the coastline, and both of them have been bitten by plaguebearing animals with no ill effects. But the steps of the ritual are steadily getting more difficult, rubbing human ashes on themselves and eating nothing. Fortunately, the ritual also protects their children, who are growing up and looking more and more like their parents. The ritual worsens, and by the time it’s finished, their whole town is empty except for them and insane revenants. Rosangela and Bendaniel starve to death in a pit of human ashes.

Their children are now identical to them, take their parents’ names, and have children of their own. Rosangela and Bendaniel and Rosangela and Bendaniel live like ghosts, unable to be touched by anything aside from their own family. When Rosangela and Bendaniel die, Rosangela and Bendaniel take their place as the heads of the family, and Rosangela and Bendaniel have to take on new responsibilities.

Rosangela and Bendaniel and Rosangela and Bendaniel live in a little house together, with a pit of corpses on one side for Rosangela and Rosangela and another pit on the other side for Bendaniel and Bendaniel.

Unlike the other stories, the city of Alhambra claims these people actually exist and are still alive. They are studied by the mages there, although it might be a lie to maintain Alhambra’s elite magic reputation. Rosangela and Bendaniel reportedly regret performing the ritual and refuse to share it, but it is known that it involves huge amounts of mugwort.

Most people believe Rosangela and Bendaniel don’t exist, and the story is a cautionary tale about extreme measures taken to avoid the plague being worse than getting the plague, which makes a lot of sense given that the most plague-free regions are filled with inbreeding, cannibalism, and/or violent xenophobia.

Some people believe that this story is about how life itself is bad, plague or no plague, since Rosangela and Bendaniel suffer every way the living can suffer before dying and compelling their children to replace them, and becoming a revenant is the only escape from going extinct or having someone take your place and continue to suffer.

#thief's apprentice #cure quest #wandering gonot #merciful death #thaes #rosangela and bendaniel #graphic injuries

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bubblesandgutz · 4 years ago

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Every Record I Own - Day 622: Jaye Jayle Prisyn

The following is the bio I wrote for Jaye Jayle’s 2020 album, Prisyn.

Evan Patterson has always been a wanderer and an explorer. It’s evident in the constant evolution of his musical projects since his earliest days as a guitarist in left-of-center bands out of Louisville, but it’s best exemplified by the constant creative shifts within the fever-dream blues of his current project Jaye Jayle. Their sophomore album No Trails and Other Unholy Paths was a mission statement of that restless search across barren canvases, a proclamation of turning away from one’s past and marching into the unknown. But with the latest Jaye Jayle album Prisyn, Patterson takes his boldest leap into unknown territories yet, capturing immediate moments in his ever-shifting surroundings with the most basic tool at his disposal—the GarageBand app on an iPhone 8. Instead of his usual backing band, he paired up with Ben Chisholm (White Horse, Revelator, Chelsea Wolfe) as collaborator and producer to create an electronic album completely unlike anything else in his discography.

The project began with a request from couture designer Ashley Rose. The up-and-coming designer proposed that Patterson team up with Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chisholm to create a soundtrack for one of her upcoming fashion shows. Patterson was in the early stages of a massive eleven-week stretch of touring—starting with a European jaunt with his rekindled band Young Widows, continuing on with Jaye Jayle, and returning to the US to play guitar for Emma Ruth Rundle—and used the extensive downtime in the van to flesh out ideas on his phone. “So I sent the track to Ben and he sent it back the next day with additional instrumentation, sounds, and effects,” Patterson recalls. “It was wild. He suggested we make a whole record that way, and it just took off from there.”

By the end of the three-month tour, Patterson and Chisholm had an LP’s worth of songs waiting for vocal treatments. “I initially wanted it to be an instrumental record called Songs For Iggy because I literally had this dream where I made an instrumental album with that title and Iggy Pop found out about it and sang on it,” Patterson recalls. Pop’s album The Idiot had been an enormous influence on the songwriter in recent years, and it seemed like the proper homage to a fellow sonic explorer. But as time passed and other guest vocalists were proposed, Patterson finally decided that the album would be the next phase, or perhaps even just a strange detour, for Jaye Jayle. “I had no idea what I was gonna sing, how it was gonna go. So I printed out all these poems, stories, and journal entries I’d made on my phone over the course of the year and went into the studio with my friend Warren (Christopher Gray). We’d eventually find things that rhythmically worked, and that’s how all the lyrics and singing happened. It was all gut instinct, improvisational.”

Consequently, Prisyn’s ten tracks are composites of various snapshots of Patterson’s three-month tour, with the music taking shape on one leg of the journey and the lyrical components coming from some other moment on the road. “The vocal approach isn’t meant to be full of hooks and melody,” Patterson notes. “The music is framed almost as a film score for my life. Instead of David Attenborough or William S. Burroughs as a narrator, I used this opportunity to narrate visuals from my reality.” You can hear that commentary quality on songs like “Blueberries,” which came to fruition during a late night drive through a thunderstorm in Atlanta. The white-knuckle experience manifests in the static blasts, ominous bass synth lines, and cascading arpeggios, and in the background you can hear Patterson reading a short story about trading his eyes with a blind man. Meanwhile, the gloomy electric piano lounge vibes on “Guntime” came from some non-descript drive, with lyrics that capture the much more harrowing experience of having a car full of teenagers point an Uzi at the Jaye Jayle tour van as they drove into Paris, creating a strange sense of distance to the event, as if it was viewed in an out-of-body experience. The expanded horizons provided by extensive touring also served as a point of contrast for Patterson’s comparatively conservative hometown of Louisville, which became the muse for “Don’t Blame the Rain.” The track sounds like a drug induced panic attack in a European discotheque, though the lyrics tackle Southern conservatism and Patterson’s efforts to rise above a culture he doesn’t believe in.

But perhaps the most evocative track on the album is “The River Spree.” Patterson crafted the music—an organic mixture of digital contrabass and interweaving drones—while driving across the long barren stretch of Kansas. But the lyrics capture a moment across the Atlantic, when Patterson found himself lost in Berlin late at night, peaking on acid, without a working phone, and without knowing the whereabouts of his bandmates. He charts his journey over the six-minute song with a drug-high ambivalence, recounting a mugging with the same stoicism as breathing in the night air while “thinking about David / thinking about Iggy.” It sounds like Alan Vega singing from an opium den, comfortably numb while recounting some urban nightmare.

“It’s a very odd record,” Patterson says of Prisyn. The album title, a play on the idea of a synthetic prison, alludes to Patterson’s desire for artistic freedom and the album’s conflicted use of addictive technologies, but in the time of the pandemic he also views it as an example of overcoming adversity in desperate times—it’s a record that could have been made under the jail-like confines of quarantine, with Patterson and Chisholm having never been in the same room at the same time. “These songs have a totally different energy, and that’s the exciting thing about making art. Things have to progress. I don’t wanna draw the same picture for the rest of my life. Maybe that keeps you from being a master at it, but being a master isn’t the key to art. It’s having that constant expression, the constant outlet, the constant change.”

#jaye jayle #everyrecordiown

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imspardagus · 4 years ago

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The Treasury Solicitor takes Tea

Or The Case of the Rugely Poisoner

Part I – Dr Palmer’s cure for debt

On Saturday, 14th June 1856, Dr William Palmer, dubbed by the press “The Rugely Poisoner” or “The Prince of Poisoners”, was publicly hanged at Stafford for the murder of John Parsons Cook at the Talbot Arms, Rugely.

The tale of Palmer’s crime and eventual conviction reads like a Victorian crime thriller. Not surprisingly, because that is precisely what it was. And, but for a chance encounter over a cup of tea, he would have walked free.

The story of Dr Palmer’s life abounds with ugly rumour and speculation but in sufficient quantity for a conclusion to be fairly reached that he was not a nice man, and certainly not the “Saintly Billy” described by his doting mother.

The earliest speculation surrounds a drinking contest that he had with a man who, later, went home to his bed and “died of convulsions”. Palmer was known to be interested in the man’s wife. With rumour spreading of his involvement in the man’s death, Palmer moved on to Rugely, where he married another woman, Ann. Her mother, who had a fortune of £5,000, came to stay: and promptly died “of apoplexy”.

Palmer loved to bet on the horses and he ran up large gambling debts. He was helped out by a large loan by a friend. The man subsequently died at Palmer’s house, apparently in agony. Palmer, as the doctor in attendance, attributed the death to “an abscess in the pelvis”.

That four out of Palmer’s five children died in infancy could be no more than a sign of the times. That Ann, his wife, then died at the age of 29, “of cholera” could be true; there was a cholera epidemic sweeping England at the time. And the fact that Palmer had just insured her life for £13,000 may have been either shrewdness or a coincidence.

Palmer had, by then, squandered his wife’s inheritance and accumulated debts of £22,000 (you can multiply that by about a thousand to get the current equivalent of that sum). That Palmer’s brother Walter then died after Palmer had taken out a huge insurance on his life may have been another coincidence. The insurance company did not think so, sent in investigators and refused to pay out.

But however unlucky Palmer was with the horses, he was more fortunate in life. When his wife’s and brother’s bodies were exhumed they were too decomposed for the cause of death to be established.

And so we come to John Cook. Cook was a rich young man who shared Palmer’s passion for betting on horses but was rather more successful at it. They became friends and Cook loaned Palmer money. Dr Palmer took charge of Cook’s health, which started to deteriorate.

The last few days of Cook’s life were spent at the Talbot Hotel with Palmer in attendance. Cook claimed one night that that there was something in the brandy they were drinking and that it was burning his throat. Palmer made a show of tasting it in front of other guests and declared it good. That night Cook began to suffer spasms and other symptoms. Dr Palmer called on the services of a local doctor who prescribed an opiate to relieve the symptoms. Dr Palmer insisted on administering the medicine and took charge of what Cook ate and drank.

A servant at the hotel later testified that she had tasted some of the broth that Dr Palmer had prepared for Cook. “I suppose I drank about two table spoonfuls, the effect of that was to make me sick in about half an hour, or it might be an hour—I was sick violently all the afternoon till about 5 o'clock”.

Witnesses gave evidence of Cook’s final hours. “I observed that his body, and head, and neck were moving, there was a sort of jumping or jerking about his head and neck—sometimes he would throw his head down on the pillow, arid raise himself up again—the jumping or jerking was in all his body—his breathing was very bad, and the balls of both his eyes very much projected—I observed a gasping when he spoke. It was difficult for him to speak, he was so short of breath—he screamed again three or four times while I was in the room, that was while that violence was—he was moving and knocking about all the time—he called aloud, "Murder!" twice.”

The maid said, “I heard Mr. Cook make a request about being turned over; I believe he said, "Turn me over on my right side." Then Cook died.

Dr Harland was called in to conduct the autopsy. As he arrived, Dr Palmer joined him. He recalled Palmer saying, "I am glad that you are come to make a post mortem examination; some one might have been sent that I did not know, and I know you.” Harland asked, "What is this case? I hear there is a suspicion of poisoning" and Palmer replied, "Oh, no, I think not; he had an epileptic fit on Monday and Tuesday night, and you will find old disease in the heart and in the head."

Later, Palmer, attending the autopsy, fed brandy to the student carrying out the examination of the body and had nudged his arm. The surgeon to whom the vital organs were sent for examination complained that they were so damaged and contaminated that he could draw no conclusions as to the presence of any poisons.

Cook had kept a “betting book” in which he recorded all his bets and what he was owed. The maid remembered its being by his bedside. But when Mr Cook’s brother inquired after the book” Dr Palmer said that it was missing.

Then it was discovered that Dr Palmer had bought for six grains of the poison strychnine shortly before Cook became ill.

Though the evidence against him was circumstantial – so much so that it could not even be shown that Cook’s system contained poison - Dr Palmer was arrested and charged with murder

Part 2 – Justice served in a teacup

In Part 1, we saw a mounting number of deaths surrounding Dr Palmer as he pursued his life of reckless gambling and debt. Despite his financial interest in their demise, nothing could be proved against him. But with the death of John Parson Cook, Palmer’s friend and benefactor, suspicion reached a level that could not be ignored and he was charged with murder.

In 1850, strychnine’s discovery by two French chemists was barely more than 30 years old. The deadly quality of the biological source of the poison, a genus of trees native to Asia, Africa and Central America had been know for some time. Nux Vomica (a substance used by homeopaths but in such microscopic quantities as to be incapable of doing either harm or good), derived from the seeds of the trees, was used as a rat poison but the active chemical strychnine had not been isolated until 1819.

Cases of strychnine being used as a murder weapon were rare (or had gone unidentified) so that establishing its administration as the cause of death was forensically difficult. Few had witnessed the progress of the poison.

Few but, sadly, not none.

In October 1848, Caroline Hickson was a nurse in the family of Mrs Serjeantson Smith. On 30th October, Mrs. Serjeantson Smith was unwell and a prescription was sent to Mr. Jones, a local chemist, to be made up for her. It was in the afternoon, about 6 o'clock, that the medicine arrived. It was a mixture in a bottle. Hickson gave her mistress the medicine, about half a wine glass full, in her bedroom the following morning, at around 7 o'clock, and saw her take it. She then left the room but was alarmed by the ringing of the bell about five minutes after, or it might be ten. When she went into the room she thought her mistress must have fainted. Very soon after, Mrs Smith started to suffer from spasms. Hickson sent a servant to bring a doctor. In that short time, when she returned to the room, her mistress was lying upon the floor, screaming with pain but through tightly clenched teeth. Her arms and legs were drawn up tight to her body, her feet turned inwards. A short time before she died, the last words she uttered were, "Turn me over" and seemed more comfortable.

Shortly afterwards, the chemist, Jones ran up to the house in a great state of alarm. He had made up the wrong prescription. Mrs Smith had, by accident, taken a fatal dose of strychnine.

The awful tragedy was reported in the papers. But Nurse Hickson was so distraught that she broke down. She left the family and disappeared without trace.

When Dr Palmer was arrested, the Treasury Solicitor was Henry Reynolds. This was before the advent of a Director of Public Prosecutions and the Treasury Solicitor had the task of supporting the Attorney-General in the conduct of major prosecutions. The trial of Dr Palmer – moved by special Act of Parliament from Stafford to the Old Bailey because local feeling against Dr Palmer meant he was unlikely to receive a fair trial - fell to them.

The Attorney General and the Treasury Solicitor, convinced as they were in their own minds that Dr Palmer had poisoned Cook with strychnine, were none the less concerned that the evidence was not sufficient to persuade a jury. Without proof of its presence in Cook’s body, the link between Palmer’s purchase and Cook’s death was speculative at best. What they needed was evidence that would demonstrate that Cook’s manner of dying was only consistent with the unique pattern followed by strychnine poisoning. But because of the drug’s novelty, such evidence was conspicuously absent.

The sad business of Nurse Hickson eight years earlier came back to Reynolds’ mind, but all efforts to find her had proved fruitless.

The matter was preying on Reynolds’ mind when he went to tea with Lady Caroline Gamier. The forthcoming trial had so captured the public imagination that it naturally formed a topic of conversation and Reynolds told Lady Caroline that there was only one link missing in the chain of evidence, vital to convicting Palmer; the evidence of a woman named Hickson, who had witnessed the fatal effects of strychnine at first hand. The Treasury had, he said, made every inquiry for Hickson, but she could not be traced.

Astonishingly, Lady Caroline replied, "Hickson is at this moment in my nursery."

At the trial, the poor nurse bravely relived the nightmare of when she accidentally administered strychnine to her mistress and gave a graphic account of the course of her dying, the spasms, the arching of limbs. They all matched the evidence of Cook’s end.

And then there was the call to be turned on her side as the only position of any comfort, followed by breathlessness and asphyxiation. Its correspondence with Cook’s own last hours was striking. The jury convicted Dr Palmer of killing Cook by administering strychnine and Palmer was sentenced to death.

As a footnote to history, English vernacular is peppered with colourful but obscure phrases, many with nautical or colonial origins. Those of you who have ever wondered where the expression “What’s your poison?” – a macabre invitation to to take a drink - came from now have your answer. So powerfully did the case of Dr Palmer, the Rugely Poisoner whose modus operandi was to spike the drinks of his friends with strychnine, capture the imagination of the British people that the “What’s your poison?” entered the language and remained long after Dr Palmer was forgotten.

If you are interested in this case, you can find a transcript of the entire trial at the Old Bailey on-line: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18560514-490-offence-1&div=t18560514-490&terms=william|palmer#highlight

#true crime #tea

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scotianostra · 2 years ago

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The Construction of Rosslyn chapel began on 20th September 1456.

Properly known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, this is just a couple of miles from where I grew up.

The building of the chapel is sometimes incorrectly given as ten years before, but that date comes from the chapel’s receiving its founding charter from Rome.

Following the Reformation, services stopped being held in 1592 and did not begin again until the Chapel was re-dedicated in Victorian times.

Oliver Cromwell had his men stable their horses in the chapel in 1650 when he and General George Monck conquered nearby Roslin Castle.

Theatrum Scotiae also included written information on the drawings featured, the noted Scottish physician and antiquarian Robert Sibbald wrote;

Rosslyn Chapel

To the Right Honourable GEORGE Earl of Caithness, Lord Biridall, &c.

Roslin Chapel

#Scotland #scottish #Midlothian #religious history #religious building #knights templar #history

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warholiana · 5 years ago

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The Times (London, England)

By Roger Lewis

Huge claims are made for Andy Warhol in this massive book. He is, says Blake Gopnik, "the most important and influential artist of the 20th century", who knocked Picasso off his throne. "Andy will go down in history," one of Warhol's teachers asserts, as being "in the same league as Alexander Pope, William Hogarth, Toulouse-Lautrec and Goya as a social critic". To which the only intelligent response is a derisive: pig's bottom!

Warhol, surely, was a tiny overinflated talent, very much a product of Fifties and Sixties pop culture, whose sole insight was that lowly illustration had potential as fine art, that the transitory could be creative. Warhol believed that the "brash materialist objects on which America is built"-- such as Brillo pad boxes, Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell's soup cans, movie star posters and comic books -- had as much right to be displayed in galleries as on trash telly commercials or as props in the colourful films of Jerry Lewis.

But how did anyone think this was new? The Dadaists had been playing games with found objects, and painting moustaches on the Mona Lisa, for years. Toulouse-Lautrec's cabaret posters had long been recognised as genuine art -- and what about Alphonse Mucha, whom Gopnik does not mention? The Czech's fin-desiecle advertisements for soap or lavender water anticipate Warhol's love of packaging, his love of Fifth Avenue shopping sprees.

The Warhols, or Warholas, and before that the Varcholas, originated in modernday Slovakia, on the edge of the Carpathians. His parents emigrated to industrial Pittsburgh, where according to Warhol, "the smog would turn a white shirt black by the end of the day". Warhol was born there in 1928; as a child he was sickly -- he suffered from Sydenham's chorea (then known as St Vitus Dance), which caused twitching and bedwetting, obsessive compulsive behaviour and bad skin.

He wasn't much interested in sports -- "everybody knows that I'm a queen" -- and preferred drawing flowers and butterflies. Warhol enjoyed art class, developing, said a teacher, "a decorative quality that was very becoming". It is true he retained "a childlike directness" -- there was never anything complicated or subtle about his work. Everything is very flat.

Warhol proceeded to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in his home city, where he did a degree in pictorial design. His earliest jobs were decorating window displays for department stores, and producing campy ink drawings for catalogues and magazines. When he moved to Manhattan in 1949, he instantly received many a lucrative commission from Conde Nast and the Hearst corporation. Warhol decorated deluxe brochures, record sleeves, and even designed a bookplate for Audrey Hepburn.

Gopnik, an American art critic, follows Warhol every step of the way, from cockroach-infested cold-water walk-ups in Greenwich Village to his later Park Avenue mansions, where the rooms, crammed with antiques, were kept locked and unvisited. He was never alone, however.

Warhol's mother came to visit, to do the laundry, and remained for 20 years. She never ceased looking for a "nice girl" for him to marry.

A large part of the Warhol mystique was his personal manner, which overcame his looks. "Andy was one of the plainest boys I've ever seen in my life," said an art dealer from the mid-Fifties, "a pimply faced adolescent with a deformed, bulbous nose that was always inflamed." Yet despite this unprepossessing head topped by a silver wig -- he got his toupee in the early Fifties to cover his thinning hair -- he became an indispensable celebrity, owing more to Quentin Crisp than Henri Matisse. He cultivated a creepy, vampiric manner -- Richard Burton called him "a horror film gentleman" -- and affected to be blank and moronic, speaking in monosyllables.

Underneath the "surface diffidence", however, Gopnik assures us that Warhol was widely read and knowledgeable, well versed in everyone from Cocteau to Fred Astaire. Although he drifted in and out of lots of parties, never raising his eyes, a friend said: "There's nothing he hasn't observed." Gopnik calls him "the world's greatest sponge", sucking up experiences and influences -- and giving nothing back.

What's peculiar is that instead of repulsing people, they were fascinated. When he expanded his studio, and named it the Factory, the place was as thronged as a royal court -- even if Warhol's courtiers were chiefly drifters and no-hopers, "drag queens and queers, street hustlers and rough trade, drug dealers and psychiatric basket-cases".

Warhol found sex (his words) "messy and distasteful". Yet he may not have been as asexual as he sometimes pretended. He underwent surgery for anal warts and took a course of penicillin for venereal disease. Warhol, though, preferred to spend hours on the phone, calling friends to get lurid details of their sex lives. A voyeur, he observed the emotions of others while experiencing none of his own.

This sounds very dead, and deadening. Yet that is the effect of his art too. His famous screen prints, where he would use rubber squeegees to slop paint around photographic stencils, were of electric chairs, car crashes and deceased celebrities, such as Marilyn or JFK -- "chaos pulled from the media". Jackie Onassis is the tragic widow. Elizabeth Taylor joined the club because of her myriad near-fatal illnesses. Everything is depicted in violet pink, orange, poison-apple green and magenta. In the 2,700 images Warhol made of Mao, the Chairman looks embalmed.

In 1968 the Grim Reaper nearly polished off the artist himself. Valerie Solanas, "a troubled hanger-on" at the Factory, shot Warhol at point-blank range, annoyed that he had misplaced the typescript of her play Up Your Ass. Luckily, at the hospital, Warhol ended up in the hands of a highly trained surgeon who knew all about bullets. But Warhol's innards were wrecked (he had a "monumental hernia" and his addiction to Valium caused constipation so bad that he needed daily enemas), contributing to the gall bladder trouble that killed him in 1987, at the age of 58, the organ having become gangrenous.

The effect of the shooting was to drive up the value of Warhol's work, and by now there was a team of assistants churning out print runs of 2,500 -- multiple repeat images of Elvis or Shirley Temple, cans and bottle tops. It was as if Warhol was insisting on the virtue of monotony and banality, with pictures that were, his dealer said, "blank, blunt, bleak, stark".

When we are informed, by Gopnik, that "Warhol always talked about his love of boredom", it is fair to say there's no surprise there: the soporific effect of his prints of stamps or banknotes; his films about someone sleeping or the Empire State Building doing nothing; his fondness for tape recording inane chatter and for taking blurry Polaroids at Studio 54 -- with Warhol, form and content were as one.

Towards the end, he dumped his riff-raff followers and sought the company of minor European royalty and the Shah of Iran, desperate to secure portrait commissions. He collected Czech folk art, decorated eggs, carpets, vintage store signs, carved carousel horses, Slavonic church icons. He packed ticket stubs, receipts and Christmas cards into 609 boxes, which he called Time Capsules, the more ephemeral the better. He surrounded himself with the bric-a-brac of his own mausoleum.

Screen prints, priced at $800 originally, now fetch $105 million at auction. The estate, its headquarters in Pittsburgh, is worth billions. Although I always liked the exquisite drawings of perfume bottles or shoes, the laces and filigree and bits of gold leaf, Warhol destroyed his archives of early commercial art. He wanted to be remembered only for his society portraits, which are tawdry. Much like this appallingly bloated book, with its naff prose: "licking his lips at the prospect", "muddied the waters", "dipped a tentative toe", "to add injury to insult", "spent a pretty penny".

Asked why she shot Warhol, Solanas said: "He's a piece of garbage." His work mostly was. Up Your Ass was finally staged in 2000.

A Life as Art by Blake Gopnik Allen Lane, 930pp; PS35

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dramallamadingdang · 6 years ago

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I really like your new hood. What kind of visual editing are you doing? Also, what exactly are the rules of this hood? I tried looking it up with the tags, but alas, it wasn't explained fully. Is this a Zombie Apoc challenge? I'm doing a variation of the one on MTS2, but it takes place in post-War California, circa 1939, if Germans invaded the US. Please let us know your rules for this hood! Thanks! child_of_air

Oh dear, this is going to be really long, sorry. :)

1) The pic-editing. I made a Photoshop action to do that. At first, I was going to edit pics of that neighborhood in a warm, low-contrast sepia-tone. Because I like sepia-tone. So, I fiddled with an existing sepia-tone action I had (one meant for regular photographs) to make it work with Sim-pics. It does everything non-destructively, with adjustment layers, so the original image remains intact "underneath." But then I decided that I wanted SOME color but still low-contrast and matte and kind of grainy. So, on top of the sepia-toning layer group, I plopped down another copy of the original image and set a "Soft Light" layer blend with the layers below to merge it with the sepia-toning. THEN I edited a "film" Photoshop action that I had on hand to make it work better with Sim-pics, then ran THAT on the copy of the original image. Again, it works via adjustment layers, non-destructively. Then I reduced the opacity of the "film" layer group and the second copy of the original image so that the sepia-toning below merged better with the added-back color, resulting in the kind of images I've been posting.

THEN I recorded ALL of the above into a one-click Photoshop action that'll work on most Sims-pics. It'll sometimes need to be further adjusted, especially if the original image is really dark, like an outdoor nighttime pic with little or no light source, but for many pics, it's just one click.

I could share the action, if anyone would be interested in having it or fiddling with it for their own use, but it is still dependent on the other two actions that I edited. I'm not sure how to share all three together since one of the dependent actions is bundled with about a dozen others. I don't know how to extract just the one. I suppose I could just share the whole bundle, though. It's a very nice bundle that offers lots of nice effects, actually! :) I'm pretty sure it's one of the hundreds of free ones my hubby has, since he has the ones he paid for in a different folder on the networked external archive drive... Well, if anyone wants it, let me know, and I'll look into it. :)

Now as for the rules....

There really isn't a hard-and-fast set, I'm afraid. I'm kind of making things up as I go along. Initially, this was SUPPOSED to be just a neighborhood to test out some of Sun & Moon's stuff and some playing ideas prior to using those things in another neighborhood I'm developing but where I don't want to experiment. Then it kind of took on a life of its own. *laugh* It has BACC elements merged with the "backstory" of an Apocalypse that can also easily be a "pioneer" or “homesteading” kind of thing with no apocalyptic undertones. :) There are also some elements of an "integrated" playing style. In its pure form that would mean that everything has to be "built" in-hood, with nothing just appearing out of the air. I don't want to go full-on with that -- too tedious and therefore un-fun, IMO -- but I do have some supply chains. More on that further down.

Basically, it goes like this: The end of civilization was coming (Plague, nuclear war, zombies, who knows? And who cares? :) ), and only one person seemed to realize it. That one person was in college at the time. So, rather than focus on his studies so much -- After all, civilization was ending so there goes that MBA and lucrative corporate career, right? -- he focused on making as many friends as possible and convincing them that, "Hey, world's gonna end, we need to get outta Dodge and make a new world." Slowly, he gathered a group of friends -- people who lived in the dorm, a few professors, hell, even a cheerleader -- who believed him and started to make preparations. Everyone else made fun of them, of course, but who cared about that? They were all gonna die or whatever. After graduation, they left, trekking out into the wilderness with (in my imagination) enough stuff like preserved food and potable water and seeds to plant and candles to burn and shovels and saws and stuff like that, to get them by for a while.

And sure enough, they were right! Civilization collapsed. Infrastructure was destroyed or became nonfunctional. Telecommunications systems were gone even if there'd been electricity to run such devices. This group of 16 is out in the wilderness, and other survivors/escapees/whatever are wandering around, too. But the core group has a collectively-agreed-up mission to work cooperatively to make a new and better and simple-living world: Peaceful, completely egalitarian, communal, a world where money and power neither exist nor are desirable, where everyone works together, willingly, for the good of the collective, a world living in harmony with nature. (Basically, my ideal world. *laugh* I really am a communist at heart, only without the oligarchical totalitarianism that modern attempts at communism have been corrupted by.)

At first, they all lived together in one place, sleeping in quickly-built, rough cabins, doing potty business in bushes, collecting rain water for makeshift showers, and eating food that they brought, that they grew/gathered, or that they caught. All the while, they were busy putting together the "raw materials" they needed to build individual houses to live in, each dedicated to a specific function that benefits the community as a whole, the fruits of which would be shared equally with the entire community. Each time a production goal was reached, one person/couple could move off the communal "raw materials" lot and into the lot that could be "built" from the gathered raw materials. And the community grows from there.

Meanwhile, there are those other folks, wandering around alone and frightened and helpless in the wilderness, having escaped whatever the disaster was that occurred. Sometimes, members of the community meet up with them while they're out scoping out the territory. Those poor souls can be brought into the fold as well, added to the communal lot and becoming contributing members of the community.

And that's as far as the "story" goes for now. :) Bear in mind that my neighborhood is age-modded with this mod, so my Sims have PLENTY of time to live out their lives. Not sure playing this way will really work with the standard-length lifestages. You'd have to figure out ways to speed things up rather a lot, I would think or else your founders will be dead before they can even earn a house, much less reproduce and stuff. :) But anyway, the "rules," such as they are, so far:

1) No careers. No vacations. No Uni after the initial "gather your founders" part, if you do that. No subhoods at all. And no money, so if you want to you can give your households a million simoleons because it simply doesn't matter.

2) No electricity. No indoor plumbing. (I intend to add those things as they are "earned," down the line, but only at the earliest when the first born-in-game generation are adults. Haven't figure out exactly HOW it'll be earned, though.) No phones. No nannies, repair people, maids, gardeners, etc., unless you want to set up some sort of in-neighborhood system for that. (Which is certainly doable; I plan to do it later, once my supply chains are in place and I'm looking for "employment" for new people.) No vehicles except "vehicle horses." (Only once you have a horse farm!) Use candles for light sources. Use only charcoal grills for cooking. (Unless you want to download an historical-type oven, but I'm trying to run this with less CC, not more, and I want there to be some big rewards for earning electricity.) Don't use an electric fridge. (I'm using this one.) Use an outhouse, not indoor flush toilets. Use mods so that water has to be gathered to use to fill bathtubs and sinks. Stuff like that.

3) I recommend using the Visitor Controller to ban all but playable Sims from every lot. Also ban mail and newspaper delivery. You COULD make the neighborhood from empty templates and no stealth hoods, yes, but then you're going to lose the "meet people by hiking" thing, which is how "new blood" gets added to this neighborhood. That function draws from the NPC household that includes things like the BV tourists/locals and the hobby leaders and stuff like that. If you use empty templates and whatnot, you won't have that.

4) Get yer founders. I did this via sending Komei Tellerman to Uni and having him focus on making friends amongst the dormies, professors, and Uni NPCs so that all the founders would at least have a strong relationship with him, if no one else, but you could just make a bunch in CAS if you’d rather skip that part. Or if you don’t have Uni installed, of course. :)

5) Build an initial lot to dump everyone on. (I teleported them with the Sim Blender, aged them to regular adults, gave them the extra want slots they should have as college graduates, etc., since they weren’t yet playables in Uni.) Include everything they need for basic motive-filling but not much else. (You could put a working stack of books somewhere if you want them to skill, but really? With no careers, skilling isn't really all that necessary.) There will also need to be ways to make/gather raw materials. Here's the layout of the one I made, with some useful links to stuff I used on it. This lot houses the founders, any new members added to the community, and ALL born-in-game Sims once they reach teenhood, until they earn individual lots.

Note: For me, I did not want kids on this lot. They have to wait until they earn an individual lot for that. So the only place to autonomously woohoo is the park benches I used as seating for eating. But, I have ACR set so that woohoo on sofas/park benches requires privacy...which is hard to get on a lot with no real walls and a bunch of other people living on it. :) If you DO want them to have kids, then they could woohoo in the cabin-tents, but ACR doesn't enable autonomous tent-woohoo, so...yeah.

Note 2: I let the communal lot run pretty much entirely on free will, only commanding certain Sims to do certain things at certain times. That way, the residents form their own relationships and either succeed or fail at taking care of themselves. They also develop different sleep schedules, which is nice for the player, less of them to keep an eye on at any given time. :) It's also easier to NOT micromanage 16 or more Sims at once, naturally. But this, of course, would be up to the player and how you like to play.

4) Earning a lot: The communal lot has choppable trees, the mining rocks from Sun & Moon's mining set, and Nixnivis's blacksmith station on it. I have fiddled with the trees and the mining rocks to make them autonomous, and the rule is that Sims can never be commanded to chop trees or mine ore. They must decide to do that themselves, so production is limited by how industrious your Sims are. Further, the mined ore has to be "refined" (into things like nails and other things that go into a house). For this, I use the blacksmith station, just having a person make that object's basic single horseshoe object as as "stand-in." (This isn't autonomous; it's one of the things that Sims can be commanded to do.)

NOTE: I could share the edited autonomized choppable trees if someone wants to use this idea; I don't think Beck would care. But sharing the edited autonomized mining rocks would break Sun & Moon's policy, so if you want that, you'd have to do the editing yourself. It's not hard, if you can run SimPE.

In order to earn each new individual lot, the communal lot must produce 75 bundles of chopped logs and 40 horseshoes. And each horseshoe “requires” 2 buckets of ore, so you need to keep track of how many buckets of ore you have in inventories and subtract out the appropriate number of ore buckets when a batch of horseshoes is made. (Just sell them "to the air;" money doesn't matter. Much of the crafting in this hood will work the same way, too, with "prerequisite" objects that need to be produced somewhere first, so get used to the technique. *laugh*) So to get those 40 horseshoes, 80 buckets of ore have to be (autonomously!) mined first. Once you have the required materials, remove them from inventories and sell them to the air. Then, you can build an individual lot and move whoever you want to own the lot out of the communal one.

(You might want to adjust the requirements needed for how you play. For instance, if you don’t want to go pure free-will, you should probably have much higher requirements. If you don’t age-mod, then you’ll want to adjust simply because you just won’t have time to earn lots with enough time left over for your Sims to have kids to keep the neighborhood going. So, yeah. That’s certainly not set in stone; it’s just what works for my set-up.)

5) Supply chains and stuff: Before you build your first individual lot(s), you're going to want to choose what that lot will be dedicated to, because that will dictate how you build it. My list of possibilities -- so far, that is; it's ever-growing as I get new ideas and figure out how to implement them -- is as follows:

RobotsFlower ArrangingToy-MakingPotterySewingSpinning/KnittingWeavingCattleChickensHorsesPigsSheepGoatsWineryPaintingDog/Cat BreederBeesBakingMarijuanaCandle-makingFishingHayCornMaxis OrchardBasketryHerbs/WildflowersHunting/TanningTrappingApothecary (Plus reagents, if witches)Blacksmithing

Some of those are Maxis things. Some of them are CC. Some of them don't actually exist and I'm using stand-ins instead. (Like, for instance, candle-making. Sun & Moon's beekeeping set produces beeswax as one of its end products, along with honey. They didn't yet make a candle-making station, though, so in the meantime, I'm just gonna use the robot station or something and pretend. They can make toy robots that can be one-for-one "exchanged" for functional candles, which can then be distributed. It's easy to do because money doesn't matter.) Most of them have "prerequisites." I'm not going to go into how all of these will work because I'd be here for days, but I'll give you one example of a supply chain and its prerequisites and stuff.

Let's talk about the sewing supply chain, clothing and blankets and stuff being the ultimate end-products of that supply chain. In order to have new clothing and towels and quilts/blankets and other nice decorative things like that, first, at the very bottom of the "pyramid," you gotta have someone who'll grow hay. Because you can't have sheep (and other livestock) without something to feed them. And you can't have wool without sheep. (Or growing cotton or flax for linen or making silk or something, and if I can figure out how to make THAT happen, I will. I have an idea brewing for marijuana -- think hemp -- but for now...sheep.) And you can't knit a sweater or produce fabric without cleaning and spinning that wool into yarn/usable fiber/thread. And you can't have fabric without someone with a loom to weave it. And you can't have leather (for shoes and stuff) without someone killing some kind of animal (domesticated or hunting wild ones) and tanning the hides. ONLY THEN can you have someone making new clothing. And at each step, there's a kind of conversion. Like "1 spun basket of wool = enough yarn to make 1 sweater." So, you sell the basket of wool (obtained from the sheep farmer) to the air, then "spin" (via a CC spinning wheel plus an invisible sewing machine to make a few potholders or something as a "stand-in" for the process), then you sell those potholders to the air and use Beck's knitting ball to make one piece of clothing which can then be distributed and used to "buy" one sweater or whatever.

That's how everything basically works in a supply chain, some of which have more steps than others. Producing new clothing would be the longest one I've come up with so far. So, when building your lots, if you want to use supply chains at all, you must start out with the "anchors" of the supply chains you want to have. If you don't want to be that complicated, you could just pick randomly or pick whatever appeals to you.

6) Individual lots: Plop down a lot. On that lot, build a house but leave room outside for the lot's function plus the outhouse, the outdoor fridge, a well/water pump and a garden. (Eventually gardens can go away, once you have enough food-producers that can consistently produce enough to distribute amongst the population. But until then, folks will need to grow stuff.) The size of your lots is gonna depend on you and how you play. Me, I like smaller lots and I don't mind cramming large families into small houses...which suits a "pioneer" sort of lifestyle, anyway. So, my individual lots are no bigger than 3x3, and the house itself (they're all the same, just different colors, different furnishings, and oriented differently on the lot), for a child-producing household, is a 9x9 square with a 3-tile deep front porch across the front. Floor plan here.

7) Unlike a BACC where CAS Sims are “earned” by certain events, any new, non-born-in-game Sims have to be met via hiking. (It’s one of the possible outcomes of hiking.) It’s a substitute for being out “exploring” or “looking for wandering domesticate livestock to capture” or whatever. If a non-pet “someone” is met, that person gets added to the communal lot, joining the “queue” for an individual lot. (I just use the Sim Blender to teleport them into the communal lot and add them to the household.) I prefer to age up any children to teen and age down any elders to adults, but that’s up to you, of course.

Annnnnnd that's about it, really. I have yet to figure out exactly how the "economy" is going to run. At the moment, the individual lots are still producing stuff with not enough to distribute yet and I don't have any full supply chains yet...but I need to figure it all out soon. I'm leaning toward just equally distributing end-products in truly communist style, but I'm not sure yet. I could list some more miscellaneous rules...but I think that's enough for now. *laugh*

#replies #rulesets #princesspiratecat

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bookofdan · 4 years ago

Text

Chuang-Tze, Idealist

The “return to Nature,” however, could not be so readily discouraged; it found voice in this age as in every other, and by what might be called a natural accident its exponent was the most eloquent writer of this time. Chuang-tze, loving Nature as the only mistress who always welcomed him, whatever his infidelities or his age, poured into his philosophy the poetic sensitivity of a Rousseau, and yet sharpened it with the satiric wit of a Voltaire. Who could imagine Mencius so far forgetting himself as to describe a man as having “a large goiter like an earthenware jar?” Chuang belongs to literature as well as to philosophy.

He was born in the province of Sung, and held minor office for a time in the city of Khi-yüan. He visited the same courts as Mencius, but neither, in his extant writings, mentions the other’s name; perhaps they loved each other like contemporaries. Story has it that he refused high office twice. When the Duke of Wei offered him the prime ministry he dismissed the royal messengers with a curtness indicative of a writer’s dreams: “Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence. I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign. While he was fishing two great officers brought him a message from the King of Khu: “I wish to trouble you with the charge of all my territories.” Chuang, Chuang tells us, answered without turning away from his fishing:

“I have heard that in Khu there is a spirit-like tortoise-shell, the wearer of which died three thousand years ago, and which the king keeps, in his ancestral temple, in a hamper covered with a cloth. Was it better for the tortoise to die and leave its shell to be thus honored? Or would it have been better for it to live, and keep on dragging its tail after it over the mud?” The two officers said “It would have been better for it to live, and draw its tail after it over the mud.” “Go your ways,” said Chuang; “I will keep on drawing my tail after me through the mud.”

His respect for governments equaled that of his spiritual ancestor, Lao-the. He took delight in posting out how many qualities kings and governors shared with thieves. If, by some negligence on his part, a true philosopher should find himself in charge of a state, his proper course would be to do nothing, and allow men in freedom to build their own organs of self-government. “I have heard of letting the world be, and exercising forbearance; I have not heard of governing the world.” The Golden Age, which preceded the earliest kings, had no government; and Yao and Shun, instead of being so honored by China and Confucius, should be charged with having destroyed the primitive happiness of mankind by introducing government. “in the age of perfect virtue men lived in common with birds and beasts, and were on terms of equality with all creatures, as forming one family: how could they know among themselves the distinctions of superior men and small men?”

The wise man, thinks Chuang, will take to his heels at the first sign of government, and will live as far as possible from both philosophers and kings. He will court the peace and silence of the woods (here was a theme that a thousand Chinese painters would seek to illustrate), and let his whole being, without any impediment of artifice or thought, follow the divine Tao—the law and flow of Nature’s inexplicable life. He would be sparing of words, for words mislead as often as they guide, and the Tao—the Way and Essence of Nature—can never be phrased in words or formed in thought; it can only be felt by the blood. He would reject the aid of machinery, preferring the older, more burdensome ways of simpler men; for machinery makes complexity, turbulence and inequality, and no man can live among machines and achieve peace. He would avoid the ownership of property, and would find no use in his life for gold; like Timon he would let the gold lie hidden in the hills, and the pearls remain unsought in the deep. “His distinction is in understanding that all things belong to the one treasury, and that death and life should be viewed in the same way”—as harmonious measures in the rhythm of Nature, waves of one sea.

The center of Chuang’s thought, as of the thought of that half-legendary Lao-the who seemed to him so much profounder than Confucius, was a mystic vision of an impersonal unity, so strangely akin to the doctrines of Buddha and the Upanishads that one is tempted to believe that Indian metaphysics had found its way into China long before the recorded coming of Buddhism four hundred years later. It is true that Chuang is an agnostic, a fatalist, a determinist and a pessimist; but this does not prevent him from being a kind of skeptical saint, a Tao-intoxicated man. He expresses his skepticism characteristically in a story:

The Penumbra said to the Umbra: “At one moment you move, at another you are at rest. At one moment you sit down, at another you get up. Why this instability of purpose?” “I depend,” replied the Umbra, “upon something which causes me to do as I do; and that something depends upon something else which causes it to do as it does. . . . How can I tell why I do one thing or do not do another?” . . . When the body is decomposed, the mind will be decomposed along with it; must not the case be pronounced very deplorable? . . . The change—the rise and dissolution—of all things (continually) goes on, but we do not know who it is that maintains and continues the process. How do we know when any one begins? How do we know when he will end? We have simply to wait for it, and nothing more.

These problems, Chuang suspects, are due less to the nature of things than to the limits of our thought; it is not to be wondered at that the effort of our imprisoned brains to understand the cosmos of which they are such minute particles should end in contradictions, “antinomies,” and befuddlement. This attempt to explain the whole in terms of the part has been a gigantic immodesty, forgivable only on the ground of the amusement which it has caused; for humor, like philosophy, is a view of the part in terms of the whole, and neither is possible without the other. The intellect, says Chuang-tze, can never avail to understand ultimate things, or any profound thing, such as the growth of a child. “Disputation is a proof of not seeing clearly,” and in order to understand the Tao, one “must sternly suppress one’s knowledge”; we have to forget our theories and feel the fact. Education is of no help towards such understanding; submersion in the flow of nature is all-important.

What is the Tao that the rare and favored mystic sees? It is inexpressible in words; weakly and with contradictions we describe it as the unity of all things, their quiet flow from origin to fulfillment, and the law that governs that flow. “Before there were heaven and earth, from of old it was, securely existing.” In that cosmic unity all contradictions are resolved, all distinctions fade, all opposites meet; within it and from its standpoint there is no good or bad, no white or black, no beautiful or ugly, no great or small. “If one only knows that the universe is but (as small as) a tare seed, and the tip of a hair is as large as a mountain, then one may be said to have seen the relativity of things.” In that vague entirety no form is permanent, and none so unique that it cannot pass into another in the leisurely cycle of evolution.

“The seeds (of things) are multitudinous and minute. On the surface of the water they form a membranous texture. When they reach to where the land and water join they become the (lichens that form the) clothes of frogs and oysters. Coming to life on mounds and heights, they become the plantain; and receiving manure, appear as crow’s feet. The roots of the crow’s foot become grubs, and its leaves, butterflies. This butterfly is changed into an insect, and comes to life under a furnace. Then it has the form of a moth. The mother after a thousand days becomes a bird. . . . The ying-hsi uniting with a bamboo produces the khing-ning; this, the panther; the panther, the horse; and the horse the man. Man then enters into the great Machinery (of Evolution), from which all things come forth and which they enter at death.”

It is not as clear as Darwin, but it will serve.

In this endless cycle man himself may pass into other forms; his present shape is transient, and from the viewpoint of eternity may be only superficially real—part of Maya’s deceptive veil of difference.

“Once upon a time I, Chuang-tze, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming that I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man.”

Death is therefore only a change of form, possible for the better; it is, as Ibsen was to say, the great Button-Moulder who fuses us again in this furnace of change:

“Tze Lai fell ill and lay gasping at the point of death, while his wife and children stood around him weeping. Li went to ask from him, and said to them: “Hush! Get out of the way! Do not disturb him in his process of transformation.” . . . Then, leaning against the door, he spoke to (the dying man). The Lai said: “A man’s relations with the Yin and the Yang is more than that to his parents. If they are hastening my death, and I do not obey, I shall be considered unruly. There is the Great Mass (of Nature), that makes me carry this body, labor with this life, relax in old age, and rest in death. Therefore that which has taken care of my birth is that which will take care of my death. Here is a great founder casting his metal. If the metal, dancing up and down, should say, “I must be made into a Mo Yeh’ (a famous old sword), the great founder would surely consider this metal an evil one. So, if, merely because one has once assumed the human form, one insists on being a man, and a man only, the author of transformation will be sure to consider this one an evil being. Let us now regard heaven and earth as a great melting-pot, and the author of transformation as a great founder; and wherever we go, shall we not be at home? Quiet is our sleep, and calm is our awakening.”

When Chuang himself was about to die his disciples prepared for him a ceremonious funeral. But he bade them desist. “With heaven and earth for my coffin and shell, with the sun, moon and stars as my burial regalia, and with all creation to escort me to the grave—are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?” The disciples protested that, unburied, he would be eaten by the carrion birds of the air. To which Chuang answered, with the smiling irony of all his words: “Above ground I shall be food for kites; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why robe one to feed the other?”

If we have spoken at such length of the ancient philosophers of China it is partly because the insoluble problems of human life and destiny irresistibly attract the inquisitive mind, and partly because the lore of her philosophers is the most precious portion of China’s gift to the world. Long ago (in 1697) the cosmic-minded Leibnitz, after studying Chinese philosophy, appealed for the mingling and cross-fertilization of East and West. “The condition of affairs among ourselves, “ he wrote, in terms which have been useful to every generation, “is such that in view of the inordinate lengths to which the corruption of morals has advanced, I almost think it necessary that Chinese missionaries should be sent to us to teach us the aim and practice of national theology. . . . For I believe that if a wise man were to be appointed judge . . . of the goodness of peoples, he would award the golden apple to the Chinese.” He begged Peter the Great to build a land route to China, and he promoted the foundation of societies in Moscow and Berlin for the “opening up of China and the interchange of civilizations between China and Europe.” In 1721 Christian Wolf made an attempt in this direction by lecturing at Halle “on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese.” He was accused of atheism, and dismissed; but when Frederick mounted the throne he called him to Purssia, and restored him to honor.

The Enlightenment took up Chinese philosophy at the same time that it carved out Chinese gardens and adorned its homes with Chinoiseries. The Physiocrats seem to have been influenced by Lao-the and Chuang-tze in their doctrine of laissez-faire; and Rousseau at times talked so like the Old Master that we at once correlate him with Lao-tze and Chuang, as we should correlate Voltaire with Confucius and Mencius, if these had been blessed with wit. “I have read the books of Confucius with attention,” said Voltaire; “I have made extracts from them; I have found in them nothing but the purest morality, without the slightest tinge of charlatanism.” Goethe in 1770 recorded his resolution to read the philosophical classics of China; and when the guns of half the world resounded at Leipzig forty-three years later, the old sage paid no attention to them, being absorbed in Chinese literature.

May this brief and superficial introduction lead the reader on to study the Chinese philosophers themselves, as Goethe studied them, and Voltaire, and Tolstoi.

Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant

Book Three: The Far East

Chapter III: Socialists and Anarchists

#quotes #will durant #our oriental heritage #chuang-tze #chuang tzu #zhuang zhou #tao

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artdjgblog · 4 years ago

Photo

Innerview: Nathan Reusch / The Record Machine

October 2008

Art: DJG Design

Note: Interview for a series called "Where Are They Now?"

Over the years we have gotten to work with really great creative people. After doing this for five years we want to give you guys some more insight on who has helped be a part of this label and make it what it is today. First off we have an interview with Danny Gibson of DJG Design. Danny has always been behind the scenes at TRM. He has helped create almost all of our logos and helped us with a lot of art direction and design since the begining. He also designed our very first release for Jame Dean Trio. 01) Introduction I was at the historic first official meeting of The Record Machine held at McCoy’s in West Port of Kansas City, MO over half a decade ago. My say didn’t amount to much. I think my mouth was full as I was mostly positioned to eat free cheeseburgers. 02) How have you been spending your days? My days are spent. Creeping on the Crow’s Feet I find that time is more easily measured in flap jack format than ever before. Something big has always been beaming and beating and I find myself blind peeping to see how far back the dogs with prickly sticks in their mouths yip, kick and nip for my heels. I do beat the crickets up at 5 am Monday thru Saturday in order to pinch a bit back. Evenings and weekends find me down slide sliver squeezes as well. I engage in making things and find some peace through all the pieces with my maker in the act of doing so. The handful of women I share space with enlightenment my walk as well…kitties and wife. Walks are good too and Fall time is the best for comfortable living in Kansas City. 03) Where have you been spending your days or evenings? A bounty of selections from my basement is always on the menu. I’m easily entertained hunched over at my good ol’ door desk. In the mean time I appreciate the company of my wife, kitty hair on my clothes, celebrating all movies, well-tailored music that sometimes requires a third ear and high rise stacks of books and comics. For nourishment I scrape every pan and pot my wife cooks in. And I am the dishwasher. In the twilight occasion, a one scoop waffle cone of peanut butter ice cream at Miami Ice just down the street does me correctly. If I’m in need to see the stars or get away, the family farm isn’t too far off. 04) What has been in your ears? I love big chunks of ear wax. While rockin’ to the thunder that Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band brought at Sprint Center here in KC, I had a big chunk of ear gunk fall out and it was heavenly. I’m really tickled by the musical foundations a fellow basement dweller named Micah Buzan of Blue Springs, MO is cranking out. He is only 18 and one to watch. Other Kansas City area highlights include The Tambourine Club and The ACBs, who both not only crank out some great and fresh music, but are genuinely lovely lads and don’t boast at the art of playing “rock star”. Far out of this area…I’m excited to hear more from Empire of the Sun as the single “Walking on a Dream” is some of the best dance pop I’ve heard since Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album. Which, I’ve been rattling the rafters with that ’80s gold as well whenever I tire of the Samey So-So’s of most things current. Though, there are a few great new ones and “Evil Urges” by My Morning Jackets is my favorite album so far in 2008. And I can never get enough Bruce Springsteen in my diet. Every day and sometimes every minute of the day calls for a different selection from The Boss’s healthy catalogue. I’m also into the music of Suicide lately. Oh, and I’m quite convinced that Harry Nilsson is one of our finest song craftsmen as a handful of his albums have really been making sense to me and his range is all over the map. 05) What has been inspiring or refreshing to you lately? The work ethic, ideas, passion and output of singer-songwriters Harry Nilsson and Bruce Springsteen gets me going. I finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” for the second and one half times and it is gold. I like Michael Chabon’s writing and work ethic a lot too and am spending my second Fall in his books…the same with Flannery O’Connor. In terms of arts and crafts, Saul Steinberg, Henryk Tomaszewski, Eric Carle and Bill Traylor continue to get me to smiling. Oh, and I must hand out an exclamation to fellow maker Ben Chlapek of Neversleeping.com as he is involved with a lot of lovely creations. 06) Earliest Influences that you can think of? Farm Life / Giant Watermelon Patches / Giant Pumpkins / Grandaddy Long Legs / Dead Animals Under Bed / Homemade Stuffed Animals / Taxidermy / Seed Corn Packaging and Farm Implement Logos / Small Town Gas Stations / Uncle Ed’s Horse Drawing Skills / The Seasons / Fireworks / Animals Big and Little / Hunting / Dead Animal Backpack / Grandma Gibson’s Handmade Aesthetics, Checker skills, Sugar Cookies and Salmon Patties / Grandpa Gibson’s Burnt Pancakes and Old Western-Love Story Reading / The Sand Box / Tree Houses and Forts / Popping Asphalt Bubbles in Summertime / Snow Days / Hard Rains / Holidays / Fishing / Camping / Guns and War / Drawing WWII Battles with Dad / Raccoon Wall Paper / Puppets / Anything Jim Henson / Mad Magazine / Mad Balls / Garbage Pail Kids / Dr. Demento / Taping Music Off the Radio / “Live & Let Die” by Paul McCartney & Wings / Mom’s Record Pile / The Beatles / Oldies Music / ‘70s T.V. Theme Tunes / ‘80s Pop Music (Michael Jackson for sure) / Weird Al Yankovic / Ren & Stimpy / Pee-Wee’s Playhouse / Saturday Morning Cartoons / “Gummi Bears” / Comic Books / Tractor Pulls / Big Foot (Creature and Monster Truck) / “Star Wars” / “The Swiss Family Robinson” / “James Bond” / “Indiana Jones” / “Rambo” / “Commando” / “Batman” (Tim Burton) / Going to the Movies / Pizza and Tacos / Soda Pop / Flavored Frozen Pops / Kick Ball / Grandma Dayton’s Spaghetti / Racking Leaves and Riding to the Dump with Grandpa Dayton / Sports (Michael Jordan for sure) / Sports Team Mascots / Sports Stadiums / Collecting Sports Trading Cards / Skyscrapers / Cake and Ice Cream / Late Nights at Best Friend Ean’s Funeral Home House / “…red and yellow, black and white they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” / Being Alone / Cutting and Pasting / Falling Off a Slide, Hitting My Head and Blacking Out in Kindergarten 07) Best thing you have seen on a little or big screen in a while? P.T. Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” is my favorite movie and I just took my 8th dip with it. My favorite 2008 movie and the best rockumentary ever so far is “Young @ Heart” and close behind for top of this year is “Be Kind Rewind” and “Son of Rambow”. This Fall and Winter look to boast one of the finest crops of films…I’m highly anticipating “The Road”, “The Wrestler”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “Synecdoche, NY”, “The Changeling” and many others. Other great watches of late (old and new) include “The Tin Drum”, “Hoop Dreams”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “The Wicker Man” (1973), “Sorry, Haters”, “The Seven Year Itch”, “The Cars That Ate Paris”, “Don’t Look Now”, “Dark Days”, “Rat Catcher”, “The King of Kong”, “Alice”, “Dear Wendy” and “The Band’s Visit”. On the small screen, “Planet Earth” is mind-blowing worship that demands for me to invest in a projector for the future. In T.V. Land this summer I discovered and fell in love with “Beauty & The Geek”. I’m excited for the cool new sci-fi show with cool typography called “Fringe” and another season with the excellent “How I Met Your Mother”. Currently I’m backtracking through the entire series of “Sex & The City” and am absolutely loving it and can’t wait to get the movie! Oh, and the live Broadway production of “The Drowsy Chaperone” is gold genius and made me cry. 08) Last best show you have been to? Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band in Kansas City on August 24, 2008. It is the best show I’ve ever seen, even better than two previous Boss concerts. Sprint Center is now officially called Spring Center. I can’t wait for the Super Bowl half-time… 09) Any links to things you want to pass along? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYwhvD2-fYw 10) The Final Word? (one word only please) GRILLEDCHEESETOMATOSOUP -djg

#innerviews

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nurseperriestyles-blog · 7 years ago

Text

More of the Same

A/N: I do not take credit for this picture. But I did have my husband edit her hair and eye color to match Perrie. This is the closest I’ve found online, and it’s pretty close.

This post probably had a lot of typos and issues, as per usual. I was fighting sleep when I wrote it

Template from:

https://theboson.deviantart.com/art/Blank-Character-Sheet-2-1-8-390-Questions-460031650

“I’d much rather save the heroes than be the hero.” --Perrie Styles

General Information

Name: Perrie Styles

Pronunciation: Pear-ee

Name Meaning: Pear tree

Name Origin: French

Other Names: Pear

Gender: Female

Titles: Nurse Styles

Birth Name: Perrie Styles

Birth Date: October 17th

Birth Length: 16 inches

Birth Weight: 6 ½ lbs

Birth Place: Infirmary in Wall Rose

Manner of Birth: Natural

First Word(s): “Uh oh”

Dominant Hand: Right

Astrological Sign: Libra

Catchphrase: “Fuck.” (She says it way too much)

Autograph: Literally just a “P” with illegible scribbles after it

Handwriting: The messiest, most lazy chicken scratch ever. She has very pretty, neat cursive handwriting, though, when she tries.

ID Number/SSN: N/A

License Plate Number: N/A

Appearance

Picture: See above

Height: 5’4

Weight: 110 lbs

Species: Human

Race: Caucasian

Blood Type: A-

Symbol: N/A

Skin Color: White

Birthmarks: N/A

Extra Anatomy: N/A

Hair Color: Pale, icy blonde

Hair Length: Just above her collar bones

Hair Type: Wavy

Hair Style: A long, messy bob

Widow's Peak: None

Eye Color: Dark blue/grey

Eyebrows: Full with a subtle arch

Nose Shape: Small and turns up at the end

Teeth: Straight and white

Face Shape: Heart shaped

Complexion: She has pretty clear skin, but around her hair line tends to get a few small bumps from sweating.

Facial Hair: None

Health and Image

Diet: Perrie doesn’t watch what she eats at all. It’s lucky that she finds time to eat at all.

Exercise: She walks to and from work, and is on her feel all day, but that’ all the exercise she gets

Fitness: That’s one of her least favorite words

Posture: She slouches a lot, but if she’s trying to impress someone, she’ll stand up straight

Dexterity: She isn’t very clumsy, unless she’s really tired

Reflexes: Her reflexes are better than average. She’s pretty good at dodging items thrown by hysterical patients

Abnormalities: None

Handicaps: None

Medication: None

Allergies: Cats

Diseases: None

Illnesses: None

Disorders: PTS from the fall of Wall Maria

Broken Bones: None

Wardrobe: She mostly wears cotton dresses and skirts, her nursing smocks, collared button ups

Accessories: None. She doesn’t wear any jewelry or anything because she loses it or it gets in the way

Equipment: N/A

Musical Instruments: None. She has no musical ability whatsoever

Piercings: None

Hygiene: She’s not a neat/clean freak, but she keeps herself and her hands very clean

Makeup: Nope. Perrie doesn’t have the time or skill to put on makeup

Perfume / Cologne: She keeps a bottle of her mother’s perfume that smells like roses, but she only wears it on special occasions

Scent: She washes in strawberry scented soap and shampoo. She really, really loves strawberries, ya’ll.

Scars: She has a thin, diagonal scar on her left thigh

Tattoos: None

Voice

Voice: She has a sweet, soft voice. When she’s mad or super serious about something, it’s more loud and firm

Pitch: On the higher side, but not obnoxious and squeaky

Laughter: She has a rather loud laugh, and she snorts sometimes

Impediments: None

Psychology

IQ: 148

Vocabulary: Perrie has a very extensive vocabulary, especially medical terms and such. She isn’t pretentious about it, however.

Memory: When she’s learning something, or needing to remember something important, she has an excellent memory. If it’s just everyday things, or when she’s really tired, she can’t remember anything

Temperament: Choleric

Learning Style: She starts by reading and studying something, then moves on to hands on learning

Emotional Stability: She is very emotionally stable. She can, however, become overwhelmed and freak out, but not very often

Mental Health: She’s healthy. She has slight PTS and can freak out in certain situations, but it isn’t debilitating.

Philosophy

Religion: None. She believes firmly in science and thinks religion is ridiculous, but she doesn’t slam it in people’s faces. She never talks about religion with others.

Superstitions: None

Spirit Animal: If she had to pick an animal, it would probably be an owl

Etiquette: Perrie is very polite and kind in social or professional situations, but she can be very vulgar in casual situations, or if she’s bothered

Alignment: Lawful good

Perception: Realist

Philosophy / Motto: “She believed she could, so she did.”

Taboos: Murder. No matter what, Perrie could never bring herself to take another’s life. It is against everything she stands for as a nurse

Vices: Cursing, spite

Virtues: Kindness, open-minded, hard-working

Character

Primary Objective: Become a doctor

Secondary Objectives: Enjoy life with her family and friends

Priorities: Her job and her loved ones

Motivation: Being the best she can be

Self Confidence: Very high

Self Control: High most of the time, but sometimes her temper can get the best of her

Self Esteem: High, though she can be self-conscious about some things

Quirks: Chewing her lip, snorts when laughing, dry hands, always has stained clothes, her hair is always a mess.

Hobbies: Cooking, gardening, reading, sewing

Closet Hobbies: Drawing. She isn’t very good, but she likes to doodle and sketch. She would die if anyone knew

Guilty Pleasures:

Habits: Lip chewing, cursing, hand washing

Desires: Success in her job, safe family and friends

Wishes: Defeat of the Titans, to become a doctor

Traumas: Titan’s invading Wall Maria, being betrayed by close friends...

Worries: Her friends/family being hurt, failing at her job, Titans

Nervous Tics: Lip chewing

Soothers: Quiet places, her garden, cooking, sewing

Soft Spots: Kids, puppies, pretty flowers

Cruel Streaks: Perrie isn’t cruel at all, but she can be a little spiteful. She would never intentionally hurt anyone, though

Accomplishments: Finishing nursing school and becoming a nurse, saving many people, learning how to cook new things

Greatest Achievement: She will always say her greatest achievement is making her dad proud. She’s such a daddy’s girl.

Failures: Not being able to help people when the wall fell, losing patients, she feels like she fails Eren everytime he gets kidnapped. She also felt like a failure when Ty joined the Survey Corps despite her trying to convince him not to, not remembering her mother

Biggest Failure: She feels that Carla Yeager’s death was her fault. She feels that she should have gone and seen if she was okay before fleeing Shiganshina.

Favorite Dream: She dreamt that she had a giant garden beyond the Walls, and there were no Titans. She could hear her father whistling somewhere near by, and she could smell strawberries and tea leaves..

Worst Nightmare: Perrie had a nightmare that her father and Ty were Titans, and she watched them eat Mikasa and her mother. She woke up and felt like crying after it

Earliest Memory: She remembers a woman singing and a vase of roses on the kitchen table

Fondest Memory: There’s so many, but her favorite is her father teaching her how to plant a rose bush

Worst Memory: The day Shiganshina fell

Most Prized Possession: Her mother’s perfume

Most Valuable Possession: A rare cookbook Ty got her for her 19th birthday

Collections: Cookbooks

Embarrassments: She’s embarrassed anytime a guy flirts with her. She gets so flustered

Humor: Sarcastic and silly

Regrets:

Secrets: The fact that she draws, her secret savings stash,

Darkest Secret: She doesn’t really have one

Pet Peeves: Weeds in the garden, when people can’t cook

Phobias: Germs

Greatest Fear: Losing her family/friends

Confidence: 8/10

Creativity: 8/10

Generosity: 10/10

Honesty: 9/10

Loyalty: 10/10

Insecurities: 4/10

Patience: 7/10

Predictability: 6/10

Reliability: 10/10

Responsibility: 10/10

Trustworthiness: 10/10

Common...

Compliments: “Cutie” “Healthy as a horse!” (She’s a damn medical nerd)

Insults: “Asshole”

Expletives: All of them. Every one of them.

Farewells: “See ya later” “Be safe”

Greetings: “Hi” “Hello, I’m Nurse Styles” (at work)

Mood: Tired and friendly

Preferences

Likes: Flowers, books, working, new dresses

Dislikes: Losing things, arguments, not being right

Favorites: Strawberries, pastel colors, spring, naps

Least Favorites: Lettuce, cold weather, Military Police (Even Perrie thinks they’re assholes)

Home, Work, and Education

Sleep Patterns: Sporadic at best

Eating Habits: She eats whenever she remembers

Pets: None

Job Title: Nurse

Experience: 4 years

Work Ethic: She is diligent and hardworking

Transportation: She walks

Criminal Record: None

Dream Job: Doctor

Social

Mother: Moria Styles (deceased)

Father: Desmond Styles

Guardians: She’s of age, so none

Siblings: None

Children: None

Close Relatives: Ty Styles (cousin) Ansel Styles (Uncle) Lise Styles (Aunt)

Distant Relatives: None. She had a very small family. Her grandparents on her mother’s side only had one child, and her father’s parents had Desmond and Ansel. Both sets of grandparents were killed in the culling after the fall

Best Friend: Ty, Hanji, Eren

Close Friends: Mikasa, Armin, Petra, Levi, most of the Survey Corps

Confidantes: Hanji, Levi, Ty

Allies: The Survey Corps

Acquaintances: Her co-workers

Rivals: Hanji, but in a friendly way

Inspirations: Hanji, Levi, Erwin, the doctors she works with

Heroes: Ty, Desmond

Mentors: Grisha Yeager, Hanji

Romance

First Love: Levi

Love Interests: Levi

Marital Status: Single

Orientation: Straight

Flirtiness: She’s too awkward and shy, but she has her moments

Turn ons: Intelligence, dedication, loyalty

Turn offs: Cockiness, selfishness, “assholes” (as quoted by Perrie)

Fetishes: None

Virginity: Perrie hasn’t even been kissed. Poor kid.

Reactions

Angry: When she’s angry, she’ll have a stony expression and not speak unless spoken to. She will say spiteful things, but not very hurtful. She’ll roll her eyes and curse even more than usual.

Anxious: She’ll tear into her lip big time, sometimes she makes it bleed. She will pace a little and talk rapidly and nonstop

Conflicted: She’ll go back and forth between her choices, being very adamant that she’s made her choice, but then the next second she’s switched.

Criticized: She can take criticism very well most of the time, especially when it is from superiors. But if someone is just being overly critical and mean, she’ll bristle and call them out

Depressed: She’ll bury herself in her work, and when she’s home, she’ll hide in her garden or bedroom and avoid people

Embarrassed: She’ll avoid eye contact, blush violently, and stammer a lot

Excited: Perrie’s eyes light up and she’ll smile and jitter around

Frightened: She’ll freeze up for a moment, but then slide her mask on and fight through the fear

Happy: She’ll smile and hum and compliment everyone

Personality

MBTI Personality Type: INFJ-A

#perrie styles #snk fic #aot fic #oc x levi #oc x canon #snk oc #aot oc

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cynthiajayusa · 7 years ago

Text

Hear Me Out: Best Albums of 2017

Donald Trump is still tweeting (oh yeah, and somehow still president). Free internet porn could be a bygone luxury thanks to #RIPNetNeutrality. But hey, music in 2017 didn’t suck! Read on for the music that saved me, and maybe you, from one of the worst years for queerkind:

Tori Amos, ‘Native Invader’

To approach dire world affairs with a sound mind, Tori Amos called on her trusty muses to guide her finest release in some time. Themes of love, pain and healing, both in the midst of global and personal tragedy, comprise a set that draws upon Amos’ earliest years as her trademark Bösendorfer is our guiding light on the mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered “Reindeer King.” Elsewhere, Amos rails the patriarchy on “Bang,” while the album’s darkest foray, the wayward “Climb,” finds her calling upon spiritual forces for some necessary divine political-hell intervention.

Beck, ‘Colors’

Beck’s Colors seems to exist entirely in another time and place and political era, a godsend for all of us standing underneath the gray clouds of post-Obama America (hey, somebody has to keep our hopes up). Though he falls back on some familiar Phoenix-like tropes on this bright, buoyant slice of escapist heaven, hearing one of alt music’s most introspective minds resist the solemn zeitgeist with work so full of life is refreshingly infectious.

Taylor Swift, ‘Reputation’

“My name is whatever you decide,” Taylor Swift flirts on the thunderous “Don’t Blame Me.” Illuminating Swift’s intent to acknowledge and exaggerate her constantly dissected and criticized persona, the line is, seemingly, a sly nod to haters who still hate. But if old Taylor is dead, who are we left with, then? Not exactly a “new” Taylor so much as a revised, extra brazen version, where she and co-producers Jack Antonoff, Max Martin and Shellback throw gasoline on her pop fire. The songs are big and bad throughout, so it’s surprising to hear the tender “New Year’s Day” revisit Taylor of yore. Spoiler alert: Old Taylor didn’t die.

Kelela, ‘Take Me Apart’

Nineties R&B was a special kind, and Kelela must think so too. Her sultry debut studio album, Take Me Apart, is a sleek mid-tempo-teeming set, with the D.C. native conjuring Brandy, Janet and Aaliyah, from the suppleness of her voice to the smooth urban grooves. But Kelela isn’t concerned with fitting her music into a box for mainstream consumption, it seems, as her sophisticated artistry subverts the modern-day R&B template with a level of exhilarating old-school innovation.

SZA, ‘Ctrl’

SZA, which rolls off the tongue slightly easier than the St. Louis native’s birthname, Solana Imani Rowe, is a name even your mom might know early next year. Yes, all the cool kids were shook when SZA released her debut, and if there is any justice left in this world come 2018, in February, she might walk away with the five Grammys she’s nominated for. As if SZA’s glorious take down of arrogant ex-lovers and revelations like “let me tell you a secret, I been secretly banging your homeboy” weren’t reason enough for her to win, Ctrl deconstructs every genre that influences it, blazing trails with a unique, ethereal blend of soul, jazz, R&B and chillwave that’s all her own.

Kendrick Lamar, ’DAMN.’

“Bitch, sit down” should be on every mug you drink from in 2018. But for now, it’s a Kendrick Lamar line from “HUMBLE.,” basically writing the epitaph on the disaster that was 2017. The hip-hop icon, who has breathed the same air as our blessed Queen Bey, is fire on DAMN. Tackling Geraldo Rivera, President Trump and gun control, he leaves room for vast self-reflection – and gorgeous jazz flourishes – that makes for an intricately layered look at one’s own place in humanity.

Perfume Genius, ‘No Shape’

If the world is ending, fine, Mike “Perfume Genius” Hadreas will just ride his sequined motorcycle into the sunset, thank you very much. In my mind that is what I see when I hear “Slip Away,” which bursts from the seams to reveal a kaleidoscopic surge of aural bliss – a strikingly queer reaction to a fascist uprising. Breaking his own mold time and time again, one of music’s sincerest songwriters takes No Shape into a new dimension where escapist fantasy and Sade vibe together. The piano parables of Hadreas’ formative years are history, replaced by fresh textural turns that are as boldly queer as his tender poetry.

The National, ‘Sleep Well Beast’

The quiet beauty of The National’s experimental arrangements on their seventh LP reveals itself in the third ear. It strikes first like a mysterious whisper on “Nobody Else Will Be There,” hushed as if frontman Matt Berninger is singing to you in the dark. Deeper within the Beast, the Ohioans take their trademark melancholic, lyrical roots to new Radiohead-evoking rock heights, where synth fuzz fills out “Walk It Back” and a hypnotic undercurrent sweeps the bottom of “Born to Beg.” On the indietronica track “I’ll Still Destroy You,” peace and chaos collide as Berninger reveals, “I’m just trying to stay in touch with anything I’m still in touch with.” Frankness at its finest.

Kesha, ‘Rainbow’

Dr. Luke survivor and former Jim Beam-swigging pop bot Kesha Rose Sebert made the queerest mainstream album of the year, drawing from her own dark-horse experiences to create her most authentic recording, vocally and otherwise – one she dedicated to her fellow outcasts and underdogs. From her rise-above credo on the lovely guitar “Bastards” opener to her delightfully weird song about a queer afterlife, “Spaceship,” Rainbow is the album 2017’s shitstorm desperately needed: One marked by individuality, empowerment and survival.

Lorde, ‘Melodrama’

Grammy nominated for Album of the Year, Melodrama pulses with lived emotional fervor, as its forlorn creator struggles to sort through sordid love to find her best self again amid the remaining remnants (“Supercut,” a vocal paradise) and self-imposed blame (her devastating Kate Bush moment, “Writer in the Dark”). Elegant keys swirl into surging Robyn-esque dancefloor fodder, vocal beds serve atmospheric percussion-like qualities. Thematically, Lorde’s timeless exploration of love’s highs and lows is captivating and wise beyond her 20 years, an album that speaks to the ears as much as the heart.

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/01/03/hear-me-out-best-albums-of-2017/ from Hot Spots Magazine http://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2018/01/hear-me-out-best-albums-of-2017.html

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