#Robert Moses too

[kosmosxipo]

I’ve been thinking about my hometown a lot lately. I wrote a whole essay about how I love it like a family member, for everything that means. It both infuriates me to tears and brings me immense amounts of joy, makes me achingly sad but I will defend it to anyone who talks shit about it, because fuck you, what do you know? My city still bears the burdens of sins committed in its name going back 150 years. But what’s driving me nuts right now is how systematically huge parts of it were destroyed. Let me show you:

I believe this is around the mid-1930s or 1940s. Before the interstates and suburbs and white flight. Here’s that same area now:

This neighborhood was redlined in the name of Urban Renewal. This is what 80 years of that looks like.

A wider shot, this time of Sportsman’s Park, where both the Cardinals and the Browns played. The streets are alive in this pic:

There’s even streetcars. A whole network of them that would get you all over the city. Here’s that same area now.

I’m posting this because I want you to understand that this was intentional. City planners like Robert Moses wanted exactly this, the more non-white and non-Christian, non-western European people it happened to, the better. In St. Louis we had Harland Bartholomew. That man who wanted to tear down iconic neighborhoods. The man that wanted to build expressways through our parks. This is his map from 1947:

A lot of those areas were marked as “blighted.” The places above? The picture of the stadium and that neighborhood? A blight. They were either destroyed or left to rot. A small but thriving Chinatown was destroyed to make way for a new stadium. An entire Black neighborhood erased by the Interstate — if you ever look at your city and wonder why the interstate weaves around like it does, you can almost guarantee that it was hitting non-white, non-Christian, non-western European communities.

I’ve been thinking about how places like St. Louis were destroyed by white men, and then turned into punchlines in movies like National Lampoon’s Vacation, or used as post-apocalyptic sets in Escape From New York. They destroyed my city, and then turned and laughed at us. Harlan Batholomew retired and lived comfortably in the wealthy suburb of Clayton, away from what he created, until his death. I always wonder if he was pleased with what he did.

[ca-chan]

This passage from The Power Broker is a good reminder that I have to be very careful about the things I like, because I can never like anything normally.

[silasplaskett]

sorry if im weirdposting today i just did my first real school assignment in like a really long time

[bogleech]

It’s amazing how you’ll see that evil villainous city planner archetype in kid’s cartoons, the one who just sadistically wants to bulldoze the cute little historic playground to build a parking lot for rich people, and you might assume it’s a generalized caricature of political greed or metaphor for more complex gentrification issues, but no, the trope started specifically as a parody of New York urban planner Robert Moses who was proudly open about making the city as hostile as he could to minorities and poor people who couldn’t afford cars, tried to scrub the city of anything he considered low class or too progressive and at one point literally wanted to replace a beloved playground with parking for an expensive restaurant. He also had countless admirers in high positions across the country and employees who went on to spread his philosophy to other cities so he might have single handedly made every city in America worse to this day.

The playground incident became especially famous, though, because it was one of the first times public backlash actually defeated him and stopped it from moving forward. That’s why the stock plot he inspired is about communities coming together and winning. His life’s legacy is a cartoon villain that exists to fail and be humiliated.

[eesirachs]

For a school assignment, I'm assembling an anthology around the theme of queer divinity and desire, but I'm having a hard time finding a fitting essay/article (no access to real academic catalogues :/ ), do you know of any essays around this theme?

below are essays, and then books, on queer theory (in which 'queer' has a different connotation than in regular speech) in the hebrew bible/ancient near east. if there is a particular prophet you want more of, or a particular topic (ištar, or penetration, or appetites), or if you want a pdf of anything, please let me know.

essays: Boer, Roland. “Too Many Dicks at the Writing Desk, or How to Organize a Prophetic Sausage-Fest.” TS 16, no. 1 (2010b): 95–108. Boer, Roland. “Yahweh as Top: A Lost Targum.” In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ken Stone, 75–105. JSOTSup 334. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2001. Boyarin, Daniel. “Are There Any Jews in ‘The History of Sexuality’?” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 3 (1995): 333–55. Clines, David J. A. “He-Prophets: Masculinity as a Problem for the Hebrew Prophets and Their Interpreters.” In Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll, edited by Robert P. Carroll, Alastair G. Hunter, and Philip R. Davies, 311–27. JSOTSup 348. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Graybill, Rhiannon. “Yahweh as Maternal Vampire in Second Isaiah: Reading from Violence to Fluid Possibility with Luce Irigaray.” Journal of feminist studies in religion 33, no. 1 (2017): 9–25. Haddox, Susan E. “Engaging Images in the Prophets: Feminist Scholarship on the Book of the Twelve.” In Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect. 1. Biblical Books, edited by Susanne Scholz, 170–91. RRBS 5. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Koch, Timothy R. “Cruising as Methodology: Homoeroticism and the Scriptures.” In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ken Stone, 169–80. JSOTSup 334. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2001. Tigay, Jeffrey. “‘ Heavy of Mouth’ and ‘Heavy of Tongue’: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty.” BASOR, no. 231 (October 1978): 57–67.

books: Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Bauer-Levesque, Angela. Gender in the Book of Jeremiah: A Feminist-Literary Reading. SiBL 5. New York: P. Lang, 1999. Black, Fiona C., and Jennifer L. Koosed, eds. Reading with Feeling : Affect Theory and the Bible. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2019. Brenner, Athalya. The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and “Sexuality” in the Hebrew Bible. BIS 26. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Camp, Claudia V. Wise, Strange, and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible. JSOTSup 320. Gender, Culture, Theory 9. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. HSM 62. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Creangă, Ovidiu, ed. Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond. BMW 33. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Boston: Beacon, 1995. Huber, Lynn R., and Rhiannon Graybill, eds. The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality : Critical Readings. London, UK ; T&T Clark, 2021. Guest, Deryn. When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics. London: SCM, 2005. Graybill, Rhiannon, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice J. W. Lawrence, eds. Rape Culture and Religious Studies : Critical and Pedagogical Engagements. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019. Graybill, Rhiannon. Are We Not Men? : Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA, 2016. Halperin, David J. Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Jennings, Theodore W. Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel. New York: Continuum, 2005. Macwilliam, Stuart. Queer Theory and the Prophetic Marriage Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. BibleWorld. Sheffield and Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2011. Maier, Christl. Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2008. Mills, Mary E. Alterity, Pain, and Suffering in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. LHB/OTS 479. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2007. Stökl, Jonathan, and Corrine L. Carvalho. Prophets Male and Female: Gender and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Ancient Near East. AIL 15. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2013. Stone, Ken. Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective. Queering Theology Series. London: T & T Clark International, 2004. Weems, Renita J. Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets. OBT. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995.

[dweemeister]

Whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I.

Born to a turbulent family on a Mississippi farm, James Earl Jones passed away today. He was ninety-three years old. Abandoned by his parents as a child and raised by a racist grandmother (although he later reconciled with his actor father and performed alongside him as an adult), the trauma of his childhood developed into a stutter that followed him through his primary school years – sometimes, his stutter was so debilitating, he could not speak at all. In high school, Jones found in an English teacher someone who found in him a talent for written expression, and encouraged him to write and recite poetry in class. He overcame his stutter by graduation, although the effects of it carried over for the remainder of his life.

Jones' most accomplished roles may have been on the Broadway stage, where he won three Tonys (twice winning Best Actor in a Play for originating the lead roles in 1969's The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler and 1987's Fences by August Wilson) and was considered one of the best Shakespearean actors of his time.

But his contributions to cinema left an impact on audiences, too. Jones received an Honorary Academy Award alongside makeup artist Dick Smith (1972's The Godfather, 1984's Amadeus) in 2011. From the end of Hollywood's Golden Age to the dawn of the summer Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s to the present, Jones' presence – and his basso profundo voice – could scarcely be ignored. Though he could not sing like Paul Robeson nor had the looks of Sidney Poitier, his presence and command put him in league of both of his acting predecessors.

Ten of the films James Earl Jones appeared in, whether in-person or voice acting, follow (left-right, descending):

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – directed by Stanley Kubrick; also starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens

The Great White Hope (1970) – directed by Martin Ritt; also starring Jane Alexander, Chester Morris, Hal Holbrook Beah Richards, and Moses Gunn

Star Wars saga (1977-2019; A New Hope pictured) – multiple directors, as the voice of Darth Vader, also starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, and Frank Oz

Claudine (1974) – directed by John Berry; also starring Diahann Carroll, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Tamu Blackwell

Conan the Barbarian (1982) – directed by John Milius; also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Cassandra Gaviola, Gerry Lopez, Mako, Valerie Quennessen, William Smith, and Max von Sydow

Coming to America series (1988 and 2021; original pictured) – multiple directors; also starring Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and KiKi Layne

The Hunt for Red October (1990) – directed by John McTiernan; also starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, and Sam Neill

The Sandlot (1993) – directed by David Mickey Evans; also staring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Marty York, Brandon Adams, Grant Gelt, Shane Obedzinski, Victor DiMattia, Denis Leary, and Karen Allen

The Lion King (1994) – directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, as the voice of Mufasa; also starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, Moira Kelly, Niketa Calame, Ernie Sabella, Nathan Lane, and Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, and Madge Sinclair

Field of Dreams (1989) – directed by Phil Alden Robinson; also starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, and Burt Lancaster

[everywishway]

Some Dimension 20 Moments that give me too much emotions

Most of these are scenes that aren't talked about enough. feel free to reblog with yours so I can cry more. Spoilers for several seasons of D20: Neverafter, Unsleeping City, The Seven, Fantasy High and ACOFAF

Siobhan reading Emma Lazarus 'New Colossus' in Unsleeping City

Siobhan/Rowan's later conversation with the American Dream; telling it that it is already real so it doesn't need to cross the golden door

Sofie and Dale reuniting while in Nod, the Sixth Burrow

The hurt, then rage when Sofie Bikes finds out Isabella Infierno killed Dale

Kingston's "I WOULD'VE CONTINUED TO BE FAITHFUL"

Pete's heartbreak when Robert Moses shows him Kingston's reaction to Pete not controlling his powers

Kugrash's death

Fig's 'Your allowed to be a complex person with her mom

Fig and Sandra-lynn on the roof of the Hangvan smoking clove cigs and having a conversation about life

Riz after realizing his Dad was a secret agent and turns to his mom with tears in his eyes going, "hey mom, I know about dad"

Fabian watching his dad's video then smashing the crystal after his death

Hob's speech at the end of ACOFAF to Rue (we all know why

Meeting Lydia Barkrock for the first time and seeing she's a wheelchair user

Ayda realizes there is nothing wrong with her when Jawbone shows her what autism is and shows her how amazing and beautiful she is

Ostentasia's conversation with Logren

Ostentasia's whole interaction with her family, especially her dad

Sam is saved by the other members of the Seven from her dream about Penelope right before they fight Talura and the army

All of Neverafter, especially Gerard

[usafphantom2]

Bob Pardo, Vietnam War pilot famous for Pardo’s Push maneuver, dies at 89

Jonathan Snyder

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Pardo is known for carrying out an unorthodox aviation maneuver, later coined the Pardo Push, to save the lives of his wingmen during a bombing mission over Vietnam on March 10, 1967.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Pardo is known for carrying out an unorthodox aviation maneuver, later coined the Pardo Push, to save the lives of his wingmen during a bombing mission over Vietnam on March 10, 1967. (David Cooper/U.S. Air Force)

Bob Pardo, who left his mark in Air Force history for using an unorthodox maneuver, Pardo’s Push, to save his wingmen’s lives during a bombing mission over Vietnam, died Dec. 5. He was 89.

On March 10, 1967, Pardo and weapons officer 1st Lt. Steve Wayne were on a bombing run on an enemy steel mill north of Hanoi in an F-4C Phantom, flying alongside Capt. Earl Aman and 1st Lt. Robert Houghton.

The target — North Vietnam’s only steel mill dedicated to war materiel — was heavily guarded by anti-aircraft guns and artillery.

During the mission, ground fire damaged both Pardo’s and Aman’s Phantoms, causing both to lose fuel. However, Aman lost too much to return safely to base, and Pardo knew he had to act quickly, according to a 2007 recounting of the mission by Gen. T. Michael Mosely, then the chief of staff of the Air Force.

“I knew if I didn’t do anything, they would have to eject over North Vietnam into enemy territory, and that would have resulted in their capture for sure,” Pardo said in a 2015 interview for the Air Force Veterans in Blue program. “At that time, if you were captured by civilians, you were probably going to be murdered on the spot.”

Pardo decided to push Aman’s plane using the nose of his aircraft against Aman’s tailhook, a retractable hook on the underside of the plane used for arrested landings.

He managed to decrease the rate of descent of Aman’s jet by 1,500 feet per minute, and they successfully reached friendly territory. Both air crews safely ejected over the Laotian border and were rescued by friendly forces.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Pardo died Dec. 5 at 89. (David Cooper/U.S. Air Force)

The Air Force at first reprimanded Pardo for further damaging his aircraft. Twenty years later, he received the Silver Star for his actions in the aerial rescue.

Pardo was born in 1934 in Herne, Texas, and began his Air Force career in 1954 at age 19. After flight school, he flew the Phantom during the Vietnam War, logging 132 flying missions.

He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1974. In addition to the Silver Star, his awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, Purple Heart, Air Medal with twelve Oak Leaf Clusters and the Meritorious Service Medal.

Pardo is survived by his wife, Kathryn, whom he married on March 7, 1992, five children and 10 grandchildren.

@AviationHistGal via X

[odinsblog]

The Supreme Court is trying to drag America backwards to “Separate but Equal”

President Andrew Johnson vetoed the nation’s inaugural Civil Rights legislation because, in his view, it discriminated against white people and privileged Black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (which Congress enacted over the veto) bestowed citizenship upon all persons — except for certain American Indians — born in the United States and endowed all persons with the same rights as white people in terms of issuing contracts, owning property, suing or being sued or serving as witnesses. This law was proposed because the Supreme Court had ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that African Americans, free or enslaved, were ineligible as a matter of race for federal citizenship, and because many states had barred African Americans from enjoying even the most rudimentary civil rights.

Johnson vetoed the act in part because the citizenship provision would immediately make citizens of native-born Black people while European-born immigrants had to wait several years to qualify for citizenship via naturalization (which was then open only to white people). According to Johnson, this amounted to “a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the Negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence have just now been suddenly opened.” Johnson similarly opposed the provision in the act affording federal protection to civil rights, charging that it made possible “discriminating protection to colored persons.”

A key defect of the Civil Rights Act, according to Johnson, was that it established “for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the general government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” Johnson opposed as well the 14th Amendment, which decreed that states offer to all persons equal protection of the laws, a provision which he also saw as a wrongful venture in racial favoritism aimed at assisting the undeserving Negro.

In 1875, Congress enacted legislation that prohibited racial discrimination in the provision of public accommodations. Eight years later, in a judgment invalidating that provision, the Supreme Court disapprovingly lectured the Black plaintiffs, declaring that “when a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.”

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to carry out the order. Assailing the order, Representative Jamie Whitten, a Mississippi segregationist, complained that it would not so much prevent unfairness as “discriminate in favor of the Negro” — this at a time when anti-Black discrimination across the social landscape was blatant, rife and to a large extent, fully lawful.

Segregationist Southerners were not the only ones who railed against antidiscrimination laws on the grounds that they constituted illegitimate preferences for African Americans. In 1945, the New York City administrator Robert Moses inveighed against pioneering municipal antidiscrimination legislation in employment and college admissions. Displaying more anger at the distant prospect of racial quotas than the immediate reality of racial exclusions, Moses maintained that antidiscrimination measures would “mean the end of honest competition, and the death knell of selection and advancement on the basis of talent.”

Liberals, too, have attacked measures they deemed to constitute illicit racial preferencing on behalf of Black people. When the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, proposed “compensatory” hiring in the early 1960s — selection schemes that would give an edge to Black people on account of past victimization and the lingering disabilities caused by historical mistreatment — many liberals resisted. Asked about CORE’s demands, President John F. Kennedy remarked that he did not think that society “can undo the past” and that it was a mistake “to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion, or race, or color, or nationality.”

Kennedy’s comment that it would be a mistake “to begin” to assign quotas reflects a recurring misimpression that racial politics “begins” when those who have been marginalized make demands for equitable treatment.

When Kennedy spoke, unwritten but effective quotas had long existed that enabled white men to monopolize huge portions of the most influential and coveted positions in society. Yet it was only when facing protests against monopolization that he was moved to deplore status-based quotas.

This same dynamic has been recurrent in subsequent decades: Every major policy seeking to advance the position of Black people has been opposed on the grounds that it was race conscious, racially discriminatory, racially preferential and thus socially toxic. That racial affirmative action in university admissions and elsewhere has survived for so long is remarkable, given the powerful forces arrayed against it.

(continue reading)

[sixthsensewulf]

I just can't stop thinking of lines from D20. . Just the story telling from 7 comedians doing a role play game. Whether they are teenagers in a fantasy high school, 6 new Yorkers saving NYC, Candy, Fairy Tale characters or a crew on a starship.

Anyway speeches/lines I freaking love and just can't stop thinking about.

PiB's talk to Alphonse both times, but more the second one. For me it was 100% PiB talking to Alphonse, but speaking to himself, being a helper animal in the stories and that it's not his fault.

Kingston's speeches. There are too many to list here but god I love his speeches to Robert Moses before and in the stock exchange fight.

The Stepmother's speech to Baba Yaga. "I don't even have a name in my own story"

Rowan's speech to the American Dream as well as American Dream to Ricky.

Jawbone. .just Jawbone.. his speech to Adaine in FH:FY finale, literally made me sob.

Honestly back to TUC, Sofia on the Empire State Building moment.

Bill Seacaster to Fabian in the prison in front of The Bad Kids. I was heartbroken and mad.

Honestly weirdly Gepetto to Pinocchio in Pinocchio's story. Yes that moment is fucked but the fact the others saw it and immediately praised Pinocchio and told him he did the right thing.

"It's Gorgug, Keep Going"

"Listen here's the thing – I don't know what you kids are up to, but I do know one thing: laws are threats made by the dominant socio-economic, ethnic group in a given nation. It's just a promise of violence that's enacted and police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean? You guys want to make some bacon?"

I probably have more but my god. .I love this group of nerds.

I probably forgot context to some of them or what they were. But I am so grateful I have found D20.

[dwelling-on-downtowns]

if I had the opportunity to go back in time to beat up any one historical figure, it would be henry ford.

at first thought, I figured it would be henry kissinger because you know. it’s henry kissinger. but I quickly decided against it, because in this hypothetical, everybody is being given this opportunity and any good leftist hates henry kissinger so the line to get a shot at him would be so fucking long and at that point why bother.

so I swung back too far and considered rob ford briefly, he’s less well-known and would have a much shorter line, but the scale of his damage is limited to the ripple effects of the what he did to toronto and I figure there’s enough people in toronto to deal with him. I’m not even from toronto. (similarly, new yorkers can take care of robert moses)

the happy medium is ultimately henry ford. there would probably still be a line but much more manageable than henry kissinger, and much more satisfying than rob ford.

[blood-sucking-freaks]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Facts

-was originally supposed to be about a town full of cannibals instead of just the Sawyer family. This version was to be titled "Beyond the Valley of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Bubba Sawyer and Sally Hardesty were to return. Nubbins Sawyer would've survived, been left paralyzed, and tied to a tree by the Sawyer family.

-Bill Mosely was cast as Chop Top because he splayed Nubbins in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre parody called 'The Texas Chainsaw Manicure'.

-Bill Mosely played Chop Top as the vocalist in an avant-garde metal band formed in 1995 called The Cornbugs with Bucket Head, Pinchface, and Travis Dickerson. The band released five albums and two DVDs before their 2007 breakup. Their songs were heavily inspired by TCM and TCM2.

-Gunnar Hansen was offered to return as Bubba, though he turned down the role because the offer was too low.

-Dennis Hopper, Lefty Enright's actor, celebrated his 50th birthday on set and cut his birthday cake with a chainsaw.

-Tobe Hooper's son William Hooper tried to bring Bill Mosely back as Chop Top in a TCM short film. It would have been titled 'All American Massacre' and was supposed to be both a prequel and sequel to TCM2. It would have followed Chop Top's origins and his breakout from prison to embark on his own massacre. The project died out when William Hooper ran out of money to complete the film during post-production. Eventually a trailer for the film was leaked and can be watched on youtube.

-Edwin Neal, Nubbins actor in TCM confirmed that the reason Nubbins wasn't sent to war while Chop Top was was because Nubbins was too crazy.

-The family photo used in the advertisements, posters, and covers was a spoof of The Breakfast Club.

-In the original version, Stretch was going to be Lefty's illegitimate daughter.

-Lefty is Sally and Franklin's uncle.

-When Lefty is buying his chainsaws, Bubba's TCM chainsaw model, a Poulan 245A, can be seen on the wall.

-Chop Top's real name is Robert. His and Drayton's are the only two known real first names of the Sawyers.

-during filming, the main set caught on fire and when firefighters showed up, they thought they had stumbled upon a mass murderers body stash

[jewish-sideblog]

I remember disliking the whole tumblr movement of looking for like… idk foucuaing on goblins and gnomes when talking about antisemitism? I felt like it created an environment where a lot of people could claim that antisemitism is that, the goblins, which is not that serious is it? Like it was very disingenuous, too. And constantly felt guilty because of that, like a sort of idk. Too serious and ungrateful person. One of the worst “I was right” moments in my life.

Genuinely, like. Obviously these days we're seeing a fuckton more people ignoring or participating in antisemitism in every field. But even back in the day it was hard to get people to focus on non-goblin antisemitism in fantasy fiction!

I distinctly remember back when Dimension 20's Unsleeping City came out that I had massive problems with the plot. An actual historical Jewish man, Robert Moses, is brought back from the dead because he is simply that greedy. He oversees a secret cabal of blood libel vampires. He controls city finances. He attempts a modern deicide with Santa Claus. He is kept alive by a phylactery that can only be opened with the passphrase "Greed Is Good".

All of that comes from Brennan Lee Mulligan, who clearly didn't intend that story to be an antisemitic charcuterie board. He's married to a Jew, and the other Jewish character in the setting is handled extremely well. But I guess actual antisemitic canards are invisible to goyim unless a goblin or a TERF is involved. They genuinely think that antisemitism has to be direct, overt and intentional-- it isn't! It's all around us! It's in most stories.

I feel like I have to do a PS here because otherwise people will take this the complete wrong way-- I like D20 and Unsleeping City and I don't think that anybody involved should be cancelled. This was just my personal awakening to the fact that the creators I like the most, and the creators who think they are being the most careful, can still put antisemitic shit in their stories. What I'm saying here is that we need a much broader public understanding of what is and isn't okay than "goblins are bad".

[allwormdiet]

Tangle 6.1

Tangle is a very appropriate name for this arc bc my heart feels like it's been tied in knots

Another detail of Brockton Bay's fucked architecture and history. I wonder if this city got the Robert Moses treatment, or if the canyons making up the class divide are the result of a hundred little choices

Also, thank God Taylor still has the sense to not trust a single goddamn word that Kaiser says

Man. Parahumans just straight up are on a different level compared to regular humans, huh? Outnumbered 20-to-1, that means with three Undersiders and two of Faultline's people that's. Like a hundred people, who couldn't do jack shit in this battle. Tattletale basically sat out this fight from the sound of things, on account of not being a slugger like the others, so it was more like 25-to-1.

Y'know I guess it makes sense that if your ability is to shoot napalm out of your mouth you'd go by the name Spitfire, but that does feel a little on the nose

Meanwhile it is neat to see Gregor's power, I wonder how the hell he chooses the chemical effects he produces. Is it an innate knowledge or did he have to read some textbooks to get it down right? Maybe both?

These two strike up conversations in the weirdest circumstances, I swear to god

Brian. Brian you seem like a good guy, smart, nice, doing well for yourself professionally. What the fuck are you doing?

Is this a date? If it's a date then it's a horrible date idea. If it's not a date then why are you just inviting Taylor along? Is the clap on the shoulder meant to make this more platonic, or to make others think it's more platonic, or???

Fucking no wonder the ABB conscript is trying to get away, I'd be fleeing this conversation too, this is a nightmare

Lisa I know you're trying to be supportive but surely you can find a better way to support them than to make this. Get-together. Sound like a good idea.

Another reassurance that the system works, which just makes me wonder how true that really is. Also, this answers something I'd wondered about privately about how this truce was working; the Protectorate, PRT, and other government forces are handling the big-picture stuff and the daylight operations, while the villains are effectively taking the "night shift" and keeping up a 24/7 assault. No shit the ABB is cooked after this, there's no surviving that, especially with your heaviest hitter down on account of the missing fucking eyes

Also interesting to get the run-down on the Travelers' powers and, again, these guys seem crazy heavy-duty hitters. Hell are they doing?

Danny's gotta be out of his fucking mind with worry, even if he's playing it off. This isn't healthy, although I guess considering that Taylor's injuries the alternative isn't really in the cards

Current Thoughts

It's cool to see Taylor becoming so much more confident in her power, in her standing alongside the other Undersiders.

I'm still utterly confounded by whatever Brian is trying to do. Brian. Please talk to me. I don't know what your goal is but I'm like 80% sure this isn't how it's done

Uhhhh, fucking, what else. Cool to get more time with Gregor, learn his powers. Cool to learn more of the mechanisms of the truce.

This really does feel like the calm before the storm.

[scifrey]

you requested more Keepsakes prompts, and I have to say, I LOVE the way you write Eleanor. perhaps some little scene from her married life with Hob? general domestic bliss? or something less blissful, like getting into their first bad argument and figuring out how to deal with it?

alternatively, Hob and Morpheus go on holiday and Morph is very bad at taking vacations...

xo @hardly-an-escape

Oooooooooh. What an excellent prompt. Thank you!

Keepsakes: A Kissing Bough

Fandom: The Sandman Series: Hob Adherent Series Rating: Slightly Spicy. Please curate your experience accordingly. Pairing: Hob/Eleanor

Hob and his wife have been charged with finishing the decorations before Christmas Morning and the start of the Twelvetide celebrations.

Eleanor's parents call her 'Nell' at home. It is a common enough diminutive for Eleanor, as common as 'Hob' had been in the mid 1400s, when it seemed that every Robert he met went by it.

The problem is, Hob didn't know that was her nickname. They'd been married eleven months, and he'd been calling her 'El' the whole time.

But how was he to know? The Giffords only ever called her Eleanor in public, and called him the full 'Sir Gadlen' or, 'my son-in-law', even after his marrying into the family.

No friendly "Robert-my-boy!"s from Master Gifford as Hob had secretly hoped for, as his own father had once chortled while thumping him playfully on the shoulder. The man still resented Hob for his lack of old-family connections, for all that he'd mellowed toward Hob after seeing how seriously Hob took his duties as Husband and Father. And where Master Gifford led, his wife dutifully, dolefully followed. 

Not even a nice cordial "Robb dear" from Mistress Gifford in all those months.

So it is quite a surprise when, after the elder Mistress Gifford's after-supper lamp had finally burned down, and she declares her old eyes too weary to continue her needlework by firelight alone, she calls Eleanor 'Nell'.

Her husband had gone straight to bed after their meager supper, grumbling heartily about the privations of the Advent fast and how a morning of eggy pies and the Twelvetide feasts could not come fast enough.

With no husband to chivvy along before her, Mistress Gifford rises from her stately chair by the hearth in the Great Hall, and bestows each of the three Gadlens arrayed on the piled furs on the floor before it a fond kiss on the forehead. One to Hob, who helps steady her with a gentle hand on her elbow as she stoops, her own hand on his shoulder, to offer the kindness. Then one for her daughter, sat opposite him. And the last to her grandson, dozing with all the abandon of a small creature who knows that it is utterly safe and utterly loved, in his moses basket beside Hob's knee.

 As she kisses them, she murmurs, "Happy Christmas Robb, Nell, my wee little Redbreast."

"Nell?" Hob asks, as soon as his mother-in-law has creaked her way out of the room. "Why have you not told me you are called Nell?"

"It is grim," she pouts. "It sounds very much like knell , wouldn't you say?" This is accompanied by a theatrical shudder that makes her bosom jiggle, and so burns its way into Hob's memories for that alone. "Death knell."

"Ah, never mind that. Death's a mug's game," Hob says, and cups her fire-warmed cheeks in his palms to bestow his own kisses on his wife. "I'm never going to die, so you shall never need ring out for me." Eleanor giggles as he digs his fingers into her hips for leverage, and scoots her closer to him, so he can bury his face against the pleasing softness of her neck. "Though you may keen in other ways for me, should you like."

"Hob!" El laughs. "Pray, do not leave a mark , we have to sit at the top table with my father in the morn—"

He had promised El that he would tell her his secret when they'd been married forty years, but here, sitting by the fire in the Great Hall, surrounded by warmth and plenty, the proof of his devotion to this life wheezing out the sweetest little snores a babe could make, he was tempted to break that oath and confess all.

There was something about the Twelvetide that encouraged confession, even now as a Protestant celebration, without a confessional to be had in a Catholic church.

"Enough," El gasps at length, pink-cheeked and panting prettily. "We have work to do, and if you wake Robyn I will be very cross with you."

The elder Giffords had left their daughter and son-in-law, with their youthful energy, to finish the kissing boughs before Christmas morning. It was well on midnight now, the feeble light from the rush-tapers dwindling and the fire in the big stone hearth beginning to fade to nothing but toasty-red coal. It was just the right sort of fire for toast.

Hob says as much.

"It is always one appetite or another with you," El huffs with a roll of her eyes, but rises. "I shall go to the kitchen, but I will share not a morsel with you when I return if these last boughs are not woven when I return. And do not throw the remaining greenery into the fire to make it look like you finished, Robert Gadlen," she scolds, catching him thinking that very thing. "There are to be twelve Crowns of Green, and I know how to count."

Hob plucks the hem of her skirt off the furs, and brings it to his lips for a revenant kiss. "As my Queen commands." 

She frees herself with a smirk and an imperious tug, and sways away to the kitchen.

"There, Robyn my lad," Hob says to his son, who has opened his dark eyes just long enough to take in the spectacle of Hob's oath. "That is how you keep your wife happy. Learn the art from me, my fine wee apprentice, and you will make of me a very indulgent and biddable grandfather in no time at all."

Robyn smacks his lips, clearly unimpressed with his father's training, and returns to sleep.

Hob is in the process of tying off the ribbons of the final garland when El returns with a napkin bundle consisting of a fresh bottle of wine, an old loaf of bread, and a tiny pot of new butter. 

Hob prefers old butter, likes the tangy burst of salt on his tongue, and his darling wife knows this. As such, she has also nicked one of the leftover bundles of sea salt that are meant to be gifts for her father's servants at his annual St. Stephan's feast, so Hob can powder his toast as he likes.

This is what love is, he muses, as he cuts them slices of bread with his belt-knife, and El retrieves the toasting forks from their hook by the hearth. Old bread, and stolen salt, a sneaky taste of butter before the advent fast is officially over, and a babe sleeping with his little milk-pout mouth gaping open like a little boor.

As Hob threads the bread onto the fork tines, and holds them carefully over the coals, El busies herself by tidying up the leftover sprigs of greenery. Bringing the winter growth indoors to remind the world that no winter lasts forever, that life persists and waited under the snow even now, is a tradition older than Hob himself.

He's seen Twelvetide traditions come and go, but this one persists, as immutable and comforting as knowing that in a year ending with eighty-nine, Hob's Stranger will be waiting for him.

It is nice to be younger than something.

El bundles her posy of leftover holly and mistletoe, finishing it with a crimson-red ribbon, then stands and dangles it over his head to coax a kiss out of Hob. He leans back against her legs, tips his chin up obligingly, and lets her fold down to meet him.

"If you continue to distract me, I will burn the toast, dearest wife," Hob murmurs into her mouth.

"That would be a waste," El agrees. She releases Hob to his duties, but does not relinquish the posy.

They eat toast, and brush away the crumbs and butter grease on the napkin, and share the bottle of wine between them, and laugh, and whisper in hushed voices. El holds the posy over the moses basket, and they kiss Robyn's fat cheeks. She dangles it over her head, and Hob kisses her eyelids, the tip of her nose, the dear swell of her chin. She loops the ribbon on his belt, and takes him in her mouth. When he has come to his pleasure with his fist jammed in his own mouth to prevent waking the baby, he hooks the posy on her belt and breaks his fast in the cool darkness before the dawn.

In all, they have quite a splendid Christmas morning indeed.

Like her mother before her, El chivvies her boys up to bed before the night grows too light. Robyn wakes long enough to whimper for his own break of fast, and Hob cuddles El up between his legs on the bed so he can hook his chin over her shoulder and watch Robyn's eyelashes flutter as he drinks his fill.

Morning will come soon enough.

The Christmas cake would be served to mark the official end of Advent, Hob's father-in-law would get his eggy pie, and they would all go to church so Eleanor could show off her new son to her old parish. The days of the Saints would be filled with acts of charity, feasting, dancing and delight. Someone would find the Bean in the Bread and be named the Lord of Misrule, and they would play silly games, and drink too much, and wrestle, and jest, and sing. On the Twelveth Night, Hob would gift his wife with the handsome leather-bound notation book he'd commissioned for her, a place for her to record her favorite composition. To Robyn, who was too young to know what presents and Twelvetide were, he would gift a handsome toy duck he'd spent the Advent carving. It had slappy leather feet attached to little wheels with hobnails, which clattered and flapped when one towed it along on a string.

And then the decorations will be removed from the house in order to preserve the good luck accrued through the Twelvetide, and the Gadlens would bid the Giffords a Happy New Year, and tromp home to their estate on the unfashionable south bank. Hob would review the profits for the year with Mr. Fletcher, his steward, and visit his warehouses with a gift of ale and an afternoon's leisure for his dockworkers, and come Candlemas, he'd join his groundsmen in rolling up their sleeves and readying the fields to feed the estate anew on Plough Monday.

But for now, Hob will keep his peace.

Christmas is not a time for such a confession as the one that teased at him.

"Dearest Nell," he says. "Darling Nell. My sweet call to ruination."

"No, no, you brute, stop calling me that," she gasps as he wriggled the three of them down into a comfortable nest of feathered pillows and thick wool blankets.

"My ruin?" Hob asks, mouth resting against her nape as Robyn stretched and unlatched, offering his fist to his father now that his tummy is full and he is ready to be spoiled in other ways.

Eleanor rolls over to hand the baby to Hob to wind.

"That name, you wretched, wretched man," she complains, burying herself into his side as he pats Robyn's bottom obligingly. "Call me Nell again and I shall really make you regret it."

"If that is your command, my queen, my wife, my Eleanor." He kisses her crown, her forehead, her shoulder with each oath. "Sweet El."

He expects her to reply to him with haughty teasing, but when she does not, he shifts Robyn out of the way to look at her face. She is already asleep.

"You see, my wee lad?" Hob whispers to his son. "That is how it is done."

Robyn spits up on his shoulder to show his appreciation for the lesson.

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

What Dreams May Be Offered - D20's American Dream

In the finale of the first season of Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, all but one of the Heroes of New York are offered everything the American Dream believes they want, and all of them refuse, and what they're offered and how they reject the offer are great pieces of capstone characterization.

Ricky is offered a life of safety and a chance to live the life his parents always dreamed he would. He asks if it's only his dream, and states that everyone should have their own dream. His parents were immigrants, so this makes sense - to him, everyone being able to get what they want if they work for it is the American Dream.

Sophia is offered her husband back and a quiet home in the suburbs, her deepest desire, and she says no, partially because she just saw him when the Dream momentarily killed her. She rejects this because her duty to the Concrete Fist demands that she and her husband live in the city, and this duty is part of what defines her.

Kugrash is offered the life he gave up. Life as a man free of his curse. He rejects it, saying that he gave up that life, and that he's learned to live with that failure. Kugrash also exposes, for a moment, the corruption of Robert Moses' American Dream by making it a rat like him - a rat from the rat race he saw in hell. As a former stockbroker, he knows that corruption far too well.

Misty/Rowan is offered a life of parties and freedom and luxury, free of the ritual she has to do. She tells it that it doesn't have to enter the real world to be real and that that's why she loves the American Dream. It reveals the hidden depths that have been hidden at, as well as a desire to protect the people that provide for her. She doesn't just take, she gives back, not only in the form of Hope, as Nod alluded to, but in the form of putting her life on the line in a hopeless situation.

Kingston is offered the life he gave up in protection of New York. He sees a life where he doesn't have to sacrifice himself, where his duty is done. Kingston asks "But at what cost?", putting the needs of others before himself, as he always has done, before telling the Dream that, in no unceratin terms, he will stop it, and that he's ready to die doing so.

But then, in speaking to the Vox Phantasma, it doesn't offer to fulfill a dream. It knows that Pete, in that moment, has everything he wants - friends, a home, and a sense of purpose. Instead, it makes a fascinating mistake. The American Dream tries to compare itself to the Vox Phantasma through identity - it tells Pete it wants to be who it knows it is, a reference to Pete's gender identity, which pisses Pete off. Ally, as Pete, then requests to make an Arcana check to see the Dream as it truly is, and, in classic Ally fashion, roles at Nat 20. This Nat 20 allows Pete insight into the eldritch Dream, and that the American Dream must remain formless.

So, yeah.