#John Cole

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Characters, book, and author names under the cut

Patroclus/Achilles - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Thomas McNulty/John Cole - Days Without End (and A Thousand Moons) by Sebastian Barry

Luke Sunborn/Elliot Schafer - In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Nathaniel Bainbridge/Sea Hawk - Kidnapped by the Pirate by Keira Andrews

[nobodysdaydreams]

The last time I wrote about Violet Hopefield, people got mad. But I think dropping this lore will make up for it.

Thank you again to everyone who gave me information about Violet and John to write show versions of them.

Summary: After leaving his brother behind, young Nicholas finds companionship in his new friends, John Cole and Violet Hopefield, but the memory of his brother and guilt of what he did prove difficult to escape. Meanwhile, Nathaniel waits patiently for his brother to come back, though each day without him becomes harder than the last.

[tomorrowusa]

RFK Jr.'s brain worm is a metaphor for the Republican Party as a whole.

[sophieswundergarten]

Imagine you're John Cole

You're twelve years old, and you've been at Rothschild's End for a while now. Your parents died a year ago, maybe a few months, maybe less, and then on top of it you got chicken pox and none of the children you knew wanted to interact with you.

You meet the new kid, and he's tiny, a scrappy little thing with too many words for a boy his size. And he's a little uneasy at meeting you, but tries to mask it. Maybe you notice maybe you don't.

Either way, you decide to warn him about the Spiders. They're older than you, maybe the same age as you, and you've been living in fear of them ever since you came to this awful place.

Nick seems like a good kid, maybe a little too uppity, maybe a little too much for a nine year old who's just come to Child's End, but it is what it is. You don't want to get involved.

But, you do. You do get involved, and he's wonderful. He's funny and bright and maybe, just maybe, the first real friend you've had in a long time.

Then, you meet another friend. Someone you like spending time with and someone who, maybe, likes spending time with you. Violet Hopefield is something else, but she's just as terrific as the new kid turned out to be, and maybe, just maybe, if you squint and hope, there's the makings of a family in these kids, these misfits, these people who you didn't mean to know but now you do.

[personinthepalace]

Unseen(?) art from The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages

[unfug-bilder]

Wirtschaftskompetenz

(C) John Cole

[ministerforpeas]

Spitting Image Series 10 Intro

[mvshortcut]

Six times someone tells Nicholas Benedict how long he's been asleep, and one time he does the same for someone else.

little fic inspired by this post!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Justice Roberts declares racism dead (again).

June 30, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

    For the second time in his tenure as Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts has struck a death blow to efforts to rectify the effects of two centuries of enslavement and a third century of state-sanctioned apartheid. From his comfortable roost of privilege and access, he views the daily struggle against racism and discrimination as mere abstractions and legal trifles (at best). At worst, he views those efforts as annoyances and obstacles that impair the ability of similarly situated members of the privileged class to secure their birthright to access, affluence, and power.

          John Roberts has ended affirmative action in the United States. As many commentators noted, he created an impossible “Catch 22” in which efforts to promote diversity are unconstitutional if they are either too specific or too vague. What’s left? As Roberts says, a university may consider “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But that exception is so narrow that it is no exception at all. A university is always free to consider an applicant’s life experiences—including their challenges in overcoming racism. But Roberts snatches back the slight exception he acknowledged by writing in the next sentence, “Universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”

          The arrogance of Roberts and his colleagues is maddening. They ignored briefing from US businesses, academic institutions, medical schools, and the military pleading with the Court to allow them to continue to recruit diverse leaders essential to their core mission. But Roberts concluded that he, and he alone, was better suited to determine what is best for American society. Except for the military academies, which Roberts exempted because they raise “distinct” issues—such as needing diversity in the officer corps to ensure cohesion and legitimacy in the military. That rationale, of course, applies equally to business, academia, and medicine. See Ian Millhiser, Vox, The monstrous arrogance of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision.

          The perniciousness of Roberts’s opinion is—as always—rooted in his willingness to ignore long-settled precedent to promote the right’s agenda of white religious nationalism. Justice Sotomayor laid bare the hubris of Roberts and his reactionary colleagues in overturning precedent:

“Lost arguments are not grounds to overrule a case. When proponents of those arguments, greater now in number on the Court, return to fight old battles anew, it betrays an unrestrained disregard for precedent. “It fosters the People’s suspicions that ‘bedrock principles are founded . . . in the proclivities of individuals’ on this Court, not in the law, and it degrades ‘the integrity of our constitutional system of government.’ Nowhere is the damage greater than in cases like these that touch upon matters of representation and institutional legitimacy. “At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law.”

          Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called out the majority for pretending that being “color-blind” will somehow make the issue of racism in America disappear. She wrote:

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems. No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse.”

          As hundreds of commentators have noted, the universities that are now forbidden from using race as a “plus factor” in granting admission will continue to grant special consideration to legacy candidates—children of alumni—and to children of major donors, politicians, and celebrities.

          Justice Roberts was stung by the criticism in the dissent and fired back that they have “contorted [precedent] into a demand that such programs never stop.” The dissents say no such thing. Instead, they are saying that Roberts has once again proclaimed the premature demise of racism in American society (as he did in Shelby County v. Holder).

The 14th Amendment was crafted to prevent the pernicious after-effects of slavery. Today, Justice Roberts used the 14th Amendment to prohibit efforts to address the very evil targeted by the 14th Amendment. Such logic can only make sense in the comfortable confines of private clubs and secret societies that exist to insulate people like John Roberts from the descendants of enslaved people.

          The dirty work of the Supreme Court is now complete for this session but is far from over. The most reactionary members have their sights set on same-sex marriage, contraception, and separation of church and state.

          It should be obvious that Biden will be running not only against Trump but against the six members of the reactionary majority. Indeed, recognizing that fact and acting on it will make Biden a stronger candidate. See Dan Pfeiffer, The Message Box, It's Time to Make a Corrupt Court a Campaign Issue.

          Biden took a step in the right direction by stating that “This is not a normal Court” in response to a reporter’s question after the opinion was issued. NYTimes, Biden Slams Supreme Court Ruling on Affirmative Action. But in an interview with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC, Biden declared that he is against expanding the Court, saying

“I think if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we're going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.”

          Biden is wrong. The Court is already politicized and will not correct course for another generation, at least. It is corrupt and illegitimate. It has subverted the norms of jurisprudence to the dark money of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. Democrats are angry and Biden is failing to read the mood of his base.

          Would it be wrong for Biden to turn ethics reform and expansion of the Supreme Court into a campaign issue in 2024? Was it wrong for Trump to promise to appoint only judges who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? We must stop the madness of disallowing Democrats from engaging in the very tactics that Republicans use to win elections.

          The Supreme Court has been politicized. Get over it and start doing something to protect the rights of Americans that are being decimated by a reactionary majority. An enforceable ethics code is a small first step, but it is woefully inadequate to address the emergency that we now face.

Concluding Thoughts.

          Two days ago, I posed the following question after the ruling Moore v. Harper:

“Is this just a temporary pause in [Roberts’s] long game?” We may get our first clue about the answer to that question in the next few days. But even if those opinions surprise us like Allen v. Milligan (voting rights) and Moore v. Harper, the only reasonable assumption is that Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are temporizing, waiting for the next major item on the MAGA agenda to make its way to the Court. Too much is at stake for us to assume otherwise. We must keep up pressure on the Court!”

          The most effective way to keep up pressure on the reactionary majority is to put Roberts and his colleagues on the ballot. They must understand that when Biden is elected to a second term and Democrats recapture the House, their death grip on the Constitution will be over.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[euaphora]

Do you have twt links of the girl ridding the guy and the guy being a moaning mess ???

most are just guided masturbation, hope you enjoy regardless!

one | two | three | four|five| six |seven |eight | nine| ten |eleven| twelve | thirteen |fourteen |fifteen

[nobodysdaydreams]

15, 16, 23, and 12 for the ask game (no need to do all of them you can pick and choose :)))

12. a trope you’re really into right now

I have a couple of tropes I'm known for. "Uh-oh! My morally upstanding friends are dead and/or fugitives, so now I'm raising their child, but also am I or was I part of a evil dictatorship?" is a classic trope I've used twice now, for both TMBS and Wicked.

However, most recently, I have been leaning more into the classic: "Throwing beloved side characters into very intense committed romantic relationships, but the twist is one person in the relationship is secretly very evil". This trope came out of nowhere too, like when I was planning the fic this was not in the outline at all, it just happened, but it worked really well. A shame some people seem upset about it, but in my defense and in response to the haters: y'all said you were "pretty sure John Cole had a wife that was mentioned in the books". None of you said his wife couldn't be evil or wasn't evil. God forbid women do anything. If you don't like she's evil, perhaps y'all should have clarified to me that John Cole's wife in the books wasn't evil upfront, but sadly, it's far too late now. Mild spoilers there, but if you're not caught up on sos, then shhhhhh... don't worry about it. He's fine. John is living his best life. Nothing bad is going to happen to him, probably.

15. favorite weather for writing

I prefer warm weather, but I like the cold (anything less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit) because I write inside so it gives me an excuse to stay bundled up and warm.

16. favorite place to write

My desk or my bed, I don't write in public. Well, not fanfic anyway. Y'all are brave for that. I don't even write R rated content or anything, and I'm still not doing that.

23. pick three keywords that describe your writing

Creative, dramatic, funny. Those are the compliments I get the most often, so I think they apply.

Thanks for the asks!

[tomorrowusa]

Keeping people illiterate and ignorant makes book banning and censorship unnecessary.

[sophieswundergarten]

Situation where small child Nicholas is doing Inadvisable And Unsupervised Science and something blows up so bad it blinds him for a few days

And so John ends up falteringly translating between him and Violet

(Because of course they're not going to just let Mr. Column lock him in his room snd ignore him for the duration)

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2025!

It's January 1st 2025 which means it's my favorite unsung holiday! Public Domain Day! This is the day once a year when, in the US, copyrights expire and things enter the public domain, meaning they belong to everyone! even you, Steve!

American copyright for books, movies, art work, and musical compositions (but not recordings, more on that later) runs for 95 years (way too long!) so today works published in 1929 join us in the public domain.

So whats free? so glad you asked.

Popeye the Sailor Man

Many people assume Popeye originated as a cartoon character but thats not true, he comes from a comic strip. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye was something of a late addition. Thimble Theatre was first published in 1919, so Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oyl has been in the public domain since before the big 20 year copyright freeze of 1998-2019. Popeye first appeared as a minor character 10 years into the strip's run but was so popular he soon took over and the strip would be renamed Popeye less than 5 years later. Now as always whats public is only what appears in 1929, later developments, remain copyrighted. Such as, while Popeye always had super strength its not till 1932 his superpowers were tied to eating spinach, and Olive Oyl originally had a different boyfriend named Ham Gravy, who she dumped for Popeye when he became the main character. It looks like Popeye is following tradition for famous now public domain characters and getting a quicky horror movie this year.

Tintin!

This is personally very exciting as someone who grew up with the Belgian boy detective. Like Popeye I expect a lot of people don't know that Tintin started off as a weekly comic strip. Indeed Tintin appeared as a part of a weekly youth supplement in the Catholic newspaper The Twentieth Century. Any ways, Tintin was first published in there in January 1929, and soon would start what would become the first Tintin story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now only part of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published in 1929, the story line wrapped up in May 1930, so only those 1929 stories and what appears in them is free and clear and Tintin was published in black and white not color. Tintin's author Hergé had no idea what he was doing and was really learning on the job so In The Land of the Soviets is generally seen as his weakest outing and the only one he never opted to redraw in later years. Even so it's nice to see the character free in the world. No word on if Tintin will star in a horror movie.

Buck Rogers (but not really)

The original futuristic space man was published, again a comic strip, in 1929 which means he should enter the public domain today, but he won't. That's because he already is public domain! Before the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright was 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years. The copyright on the original comic strips was not renewed so ran out at the end of 28 years, 1958. So Buck Rogers has been free and clear for close to 70 years now, whatever you hear about him today.

What else?

Famously last year Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, but all the entered public domain was one (maybe two) animated short, Steamboat Willie. Well this year a dozen Mickey Mouse animated shorts enter the public domain, including the first time Mickey has his iconic white gloves, and the first time Mickey speaks (the first thing Mickey Mouse ever says, voiced by Walt Disney himself, is "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" in case you were wondering) This will give creators much more to work with if they want to use Mickey in their works which is exciting.

Speaking of Walt Disney, The Skeleton Dance is entering public domain, you likely don't know the title but I suspect you've seen at least part of it at some point

so look for this showing up on TVs in the backgrounds of films and TV shows in the next year or so

Books

The iconic novels of World War I, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front enter public domain. In fact All Quiet on the Western Front entered public domain last year, but only in the original German, the 1929 translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen is whats entered the public domain now. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (always get an Agatha Christie novel on this list for the rest of our lives). Dashiell Hammett published both Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, later made into one of the greatest films of all time, in 1929. Future children's book author E. B. White (who's go on to write Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little) and future New Yorker cartoonist and humorist James Thurber teamed up to write the delightfully titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do a book of spoof essays making fun of popular books on Freudian sexual theories at the time. The Roman Hat Mystery the first of the long running Ellery Queen mysteries was published, Queen would keep publishing mysteries into the 1970s (and Ellery Queen was a pen name for two people). Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy also came out in 1929 and are in the public domain now. There's much else but those are the highlights sorry if I missed your favorite 1929 novel.

Movies

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille's first movies with sound, Blackmail and Dynamite respectively, came out in 1929. Marx Brothers' first feature film The Cocoanuts joins the public domain. Other comedy land marks are Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger and Buster Keaton's last silent film, Spite Marriage (which Keaton also directed). John Ford's first sound film, The Black Watch, which also is 21 year old John Wayne's first appearance in a film, as an uncredited extra, he worked in the art department. Hallelujah the first studio film to have an all black cast came out that year. Also worth noting is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 a singing and dancing review, one of the earliest and the movie that popularized the song Singin’ in the Rain, maybe the first time a movie made a song a hit.

Musical compositions

musical compositions, ie the lyrics and musical notations you might see on sheet music are governed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and music written in 1929 is public domain. Music recordings are governed by a whole different law (we'll get there). Songs written in 1929 include Singin’ in the Rain by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Black and Blue by the legendary Fats Waller, What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter, Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Alfred Dubin, You Were Meant for Me by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, and also Happy Days Are Here Again by Jack Yellen which would become FDR's campaign theme song in 1932.

Art!

a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí including:

Illumined Pleasures

The Accommodations of Desire

The Great Masturbator

are entering the public domain as is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Art is hard because while movies and books are clearly "published" and put on sale, what counts as "published" for a piece of art? the law is not totally sure.

Musical Recordings

as I promised, we got here. Till 2017 there were no federal laws governing the copyright of music recordings before the 1970s, it was governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws and it was not totally clear what was or was not free and clear even from the very earliest recordings ever. Now the term of a music recording's copyright is set at 100 years (way too long) so music recorded in 1924 is now public domain such as. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Marian Anderson, Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me) by Louis Armstrong, California Here I Come by Al Jolson, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Shreveport Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton, Mama’s Gone, Good Bye by Ray Miller, and It Had To Be You by Marion Harris. Now many recordings a lot less famous can finally be preserved and digitized to save them for the next 100 years. Many abandoned works are literally rotting away since without the copyright holder's permission digitizing a work isn't legal.

[sophieswundergarten]

“You’re probably the nicest person I’ve met before.” Nicholas shrugged, smiling shyly at John.

John, meanwhile, was standing there gobsmacked. “Nick–” He began in a choked-off protest. “Nick, I’m just a normal, decent person. There’s literally nothing special about me. Are– Are you okay?”

“Oh.” Nicholas’ face fell, and looked down at his shoes. “I guess I don’t have a lot to compare it to.” He mumbled. “There weren’t that many kids at my old orphanage who talked to me. I mean, the adults did a little, but there was never someone who really wanted to talk to me, like you do. Everyone just kind of ignored me.”

John paused, imagining Nick, tiny little Nick, pushed around in a cold sea of strangers, most of them older all of them uncaring. He felt a quiet horror creeping over him, laying its heavy hands on his shoulders and whispering in his ear: “He didn’t have anyone. He was all alone, and there was no one to care about him. No one at all.”

“Nick…” He bent down to get a better look at the other boy’s face, feeling his heart clench when he noticed the tears dripping down the smaller child’s nose.

“It’s– It’s fine–” Nicholas was blinking hard, trying to pass it off as some sort of casual, non-crying type of water coming from his eyes.

“C’mere,” John scooped him up into a hug, knowing he did the right thing when he felt Nicholas’ arms tighten around his neck, tears dampening his shirt. “Aw, Nick, it’s okay.”

i reread the beginning of extraordinary edition and i love their friendship so much. john you will always be my special guy

[IDs copied in alt text: two images are both drawings of kid nicholas and john cole.

a drawing with two panels, the first is nick looking up with an amicable expression, he is amused and is saying “you’re probably the nicest person i’ve met before” with a shrug. the second is john who is looking down and he looks horrified. he is captioned “considers himself just a normal decent person and is horrified”.

a drawing of john holding a crying nick to his chest. nick has his legs wrapped around john and his arms around his neck. john has a sympathetic expression and is holding him around his back and is saying “aw, Nick it’s ok.”]

[zanephillips]

Peaky Blinders #3.05