#Jim making a wall diagram

[conduitstreetcat]

Book 2 Chapter 20: Pulling the Strings

You pop in to ask me what I want for dinner - when I say nothing, your silence is louder than words could be. You nod and leave, closing the door quietly behind you.

You're not doing anything wrong on the surface - you're not. But I *feel* your dissatisfaction underneath - bubbling up, eating away at what we're building together.

Don't you see that this is for *us*, Sebastian? We could rule the world together... I've never even considered sharing the Empire with anyone - do you know how much trust I've shown you? Do you think I could have shared my life with anyone like this?

And after all this, you're obsessing about the bloody detective - he's just something to toy with, nothing more. Don't you know how bored I get, how alone I've been in the world without big brains to play with?

Why should I have to explain this to you, Sebastian?

Read it on AO3!

[writingbyshiloh]

The Valentine's Question

AN: I figured this is during an early season but could be during any time of the snow 

Warnings: Not beta read, fluff.

Summary: It’s Valentine’s Day and Jim has a question

You stuck your head out of the conference room to see if Jim was on a call. The optimist part of you hoped your crush wouldn't be busy and could help. The other part of you knew that if he was on a sales call, then he wouldn’t reject you because you wouldn't have to ask. 

Phyllis and Angela roped you into the party planning committee and gave you the job of decorations. Sure you could have put the decorations up yourself (after finding a stepping stool or jumping), but asking Jim would give you some alone time with him and without Micheal or Dwight. Plus all the decorations had fallen to the floor. 

Jim had his head down but was thankfully off the phone. 

“Jim! Jimothy!” you hissed, using the nickname Micheal used on him once. 

Jim turned around, facing Micheal's office door (which was fortunately shut) before he swivelled to the conference room. When he saw you his face lit up in a smile, which you quickly returned. 

You jerked your head back, trying to get him into the conference room, before closing the door behind him. 

“I help with the decorations,” you explained. 

“Is the plan to have decorations on the floor? Because if so you’re doing great.” Jim teased kindly. 

You slide the diagram Angela drew you over to Jim. 

“The PPC was very specific about how the conference room should look.” 

You tried not to notice how close Jim stood to you while he studied the digraph. 

Grabbing the new pile of decorations you moved away from him, the close contact was too much. 

“I can stand on a chair if you hand me the decorations?” you suggested hopefully. It was nice to be close to Jim but Angela was also scary. 

Jim nodded in agreement and took the decorations into one of his arms while offering his free hand to help you onto the chair. 

With a soft grunt, you got up on the chair and started taping the decorations to the wall. 

A comfortable silence fell over Jim and yourself. 

“Do you have any plans tonight?” He asked, breaking the silence. 

“I’m sure if I play my cards right, then Angela will ask me to take down the decorations,” you said with a small laugh. “What about you, Halpert?”

“Think she’ll make me join if I mess up the theme?” 

You both laughed at that, knowing how dramatic the party planning committee could be. 

“She will if you keep putting the large hearts above the small ones! Seriously Halpert, get your head in the game.” you tease, not missing the slight blush on Jim's face. 

‘Can I ask you something?” Jim said, voice more serious than before. 

Concern immediately flooded your face. 

“Of course,” you replied matching the tone of his voice. 

Before Jim could ask you the question, Phyllis poked her head in to let you know there is an emergency PPC meeting. 

You turned to see what the question was, but Jim demised you to go with her. 

---

You found Jim later in the kitchen/break room during a quiet moment of the party. 

“Are you seriously missing the party after all the hard work we did on the decorations?” you teased him again. 

“You know, I got so exhausted I needed to take a break.” 

You laughed. 

“What was the question you wanted to ask?”

The tone shifted slightly. Jim toyed with the mug he was holding. 

“I wanted to ask -” Jim started before being interrupted by Micheal holding a small bit of mistletoe. Earlier in the day you tried to tell Micheal that he was six weeks too late, but he insisted that it also fit Valentine’s Day. You and Jim duck out of the way of your boss before steering Micheal to try and kiss Dwight. 

---- 

The party dragged on due to your anticipation of what Jim wanted to ask. It could be about sales or other regular work questions, but he would have kept asking when others interrupted. 

Maybe if you got Jim alone you could ask him and finally get the question. Then you both would also be together on Valentine's day, even if it was just casually and as friends. 

You timed your exit from work with Jims, so you would both be in the elevator alone. You were going to wait until you both were outside but you would rather talk to Jim where it was warm and dry. 

Jim pushed the button for the ground floor, while you took a deep breath. 

“Can I ask you something” 

“I have a question”

You grinned as you both spoke in sync. 

After waiting for a beat, you spoke first. 

“Do you have any plans? My roommate is sick but she put a deposit down on dinner reservations and asked me if I wanted to take her reservation and bring someone. You don’t have to say yes! I’m sure she can find another two people to take her plans.” you said, rambling brought on by your nerves. 

“Yes yeah! Sure” Jim replied, pink blush returning to his face. 

“It’s at 6:30, I can pick you up around 6. If that works?” 

“It’s a date!” Jim agreed. 

You grinned, feeling the heat rise to your face. 

The elevator dinged to signal that the ground floor was reached. 

“Wait! What did you want to ask me?” temptation has gotten to you and you couldn't wait until your date to learn the question. 

“Oh, that. I forgot. Something about paper probably”.  Jim explained, even though he was going to ask you when you first entered the elevator. 

“If you remember, you’ll tell me, right?” on our date you silently added. 

“Absolutely.”  

You and Jim pushed open the office building doors. It was unspoken between you two, but if you left at the same time he would always walk you to your car. 

You pulled your car keys from your pocket, trying to drag the moment out. 

“Hey! I remember the question” Jim said. 

You turned around, so your back was resting on the driver's side door. Jim was closer than normal. 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked softly. One of his hands moved to gently cup your face. 

Your face broke into a grin as you pressed your lips against his.

Instead of verbally answering, you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him down towards you until his lips met yours.

[seat-safety-switch]

I’m a plumber. My father was a plumber, his father was a plumber, maybe his father was a plumber. We don’t know for sure. Grandpa was eaten by a tiger working at the zoo that one fateful afternoon, but this story isn’t about that. Where I work is a little company called Fel-Pro.

Maybe you’ve heard of Fel-Pro. You probably use their products. They’re one of the pre-eminent gasket manufacturers of the 21st century. Wherever there’s two tubes in your car that have to have a nice tight seal against each other, chances are Fel-Pro sells something to replace that seal. Are they as good as factory? Experts employed by Fel-Pro mumble and change the subject. Here’s the important thing: they have money, and some of that money goes to feed my kids by way of me fixing their office plumbing once in awhile.

Now, it’s not all roses. My plumber and custodian buddies who work in other companies, they say that people mostly stay out of their way while they’re working. Maybe once in awhile, they’ll get a Super Dad who chats a bit about power tools, or asks some basic questions about their toilet at home, or doesn’t want to take responsibility for having left a cast-iron shit in the tank and then trying to cram it through the manifold using thirty pounds of toilet paper. The usual stuff, right?

At Fel-Pro, it’s different. These motherfuckers have opinions about plumbing, as you would expect from their careers. As soon as they hear even the smallest pinhole leak, the bathroom is filled wall-to-wall with engineers, trying to figure out if it’s a gasket interface issue. Once they realize it isn’t, they start discussing ways to make it a gasket issue.

Anything that leaks is caused by inferior gasketry, even if the pipe itself has split in the middle. They could solve that by making a sort of very long, pipe-shaped grommet gasket to replace the pipe entirely. Yeah, yeah. And then a bunch of these pencil-necks start climbing over top of me to take measurements with their Mitutoyo digital calipers, and video-chat with the toilet manufacturer’s engineers just to call them rookie-level chumps. All the while, the bathroom is slowly filling with water up to our waists, the water-shutoff valve having been removed years before to prevent these eggheads from being tempted to fuck with it.

As any professional would, I started ignoring them, but it turns out that showed up on my performance review. Everyone at Fel-Pro has to be vigilant against leaks, said my boss, a dour expression on his face. He thrust a diagram on how to apply the proper torque pattern to the wax seal of a toilet.

Don’t get me started on how angry they get when they see me using hardware-store silicone bathroom caulking to solve the problem. That’s not the ideal thermal interface, they moan, and start bringing out all kinds of high-zoot polymer compounds, emblazoned with safety warnings in Chinese. Those make the room spin pretty good, and sometimes they get worryingly hot on application, but I must admit they work a treat. One engineer brought me something he stole from a tour he took of NASA and told me to seal a leaking air conditioner drain with it. Well, mission accomplished, buddy: Jim, the custodian I share an office with, had to use a plasma cutter to remove it last week.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve started only doing plumbing repairs in the middle of the night, when the engineers are likely to be at home, berating their spouses for daring to bring Scotch tape into their home.

[skepwith]

Where Is the Revenge’s Toilet?

In ep 1 Stede gives a tour of the Revenge that includes the “en suite,” a small room with a toilet and some kind of bathing bucket. But we’re never shown where on the ship it is, exactly.

Stede of course has a bathroom next to his cabin, but from what we can see it only has a bath, no toilet.

So does this mean Stede uses the en suite along with the crew? Not necessarily! On navy vessels of the period, the officers used toilets in the quarter galleries—the enclosed balconies that stick out on either side of the stern. Presumably this is because of the way they hang out over the water, so the waste can fall straight into the ocean.

Right: “Seat of Ease off the Captain’s Quarters” by Robert G. Hewitt © 2020.

On the Revenge, the port gallery contains Stede’s bed, but there are some spaces around it that could maybe house a toilet. The starboard gallery is a mystery: yes, secret passage, but also maybe toilet(s)?

As for the crew, there’s the time-honoured tradition of just pissing over the rail, but in heavy weather you might lose your balance and fall overboard. By the 1700s ships were built with a pissdale, a basin or trough placed just inside the low walls around the main deck. It acted as a urinal, funnelling the urine off the side of the ship. I can’t say for sure the Revenge has a pissdale, but it seems like something Stede would include. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim figured out a way to use it too, maybe with an 18th-century P-Mate.

“Pissdale on Deck of Ship” by Robert G. Hewitt © 2020.

But of course this wouldn’t do for, ahem, solid waste. Below is a 1728 diagram of a ship’s toilet, labelled “necessary seat” (14), also called the “seat of ease,” as in the earlier illustration. It’s located in the ship’s head (or beakhead), which is why the word head came to mean toilet, as in “I’m gonna hit the head.”

The deck of the head was also partly open—slatted rather than solid—to let the waves in to rinse everything out, which is why toilets were usually placed just above the water line. Here’s the beakhead of the Swedish warship Vasa from the 1620s, with two box-like toilets. You can see the remains of a seat on the right-hand one.

As for the Revenge, it makes sense to put the en suite in the head, somewhere where the toilet can open directly over the water. Let’s look again:

Left of Pete there’s a vessel with a handle sitting on a small barrel. This could be a scoop and a covered bucket of seawater for “flushing,” i.e., sluicing the inside of the toilet with scoops of water. This only makes sense if there’s somewhere for the waste to go; if the toilet was a stool with a chamber pot inside, you could just rinse it out when you dumped its contents.

Also, look at the right-hand wall. It’s decorated with moulded panelling (carved squares), which seems pretty fancy for a toilet room. Unless it’s a continuation of the fo’c’sle’s front wall.

I was very proud of this theory until I noticed the panels don’t match. Alas.

There’s also a noticeable gap in the toilet room’s right wall. It could just be the door, but my theory is it’s an open gap to make room for the bowsprit higher up the wall (see diagram below).

Another piece of the puzzle is the pattern of light and shadow against the walls. We don’t see any other shadows like it (except in the ��ball room,” which is another post). It doesn’t match any of the gratings we’ve seen, which make a crosshatch pattern, nor does it line up with the ship’s railings. Does this matter? Well, look, someone on the film crew had to cut out that shape and stick it in front of a light, or however they do it, to cast that specific shadow, so I’m guessing it points to something.

My first guess was that the light here is shining through the railing around the head, which is a different shape from the ship’s other railings. If the head’s deck isn’t solid—like on historical ships—the light could be coming from behind the railing and shining through the slats.

But…the deck of the Revenge’s head looks pretty solid, as far as I can tell. Still, we haven’t seen the entire deck…

Just leave me my delusions, okay?

So, finally, here is my new improved diagram of the head:

Is it accurate? Who can say. It’s really all headcanon at this point.

(Sorry.)

[thewestern]

Chapter 13

Kitty really had to pee. (The line for the gender-agnostic bathroom ünit had stretched the length of four school buses.) Partway through the supposed performance — this rank obscenity, a mechanical minstrel — Dandy Jim’s petite lieutenant returned to fetch the Mick and his party. Escorting them back behind the brewhouse to Jaime’s private studio ünit, she assured them he would be along shortly. 

For about another thirty minutes they sat in wait. By which point Grace was fucking starving. The Mick was comfortable, compared to Grace and Kitty, but nonetheless on the brink of melting down completely. Zeke meanwhile was patiently hoping their hostess would soon return. They were seated all four in a row on an obtusely angular white pleather sofa that contorted each of their very differently sized and shaped bodies.

If this was Jaime’s office, it didn’t bear much resemblance to Hank’s. For the first, there weren’t much hanging from the walls, except that thing which was mounted quite precariously on above their heads; set against an ornately patterned wallpaper depicting a playbook of acrobatic sexual positions seemingly plagiarized from the Kama Sutra or some similar text. It was a blaring neon sign with a cursive quotation: 

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. 

- The Notorious R.W.E 

Excuses are like poetry, Russ always said. They’re for pussies and nobody wants to hear them.

Across the room abutted the door frame, there stood a DIY bookcase, with shelving fashioned of salvaged skateboards, stocked with a small library of titles Kitty hadn’t heard of — Zero to One, Good to Great, Thinking Fast and Slow, Outliers, Team of Rivals, The Hard Thing About Building Hard Things, the Fountainhead, Let My People Go Surfing, Barbarian Days, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Meditations. And then one she did recognize but had not herself read — Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The wall itself was lined with green astroturf.

In place of a proper desk, there was what the Mick ascertained to have once been a door, based on the protruding knob, mail slot and door knocker. It was propped up on either side with neo-classical columns of imitation granite, and arranged lengthwise against the side wall beneath a large, trapezoidal makeup vanity. Hollywood style … you know … with the exposed light bulbs. (E.g. I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. Delano. That’s great, sweetheart. Look straight into the camera and tell the folks at home how old you are.) Behind the mirror, the wall was whiteboard, like the one Kitty used at her new school. (West Middle still had the dusty old chalkboards that probably hadn’t been replaced since well before bussing. For a fact, some years prior, a student had done a graffiti spanning the full length of the board, to commemorate the last day of school. However, since the janitorial staff had been dismissed for the summer, it would remain scrawled there until the following fall, by which point the chalk was burned into the dark green surface to an extent that it could not be completely erased. Kitty went on to teach in that very classroom, where she would be forced to write Newton’s Laws and other lessons atop the faded italicized wordmark of the band KISS, reproduced perfectly.) Somebody — Jaime, presumably — had drawn out various diagrams in the multi-coloured dry-erase markers — pie charts, histograms and line graphs, the latter all trending exponentially upwards. Then there were the chicken-scratched aphorisms Kitty couldn’t quite make out, except for the largest one that read, Gratitude Is My Superpower. The penmanship was poorer than her seventh-grade students. (From her previous gig. West Middle, that is. At SciTech, all assignments were to be completed on school-issued computer and submitted via email.)    

Opposite that wall was a floor-to-ceiling portrait. The artist could be quite readily identified by his vivid color palette and screen-print anti-aesthetic. But the subject, none of them could quite make out. It was a soldier from the looks of him. Or at least by way of the uniform. Dress blues. Because this officer on deck did not have the barracks-standard issue high-and-tight haircut. No, this here warrior-beat poet — no doubt a bon vivant par excellence — had the flowing blonde locks of a flower child, with the bushy handlebar mustache to match. Accessorized by his own dandy red handkerchief, tied daintily around his neck. 

The convergence of art and commercialism. Isn’t that what we’re all striving toward? 

It’s more like a barreling. 

Oh, come on. Take some pride. We’re part of a lineage. Walt Disney, Coco Chanel … fucking [snaps fingers three-x]  … this is going to drive me crazy … who else was I literally just thinking of? 

Dandy Jim had slinked in whilst their heads were turned toward the mural. 

I don’t know … Fucking Elvis. You tell me, Jimmy. You’re the Creative Director. I’m just a brewer. 

Almost more than the new first name, it was the roll call of titles that had stuck in the Mick’s craw.

Listen, I know it’s all a little esoteric … for the likes of you, anyway … but I don’t know … Brewmaster … it just sounded so … status quo. It’s So Good To See You, Michael, by the way. Y Kitty, mi amiga guapisima, te amo. Wow. Michael’s muse … the Brewery Girl, in the flesh. You look stunning. Seriously, girl, you haven’t aged a day. 

What an asshole thing to say to a woman in her late twenties, after not having seen her for only, like, less than two years. Whatever benefit of the doubt she was willing to afford Jaime was rapidly depleting with every Spanglish word he spoke. 

And who are these lovely folks? My sincerest apologies if we’ve already met. Jaime Delano. Welcome … seriously, welcome.

Something about the way Jaime said seriously. He gesticulated his hospitality by bowing at the neck and holding his hands together in self-observance. Where and when did he acquire all these mannerisms? 

Well, J, in point of fact, these are your replacements. Meet Grace and Zeke. 

The Mick wouldn’t normally feel compelled to speak on their behalf, but in this instance he was overcome by a protective instinct. Also, he wanted to remind Jimmy there had been a time, not so long ago actually, before he coronated himself King of Shit Mountain, here. 

Ohh … okayy. Very sick. You guys are learning from the best. And believe you me, being a Newfy alumni goes a long way in this industry, unless you’re Michael and you never leave …  I’m teasing. Genuinely, I feel so much gratitude for having the Newfy as part of my Founder Story. It seems like forever ago, doesn’t it? 

Only been about two years actually. 

Kitty couldn’t resist to reset the record.

Is that all? Time fucking flies. I mean, can you believe how much all this has grown? I’ve actually been meaning to get you guys over here for the full #eXperience. Couldn’t have picked a better night, amirite? So fire.  

Oh yea, fucking totally. So Was that how come you sicked your lawyer dogs on us then? So we’d come see your fireworks show?

By now, the Mick was hot-sweating mad at Jaime, who fanned the flames by pretending not to have the slightest clue why. 

Oh my goodness, y’all. I completely forgot. It’s just been so busy around here. Never a dull moment, you know? Listen, on some real, I’m sorry to have run up on you like that, all litigious and shit. Speaking as a friend, I didn’t mean any malice by it. Just some strategic maneuvering. Kitty, I’m sure you of all people would understand.

Yeah, well, what did you mean by it? Because what it felt to me was about a pretty damn good bushwhacking, Jimmy. 

I know. I know. The optics were less than ideal. But, truly, my hands were tied, dude. Honestly we’ve never collab’d with a music brand of this magnitude legacy and audience reach, not to mention two simultaneously. I mean, who would have thought song licensing would be such a hornet’s nest. Anyway, their people had some concerns that there could be some confusion in the marketplace vis-a-vis I know You Ridah versus Rider, Pale Ale. And since Hank never had it copyrighted … 

Hold on just a goddamn second, man. You know well and good we’ve been out here brewing R,PA long since before any of this bullshit. 

Oh, for sure. But try to understand where I’m coming from is … that it technically doesn’t matter. Who was First, technically. That’s the whole reason there is such a thing as the fast follower advantage.

Demuredly, Dandy Jim shrugged using only the muscles in his face in such a way that made the Mick want to punch it oh so very fucking badly. 

But don’t worry. We’re not going to make you rename or discontinue R,PA or anything. Trust me when I say, player … it’s all good. I would never do a Day One like that. The way the lawyers explained it to me, it’s really just more of a pre-warning, legally speaking. 

I’m sorry? What’s a pre-warning?

You know … a pre-warning … the warning before the warning, legally speaking. Like establishing a trademark precedent, or whatever-the-fuck. Seriously, bro, don’t sweat it. I’m pretty sure they just wanted to prevent any future IP disputes. I might have mentioned that you guys are into the whole Grateful Dead Thing. Speaking for myself, that was never really my wave, as you know. The whole Jamming thing, I mean. Besides, it pains me to say, but rock is played out, dawg. Guitar music in general, actually. 

Dandy Jim spoke with some authority on endangered musical genres. During his brief, wholly unremarkable tenure as the Mick’s assistant brewer, he moonlighted as the backup vocalist and lead bassist of a post-hardcore musical outfit by the name of Some Pulp, a fringe player in the already fringe DIY scene. Upon their breaking up, citing Creative Differences, Jaime embarked further still into the harmonic hinterland on a solo career as quite possibly the world’s only craft beer-centric battle rapper. This under the nom de guerre, Hip Humulus Lupulus. He had invited his at-the-time mentor on more than one occasion to come and see him compete, and as a matter of course the Mick curtly declined. (This despite Kitty urging him to please, relent, and generally to be more congenial with his colleagues, or at the very least courteous.) In truth, Jaime never forgave the Mick for missing the time he narrowly lost his quarter-final matchup to the eventual runner-up finisher, Heavy Flow, who was herself widely credited with breaking the glass ceiling of the old fuccbois club that was competitive battle rapping at that time. (Coincidentally she was also a future acquaintance of Grace.) 

So when they offered me Garcia, I was like cool, cool, whatever. I mean, I feel you. Purely a nostalgia play. Has to be a pass from me, unfortunately. Space ships don’t come equipped with rearview mirrors, you know what I’m saying? But, yo, when they came through with Pac? … I mean, fuck, man. One of the absolute OGs, of the rap game. Know what I’m saying, big dawg? 

Here he was addressing Zeke, who still hadn’t any idea about, nor concern for what this person was saying, because his momentary one true love had at last returned.

Dutifully, she handed Jaime a water bottle and white towel, as if he himself had just finished performing posthumously. 

I pray the homegirl Anna Leigh has been keeping y’all company? Seriously, she’s a fucking rockstar. I’m being serious. The brains of #x_brüing, right here, for real, on some real shit. 

Anna Leigh was her name, and how pretty a name it was. 

Unbeknownst to Zeke, Grace was picking up strong sexual tension flowing in one direction from Jaime to his #eXectuive assistant. This came as a surprise to Grace, because for one thing they looked way too much alike to be sexually compatible. Of course they in the lesbian community had a name for this phenotype: Dopplebanger — [noun] slang term for a gay woman who exclusively dates other women who look like her. (Grace was certainly open to the possibility; although, alas, she hadn’t found anybody pretty as her, as of yet.) For another, Grace was also picking up major Do Me Vibes, being put down in her general direction by way of the lovely Miss Anna Leigh. This would have come at quite a shock to Zeke, who was completely unawares of the homosexual encounter unfolding right before his eyes, as he was currently well on the way convincing himself that he and this person were put Planet Earth solely for each other. For a post-modern man so susceptible to the perils of a work crush, Zeke was at somewhat of a numbers disadvantage, being how women were so woefully underrepresented in the craft beer industry. Grace meanwhile was taking full advantage of a statistical anomaly, how among that relatively small female workforce, gay women indexed considerably higher per capita, than say in the population of duly employed persons at-large. Go fucking figure. 

I don’t get it. Then what was with the Village Person? The cowboy?

Only Kitty could be depended upon to keep this detente on the rails. It cannot be understated, how much she really had to pee. Anna Leigh interjected.

Oh my god, do you mean Carl? Aww … isn’t he just the cutest? He’s an actual dairy farmer. We sell him our spent grain to feed his cows. You guys, we love Carl! Like, actually, I’m obsessed. We thought about hiring like some guy online to do it, but Carl is always asking about odd jobs to earn extra cash so we paid him fifty bucks. How freaking adorable is that? Like can you believe he’s even real? 

Hey Jaime, do you have a banana or energy bar back here I could borrow? 

Anna Leigh was about to offer to order Grace something from the tapas ünit before the Mick interrupted on her behalf.   

No time, G. We’re leaving. There’s a bag of pretzel sticks in the car. Jimmy … what the fuck, man? Do I need to lawyer up here, or are we cool?

Whoa, Michael … relax. Of course, we’re cool, bro. AL, what’s our core value #two at #x_brüing? 

No Assholes Allowed, Jaime. 

Russ used to say assholes are like poetry, but Mick couldn’t remember how come.

You already know, girl. Our douchebag policy is zero tolerance. And best believe that shit’s serious, because we made it our second guiding principle. 

What’s number three? Grace asked. 

Be a Rockstar. Anna Leigh answered. 

What about the first one? This was Zeke asking.

Do the Work, Jaime said with bravado.  

How many are there? Kitty now. 

Seventeen. Anna Leigh again. 

Which is your favorite? The Mick, heat checking.

If I had to choose just one, it’s probably #eleven. Anna Leigh accounted earnestly. Think Macro\Live Micro. It’s all about how innovating — the truly big changes — happen in small increments: microchips, micro-dosing… 

Micro penises. Grace interjected, looking directly at Jaime, who averted her gaze, glancing sheepishly down and to the left. Anna Leigh blushed.

Whelp, that’s our culture. 

And taking you to court would constitute an asshole move, Michael. That’s why I’m not going to do it, even though I’ve been advised by counsel that we have an exceedingly legitimate case. Trust me, you don’t want to see Schuster or Shanker on the plaintiff end of a deposition table. So look man, as a good faith favor to you, I’ll talk to the legal folks and we’ll get this thing squashed. But listen, while I’ve got you here, I was wondering what’s the word on the new production facility.  

Now Kitty could see what this was really about. For a fact, it was so patently obvious, even the Mick could see Jaime’s play. 

Yeah, well, what about it? 

Just that since you broke ground, what’s it been, a year? 

Been about two years, actually. 

Bonus point to Kitty for her attention to detail. 

Two years. Sounds like some serious growing pains. I know that game. 

What’s your angle, Jimmy? 

Mich-ael. Always about that business. That’s what I love about you, my guy. Alright, I’ll hit you with the straight dope. I know you’re taking the L on this. Not to throw any shade, just … well it just so happens that we’re anticipating somewhat of a L of our own. Not that kind of L, because you already know we stay winning. L as in L is for Liquidity, like a liquidity event, projecting by end of fiscal year. So, in the spirit of helping a true ride or die out, let me buy you out. Of the production facility. 

Sold. 

Whoa. Just like that? Are you tripping, Michael? I haven’t even named my price. 

Don’t bother. If it’s enough to recoup whatever Hank had us losing on that deal by a half, you can have the whole goddamn thing. What do you think, Kitty? Can we make it work, in terms of money?

In terms of money? Um, I don’t see why not. 

You hear that, Jim. You got yourself a deal. 

And a halfway-done boondoggle of a buildout, he thought to himself. The Mick exercised the restraint to withhold from gloating. This was the first and best deal he would ever make. All it took was a partner with even less business sense than he had, and boy was Dandy fucking Jim his huckleberry. At that the Mick extended his hand. He was of half a mind to spit in it. Now the tables had turned, and Jimmy was on his back foot, shoeless. 

Hold up, hold up. Let’s slow our rolls for just a sec, Mike. How do I know you’re not trying to play me? It’s not a fucking superfund site, is it? 

I’ll level with you, James. Production, distribution, the whole expansion … that was Hank’s vision. Now that he’s gone, I’d just assume have you see it through. I don’t think Hank would mind and I wouldn’t much care if he did, on of account of his being dead.

Presumably.

Now that you mention it — Hank I mean … well, I’m sorry is all. I was going to say something earlier. Hank was like an uncle to me. Real talk.

The Mick did not acknowledge Dandy’s attempt at contrition. Even if it rang surprisingly true, Hank’s being like an uncle to him. Hell, he was like an uncle to us all. 

K. But I still don’t fully buy this out-of-the-goodness-of-my-heart bullshit. What’s your angle? Wait, wait … don’t fucking tell me. Fuuck, dude. Is this about you finally doing that thing … fucking Spontaneous Fermentation, right? Holy shit … it is, isn’t it? Back on your Belgian bullshit. You’re crazy for that one, Michael. I mean that’s some truly out there stuff. You do you, though, you know what I mean? But for real though, how long are we talking … grain-to-glass? Three years? Even with the whole wild yeast, au natural thing — which don’t get me wrong, it plays, from a branding standpoint— just, it doesn’t scale, is all I’m saying. Brewer to brewer. 

Maybe. But then don’t things have a way of balancing themselves out in the end?

No, I don’t believe they do. 

Kitty reckoned this to be the first true thing Jaime had said, apart from the thing about Hank being like an uncle, which had also resonated with her.

I don’t get you, Michael. Why do you practice brewing, I mean. What’s your Why? Like do you have an exit? An end game? A liquidity event? Maybe you are just Johnny fucking Appleseed, punching a clock — and best of fucking luck with that — but still, I know you’re no fucking dummy, and you’ve been around enough to know in this Beer Shit you’re growing or you’re dying. If you want a dependable career and a steady income, go sell software with those mooks out there. 

Here Jaime was referring to his customer base. Zeke often wondered what it was all these people did when they weren’t hanging out in breweries, drinking six-dollar beers on a Sunday afternoon. Lawyers and doctors were his best guesses. Or maybe they worked at the bank. He couldn’t quite figure. His dad installed drywall, and someday so would he, at least he’d always assumed. Now here he was, the second person in his family to go to college and the first to drop out. A Social Media and Events Coordinator. Sitting in a room where there was no drywall to speak of. 

The Mick answered honestly. 

I don’t know why I make beer, Jim. Just lucky, I guess. Maybe because by now I don’t know how to do anything else. At least not nothing that pays. 

He wasn’t being modest. Really, the Mick didn’t know how to do very much. Brewing was the only steady gig he’d ever had. (Previously he had held down a summer job as a caddie at a local country club, the members of which were rich dickheads to a fucking man. He would entertain himself by performing subtle acts of civil disobedience, such as giving his players too short of yardages on their approach shots.) Jaime on the other hand was a serial career switcher. He was cagey about his pre-beer days, but word was he’d tried his hand at the dramatic arts. Acting. Beside booking a local television commercial for a regional chain of furniture warehouses though, he’d mostly had to settle for print work. When Wade and Winona first heard tell of his male modeling past they took a short intermission from watching Internet videos of hockey fights and dash cam-POV car wrecks to dig up a cheeky, black-and-white photo spread of the then James Dean Delano (the Dean was a bit of a show biz fib … Jaime bore no relation to the late teen icon — his real middle name was Drury, after his maternal grandmother’s maiden). In the picture, a sexy lady was using a vacuum to suck off his t-shirt. She’ll Be Happier … when he helps around the house. Whether or not it rose to meet the standards of irony, the campaign had been intended as a playfully feminist twist on the sexist practice of advertising home goods to housewives in the postwar suburban boom period. Maybe it goes without saying that the reference was lost on the Mick, he who had always happily done the vacuuming in his household. Every couple Sundays he’d get thermo nuclear-stoned, crank up his noise-canceling headphones to eleven and fucking regulate. As chores went, it was one of his most favourite. Ma’am, I assure you, he’d kid to Kitty, holding up the hose. This thing sucks.  

Okay, I see you. I didn’t choose this life, this life chose me, type of thing. Respect, Mick. You know we should collab on something. For Hank.

Wait, what about you? Why do you make beer?

Against her better judgement, Kitty asked Jaime, although she had been genuinely curious. Accompanied by a look that said, well obviously, what else could it be, he responded: 

For the benefit of all mankind. 

Upon hearing this, Kitty legit peed her pants.

[henrysglock]

Alrightttttt you got me hooked >:3 This is going to be a bit long, and it's a lot of information, so uh. Buckle up, I guess!

Here's the bit about the multiple UDs:

All of it should basically make sense from this one post alone, but there is a good deal of extra reading re: NINA and Vecna/001 that adds an extra (haha) dimension to it.

As for the lights not necessarily having been Will, I don't have a formal post about it yet. However, I can give you a run-down of my reasoning.

One, they basically told us that the letter lights and the other signs from Will are two separate things:

Specifically, "R. U. N." is categorized as a "message from the UD".

This becomes fun when we realize that the scene in S1 with the lights in general is chock-full of weirdness that indicates the presence of another person (?).

For instance:

How is "Will" in two places at once? And, if we recall, the lights jump from the end of the chain straight back to its origin:

Which is decently reminiscent of this:

Which is not to say that Will has powers, but more to say someone with powers wants Will to be found. Someone with powers is working in Will's favor, in favor of all the protagonists. It's also someone who consistently warns our protags of incoming danger. This is a continuing theme, and I'll discuss is more as I go on.

Second, the lights scene has all the hallmarks of a vision.

When Joyce puts up her letters, it's daytime. Full sunlight. Next comes the scene of Nancy and Karen, then Hopper at the library (neither pictured), and we can see the sun setting consistently across the two scenes.

The next time we see the Byers house, it's well past dark. The kids run after the cops down to the quarry in that same scene, no cuts. Smash cut to Joyce talking with "Will", which is...once again daytime.

The demogorgon "attack" also happens during the daytime...but then Joyce is shown running away from the "attack" in total darkness, like someone flipped a light switch. Then the cops, which we just saw at the quarry, come up the street.

That tells me that these two scenes:

Are happening just about simultaneously. We never see the letter lights used outside this context

In short: this tells me that time is visibly passing in reality, but not for Joyce. Joyce has spent however long in daytime. Meanwhile, sunset is visibly occurring for everyone else.

There are very few people in the show who can give visions. One of them is Kali, one of them is the Mindflayer, and the other is Henry.

Which all makes this direct callback even weirder:

The gang being led up to the attic is directly compared to the Christmas lights.

Now...riddle me this. If we know people in the UD can hear people in the right-side up, and they call attention to this fact multiple times, then it stands to reason that yes, Vecna could hear them and knew they were there during that scene. It was then established that this instance was not a trap, subverting Dustin's expectation that it was Vecna leading them to be killed.

Is that not, then, weirdly generous and unprompted exposition? This is on the level of, like, say...Or the gang in S2 being led up to the gate, and the Mindflayer ignoring them while they wander around just on the other side of the barrier. There's a cocky villain, and then there's unrealistically stupid behavior (especially for a supposed mastermind who's meant to be very intelligent).

Everyone in the UD knows they're there. Someone is letting the gang know exactly where Vecna is—someone working against the UD baddies from the inside. Sort of like Alexei did with the Russian gate just one season prior, yknow?

See: the Russians+Jim being directly compared to the Mindflayer+Henry.

See also:

(There's also a tangential bit to be mentioned here about "they'll get his whole life story, making this an elaborate ruse to capture you too" vs "join me" and the NINA monologue that can't physically exist outside of NINA and the distinct possibility that the guy we saw giving that monologue was not Henry, but a Mindflayer-generated dupe. See: the Mindflayer in the VR game putting Henry into a NINA-type simulation and the distinct possibility that NINA runs on a captured section of Mindflayer. See also: the Russia parallels, the captured Mindflayer in Russia, and the similarities between the Russian Prison Massacre and the NINA massacre. There's a whole web of connections here regarding The First Shadow, as well, because the plot and mechanics of TFS are very, very similar to those of NINA...I have like 50k words of analysis on TFS if you're interested. The link regarding the VR game will take you to the full work on Ao3.)

Circling back to the original topic, there are other instances in S1 of people in the Byers house being given visions with the specific intent of making them run away. Take Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve with the demogorgon, for example.

It comes through the exact same area that it did for Joyce, and then it just...gives up the chase...for no discernible reason?

Only for it to pop back up like 30 seconds later in a totally different spot with a totally different "progression" (see: all the electricity in the house going out the second time we see the demogorgon, but not the first)

The purpose of the first instance, and of Joyce's instance, being to get our protags to run away before they're in real danger. Like...

In short: There's someone else there, they want Will to be found, and they're ringing the alarm bells whenever our protags are in danger.

See also: The unexplained call they never return to/they never tell us who the caller was...that turns into literal alarm bells at the lab right before Will sees the Mindflayer.

Sounds like a missed warning to me.

But who would have the knowledge and foresight to do something like that? Wouldn't it have to be someone in close contact with the Mindflayer?

Which actually—and I am SO sorry for rambling this long, OP, holy shit 😭—directs me back to something I was saying earlier this year about S2, specifically about Will and "closegate".

Will fully succumbed to the Mindflayer in less than 3 days. How was Will not only able to figure out what should have been a closely guarded secret (that secret being "how does a person stop the Mindflayer?"), but also communicate it...while being fully flayed.

In contrast, per The First Shadow, young Henry had been more or less successfully managing to live with Mindflayer stuff for about 10 months. Henry, in the VR, holds his own against the Mindflayer in terms of individuality and strength of identity.

Which person sounds like a likely culprit for sending a message with sensitive information right under the Mindflayer's nose? (see also: "closegate" being sent in morse code, the kids communicating through morse code in S4 and that being compared to Vecna and the lights, and Enzo—welcome back, Russia arc— sending sensitive info in code right under the Russians' noses)

Anyway, I'm stopping myself here. If you want to read more about the double agent stuff throughout the seasons, I have a post here:

isnt the upside down supposed to be stuck on 6th nov 1983?

then how can will see the alphabet joyce wrote on the wall???? like that was 3 days after his disappearance

he basically could see everything joyce was doing in the house in real time

like do we have any possible explanations for this?😭

[dancing-with-the-madmen]

Ship-shaped; a proportional response

As ever, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

This is in response to the reply from @nicnacsnonsense found here

1) I don’t think the ship’s floorplan actually juts out on the sides the way you have here, etc.

I see what you mean about the windows on the side being a wrap-around continuation of the windows as seen from the back of the ship.

However, I disagree about them not contributing to the floorspace. If you look at the interior, the bottom of the windows are not so far from the floor, and then you look at the... golly - I have no idea what is the technical term; in my head, I've been referring to them as panniers - from the side, you can see there is a bit below the sill that juts out as well as the windows themselves. That said, my diagram certainly had them jutting out WAY too far. Corrected!

2) There is for sure another secret space behind the primary wardrobe containing those missing windows. I also suspect that it has stairs or a ladder & trap door or something that connects the captain’s quarters to the rest of the ship’s interior, etc.

I think you're absolutely right. It makes sense - if Stede had the ship commissioned with the intention of living on it with his family, and the kids were meant to sleep in Jim's bedroom, he ought to have made sure he could get to them (or they to him) in the middle of the night without having to go on the open deck and potentially be washed overboard in a storm or something. I've reworked my floorplan trying to pay a little more attention to the proportions, and I think I've got it (more on that later).

3) ...We know the bathroom is against the outer wall because the shot we get looking down on it from above shows a window sill next to the tub, and we can see the hatch for the opening to this window more or less directly in front of Lucius when he was being forced to scrape barnacles.

Alas, I have to contradict you here. You're correct that there is a window sill tub-side, but it's a full-sized window, whereas the hatch seen when Lucius' is on barnacle duty is a small square.

What's more, the hatch is below the level of the rest of the windows on the deck. It's too high for a cannon , so my guess is it's a little port hole to let in air/light and/or vent smoke from the galley.

In fact, there don't appear to be any windows on that level on that side of the ship other than the three grouped together by Stede's bed. So I conclude that the bathroom can't possibly abut the hull of the ship. All I can guess is that the window next to the tub opens up onto a hall with a ceiling prism to let in light. Why? I haven't the foggiest.

I further propose that the overhead shot of the bathroom shows that there simply isn't any room for the secret entrance from the aux wardrobe (which we know Ed would have had to have taken after the Fuckery break-down) except where the camera is positioned for the shot. I toyed with the idea of a secret entrance through the armoire at the end of the aux wardrobe (like a Narnia thing), but between the lack of window in the hull, and the clearly unbroken horizontal planking on the wall that would have to abut the armoire's wall, it's simply not to be.

Therefore, when facing the armoire in the aux closet, the bathroom MUST be off to the right.

4) The aux library is genius, and I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me; it definitely would have solved some of the problems I was having getting my blueprints to look right, etc.

I love my secret aux library, but when I took pains to bother with proportions, it, alas, disappeared from where it was (explanation below). I'm not giving up on it, though. I think I found another place for it...

So, now on to the new and improved design. On order to tackle the proportions of the cabin, I'm relying mostly on the ceiling joists and planks between them, and the straight-running planks on the floor to either side of the dove-tail design that runs center-floor. Yes, that's right - I'm counting planks. I like this show a normal amount and devote a normal amount of time thinking about it.

Starting with the joists that run from the back windows to the library wall, there are 4 equally-spaced (including the ones that edge the recessed portion of the ceiling) that run only over the dove-tail patterned flooring, with 11 planks between each of the joists. On either side of the dove-tail patterned flooring, starting where the back wall angles and going to the wall that opens on to the bed chamber on one side, and the wall behind the primary closet on the other, the flooring runs in the same direction as the ceiling planks, and is also 11 planks wide (meaning the center-floor as a whole is a bit wider because of the added width of the joists, but the flooring on either side is at least as wide as each of the sections between the joists.

So now let's look at the hallway that leads from the deck to the cabin (which would necessarily be at least 11 planks wide, because the angled wall on which the door is located). Uh-oh! looks like it's actually 16 planks wide, which is where my original aux library gets eaten up (don't worry - we'll get there).

And now the Aux closet. There are 11 floor boards between the hull wall and the entrance, where Ed's head is peeking in, meaning, since the entryway is the same wall that opens into Stede's bedchamber, Stede's bedchamber has to be at least 11 planks wide, prolly a little more because of the "panniers."

Now, because we like symmetry (and for ships to not tip over), that means that there also has to be a space at least 11 planks wide behind the wall behind the primary closet. Which means that Lucius' hidey-hole is a lot more commodious than my previous design accounted for. Nice.

So if the shelving to the left in the picture above doesn't run the whole 11 planks of the angled wall (say 5 or 6 planks), and you account for the extra 5 planks that got eaten up on the other side of the library by the 16-plank hall, that makes a 10-11 plank void between the aux closet and the library proper to put the naughty aux library. There's even a bust that would make a great secret door lever.

With regard to the length of the room, the recessed ceiling between the joists looks roughly square, so I'm operating on the assumption that it's about "11 planks" worth of space as well. There are, however, more joists that run between the bed nook and closet than between the windows and library - 5 (including the borders). The center joist runs from the key on the arch above the doors of the primary closet to the key on the arch of the opening to the bed nook.

The space between joist 4 and 5, however is roughly half that between the other joists.

Just some other notes before the big reveal, but I don't have pics to back all of them up: I think the sun-washed thing behind Stede in the aux closet is another armchair matching the two mustard-colored ones in the main room. So maybe the little space is like a solarium, or something? Maybe a reading room for when he didn't want to be easily found?

I don't have pics to back it up, but if we're making the back and side windows one continuous enclosed area, that also opens up a void space behind Stede's bed and writing desk. So what do we think this one is for? A safe place to hide the fam in case the ship got raided? A room in which to wail openly when one can no longer persevere in quiet dignity? Kinky sex dungeon?

I also decided to put a wall between the stairs and Lucius' hidey-hole on the starboard side. No real reason I just thought it would be nice if he could still remain hidden, even if the secret stairs were found.

So without further to-do:

[aion-rsa]

The Real Martial Arts Behind Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains some minor spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

In the pages of Marvel Comics, Shang-Chi is known as the “Master of Kung Fu.” So when Marvel Studios announced the character to help usher in MCU Phase 4, the one thought on every fan’s mind was that whoever gets cast in the lead role better really know Kung Fu. 

In the wake of Netflix’s Iron Fist, Marvel’s other Kung Fu master, there was a lot of skepticism. Marvel had scored with the previous Netflix series Daredevil, which delivered some of the best small screen fight choreography we’d ever seen. But Iron Fist was sorely lacking. Finn Jones just couldn’t sell a punch as Danny Rand, leaving fans of Marvel martial arts masters overwhelmingly disappointed. If there’s one thing that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings had to nail, it was the Kung Fu. 

Like Jones, Simu Liu had little martial arts experience before taking on the role of Shang-Chi. However, he already had the physique, so much so that appearing shirtless was a running joke when he played Jung in Kim’s Convenience. What’s more, Liu bulked up, added 10 more pounds of muscle while training for the film. 

Unlike a character like Daredevil, Shang-Chi doesn’t wear a mask, so Liu had to quickly pick up enough cinematic Kung Fu to appear masterful on screen. Fortunately, he was backed by a top-notch team of stuntmen and surrounded with a cast of veteran film fighters including Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Star Trek: Discovery), Tony Leung (Hero, The Grandmaster), Yuen Wah (Kung Fu Hustle), Florian Munteanu (Creed II), Andy Le (The Paper Tigers), and others. Even though Liu was new to Kung Fu, he carries the action scenes with panache.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is not only a good Marvel movie, it’s a good Kung Fu movie. It has the best fight scenes seen in the MCU so far. And although the movie doesn’t get bogged down in the specifics of Kung Fu style, there are telling nods throughout the film that shows the filmmakers knew their Kung Fu too. “We knew the martial arts had to be authentic,” says Director Destin Daniel Cretton. “In order for that to feel real, we worked with people who understood Chinese Kung Fu.”

Let’s take a look at some of the Kung Fu roots and martial arts Easter Eggs underlying Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Ringsdone..

The Ten Rings are Real…Kind of

Wenwu (Tony Leung) is the villain of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and he wields ten magical rings that he wears on his forearms. These are the source of his power, as well as the name of his criminal organization. The origin of these rings is a prevailing mystery in the movie; however, their inspiration is not. 

Traditional Kung Fu practitioners use rings akin to these while training, particularly in Southern Chinese styles. Such rings are called tit waan in Cantonese, which literally means “iron rings” or “iron bracelets.” Iron rings are constructed of heavy metal, typically brass or steel, and are worn loosely on the forearms when practicing solo forms and doing arm drills. 

They serve two purposes. Firstly, they are heavy, usually weighing over a pound a piece, so they act like wrist weights. Secondly, unlike Wenwu’s magical rings which conform to fit his forearms perfectly, real iron rings are looser. They must be narrow enough so that they stay on when the practitioner makes a fist, but they are far from form fitting. This gives them play to bang against the practitioner’s forearms when they are shadowboxing. The banging conditions the user’s forearms, hardening them to withstand the impact of blocking. Some iron ring practitioners have forearms that are so tough they can severely damage an adversary’s punch with their ring-hardened blocks.

Although iron rings are not conventionally considered as weapons, Kung Fu practitioners have figured out ways to weaponize just about everything. Some wield iron rings like brass knuckles, holding them in their fists for punching. 

Kung Fu Hustle

Weaponized iron rings are used in the 2004 comedy Kung Fu Hustle. The character Tailor (Chiu Chi Ling) fights with them. Chiu is a genuine master of Hung Ga Kung Fu, a southern style that uses iron ring training extensively. 

Director Destin Daniel Cretton claims that Kung Fu Hustle is one of his favorite martial arts movies so there are other nods to it in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, including when a Kung Fu Hustle poster can be seen on a bedroom wall in the background. What’s more, Yuen Wah also appears as the warrior leader of Ta Lo who oversees Katy’s (Awkwafina) archery training. Yuen played the Landlord in Kung Fu Hustle and is a veteran martial arts actor with nearly 200 film credits. He is also the Kung Fu brother of Jackie Chan. 

Yuen Qiu, who plays the Landlady in Kung Fu Hustle is a mutual Kung Fu sibling. Jackie, Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu were all pupils of Yu Jim-Yuen, a master of Chinese opera who trained them all from childhood.  They all took stage names that included the “Yuen” part of their master’s name (Jackie Chan was known as Yuen Lau as a child). Others among that troupe were many of the movers and shakers of Hong Kong’s golden age of Kung Fu films, such as Sammo Hung (a.k.a. Yuen Lung) and famed action choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill). 

Tiger Head Hooks

The signature weapons of the Ten Rings are Tiger Head Hooks. These are those black glowing hooked swords that the gang members wield. They also appear on the Ten Rings banner. It’s an excellent choice because Tiger Head Hooks are one of the most distinctively Kung Fu weapons of all. 

In Chinese, these are called Hu tou shuang gou, which literally means “Tiger head paired hooks.” “Paired” because they are typically used in pairs. Sometimes they are just translated as Hook Swords. They have a sword blade with a hooked tip, a crescent-shaped blade for a knuckle guard, and a dagger blade for a pommel. Every edge is sharp. The only place they are not sharp is the handle. This makes them very difficult to wield. Consequently, Tiger Hooks are considered an advanced Kung Fu weapon. 

The reference book Ancient Chinese Weapons by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming dates Tiger Head hooks back to China’s Spring Autumn Period (771-476 BCE), however those ancient hooks likely took on a different form. The modern style of Tiger Head hooks as seen in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings rose to prominence around the 1800s. They are still practiced today, mostly by Northern schools of Kung Fu.

What Style of Kung Fu Does Shang-Chi Practice?

Kung Fu is renowned for its diverse collection of styles like Shaolin, Wing Chun, Tiger style, and countless others. There’s even Drunken style and Toad style. In the movie, Shang-Chi doesn’t adopt a particular style of Kung Fu. Some of his moves have characteristics of Wing Chun or Bajiquan, but there’s nothing in the choreography to indicate a very specific style.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

The warriors of Ta Lo are different. While their style is not explicit, their peacekeeping philosophy is expressed through the soft, internal styles of Kung Fu like Tai Chi. When Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh) schools Shang-Chi in their first match, it’s reminiscent of how airbending is depicted in Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

However, the connection is deeper than that. Despite its fantasy elements, Avatar based its martial arts sequences on authentic Kung Fu by mo-capping Sifu Kisu, a renowned martial arts master. Kisu designated specific styles for each school of bending. Airbending was based upon an internal style of Kung Fu known as Baguazhang, or Eight Diagram Palm. Like Tai Chi, it has a soft expression. It relies on circular movements and pivoting evasions. Several of Yeoh’s techniques are plucked straight out of Baguazhang.

The Masters Behind Shang-Chi’s Martial Arts

Credit for Shang-Chi’s Kung Fu authenticity falls on the film’s top notch stunt team. Two are leading graduates of the legendary Jackie Chan Stunt Team. The fight on the hi-rise scaffolding is a homage to Jackie’s parkour-inspiring choreography. Andy Cheng worked on around half a dozen of Jackie’s films including his first two Rush Hour films, Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, and Who Am I? where Jackie does one of his all-time greatest stunts, sliding down the Willemswerf skyscraper in Rotterdam. He was also the action director for Into the Badlands. When Jackie inevitably stepped back from doing his own stunts, Cheng stepped in for him. 

“We were very concerned [about Kung Fu] from the very beginning,” says Cretton. “Marvel was also concerned and wanted to get it right. [They] knew that Marvel fans, wouldn’t have let it slide if we did a Hollywood version of a whitewashed Kung Fu movie. To be able to, we brought in Brad Allan.” Brad Allan was the first non-Asian to make Jackie’s stunt team. He also worked on around a dozen of Jackie’s films (this is approximate because stunt work wasn’t always credited).

Who Was Brad Allan?

You can’t miss the credits in any MCU film. In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, there’s a prominent dedication to Allan at the very end. Tragically, on August 7th, 2021, Brad Allan died unexpectantly at the early age of 48, sending the martial arts world reeling from the loss of one of its brightest stars. Beyond Shang-Chi, Allan leaves behind an exemplary legacy of action films where he served as the Second Unit Director including Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Cuban Fury, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the Kingsman trilogy. 

Allan was obsessed with the martial arts from childhood and rose to compete internationally in Wushu, representing Australia where he was born and raised. Through a chance encounter, he was able to demonstrate his skills to Jackie, and Jackie liked what he saw so much that he took Allan under his wing. 

In 1999, Allan played Alan, the villain in Jackie’s film Gorgeous, which coincidentally also stars Tony Leung. With Allan clad in black and Jackie in white, their finale fight is, well, it’s gorgeous. It’s two of the greatest masters of the craft delivering top notch fight choreography. Allan spent most of his career modestly behind the scenes, so Gorgeous is the outstanding example of his speed and agility. It’s heartbreaking that Allan didn’t get to see the premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Allan’s final work will be seen in The King’s Man later this year.

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is now playing in theaters.

The post The Real Martial Arts Behind Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/38AEQ5t

[sofiessketches]

NASASocial experience at JPL

This is a LONG one, so I’m gonna put it under a readmore! 

This was my first ever NASA Social, so I didn’t really know what to expect when I applied, what the chances were or what other sorts of people would be there. I was surprised I even got in, because compared to some of the other people I have very few followers, but I think there’s more to it than that! As Stephanie, the head of social media at JPL, said, “You were chosen for your insatiable curiosity, and for the stories you tell”. I really appreciate that the selection process was more about being a creator of SOMETHING that you truly care about.

I’ve been to JPL several times for tours and lectures, but it’s always exciting to come up to the front..there was a really long line, I’m assuming because of the event and also traditional media that was there to interview people.

Got my badge and headed in, and said good morning to the Curiosity model! (which I wish was as detailed as the real thing..I still love her tho. I’ve just been spoiled having gone on tours and doing a lot of research on Curiosity that I was able to spot what’s missing..)

Admiring how the light hits her..er..Chemcam

I never get tired of looking at this piece, but this was the first time I actually checked out the plaque next to it, which had a helpful diagram!

An installation displaying the information from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE Follow-on missions, which in the words of my friend Sirina, shows us how screwed we are, in a beautiful way! I also realized the reason the screens are this shape is because the spacecraft are shaped like that...!

JPL’s inspiring slogan in a beautiful geometric typeface B)

We got to the meeting/conference room, with portraits of all JPL’s past and present directors around. The last seat at the front table appeared to be taken by the Mars 2020 wheel, so I asked if I could sit there with the wheel, and my day was made! I have to admit this may have been the highlight of my day. One of the first JPL-specific drawings I did was a study of an image Curiosity had taken of her own wheels on Mars, and after that I read a lot about how the wheels worked and how the design was less than ideal..it makes me happy to see the next iteration and how it’ll work out!

No pointy grousers for the sharp Mars rocks to snag on here!!! Just this...veeeeery shallow S-curve.

Everyone hanging out and social media-ing before the event began, waiting for more people to get there. I happened to sit next to a couple people I had pre-stalked on Twitter from the list they made of participants!

LOSING MY MIND EVEN MORE THAT WE COULD TOUCH AND PICK UP THE WHEEL???!?!!? It was pretty light, since it was a 3D model and not made of actual aluminum.

Lookin cute together. This is Kevin Baird, an awesome photographer! The only patches we had in common were the NASA meatball (not even the same one, though) and the SOFIA patch, which was strangely almost in the same spot on both of our jackets.. (on the back left side)

Then Stephanie, JPL’s social media head, came and proposed to us with space grade aerogel, and of course we all said yes. 

After an introduction, Linda, another social media expert at JPL, brought over a top secret looking box, which she explained will have some cool graphics relating to Mars 2020 on the front and inside soon (excited to see that!!)

Inside were material samples of several components of Mars 2020, including the many layered thermal blanket, the ropes that will lower the rover onto the surface of Mars (which can hold the weight of 1 car EACH, and the rover will be suspended by 80 of them) as well as the parachute material (orange), which was remade for better strength and lightness. 

We also got to hold a replica of the sample cache tubes that Mars 2020 will be filling!

At 10:00, the event we were there for, the State of NASA, came on (a budget rollout explaining briefly how much money the government will be giving to NASA in 2021 and what it’s for) so we watched Jim Bridenstein in front of some incredible engines...

And I just..get excited when I see the rover on the screen ok..

There was a super cool internal view of how the Mars 2020 will be depositing sample caches! The video is below:

Anyway, the budget rollout declared 22 billion to NASA and 3.3 billion of that to the development of the human landing system, which will go toward landing humans and science on the moon for the Artemis program. You can read more here about this.

After that, Director Watkins and Dr Zurbuchen came to answer questions, and we learned a bit about Mars Sample Return, and the mission that will come before that but after Mars 2020, which will map icy areas in Mars’ poles. (Really looking forward to learning more about that!!) I gave Dr Zurbuchen some stickers I made and he gave me his card......!

Soon after, we headed to the Science building, to learn about MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) (I’ve noticed, the bigger the budget on these missions, the more effort they put into making the acronyms for everything sound cool) This technology demonstration is on Mars 2020 to prepare for larger scale carbon dioxide to oxygen conversion from Mars’ atmosphere for human use. This size of MOXIE creates only about enough oxygen to keep a small dog alive. Still impressive!!!

Wandered around the MOXIE lab a little and took a peek at the rest of what was on the walls and tables..

After that, we went to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where Mars 2020 was not, but that’s a good thing! I’m actually not sure which part is in the box there.. but soon after we left, it left too!

Teeny tiny Mars 2020 model hidden at the end of the viewing area...

Best.

At the indoor mars yard, a couple InSight engineers talked to us about how they use this area to test software before they send it to Mars. Here from left to right are the engineering models for Mars2020, InSight, and Curiosity.

Her name is Maggie!

One of my goals in life is to be able to stand in front of the arm and draw it until I understand what the hell is going on.

Also going to insert some pics I took last week because I was lucky enough to get a tour from my friend Sirina, where there were engineers inside working on the arm:

Next, we headed to the Mars Sample Return testbed!

It makes me excited to be in the rooms with dirt regolith inside.. also SmalBoSSE is the best acronym I’ve seen all day...

The “volleyball” that Mars 2020′s sample caches will eventually be stored in, to be fetched by another rover, launched into orbit around Mars and picked up to be sent back to Earth! 

More freaking out about rover wheels. This is a prototype of one that will be on the rover to pick up the samples; the wire is slightly deformable which is great for offroad Mars action.

The rover will be a joint effort between NASA and ESA.

I love seeing these posters with hints of other projects going on. So cool!!

Last stop (cry) was Mission Control, aka The Center of the Universe, where all the data the Deep Space Network gets from spacecraft comes in.

The view from inside from my previous tour!

*eyes emoji when I see Mars 2020*

The darkroom and Curiosity’s Ace’s desk, where they send commands to Curiosity at 10:30AM Mars time.

Spitzer’s end of mission from Monday (top) vs the day after it was decommissioned (bottom).

Center of the Universe!!!

Ouagh don’t step on it! Well you can..

It was sad to say goodbye to our excellent guides, but we’ll be keeping in touch!! ;)

I also got a bunch of awesome pictures taken of me, which I was surprised by, because usually I’m the last one people take pics of..! 

My jacket, which they posted on JPL’s instagram... gosh!!!!!!

And some stickers/new business card design (did I post this here yet??) I gave to everyone I met!

Displayed at Shannon Forrey’s desk!

This was a truly amazing experience, my first time attending one of these events, I learned so much and had such a great time surrounded by inspiring and talented people. Thank you again to everyone at JPL who made it possible and to all the scientists and engineers who took the time to share their work with us! I’ll never forget this day.

Also, I want to make some art based off what I learned, so keep an eye out for that in the upcoming weeks!

[gatewaygeek]

A fic I've always wanted to read...

Vulcans allow Humans to stay on Vulcan after a natural disaster destroys Earth (and several billion people). Humans have dwindled in numbers, it went from 7 billion to 3 million. Everything is going fine until Vulcans decide to segregate, noticing how Vulcan younglings are expressing human actions.

The Humans do not argue. It is their planet, the humans sre simply living on it. Most begin to dedicate their lives to building a warp-capable ship to take them to a new colony. When the next generations come, interest is lost in leaving. This is home now.

The human young now have PADDs. One kid climbs to the top of a building and takes a picture over the wall and posts it online; it goes viral in hours.

There is now a picture of Vulcan society, advanced, clean, and unperturbed. The human young are angry. They want a revolution. The adults don't want to seem ungrateful, they tell the young to mind their manners and stop spensing so much time on their PADDs. Some even get them taken away.

In an attempt to calm the nerves of the young, the Humans and the Vulcans decide to elect one child to attend a Vulcan school, to test if the humans are ready for integration. That child was a young boy named Jim Kirk, with no father and a mother who makes minimum wage. His brother had to take up a job at age sixteen to get Jim new clothes for school and help pay the bills. He makes even less.

Jim is ecstatic. He can't wait to learn new things. He is given advice from his mother the day he goes to school.

"Don't mind them, Jimmy. Don't you mind them one bit. They ain't like you, they ain't got the right to judge you. Only God and your Momma can do that." She sends him off with a kiss on his forehead.

That day, Jim is stared at and whispered about, but he's incredibly shy about being there, so he doesn't say anything. He only speaks in the learning pits.

His pit had been programmed to be more fit for his own mind and to become increasingly harder over time. The Vulcan High Council is surprised to see that Jim does well, even when he gets into Quadratic equations, Advanced Chemistry, and Physics. He is accused of cheating. When asked his perspective, Jim says simply;

"It's all numbers, sir. Numbers aren't difficult. It's all just countin', right? Momma always said that if I can do well in Math, I'd be goin' places... I didn't wanna disappoint her."

This attracts the attention of a young Vulcan boy, a few years older than Jim. The Vulcan ambassador's son; Spock.

Jim is packing up one day when the bullies start to come. They tell him his learning pit is easy, that they'll never integrate, that the humans are inferior beings that don't deserve their patience. Jim is pushed down, and his PADD gets broken. Spock intervenes swiftly, tells them to leave at once. Jim is looking at his PADD, lips taut and tears in his eyes that he is trying hard to keep in. Spock frowns.

"You are crying." Jim wipes his tears, frustrated.

"I apologize for the display of emotion." The words are routine. "Thank you for assisting me." Spock leans down and helps Jim up.

"It is of no inconvenience to me. What is your name?" The human looks up at him.

"I'm James Tiberius Kirk, Sir." Spock lifts the ta'al.

"Greetings, James Tiberius Kirk. I am Spock." Jim lifts his shaking hand and does his best to return the gesture.

"You can call me Jim, if you want. Saying my full name is extensive."

"Jim." He looks at the device in Jim's other hand, and notices that the screen is cracked. "Your PADD is broken."

"Yeah... That's the third one this month. My mom's gonna have a coniption. Can't afford to get this one fixed."

"I see." Spock takes out his PADD. "You may borrow mine. I will get yours fixed." Jim looks hopeful.

"Really?"

"Indeed. The passcode is 01 13 01 14 04 01." The two switch PADDs.

"Thank you so much, Spock."

"You are welcome, Jim."

"Spock," a deep voice said, and Spock looked at a taller Vulcan. "Your caretaker has arrived. You must go."

"Yes, Sa-mekh." Spock looked back to Jim, and lifted the ta'al once more. "Farewell, James Kirk. Live long and prosper." Jim lifted the ta'al again, being careful not to drop the PADD.

"Peace and long life. Farewell, Spock." The two Vulcans left, and Jim was left with Spock's PADD.

Spock fixes the PADD with little issue, and is surprised to see there is no passcode on it. He justifies his snooping by assuring himself it's only to make sure all the settings work. He reads through messages, looks through pictures, looks at his study material, reads human literature, listens to human music, and eventually finds Jim's personal log. He is almost brought to tears; the human suffers often. He admits he doesn't eat regularly, so that they'll be able to afford heat. He admits he wants a job, maybe then they'll be able to save up for the lavender sweater his mother wanted for her birthday last month. He admits he has an anxiety disorder, and can't afford help. He admits he missed his father, despite never having met him. He admits that Vulcan is not home, Jim never really thought he had a home, and he admitted that the lack of one leaves Jim feeling uneasy.

But what gets to Spock the most is the most recent one.

He says how excited he is to go to the Vulcan Learning Center. He says he wants to learn everything he can, he wants to make friends, he wants to experience life outside the Human Expanse (the territory given to the Humans upon arrival). He doesn't want to let his mother and brother down.

"Momma told me not to mind any of 'em. But if I don't, how do I know if I'm doin' well? It's difficult, but I'm doin' better than they thought I would. That gives me hope that maybe Vulcans and Humans can live together. Maybe I'll find a home there."

Jim uses the PADD to study. He is enthralled by all the new information, and spends the whole night reading the Teachings of Surak. He understands more complex math equations, writing them down and spending hours solving them. He memorized the diagram of warp cores, and Vulcan anatomy. He was ecstatic.

The next day, Jim performs with flying colors, meets ever challenge head-on because he understands. Finally, he understands! He loves studying the Vulcan material, and when it came time to exchange PADDs with Spock, he was sad to watch it go. Spock notices, and asks why.

"Your studying feature is so much more interesting compared to mine," he admitted. "I read all of Surak's teachings last night."

"I... Admit that I found your human music and literature fascinating," Spock said in a quiet voice. "Perhaps we could exchange PADDs once a week?" Jim's eyes lit up, and Spock's heart stuttered.

"Really? That would be awesome!" He said, trying to keep his excitement contained. Spock didn't smile, but his eyes softened.

"Indeed. Perhaps Tuesdays would work best?"

"Sounds good to me."

"I look forward to it, James." Jim's cheeks tinted at the use of his full name.

"Me too." The two part to their shuttles home.

Spock and Jim develop their relationship through those PADDs for months. Jim would bookmark his favorite stories and illegally download songs. Spock would leave complex equations and write poetry for him. Jim starts to catch on that Spock listens to his personal log, and stops for a while before he starts talking about Spock in his personal logs. Spock makes his own personal logs. They communicate this way, as they can't exchange PADD numbers.

It's three years later, when Spock is graduating from fhe Vulcan Learning Center that Jim gets anxious. Spock assures him they will see each other, that he would miss Jim's voice. Jim kisses Spock.

Spock kisses back.

-

They date in secret for months before Jim is told that the integration wasn't working, and he would be sent back to the Human Expanse. Jim fights it, and Spock supports him. He takes it to court, where both humans and vulcans are in the jury. Jim is asked to make his testimony.

"Seventy two years, eight months, and twelve days ago, the Humans suffered a natural disaster that destroyed our planet. We were taken in by the Vulcans, and for that, we are grateful. We were segregates, and we didn't fight, because this is your planet. We abided by your rules.

"Seventy two years, eight months, and twelve days later, a new generation is leading a revolution. A generation that has never seen Earth. This is as much our home as it is yours; and yet, we are not seen as equal. And maybe you are right. Maybe we will never be as smart as you, or as strong. But the truth is, it doesn't matter.

"Over the past several years of my integration. I met a Vulcan, and we entered an intimate relationship. We are proof that Humans and Vulcans can work, if you give humans the same opportunities to succeed. But maybe I'm a special case. Maybe I was given a better education in the Human expanse. So, I have decided to tell you of my life prior to the integration.

"When I was three, my father died. Cancer. My mother took a job, making minimum wage, which was about eight dollars an hour. Our inflation didn't help. My brother obtained a job when he was sixteen, and he made even less. I went to public school, and often didn't eat so we could afford to stay in a heated home. Regular meals was a luxury few humans could afford.

"The Integration offered hope for me and my family. I might be able to make something of myself. But it truly would all be for naught if you took me, a human that has passed all your tests and succeeded your expectations, and put me back where I was, not given the chance to use what I have learned. I am but one man. Imagine what would happen if you exposed humans to the Teachings of Surak, taught them fairly and gave them the chance to prove themselves. Don't stop integration simply because you don't like change. We can all benefit if we work together."

Jim's voice is heard. It's his testimony that integrates Vulcan and Human society. Jim and Spock found Starfleet, a branch of the VSA to help humans catch up with the Vulcans and teach them how to reach for the stars.

[rampantmuses]

If You Want My Opinion, Which I’m Sure You Didn’t...

I’m 34 years young. I started on Tumblr well over five years ago. With that being said, I’d like to impart the following knowledge to the newest fandom I’m involved with involving the work of actor Cody Fern, knowing for playing the Antichrist Michael Langdon in AHS: Apocalypse, Duncan Shepherd in House of Cards, Jim Mason in the Tribes of Palos Verdes, as well as David Madson in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

Know that my words come from a place of love....and a crap tonne of experience in various fandoms. If you’d like a resume of my fandoms, just know I’ve survived fandom bollocks/nannies in the Cumberbatch, Hiddleston, and Seb Stan fandoms and I’m still here. I speak from experience. I’m not here to gatekeep...what I am here to do is share what I have seen and what can divide.

Don’t Be That Fan...

You don’t get brownie points for being a fandom nanny. The fandoms I’ve dealt with? None of the fans I ever dealt with or am still friends with liked the resident fandom nanny. If they did like them, they were usually sycophantic people who agreed with every word that came out of the nanny’s “mouth”. Why aren’t they liked? One good reason: they suck the life out of the tags. They act like their defence of whichever actor is so groundbreaking and helpful. Some have even gone so far to act like they’ve got a special connect with that actor (which is kinda disrespectful to the boundary between artist and fan...don’t do that either, know your role and know your boundaries). All that seems to accomplish is the fandom equivalent of a dog peeing on a tree. That’s not cute. The actor your defending the “honour” of can more than likely fend for themselves. They don’t need you to do it for them. Slow your roll.

Regarding Fan Fiction...

People will always have opinions about fan fiction. If you enjoy it: read it, share it, give feed back or constructive criticism. Help an author out if you can. Be supportive as best you can as it’s a medium that’s actually a craptonne of work at which people like to sneer.

If you don’t, I don’t know what to tell you. You may want to keep it from existing. However, it’s a public page, and until someone decides to remove fan fic from Tumblr, It may be best to ignore or block these blogs. Best motto is to live and let live.

If you’re in a prudish mode about erotic fan fic you may find in the tags? That’s all you. Self respect and sexual confidence are not mutually exclusive concepts that never meet. That’s an erroneous construct someone fed you and you ate it wholesale. They are a Venn Diagram that is a complete circle. If you have an issue with erotica in fan fic, again...block or ignore the blog. You never have to subject yourself to something if you choose not to seek it out.

Share and Share Alike? Back It Up...

If you have an opinion, share away. Don’t be surprised if someone calls you out. Just be prepared to back yourself up with facts. And by facts, I mean actual facts, not just more of your opinions. Opinion isn’t enough anymore, no matter how persuasive it is. Name calling nullifies your argument and makes you look like a child. Be better than that. Discussion will always lead to a better result than an online screaming match.

Golden Rule...Don’t Be a Bellend

Just...don’t be a dick. Life is chaos. Be kind. You’ll bring in more people with kindness that with prickish behaviour. I’ve made amazing friends through this site. I would like to think that we’d love to be that person made that impact on someone else. A new fan is looking for someone to share their enthusiasm with. Why not geek out with them?

If you’re doing good things, continue to do good. If you’re reading this and getting mad, chances are you’re throwing up walls instead of setting up a longer table for the fandom family to grow. At the end of the day, we’re all fans of an amazing person whose work we enjoy. Why be elusive and exclusive?

[statetalks]

Were The Confederates Democrats Or Republicans

Th United States Congress

Were The Democrats That Founded The Confederacy, KKK & Jim Crow CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL? Lets Go!!!!

As of September 13, 2017, 16 Senate Democrats cosponsored the Medicare for All Act of 2017. As of September 26, 2017, 120 House Democrats cosponsored the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act. This was all for naught, as the Republican majority made sure that the Democratic minority remained impotent.

National Democratic Redistricting Committee

On January 12, 2017, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a 527 organization that focuses on redistricting reform and is affiliated with the Democratic Party, was created. The chair, president and vice president of the umbrella organization is the 82nd Attorney GeneralEric Holder, Elizabeth Pearson and Alixandria “Ali” Lapp respectively. President Obama has said he would be involved with the committee.

Protests against Donald Trump

At the inauguration of Donald Trump, 67 Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives boycotted the inauguration. This was the largest boycott by members of the United States Congress since the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, where it was estimated that between 80 and 200 Democratic members of United States Congress boycotted.

Democratic Party PACs

In November 2018, the Democrats gained 40 seats in the House of Representatives, retaking the majority in the chamber. Nancy Pelosi was nominated to retake the speakership in January 2019.

Southern Democrats Split With Republicans Over Confederate Symbols Is More Recent Than You Might Think

Following the recent police killing of George Floyd, recent months have seen Confederate monuments and symbols removed;from public display;in parts of the Southern US and elsewhere. And while Southern Republicans generally oppose Democrats who are pushing for these changes, this is a relatively recent development, argue;Christopher A. Cooper;and;co-authors. By;analysing;public opinion data, they find that up until the 1990s, there were no partisan differences among white;southerners on opinions toward Confederate symbols.;

In the ongoing;and contentious;conversation about;Confederate;symbols, one thing is taken as a given:;compared to Republicans,;Democrats;are;more likely to support;removing displays of the Confederate past;which had been publically approved in the past. This;fact;is;evident;in public opinion polls and in the results of recent;votes;in state legislatures,;like the one in;Mississippi;where every Democrat voted to remove the Confederate;emblem;from the Mississippi state flag,;while;Republicans split on the issue.

How The Democrats Became Socially Liberal

The Third Party Democrats began to change from social conservative to social progressive in the 1890s at the end of the Gilded Age under the;progressive populist Democrat;William Jennings Bryan. Under Bryan, the Democratic Party became;increasingly socially progressive and necessarily authoritative. From Bryan to Wilson, to LBJ, to Clinton the Democratic Party;increasingly favored progressive social liberalism regarding government enforced social justice and economic intervention over;laissez-faire governance, this attracted progressive Republicans and drove social;conservatives from the party over time.

TIP: See History of the United States Democratic Party.

Also Check: Why Did Republicans Hate Obama So Much

Why Democrats Avoid Confederate History While Republicans Embrace It

Governor Bob McDonnell made a proclamation to recognize April as Confederate History month, which caused an outcry from the very same people who are vilifying those attending tea parties as terrorists. These are citizens who are invoking the spirit of our founding fathers, reminding current lawmakers of the original intent of the Constitution and suggesting that an 8-year war to end tyranny and guarantee liberty for all should never be forgotten. But the left is always keen to distort history, or just ignore it all together as they want to do now, by denying a closer look at Confederate History.

It is not a huge surprise as to why Democrats react so viscerally to anything dealing with the history of the Civil War, the role of the Confederacy in that war, and why racism is still a hot topic in the country. It is because their very policies are at the heart of what caused the Civil War, and have kept racism alive to this day. They dont want people to learn the truth about the founding of the Republican Party and that its first president was Abraham Lincoln, and that within 11 years of the founding of this civil rights party, a war was fought and won to end slavery. It would be a bigger surprise to see a Democrat governor proclaim a Confederate History month since their history, as it relates to race and slavery, is not one to be proud of.

A Reconstituted Early 20th Century Kkk Attracts Members From Both Sides

After Reconstruction, and as the Jim Crow period set in during the 1870s, the Klan became obsolete.;Through violence, intimidation and systematic oppression, the KKK had served its purpose to help whites retake Southern governments.

In 1915, Cornell William J. Simmons restarted the KKK. This second KKK was made up of Republicans and Democrats, although Democrats were more widely involved.

The idea that these things overlap in a Venn diagram, the way they did with the first Klan, just isnt as tight with the second Klan, Grinspan said.

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Progressive Era And The New Deal

As the 19th century drew to a close, the Republicans had been firmly established as the party of big business during the Gilded Age, while the Democratic Party strongly identified with rural agrarianism and conservative values.

But during the Progressive Era, which spanned the turn of the century, the Democrats saw a split between its conservative and more progressive members. As the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, William Jennings Bryan advocated for an expanded role of government in ensuring social justice. Though he lost, Bryans advocacy of bigger government would influence the Democratic ideology going forward.

Republicans again dominated national politics during the prosperous 1920s, but faltered after the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first Democrat to win the White House since Woodrow Wilson.

A Century Of Jim Crow But Otherwise Lots Of Progress

From 1877 to at least the 1960s, the Solid South KKK-like;Progressively Socially Conservative Democrats remained a formidable faction of the Democratic Party.

This is true even though the party was increasingly dominated by Progressives like William Jennings Bryan. We can see in Wilson that both factions held sway in the party, Wilson was both a progressive liberal and a son of the Confederates.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | PBS | ep 1 of 4 Promises Betrayed.

TIP: During the late 1800s and early 1900s Eugenics was a popular theory. In this era, we might find;Margaret Sanger, liberal economists and social scientists, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, a young Hitler, and the KKK all agreeing on aspects of eugenics. There are many sides;of the eugenics argument, and one must study its history in earnest before making a judgment call. Very;radical right-wing propaganda equated birth control with;genocide, but there was a wide range of beliefs. An espousal of;negative eugenics is part of the dark history of the Democratic party.

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Presidency Of John F Kennedy

The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 over then-Vice President Richard Nixon re-energized the party. His youth, vigor and intelligence caught the popular imagination. New programs like the Peace Corps harnessed idealism. In terms of legislation, Kennedy was stalemated by the conservative coalition.

Though Kennedy’s term in office lasted only about a thousand days, he tried to hold back communist gains after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Walland sent 16,000 soldiers to Vietnam to advise the hard-pressed South Vietnamese army. He challenged America in the Space Race to land an American man on the Moon by 1969. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he moved to de-escalate tensions with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy also pushed for civil rights and racial integration, one example being Kennedy assigning federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the South. His election did mark the coming of age of the Catholic component of the New Deal Coalition. After 1964, middle class Catholics started voting Republican in the same proportion as their Protestant neighbors. Except for the Chicago of Richard J. Daley, the last of the Democratic machines faded away. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

Andrew Johnson And Presidential Reconstruction

Democrats became the Confederacy, NOT the Republicans!

At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states rights. In Johnsons view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnsons Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the formerly enslaved people by the army or the Freedmens Bureau reverted to its prewar owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery , swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves.

As a result of Johnsons leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the black codes, which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.;

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The South And The House Go Republican

“I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” President Johnson said shortly after signing the Civil Rights Act, according to his aide Bill Moyers. And indeed, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican specifically for this reason.

Yet party loyalties take a long time to shake off, and the shift of white Southerners from being solid Democrats to solid Republicans was in reality more gradual.

And while race played an important role in this shift, other issues played roles too. White evangelical Christians became newly mobilized to oppose abortion and take stands on other “culture war” issues, and felt more at home with the conservative party. There was that suspicion of big government and lack of union organization that permeated the region. And talented politicians like Ronald Reagan promised to defend traditional values.

Still, Democrats continued to maintain control of the House of Representatives for some time, in large part because of continued support from Southerners, as shown in this map by Jonathan Davis at Arizona State University. But in 1994, the revolution finally arrived, as Republicans took the House for the first time since 1955. And many of the crucial pickups that made that possible came in the South.

The First Party System: The Federalist Party And The Democratic

To start, the founding fathers can be put into two groups: the;Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party .

Alexander Hamilton favored central Government and had ties to Britain, and wanted centralized banking. He favored national power over state power. He is todays Washington Liberal/Conservative. Hamilton wanted free-market capitalism and globalization with Britain/America, as a world leader hundreds of years before his time. He is an impressive character.

The Democratic-Republican Party, headed by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, generally opposed Hamilton and his views . In simple terms, they are todays Social-Libertarians . They are more in-line with what people think when they think rebelling from the authority of the King to be free.

In this scenario we can say the big government aspect of the current American left is with the Federalists, and the socially liberal of left, and anti-big government of the right, part is with the;Democratic-Republicans. But remember, the who far-right thing simply doesnt exist yet. So the divisive politics of today arent anywhere to be found .

The duality of the;Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party;is well displayed in the clip below in a discussion between Hamilton and Jefferson .

Read Also: How Many Senate Seats Do The Republicans Have

Republican Voters Turn Against Their Partys Elites

The Tea Party movement, which sprang into existence in the early years of the Obama administration, was many things. It was partly about opposing Obamas economic policies foreclosure relief, tax increases, and health reform. It was partly about opposing immigration when Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson;interviewed Tea Party activists across the nation, they found that “immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern” those activists expressed.

But the Tea Party also was a challenge to the Republican Party establishment. Several times, these groups helped power little-known far-right primary contenders to shocking primary wins over establishment Republican politicians deemed to be sellouts. Those candidates didnt always win office, but their successful primary bids certainly struck fear into the hearts of many other GOP incumbents, and made many of them more deferential to the concerns of conservative voters.

Furthermore, many Republican voters also came to believe, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly, that their partys national leaders tended to sell them out at every turn.

Talk radio and other conservative media outlets helped stoke this perception, and by May 2015 Republican voters were far more likely to say that their partys politicians were doing a poor job representing their views than Democratic voters were.

Rural And Urban Population

A Home on the MississippiCurrier and Ives

The CSA was overwhelmingly rural. Few towns had populations of more than 1,000; the typical county seat had a population of fewer than 500. Cities were rare; of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only New Orleans lay in Confederate territory; and the Union captured New Orleans in 1862. Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the Union blockade. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864. Other Southern cities in the border slave-holding states such as Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Wheeling, Alexandria, Louisville, and St. Louis never came under the control of the Confederate government.

The cities of the Confederacy included most prominently in order of size of population:

#

The CSA was overwhelmingly Protestant. Both free and enslaved populations identified with evangelical Protestantism. Baptists and Methodists together formed majorities of both the white and the slave population . Freedom of religion and were fully ensured by Confederate laws. Church attendance was very high and chaplains played a major role in the Army.

Read Also: How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

An Overview Of The Party Systems

The party systems, AKA eras of the United States;political parties, can be described;as follows :

In other words, as the Democratic Party became more progressive in the progressive era, it attracted progressives from the Republican party and alienated the Democrats of the small government socially conservative south. Meanwhile, as the Republican party conserved toward Gilded Age politics in the 20th century, and embraced socially conservative single-issue voter groups and individualism, it attracted the solid south and alienated progressives. These two factors, and many more explained in detail below, substantially changed the party platforms, seats held in Congress, and the voting maps over the course of the 20th century .

To sum up and connect all of the above, the switches we see that change the parties and define different eras include things like Teddy Roosevelt or Strom Thurmond switching parties , the Democratic Party platform becoming more progressive in the progressive area , the southern Democrat southern bloc tending toward the Republican party after the Civil Rights era , all this impacting which regions of the country tend to support each party , and all of this affecting which party has a stronghold in which region as new elections occur .

Babe Didrikson Zaharias Wins Final Lpga Tournament Of Her Career

Southern Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the Souths first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs .

READ MORE: The First Black Man Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His Seat

You May Like: How Many Republicans Voted For Impeachment

Better Understanding The Changes In American Politics

Above we summarized the switching of ideologies and platforms;between the parties by looking at the party systems and Presidents.

Below we explore;details, clarify semantics, answer questions, present curated videos, and illustrate some of the key telling moments regarding the changes described above.

Please consider sharing your insight below, our summing up of the history of American politics is an ongoing effort, see the videos for supplemental content from other authors.

For deeper reading:

Also, see a breakdown of each party and President and how they would be placed on the left and right.

Effect On Women And Families

Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican?

About 250,000 men never came home, some 30 percent of all white men aged 18 to 40 . Widows who were overwhelmed often abandoned their farms and merged into the households of relatives, or even became refugees living in camps with high rates of disease and death. In the Old South, being an “old maid” was something of an embarrassment to the woman and her family, but after the war, it became almost a norm. Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Divorce, while never fully accepted, became more common. The concept of the “New Woman” emerged she was self-sufficient and independent, and stood in sharp contrast to the “Southern Belle” of antebellum lore.

Recommended Reading: How Do Republicans Feel About Donald Trump

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/were-the-confederates-democrats-or-republicans/

[patriotsnet]

Were The Confederates Democrats Or Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/were-the-confederates-democrats-or-republicans/

Were The Confederates Democrats Or Republicans

Th United States Congress

Were The Democrats That Founded The Confederacy, KKK & Jim Crow CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL? Lets Go!!!!

As of September 13, 2017, 16 Senate Democrats cosponsored the Medicare for All Act of 2017. As of September 26, 2017, 120 House Democrats cosponsored the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act. This was all for naught, as the Republican majority made sure that the Democratic minority remained impotent.

National Democratic Redistricting Committee

On January 12, 2017, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a 527 organization that focuses on redistricting reform and is affiliated with the Democratic Party, was created. The chair, president and vice president of the umbrella organization is the 82nd Attorney GeneralEric Holder, Elizabeth Pearson and Alixandria “Ali” Lapp respectively. President Obama has said he would be involved with the committee.

Protests against Donald Trump

At the inauguration of Donald Trump, 67 Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives boycotted the inauguration. This was the largest boycott by members of the United States Congress since the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, where it was estimated that between 80 and 200 Democratic members of United States Congress boycotted.

Democratic Party PACs

In November 2018, the Democrats gained 40 seats in the House of Representatives, retaking the majority in the chamber. Nancy Pelosi was nominated to retake the speakership in January 2019.

Southern Democrats Split With Republicans Over Confederate Symbols Is More Recent Than You Might Think

Following the recent police killing of George Floyd, recent months have seen Confederate monuments and symbols removed;from public display;in parts of the Southern US and elsewhere. And while Southern Republicans generally oppose Democrats who are pushing for these changes, this is a relatively recent development, argue;Christopher A. Cooper;and;co-authors. By;analysing;public opinion data, they find that up until the 1990s, there were no partisan differences among white;southerners on opinions toward Confederate symbols.;

In the ongoing;and contentious;conversation about;Confederate;symbols, one thing is taken as a given:;compared to Republicans,;Democrats;are;more likely to support;removing displays of the Confederate past;which had been publically approved in the past. This;fact;is;evident;in public opinion polls and in the results of recent;votes;in state legislatures,;like the one in;Mississippi;where every Democrat voted to remove the Confederate;emblem;from the Mississippi state flag,;while;Republicans split on the issue.

How The Democrats Became Socially Liberal

The Third Party Democrats began to change from social conservative to social progressive in the 1890s at the end of the Gilded Age under the;progressive populist Democrat;William Jennings Bryan. Under Bryan, the Democratic Party became;increasingly socially progressive and necessarily authoritative. From Bryan to Wilson, to LBJ, to Clinton the Democratic Party;increasingly favored progressive social liberalism regarding government enforced social justice and economic intervention over;laissez-faire governance, this attracted progressive Republicans and drove social;conservatives from the party over time.

TIP: See History of the United States Democratic Party.

Also Check: Why Did Republicans Hate Obama So Much

Why Democrats Avoid Confederate History While Republicans Embrace It

Governor Bob McDonnell made a proclamation to recognize April as Confederate History month, which caused an outcry from the very same people who are vilifying those attending tea parties as terrorists. These are citizens who are invoking the spirit of our founding fathers, reminding current lawmakers of the original intent of the Constitution and suggesting that an 8-year war to end tyranny and guarantee liberty for all should never be forgotten. But the left is always keen to distort history, or just ignore it all together as they want to do now, by denying a closer look at Confederate History.

It is not a huge surprise as to why Democrats react so viscerally to anything dealing with the history of the Civil War, the role of the Confederacy in that war, and why racism is still a hot topic in the country. It is because their very policies are at the heart of what caused the Civil War, and have kept racism alive to this day. They dont want people to learn the truth about the founding of the Republican Party and that its first president was Abraham Lincoln, and that within 11 years of the founding of this civil rights party, a war was fought and won to end slavery. It would be a bigger surprise to see a Democrat governor proclaim a Confederate History month since their history, as it relates to race and slavery, is not one to be proud of.

A Reconstituted Early 20th Century Kkk Attracts Members From Both Sides

After Reconstruction, and as the Jim Crow period set in during the 1870s, the Klan became obsolete.;Through violence, intimidation and systematic oppression, the KKK had served its purpose to help whites retake Southern governments.

In 1915, Cornell William J. Simmons restarted the KKK. This second KKK was made up of Republicans and Democrats, although Democrats were more widely involved.

The idea that these things overlap in a Venn diagram, the way they did with the first Klan, just isnt as tight with the second Klan, Grinspan said.

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Progressive Era And The New Deal

As the 19th century drew to a close, the Republicans had been firmly established as the party of big business during the Gilded Age, while the Democratic Party strongly identified with rural agrarianism and conservative values.

But during the Progressive Era, which spanned the turn of the century, the Democrats saw a split between its conservative and more progressive members. As the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, William Jennings Bryan advocated for an expanded role of government in ensuring social justice. Though he lost, Bryans advocacy of bigger government would influence the Democratic ideology going forward.

Republicans again dominated national politics during the prosperous 1920s, but faltered after the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first Democrat to win the White House since Woodrow Wilson.

A Century Of Jim Crow But Otherwise Lots Of Progress

From 1877 to at least the 1960s, the Solid South KKK-like;Progressively Socially Conservative Democrats remained a formidable faction of the Democratic Party.

This is true even though the party was increasingly dominated by Progressives like William Jennings Bryan. We can see in Wilson that both factions held sway in the party, Wilson was both a progressive liberal and a son of the Confederates.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | PBS | ep 1 of 4 Promises Betrayed.

TIP: During the late 1800s and early 1900s Eugenics was a popular theory. In this era, we might find;Margaret Sanger, liberal economists and social scientists, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, a young Hitler, and the KKK all agreeing on aspects of eugenics. There are many sides;of the eugenics argument, and one must study its history in earnest before making a judgment call. Very;radical right-wing propaganda equated birth control with;genocide, but there was a wide range of beliefs. An espousal of;negative eugenics is part of the dark history of the Democratic party.

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Presidency Of John F Kennedy

The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 over then-Vice President Richard Nixon re-energized the party. His youth, vigor and intelligence caught the popular imagination. New programs like the Peace Corps harnessed idealism. In terms of legislation, Kennedy was stalemated by the conservative coalition.

Though Kennedy’s term in office lasted only about a thousand days, he tried to hold back communist gains after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Walland sent 16,000 soldiers to Vietnam to advise the hard-pressed South Vietnamese army. He challenged America in the Space Race to land an American man on the Moon by 1969. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he moved to de-escalate tensions with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy also pushed for civil rights and racial integration, one example being Kennedy assigning federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the South. His election did mark the coming of age of the Catholic component of the New Deal Coalition. After 1964, middle class Catholics started voting Republican in the same proportion as their Protestant neighbors. Except for the Chicago of Richard J. Daley, the last of the Democratic machines faded away. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

Andrew Johnson And Presidential Reconstruction

Democrats became the Confederacy, NOT the Republicans!

At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states rights. In Johnsons view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnsons Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the formerly enslaved people by the army or the Freedmens Bureau reverted to its prewar owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery , swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves.

As a result of Johnsons leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the black codes, which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.;

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The South And The House Go Republican

“I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” President Johnson said shortly after signing the Civil Rights Act, according to his aide Bill Moyers. And indeed, Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican specifically for this reason.

Yet party loyalties take a long time to shake off, and the shift of white Southerners from being solid Democrats to solid Republicans was in reality more gradual.

And while race played an important role in this shift, other issues played roles too. White evangelical Christians became newly mobilized to oppose abortion and take stands on other “culture war” issues, and felt more at home with the conservative party. There was that suspicion of big government and lack of union organization that permeated the region. And talented politicians like Ronald Reagan promised to defend traditional values.

Still, Democrats continued to maintain control of the House of Representatives for some time, in large part because of continued support from Southerners, as shown in this map by Jonathan Davis at Arizona State University. But in 1994, the revolution finally arrived, as Republicans took the House for the first time since 1955. And many of the crucial pickups that made that possible came in the South.

The First Party System: The Federalist Party And The Democratic

To start, the founding fathers can be put into two groups: the;Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party .

Alexander Hamilton favored central Government and had ties to Britain, and wanted centralized banking. He favored national power over state power. He is todays Washington Liberal/Conservative. Hamilton wanted free-market capitalism and globalization with Britain/America, as a world leader hundreds of years before his time. He is an impressive character.

The Democratic-Republican Party, headed by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, generally opposed Hamilton and his views . In simple terms, they are todays Social-Libertarians . They are more in-line with what people think when they think rebelling from the authority of the King to be free.

In this scenario we can say the big government aspect of the current American left is with the Federalists, and the socially liberal of left, and anti-big government of the right, part is with the;Democratic-Republicans. But remember, the who far-right thing simply doesnt exist yet. So the divisive politics of today arent anywhere to be found .

The duality of the;Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party;is well displayed in the clip below in a discussion between Hamilton and Jefferson .

Read Also: How Many Senate Seats Do The Republicans Have

Republican Voters Turn Against Their Partys Elites

The Tea Party movement, which sprang into existence in the early years of the Obama administration, was many things. It was partly about opposing Obamas economic policies foreclosure relief, tax increases, and health reform. It was partly about opposing immigration when Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson;interviewed Tea Party activists across the nation, they found that “immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern” those activists expressed.

But the Tea Party also was a challenge to the Republican Party establishment. Several times, these groups helped power little-known far-right primary contenders to shocking primary wins over establishment Republican politicians deemed to be sellouts. Those candidates didnt always win office, but their successful primary bids certainly struck fear into the hearts of many other GOP incumbents, and made many of them more deferential to the concerns of conservative voters.

Furthermore, many Republican voters also came to believe, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly, that their partys national leaders tended to sell them out at every turn.

Talk radio and other conservative media outlets helped stoke this perception, and by May 2015 Republican voters were far more likely to say that their partys politicians were doing a poor job representing their views than Democratic voters were.

Rural And Urban Population

A Home on the MississippiCurrier and Ives

The CSA was overwhelmingly rural. Few towns had populations of more than 1,000; the typical county seat had a population of fewer than 500. Cities were rare; of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only New Orleans lay in Confederate territory; and the Union captured New Orleans in 1862. Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the Union blockade. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864. Other Southern cities in the border slave-holding states such as Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Wheeling, Alexandria, Louisville, and St. Louis never came under the control of the Confederate government.

The cities of the Confederacy included most prominently in order of size of population:

#

The CSA was overwhelmingly Protestant. Both free and enslaved populations identified with evangelical Protestantism. Baptists and Methodists together formed majorities of both the white and the slave population . Freedom of religion and were fully ensured by Confederate laws. Church attendance was very high and chaplains played a major role in the Army.

Read Also: How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

An Overview Of The Party Systems

The party systems, AKA eras of the United States;political parties, can be described;as follows :

In other words, as the Democratic Party became more progressive in the progressive era, it attracted progressives from the Republican party and alienated the Democrats of the small government socially conservative south. Meanwhile, as the Republican party conserved toward Gilded Age politics in the 20th century, and embraced socially conservative single-issue voter groups and individualism, it attracted the solid south and alienated progressives. These two factors, and many more explained in detail below, substantially changed the party platforms, seats held in Congress, and the voting maps over the course of the 20th century .

To sum up and connect all of the above, the switches we see that change the parties and define different eras include things like Teddy Roosevelt or Strom Thurmond switching parties , the Democratic Party platform becoming more progressive in the progressive area , the southern Democrat southern bloc tending toward the Republican party after the Civil Rights era , all this impacting which regions of the country tend to support each party , and all of this affecting which party has a stronghold in which region as new elections occur .

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Southern Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the Souths first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs .

READ MORE: The First Black Man Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His Seat

You May Like: How Many Republicans Voted For Impeachment

Better Understanding The Changes In American Politics

Above we summarized the switching of ideologies and platforms;between the parties by looking at the party systems and Presidents.

Below we explore;details, clarify semantics, answer questions, present curated videos, and illustrate some of the key telling moments regarding the changes described above.

Please consider sharing your insight below, our summing up of the history of American politics is an ongoing effort, see the videos for supplemental content from other authors.

For deeper reading:

Also, see a breakdown of each party and President and how they would be placed on the left and right.

Effect On Women And Families

Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican?

About 250,000 men never came home, some 30 percent of all white men aged 18 to 40 . Widows who were overwhelmed often abandoned their farms and merged into the households of relatives, or even became refugees living in camps with high rates of disease and death. In the Old South, being an “old maid” was something of an embarrassment to the woman and her family, but after the war, it became almost a norm. Some women welcomed the freedom of not having to marry. Divorce, while never fully accepted, became more common. The concept of the “New Woman” emerged she was self-sufficient and independent, and stood in sharp contrast to the “Southern Belle” of antebellum lore.

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[seven-oomen]

Jericho: Chapter 2

A/N: I have a feeling you guys might hate me, but this needs to happen. It deviates from the prompt a bit, there is cryosleep. But there are four more chapters to go and a lot can happen in four chapters.

May 30, 2002

Programming not found. Programming not found. Restarting memory system. Memory core restarted. Warning. Data missing. Data missing. Missing command.

Present day

The soft beeping of the heart monitor slowly woke him from his slumber. He sat up slowly, flexing his hand as he looked at the remaining metal stump of his left arm. He faintly registered some doctors slowly approaching him and he froze in a reflex. They weren’t going to hurt him, were they?

“Mister Barnes?” The doctor was dark skinned and his voice had a heavy accent to it, African maybe? Although he wasn’t sure about it. He didn’t really want to ask and be wrong about it either.

“Yes?”

“My name’s Otieno, I’m your physician during your stay in Wakanda. I’ll be monitoring your health from here on. Would you be willing to answer some questions?” The doctor stared intently at him for a few minutes, as if he was observing him. It unnerved him slightly, but the man didn’t seem to be threatening him.

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Alright then. Can you tell me your full name, your date of birth and your current location?”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” He paused on his date of birth, he was fairly sure he remembered it but he couldn’t access it for some reason. “I think it’s March ten, I’m not sure what year.”

“That’s alright, Mister Barnes,” The doctor took some notes, “Can you tell me your current location?”

“Wakanda?” He looked around, “In a hospital?”

The doctor scribbled down some more on his chart. The double doors, which seemed to be the only exit for the ward, opened. “Buck?”

He recognized the blond mop of hair anywhere. “Steve… what happened?”

Steve fidgeted with his own hands, looking down at them for a minute before meeting his gaze. “What do you remember?”

He shrugged, “Not much, I think we were in a fight with someone… your friend. Tony. I think we hurt him and then left him in the cold. Did we? Steve?”

Steve was looking away, off into the distance before he slowly nodded. A heavy weight settled in his stomach.

“We did… but-”

“What?!” He couldn’t believe it, yes something terrible had happened and he lost an arm, but they shouldn’t have- “Is he okay?”

“I- I don’t-”

“You didn’t check?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Of course I did.” Steve sighed. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. War Machine was hospitalized but that’s all Natasha knows.”

“The Black Widow…” He faintly remembered her from somewhere, he just couldn’t recall it. “I think I-”

“If you don’t mind, Captain. I should really go back to examining my patient.” Otieno interrupted him.

“Do you mind if he stays?” Jim looked up at the physician, taking a quick peek at his best friend for support.

“I suppose it can’t hurt. The king has asked me to determine how well you’re handling the old programming.”

He fidgeted, looking up at Steve and then down to his own hands. “I suppose…”

“It’s alright, Buck. It’s just a few questions.”

Otieno shook his head. “Not exactly. I’d like to attach some sensors to your temples in order to assess the level of brain activity that your programming is taking up.”

“I-” He wasn’t sure if that was such a smart idea. What if the Winter Soldier released itself? “I don’t know.”

“It’s not going to hurt or stimulate your brain, Mister Barnes. It’s merely going to read it.”

“Relax, Mister Barnes. I promise you, Otieno is a professional. He knows what he’s doing.” Another dark-skinned man entered the ward, he carried himself with great confidence and poise. A young woman walked next to him, she seemed to resemble the man quite a bit. His sister maybe? She carried herself with a similar look of confidence and poise.

“Your majesty, your royal highness.” Steve and Otieno bowed their heads in acknowledgment of the man and the woman, the king and a princess?

“I’ve promised Shuri I would let her have a look at your patient, Otieno.” The king turned to Steve. “She’s our finest engineer and may be able to help with Mister Barnes’ memory loss.”

“No offense, your majesty. But I’m right here.” King or not, not addressing Jim directly while talking about him was rude in his eyes.

“He’s right brother, where are your manners?” The woman, Shuri, gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, Otieno will not hurt you and neither will I.”

“Forgive me, Mister Barnes.” The king apologized.

He still wasn’t too sure about this, especially not with all these people around. But Steve smiled at him in encouragement which made him nod in agreement. He could do this.

Otieno walked over to a storage closet on the other side of the ward and fetched a strange looking machine which seemed to consist of a board full of little switches, one of those really flat computer screens and a lot of sensory wires.

He looked down at his own chest where his heart monitor sensors where still attached to his body, along with an IV line which was hooked up to a bag of clear solution. Saline, probably.

Otieno wheeled the machine up to the side of his bed and plugged it into a wall socket nearby. The machine came on with a soft beep. Otieno put a weird looking gel onto the cups of the sensors and gently placed them onto his temples, his forehead and down in his neck. It felt weird like someone put blobs of a liquidly pomade on his head. But it didn’t hurt, so he let it slide. The asset inside of him stirred but didn’t surface. So far, he could handle this.

Otieno’s hand moved towards a switch, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the sight. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t, the pain-

A hand rested itself on his right shoulder, warm, comforting, Steve. He released the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and looked up at his friend with a soft smile, nodding at him in thanks.

A soft click indicated the switch had been flipped and the machine started beeping away. Strangely enough, there was no pain, no strange feelings running through him. Quite anti-climatic if he said so himself.

“Do you see that?” Otieno was staring at the screen in disbelief.

“There are two distinct lines…” Shuri added.

“As if there are two conscious brains inside one. It’s remarkable.” The king, he still hadn’t caught his name, spoke up.

“Put it in a three dimensional reading with peak indicators.” Shuri walked over to Otieno and flipped a few switches on the board.

The screen burst into two diagrams with a magnitude of different colors running through it. It didn’t mean anything to him, but he kinda wanted to know what they meant. It looked interesting, to say the least. Otieno and Shuri seemed to think it was interesting.

“What does that mean?”

Otieno, the king, and Shuri shared a look before focusing their attention back to him.

“It means that there are two subconscious beings in your brain, or that’s what we think.”

“This programming they did, it’s like they created completely new pathways in your brain in order to create a secondary subconscious that can overwrite your own brain waves by electric stimulation. It’s both horrifying and extraordinary.” Shuri had leaned towards the screen, staring at it wide-eyed.

She then leaned back, a hand resting under her chin as she studied the screen. “But not something that cannot be undone. But we’ll have to bring you under for the procedure.”

“You mean freeze him cryogenically.” Steve stiffened.

“It’s to ensure the Winter Soldier doesn’t come out to defend you, Mister Barnes.” The king said.

“If that’s what has to be done, then do it.” He sighed softly, knowing that he could potentially trigger another episode by doing this. But if he ever wanted to have a chance to apologize to Tony Stark, he had to do this. He’d-, no the soldier, the soldier had taken so much from Tony. He owed it to the Alpha to find out why his mate had been targeted.

Otieno slowly took the brain sensors off his body, leaving the heart monitor sensors and IV drip alone for now. Shuri tapped away on a holographic screen in her hands in the meantime, seemingly lost in thought.

“If you would follow me Mister Barnes, the sooner we can start, the sooner we can get this over with,” Otieno led him to a new room and pointed to a bed next to a cryogenic chamber. “Please have a seat.”

Steve walked in after him, his hands in his pockets as he studied the chamber. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“They’re saying they can cure me, Steve. I can finally be free of this nightmare.” He sounded hopeful, even to his own ears. And he had hope, for the first time in many, many years. He had faith that Shuri could cure him.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. I’m doing this for Tony, I’m doing this for me.” He sighed softly, running his hand through his long, messy locks, “I need to know why all of this happened, I need to know I can make things right.”

Steve slowly nodded in response. His friend was unusually quiet but he seemed accepting of Jim’s choice. He hoped it would stay that way. He needed to do this, for his own sake, for Tony Stark’s sake, and for the sake of his own sanity. The blanks in his mind needed to be filled. He needed to undo the wrongs he created in this world. As much as he could. He hoped Steve would understand that.

Shuri and the king came in after a few minutes, the princess took a seat behind a monitor that seemed to control the cryogenic chamber and tapped away on the controls.

“You don’t have to do this against your will, Mister Barnes.”

He looked up at the king. “I never did catch your name, your majesty.”

“Forgive me,” The other man nodded, “T’Challa.”

“T’Challa. Thank you for your concern. But this is something I have to do. I can’t trust my own mind until this is done. And nobody else should either.” He looked down at his remaining hand and bit his lip. “I need to do this.”

“Then it shall be done.” T’Challa took a step back and nodded at Otieno. “Otieno will remove your IV drip and switch your monitor sensors to more sophisticated ones. We’ll be able to monitor you in the chamber during the procedure.”

He nodded in acknowledgment, looking to Steve for support as Otieno approached him. He felt the fellow Omega stand behind him, a hand on his metal shoulder for support and to distract him from the doctor’s movements.

“So what’s going to happen to me?”

“Once you are in suspended animation we will start running digital construction test of your brain. This will all be done in a digital environment so there will be no damage to your physical brain. The scan we made and the scans we will continue to make will aid us in this process.” Shuri said, looking up from the controls for a minute as she explained the procedure.

“It may take a few weeks but eventually we hope to find out how we can disable the programming HYDRA created for the Winter Soldier, and how we can disable him without corrupting the rest of your memory. We want to keep you intact while taking him out of the equation.”

He nodded solemnly, sighing softly. “Well… whatever you need to do.”

The cryogenic chamber was slowly lowered into a flat position and Bucky willingly laid down on the bedding. T’Challa and Otieno gently strapped him in under the careful supervision of Steve.

The cryogenic chamber was carefully erected once again, the glass casing closed and the temperature inside gradually fell.

“See you soon, Buck.”

“With you till the end of the line,” Jim answered, closing his eyes as the cold settled in around him and his brain activity slowed down.

*

Two months and three weeks passed in which Shuri ran many, many tests and created an algorithm that Steve couldn’t hope to understand. But that didn’t matter. Shuri had cracked the code, or so she said. According to her, they were going to reboot Bucky’s brain, giving new meaning to the codewords installed. Leaving them there with the memories intact, but making sure that they wouldn’t ever bring out the Winter Soldier again. She integrated both minds into one.

Sam, Wanda, Clint, and Scott had gathered for the big day, the day Bucky would wake from his slumber. Their team was back together. But for how long?

*

May 30, 2002

He was walking towards a flipped car in the middle of traffic, the hood of the car was completely destroyed and one of the parts was protruding through the cabin itself. He knew why he was there, he had orders. Orders to assassinate.

“Something hit the car, it flipped. There’s something piercing my abdomen, Junior’s not moving. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He stopped at the words coming from the target's mouth, his advanced hearing picking up the conversation easily. A part of his brain screamed at him to stop. But the asset didn’t care. He had orders. Program override.

“I can smell gas, it’s leaking. I’m so scared.” Barnes closed the distance between him and the car, “There’s something or someone moving outside… Tony, if I don’t make it, I love you.”

He looked down at his hands, at the storm lighter located there. One little chuck towards the car and everything would be done. Yet he hesitated for a second. This was wrong…

But he had orders.

He lit the lighter and chucked it towards the vehicle before taking off in the opposite direction.

Several days earlier:

“Do you understand your orders, soldat?”

The asset looked at his handler, his eyes cold and calculating. “Terminate the rogue agent.”

Tag list:

@bvcktn @larissaloki @creationfail @queendophne @cwar1864

[cosmosogler]

aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

super agitated.

i woke up on time but i felt super sleepy and exhausted for some reason. my dreams were... hmm.

i was having an ok dream. actually not much was going on. i think i was in the Crowded Airport. i was so relieved to not have murder and blood happening again that i hopped out a window and started flying around. there weren’t even power lines to get tangled in. i said hello to some people i flew by and they didn’t chase me or kill me.

i ended up in an attic i have visited before. i’m not sure why it was on my mind. maybe i just needed something to ruin my night. the club there had a new game set up. i don’t think it’s new, i seemed to remember the rules, but they seemed interested in me playing it so i said ok, i think. 

the game didn’t have a name in the dream but i am pretty sure if it had a name it would be called “deal with the devil.” 

in order to beat the game you had to make sacrifices. but they weren’t yours. you had to sacrifice things from people close to you. there was a big flyer i found by the exit door that proclaimed a wonderful hat prize if you just gave up your baby’s sentience!

i wasn’t sure if these were real life consequences or not but the idea was repulsive to me, especially with the diagram showing how the transaction kind of went down. the hat was made of cotton and bones and was ten feet high and had puffs and sharp edges. also ghastly. there were other achievements you could get for giving up other things from your baby. i inferred you could give up things from friends or parents or colleagues too.

the whole world was dark and there were no street lights or moonlight or starlight. the colors were dull and everything looked the same. it took me forever to find the exit door and then i couldn’t get through because i wasn’t willing to give up anything that wasn’t mine.

i did run into one other person playing the game. they had the bone tower hat. i didn’t ask. honestly i’m not sure if they were real or a part of the game. they didn’t move, they just sat near the door in their giant kind of terrifying hat.

eventually i either got through the door or remembered i was playing a game and stopped. the person running the game wanted either my money or for me to stop interrupting his turns. i didn’t realize it was a turn game. 

i played one more round. it was... with him, i think? i had a better handle on the layout and didn’t stray far from the door once i got back to it. i asked him to meet me somewhere i was familiar with, and then i woke up because my alarm went off.

i thought it was interesting that the game was asking you to give up unquantifiable qualities of other people. sentience. opportunities. health. happiness.

i think the fancy hatted person sitting near the door was a mother. she may have been my mother. i’m not sure. it’s just a possibility. all i know is that she was sitting on a wall and not moving.

the image of a blank person sitting on a blank wall against a blank dark sky stuck with me though. everything had that color things get under old street lamps but with no variation.

i’m not really sure what made the hat so terrible to look at. maybe what had to have happened to get it? maybe the fact that it looked so bizarre and unnatural? out of context it’s hilarious but also still morbid with the bones.

so i was thinking about that in the shower. then i got out of the shower late. i wasn’t late to class though!!

but i noticed i was really, really tired today. like “can’t stand up for one whole lab period” tired, when i don’t normally need breaks during the first 2-hour period. my knees and ankles and feet felt swollen and stiff. my back hurt a lot too.

that exhaustion kept me quiet and slow all day. biking downhill to get to the drc after my classes was even tiring. and all you have to do is coast!

my meeting with danielle went ok. we developed more options for what could happen if i dropped e&m. a professor i really like teaches it in the summer actually so i wouldn’t even be TOO far behind if i did drop this and next semester... i’m just worried about what might happen on the prelim, as i think i mentioned yesterday.

we dove a little bit into my family history and i explained why i don’t really like going home on school breaks but i do anyway. i talked about why i don’t talk to dad any more, for the last (almost) four months. 

it was like this with jim too, a little bit. for the first few weeks you kinda hope... and then you realize it’s never going to happen. they will never reach out. and if they won’t reach out then i don’t want to bother with them anyway! go stub your toes.

i told suzanne yesterday that my parents have “earned my not-love.” and that’s true. i would have liked to love them, maybe, twenty years ago. but now... they are not worth my time or energy. i don’t just have to “get to know them better.” i have known mother for my whole life. i see how she treats me, and my siblings, and my dad, and her parents and her brothers, and other people. mom thinks she’s a manager but really she just has to be managed around. 

and dad... i guess the anger feels more like betrayal even though the red flags were totally there. i wanted to give him a chance. i gave him so many chances. even after i got choked that one time... i’m angry with myself for trusting him long enough for him to break it like that.

i’m angry with myself for trusting jim long enough for him to break it like that.

it’s a fresh hurt. dad’s. compared to mom’s, at least. mom hurt me a long time ago. i still have to tell myself that was real. telling the stories is like, of course that happened, but when i sit and think about it the memories are so distant and disjointed... my sister and i were always alone with her, no one stepped in for us, i got bullied at school, mom amplified our weaknesses and blamed them on the other sister... 

dad hurt me in front of everyone. and no one did a single thing about it. and when i said he hurt me they still didn’t do anything.

no one’s ever gonna step in. no one’s ever gonna stick up for me. i have to do all that myself. i had to learn how to do all that myself. i wasn’t very nice as a kid. i didn’t know how to be. i had never really had any source of “niceness” in my life that lasted more than a year or came from more than a single person i saw like an hour a week. 

and i continued to not have it regularly until like three years into high school. 

it’s. hard. being let down all the time. i don’t know why i get my hopes up. i’m kinda stupid like that.

danielle helped me. i didn’t know about the care area. she sent them to me. she apologized during our meeting today. said it was protocol from my risk factor or whatever. but i’m not mad about that.

after my meeting with her i went to a coaching session with her and another drc person. one other student showed up. their name was autumn. i was expecting a larger group and was kind of awkwardly sipping my soup off to the side of the table while the other three talked. i burned my mouth and then i burned it again every sip after that. danielle watched me struggle with it. she might have thought i was making faces about what autumn was saying about physics classes. but it was the Powerful thermos keeping my soup boiling hot all day.

it was after 3 and i hadn’t been able to eat since 9-ish this morning.

i learned about a thing called overjustification. it is when you are intrinsically motivated toward a goal, but some external motivation is introduced that sucks the joy out of whatever was intrinsically motivating you. grades will do that. and it’s a “punishment for failure” type of motivation so it’s not even a positive one.

i was so tired afterward that i ended up on the wrong side of the road trying to get back to the office. i crossed the crosswalk, looked around confused, got off the bike, rubbed my face, got back on the bike, went BACK across the crosswalk, and rode in the bike lane on the right side of the road. the woman at the bus stop next to the crossing stared at me the whole time.

i didn’t feel better after i got back to the office. i continued snacking but i was just too tired for food to help i guess. i couldn’t get focused for two and a half hours. then at 6:50 suzanne told me that john had moved our tutoring session back to 7:30. i said i didn’t want to stay on campus that long because i had run out of food and had to bike home. also it was cold today and it was already getting dark outside.

i dicked around with harrison for a while before taylor told us to knock it off or leave. harrison left to try to get home before the sun went down and i told taylor to get some rest and then headed home myself. getting up the hill suuuuuuuucked.

when i got home i let snoopy watch me hide all her cookies and then i brushed her for a bit. i made mac and cheese for dinner but it didn’t make me very happy. and i didn’t do the dishes tonight... might tackle them before bed. i will try.

i didn’t do any homework this evening either. i guess i was just too tired to focus. i didn’t even check my 9 o’clock updates until 9:55. i’m really worried about the grading... and the test tomorrow, which i neglected to do any review for today. i’m just so busy that these breaks kinda just happen...

something good... i dunno, man. is it better to pull yourself up by your bootstraps or to make use of all your available tools? is it braver to go it alone or admit you need help? is it smarter to flail through the help system or to wait until you know what you need?

i can’t answer that. maybe there isn’t an answer. maybe it’s not up to me to answer. maybe it is.

asking what the meaning of life is. all these confused people wondering what the point of it is. life is about whatever you want it to be about. but figuring out what you want it to be about is a process and depends heavily on how much you know about yourself i guess.

i’m struggling there because i’m not sure if i want it to be about anything at all. 

when i pop into the living room i see a few less cookies around each time. snoopy found the ones on the windowsill but not on the back of the couch two inches away from the windowsill. she also found the ones on the lower perch of her bed again.

i love snoopy. but i still miss eve. mom always says she’s doing pretty well. i am glad she is able to enjoy life without me. i guess she kinda has to since i’ve never lived at home more than a year at a time for her entire life.

i think we are both waiting to see each other again though.

i don’t really have anything else to talk about i just don’t want to sleep. it just feels like a lot to tackle right now. i guess i’ll try to get up after this song ends and spend 2 minutes washing out the thermos. i think i can do that.

[caveartfair]

5 Standout New York Exhibitions to See This April

Here, we share a roundup of notable shows to see in New York this April, chosen by Artsy Editors.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya at Team Gallery

Through April 13th

83 Grand Street

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Darkroom Mirror, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Team (gallery, inc.)

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, A Portrait, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Team (gallery, inc.)

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Orfice, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Team (gallery, inc.)

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s show at Team Gallery is as sexy as it is smart. The artist’s new series, “The Conditions,” consists of shots taken entirely in his studio, using his friends as models. Simple objects (drop cloths, a mirror, a bench) complicate the compositions. Some shots, such as Orifice (2018), connect photography itself to the queer black experience: In the image, hands hold up a rich brown cloth, with a camera lens peeping out from the center. The work seems to remind us that an aperture, after all, is just a hole.

Other pictures are more subtle. A Portrait (2017), for example, captures a woman in a blue dress, standing in front of a mirror that reflects Sepuya and his own tripod. Yet strange details—three fabric circles at the mirror’s top edge; rogue tripod legs that distort the viewer’s sense of space—give the composition an off-kilter aura that becomes more curious the longer you look. A sense of warmth pervades the series, saving it from ever becoming too esoteric. Despite his clearly rigorous process, Sepuya and his friends appear to be playing around as they work, having some (very erudite, very intimate) fun.

Sarah Zapata at Deli Gallery

Through April 14th

110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn

Sarah Zapata, What Great Conflict I have for you X, 2019. Courtesy of Deli Gallery.

Installation view of Sarah Zapata, “Of This World Rather,” at Deli Gallery, Brooklyn, 2019. Courtesy of Deli Gallery.

Sarah Zapata creates some of contemporary art’s most colorful, exciting work in fiber and felt. Her Deli Gallery show includes 15 new pieces, in two and three dimensions. New tapestries (hung on the wall and laid on the floor) depict a series of bright faces and patterns behind bars, resulting in a sense of both imprisonment and depth. They offer glimpses of a mystical world that’s unavailable to the viewer. In her sculptures, Zapata pairs fiber-wrapped clay pots with thread-bound mannequin feet; the assemblages link craft with fashion. The artist has discussed how her Peruvian heritage and queerness influence her practice: She uses Peruvian weaving techniques and makes her own clothing for drag king performances. Yet the work invites the viewer into its complex politics with its sumptuous, exuberant surfaces.

Isaac Julien at Metro Pictures

Through April 13th

519 West 24th Street

Isaac Julien, The North Star (Lessons of The Hour), 2019. Courtesy of Metro Pictures.

Installation view of Isaac Julien, The North Star (Lessons of The Hour), 2019, at Metro Pictures, New York, 2019. Courtesy of Metro Pictures.

Jim Shaw,The Potato Family, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

In a red-carpeted theater at Metro Pictures, Isaac Julien’s gorgeous new film Lessons of the Hour (2019) plays across 10 screens; the piece offers reimagined and reenacted scenes from the life of Frederick Douglass. In addition to portrayals of Douglass speaking at a podium, traveling, and walking through the woods, some channels simply focus on lush atmospheric shots: orange leaves in an autumnal forest; ornate interiors; a train chugging along a barren landscape. Importantly, Julien’s work gives viewers a creative new depiction of a historical subject; Douglass himself prized photography and the popularization of his own image. On a purely aesthetic level, Lessons of the Hour provides a beautiful study in color and form. Julien asks viewers, at any given time, to contemplate the 10 different vignettes as one coherent narrative about an iconic figure—while relating Douglass’s struggles to the current moment. (While at the gallery, be sure to head upstairs to also see Jim Shaw’s dreamy, bizarre paintings—one of which features a family of potatoes.)

Jessi Reaves at Bridget Donahue

Through May 12th

99 Bowery

Installation view of Jessi Reaves, “Jessi Reaves II,” at Bridget Donahue, New York, 2019. Courtesy of Bridget Donahue.

Jessi Reaves is known for conflating art and design in her furniture pieces that sit at the contested border of good and bad taste (and are often barely functional). In her new show, she pushes her trash-chic aesthetic into weird and welcome new directions. Redemption island standing table (2019) reminded me of an aquarium: The piece features a black chair with sawdust arms and Survivor-branded fabric across its seat, situated in a glass box (that might serve, judging by the title, as a table). A rubber coil snakes around the entire contraption. The wry nod to a pop-cultural phenomenon that’s just past its prime squares neatly with the idea of putting on a chair on display, trapped in a table, as though the form (and furniture) itself is passé—utility be damned.

There’s also beauty in all of Reaves’s wreckage. Walking up was getting into discipline, nyc stick shelf (2019) consists of racks of wood and metal clothed in sheer yellow fabric with zippers, resembling a tent. As the afternoon light shines into the gallery, the artwork creates a lovely golden glow.

Aki Sasamoto at Bortolami

Through April 20th

39 Walker Street

Installation view of Aki Sasamoto, Do Nut Diagram, 2018, at Bortolami, New York, 2019. Courtesy of Bortolami.

The conceit of Aki Sasamoto’s delightful film Do Nut Diagram (2018) sounds like a potential conceptual art project someone might come up with while getting high (and hungry) with friends: Let’s get this ant crawling on a donut, on top of some panes of glass, in the middle of a forest—and let’s throw in a Venn diagram for good measure. The whole strange setup makes for funny, transfixing video art. The piece is, in fact, entirely improvised, and retains a sense of quirky impulsivity. By the time the artist herself appears, rubbing donut grease on the glass panes, I was ready to watch for far longer than the video’s length (just over 20 minutes), following Sasamoto’s journey to see which bizarre situation she’d come up with next.

from Artsy News