#Kafka is only his senior in age

[guardianlioness]

Watching Kafka and Reno’s interactions at the beginning of the Kaiju No.8 anime hits differently after catching up with the manga.

Reno protesting Kafka’s carelessness with his Kaiju form is a fun gag early on in the story, and his decision to stick with Kafka during the exam is endearing—but it’s amplified and almost sad in retrospect.

Manga spoilers from chapter 101 onward below the cut.

We learn in Ch. 101 that Reno has suffered a huge amount of loss in his life.

He lost his parents and brother. He lost the familiarity and daily routine of attending his existing school. He lost emotional security, witnessing his grandmother’s struggle with their mutual grief. He lost faith in the idea that someone might help.

Only for Kafka to trip headlong into correcting that belief.

Despite Reno’s disrespect, Kafka fully embodies his senpai title by teaching him the tricks of the trade. He looks out for and helps him without hesitation, and he brushes off any jabs or insults with a quick, internal wince.

And then Kafka absolutely shatters his core beliefs by shoving him out of a Kaiju’s path.

This guy—a guy Reno barely knows, a guy that he insulted seconds into their first meeting—is willing to die for him without hesitation.

Is it any surprise that Reno really would rather not lose him?

All of those reminders and all of that fussing is to keep Reno’s only hero from being scrapped for literal parts.

For the first time since the death of his family, someone steps between Reno and tragedy. Of course he’s going to do everything in his power to keep that savior alive.

[vryivs]

finally posting my hsr age hcs

(note: these are all physical age only for obvious reasons)

notes below the cut (any i havent elaborated on are just there for vibes)

i know we joke that welt is a grandpa (because he is), herrscher shenanigans make me think he doesnt look much older than his early 40s (in alien space he canonically looks really young for a professor which is why i think theres some aging shenanigans occurring)

nat basically raised seele and seele is a young woman so nat has to be at least 40

i feel like as the resident milf and dilf gallagher and yukong are self explanatory

jade is a senior in the ipc and that doesnt happen over night, plus it seems like she was already fairly senior when a (potentially teenage?) aventurine met her

blade was old before he was de-aged and idk why the powers that be would be worried about youthful beauty so i think hed have gone back to his physical prime rather than early adulthood, and all the best blacksmiths ive met have been late 30s/early 40s

kafka imo is close to 40 because i like to hc that she mostly raised us

i just like the idea that a pretty blond twink can be pushing 40

serval is old enough to be friends with someone's mother, but bronya wasnt adopted as a baby so i think theres some wiggle room with cocolia being slightly older than serval that could plausibly put her in the early 30s bracket

sampo because of his long legacy of crime

all the xianzhou natives (homo celestiae) i imagine would stop aging entirely in their early-mid 30s. fu xuan is just short (sidebar, i have many questions about the xianzhou world building but thats for a diff post)

ruan mei could be a xianzhou native but personally i rather interpret her as a normal abundance abomination species since she has a home 'planet' and not a home 'ship'. anyway her aging is probably screwed in a similar way to xianzhou natives regardless since she seems a similar age to herta, who is over 200

himeko because i feel like she's older than her hi3 version

i didnt pay that much attention but i vaguely recall ratio being especially accomplished for his age, which makes me think he's fairly young, along with aventurine

asta is renowned enough to run a research base, so i would imagine shes old enough to have a phd

gepard only seems to be a couple years younger than serval

topaz also is notably young to be in the position she is

silver wolf noted to not be a child anymore, which makes me think she's only recently an adult.

trailblaze trio all come across as younger adults, although i imagine dan heng is slightly older than the other two, and march is the youngest

sushang came of age recently as per the letter from her mother, and gui is her bestie, so theyre probably similar ages

arlan imo isnt massively young, hes just transgender

i feel like xianzhou native aging slows exponentially until it stops which is what makes me think qingque is in her early 20s physically despite being over 100 years old

firefly's body slowing down over time probably includes aging so although she's old enough to be in glamoth's iron cavalry, i imagine she's physically fairly young looking

pela is canonically 16 and lynx is her best friend

these guys all strike me as being early teens (what with yanqing being 14 and the rest sharing a height and a model with him)

the babies are self explanatory

[sonicasura]

1/2

Kafka was like 12 at the oldest when his mom died. Of course it was a nightmare. We don't really know what age Kafka and Mina was when the first kaiju attacked their homes in canon, at least from what I remember. And given that the second in my au happened months after the first one he was nowhere near a teenager or adult when he lost his mom.

Though regadless of which verson I'd use, Kafka statys in touch with his dad for years. And visits when he can after his old man move to his grandparents place.

His dad always found it a bit akward that Kafka ended up working as a monster sweeper, given his family history. Know or not. But in this verson it actually helps his son greatly as Kafka needs a lot more food to fully function as a adult since his kaiju side is awake instead of dorment. Had it stayed dormant, Kafka would have not needed to eat kaiju meat he stole from his workplace at night every few weeks.

It was the same for his mom and Proto. While Proto found he loved human food, with some junk foods being his favorite. The old kaiju had to hunt other kaiju to properly get the needed nutrition and not bankrupt themself.

Akari was no different, even if she needed to eat less of the amount her dad needed being only 50/50. Kafka need even less, which helps greatly when he has to go and get said kaiju meat.

And yeah after the main events happened, a lot of stuff got filled in for Mina. She did give Kafka a good smack in the head for waiting this long to tell her the truth, but she understood his fears.

Awkward dose not even fit properly with how Soshiro feels about this all. He was infact the one who found out that No 8 was that welp in the old file after he did some digging with Okonogi. As both feld like they had seen the kaiju somewhere.

You can imagien when the two of them reported that No 8 had been spotted before main events as a little welp caused a bit of a mess. There was enough familities from the old pictures they had of Kafka's early form that there where little doubt that it was true.

Some of the seniors where happy to know that that meant no mama kaiju to protect him, since he's an adult now and they know his mom is dead. And feel dread when they realized said full grown welp is now the strongest kaiju know to mankind.

I'm not surprised at all that the entire kaiju side of his family had larger appetites. Only a Pokemon Trainer is equipped to deal with something on such a magnitude. Kafka munching on kaiju corpses when his coworkers are gone or aren't paying attention. It isn't uncommon for something to eat at the bodies so no one would suspect a thing.

Mina honestly would smack Kafka cause her friend really can't do things like this alone. She's just glad he managed to not get into trouble much earlier. Kafka is a Grade A disaster after all.

Soshiro and Okonogi have a lot of material to build their case on. Especially since the Third Division in general likes Kafka. (He's practically their heart similar to Mina.) Although his family line is definitely being monitored, even moreso if Kafka has kids down the line. Tiny had greatly amplified his kaiju blood thus the potency might be way more than 1/4 now.

Kafka feeling awkward in Riot mode honestly sounds funny. Bigger scarier No.8 acting more like s panicked kid cause Tiny just supersized his Kaiju form and the poor man is trying to calm the thing down while fighting Isao. "It's an idiotic old man, not a kaiju so fucking chill!"

Kafka swears he has an extra feral kid in his head than a mysterious body mate.

[chriskreider]

thoughts about chris being young and weird: a lot of the people who know him from college, not hockey players say that hes a good human being, just like a decent guy but definitely a weirdo, peep the replies/qrts in this thread (theres another tweet i cant find rn) + this which at the tiiiiiime were juxtaposed directly the the rumors of kevin hayes at BC shitting in staircases on campus and being a crazy partyer.

BUT! (tldr bc its a lot)

when he got to the rangers it was still very much a league where the rookies were treated like rookies and not immediately accepted. theres a few different quotes where he mentions being so comfortable around cam talbot bc that was the only dude his age when he first broke in. he was so awkward in interviews tho shfjsjf but he was probably a know it all goofy kid and needed to be knocked down a couple pegs (see: refering to his play as kafka-esque, doing shit like this and this ... and this and that one spittin chiclets story about how he left kevin hayes and keith yandle waiting for him for like 2 hours in their car and then entered without saying a word ����).

the biggest thing is that somehow, he was a rookie for like 6 years. i am not jokng when i say before they traded mcdonagh and tore the whole team down at the turn of 2018 he was still just the kid, he didnt have to be a leader really because he didnt have the seniority over guys like mac, girardi, staal, hank, even zucc and stepan. i think the summer prior was when he started letting dudes who were just called up stay with him/in his NYC apartment, a few different rookies i cant all remember (he taught brett howden how to cook, adam fox stayed there, later frank vatrano) combined with the blood clot that made him realize he had to be The Guy. since he came back i atleast think that he realizes the clock is ticking on his career so he's been trying to pay it forward by treating the younger dudes right

anyways you made it to the end heres an image of him

[godslayingenthusiast]

https://qgpennyworth.com/portfolio/sermon-no-9-there-are-no-bars-or-cages/

Sermon No. 9: There Are No Bars Or Cages is a work from Holy Nonsense, a Creative Commons project. View Holy Nonsense 2020 here.

Each entry (single page or multiple pages of the same work) is released under an individual CC: Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivatives license. That means you can repost this work as-is anywhere for any non-commercial purposes.

Image descriptions, including transcriptions of text, are expressly allowed, but just make sure you include the credits that are baked into the image when you do them. Image Description after the cut.

Rev Roger Sermon #9: There Are No Bars Or Cages -

Brothers and Sisters, sinners and mutants, freaks and walking glitches, I bid you a good evening. This evening, we are gonna talk about prisons.

Now, there are a few different kinds of prisons...there is The Big House, The Prison of Toil, and The Prison of Your Frickin' Head.

The Big House, as we all know, is the prison they send you to when you get caught breaking one of their rules (Which, as Kafka noted, you can't help doing. The rules are so complex, you WILL break them, every day). We aren't gonna talk too much about this type of prison, because you can see that on any network, though not so much now as the last couple of years...save for this: All of those prison TV shows, "Inside reports", "OZ", "The Big House", ad infinitum, ad nauseum, are there for a reason. The lesson they impart, my friends, is this: If you get out of line, we'll put you in a cell with people like THESE!

The Prison of Toil, however, is a prison they put you into starting at age 5. You are placed in an unnatural state for a juvenile primate; you are forced to wear clothes, sit in an uncomfortable position, and stay still for HOURS while they teach ya the proper art of the Fnords. You are told that you must excel, so you can go to college, where presumably, the Fnords can't get you.

Once you get to college, however, you are told that you must continue to toil, so that you can get a good job... you STILL aren't safe from the Fnords. Then, one day, you graduate to the supposed "real world", where you are told that you must now work hard for your parole at 65... because if you don't the Fnords will make you eat dog-food in your retirement... WHAT A SUPRISE! The Fnords don't eat children, they eat senior citizens. They lied AGAIN! The problem is, even if you DO follow their advice, you are still screwed. By the time you are paroled, you are too old to enjoy it, and just like real prison, most inmates don't LIVE long enough to GET parole. What can you do about this? How can you escape THIS prison, which has no bars (though many inmates DO have cells, or cubes as we call them)? Well first, you have to escape the REAL prison, The Prison of Your Frickin' Head.

The Prison of Your Frickin' Head is the worst jail of all...As G.G. Gordon once said, "Where can you run, where can you hide, when the man in blue is on the INSIDE?" This is the prison from which very few people get out alive. There is NO parole, and you will spend all the days of your life inside it, should you not escape. This is the prison built for you by those around you, wih your willing help. It is done in the following fashion:

1) You are convinced by society that you are not good enough, and that all of your accomplishments so far have been GOOD LUCK. You will be found out for (as RAW said) the "no good shit" you are. The only escape from this is ego-training, or stupidity. Most talented people think, deep down inside, that they are frauds. Most utter fools consider themselves gawdlike. Go figure.

2) You are told by society that they are watching. Just who they are is never made clear; but it IS made clear that they had better not catch you in any funny-business, or you are screwed. (Of course, they are the Fnords)

3) You are taught to "fit in", one way or the other. Either you fit in to the mold the establishment sets up for you, or you rebel...and most rebels tend to fit into one group or another (Goth, Punker, New-age bliss zombie, Discordian, Subgenius, etc)...and if you aren't careful you fall into the conformity of non-conformists. If you don't dress a certain way, or mouth the correct ritual sayings, you are obviously a "normal" or a “greyface"... Despite the fact that the weirdest freaks, the truest Yeti, usually BLEND RIGHT IN!

So what do we do about it? How do we escape? We escape SYSTEMATICALLY. You don't saw each bar a little at a time, you whack each bar out, methodically...thus:

1) For the ingrained failure complex, use ego-training. Not that "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough" affirmation shyt, either. No, you are superior. This is proven by the fact that you even noticed the cage in your head at all! When you look in the mirror, don't THINK there are no flaws, KNOW there are no flaws. When you screw up, screw up catastophically! ROLL IN YOUR MISTAKES! WALLOW IN THEM, AND LEARN FROM THEM. Most "normals" will start wars to avoid admitting they made a mistake. Don't fall into that trap. When you are no longer afraid of mistakes, you will make less of them, and you WON'T CARE about the ones you still DO make.

2) There is no they. You've been lied to, all these years. THERE ARE NO FNORDS! There never have been. The cage is only in your head, there is no warden, and we are all free, should we realize it. It's all a collosal LIE. Now, most people are afraid of freedom. They might make a mistake...for that, see #1. As far as getting caught and going to The Big House, well, if you can't outwit the morons who run the system, then you aren't much of a Yeti after all, are you? LIE to them, SMILE in their face, and KEEP YOUR BOBDAMNED MOUTH SHUT AFTER PRANKS! He who kicks society in the crotch and shuts his mouth, usually lives to kick it again tomorrow.

3) Don't worry about fitting in. Just because you LIKE to dress like a Goth, for example, doesn't make you a conformist...provided that's REALLY why you do it (as opposed to seeking acceptance from Goths). If you say to yourself, "Is my image perfect today", you are probably screwing up. If you say, "Cool" when you look in the mirror, you're probably ok...the best rule is, if you are BEING YOURSELF, don't sweat it.

Or kill me.

[aside: Over the last year over 50,000 deaths were attributable directly to surprise.]

[chxmpagneproblemss]

get to know me?

Hello hi everyone

This is like the first blog I’ve ever had with more than like, 5 followers so I figured I’d introduce myself?

i guess i’ll just do a funky little list? here goes nothing.

will probably be long so i inserted a read more so you don’t have to scroll for a while! 

name: ariel (pronounced are-ee-ell) 

- with that being said, call me whatever you want or whatever you associate me with. if you had a name in mind send it to me!! im interested to hear what you all think o:

pronouns: she/they but i dont really care honestly. i gave up on gender years ago 

age: 17 (i turn 18 in april)

zodiac: aries sun, saggitarius moon, cancer rising

what got me on academiablr: i’ve always loved studyblr, but i kinda took a break from it my sophomore year up until fall of my senior year. i came back and dark academia was a thing, and i love books/classical music/dark clothing/etc etc so here i am 

where i’m from: rural south, united states of america 

favorite color: yellow!!!! i could live in it!! 

pets: i have 3 cats! 

favorite subjects: all of them! (except computer science) 

hobbies: i do ballet and classical singing as main hobbies. i also paint! 

favorite books/authors?: i love love love love leo tolstoy, oh my god. i’m also getting more into dostoyevsky, however i’ve only read one of his books (the house of the dead), so i feel like i can’t quite list dostoyevsky as a favorite. franz kafka’s writings also have my heart, oh goodness, they’re so amazing. shakespeare too!!! i love shakespeare!! as for books, there are so many, but if I had to choose some, I’d narrow it down to frankenstein, anna karenina, romeo and juliet, titus andronicus, and i better stop now before i go down a rabbit hole.

whats on my tbr?: far too many to count. in the immediate future, the secret history, the brothers karamazov, and definitely more tolstoy and dostoyevsky! i’d also like to grab a copy of eugene onegin and dead souls at some point.

favorite artists?: I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but lately I’ve been vibing with ic3peak, alyona shvets, and gretchka! i listen to a lot though, you can check out my spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/user/oyzri2j5hl8e5vwjyjv41701k?si=5h_V6myHSj--5mQGuvFtew

academia goals: i would love to learn russian and become more fluent in german (i speak very poor, broken german - not fluent at all). i’m aiming for dartmouth college or columbia u in new york, but i get my decisions april 6th and i know i’ll end up where i’m supposed to! 

other goals: after university i’d like to dance ballet with the mikhailovsky theatre in st petersburg! 

celebrities/influencers i look up to: taylor olsen, anzhelina vorontsova, nastya kreslina, probably more but i am very sleep deprived so i don’t remember.

political leaning: far left, raging feminist, pro trans rights, pro blm, all that 

um anyway this post is too long now, feel free to send asks if you wanna learn anything else! nothing is really off limits, just don’t be a creep

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1909.17: Missions Reviewed, “Inquisition,” “In the Pale Moonlight,” and “His Way.”

In “Inquisition,” Bashir is repairing Chief’s shoulder after a kayaking accident (again) and preparing to go to a medical conference. When he wakes up for his trip he is remarkably groggy and matters are made worse when he is called to ops because Starfleet Internal Affairs, led by a Director Sloan, has come to investigate DS9’s senior staff as someone has been leaking information to the Dominion. 

After some time confined to quarters, Julian is just briefly questioned by Sloan, but all seems well. Returning to his quarters, he finds they have been searched, and he receives a cryptic message from O’Brien that Miles had been questioned for two hours, and ONLY about Julian. In a second interrogation, Sloan reveals that he believes Bashir was actually turned during his time in a Dominion prison, and has sublimated all memories of this, making him the perfect spy. Sloan admits that Bashir’s motivation is to save lives, hence using the genetically engineered think tank from “Statistical Probabilities” to try and convince the Federation to surrender. Bashir continues to deny, but Sloan, seemingly with no accountability to anyone but himself begins to raise the stakes. Things just become difficult when Julian is suddenly whisked away in a transporter, and finds himself with Weyoun on a Dominion vessel. The Vorta tells him that in fact he HAS been working for the Founders, but now he has been compromised. Bashir, still simply can’t remember any such programming.  Soon after though the Defiant arrives, and Kira and Worf beam over to rescue Bashir. When he’s back on the Defiant though, he is treated as a prisoner.  The crew has turned against him. When even O’Brien literally turns his back on Bashir, Julian reaches out to turn Miles back to him, and realizes that O’Brien doesn’t have the shoulder injury he just treated the day before. Everything disappears and a black-clad Sloan is standing with Julian in a holodeck. Sloan explains to Bashir that he runs a branch of Starfleet intelligence called “Section 31” and all of this has been to confirm Bashir’s loyalty for recruitment into the covert organization.

 Sloan promises Bashir will see him again. Back on DS9, Bashir realizes he’s been gone since the morning he woke up (which was actually after just an hour’s sleep to keep him off balance).  Sisko makes inquiries to Starfleet about Section 31, and the admiralty will neither confirm nor deny their existence. Sisko and Bashir decide they want to infiltrate this organization, so if 31 comes calling again, Sisko advises Bashir to join.

The introduction of something that will become a major plot point throughout the rest of Star Trek. Section 31 will of course continue to appear in DS9 for the rest of the show, we will find out they were already operating in the Earth Starfleet in the 2150s during “Enterprise.” Section 31 is responsible for thawing Khan and trying to provoke a war with the Klingon Empire in “Star Trek Into Darkness.” And finally, the existence and actions of S31 play heavily into the second season of “Discovery.” The Kafka-esque feel of this entire episode is perfect, even if it seems like this is something they would generally do to Miles for the annual “let’s screw with O’Brien” episode. Bashir is a perfect choice though- well placed, genetically engineered, has already made friends with men like Garak, and someone who replicates espionage on the holosuite. Can’t overstate how perfect William Sadler is as Sloan either. It’s a pointed discussion. A utopia like the Federation may not be able to exist without someone behind the scenes doing the wrong things for the right reasons.  At least one of out main crew would never do that, right?

“In the Pale Moonlight,” is told entirely as a personal log entry from Benjamin Sisko. He is talking about how “it all went wrong” when he posted a casualty report; the Federation/Klingon alliance is not doing well against the Dominion. Talking with Dax, he realizes they need to get the Romulans to break their non-aggression pact with the Dominion and come into the Alpha Quadrant alliance. Sisko is convinced that the Founders plan to invade Romulus when the main war is done, but will need proof to get the Romulans to act. He approaches Garak to see if anyone can get such records off of Cardassia, but Garak reports back that the Dominion has killed every operative he still as contact with on Cardassia. 

 Garak suggests faking the proof; he can get a blank Cardassian data rod, and he knows a forger who could build a holo program to demonstrate the “briefing” regarding turning toward Romulus. Sisko is resistant…until another casualty report comes, and Sisko realizes perhaps the ends do justify the means. They proceed with the plan which keeps having moral red flags pop up, but finally convince a Romulan senator to stop at the station and see the “evidence.” The senator analyzes the data and discovers the forgery. He leaves, potentially to tell his government that the Federation tried to trick them into the war, likely leading them to join the Dominion. The senator’s shuttle explodes on the way home, and the Romulans discover the forged rod, believing it to be real and the reason the Dominion destroyed the shuttle. Sisko knows it was Garak who killed the senator (and the forger on the side) and had really planned this from the beginning. But when the Romulans attack the Dominion, Garak tells Sisko they may have saved the Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was one senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet Officer. 

Sisko closes out the dictation of his log:

“So… I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all… I think I can live with it… And if I had to do it all over again… I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it…Because I can live with it…I can live with it. Computer – erase that entire personal log."

I know I say this more than once during this show but: Holy shit. First there’s Avery Brooks’ performance throughout the episode. As he dictates the log he is just mesmerizing to watch. Andrew Robinson as Garak of course is fantastic. This is of course the origin of the internet meme “It’s a FAAAAKE!” from Senator Vrenek. 

And the moral conundrum is really captivating. This is an episode a lot of DS9 detractors use to point out how antithetical they believe DS9 is to “Gene Roddenberry’s vision.” I would argue they forget that classic Trek had many of the same tropes. Watch “Errand of Mercy” and how quickly Kirk and Spock are willing to risk the lives of what they believe to be simple peasants in order to stymie the Klingons. Or “A Private Little War” where Kirk provides rifles to a stone age tribe so the can fight a proxy war against a side supported by the Klingons. Kirk referring to himself as a “soldier” or his line from “A Taste of Armageddon,” “We can admit that we’re killers, but we will not kill today.” Yes, Trek offers a positive view of humanity’s future, but it also uses its science fiction setting to examine the human condition without ever saying humans are perfect. There is no way to examine the human condition without examining what we as a species are willing to do in war. As someone who still periodically has to assess what I did defending my county (and more than once found myself not meeting my own ethical standards) I appreciate Trek asking us to do that, asking us to take a look at ourselves, what we have done, and what we can live with.  I can live with it. I will learn to live with it.

Will you?

“His Way” introduces us to Bashir’s new holosuite program, a swinging 60’s Vegas club and lounge singer named Vic Fontaine. The AI in the program is remarkably astute and quickly sums up everyone Bashir introduces to “Vic.” Even Odo becomes intrigued when Vic looks at he and Kira, begins to ask about their status but shies away. Odo begins to go the holosuite to ask Vic for advice on Kira.

 They run through a series of exercises to help Odo learn to be “smooth,” and eventually program another 60s character, a torch singer based on Kira. Vic actually on his own reaches out to Kira to tell her to be in the holosuite to have dinner with Odo, and tells Odo that they are working with the hologram again.  The two are having a wonderful date when Odo begins to lament that this isn’t the real Kira. When he find out it is he storms out. The two of them meet on the promenade and begin to argue about whether or not they should try it again. “Well then after dinner, I suppose I should try to kiss you then!” Odo shouts. “Maybe!” Kira counters. “Why wait, maybe I should just kiss you now!” “Maybe you should!” and he does.  After five years of mooning over her, Odo and Kira have finally come together.

Oh. MY. GOD. How frickin’ sweet.  This episode is simply adorable, and the whole scene with them on the promenade is just lovely.  Always good to see your OTP (that’s internet talk- “one true pairing”) made canon.  It is just about damn time, and their joining is perfectly executed.  Also, my sincere and heartfelt thanks to whomever on the DS9 writing staff decided we needed to see Kira in a slinky 60s dress perform “Fever” while laying coquettishly across the piano Odo was playing. I just can’t thank you enough for that. 

From the larger Trek standpoint though, we are beginning to deal with questions on the sentience of AI.  Yes, The Doctor over on “Voyager” would seem to have been “awake” long enough to gain a self-awareness, but is Vic simply a hologram, or are these “lightbulbs” a new lifeform as much as Data was on TNG? There are some big SF philosophical questions going on behind this delightfully romantic episode.  

NEXT VOYAGE: Ancient Bajoran prophecy comes back into play as it is Prophet vs. Pah-Wraith in “The Reckoning.”

[anxious-amethyst]

These days, I’ve taken to asking Google a lot of my questions. The questions I can’t ask anyone else. Not because they won’t know the answer, which they likely won’t, but because they are hard questions. Deeply personal to each being. Some random when something I’ve watched or read triggers a bizarre thought process. A lot of them have become existential in nature. I’ve become existential. If I were to pick up Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis right now, I’d probably be able to actually get through it this time and understand where he’s coming from. My brain relates that to being bad. In my senior year of high school, I found Mr. Kafka to be downright bizarre and depressing. I took a greater liking to Kurt Vonnegut and Mary Shelley. Thus making Slaughter-House Five and Frankenstein high on my list of favorite classics. But I can no longer laugh at him and his crisis. I’m fucking having one.

In my last therapy appointment, my therapist helped me make a discovery. A self discovery to be precise. I’m negative. Cynical. Many of those who know me, and anyone who has read my previous posts would likely go “No, shit.” And I’m aware that I’m negative, but I didn’t know just how deep it went. Farther than 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea if you ask me. No, I have not read that book or watched that movie. Was never interested, but it makes for good humor. Negative Level? Over 9,000. The way I perceive things and take in information. The way I process conversations, situations, expressions, etc; ends up on the negative side of life. I begin to be defensive. Another self discovery that I made last week, I begin to ruminate. 

I ruminate a fuck ton. Even when I am unaware. For example, I could be playing Minecraft and absentmindedly digging when I finally realize that I was dwelling on a subject again and really just digging into that instead of the virtual dirt. Current events and my existential crisis appear to be my mind’s favorite subject matters for rumination. Unlucky for me. The way our Earth is heading and the disgusting hell that my country, the United States, has become; weigh on my mind, heavily. I begin to go down a separate, but all too familiar negative spiral. The hopeless one. On this spiral there is only one end result, one way for me to achieve peace and avoid pain.. death. The protocols for the action-plan-that-isn’t-even-a-plan are as follows:

- In the event of a zombie apocalypse, end your life.

- The political state has become increasingly frustrating. Should humanity lose 98% of its compassion, women become completely oppressed once again, Trump wins the 2020 elections, the police go bat shit crazy, and any other events that arise from such a climate, end your life. More than 4 things must be met at once.

- If you are not better than where you were at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019, by 2020, end your life.

There are probably less frequent protocols that my mind regularly checks on this spiral, but I can’t remember them. The horrid thing is, once a person thinks about death, they will always think of it. And once a person gets to a certain point where suicide becomes the third option in their life plan, the other two being continue to go downhill or get better, it will always remain there. So, my mind ruminates on death everyday.

Question for Google: If a person bleeds out and dies, does their pacemaker draw out their death?

Google: https://www.mypcnow.org/blank-fne00

TL;DR: Chances are, it does not prolong suffering. 

Another thing I am aware about myself is my horrid reaction time to change. Depression and anxiety increase in periods where something in my life has changed and it effects the way things are done, or the way I see things, or any other significant change to how things use to be. Knowing of a coming change ahead of time does not help. I then ruminate on that knowledge and become increasingly anxious and agitated. I am way behind those my age on the normal path of life. No job, no college degree, no money, no will to live I suppose.

Question for Google: What is normal?

Google: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200911/what-is-normal

(Truly enlightening to read, I recommend you do.)

TL;DR: “People afflicted by disabling panic or depression may fully embrace the disease model. A diagnosis can restore a sense of wholeness by naming, and confining, an ailment. That mood disorders are common and largely treatable makes them more acceptable; to suffer them is painful but not strange.”  <-- ME

There is no one normal. Normal varies person by person and by accepted behaviors in society. Even psychiatrists and psychologists cannot say what is truly normal.

Change is scary to me. It changes my normal. I don’t appear to be like other people my age, therefore I feel abnormal. The slightest flaw sends me scurrying to my mom, or my therapist, or Google, out of anxiety and the need to know if I’m okay. Often times I find that many people experience the flaw that I felt was abnormal. Sometimes I find that its not healthy, however, and then I make a plan to talk with my therapist or mother about it. Close friends and family have said many times this past month that they see me getting better. I don’t know how that is possible. Perhaps it is because of all the revelations about myself that I am making and my need to prevent them from continuing as they have all been harmful in my eyes. i.e. ruminating to the point of extreme depression lows and suicidal thoughts, picking up both positive and negative aspects of something, but more often than not, when involving me directly or indirectly, choosing to focus more on the negative. There is a part of me, I don’t know how large, that doesn’t want to get better. I only know that it is a strong force. Getting better would mean having to relearn and rediscover so many things. It would mean a drastic change to my normal. For me, not a day goes by that I don’t mention having depression or anxiety as a reason for why I am the way I am. These intense emotions are my normal and they are my crutches. While not easy to live with and breathe with and smile with, they seemingly make other things easier. They can be an excuse at times. I cannot imagine myself without them. I have had varying degrees of these ailments my whole life. The more developed my brain becomes, the worse they become. I believe it’s because I understand more and am able to pick up on things a younger me would have missed. Even now, with my mental situation, I do not know who I am. There are times, when the depression physically hurts my heart, that I want to rip my skin off. I imagine myself just grabbing and tearing the skin from my face and neck and then the rest of my body. Getting rid of this terrible self. That somehow it will reveal the true me. I struggle to not cut my face. As if the act of slicing my face and watching it bleed will somehow fix things. But logic tells me that I will only regret the ugly scar later on and not to do it. So I don’t, but I get angry because I want to. Who the hell am I, why the fuck am I this way, and what am I supposed to do? Will I ever do it? Is it even possible to get better? Do I want to get better? I don’t know. And that drives me crazy.

Question for Google: Who am I?

Google: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shift-mind/201006/who-am-i

TL;DR: Ask instead, how do I want to experience life?

[mohammad14vinding-blog]

When You're Held Back For Anxiety You Might Surpass In charge.

The annoyed girlfriend made a decision to expose his infidelity on film as well as shared the minute she got him back back all over the internet. Then I bore in mind that my spouse had made me cheese sandwiches that day so I produced the cling movie as well as stated, 'the only waste here comes from my sarnie wrappers'. He overlooks his kids, his partner, his church and his work as he focuses an increasing number of on Alicia, his online friend. If both partners are ready to endanger, the Scorpio guy and also Virgo lady can build a solid partnership. The story didn't begin till web page 354 when after great deals of connection issues and s they ultimately showed up in Ireland. Loan is a forbidden subject, as a whole, and also couples-- especially new ones who are still navigating the sloppy waters of a progressing relationship-- do not like to talk about the financial circumstances they may be in. Yet these discussions are required. The periodic rapid has been shown to result in a lot of the benefits we've already talked about, so also if you do not use it to cut down on calories constantly there are still several various other health and wellness benefits. Its concepts are dated currently, however the truth is the connection between business and consumer has evolved as well as could advance even more. Leo has the tendency to glamorize everything (assume Joey Tribbiani from Pals) and also wishes to be the focal point. He agrees to make whatever backdoor political bargains could get him closer to Washington; he is as ready to take the situations of servant owners as he is to protect run away slaves; as well as he will abandon his friend in order to keep tranquility at house with his wife. However, changes in partners' perceptions of actor's responsiveness led to their increased responsiveness to actors and compassionate goals the following week. New Friend is amusing trash that we discover ourselves engrossed because we hate to admit it. Mia Kirsher provides an excellent efficiency as Alicia, a college lady that overdoses under questionable circumstances as well as the prime suspects are her new top class filthy rich pals. Self-indulgent narrative sympathizes boldy with inefficient central connection and aims to encourage visitor that claimed dysfunctional central relationship is not abusive by resolving this hazard of abuse via the lens of characters set up by the narrative to be villainous/bitchy/slutty. As you spend time with Me, your ideas tend to jump ahead to today's plans as well as troubles. I know that to you those Twelve Month appear like a very long time and you can really feel the range slipping between you as well as this young boy who is still at college, but he still holds the power to turn his life around - it's simply that the much longer he waits to do it, the much less likely that you and also your various other close friends will certainly play a part because life. http://www.buyitdirect-my.com have a possibility to miss out on each various other, and also it aids you truly understand the value of your relationship. Think of recommendations or feedback as information - option. But do not hit the various other individual over the head with it. No significant connection was located between loneliness and also sociability; anxiety and also sociability. Clinical depression and also loneliness are thought about to be the major troubles leading to impaired lifestyle among seniors. The rest of the actors are either bothersome by their own initiatives or disappointing due to exactly how little they offer the table. It's a lot easier to maintain something like that on course if you don't just seek advice when you have actually got to dilemma point," she claimed. Otherwise, remark listed below as well as I will aim to collect some particular concepts just for your boss. Stephen Harrigan has completely recorded a guy we all A Pal of Mr. Lincoln by Stephen Harrigan is without a doubt a magnificent read. So unpleasant & unusual like a life time movie. She completely told this sorry prior to and also has once more she informed an extremely comparable tale in Justin's book with the attorney and also assistant. However we need to have even more freedom in the connection-- for the most parts, we're discussing placing more democracy right into commercialism. It additionally shows up that job could be quite a lonely area too: 42% of people stated they had no close friends at work. Thoughtful objectives and perceptions of roomies' responsiveness, though associated, are also empirically distinct. Kafka wished for his whole world to continue to be exclusive-- he never finished any of his books as well as burned the majority of his manuscripts; the rest he entrusted his closest good friend and literary administrator, Max Brod, whom he instructed to melt the continuing to be journals, manuscripts, sketches, and also letters. The two, although superficially independent of each other, are realistically connected by the truth that the private physician practices within the monopolistic framework that identifies the connection between the career (which the medical professional is a participant) as well as culture all at once. A Goat guy will often become friends with a female prior to considering a romantic relationship with her. My Papa, born in the late 50's in country Illinois, really did not take a shower in a connected restroom at his moms and dads home till his wedding day at age 25. There were 3 television channels. In BUDDY OF BILL, Lizzy Caplan plays an author jailed for public intoxication, who is compelled to take a sabbatical in order to kick her alcoholism. If you're a telecommuter in need of workplace away from loud children, ask see if a buddy has unused room throughout the day. Many people recuperate from psychological health problems without having to go into health center. Employer is book two in Chianti Kisses series and also concentrates a large amount on Dom's point of view. That is, objectives and also objectives predict people's relationship habits and just how they analyze companions' actions, which consequently, feed back to forecast goals and objectives. Clare Alexander, a literary representative that worked for Twenty Years as an author, stated five years ago employers at Penguin would certainly have spoken with electronic gurus". This is the verdict to Like An Employer where we were left on an almighty cliffhanger. Once you obtain genuine regarding your connection as well as consider it for all that it is - as well as all that it isn't - there are some concerns that are just too significant to forget.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I got some things to say about Child Within and Death of Vermin

Back when ASM v5 #2 got released I had problems with how Peter and the Lizard were characterized, specifically due to the shadow of Shed and it’s infanticide cannibalism. To dive deeper I looked at the Child Within and Death of Vermin story arcs by DeMatteis. My thinking was we are discussing Spider-Man’s reactions to a character who was a man mutated into an animal hybrid who engaged in cannibalism and well, there was already a precedent for that in Vermin.

 However in diving into the stories there were other things I wanted to say about the stories more generally.

 The big thing I should qualify is that these are good storylines but those come with certain qualifyers.

 They are not badly written on a craftsmanship level per se but that is dependent upon whether you look at the stories in isolation vs. within the broader context of Spider-Man’s history or from the which particular character’s perspective.

 The thing is DeMatteis who authored both stories (as well as KLH which Child Within is a pseudo sequel to) created Vermin and he was plainly an author’s pet character. I dunno from where DeMatteis’ affection for Vermin comes from but it’s plainly obvious from KLH, Child Within, Death of Vermin and his Captain America run from which Vermin originated.

 And that’s the big deal when it comes to Death of Vermin. The Death of Vermin is kind of a Vermin and Ashley Kafka story first and a Spider-Man story second. It isn’t that Spider-Man doesn’t appear, or is passive within the story or unimportant. Its more like it’s not his story, it’s Vermin’s and Ashley Kafka’s. Whilst DeMatteis’ later invention of Judas Traveller was an example of an author indulging themselves most of the Traveller stories still were rooted in their focus upon Peter and/or Ben Reilly’s characters and used Traveller as an opponent or plot device for exploration of said characters. Death of Vermin provides a weird reversal wherein it is better written than...well every scene Traveller showed up in, possibly better written than every story featuring Traveller (except stories where he appears only briefly, e.g. ASM #400). And yet it places the majority of focus upon characters other than Spider-Man himself.

In truth the story could be regarded more as a wrap up arc for Captain America than a Spider-Man story, but even that’d not be wholly accurate. There is greater resonance offered to Spider-Man’s presence via his connection to Ashley Kafka via Child Within and to Vermin via Kraven’s Last Hunt. However Cap could’ve arguably had resonance with Vermin too from his interactions with him and of course Zemo’s presence in the arc makes much more sense if this was Captain America.

Possibly the solution would’ve been if Death of Vermin was a mini-series/crossover that featured both heroes. But in truth either way it just underscores the fact that this wasn’t truly Spider-Man’s story, nor Cap’s. It was Zemo’s (a non-Spider-Man character), Ashley Kafka’s (a then very new addition to Spidey’s word) and most of all Vermin’s (a Captain America character then recently adopted into Spider-Man).

So in truth Death of Vermin was...a DeMatteis pet project arc.

And hey if you like Kafka, if you like Vermin, if you like Zemo and if you liked Dematteis Cap run then this is for you. Problem is apart from those last two I don’t think the audience for those first two was big enough or enthusiastic enough to warrant a story like this. More poignantly if you are telling a multi-part story arc within the pages of a main monthly Spider-Man title...shouldn’t Spider-Man himself be the main point? Shouldn’t aiming it for an audience who first and foremost want to see Spider-Man and important/notable Spider-Man characters get focus be the point?

All this in spite of the story again not being bad per se. It’s more that it’s bad from a certain point of view. But that point of view is from the pov of a Spider-Man fan/reader wanting to read about Spider-Man in a Spider-Man title.

That being said this was just one arc and at the time there were after all 3 other monthly Spider-Man titles to choose from. Perhaps the mentality at the time was that there was space to do more different stuff. If you didn’t want to read a story arc where Vermin and/or Ashley Kafka to all intents and purposes are the main characters and would rather read a story where it was in fact Spider-Man then you had the chance to do that every three weeks before or after the publication of any given part of Death of Vermin.

If you do feel it’s bad though or at least overly indulgent of DeMatteis remember that even the best writers make mistakes or are prone to that from time to time. Unlike with Slott DeMatteis didn’t do that stuff routinely, Vermin, Scrier and Judas Traveller were basically it. And for Ashley Kafka specifically it did add a lot of character development to her to be fair, character development pissed away by Slott when he killed her off.

Moving on we have Child Within.

Again...an incredibly mixed bag.

There are two major retcons to Child Within and one works great the other not so great.

The gist of Child Within is that DeMatteis compares and contrasts Peter, Harry Osborn and Vermin in terms of them coming face-to-face with traumatic childhood memories they’ve been repressing.

For Vermin this is the realization that he was sexually abused by his father. This is another example of DeMatteis wanting to develop Vermin because he loves the character but in context of the story it works as effectively as the ways in which Kraven and Peter and Mary Jane are contrasted against one another along with Vermin in KLH.

For Harry, he realizes that his father was physically and verbally abusive towards him, even before he got the Goblin formula. Additionally Harry remembers Peter’s identity as Spider-Man and comes to grips with the fact that his father killed his friend Gwen Stacy.

For Peter he realizes that he’s always had a guilt complex even pre-dating Uncle Ben’s death stemming from the internalized blame and guilt he felt over his parents’ deaths. I also suspect this story choice was connected to the soon to be published return of Peter’s parents in ASM #365.

It is Harry and Peter’s revelations that are specifically retcons.

Ironically both (more or less) date back to the same moment from the same issue: ASM #39 (the first Romita Senior issue and reveal of Norman as the Goblin). In that issue Peter and Harry bond over their childhoods, with Harry telling Peter he and his father were pals up until a few years ago (the subtext being that his Dad changed due to the Goblin formula). Peter for his part claims he doesn’t even remember his father since he died when he was too young to remember.

Later stories would further explore Peter’s childhood with varying levels of contradictions. Half the time (such as when Howard Mackie or Paul Jenkins were writing the series) it seemed Peter was a young boy in the 4-7 age range when his parents died and he came to live with Ben and May. The other half the time Peter was a baby or a toddler when that happened.

Confusing matters more is the fact that even the stories that put Peter in roughly the same age range don’t jive with one another. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa and Stan Lee both wrote stories depicting Peter as a baby or a toddler but whilst Lee claimed that the Parkers died whilst Peter was in May and Ben’s care (prompting them to continue that as his guardians), Sacasa depicts them as picking Peter up from somewhere after the fact and resolving to raise him. Yet other writers (like Michelinie) depict Peter as not remembering his parents yet still apparently knowing certain details of his life with them.

As far as canon goes though I think it only really makes sense to side with Stan on this one. He established Peter as not remembering his parents in ASM #39 and his account of Peter’s early years from ASM Annual #5 was the first such account and jives with issue #39. Plus you know...he created Spider-Man.

DeMatteis’ retcons in Child Within thus contradict both peter and Harry’s established childhoods but whilst Harry’s is workable and enriching, Peter’s is nonsensical and reductive. DeMatteis is a superb writer and Spider-Scribe but like I said, nobody’s perfect. Even Stan and Steve had the odd faux pas with the characters.

With Harry Child Within was the start of DeMatteis’ character arc for him which would culminate in Spec #200, with the issue and arc over all regarded as the best Harry centric story of all time, and one of the best Spidey stories of all time to boot. The storyline developed Harry beautifully as a character, making him a complex yet sympathetic villain.

At the same time it’s contradictions to ASM #39 and what we thought we knew of Harry made sense. He was repressing all this stuff so of course there would be contradictions. More poignantly ASM #40 depicted flashbacks wherein Norman himself is clearly out of touch with the reality of his past relationship with his son and the picture they paint doesn’t exactly showcase Harry and Norman as pals either.

So there was already something of a precedent for Harry or the Osborns in general having major memory problems, drugs, goblin formulas or blows to the head or not.

And you know thematically this worked really well for Harry. Painting him as this messed up helped explain his outings prior to that as a villain, his initial antagonism towards Peter, his drug abuses and his devotion to his father and even his own family. After all he was a devoted father to his own son Normie. Could he perhaps have been seeking subconsciously a more positive relationship with his own son than he had with his father (a father who his son was named for)?

If you take Child Within in isolation the retcons to Peter’s own past and how Harry was key to awakening them work really beautifully in symmetry and contrast with Harry. These two friends inadvertently unearthed painful childhood memories connected to their parents which had subconsciously shaped them into who they were today. And in awakening those memories it had set them on a path towards their futures to. In Peter’s case it was a form of closure, or at least the start of a healing process wherein he could walk forwards in life more whole than he was before, more able to be a god family man. In Harry’s case it started him on a road to madness as self destruction that would scar his family. This is of course summed up in the closing pages of part 6 wherein we get complimenting splash pages of Peter brightly and triumphantly swinging away from his parents’ graves whilst Harry scared and sad flies away from his living wife and child.

Great writing. Beautiful writing.

In isolation.

The problems then arise when you put the story within the wider context of Spider-Man’s established history, the defining themes of the character and the genre considerations for a superhero series like Spider-Man.

See it is theoretically possible for Peter to have blamed himself for his parents’ deaths and then repressed that blame creating the examples of guilt we’d seen for 30 odd years by that point.

If he was old enough.

But as I said ASM #39 established Peter didn’t remember his parents because he was too young and the very next elaboration upon that we see is in ASM Annual #5 where Peter is at a humungous push maybe 3 years old tops. Both written by the same person before anyone else says anything about Peter’s early years and that same person happens to be the co-creator of Spider-Man himself.  

At which point you have to say “This makes no sense, of course he wouldn’t blame himself he wouldn’t be old enough for that to have happened.”

In fact in Spec #254, DeMatteis does another psychedelic story in which Peter symbolically revisits the moment Uncle Ben informed him of his parents’ deaths and in said scene Peter is in a crib, which again would render him too young to remember his parents.

Spec #254

You could always explain this one away as a glorified dream sequence but it’s food for thought.

There is an even more pressing problem with the retcon though.

The retcon clearly leans hard upon the interpretation that Spider-Man is defined by guilt. That in fact guilt is the root of his motivations to be a hero. This story goes further as to essentially say up until now Peter has essentially been a hero due to...well....not getting enough therapy over the years.

Child Within inadvertently codifies that Spider-Man is Spider-Man not because Uncle Ben died so much as because Spider-Man has if not a mental illness then very serious unresolved childhood issues which have unhealthily manifested in his internalizing blame and guilt and alleviating those feelings by...risking his life all the time...

...er...can you see how this is something of a problem within the big picture of the series?

This isn’t saying Spider-Man is a hero in spite of some serious condition he has or he is able to take the unfortunate circumstances of an illness and use it to propel him into something positive.

This story essentially (though perhaps unintentionally) spelled out that Peter has been suffering with something very serious for the entire time we’ve known him and that is the actual reason he is a superhero. The idea being that if Peter was to treat this, was to make himself well or had been well the entire time he WOULDN’T have been a hero in the first place. Because he’d have lost the root of the thing that compelled him to be Spider-Man in the first place.

I adore DeMatteis but in this respect Child Within can be seen as his most reductive Spider-Man story.

This retcon invalidates/undermines Uncle Ben’s death and Spider-Man’s actual origin story and the central message of great power=great responsibility.

It presumes Spider-Man’s sense of responsibility is interchangeable with or stems from a inherent sense of guilt when this is just plain not the case and goes against the ‘rules’ of the superhero genre. Or at least the rules as they apply to a character like Spider-Man.

Spidey is supposed to be an everyman, someone to relate to and be inspired by. In this sense codifying his motivation and central message as one about learning to use the powers you have responsibility to help others makes sense and is powerful and resonant. When it’s actually nothing more than the by-product of a serious personal issue that he’s unhealthily left unresolved you seriously mess with the foundation and heart of the character.

It is the same kind of nonsense which presupposes Batman must be insane and traumatized and have unresolved issues to go about being a crime fighter in a bat costume, as opposed to someone who went through something bad and used his pain to safeguard innocent people from the source of that pain, using his costume as a (highly effective) battle tactic.

To be honest I think this change to Spider-Man’s early years and driving emotions came from again a place of indulgence on DeMatteis’ part. I have spoken at length about how Slott indulged himself so much during his run so I want to make it clear I don’t mean DeMatteis indulged himself in that sort of way.

Rather I think he was maybe putting a lot of himself or people he knew or stories he’d encountered which struck deep within him into Peter’s backstory as seen in Child Within. It was a sincere attempt to develop the character and dive into who he is and why, he just came at it from an ill considered and problematic angle.

Moreover the story talks at length about needing to admit to and deal with these repressed childhood memories and get help to cope with them.

But then...DeMatteis doesn’t depict Spider-Man doing that. There is no ongoing subplot of Spider-Man coping with this newfound knowledge that the root of his tendency to blame himself for everything stems from this messed up childhood trauma. It comes up a little bit in DeMatteis’ run as throwaway lines but it essentially goes uncommented upon in consequent Spider-Man stories in other titles and even within the same run by DeMatteis that established it. I don’t even recall it coming up much when his parents seemingly come back after being presumed dead, though I admit it’s been a long while since I checked those stories out.

Is that a faux pas on the part of later writers and editors. Kind of but this is also a case of something that really doesn’t belong in Spider-Man lore being essentially ignored because it has to be for the character to function properly. But if you buy into the Child Within retcon (which I do not advise you on doing) it paints the horrible picture that Spider-Man basically didn’t address this trauma and backslide into old habits of blaming himself and repressing the root of why that was the case.

To be honest, this is honestly why I always advise against doing stories with the main or highly recurring supporting characters who essentially show up every issue wherein you put them in situations where they’d need a lot of therapy over a long period of time. It’s just not practical to do a story like that when you got to put out a monthly (in this case basically weekly) action adventure series.

Mini-series like Lost Years with characters who exist for that story alone or with infrequently recurring villains like Vermin or less vital supporting characters ever, where you can park them and let us presume they will be getting better off panel, is fine.

But this just wasn’t practical at all for Spider-Man.

What compounds the issue is that we see in Death of Vermin the deep scars childhood trauma results in and how it takes a lot of time, effort and hardship to recover from them. But here Spider-Man is basically fine a few months (publishing time, less time in-universe) later just...over it.

Both stories are ultimate a gigantic testament to how great writers can still make missteps, even ones born out of good intentions and creative instincts, whilst the end results can still possess plenty of merit nevertheless.

[aion-rsa]

Best Movies Coming to Netflix in August 2021

https://ift.tt/3yg0gQx

As quickly as the summer movie season of 2021 seemed to come upon us, it’s already about to begin its long, languid slide through the dog days of August into fall. That’s not to say that theaters won’t still have plenty of interesting fare to encounter, with films like The Suicide Squad, Free Guy, Respect, Candyman and The Night House all on deck. Hopefully the other hideous sequel happening at the moment — Pandemic 2: The Delta Variant — won’t set any of these potential hits back.

In the spirit of keeping August entertaining, Netflix is rolling out a slew of new streaming additions as well, including an underrated Spielberg gem, fantastic teen comedies both old and new, a couple of stoner classics and perhaps the finest film from the canon of one of the modern era’s most revered directors. We’ve rounded up our recommendations below, and hope you stay cool and healthy whatever you’re watching!

Universal

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Beethoven (1992)

August 1

Hollywood in the 1990s was a glorious and furry era when studio executives never met a family movie that couldn’t be improved with the addition of at least one animal character. Beethoven is one of the most successful examples of this winning formula. Directed by Brian Levant from a script co-written by John Hughes himself (alongside Mystic Pizza co-writer Amy Holden Jones), Beethoven is basically the story of how a husband and father, Charles Grodin’s George Newton, feels threatened by the attention his family gives their new dog, a St. Bernard named Beethoven.

George eventually works through some of his issues and accepts the charming Beethoven into the family, a process that comes to a head when Beethoven is dog-napped into an animal experiment scheme run by evil veterinarian Dr. Herman Varnick. (Honestly, the plot isn’t dissimilar to the story in cinematic masterpiece Paddington.) The deep supporting cast includes Bonnie Hunt, David Duchovny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Oliver Platt, Stanley Tucci, and Everybody Loves Raymond‘s Patricia Heaton. The film’s sequel, Beethoven Second, will also be available on Netflix starting on August 1st.

Dreamworks

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

August 1

As one of Steven Spielberg’s most charming and laid-back efforts, Catch Me If You Can is a breezy and star-studded entertainment. The story is loosely based on the real grifts of conman Frank Abagnale Jr., who beginning as a teenager was able to pass himself off as a pilot, lawyer, doctor, and many other things. But really, this is a cat-and-mouse chase movie between a still baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio as Abagnale and Tom Hanks as the FBI stiff who hunted him down. It’s all good stuff, with the movie enjoying a light touch and fresh take on Spielberg’s favorite subject matter: fathers and sons.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

August 1

A shockingly entertaining B-movie about a bunch of genetically engineered super-sharks which break out and take over a testing facility, this is horror silliness at its best with great turns from Samuel L Jackson, Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows and LL Cool J. Partially shot on sets built around the same water tanks used for Titanic, with animatronic and CGI sharks, Deep Blue Sea is action-packed, schlocky fun from director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger).  

STX Entertainment

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

August 1

A bit like Lady Bird before there was a Lady Bird, Kelly Fremon Craig’s Edge of Seventeen is an underrated gem that stars a teenage Hailee Steinfeld as a young woman stumbling through an especially awkward time in her life. Steinfeld is terrific in her best performance since True Grit, playing Nadine as a bundle of insecurities, yet still nobody’s victim. Also of special value is Craig’s hilarious and authentic script, which captures the specificity of growing up in the social media age while being near-universal in its accessibility and empathy for a wide ensemble which also includes Kyra Sedgwick, Haley Lu Richardson, and Woody Harrelson.

Paramount

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

August 1

Just in time for the dog days of summer comes one of the best summer movies ever. Relying on charm and sharp characterization instead of special effects for its spectacle, John Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a truly great teen comedy that follows the easygoing bon vivant (or secret sociopath?) of a high school’s senior class when he decides to take the day off in the best fashion: by faking he’s sick and then guilting his BFF into giving him the keys to his dad’s Ferrari.

Read more

TV

Should Netflix’s Pokémon Live-Action Series Explore the Franchise’s Dark Side?

By Matthew Byrd

TV

Never Have I Ever Season 2 Review: This Netflix Teen Comedy Deserves to Run and Run

By Louisa Mellor

It’s silly yet curiously honest stuff about the pressures of young adult life, at least in 1980s suburban America, and a beguiling showcase for an ensemble that includes Matthew Broderick in his coolest role, as well as Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jennifer Grey, and a seriously stoned Charlie Sheen. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re due.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Inception (2010)

August 1 Still Christopher Nolan’s most complete and satisfying film to date (yes, even more so than The Dark Knight), Inception is a cerebral sci-fi set of stacking dolls combined with a rollicking James Bond adventure that all happens to be mostly situated inside one guy’s head. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a team of professional thieves who steal things from people’s minds — only this time they’re hired to implant an idea, even if they have to dive deep into the mark’s subconscious to do it.

Mind-bending imagery and several jaw-dropping action sequences are wrapped around a surprisingly emotional core, with only the usual unwieldy exposition there to remind you that there are some things Nolan may never get right.

Lionsgate

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

August 1 Based on a novel by crime writer Michael Connelly, this gripping, suspenseful 2011 drama arguably kicked off “the McConaissance,” a shift from rom-coms to more serious roles by Matthew McConaughey that launched a new, largely acclaimed phase of his career.

McConaughey is formidable as attorney Mickey Haller, a slick lawyer who works out of his Lincoln Town Car and undergoes a crisis of conscience as his new case starts to feel disturbingly like an old one. In addition to McConaughey stepping up his game, this Brad Furman-directed thriller is the kind of character-driven, literate melodrama we don’t see much on the big screen anymore — although we see plenty of them these days on, of course, Netflix.

Paramount Classics

The Machinist (2004)

August 1 Director Brad Anderson followed up his cult classic 2001 horror effort Session 9 with this surreal, Kafka-esque psychological thriller. Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, whose inability to sleep leads him to cause an accident at his industrial job that costs a co-worker (Michael Ironside) his arm. Already physically and mentally deteriorating, Reznik begins an even deeper descent as he tries to unravel what’s happening to him and why. Bale is intense and viscerally shocking as the emaciated Reznik, with his riveting performance anchoring an atmospheric, visually striking film that is sometimes an exercise in style over substance.

New Line Cinema

Magnolia (1999)

August 1

Boogie Nights pushed director Paul Thomas Anderson into the spotlight, but it was his massive, sprawling jigsaw puzzle Magnolia that made him into a superstar filmmaker. Following multiple narratives and numerous characters all finally brought together by a climactic storm of frogs, this is high art packed with standout moments.

Read more

Movies

Top Gun: Maverick Footage Shows Tom Cruise in Real Jet Behind the Scenes

By David Crow

Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

Tom Cruise is electric as a toxic motivation speaker, Julianne Moore is brittle and tragic as a trophy wife who has grown to love her dying husband, while the burgeoning relationship between Melora Walters’ addict and John C. Reilly’s cop added sweetness and hope to a tale of messed up people and damaged families. Epic.

Sony PIctures

Pineapple Express (2008)

August 1 After its trailer introduced everyone to M.I.A.’s amazing “Paper Planes,” Pineapple Express’s work was already done. It didn’t even have to produce a satisfyingly funny movie on top of that. Thankfully the filmmaking team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and David Gordon Green decided to give us one anyway, because Pineapple Express is the ideal of the little-seen-or-attempted stoner action comedy.

Rogen stars as process server and marijuana enthusiast Dale Denton, while James Franco portrays his annoying drug dealer Saul Silver. When the pair witness a murder, they are forced to flee hitmen, a pair of corrupt cops, and worst of all, Danny McBride. The Rogen/Goldberg comedy catalog has very few misses and this one is particularly excellent.

Universal Pictures

Seabiscuit (2003)

August 1

No one would ever accuse Gary Ross’ Seabiscuit of being subtle. With its voice-of-god narration by Ken Burns fave David McCoullough, which helpfully spells out the themes of the movie every few scenes, and its achingly sentimental score and dialogue, Seabiscuit is a Cinderella story which all but asserts its titular race horse ended the Great Depression. Yet Ross captures some of the simple American grandeur of Laura Hillenbrand’s non-fiction source material book, as well as the beauty of this true story where a horse that everyone counted out as worthless was nursed by three men into becoming one of the greatest racing animals of all-time.

It’s the type of feel-good yarn that won people over in the 1930s and which is still winning now. When coupled with a handful of strong performances, including from Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, Tobey Maguire, and a seriously underrated Elizabeth Banks, you have a crowd-pleaser that actually pleases.

Paramount Pictures

Team America: World Police (2004)

August 1 Roger Ebert’s one-star review of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America: World Police sums up the film’s nonsensical political stance nicely. “I wasn’t offended by the movie’s content so much as by its nihilism,” the great film critic wrote.

Rog was right to criticize Team America’s incomprehensible worldview. Nearly 20 years later, its seeming position that Alec Baldwin and Kim Jong-Il are equally bad hasn’t aged that well (despite Mr. Baldwin’s best efforts). But it’s hard to argue that the South Park creators’ nihilism doesn’t lead to some great comedy. The novelty of Thunderbirds-style puppets saving the world amid graphic sex acts and voluminous barfing never quite wears off.

The post Best Movies Coming to Netflix in August 2021 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3BY7St3

[quentinblack]

Smoke and Mirrors, Chapter 17: Percy II - Absinthe (link to full story on FF.net) 

Featuring: Percy Weasley, Dedalus Diggle

Word Count: 5,000 words

“You should’ve picked up one of these doughnut-cone ice-creams, Perce,” Dedalus chirped merrily, as he took another big bite out of the remnants of his cone, which had been lavished in both sugar and melted chocolate. “Absolutely marvellous, this is!”

Percy saw that Diggle’s chin was absolutely covered with chocolate. He sincerely hoped the small wizard would clean himself up before long, as by his own calculations of the map he was reading they were not that far from Franz Kafka Square, which was where they were meeting their very first prospective recruit.

He had mercilessly studied Monika Svoboda’s file.

She was in her late twenties.

Her Czechoslovakian muggle parents had left their home country in the late 1960’s, presumably for brighter economic prospects in Britain.

Not much longer than a decade later and their daughter, born with the gift of magic, had set off to harness that gift at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Miss Svoboda’s academic record was nothing short of exemplary.

Her incredible grades dictated that that she was almost certainly a Ravenclaw.

She had been taken on by the Ministry very soon after graduating.

In just eight short years she had very quickly risen to a very respectable post in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, but then she had left quite abruptly, opting to take a senior post in the Czech Ministry instead just a few years before it all kicked off in Britain.  

It was Dedalus and Percy’s role and responsibility to convince Monika Svoboda to come back home and help rebuild the British Ministry to its past glory.

Percy was quietly optimistic that they should be able to manage it, after all he felt he was of a similar age to this woman and that they may very well have a few things in common.

She had been Head Girl, he had been Head Boy.

They had both left school and immediately taken up positions in the Ministry.

They were clearly both very intelligent and ambitious.  

Yes, he was quite confident that he could talk her around, very confident indeed.

Kingsley Shacklebolt had given him some discretion and flexibility around the sort of contracts he could sign for the prospective recruits, with vague outlines of the sort of job roles that they were recruiting for.

Percy felt sure that he could come to some kind of agreeable arrangement with Monika, then he and Dedalus would be off on their travels again to convince the next one and then the next one after that.

Easy.

Although they did have quite a daunting travel itinerary sketched out for the next few weeks.

After the Czech Republic they would move on to Denmark, Sweden and Greece, then onto Italy and Malta to conclude their European trip, before heading further afield to Turkey, Pakistan and India. They had business in Thailand too, before they travelled to North America to conclude their trip with a layover in Canada and then finally the one Percy was really looking forward to – The United States of America.

There was quite a few people they had to meet with in America who had left to work for the MACUSA, but Percy was only truly interested in seeing Penelope again.

The thought of rekindling his romance with Penelope Clearwater had been the driving factor in agreeing to this mission in the first place – and it seemed quite fitting that they were saving the best for last.

He could hardly wait to convince her to come back home to Britain and the Ministry.

They could make up for lost time.

Maybe he would ask her to move in with him.

Yes, that would be splendid.

That would be absolutely-

“Is this us, young Perce?” Dedalus asked rather eccentrically, as Percy was rudely dragged out of his daydream. He was at least pleased to see that Diggle had wiped his face clean of the very sickly looking chocolate that had dirtied it just moments ago.

The building was sign-posted in a foreign looking language, possibly French rather than Czech, but it was unmistakably the right place. The two of them crossed over to the other side of the road on the cobblestoned street in Prague’s old-town district.  

“Absintherie” read the yellow writing on the turquoise painted sign. The windows facing into the bar had a slightly tinted green look to them and there was an old-fashioned bright green bicycle resting against the wall.  

“What is an Absintherie when it’s at home anyway, then?” Diggle enquired with a puzzled look awash his pasty-white face.

“I don’t know, Dedalus,” Percy replied calmly as he pulled open the green wooden door. “But I imagine it is some kind of-

Percy was stopped mid-sentence by the sudden burst of an intense, warm medicinal smell emitting from the place that was almost certainly a very strong type of spirit alcohol.

“Blimmin’ ‘Eck,” Dedalus muttered under his breath.

“She said she would be upstairs,” Percy stated, attempting to take his mind off of the awful smell as he motioned for Diggle to follow him up the wooden staircase.

The upstairs of the bar was deserted, save for a lone table in the far corner, wherein sat a woman with dark-blonde hair and three small glasses of green liquid.

“Miss Svoboda?” Percy enquired politely, as the woman looked towards them and smiled, indicating for them to come and join her.

“Please, call me Monika,” she instructed softly, as she retrieved an ash-tray then lit a cigarette and began to smoke. She motioned to Percy and Dedalus as if to offer them both one too, but they both politely declined.

Dedalus had seemed to momentarily consider taking her up on the offer, but he perhaps changed his mind upon the split-second look of disapproval that Percy had shot in his direction.

However, it had to be said that they were on first name terms already and she’d offered them both a cigarette and got a round of drinks in.

She must be keen.

It was going well.

Percy knew all along that this was going to be a walk in the park.

It had never been in doubt.  

“You must be Mister Weasley and Mister Diggle,” she added, as the two wizards took their seats.

“And these must be our drinks,” Dedalus commented in a very concerned fashion, studying his small glass of green alcohol, which had only two small cubes of ice for company.

“I do not usually drink alcohol as strong as Absinthe,” Monika began, as Percy noticed her piercing blue eyes, which were making quite intense eye-contact with his on a seemingly intermittent basis. “But, as it is the Ministry paying I felt I should make the most of it.”

Dedalus laughed very loudly.

“A lady of my own heart,” he added when he had regained his composure.

Svoboda had bought the drinks under the impression that they would pick up the tab for her. They would of course, but still, she had some nerve and confidence.

Percy in a strange sort of way kind of liked that and thought it was another promising sign.  

Monika then raised her glass.

Percy and Dedalus followed her lead and raised theirs too.

“I am free and that is why I am lost,” Monika said in a quite dramatic fashion, before taking a large swig from her glass.

Percy wondered who it was that had said that.

It sounded like the sort of ostentatious speech closer that a tipsy Albus Dumbledore would trot out before a Christmas feast.

It was not lost on Percy that she had showed no signs of grimacing after the alcohol had hit the back of her throat, which perhaps led both he and Dedalus into a false sense of security over the strength of the alcohol they were about to drink.

“I am free and that is why I am lost,” Percy repeated, chinking glasses with Dedalus as they shared a bemused look before they both took large gulps from their glasses.

The absinthe hit the back of Percy’s throat and he had to bite his cheeks immediately to avoid projectile vomiting right there and then.

It was the strongest and most repulsive thing he had ever drank.

He was determined not to chuck it up though, as he was there in a professional capacity and if he threw it up he may look weak to Monika, who had not flinched in the slightest when drinking hers.

“Merlin’s cock,” Dedalus swore, as he began coughing violently, perhaps not possessing the same ability or motivation to keep it down.

“If you’ll pardon me for just one momen-

Percy watched on in absolute horror as Diggle made an immediate beeline for the men’s toilet, which thankfully happened to be stationed not too far away from their table.

“I’m awfully sorry for my colleague’s-

“I am not offended, Mister Weasley,” Monika began, as she took another thick drag of what Percy’s Mother had always called muggle death-sticks whenever she had caught his older brother Bill smoking one.

“Please, Monika, call me Percy.”

“Very well,” she smiled, as she delicately tapped her cigarette to rid it off the excess ash.

Perhaps all was not lost after all.

She was still smiling.

There was a slight twinkle in her eyes now, as if she was deep in thought and about to say something very profound.

Percy wondered if the alcohol had gone straight to her head, or maybe it had just gone straight to his, but for a split second he felt there was a slight wave of sexual tension between them.

In an hour’s time they could probably look back and laugh at Dedalus chundering as Monika happily signed her contract to come back and work for the Ministry.

“I am not offended by your colleague’s weak stomach, Percy. But I am offended by the Ministry’s arrogant attempt to rehire me.”

Percy was dumbstruck.

“I- I-

“I hold no ill-will to you and your colleague, Percy. You are just doing as you have been instructed to do, as I would have done once upon a time. But you must understand the arrogance that the Ministry is operating under. The letter I was sent regarding this meeting. It was not sent to my home address. It was sent to my office address. Do you not think the inbound international postal workers talk? It’s not every day they receive a letter from the British Ministry for Magic.”

“I’m- I’m sure that was purely due to logistical reasons. We would not have known your personal address, so the only option was to-

Percy stopped briefly as they overheard Dedalus loudly puking up his goulash lunch and ice-cream dessert through the thin wooden walls.

He felt incredibly awkward as he watched Monika roll her eyes as she breathed out some smoke, which lingered in the air for a while.

The mixture of the smell of absinthe and tobacco fumes really was quite odd and not one that Percy found particularly pleasant.  

“The only option was to allow me to have to face the embarrassment of my employers questioning my commitment to them? To let my bosses think that as soon as the war in Britain was over I was looking to pack my bags and go home?”

Monika’s tone had very much changed into one of condescension and indignation.

“Do you know why my parents first left Czechoslovakia?” Svododa asked him calmly.

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but I assume for some kind of economic reasons,” he replied reasonably confidently, as they heard Diggle vomit once more.

Svoboda laughed softly in a patronising manner.

“Of course, you can only think in economic terms, Percy. A wizard like you has never truly known what it feels like to be persecuted,”

Percy felt very offended, but thought it best to remain silent.

“My parents left Czechoslovakia when the Soviet Union invaded in 1968 so it could become a satellite state once more. They left their country with nothing for a better life. For a life without suppression. For a life without conflict. Do you know much of the Soviet Union and their brand of Communism?”

Percy shook his head blankly.

“My father used to repeat a saying that best described what his life was like growing up under communism…he used to say - sometimes there was no toilet paper in the shops, luckily there was not much food in them either.”

Svoboda took another sizeable swig of her absinthe once she had discarded the remains of her cigarette into the ash-tray, leaving perhaps only a mouthful or two remaining in her glass, which had warmed up sufficiently so that one may never have guessed that several ice cubes had once inhabited it.

“He and my Mother found peace and prosperity in England. Lots of food, lots of toilet paper too. They had a daughter, who one day turned out to be a witch. A slight hiccup in their plans, but they had the comfort of their own home and more importantly they were living in a peaceful country free of war, conflict and communism.”

The young witch then took another sip of her drink, before looking down disapprovingly at Percy’s glass that was still half-full.

“They thought they had left war behind them, but little did they know that the magical world that their daughter had thought so wonderful and exciting would be filled with more war than they could ever imagine. I spent my first two years at Hogwarts reading headline after headline of murder after murder. I did not dare tell my parents when they sent me letters asking how everything was going, after all, they were so proud of me. If only they knew what I had unwittingly signed myself up for.”

Percy shifted slightly in his seat, but he had no real argument to mount against her, perhaps she had only agreed to this meeting in the first place to vent her frustrations at someone.

“They told me that The Boy Who Lived had vanquished He Who Could Not Be Named, but he did not. Soon enough, the murders began again. The dark times returned. Tell me, Percy, have you ever read any of Franz Kafka’s work?”

He had no idea who Franz Kafka was, but for the street to have been named after him Percy had assumed he had been a muggle politician or a king.

“No,” he answered honestly. “But if I could just maybe tell you about what fantastic opportunities the Ministry has to offer a woman of your incredible talents and-

“Kafka was born right here in Prague. He didn’t like it much… he didn’t like much of anything, really. The majority of his work was dark and depressing. The stories he wrote were often set in horrific places, filled with fear, corruption and misery. He may as well have been describing what it was like to be a muggle-born in Wizarding Britain during the last few decades.”

Percy could see now that this was well and truly beyond a lost cause, but his professional pride meant that he could not give up on Svoboda without at least one more roll of the die.

“It’s different now!” Percy pleaded. “The dark times are over. You Know Who is gone, for good this time. Harry Potter made sure of that, I saw it myself. I was there. We can forge a new future, one that is free from fear, corruption and misery – but the Ministry needs people, good people, talented people like you, Monika.”

“I do not doubt that you believe that, Percy, but come on, get real! The dark times are over? Do you think that we abroad are not aware that you still have six Death Eaters on the loose? They say that ignorance is bliss, but they are wrong. Those who are ignorant naturally consider that everything is possible.”

Percy could not tell for sure, but he believed from her poetic tone of voice that she was quoting that Kafka fellow again.

She was most definitely a Ravenclaw.

“Wizarding society in Britain is not built for change, Percy. The very foundations of its design is to keep things the same. The-

“It will be different this time,” he relented. “It is different this time. The new Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, he is different he is-

“Another pure-blood Minister, is it then? Quelle fucking surprise. He may well have good intentions, but the same mistakes will be made once again, Percy. You are blind if you cannot see it. Tell me, will there still be the same four houses at Hogwarts in the coming school year?”

“Well, yes, of course!” Percy answered indignantly.

“Your reaction is exactly what I’m talking about, Percy. You cannot possibly even conceive of the idea that say for instance, Slytherin house… the very house from which your new… oh so different Minister for Magic was once a Head Boy for… was to be… terminated.”

“Well- well that’s impossib-

“A school which explicitly groups together the most prejudiced members of its society, based on the hiring preferences of a prejudiced ancient wizard who should be doomed to the history books, not held up on a pedestal for young, impressionable children to chant his name and wear his colours.”

Percy didn’t really have an answer.

He was left speechless once again.

It was perfectly clear how Svoboda had flourished so well in the Ministry. She was an excellent orator, clearly extremely intelligent and didn’t give you a word in edgeways, yet still remained very polite in the process.

It was incredibly frustrating as Percy knew he could not win a debate with this woman. She was running absolute rings around him. He almost wished Dedalus would return from the toilet to help back him up.

“In muggle schools in Prague they do not have a house that honours Josef Stalin. They do not wave red flags with gold hammers and sickles on them. In Berlin they do not have school houses honouring Hitler or the Nazis. They do not hang swastikas on the walls or chant Nazi songs at school football matches. Slytherin house remains at Hogwarts because of what, tradition?”

“No- no. Well, yes. But it’s not that simple, Monika. You must understand. I saw you were Head Girl once. I was Head Boy. You must know that the tradition of Hog-

“I know that when I was chosen to be Head Girl I was the first muggle-born Head Boy or Girl for a quarter of a century,” she fumed.

“Almost every other family name that fell before mine in the record books belonged to the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Well, do you know what I say, Percy? Fuck the Sacred Twenty-Eight!”

Percy desperately tried to think of a rebuffal to her point, but he was taken aback by her sudden swearing. He felt very flustered and straightened his shirt a little as he felt himself begin to sweat nervously.

The men’s toilet door suddenly flung open and a rather refreshed looking Dedalus Diggle emerged from it, momentarily distracting Percy from his train of thought.

“Well then, what have I missed?” Diggle squeaked as he looked from Percy to Monika in slight confusion.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Monika murmured as she finished the last slithers of her drink and stood up. “I was once much like you, Percy. I once held the establishment and tradition on a pedestal… well here’s a piece of advice for you, as well as my answer to your new Minister. Fuck your prejudice… fuck your traditions… and fuck your Ministry!”

Monika Svoboda abruptly fled the table, departed down the stairs and they did not see her again.

“Hmph,” Dedalus muttered. “Not the best of starts for you then, ehh, Perce?”

“I need a drink,” Percy mused. “Something pretty strong…but not that strong,” he added, as both he and Diggle shied away from seeing off their Absinthe.

“You know what you want, Perce? A nice cuppa tea,” Dedalus remarked in his ever boisterous manner.

“Yes, I think that would be perfect,” Percy replied, as he glumly made his way down the stairs.

Dedalus calmly strolled towards the bar to settle their tab with the muggle credit card that Kingsley had supplied them with.

Percy thought he had seen some of Penelope in Monika.

The thought that she may show a similar sense of resolve and reject him too filled his heart with the sort of misery and despair that Monika had described as being present in those Kafka stories.

“We’d… like… to go… somewhere… where… we can… get some… tea…tea…yes, tea! Tea!” he heard Dedalus loudly explaining to the Czech bar-keep in the sort of accent one only makes when speaking to someone whose first language is not English.

“Excellent!” Dedalus remarked.

“He says we can get some tea not far from here, Perce. Follow me. We take the first left and then it’s the forth building down.”

Percy slowly followed his companion across the cobblestoned street as a sense of sombre overcame him.

The meeting with Monika really had been an unmitigated disaster of the highest order.

He really could kill for a nice mug of piping hot tea, just like his Mother would make.

The thought of his Mother made him suddenly feel awfully homesick, which was ridiculous as he’d only been gone for a few days.

He had to pull himself together for Kingsley and for Penelope and perhaps more importantly for himself.

It was all going to be fine.

Monika was just a one off.

The others would all want to come back.

“Here we are, Perce. Looks like a nice quiet café, bet we’ll get a splendid cup of tea in here. That’ll make you feel better.”

Percy agreed with Diggle and followed him through the front door of the fancy looking establishment, upon which they were greeted by a quite large bald headed muggle-man who appeared to be some kind of security guard.

“You pay two hundred and fifty koruna entry each, but you get one free drink inside,” he said in a deep voice with a very thick accent, which Percy assumed must be Czech.

“Seems reasonable,” Dedalus quipped. “Here you are my friend,” he added as he presented the doorman with the money, who happily let them through following this exchange.

As they reached the bottom of the spiral staircase they discovered that the café was very dark and dingy, but it did at least seem to possess some quite comfortable looking sofas.

The ambience itself was not particularly relaxation orientated though, as the speakers within the place were playing some rather flamboyant muggle rock music quite loudly.

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME

OOH, IN THE NAME OF LOVE

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME

C’MON, FIRE ME UP

“Might as well get those free drinks,” Dedalus said in a raised voice so as to be heard over the noise.  Percy nodded at him and followed the little wizard to the bar.

Percy thought that the woman serving at the bar was rather scantily dressed for this time of day, but at first he put it down to muggle fashion and culture that he perhaps did not understand.

“Two cups of tea, please! What? You don’t sell- I would like two cups of tea, please!” Dedalus squeaked at the woman serving over the loud muggle-music.

POUR YOUR SUGAR ON ME

I CAN’T GET ENOUGH

I’M HOT, STICKY SWEET

FROM MY HEAD TO MY FEET, YEAH

“She reckons they don’t serve any hot drinks!” a very disappointed Dedalus yelled up into Percy’s ear. “The chap at the Absintherie said it was a Tea Bar!”

That was when Percy first noticed the giant neon sign that was lighting up the opposite corner of the room.

It read “TITTY BAR”.

Percy did not quite grasp what this referred to at first, having never before encountered the muggle slang-term of “titty”, but upon further inspection towards the other side of the room it soon became quite apparent what it was that it referred to.

He felt another sudden flurry of home-sickness again as he wished with all of his heart that George was here to see this.

It would certainly bring a huge grin to a face that so seldom did smile these days.

Percy would never live it down once George found out about this.

“MERLIN’S BEARD!” an utterly astounded Dedalus exclaimed, as he suddenly noticed the topless muggle women dancing on the stage.

[msniw]

The Language of the #Metoomorphosis

(With acknowledgement to Frank Kafka)

Make no mistake: the day Harvey Weinstein woke up to discover he was a cockroach, we soon learned the movie mogul is but another disgusting creature on a dunghill so vast we may never dig it up.

Don’t be fooled: while the first revelations tempted satire, it is clear that the phenomenon of universal sexual harassment-cum-abuse should be far too serious for sniggers and lewd laughter.

From private homes to schools and offices; from the Israeli Knesset to the U.S. White House and on  to the U.K. Houses of Parliament, communal institutions, places of worship and everywhere else people collide, it is self-evident that no matter how we identify as human beings, success, as ever, is based not on merit but tiptoes over shards of nepotism, privilege and power.

Children who complain to their mothers of sexual predation are often ignored or disbelieved while workplace victims of bullying cannot complain to the management when the villains are those in charge and who indeed may not be heterosexual men but allegedly vengeful or overbearing women.

But perhaps the root of the problem lies not in sexual tension but in the way we communicate; the fashionable debasement and defilement of everyday speech, let alone written language, all of it pointing to our fumbling through a fug of casual, mutual contempt.

I keep thinking of Ian McEwan’s novel, Atonement whose storyline hinges partly on the misuse of a word once considered so offensive that it was scarcely uttered outside military barracks or brothels, but whose stigma has become so worn that last year a British woman judge used it quite airily during a crown court hearing!

Moreover, I’ve wondered if it was coincidental that U.K. emeritus chief rabbi Lord Sacks released the transcripts of two radio talks devoted respectively to the concepts of ‘fake news’ and ‘safe spaces’soon after the Jewish Chronicle newspaper ran its incendiary features about sexual abuse and harassment, noted here and above.

Certainly, it was personal good luck that against this background, I should receive a copy of ** #MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What It Means and How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again.

A collection of 26 essays edited and produced at break-neck speed by US writer and publisher Lori Perkins, the anthology is a swift, extremely powerful response to “the groundswell of reaction to and exposure of this sexual predation … that has spread throughout Europe and beyond. New revelations of unacceptable behavior in every industry break every day as people come forward in response to the viral #MeToo posts … This is the turning point. Things are going to change”, she writes.

So while there are elements of this collection I dislike, I must champion Perkins’s generosity and courage as her company, Riverdale Avenue Books has published the volume gratis on Kindle and at cost in print.

All Perkins asks in return is that readers “pass this book around. Share it with your sons, brothers, fathers, your daughters, sisters and mothers, your co-workers and friends. Read passages to them, if they won’t read it for themselves. Leave it on the desk of someone who should know better. Help us make this movement more than a hashtag”, she demands.

Now in my sixties, I’m among millions of adults and children worldwide to have experienced several #metoo crises. But I am anxious not to personalise matters, so will instead share some of what I’ve learned from Perkins’s book:

The first woman who attempted to expose Hollywood’s rampant sexual abuse was Patricia Douglas, an occasional bit-part actress who in 1937 was aged only 20 when she was deceived into attending a rowdy, drunken party where she was ambushed by two men who poured liquor down her throat before one of them flung her into a nearby car and raped her. This was the era when the MGM studio wielded such fantastic power that it held everyone in its grip, even the Los Angeles district attorney and police department. So her attempts to lodge official complaints and take legal action were continuously blocked and her character was irretrievably blackened.

For historians the case was a significant, apparent “legal first”. But by the time the full truth of her story emerged in a Vanity Fair magazine feature, Douglas was aged 86, a great-grandmother and “housebound by glaucoma, emphysema and fear”. Still traumatized by what had happened, she had never previously discussed the incident with anyone. She went public in her declining years only because she did not want the truth to disappear with her demise.

I am surprised that Raechal Leone Shewfelt, a senior Yahoo News editor who wrote the essay about Patricia Douglas did not mention the infamous scandal of the 1920s in which silent film comedian, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle allegedly killed a starlet named Virginia Rappe as a result of raping her. Although she died four days after the supposed incident, Arbuckle was acquitted due to lack of evidence. While it is suggested he may have been the victim of a blackmail honey trap, his career was effectively destroyed by Hearst newspapers and the Hays Office, a film industry self–regulatory body that temporarily blacklisted him. He died aged only 46.

Was Arbuckle evil? Or was this an early case of #HimToo?

A book like this, featuring many different writers with a huge range of styles and produced so fast, falters by being occasionally repetitious, a little tedious and occasionally delivers a mixed message because so far as I’m concerned many of the contributors have an unhealthy over-absorption in sexual matters. If this view  makes me appear both reactionary and ungracious, I’ll conclude by mentioning a piece that made me chuckle. Wall Street Assets, an excerpt from the memoir of artist, author and sex rights activist, Veronica Vera is by turns funny, ferocious and filthy.

It also returns me to my earlier thoughts about the misuse and abuse of language. Veronica Vera most certainly needed to study her rights after meeting the repulsive ‘Sherman’, a character at a small Wall Street trading house. How in tarnation she ever became his mistress, heaven alone knows.

After all, he began their relationship by calling her ‘shiksa’, then unzipped his trouser (pants) fly and pulled out his shirt tail “as if it were a penis”.

He also had a vile nickname for the car he gave her and did not tell her that the ‘S’ word is not just a disdainful Yiddish expression for a non-Jewish woman. It means that which is loathsome and abominable. No wonder Sherman went back to his wife!

Now, what will Harvey Weinstein do next?

** #MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What It Means and How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again, edited by Lori Perkins is available from Amazon on Kindle ($0.00) or in Paperback ($6.99).

© Natalie Wood (15 November 2017)

[dragnews]

Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary

AMSTERDAM — Anne Frank tried to cover up two pages of writing in her diary that contained dirty jokes and a description of what she referred to as “sexual matters,” pasting brown paper over the pages in her red-and-white plaid notebook.

But researchers here have revealed the hidden text using new digital technologies, the Anne Frank House and two other Dutch cultural institutions announced on Tuesday.

Frank, the teenage diarist who wrote about coming-of-age in a secret attic annex while in hiding from the Nazis during World War II, may have camouflaged the two pages because they contained prurient content that she didn’t want her father or someone else in the cramped quarters to discover.

“I sometimes imagine that someone might come to me and ask me to inform him about sexual matters,” Frank wrote in Dutch. “How would I go about it?” She attempts an answer, addressing an imaginary listener with a lofty tone, using phrases such as “rhythmical movements” to describe sex, and “internal medicament,” to refer to contraception.

She also touches on menstruation, “a sign that she is ripe,” and prostitution: “In Paris they have big houses for that.”

Peter de Bruijn, a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, one of the partners in the research, said that the newly uncovered pages are not significant for their sexual content — because Frank explores similar matters in other parts of the diary, often in even more explicit terms. He said these pages were important because they show Frank’s first foray into trying to write in a more literary tone.

“She starts with an imaginary person whom she is telling about sex, so she creates a kind of literary environment to write about a subject she’s maybe not comfortable with,” he said.

In an interview, Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, said, “It is really interesting and adds meaning to our understanding of the diary.”

“It’s a very cautious start to her becoming a writer,” he said. “It’s still very early stages.”

The two newly revealed pages were written in Frank’s first diary, with a red plaid cover, on Sept. 28, 1942, when she was 13 years old. During her time in hiding, she wrote two versions of the diary. The first was written in a series of small notebooks, from her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942, until Aug. 1, 1944, and was intended strictly for herself.

But one day she heard on the radio that the Dutch government in exile was planning to publish eyewitness accounts of people’s suffering under the German occupation, and she resolved to write a new book that she called “The Secret Annex,” based on her diaries, which she hoped to submit after the war. She completed 215 loose pages in a couple of months, but in August 1944, she and her family were discovered, arrested and deported; she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp three months shy of her 16th birthday, in 1945.

Mr. de Bruijn said Frank may have also pasted over the pages as a form of self-editing as she revised her diary in preparation for the second, public version.

Researchers at the Anne Frank House discovered the two hidden pages in the original version of the diary while they were checking its condition and photographing the pages in 2016. The notebooks are in storage for safekeeping and only examined once every 10 years.

Until now, the technology that would have allowed researchers to look at the covered pages without destroying them wasn’t available. “When you touch the pages they can be damaged, so we don’t touch them,” said Teresien da Silva, head of collections at the Anne Frank House. Using photo-imaging software, they were able to decipher text beneath the brown paper without any contact with the pages.

Could it be considered disrespectful to reveal pages that Frank wanted to hide?

“You can compare it, for example, with finding out that there’s something painted underneath a Rembrandt masterpiece,” Ms. da Silva said. “When you discover that you want to know what’s underneath, because it can tell you about how he worked.”

She also compared it to salvaging the writings of Franz Kafka, who wanted to destroy many of his own literary works. “It’s not always good to follow the wish of an author,” she said. “It’s important sometimes for scientific research and also good to know for the public what she didn’t want to publish.”

A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House said that the museum would make the new text available on its website, but only in Dutch at the moment, because of copyright restrictions. She said she did not know when the text would be available in English.

The post Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2ImuYxj via Today News

[cleopatrarps]

Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary

AMSTERDAM — Anne Frank tried to cover up two pages of writing in her diary that contained dirty jokes and a description of what she referred to as “sexual matters,” pasting brown paper over the pages in her red-and-white plaid notebook.

But researchers here have revealed the hidden text using new digital technologies, the Anne Frank House and two other Dutch cultural institutions announced on Tuesday.

Frank, the teenage diarist who wrote about coming-of-age in a secret attic annex while in hiding from the Nazis during World War II, may have camouflaged the two pages because they contained prurient content that she didn’t want her father or someone else in the cramped quarters to discover.

“I sometimes imagine that someone might come to me and ask me to inform him about sexual matters,” Frank wrote in Dutch. “How would I go about it?” She attempts an answer, addressing an imaginary listener with a lofty tone, using phrases such as “rhythmical movements” to describe sex, and “internal medicament,” to refer to contraception.

She also touches on menstruation, “a sign that she is ripe,” and prostitution: “In Paris they have big houses for that.”

Peter de Bruijn, a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, one of the partners in the research, said that the newly uncovered pages are not significant for their sexual content — because Frank explores similar matters in other parts of the diary, often in even more explicit terms. He said these pages were important because they show Frank’s first foray into trying to write in a more literary tone.

“She starts with an imaginary person whom she is telling about sex, so she creates a kind of literary environment to write about a subject she’s maybe not comfortable with,” he said.

In an interview, Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, said, “It is really interesting and adds meaning to our understanding of the diary.”

“It’s a very cautious start to her becoming a writer,” he said. “It’s still very early stages.”

The two newly revealed pages were written in Frank’s first diary, with a red plaid cover, on Sept. 28, 1942, when she was 13 years old. During her time in hiding, she wrote two versions of the diary. The first was written in a series of small notebooks, from her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942, until Aug. 1, 1944, and was intended strictly for herself.

But one day she heard on the radio that the Dutch government in exile was planning to publish eyewitness accounts of people’s suffering under the German occupation, and she resolved to write a new book that she called “The Secret Annex,” based on her diaries, which she hoped to submit after the war. She completed 215 loose pages in a couple of months, but in August 1944, she and her family were discovered, arrested and deported; she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp three months shy of her 16th birthday, in 1945.

Mr. de Bruijn said Frank may have also pasted over the pages as a form of self-editing as she revised her diary in preparation for the second, public version.

Researchers at the Anne Frank House discovered the two hidden pages in the original version of the diary while they were checking its condition and photographing the pages in 2016. The notebooks are in storage for safekeeping and only examined once every 10 years.

Until now, the technology that would have allowed researchers to look at the covered pages without destroying them wasn’t available. “When you touch the pages they can be damaged, so we don’t touch them,” said Teresien da Silva, head of collections at the Anne Frank House. Using photo-imaging software, they were able to decipher text beneath the brown paper without any contact with the pages.

Could it be considered disrespectful to reveal pages that Frank wanted to hide?

“You can compare it, for example, with finding out that there’s something painted underneath a Rembrandt masterpiece,” Ms. da Silva said. “When you discover that you want to know what’s underneath, because it can tell you about how he worked.”

She also compared it to salvaging the writings of Franz Kafka, who wanted to destroy many of his own literary works. “It’s not always good to follow the wish of an author,” she said. “It’s important sometimes for scientific research and also good to know for the public what she didn’t want to publish.”

A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House said that the museum would make the new text available on its website, but only in Dutch at the moment, because of copyright restrictions. She said she did not know when the text would be available in English.

The post Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2ImuYxj via News of World

[dani-qrt]

Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary

AMSTERDAM — Anne Frank tried to cover up two pages of writing in her diary that contained dirty jokes and a description of what she referred to as “sexual matters,” pasting brown paper over the pages in her red-and-white plaid notebook.

But researchers here have revealed the hidden text using new digital technologies, the Anne Frank House and two other Dutch cultural institutions announced on Tuesday.

Frank, the teenage diarist who wrote about coming-of-age in a secret attic annex while in hiding from the Nazis during World War II, may have camouflaged the two pages because they contained prurient content that she didn’t want her father or someone else in the cramped quarters to discover.

“I sometimes imagine that someone might come to me and ask me to inform him about sexual matters,” Frank wrote in Dutch. “How would I go about it?” She attempts an answer, addressing an imaginary listener with a lofty tone, using phrases such as “rhythmical movements” to describe sex, and “internal medicament,” to refer to contraception.

She also touches on menstruation, “a sign that she is ripe,” and prostitution: “In Paris they have big houses for that.”

Peter de Bruijn, a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, one of the partners in the research, said that the newly uncovered pages are not significant for their sexual content — because Frank explores similar matters in other parts of the diary, often in even more explicit terms. He said these pages were important because they show Frank’s first foray into trying to write in a more literary tone.

“She starts with an imaginary person whom she is telling about sex, so she creates a kind of literary environment to write about a subject she’s maybe not comfortable with,” he said.

In an interview, Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, said, “It is really interesting and adds meaning to our understanding of the diary.”

“It’s a very cautious start to her becoming a writer,” he said. “It’s still very early stages.”

The two newly revealed pages were written in Frank’s first diary, with a red plaid cover, on Sept. 28, 1942, when she was 13 years old. During her time in hiding, she wrote two versions of the diary. The first was written in a series of small notebooks, from her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942, until Aug. 1, 1944, and was intended strictly for herself.

But one day she heard on the radio that the Dutch government in exile was planning to publish eyewitness accounts of people’s suffering under the German occupation, and she resolved to write a new book that she called “The Secret Annex,” based on her diaries, which she hoped to submit after the war. She completed 215 loose pages in a couple of months, but in August 1944, she and her family were discovered, arrested and deported; she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp three months shy of her 16th birthday, in 1945.

Mr. de Bruijn said Frank may have also pasted over the pages as a form of self-editing as she revised her diary in preparation for the second, public version.

Researchers at the Anne Frank House discovered the two hidden pages in the original version of the diary while they were checking its condition and photographing the pages in 2016. The notebooks are in storage for safekeeping and only examined once every 10 years.

Until now, the technology that would have allowed researchers to look at the covered pages without destroying them wasn’t available. “When you touch the pages they can be damaged, so we don’t touch them,” said Teresien da Silva, head of collections at the Anne Frank House. Using photo-imaging software, they were able to decipher text beneath the brown paper without any contact with the pages.

Could it be considered disrespectful to reveal pages that Frank wanted to hide?

“You can compare it, for example, with finding out that there’s something painted underneath a Rembrandt masterpiece,” Ms. da Silva said. “When you discover that you want to know what’s underneath, because it can tell you about how he worked.”

She also compared it to salvaging the writings of Franz Kafka, who wanted to destroy many of his own literary works. “It’s not always good to follow the wish of an author,” she said. “It’s important sometimes for scientific research and also good to know for the public what she didn’t want to publish.”

A spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House said that the museum would make the new text available on its website, but only in Dutch at the moment, because of copyright restrictions. She said she did not know when the text would be available in English.

The post Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2ImuYxj via Online News