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crystalelemental · 8 months ago

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Okay so I seem to be in endgame of Triangle Strategy. Chapters are coming in as one-shots, no sub-parts, and I made a big decision the game prompted me would be the big path divergence decision.

...which implies the others weren't. I'm sure there must be some differentiation, but now I'm thinking about it and like...how different are the other paths? Questions for round 2.

Anyway, Decisions Made Thus Far:

Visited Aesfrost (meaningless)

Refuse to hand over Roland (this feels like a big split path but maybe not?)

Refuse Silvio's invitation (they spoiled his intentions with the side dialogue)

Reveal the illicit salt trade (easy decision; we'd be the fall guys otherwise)

Refuse to surrender the Rosellans (yeah, fuck Hyzante)

Destroy the bridge and negotiate (seemed sensible, though blowing up the warship was a close second)

Oust the royalists (Benedict, whatever dad has to say can wait for actual crises to resolve. Also the village isn't great but the Royalist situation seemed worst)

Ally with Aesfrost to defeat Hyzante (killing Hyzante has always been my endgame, and Benedict is talking a lot of sense. Frederica, I hear your concerns, but we can discuss that after we won.)

Most of these were pretty easy decisions, though some had secondary options that I was drawn to just to know what's going on, but it felt like the less sane choice in-character.

I am admittedly slightly surprised at Roland leaving? Particularly the method. I won't claim it felt forced or entirely out of nowhere, just...something about it doesn't quite settle with me.

I mentioned in a previous post about it that a lot of characters felt very flat in your party, because while they have ideas, they're marked by this feeling of "strong convictions, loosely held." They can be swayed. As you approach endgame, some of these decisions won't be swayed at all. The last two, you have a party split over, as the proponent of each (Roland, Frederica, and Benedict respectively for both) will not budge on their stance. Which is nice! We get a bit of priority and importance out of them. But how their characters have solidified doesn't feel entirely...connected? In some ways?

Like okay, Benedict. Apparently, despite his super devoted approach to serving your father, was super pissed at him the entire time, because of how he and the previous king treated Serenoa and his mother. It's a cool reveal, I like it! But it's also the kind of thing that feels like we just established that now for something to talk about as far as Benedict's motivations go, when "he's just that devoted to the success of the house" already kinda spoke for itself.

Serenoa himself also gets hit a bit by this transition, as we're getting into territory where it feels like Benedict is in full control despite this being a team decision. I get that this is his plan, but Serenoa is passing off negotiations and leading the battle announcement to him, when that...never quite felt like their dynamic before? The Aesfrost route is themed around freedom, and I get the irony that Serenoa seems to be intentionally surrendering his to his advisor for his own benefit, but it doesn't feel wholly in line. Or maybe it does. He never really makes his own decisions, we always use the scales. I retract this one, actually, this one checks out.

Roland feels like the worst, though. Again, get that he's the kind soul and likes to help others. I get that the loss of life and the threat to the citizens is a big deal. But dude. My literal brother. Listen. There is no way you're this stupid. Like, you saw Hyzante's deal! You know! You were literally the first person, aside from Frederica, to get really mad about the slave class thing! And now it's fine? Because if it means no war then I guess we can just subject these people to eternal exploitation and torture? This one feels the worst of them. I get that Roland is kind of an impotent king and is abdicating responsibility, but even for him that's pretty bad.

Maybe I'm being nitpicky. Maybe they don't have enough character for this to be out of character, or maybe I didn't have a good read on what anyone was like prior to this. I don't dislike the general approach. I actually like Benedict's nefarious approaches, it gives him a lot more personality as the tactician. I like that Serenoa, as a leader, had the strength to lead Wolffort to this point, but with the big decisions abdicates a lot of responsibility to Benedict. I even like that Roland's kind of a piece of shit! I think there's something to be said for the weight of leadership changing someone in not-so-great ways, and how a king can be brought to see some as expendable for the greater good. But it also doesn't...feel as connected to what came before. Maybe I learn more about other stances and why people are the way they are in other routes, and it helps it click. I'm trying not to be too judgmental without full information, but as we approach the finish of one route, I'm going to start solidifying opinions. I'll keep my stance on things flexible until then.

With the exception of Avlora still not being here. I'm aligned with Aesfrost! Someone get Cordelia her knight back! Come on, you can't introduce this, separate them like a chapter later in the most annoying way possible, and just never bring it back!

#triangle strategy

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dustedmagazine · 1 year ago

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James Brandon Lewis/Red Lily Quartet — For Mahalia, with Love (Tao Forms)

Photo by Henri Selmer

For Mahalia, With Love by James Brandon Lewis / Red Lily Quintet

James Brandon Lewis reconvenes the Red Lily Quintet—with Kurt Knuffke on cornet, Chris Hoffman on cello, William Parker on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums—for a set inspired by songs associated with Mahalia Jackson, the towering figure in gospel music in the previous century. The group develops the brief melodies of these traditional devotional tunes into vehicles for improvisation and exploration, creating a joyful noise that celebrates Jackson and also recalls the exploration of themes associated with the Black church by Charles Mingus, Albert Ayler and Roland Kirk.

In some cases, such as “Swing Low” and “Wade in the Water,” the source material is readily apparent while in others it is less so. The set begins appropriately and gently with Lewis’s adaptation of one of Jackson’s signature songs, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which provided the name for a radio show that she hosted in the 1950s and with which she wowed the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Lewis’s phrasing well captures Jackson’s meditation on a tune that, like the rest of those here, is beautiful in its simplicity rather than showy.

The quintet was rock-solid on its first outing, Jesup Wagon (2021), and is even more together this time around. Parker is, predictably, outstanding here, delving deep into the music whether soloing, as on “Go Down Moses” and the first minute of “Elijah Rock,” or providing bedrock support throughout. Hoffman’s cello often blends with Parker’s bass, somewhat like the dynamic between the two bassists in some of Coltrane’s bands. Knuffke once more serves as the perfect foil for Lewis as they alternately trade leads and blend their voices. His solo on “Deep River” well exemplifies his approach, building on the foundation established by Lewis before him, he ranges from flutters to searching cries consistent with the funereal theme of the song. Taylor, along with Parker, holds everything together, being equally effective in delivering frantic rolls, as on “Were You There,” and hand percussion, as on “Calvary,” and there are numerous satisfying moments when he and Parker lock in, such as the last couple minutes of “Elijah Rock”

Lewis’s ever-deepening mastery of the tenor is naturally on full display here. His playing, like this recording, delves into the history of jazz without ever sounding formulaic with a tone that is simultaneously ancient and cutting-edge. Here, his horn transforms into the voice of the great gospel singer, channeling as well the voices that she was influenced by and that influenced her.

Those who purchase the CD or vinyl versions can hear Lewis’s playing in a different context on a live recording of his composition for sax and strings with the Lutoslawski Quartet. Titled These Are Soulful Days, the piece interweaves themes from the spirituals and thus serves as a companion to the Red Lily Quartet recording. This fresh context for Lewis’s vision unfolds through the tranquil and plaintive “Prologue – Humility” and four movements to “Epilogue – Resilience.” The movements interweave more and less recognizable phrases from the gospel songs, particularly the dramatic eruption of “Wade in the Water” in Movement III, while “Epilogue” gets fairly noisy and atonal. An encore concludes the set in the form of a lyrical solo sax performance of “Take Me to the Water.”

For Mahalia, with Love, like Jesup Wagon and Lewis’s “Molecular” releases, is fairly high-concept, but the music is spunky and easy to enjoy, with plenty of groove and intensity. The bare nature of the source melodies is well-suited to jazz exploration (as successive generations of musicians have discovered). Lewis is still too young to be considered a jazz elder statesman (and national treasure), but he is steadily building a body of work and a perspective commensurate with that status.

Jim Marks

#james brandon lewis #red lily quartet #for mahalia with love #tao forms #jim marks #albumreview #dusted magazine #jazz #Kurt Knuffke #chad taylor #william parker #chris hoffman #mahalia jackson

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victorlincolnpine · 10 months ago

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The Fitzgerald, the Gabberpaw gang and the Ratinac Shipping Company

The godly year of 1975 is when the god ship, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sank. Extrapolating the date based on the Great Godly War, it lands on the year 274aGW. Carrying taconite pellets, an apparent key ingredient of God Metal and a source of black metal for rodent metalwork, there was a plan to steal a large amount of these pellets by the now defunct Gabberpaw gang, who were known for selling black metal weapons in the hidden market. However, this turned foul when the noreastern winds of November rolled in, leading to the deaths of most all of the gang members involved save for two souls. Both survivors were in a catatonic state when they were discovered on the shores of Shiphome Point, but they eventually described the event as "a storm that scared the gods themselves, and ripped the Fitzgerald clean in two".

This event would cause the majority of the rodent population in Great Paw to avoid sailing the lakes for several winters, all too frightened to dare challenge storms that terrify gods. This changed when the Ratinac Shipping Company was founded in the year 285aGW. The company promised safe travels across the lakes in their own rodent-built ships.While this did not change the minds of the populace, it did get more rodents back out at sea. To date only 3 rodent vessels have sunk on their voyages: the Roland (christened by Lord Roland when he acquired RSC), the Gabber (christened ironically when RSC was founded) and the Muria (Christened by Lord Roland as part of a trading deal with the city of Murida, Rodentia), a superb record for the sheer number of trips made.

Before being acquired by Lord Roland, RSC worked under an honor based pay system. Workers would be assured a share of the profits of any given voyage they sailed on, with no sailor being given priority over another. This would often lead to sailors "double-sailing", or starting a new voyage immediately after having finished another. This was often frowned upon, because double-sailing easily led to exhaustion for sailors. However, no one would stop a sailor from doing this unless they looked too tired to go on. This changed when Lord Roland took over, as the Lord instated a policy of double-sailing by default for all sailors, whether they were exhausted or not. This among other things led to waves of discontent amid the sailors, and talks of unionizing were commonplace.

In response to the talks of unionizing, Lord Roland began to hire thugs and hitmice to violently suppress his employees. This ultimately led to the fateful attack in the summer of 309aGW, and Roland's death two seasons later in the winter.

#small saga #fan project #great paw au

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yuichi-ro · 3 years ago

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Exchanging literature with Roland. Archives of the church passing his hands. Tomes of vampiric decent passing yours. Each one filled with knowledge of the other neither of you had experienced before. Steeped in blood, hate and truth about one another. Unstomachable to most. Yet filling the two of you with butterflies every time you meet in private for such an exchange.

Until they change to something else. When history is regurgitated in similar words but different leather bound books. What you both seek to understand about the other is not laced together in the items you both trade off. A betrayal of your own kind of sorts. What you seek isn't residing in the past.

It lurks in the way you find an adorable little doodle tied to the book Roland gave you. It creeps into the way you place dried flowers on the books you pass over to him. In the way that the book rests under a bevy of other things when you two meet up.

From letters, doodles, pastries and more.

All lied a top the books you come hand in hand with as you both have been doing. Transcripts pushed aside to show you the beautiful little cake Roland picked up that morning to share. Pamphlets tucked up porcelain saucers because the coffee shop you told him about has a press that makes coffee you could simply die for.

You've both scoured the pages. Front to back. Searching for things you perhaps missed about your own kind. As well as the other before you. To understand it all just to turn up failing in a contextual sense. What you sought was never bound in the pages seething with rage and pity diverted to the other. It lay before you in the way he laughs at the frosting on his nose. Or simply in the way you look at him when he's telling you something so mundane. Answers spilling out before the both of you in real time.

It's in the way you both read the other like the books that pass your hands. Cherished to the deepest part of your souls. Unwritten and yet when your eyes meet. It's a story as old as time itself. And one that never tires.

#👉👈 i don't like this man ok #i uh....dont wanna talk about roland or anything shhh #vnc x reader #vnc roland #vnc #the case study of vanitas roland #the case study of vanitas x reader #the case study of vanitas #roland x reader #roland fortis x reader #roland fortis #vanitas no carte #vanitas no shuki #vanitas no shuki x reader #vanitas no carte x reader

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hopefulstarfire · 2 years ago

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The funniest thing with the ocs is that like. Once Kat and Seto get together, Kat throws Thanksgiving dinner over at their house. Right.

So you have her with her godparents, her Memaw, her Uncle Wes. Maddox is there with Rishid and the kids. And if Rishids there they have to bring Marik and Ishizu, and that means bringing Nana and Yugi and Téa and Grandpa bc of course.

Then you have to equate in that Raphael is her cousin. So him and Ellie and them are coming.

And also Max is there. Because he's still her big brother.

And Iris is gonna be there with Meredith and Roland and River bc they're Seto and Mokubas family. And Iris is bringing Alister.

And also obviously if Raphael and Alister are there, they're bringing Valon and Serenity, who would bring Joey and Mai because they're family too and Chelsea and Vance love them.

And while we're at it why not just invite everyone then?

So Kaibas just. Stuck figuring out how to carve a damn turkey and break bread with several people who have tried to kill him over the years because his family, in his quote, has bad taste.

Like he isn't married to the girl who's brother in law kidnapped Mokuba.

He doesn't know how his life came down to this. He doesn't think he'd trade it. But it's like he was 15 and hated everyone and didn't trust a soul because of Gozaburo and now here he is with a real family and it's Mads up of people he originally hated and now has begrudgingly come to care about.

#kenz musings #yugioh ocs #ygo ocs #you painted colors in my heart i could never replace #seto kaiba

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nicklloydnow · 2 years ago

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“A wave of terror and horror is breaking over us all. I don’t have the heart to do much besides wait for news to trickle out from the hospital in Pennsylvania where Salman was taken by helicopter and let the memories come back to me—my memories of Salman Rushdie over the 33 years that have passed since Ayatollah Khomeini publicly sentenced him to death.

(…)

Another cowardly soul comes to mind. This one was once France’s foreign minister, Roland Dumas. La Règle du jeu, a literary magazine that Salman and I and some others founded in 1990, invited Salman to come to France to meet up with some of his Parisian friends. As I remember, the minister behaved shamefully, decreeing that Salman, a citizen of Europe, needed a visa to enter France. Then he denied the visa on the grounds that he couldn’t guarantee Salman’s security. Dumas’s own colleague, Minister of Culture Jack Lang, protested. My friend the businessman François Pinault offered to lend us a plane and to provide the necessary protection. President François Mitterrand himself had to settle the matter. And lo, the France that was hoping for trade deals and arms sales yielded to the spirit of Voltaire. Bienvenue, Monsieur Salman.

Yet another spineless individual: Prince Charles. In 1993, I met him at a lunch hosted by the British embassy in Paris. “Salman is not a good writer,” growled the prince when I asked him what he thought of the whole affair, adding that “protecting him costs England’s crown dearly.” On this, Martin Amis, another of Salman’s friends, later remarked: “It costs a lot more to protect the Prince of Wales, who has not, as far as I know, produced anything of interest.” The press and public opinion, for once, took the side of the persecuted writer.

(…)

I remember a conversation we had in front of an audience in London, where Salman said how much he missed the Islam of his childhood in India. “The greatest of Muslim thought has been broad-minded,” he explained. “When I think back to my grandparents’ time, my parents’ time, Islam strove to be cosmopolitan. It raised questions and engaged in argument. It was alive.” Salman is the son of that form of Islam. He obviously has nothing against blasphemy, because blasphemy, in his eyes, is inseparable from freedom of expression and thought; but neither do I believe that he has ever blasphemed against the creed of his parents.

I remember a conversation between us, in Paris, on the Jewish radio station RCJ, when he speculated on what the fatwa would have entailed if it had been issued in the era not of the fax machine but of social media. “A tweet is all it takes,” he said, as I recall, “to stir up the planet. Five minutes on YouTube is enough to trigger simultaneous demonstrations throughout the world. If my fatwa had occurred in the internet age, would it have been fatal? I don’t know.” Now he knows. Alas.

(…)

I remember a day on the beach in Antibes, the pleasure of being alive, the noon sun, heat waves rippling as far as you could see, sharing a love of movies and actresses, especially Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, the real owner of the Casa Malaparte in Capri (which Godard used as his film’s main setting). That day, Salman wanted nothing so much as to be able one day to do a remake of Dr. No or From Russia With Love. The good life. An appetite for living and for multiplying the ways of living. The opposite of a condemned man.

(…)

I mull over our dinners together in New York in recent years. He didn’t want to hear any more about the fatwa. We talked about François Rabelais, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Laurence Sterne, George Eliot (a writer he could never get into), and V. S. Naipaul, whose death had devastated him. Literature before and above all else! The wish, faced with the fracas of the world, to say, “Please, turn down the sound!” Which obviously did not prevent him, a few months ago, at the very beginning of the war in Ukraine, from deciding that it was urgent for us to pen an appeal for sanctions against Russia and to help persuade Sting and Sean Penn to join the campaign.

What has struck me, over all these years, is the quiet heroism of my friend. He understood very well that, from time to time, a Western government would expel a fake Iranian diplomat and that this might be out of concern for his safety because of the fatwa. He knew that self-styled friends of the Muslim people were still insisting, despite the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other slaughters, that no one had the right to offend others’ faith and that, if harm should befall the offender, he had only himself to blame. And never did a speaking engagement go by without his being asked the eternal question: Knowing everything he knew today, did he ever regret having written The Satanic Verses, a work that has followed him like a curse?

(…)

And once—just once, a long time ago—I heard him make an odd remark about the knack master killers have for ruminating on their vengeance and carrying it out coldly when least expected. Think Mussolini and the Rosselli brothers; Stalin and Ignace Reiss; Putin and the poisoned oligarchs. And one day, a Shiite Ramón Mercader whom no one would see coming.

I believe that is where things stood, last Friday at the Chautauqua Institution, when Salman Rushdie saw the man who meant to execute him leap onto the stage.

Will this still be where things stand when he emerges from the hell of pain in which I imagine him? The artist in him will continue to believe that life is a tragedy, a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot. And he will not be surprised to hear friends tell him that if one can be Dickens, Balzac, and Tagore in a single life, one could well be considered immortal.

But he will read the article in Iran, the semi-official newspaper of the regime, which, while he was fighting death, rejoiced that “the devil’s neck” was “struck with a razor.” He will see the ultraconservative newspaper Kayhan pronouncing a blessing, while he was recovering, on “the hand of the man who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife.”

And Salman will have to get used to the idea, one that always petrified him, of being a human symbol, a hostage in a war of the worlds in which, like it or not, his own life and death have become everybody’s business. That is why those of us who could not protect him—all of us—now have a duty to perform.

This act of terror against his body and his books is an absolute act of terror against all the world’s books. Such an outrage against freedom of expression calls for a ringing response.

Individual nations will have their say. The international community, too, must signal to the sponsors of this crime that this Salman Rushdie affair has created a new division, a time before and a time after.

As for his friends, his peers, media, and others for whom public opinion counts for something, we all have a commitment to make. And that is to ensure that the author of The Satanic Verses receives the highest of literary honors. To see that, in the name of all his fellow authors and in his own name, Salman Rushdie receives the Nobel Prize in Literature that is due to be awarded in a few weeks.”

“In October, the Swedish Academy will have the opportunity both to chip away at its record of overlooking many of the most profound writers in its field of vision and to help correct its woeful hesitation in standing up for the values it ought to champion. In the mid-nineteen-eighties, Salman Rushdie’s masterpieces, “Midnight’s Children” and “Shame,” had been translated into Persian and were admired in Iran as expressions of anti-imperialism. Everything changed on February 14, 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini condemned as blasphemous “The Satanic Verses,” a novel that he hadn’t bothered to read, and issued a fatwa calling for the author’s death. Khomeini’s edict helped inspire book burnings and vicious demonstrations against Rushdie from Karachi to London.

Rushdie, who could never have anticipated such a reaction to his work, spent much of the next decade in hiding and under heavy guard. The literary world was hardly unanimous in his defense. Roald Dahl, John Berger, and John le Carré were some of the writers who judged Rushdie to have been insufficiently attentive to clerical sensitivities in Tehran. Among the more cowardly acts of the time was the Swedish Academy’s refusal to issue a statement in support of Rushdie. The Academy waited twenty-seven years—a period during which booksellers in the United States and in Europe were firebombed and Rushdie’s Japanese translator was murdered––before it roused itself to condemn the fatwa as a “serious violation of free speech.” Stern stuff.

Rushdie, for his part, behaved with impeccable bravery and, even more remarkably, with good humor. As he put it in a recent essay, “While I had not chosen the battle, it was at least the right battle, because in it everything that I loved and valued (literature, freedom, irreverence, freedom, irreligion, freedom) was ranged against everything I detested (fanaticism, violence, bigotry, humorlessness, philistinism, and the new offense culture of the age).”

Through it all, Rushdie never stopped writing, and, eventually, he emerged from his highly sequestered existence and resumed teaching, lecturing, and enjoying himself. The tabloids seemed aghast that he would dare go to parties, concerts, and ballgames, as if this somehow undermined his standing as a hero of the free word. He didn’t care. He was so insistent on living his life without performing the role of a “Statue of Liberty,” as he put it, that he played himself on an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” counselling Larry David on the forbidden pleasures of “fatwa sex.” Solzhenitsyn was capable of many deeds, but not that.

At the same time, no one in our era has been a more tireless champion of free speech. As an essayist and as the president of pen America, Rushdie spoke up for artists, writers, and journalists everywhere who were under assault. He has been especially vigilant in recent years about threats to free expression in the two largest democracies: India, where he was born and raised, and the United States, his adopted home for the past two decades. His judgments could sting. When a group of six writers refused to attend a pen gala, in 2015, because it was honoring the editors of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Rushdie said, “If pen as a free-speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name.” Of the writers who spurned the dinner, he said, “I hope nobody ever comes after them.”

(…)

As a literary artist, Rushdie is richly deserving of the Nobel, and the case is only augmented by his role as an uncompromising defender of freedom and a symbol of resiliency. No such gesture could reverse the wave of illiberalism that has engulfed so much of the world. But, after all its bewildering choices, the Swedish Academy has the opportunity, by answering the ugliness of a state-issued death sentence with the dignity of its highest award, to rebuke all the clerics, autocrats, and demagogues—including our own—who would galvanize their followers at the expense of human liberty. Freedom of expression, as Rushdie’s ordeal reminds us, has never come free, but the prize is worth the price.”

“When the Rushdie affair took off in early 1989, America’s campus culture wars had only just begun. Although I was riveted by both controversies, I would not have connected them at the time. What was then called political correctness (now called “woke”) seemed to be something of a different order than the command of a religious ruler to execute a literary figure in the name of the Muslim faith.

Yet the professors who kicked off the campus culture wars did see a link. They argued that globalization requires us to demote or abolish the Western civilization narrative. Eurocentrism must go, they said, since the sensitivities of ethnically non-Western students were on the line.

(…)

In those days, there was plenty of academic controversy around Samuel P. Huntington’s 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations. Probably no book has more successfully predicted the war on terror that soon followed, or the rise of China that preoccupies us today. Yet academics uniformly slammed Huntington’s book for the sin of “essentialism.” Huntington was supposedly guilty of overplaying cultural difference, while underplaying the extent to which cultural borders overlap, interpenetrate, and blend. In other words, the same academics who treated cultural difference as real and significant — especially when criticizing the West — could turn around and “deconstruct” the supposed illusion of culture when the issue was non-Western intolerance. For academics, Huntington’s book became one more reason to shun the teaching of Western civilization, and indeed to abandon the word “civilization” itself.

(…)

Surveys now show that up to two-thirds of students approve of shouting down campus speakers, while almost a quarter believe that violence can be used to cancel a speech. These are the views of the generation that grew up without required courses in Western civilization, a course the core theme of which was the long, bloody, and difficult path by which our freedoms were conceived and established. Those courses nurtured a sense of reverence around our liberties, and a sense of shame in those violating the liberties of others. We have lost both the reverence and the shame.

The upshot is that globalization has made us more vulnerable to foreign threats, while our misguided response to globalization has damaged our greatest weapon against those very threats: our regard for our own tradition of liberty, and the principles that lay behind it. Our horror at the assault on Rushdie is a sign that there is life in our tradition still. The culturally alien nature of the attack reminds us that our tradition of freedom is real, distinctive, and worth preserving. Yet our continuing reluctance to affirm our own history and principles — especially in our schools — means that time is running short. Freedom, so to speak, is on a ventilator. We cannot remain a “safe haven for exiled writers” if we are not a safe haven for ourselves.”

#rushdie #salman rushdie #bernard henri levy #levy #huntington #samuel huntington #clash of civilizations #free speech #freedom of speech #first amendment #nobel prize #western civilization #stanley kurtz

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the-silvertonguewitch · 4 years ago

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Some thoughts, now that I’ve finished my re read of TSC

-When Lyra reach the Blue Hotel, she finds Nur Huda already there and waiting for her, but Pan, who’s been travelling with Nur Huda, isn’t. Nur Huda seems to know her way around the Blue Hotel. If Pan isn’t waiting outside with her, it could be because, while humans might come and go as they please in the Blue Hotel, once daemons get inside, they – technically – can’t leave. That would explain why so many people who go there don’t return (they’d rather stay there with their daemons than leave without them) and why people that do return from there appear “diminished” (TSC, 609). Wild guess: It’s possible that in order to leave with Pan, Lyra will have to hide him inside of her, make him invisible, like people’s daemons from Will’s world. That way she’ll trick the zarghuls there into believing that she’s leaving the Blue Hotel alone. The alchemist Agrippa also predicted that Lyra would find her daemon again, but not in the way she’d expect (i.e., that Pan would become an “internal” daemon, perhaps).

-On her way to Seleukeia, Lyra meets a man with two apparent purposes in the story: to give Lyra a set of stories telling cards called a “Myriorama”, and to warn her that Seleukeia isn’t safe. The story he tells the little boy and his mother sharing their cabin involves two soldiers, one wanting to shoot a giant bird that stole their horses, and the other convincing the first not to shoot, since killing the bird would also kill the horses. Wild guess: this is another warning intended for Lyra. She’s the bird. The first soldier is Olivier Bonneville. The second one is Abdel Ionides. The man with the Myriorama is akin to those fairies in disguise (undercover fairies, you know which ones) in children’s stories. These fairies test people, often travelers, asking them for some food and rewarding them if they accept to share, or punishing them if they don’t. Lyra, who shares her food with the little boy and his mother, is rewarded with an honest warning and a useful magical item.

-After being shot in the leg, Malcolm takes a train to Aleppo. The train makes an unexpected stop somewhere in order to board someone important, or several important people. This is a direct parallel to the events of chapter 18 (“Malcolm in Geneva”), where another train is highjacked by the newly appointed President of the High Council of the Magisterium and his suite. That president is assassinated soon after and replaced by Marcel Delamare. Not so wild guess: Malcolm just passed out on a train that’s getting filled with members of the High Council of the Magisterium. Delamare is among them and he knows about a burly, ginger “Matthew” Polstead working against the Magisterium, so Malcolm could find himself in a pickle when he wakes up.

-Abdel Ionides knowns an awful lot. Either he is an alethiometrist himself, or he has his own Myriorama pack, or he’s extremely observant and knows about the Lyra/Rukhsana thing – because he’s aware that she’s headed for the rose garden in Karamakan, even if Lyra never told him. He wants gold (or some sort of other treasure), like Chen, the camel herder who guided Dr. Hassall and Dr. Strauss into Karamakan, did, and he believes that only Lyra can get it for him. Wild guess: he thinks that Lyra, and no one but her, can get in and out of the red building. Maybe because she’s “Rukhsana” and special rules applies to Rukhsana, who knows.

-The poem Lyra quotes in “Little stick” is titled Le cor, by Alfred de Vigny. It alludes to the hero Roland, from La chanson de Roland (“The song of Roland”). Roland and another soldier are surrounded by enemies and the soldier urges Roland to surrender, to which Roland reply “only when the mountains roll down into the river below” (I’m roughly translating). Somehow that’s exactly what happens, and Roland and his friend are precipitated down the gulch and into the river, where they’re both crushed by falling stones. A knight named Turpin finds them some time later and declares that Roland’s soul blew the horn twice before going to Heaven. Funny detail: the soldier standing with Roland is a man from the desert and his name is “Olivier”.

(Going further into the chapter, it’s easy to see where and how Lyra is meant to parallel Roland.)

-In our world, Aleppo would be in Syria and Smyrna would be “Izmir”. I was curious so I googled it. Lyra’s journey would look a bit like this:

1 (Oxford) 2 (Amsterdam) 3 (Paris) 4 (Prague) 5 (Istanbul/Constantinople) 6 (Izmir/Smyrna) 7 (Seleucia/Seleukeia). And Aleppo is circled in red. Lyra traveled by ferry twice: once going from England to Amsterdam (the ferry with the loud, annoying guy and the welsh miners) and once from point 5 (Constantinople) to point 6 (Smyrna). That’s the one where the boat crash occurred. The Blue Hotel would be located somewhere between Iraq and Syria.

If the Blue Hotel wasn’t a place, but a person, it would be a person without a daemon. Maybe that’s why daemons are attracted to it.

EDIT:

The place called “Seleucia”/Seleukeia is a bit confusing. Wherever it is, or was, it refers to the ruins of a very old city. Actually, It looks like there’s two places called “Seleucia”, both ruins, now (in our world, that is): the ruins of Seleucia in Baghdad, also called Seleucia-on-Tigris, and the ruins of Seleucia in Antalya, Turkey. The second one is also called/pronounced “Seleukeia”, and is located on the coast of Pamphylia. I couldn’t find it on the map.

Most pictures of Seleucia I can find on Google are of the second one. It looks like this:

When I google Seleucia-on-Tigris, I get black and white pictures and photos of old maps from the Seleucid Empire. I’m guessing there isn’t much left of it. If our friend Wiki is to be believed,

“The city eventually faded into obscurity and was swallowed by the desert sands, probably abandoned after the Tigris shifted its course.”

You know what this reminds me of? The Blue Hotel.

EDIT:

ACTUALLY, THERE ARE SEVERAL PLACES CALLED (OR WHO USED TO BE CALLED) SELEUKEIA! ��

*Deep breath*

Ok, let’s check further. Our world’s equivalent of the Karamakan desert is the Taklamakan desert and it’s located in North West China. In TSC’s last chapter, Ionides tells Bonneville that the “treasure”, which I’m guessing is in Karamakan/Taklamakan, is 3000 miles from their current location, i.e., the Blue Hotel.

The distance between Baghdad (Seleucia-on-Tigris) and Taklamakan, in our world, is approx. 2127 miles.

The distance between Antalya (where the Seleukeia from the picture above is) and Taklamakan, in our world, is approx. 2768 miles.

The distance between Silifke (previously known as Seleucia on the Calycadnus - this is getting complicated isn’t it) and Taklamakan, in our world, is approx. 2612 miles.

The distance between Antakya (previously the Seleucid Capital, also known as Seleucia Pieria, phew) and Taklamakan, is approx. 2498 miles.

The Blue Hotel is about a day’s walk on camel back from Lyra’s Seleukeia, so it’s not very far. If we try to go by the 3000 miles indication, we can probably eliminate Seleucia-on-Tigris in Iraq (sorry, I was wrong!)

Lyra’s Seleukeia is a coastal town. The book tells us that much. (Ok, it definitely couldn’t have been Seleucia-on-Tigris.)

Antalya’s Seleukeia, also known as “Lyrbe” (sounds a bit like Lyra?), is located here:

While Silifke is located here:

And Antakya is here:

So they’re all coastal, kind of. For a very general view, you’ve got:

From left to right (in yellow): Seleukeia/Lyrbe, Seleucia on the Calycadnus/Silifke, Seleucia Pieria/Antakya, and Aleppo. The puzzle is to decide which of the first three is Lyra’s Seleukeia. They’re all under 3000 miles from Taklamakan but I wouldn’t discount any of them because of it (the distance is probably calculated from the starting point to the border of Taklamakan, and the “treasure” is in the “heart” of the desert, so way further).

I’m guessing that the one Lyra went to was the third - Seleucia Pieria/Antakya. It would explain why it’s a dangerous location (it’s located on the Syrian borders). It would make more sense to use the expression “between Seleukeia and Aleppo” to indicate where the Blue Hotel might be (since that Seleukeia and Aleppo are geographically the closest to one another).

So let’s say Antakya. What does the place look like in our world?

More ruins, unlike the Seleukeia of Lyra’s world, where people still live and do trade. It’s all very curious. I really do wonder if Pullman got the idea for the Blue Hotel from all these seleucid ruins, or if there’s another place in Syria that would match more.

#his dark materials #lyra belacqua #lyra silvertongue #the secret commonwealth #hdm meta #my ramblings #Abdel Ionides #malcolm polstead #my metas

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dxmichelle · 4 years ago

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The Game: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag some authors!

I was tagged by the lovely @kaibacorpintern, so let's see what we got! I don't have 20 fics, so we're going to go through the last 20 "unique" fics/prompts in updating order.

Of Lost Swords and Shadow Magic (YGO/HP): Malfoy Manor had never seen so many visitors come and go than in the past weeks.

Falling in Love in a Pharmacy (YGO/HP, Nerdship): “They’re asking for you in the office,” said Parvati, taking a moment to glance in Hermione's direction.

Guilt (YGO): It all happened so fast that now, in the aftermath, everything felt like one great blur.

The Getaway (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: Seto knew something weird was going on the moment he settled in at his desk Friday morning.

Murder Most Foul (YGO): “You want me…to do what?!”

Ghost in the Machine (YGO): Beep. Beep. Beep.

Sapphire Road (YGO/HP, Nerdship): The plan was simple: head deep into the mysterious tomb holding the final broken piece of the sword housing the Shadow Magus’s soul before said Shadow Magus or the Death Eaters could get hold of it.

Blind Date (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: Hermione barely paid a moment notice to the new post hanging on the common room bulletin board, while the rest of the underclassman flocked around it, whispering excitedly to each other.

Recovery (YGO/HP) [Prompt]: Voices wormed their way into the back of his mind as he lay in bed, the blissfulness of dreamless sleep fading away, leaving nothing but the darkness from the back of his eyelids and a residual pounding in his skull.

The Appeal (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: When Seto staggered into the kitchen at 3am, fresh off a late night at Kaiba Corp, he was not expecting to see Hermione sitting at the island with a pile of books and a laptop, her expression locked up with intense concentration.

The Gala (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: “I have a question for you…”

Practice (YGO) [Prompt]: “I know you hate this,” Seto said, “but let’s try it again.”

Anniversary (YGO): The only one who knew he was going was his grandfather

Mirror of Erised (HP): Three days.

Detention (YGO/HP) [Prompt]: It was a harmless prank, he said.

Crookshanks (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: Hermione once worried that Crookshanks wouldn’t adjust well to the ‘temporary’ move to the Kaiba mansion during her three month assignment working alongside the Japanese Ministry of Magic

Conspiracy (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: Roland rapped his knuckles hard against the open door before walking into the office and taking a seat in front of the desk without waiting for any acknowledgement or invitation from his employer.

Hospital Visit (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: Hermione was the last of their group to come down the dormitory steps that morning, and to Harry’s surprise, she had her bag slung over her shoulder.

Exam Prep (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: During rounds, Hermione had found a little alcove in the wall on the third floor of the East Tower.

Worries (YGO/HP, Nerdship) [Prompt]: First, it was Pegasus, dangling Mokuba by his soul, trapped in a trading card, all for the delight of watching him try and boot Yugi off of Duelist Kingdom in a duel that wasn’t even meant to be part of that farce of a tournament.

I don't think I'm super good at coming up with super catchy and unique opening lines, but I think there's a healthy mix of action, intrigue, and dialogue.

Gonna tag @bellamy-taft, @darksidechick823, @lafeae, and whoever else wants to play!

#michelle replies #ask memes

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tracelessrp · 3 years ago

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ROLAND BANCROFT-BISHOP is a 28 year old WITCH, who looks a lot like THOMAS DOHERTY. RO spends time at Traceless because HE IS TRYING TO FIND SOMEONE. HE is known for HIS EXPERIENCE WITH DARK MAGIC, HIS ENHANCEMENT SKILLS, AND CRAZY DREAMS.

Hometown: Salem, Massachusetts Current Residence: Traceless Village How long they have visited Traceless: New Arrival (2-3 days). Abilities: Roland is a jack of all trades but master of none when it comes to magic. He finds it easier when he uses emotion with his magic; when he is happy, or focused, the magic is easier to use. He also has incredible durability, with the ability to use magic for extended time periods, or withstand a lot of magical attacks. Ro is best with potions, and often does better with spells or runes, and can be a great enhancer of power for others. Honestly? He is still searching for his “great power”, which he is convinced he must have hidden somewhere.

Character Background:

Trigger warnings for violence, death, neglect of a child

Being born a Bancroft-Bishop had more history than Roland realized for most of his life. Salem, Massachusetts was famous for its folklore with witches and The Salem Witch Trials, and somehow his destiny became tightly interwoven with past, present, and future. During the original Trials back in the 1690s, the Bishop name was synonymous with witch hunter. It was something that never truly left the lineage of the family, even after a marriage in the 1740s between a Bishop and a Bancroft was arranged to establish peace. Bancroft was a particularly strong lineage of witches, one almost eradicated in the Trials. Fast forward a few hundred years, and you have him - Roland Bancroft-Bishop. There was a fast bond between Ro and his father, one that only deepened with the passing of his mother when he was 11. Along with her death came the anger, and with the anger, centuries old grudges resurfaced. Ro was filled with stories of Salem’s history, of the witches who ruined it, who cursed and poisoned the town, and the men who rose from the ashes to save it from their wicked power.

Ro’s father blamed witches - and a 300 year old curse placed on the Bancroft name - for his wife’s death, and so Ro did, too. It wasn’t long before his father decided Roland should know the truth about their quaint, tourist-y town… witches still existed, and the fight was ever on.

Aside from the supernatural element, Roland lived a pretty good normal life for most of his upbringing. His family was wealthy; they were old money, roots deeper in Salem than the trees. Their home at the end of Main Street was all brick, lined with windows, and could’ve leapt from a historical site itself; but you’d never have guessed how lush Ro’s pockets were by looking at him. He liked the outdoors, he liked the “survival trips” he’d take with his dad, he loved camping and boating, climbing - it didn’t matter what it was, Ro thrived on the adventure of it all. Witch hunting came easily to him because of that, those base animal instincts to hunt, catch, survive. His father did nothing but encourage and praise Roland, so by his teenhood, the boy had become quite cocky and energetic.

Then it happened… magic flooded Salem, and a coven was unveiled from the shadows. It was chaos from the first moment Roland laid eyes on the first of the witches he would eventually be captured by, with ice-blond hair and a frosted gaze. Blood was spilled, friends were lost on both sides, and Roland found himself left in the wreckage with the one thing he held most dear gone forever - his identity.

First the tea, drugged, and then, the dreams, and finally… the awakening. Ro had fallen asleep himself and awoke as something more. The same witch who had been entrusted to hold him captive had turned his own blood against him, pumping him full of what lay asleep underneath, and he woke with magic. A witch. The hunter becomes the hunted.

Of course he couldn’t go home. Roland doubted his father’s hatred of witches would stop him from taking any of them out, himself included. He couldn’t join the coven, obviously, not to mention the war between the hunters and the witches had torn the survivors apart, and scattered them in opposite directions. There was nowhere else to go but to stay with her, his captor, his now self-proclaimed mentor. Ro was surprised how quickly it felt natural, how quickly the two fell into a routine, and somehow, began to build a life. He’d watch her in moments she thought she was alone, practicing her most incredible magic; the ability to wield the cold around her. It became different to him as he’d watch, see her grow, see how own abilities grow. No longer was magic something to despise and snuff out, but something to pursue.

Though magic had always run through Ro’s blood since birth, it was heavily diluted and weakened, rendered dormant. It never would have come forth without some extra help from a powerful, determined witch and an ancient ritual. It was weaker than the magic he’d witnessed in Salem, and this frustrated Roland. He’d never wanted to be a magical being anyway, but once he was, he had to be stuck with fickle, mild powers that were basically useless? Perhaps this instinctive desire for power is what originally drove Ro to dark magic, at least in the beginning. Something to “jump-start” the process, something to coax out what he knew had to be lurking inside. The sinister spells and the power of dark magic tempted Roland, and when he found a medallion pendant that promised to lend the wearer strength, he was sold. It snowballed from there, and Roland was already in too deep by the time he realized he’d lost her.

The longer he wore the pendant, the worse Roland’s mind got, the more his heart darkened. He received the power he wanted, but the cost continued to get greater, and this carried on for years. Roland found himself traveling, familiarizing himself with vampires and other witches, picking up the pieces of everyone’s magic and creating a capsule within himself. When the dreams started, Ro ignored them… but it was the same dream, night after night, and growing more realistic.

What neither he or the ice witch had realized was that the ritual performed to turn Roland into a witch created a soul bond between the two. It was all but erased by the black magic Ro had taken to using, but something had changed. Something had strengthened the bond between him and the witch, and now it was calling to him. Hidden in Traceless, and a witch and her daughter carried on their life, and the older the little girl got, the more Ro couldn’t fight the dreams.

Roland is a hunter, so he followed the clues, and he broke free of the darkness fading his mind. His connections with the supernatural helped him find Traceless, a suggestion from a friend of a friend who knew a guy who served a good cup of coffee (and hid a whole world right out the back door) leading Roland into the coffee shop’s doors, and discovering the village. Hopefully, discovering the witch, and fixing the disaster he’d left in his wake.

(ooc: ghost, 25, they/them, est)

#species: witch #child abuse tw #death tw #death mentions tw #abuse tw

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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Best Live Action Short Film Nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards (2021, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

NOTE: For viewers in the United States (continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawai’i) who would like to watch the Oscar-nominated short film packages, click here. For virtual cinemas, you can purchase the packages individually or all three at once. You can find info about reopened theaters that are playing the packages in that link. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

This blog, since 2013, has been the site of my write-ups to the Oscar-nominated short film packages. No pandemic was going to stop me this year, as I was able to view the short film packages virtually thanks to a local repertory, the Frida Cinema of Santa Ana, California. Without further ado, here are the nominees for the Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Oscars. Films predominantly not in the English language are listed with their nation of origin.

The Present (2020, Palestine)

Since the 1990s, the Israeli military has set up hundreds of checkpoints within Palestine’s West Bank. These checkpoints have impeded Palestinian movement within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, supposedly to better protect the extraterritorial Israeli settlements there. Directed by Farah Nabulsi, The Present could have easily fell into an agitprop trap – leaning on political outrage rather than the individual emotions that power this film – but it deftly avoids doing so. On the day of his wedding anniversary with his wife, Yusef (Saleh Bakri) decides to go shopping with daughter Yasmine (Maryam Kanj). Yusef and Yasmine travel to and from Bethlehem (which is in Palestine, but is not easily accessible by Palestinians) to purchase a new refrigerator, groceries, and a few goodies for Yasmine. The process of traveling just a few miles from home proves onerous and humiliating.

Nabulsi’s film never feels like a lecture, instead preferring to juxtapose the cruel ironies that these Israeli checkpoints embody. The viewer intuits how militarized and confusing these checkpoints must be to the Palestinians. Israel’s apartheid mindset extends to the West Bank – the checkpoints have a single lane for Israeli drivers and a gated, narrow entryway specifically for the Palestinians. Past the checkpoint during their time shopping, life seems briefly normal. That Nabulsi can navigate the contrasting emotions between these scenes reflects the tautness of this film and its hints of Italian Neorealism. Bakri, as Yusef, is excellent during his tense conversations with the Israeli soldiers, even if some of these moments feel more stilted due to the actors playing the soldiers and the guerrilla filmmaking this piece employs. For Kanj, as Yasmine, one can see her anguish in seeing her father discriminated against on what should have been a special day. For Palestinian children, injustice is a rite of passage.

My rating: 8/10

Feeling Through (2019)

It is a chilly night in New York City at an hour where few are outside by choice. Teenager Tareek (Steven Prescod) is homeless. After saying good night to his friends, he happens upon Artie, a deafblind man (Robert Tarango, who is deafblind himself) holding up a sign requesting anyone to assist him. Curious and half-willing to help, Tareek taps Artie on the arm. Artie pulls out a tattered notepad and marker, asking for help to get to a bus stop. What follows is an uplifting connection between two cast-off souls, sharing each other’s good company and good humor if only for a brief time. Director Doug Roland based Feeling Through on an encounter he had with a deafblind man named Artemio. Roland’s film was accomplished in collaboration with the Hellen Keller Center.

Cynical viewers might view Feeling Through as syrupy, its swirling score too manipulative, the screenplay predictable, the filmmaking pedestrian. To different extents, each of those criticisms are true, but that does not undermine the raw inspiration responsible for this film’s pulse. It boasts solid performances from Prescod and Tarango – the latter a kitchen worker from Long Island and possibly the first deafblind actor in a lead role in film history. Roland’s screenplay beautifully strips away stereotypes of deafblind people. Tarango, as Artie, is neither overly dependent nor secluded from society. He knows that being deafblind sets him apart from those who can see and hear, and embraces the difference – lending a refreshing directness to how he communicates. Despite its lack of filmmaking or acting pedigree compared to its other nominees in this category, Feeling Through enters this Academy Awards season without a single loss in any of the film festivals that it screened in. No wonder: it is a crowd-pleaser in the best sense, without ever glossing over how difficult it is to be deafblind.

My rating: 9/10

Two Distant Strangers (2020)

Production on Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe’s Two Distant Strangers began in the shadow of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Its emotions are raw and there is no doubt behind the importance of the film’s messaging. Carter (rapper Joey Bada$$) has had some first date with Perri (Zaria Simone), and leaves in the morning to get home to his pet dog. Just outside the apartment building door, a police officer named Merk (Andrew Howard) stops Carter, profiles him, and ultimately kills Carter in cold blood. Once Carter dies, the film cuts to Carter and Perri in bed once again. Immediately, the viewer knows this film is a time loop a la Groundhog Day (1993), and, no matter what precautions he takes, Carter just cannot avoid execution from Merk’s hands. Through the film’s structure, Free and Roe capture the sinking, repetitive feeling that black Americans go through when hearing the news of yet another incident of police brutality.

Good intentions and urgency, however, do not necessarily make a worthy film. Some of the editing in Two Distant Strangers’ middle third shows too many images of Carter’s bullet-riddled body. After the first few instances of the time loop, the viewer does not need another glimpse of a lead-shredded corpse, blood splattering across pavement. The filmmaker’s fury towards Carter’s situation – that nothing will change – is already evident in the idea of such killings. Combined with the questionable dialogue in the final time loop and the mediocre acting, this all feels exploitative, an unwitting product of Hollywood’s history of fetishizing black trauma. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), historically, likes to reward films they perceive as demonstratively staged and thematically urgent. Two Distant Strangers meets both these criteria, but this material could have retained its rage without as much sensationalism.

My rating: 6/10

White Eye (2019, Israel)

Like Feeling Through, Tomer Shushan’s White Eye – the winner of the Narrative Short Film award at South by Southwest (SXSW) – was based on an actual encounter in its director’s life. Late at night in the streets of Tel Aviv, Omer (Daniel Gad) has spotted his stolen bicycle locked onto a rack. Omer lost his bike more than a month ago, has not filed a police report, and seeks to reclaim it as soon as possible. The police are of no help, and the people proximate to the intersection where these events take place are unwilling or hesitant to help. The now-owner of the bike is an Eritrean refugee named Yunes (Dawit Tekelaeb), and he insists to his manager (Reut Akkerman) and to Omer that he did not know that the bike was stolen property when he purchased it. And yet Omer’s tenacity and fit of passion spirals the situation beyond his or Yunes’ control.

White Eye is impressively staged, filmed in a single take – no cuts, no edits, all in real-time. To compare this film one last time to Feeling Through, White Eye accomplishes all it needs to say at a short film’s length. Some might claim Saar Mizrahi’s cinematography and 360º smooth-rotating is just another modern filmmaking gimmick; instead, it submerges the viewer into Omer’s mentality as he fights to retrieve his bike. The purposefully subjective framing questions the viewer on what our reactions might be in this situation, how deeply would we allow out outrage – and perhaps our ethnic/racial biases – to guide our actions. Shushan challenges the audience not to adopt Omer’s conclusions and emotions so readily, and he does a masterful job in appealing to and challenging one’s empathy as it becomes clear there will be no storybook ending.

My rating: 8/10

The Letter Room (2020)

By virtue of its central actor, The Letter Room is the most high-profile of this year’s nominees. Elvira Lind’s film is a dark comedy and its approach and tone are difficult to categorize. Richard (a mustached Oscar Isaac, who is Lind’s spouse) is a corrections officer who has requested a departmental transfer. With the transfer, he trades a more hands-on role for an office job. As the prison’s communications director, his responsibilities now entail filing through all of the prisoners’ incoming and outgoing mail – reading through all of the letters, reporting to his superiors for prison rules violations, censoring materials if necessary. At first, this role is as tedious as his previous position. But when Richard begins to read the histories of the prisoners and their loved ones, he becomes emotionally invested in a particular exchange between one death row inmate and his loved one (Alia Shawkat).

The Letter Room, despite a serviceable performance by Isaac as the unusual and stiff lead, has a milquetoast commentary about how the American criminal justice system imprisons more than just the inmates. These themes shambolically merge with Richard’s inherent loneliness, his inability to separate his own feelings from the voyeuristic work that his new position entails. This is a fellow looking for meaningful human connection, finding none, and attempting to understand something he has never found. The Letter Room curiously never questions the tricky ethics of Richard’s decision to intervene with the decisions made by Alia Shawkat’s character, and how the power disparities of his interactions color his life. The film’s conclusion is unearned, placing too neat a bow on a film that cannot balance its incongruous themes.

My rating: 6/10

^ All ratings based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

From previous years: 85th Academy Awards (2013), 87th (2015), 88th (2016), 89th (2017), 90th (2018), 91st (2019), and 92nd (2020).

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bibliodragon · 5 years ago

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Fic: Coping Strategies

Night on Infinity, and Sarah Palmer considers how to silence old ghosts.

Fandom: Halo

Characters: Sarah Palmer, Roland

Rating: T

Word Count: 1167

AO3

Nestled in among the perks of being Commander, next to the constant paperwork and responsibility for over 300 men and woman who seemed to take great pleasure in coming up with more and more elaborate ways to kill themselves, was your own quarters in Spartan Town. Not as large or fancy as the Captain’s (but that was Navy for you) but it meant she had her own bedroom and bathroom, and it included an office slash lounge thing.

Palmer had never liked it. She’d spent around half her life bunking with other soldiers. She missed the camaraderie of it. If you could trust someone not to say anything after being screamed awake at 0200 hours beyond the normal good natured shit, you could trust them to take out the Covie bastard coming at you with a plasma grenade. And you would do the same for them. She had done.

PTSD. The great equalizer.

Course, some were considered more equal than others, despite what her bosses may say. Which is why when she bolts herself awake, there’s no one around to see this humanity slash weakness, and she remains the unfeeling Commander responsible for saving her Spartans from themselves. And anything that she may have been able to learn about them in the dead of night, why, she had reams of psychological profiles and files and reports by ONI’s finest.

No one ever said anything at the time. But her first sergeant, gods rest her soul, had taken her aside one moment the next day during training. “The only thing that matters is if you can shoot straight, and stay awake during recon.” Then later in the mess hall: “Good scotch. Or not so good. It’s always 5pm somewhere in the universe.”

As she kicked off sweat soaked sheets and turned to put her feet on the floor, not for the first time she thought how it was a pity that augmented everything included a metabolism that could process alcohol so fast you were sober as soon as the shot glass was back on the table.

0300. That would make it roughly an hour’s sleep. She flexed her arm just to prove to herself she still could, once, twice, and then rubbed the back of her neck. An hour’s sleep would do.

Standing shivering under a shower set at cold to the point of pain, she pushed her hands against the ceramic tiles and let out a deep breath in the old familiar routine. The faint smell of disinfectant underneath soap and water. That was real, immediate. Blood, burning, plasma, and for some reason always dusty flooring. Dusty flooring, and a space that should have been too small for her. She let it all flow away with the water.

Dorsey, her second squad, had always sworn by sex as a solution. For most things, come to think of it. But she had been eighteen, well aware she could die any day, and he was good looking (though sadly knew it). And he was right about one thing: wiping that smug look off his face by fucking him until he begged for mercy provided excellent stress relief for many a night. Up until he took a needler round to the face on a routine op. But afterwards, it had never been hard to find anyone else looking to let off some steam.

Hell, it was an ODST trade secret. Her squad leaders had always overlooked screwing around as long as it didn’t interfere with the job, and she knew full well many of her own Spartans were at it like rabbits, but she’d only rarely had cause to intervene.

But that was something that was out of bounds to her ever since she made Spartan Commander. While there were some men and women under her command that could do with getting taken down a peg or two that way, she’d heard enough stories, and seen a few examples personally, to know that was a bad idea.

With a sudden movement she turned the dial, leaving behind the sound of water gurgling down the drain and her own breathing. Too many old ghosts. She stepped out, towelled off, and grabbed her undersuit.

Another ODST trade secret: when haunted by your own ghosts, you return the favour by making some more for the other side. Admittedly that was a lot easier to achieve when you were in the middle of a war for the very survival of humanity, but there were alternatives available on humanity’s most advanced warship.

As she caught the last seal on her suit she stepped into the lounge and turned to the tactfully dark holo-projector in the corner of the room. “Roland, send word to the Wargames that I’ll be down there in thirty minutes, and they better have Apex ready and waiting for me.”

“Aye Commander.” The room was awash with gold light as the AI’s avatar flicked into being. Roland gave a theatrical yawn, and blinked at her owlishly. In place of his regular aviator get up, he was wearing a large, fluffy dressing gown, though his aviator cap was still in place. “They are thoroughly terrified and getting things prepped as we speak.”

She gave him a long look. “Seriously Roland?”

“You don’t believe me? Oh.” He looked down at himself and up at her. “What, can’t an AI get some shut eye?”

“Are those bunny slippers?”

“Neat huh?” He lifted a foot and beamed at her proudly. “I was torn between those and the dinosaur feet, but I though why mess with the classics.”

She pinched at the bridge of her nose, which had the advantage of hiding her mouth. “Roland…”

“I was trying for pink, but the projector had some issues with that. You’d think by the twenty-sixth century they would have got a handle on that.”

She managed a sigh with the correct level of exasperation in it.

“What? I’m trying a thing. Night-mode. You know, the subtle approach. Considering the Captain didn’t appreciate my rendition of ‘Go The Fuck To Sleep’ ten minutes ago.”

“Tom woke up?”

“Captain Lasky never went to bed. Not that I’m a narc or anything. I am an AI of many skills, but putting stubborn Captains to bed is kinda outside my paygrade.”

“Great!” They had talked about this. “Roland, tell Wargames to expect me in an hour. Tell me if Tom goes down on his own, but do not give him advanced warning I am heading up there to yell at him.”

“Do not tell the Captain you are on your way to sing sweet lullabies, got it.” He gave her a salute as she glared at him.

“I mean it Roland!” She spun on her heels and was at the door, then turned back to him. “By the way, you should be holding a coffee cup.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Would tie the whole thing together.”

One of the perks of being Commander was at least you could go solve other people’s problems.

#sarah palmer #roland the ai #halo #infinity #fanfic #commander palmer #my fic

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philautiathegreat · 4 years ago

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🥺🌼💕 get to know your mutuals!! when you get this, it means someone wants to know more about you, so list 5 things about yourself you want your followers to know. they can be as simple as your age or as complex as your deepest fear, as long as it’s something you’re comfortable with sharing. when you’re done, send this to 10 people you want to get to know better!! 🥺🌼💕

omg thank u so much for sending this 🥺🥺 <3<3<3

1. my favourite artist is mitski! something abt her music just hits... REALLY DIFFERENT. so, so different. my favourite album of hers is bury me at make out creek, and first love/late spring is my fav song of all time. i constantly tune my guitar to open D (her preferred tuning) and just have a mitski jam session lmao! honestly a thing on my bucket list is to SCREAM DRUNK WALK HOME at the top of my lungs. like, kinda wanna take my guitar into an open field and just YELL! absolutely wreck my throat! i feel like that would be very cathartic!!! singing my body’s made of crushed little stars is already so GOOD FOR MY SOUL, like, it feels as if a weight is being taken off of my shoulders every time. (I WORK BETTER UNDER A DEADLINEEEEE I WORK BETTER UNDER A DEADLINEEE I PICK AN AGE WHEN IM GONNA DISAPPEAARRRRRRRRRR UNTIL THEN I CAN TRY AGAINNNN) i can’t even imagine what it would be like to SCREAM drunk walk home GAH i love one (1) woman! i’m so glad i found her and i have her music in my life now, it means so much to me!

2. speaking of music and musical instruments, i have 4 instruments in my room:

i have a keyboard, a roland 3-500, that is my maternal grandpa’s. i don’t play the piano, but i know some basic chords and a few easy songs and musical pieces (like the first part of fur elise lol yes cliché but so fun!), but i love singing and playing anyway.

i have a concert ukulele, a mahalo mh2vna, called maria madalena that my dad bought for me when i was 15 and she was my PRIDE AND JOY for so long. she’s my go-to when i wanna have some fun alone without much effort, bc the concert uke is probs the instrument i know the most chords in.

i have a baritone ukulele, an ortega RU5CE-BA, that i got because i was highkey obsessed with dodie for a while, and i love him. his name is flávio teodósio augusto (yes thats emperor theodosius’s name in portuguese... he deserves it...) and he has a BUTTERFLYYY on him! wonderful! also a go-to!

lastly, i have an electric guitar, an ibanez GRG140 GIO, that my paternal grandfather got me for my 18th birthday! her name is andromeda, andy for short. im not great at the guitar, and she constantly has problems with the cable tbh but i love her. i’ll never be able to play solos and hard stuff, especially bc i’m self taught at everything music related, but she’s good fun for a bedroom mitski session.

3. if you like astrology, here are my placements: aquarius sun, gemini moon, cancer rising, aquarius mercury, aquarius venus, and aries mars. those are all the ones i know by heart sidfhdfusdhsdif!! do with them what you will.

4. despite being (apparently, this is a surprise to me too,) interested in astrology, i don’t rly believe it??? like, not wholeheartedly. sorry to my friend lena she deserves better BUT i can never really bring myself to believe in this kind of stuff. i have a really complicated relationship with anything spiritual? i’m a pretty pessimistic person, so the idea of there being any kind of magic in the world just sounds too good to be true. (why do i feel like lena’s gonna read this and tell me this is such an aquarius/gemini moon thing to say??? why?) have you seen this bitch of an earth... UNFORGIVING AND DULL. however, i do believe in the possibility of these things being true, but idk! it’s pretty fun, though, to roast myself and any friends with gemini or pisces placements sdiufhdf they’re my go-to signs for roasting. it’s kind of an inside joke between my friends and me now. i’m mostly roasting myself with the gemini part. also my dad, that GEMINI. pisces i just roast for its Vibes. no offense to pisces. sorry if you’re a pisces. i’m sure you’re great!

5. i’m, like, the definition of jack of all trades master of none. i’m mediocre at 4 instruments, like i said previously. i’m ok at writing, ok at singing. i do well in standardized tests, but nothing too remarkable. i’m not not smart, but i’m not remarkably smart or kind. this is kind of an insecurity of mine, not gonna lie, but sometimes i feel like i’m stretched out too thin over too many things, and i’m not sure what i want for myself because i’m good at a lot but never great at anything, if that makes sense. whenever i bring this up to people they’re usually like “Oh! but that’s so good! and cool! you should be thankful!”, but like i said i’m pretty pessimistic most of the time sdiufhsd. i don’t have a passion; i have many interests that i can never dedicate myself to fully because 1) i never learned resilience because i was always Good at things at first try, so when i reach a Tough Spot i just quit, and 2) i have way too many things i like, and the idea of choosing Just One Thing... STRESSFUL. this is such a petty thing to complain about, but i guess it just comes down to the Gifted Kid Struggle™: you grow up hearing about how good you are and how you’re The Best, and you start to base your self-worth on being The Best at a Few Things. slowly, people start to catch up to you, and then you realize that you’re just Painfully Average and Mediocre. i’m coming to terms with the fact that i’m average, i guess. it’s ok to be, i know that, but it’s gonna be a long way before i can fully accept that i’ll never be the best at anything again. i actually think that this is what has made my relationship with food really shitty but that’s a whole Can of Worms™ that i won’t unpack here dfugdiofh

again, thank u so much for asking this!!!! it means a lot!

#ed mention #not rly #but just in case #my post #philautia speaks #thank u thank u!!!#<3 #demigodavenger #KINDA RAMBLED BUT THATS FINE

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sol-futura-est · 4 years ago

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Sol didn’t seem like such a mythic character as some people made him out to be, if what I looked at was the individual. Sure, he changed reality at a whim, but there was more to him. It was like you trusted him, as soon as you understood who was in front of you. Implied was a hundred different things, including the fact that he watched over you. As I came in, I greeted Mortimer as he cooked a meal for dinner, but I declined. Even with the meeting shocking me, I was tired. I wanted to read some then head to bed. As I shut my bedroom door behind me, I turned on the lamp at my desk, the same one I had at the arena, a small one, that only lit the hardwood, not the room. On the top of the stack, a detailed account Varo Tarquini’s encampment after the Battle for the Caucasus, where he routed an army one hundred strong in a battle lasting four months. My father had been caught further east, assisting the Sikhs, before he would cut through the Mongol territories, the former Kazakhstan, up into Moscow, relieving that siege with Tarquin, before going further into Petersburg. All in all, it would be three years of fighting, just here, from Georgia north to the Baltic Sea, then another four fighting east, with the remaining three years of this war spent in bitter stalemates, some lasting up to a year. What made this battle special was that one fifth of the former archon’s army, formerly a Georgian, by the name of Kuratisi, was eradicated entirely. Tarquin only had his one legion at partial strength, with barely twenty thousand ground forces engaged at any given point. This was where Svarogovist automated air power, and limited naval forces proved underpowered. We didn’t need to use guerilla tactics every time to bleed them. We didn’t even need to constantly bombard them. We just had to bog them down enough to make them believe that they could face us and do enough damage for another part of their army. They had nowhere to retreat, nowhere to go but back.

But they wouldn’t.

" Today is the 9th of September, 2211. Yesterday, my forces encamped at Volgograd celebrated their victory over the southern army group of these machines. I tried to cajole them, but after a certain point, I decided to let them have the day. Airspace is clear, so are rail lines. We’ll receive our much needed reinforcements via Kiev. I never thought the Intermarians would be much good in war, but they’ve kept good on all their promises. Nobody rescinded quotas, nobody refused their tax. This war wasn’t for us, they understood that. We could’ve stood back. After all, this wasn’t a threat we anticipated.

I would’ve gone, senate or not, anyway. But that’s not the point. Air freight and rail freight will be escorting out our wounded, bringing us fresh troops. I hear that the auxiliaries are gonna be in high supply, even with record recruitment numbers out of the major cities, Paris, Madrid, Rome. Even the Celts are putting forth ten thousand troops, with another ten thousand from American mercenaries. They’ll fill in foreign detachments as need be, or, if these bastards take my advice, let these men command themselves so long as they obey regional commanders. The consul is insistent on it, however. Foreigners serve alongside us, use our guns, obey our rules. Julian says it’s to avoid international incidents. Trade with the city states and the American republics isn’t even that important, the only incident we’d have is criticism from one of our own journalists. Even then, what would it matter?

Two hundred miles east is the front. Roland has the south, up to Moscow, where the Intermarian Army holds out. From their left flank north, is Marcus. His infantry were made for trench war, stagnant war. His lines, his defenses are nearly indestructible for a normal enemy. For this one, he gets to learn a thing or two. Lawrence and the Sikhs are preparing to move onto Orenburg, and after that, we’ll all sweep through in one massive L-shape east. We’ll march until the sea or the Chinese borderlands, or until there’s a mass surrender.

Every night, I relive that moment Sol visited me. I guess he knew me well, showing up dressed like a Camargue rancher, tipping his hat to me as his eyes gleamed golden light. All the stories I heard talked about him shouting from a summit of a nearby hill as our boys crossed a valley. We had a brief conversation, and even though I thought he’d be taller, it was enlightening. His faith, his strength, you don’t really know it until he affixes your mind, your sight, until he stands before you like king of the world and tells you some poetic riddle you only half understand, before you wake up in your bed, or back wherever you were, as if nothing happened. Lawrence and Marcus told me things like this happen, usually in dreams. Maybe I dozed off and didn’t notice, but all the same it doesn’t matter. In some way, I have his blessing against this enemy. Whatever he is can wait for war’s end.

Us soldiers, us farmers, we march forward with or without the support of any king, any God, though we will never refute the help.

Though a part of me I thought I put away, my Catholic upbringing, is smitten. This man appeared from nowhere. He didn’t tempt me with prize or power. He held an open palm, told me he was proud of me, of my cause, of every soul on the march.

Was this Christ? And he simply took on the name Sol for reasons I couldn’t understand? Maybe he was Christ and simply let people call him Sol. It wasn’t like he ever introduced himself.

If it was Christ, would it even matter if I comprehended that?

Even with so many men under me, cheering my name, even with every newsstand emblazoning my name, this being made me understand the task, he humbled me.

Maybe when I go home, I’ll teach my daughters some new lessons. Ones of faith, of duty, of discipline in the face of adversity.

In a few short years, I’ll be able to go home to them for good. "

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anastpaul · 5 years ago

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Saint of the Day – 27 April – Blessed Nicolas Roland (1642-1678) Priest, Canon, Mystic, Apostle of the prayer, the poor, especially children, teacher and Founder of the Congregation of the “Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus” – born on 8 December 1642 in Rheims, Marne, France and died on 27 April 1678 in Rheims, Marne, France of natural causes, aged 35. He was a friend, contemporary and Spiritual Director of Saint John Baptist de La Salle (1651-1719). (Biography here: https://anastpaul.com/2018/04/07/saint-of-the-day-7-april-st-john-baptiste-de-la-salle-1651-1719-the-father-of-modern-education/).

Nicolas Roland was born on the small town of Baslieux-les-Reims in the ancient province of Champagne, 9 kilometers away from Reims, son of Jean-Baptist Roland (1611–1673), Commissioner of the Government and antique merchant. He was Baptised on 23 July 1643. His Godfather was his uncle, Fr Matthieu Beuvelet.

In 1650 he joined the Jesuit College at Reims, where he showed an active intelligence and the wish to become a Priest. In 1653 he obtained the tonsure from Bishop Pouy at the Abbey of Saint Pierre les Dames. Completing his preliminary studies, he travelled around France for while.

The young student then moved to Paris in 1660 to continue his studies in Philosophy and Theology, staying at the college of Bons Amis. He joined several pious associations such as the “Friends Association” of the Jesuit Jean Bagot and one of Vincent de Paul. He considered joining the Jesuits and was also interested in the work of the Missionaries for a time and considered going to Siam after finishing his doctorate on theology. But he was appointed to a well-endowed Canonry at Reims Cathedral, before being ordained a Deacon and was highly regarded as a Preacher but realised that his elegant style reached few of the faithful. On 3 March 1665 he was Ordained a Priest.

In 1666 he left his parents house, moving to a house on Barbâtre Street, in Reims, where he began a life of poverty dedicated to charity. He established contacts with the Saint Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Seminary where his uncle worked and there he was exposed to the ideas of Adrian Bourdoise, Fr Jean-Jacques Olier (the Founder of the Sulpicians) and the movement for the renewal of the French clergy. Of all his apostolic activities, education of the poor, was the apostolate to which he was most attracted.

In Rouen he met yet another clergyman passionate about education of the poor, the Minim Blessed Father Nicolas Barre, who arrived in the city in 1659. Barre had organised a group of men and women who worked in free schools located in several neighbourhoods of the city. Roland returned to Reims with the intention of starting similar projects there. On 15 October 1670 a Reims’ orphanage founded by Marie Varlet was entrusted to him and he gradually transformed it into a real school. He asked Fr Barre to send two teachers from the Sisters of Providence to help. On 27 December 1670, the teachers, Francoise Duval and Anne Le Coeur, arrived. Fr Nicolas would later found with them, the Congregation of Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, dedicated to the education of poor and abandoned girls.

In 1672 he met a young Canon, John Baptist de la Salle and became his Spiritual Advisor. They stayed in touch while La Salle studied at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. Roland influenced La Salle to learn a type of spiritual detachment that he later demonstrated when he founded the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

Official Portrait of Nicolas Roland, 1888

After the death of his father in 1673, Roland became more involved in encouraging the growing community of the “Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus.” On 13 July 1673 he opened the first school of the sisters, at his own expense. The Order received Diocesan approval and confirmation in 1675.

He wrote many spiritual works and published the “Notices for the regular people”. One of the notices left for the sisters reads:

“The sacred fire must embrace the sisters, it makes them inflame the others and above all the teachers, the students and all the people they come in contact with. That way with their example and edifying words, they will do good as the divine providence wishes. With this fire they will love their neighbour. God does not wish to divide the charity with which we love Him, we must give this one equally to all humanity. This is the principle on which we must encourage the teaching of girls in the schools, not making any distinction of their human and natural qualities.”

The following year he gave all his inheritance to consolidate the young congregation and increased his activities in favour of the poor and all those in any need, gathering a group of Priests around him who assisted in all these endeavours.

On 30 March 1678 he assisted, with great joy, in the first Holy Mass of Saint John Baptist de La Salle. He encouraged De La Salle to trade his Canonry for a small parish but the Archbishop opposed this move and so the matter remained unsettled for the time being.

On 19 April 1678, he had to stay in bed due to a severe headache. On the 23rd of the same month he prepared his Last Will and Testament, leaving the administration and care of his Order and their works in the hands of Saint John Baptist de La Salle. On the 27th he died peacefully at Reims and was buried in the Sisters’ Chapel on the 29th. Below is his Shrine, relics and the Chapel. He was only 35 years old and yet he left behind a huge apostolic project, an infirmary, a hostel and four schools.

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Saint John Baptist de La Salle then continued with the final approval of his work and later on followed in his footsteps, founding the Congregation of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools for the Christian education of the poor.

He was Beatified on 16 October 1994 by St Pope John Paul II, who, at the Beatification of Blessed Nicolas said:

“This young Priest, Canon and Theologian of Reims’ Cathedral, friend and counsellor of Saint John Baptist de La Salle and Founder of the Sisters of the Child Jesus… This young man from a middle-class family, well educated, able to see various sides of a question, could have become rich and powerful and a man of distinction. But he was called to follow another course, another route to which he became passionately devoted. He lived in the world of his day, with its poverty and wretchedness, uncertainty and fear, where the rich dominated and the poor never had a say, he found the road shown him by God, a road shown him by and in prayer. And he invited everyone, the young, adults, children, priests to follow the same road and he trained them how to do so. He discovered that “God has so loved the world, that he has given his Son” to teach us how to pray to Him as a son, and how to speak to one another as brothers and sisters. This prayer is given to us in Jesus, by Jesus and with Jesus ……… .. This road is “the life we live”, in which “we converse” , and have ‘relationships.'”

Be our guide Blessed Nicolas Roland

With the heart of a poor man, you gave up position and honour, you gave away your wealth and your health, to come to the help of poor and abandoned children.

With a gentle and humble heart, you, a young man with a vivacious character, managed to unite strength and patience, in order to take on the gentleness of the Child Jesus.

Your heart was often sad to see God so little known, so little loved and to see mankind disfigured. To repeat to everyone that God is love, and His greatness as a son of God, you founded a religious family completely devoted to Jesus in His Incarnation.

Enamoured for justice, you worked endlessly to that the child would be recognised in his dignity To achieve that, you have raised up loving and attentive teachers.

Priest moved by all human wretchedness, enlightened by the merciful love of the Father, you trained your brother priests to show God’s gentleness and to forgive others in God’s name.

Enlightened by the presence of God, your pure heart discovered Him in all kinds of work and in his suffering members.

As a spiritual guide, you knew how to calm anguished souls and taught them how to abandon themselves to God with confidence. You yourself kept calm in spite of trials.

As an apostle with a passionate heart, you suffered because of His name and until the hour of your death, you suffered misunderstandings but all in peace and joy, for the glory of His Kingdom.

Saint of the Day – 27 April – Blessed Nicolas Roland (1642-1678) Saint of the Day - 27 April - Blessed Nicolas Roland (1642-1678) Priest, Canon, Mystic, Apostle of the prayer, the poor, especially children, teacher and Founder of the Congregation of the…

#blnicolasroland

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