#SIEGE 1984

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

AEROSMITH TEES & BC RICH GUITARS IN THE HARDCORE SCENE -- IN REAGAN'S AMERICA.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a completely mysterious live shot of American hardcore/proto-grindcore band SIEGE, with guitarist Kurt Habelt playing a really heavy metal-centric electric guitar (see SLAYER), location, venue, & year unknown, but more than likely the mid '80s.

Source: www.picuki.com/media/2567226259972192839.

[pocoslip]

I wanna see Shockwave wielding the Fusion Canon after he Overthrew Megatron

(Because I still like the Idea of Shockwave pretending to be Loyal to Megatron and planning to Take his Leadership someday and also because I keep seeing Optimus Prime with a Fusion Canon in the New Transformers Comics)

[gotankgo]

Siege “Grim Reaper”

• Drop Dead (1984)

[firstfullmoon]

In 1981, Israeli Mossad agents assassinated Palestinian Liberation Organization member, writer, and intellectual Majed Abu Sharar in his hotel room in Rome. Abu Sharar was a close friend of the Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish. In 1984, in his collection A Siege for the Eulogies of the Sea (Hissar li-Mada’h el-Bahr), Darwish included the final version of his long elegy to his friend, “The Final Meeting in Rome.” This poem in particular is largely untranslatable in English. The untranslatability is not so much due to the technical demands of the surreal lyric’s transformation of song into an act of liberation. Instead, the untranslatability relates primarily to the question of audience. There remains little room in English to receive openly, unequivocally, the freedom song of Palestinians in its myriad forms.

But I can simplify all this jargon in a single word, a name: Majed. Majed’s name permeates the text of “The Final Meeting in Rome.” In a moment of genius, in the penultimate section of the text, Darwish explodes language with his friend’s name through an unexpected refrain—as if Darwish had been writing the previous pages for the sole purpose of arriving at this stanza: “Good morning, Majed, / good morning, / get up to recite Surat al-‘Aaed.”

In the Quran, there is no chapter, or Surah, titled al-‘Aaed—a word that means the returnee. Some may argue that one solution for translating the stanza would reside in changing Majed’s name to Ali, for example, so that the impact of the rhyme is maintained: Ali/the Surah of the returnee. But that is self-deluding. English, much as it likes to argue otherwise, still struggles to accept at least two major points about this linguistic construct in Arabic. The first is the beautiful, divine presence of the Quran to elegize a Palestinian martyr (irrespective of their religious affiliation, if any). The second is the Palestinian right of return, dead and alive.

Darwish stuns his audience by blurring the boundaries of blasphemy. He is not echoing a specific Quranic text. He elevates the Palestinian question to touch the moral arc that bends toward justice in the universe. He delivers a mystical experience no one objects to in Arabic. He invents a Surah in the Quran and attributes its title to his “friend, brother, and last love.” The entire Palestinian body in one named Majed. The entire human history of return in a Surah.

Among the poem’s memorable lines, there is this couplet: “As if I could protect my heart / from hope. My heart is ill.” This ailing heart arrives near the end of the poem and disseminates into Palestinian flesh. What Darwish manages to describe, in topical yet visionary manner, is astounding, precisely because the poem does not claim to see the future. Yet here we are, more than forty years later, and every word of the closing salvo that I have translated is true.

I took liberties with this last, translatable section of “The Final Meeting in Rome.” Since one aspect of the original untranslatability is in the name—Majed—I clearly see that today, Gaza is the untranslatable name in the poem.

[paperbackribs]

A Tarnished Copper Boy

Previous | Next Last chapter, it was Spring Break 1986, Vecna was vanquished but Steve mysteriously disappeared when he touched the gate in Eddie's trailer.

Chapter 2: The Sentinel

Fall 1984

Eddie slams his school bag against the side of the couch before falling onto its worn cushions, huffing. It’s only day one into his repeat of senior year and he already wants to quit.

Today had been an unending exercise in patience after walking through the wide doors of Hawkins High, while also pretending not to experience the wash of humiliation for failing to graduate last year. Already thinking that he looks older and certainly feels older than most of the student body.

He'd caught glances from the former juniors too. Typically, being seen as the resident freak wouldn’t get to Eddie. He likes to court that sort of attention every now and then.

But the knowledge that he’s returned due to his own fuck up turned their scrutiny into tiny, pointed daggers stabbing across his back. It made his skin crawl and his van had squealed out of the parking lot minutes after the final bell rang.

An image of Wayne’s hopeful face fills his vision and Eddie’s head falls back against the arm with a groan. He had promised Wayne that he would try again and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for his uncle.

Glaring at the open bag, Eddie decides however that he doesn’t need to tackle it all immediately. Day one, he reasons to himself, pulling out his campaign notebook and pushing The Great Gatsby further into the depths of his backpack.

The scratch of his pen on paper is the only sound in the trailer as Eddie details his new idea about a township under siege. Afternoon sunlight spills past the curtains hanging on the window, the warm glow of it creating a soothing space as he determinedly forgets his day. Eddie faintly notes from its frantic barking that the Hamilton’s dog has spotted a cat when his calm is shattered.

A falling object slams from the ceiling to the floor. The thud echoes through the trailer and shudders under Eddie’s seat.

Pulse jumping in surprise he scrambles away from the moaning intruder sprawled face-down on the carpet. What the fuck, Eddie thinks, head whipping around in increasing shock, urgently looking for where the man had come from.

He’s half crouched, eyeing the front door, when the man struggles to push up onto his hands and knees, back facing Eddie. “Why’d you move the mattress?” He calls out irately.

The surprise of such a non-sequitur briefly knocks Eddie out of his fear and he peers closer, trying to make sense of this strange turn to his afternoon.

He’s just had a moment to take in the back of mud-splattered pants and a brown leather bomber jacket before the man bellows, “Christ!” He plunges to his side, kicking his legs in pain. “Shitting Christ,” he hisses, clutching at his sides. “Like a thousand fucking needles.”

The genuine pain in his voice has Eddie pausing from his bent position, warily watching and surprising himself as he asks, “Are you okay, man?” He immediately slaps a hand to his forehead: what idiot is concerned for the wellbeing of their home invader?

“Yeah,” the man eventually groans, rolling over onto his back and slowing his breathing. He gingerly rises, propping one hand behind him for support and running fingers through thick bronze locks. “Just a bad landing, is all,” Steve Harrington says in the middle of Eddie’s trailer.

Eddie absently wonders whether it’s his head tilting to the side or if it’s the world spiralling that has the ground swaying under him so abruptly. Either way, it does nothing to distract from the shock that’s rung through him like a slap to the face.

Steve’s eyes suddenly lock on Eddie and, bizarrely, a shadow of concern clouds his expression. “Shit,” he rushes to his knees, darting to hover over him, his palms raised like he doesn’t know where to touch first. “Are you okay? You shouldn’t be moving like that.”

Steve pushes him gently against the couch and, just as bizarrely, Eddie simply… lets him. The surprise of this entire situation numbing him into a blank compliance.

Steve presses his hands against the sides of Eddie’s torso, the warmth of it scalding through his thin shirt, before frowning and shaking his head. “No, it was…” He redirects his attention, staring intently at Eddie’s lap before starting to pat large palms against his legs. He frowns, “Where’s the blood?”

But it’s Steve’s thumb moving against the inside of his thigh—the intimacy of the inadvertent gesture—that finally jolts Eddie out of his shock and he slaps at Steve’s roving fingers with one hand and uses the other to push him away.

Unprepared for Eddie’s hasty resistance, Steve falls on his backside with an oomph, arms splaying behind him to keep himself upright. His face is one long crease, mouth downturned and brows furrowed. “Where are your injuries?” He asks urgently, eyes darting over Eddie’s exposed neck and collarbones.

“What injuries?” Eddie asks in exasperation, feeling like he’s going out of his mind.

Steve leans urgently forward, gesturing with a frantic hand. “The bats, man. You’re— that is, you were pumping blood out of those bites just a second ago. I thought Robin was going to puke if she had to look under your bandage one more time. Robin—” His head swivels, turning and twisting, trying to find—Eddie assumes—this Robin.

Under his warm tan, Steve pales even as his breathing picks up. “Where’s Robin? What about Dustin? Why—” His head snaps to the ceiling in a way that has Eddie wincing in sympathetic pain. He follows his eyeline but all he can see is the normal plain beige above them, and that small water stain that looks like Australia in the corner.

Steve’s wide eyes shoot back to Eddie, panic clear in their depths as they frantically take in every detail. He shifts back onto his knees, slowly reaching out to touch the end of Eddie’s hair, now long enough to just brush his shoulders. His fingers tremble. “Your hair, it’s so short. And…” He swallows, the gulp audible in the silence of the room, “You’re okay. The trailer is okay.”

He trails off, gaze turning inward before focusing on the curl pinched between his fingertips. “It hasn’t happened yet, has it.”

Steve’s face is inches from his own, enough that Eddie can feel the warmth of his breath as it washes over his skin. He’s not keen on how Steve’s invading his personal space but doesn’t have it in him to push someone away when they are so clearly freaking out.

The guy looks like he’s teetering on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. And the last thing he needs is some jock losing his mind in Eddie’s home; though, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s talked someone down from a bad trip.

Eddie sighs, he may not like or even really know Steve, but he doesn’t want  to see him suffer either. “Steve,” Eddie says gently, trying to break through the fog clouding his expression, “What’d you take, man?”

That’s the first thing to figure out: has he been mixing with drinks, is it some bad shrooms, or a paranoid spiral from getting too baked? Eddie’s thinking something along the lines of acid if the guy is hallucinating bats big enough to take down a fully grown man.

Steve snorts, a bit of colour returning to his face as he drops Eddie’s curls, leaning back onto his heels. “No, man. I’m not high.” His head tilts back as he spears his fingers through his hair and Eddie struggles not to look too closely at the smooth skin stretched over his neck or the pretty little moles dotted across it.

“Not high, but I feel a little out of my mind. I think…” He curses, still staring up at the ceiling like it’s an oracle about to unveil otherworldly guidance. “I think I’m not in the right place or the right—” He stops like he can’t say it.

Eddie shifts uneasily against the couch. For the most part, Steve seems in his right mind, even if the contents of what he’s saying don’t make much sense.

His gaze narrowing, Eddie finally realises that the man in front of him also looks very different from the high school junior of last year. He appears roughed up, for one thing, with smudges of dirt smeared across a cheek and under his chin. And his jaw looks sharper and hair longer, more 70’s rebel than 1950’s greaser.

“The ‘right’ what?” Eddie asks softly, figuring it won’t hurt to play along and understand what’s making Steve stop and start his sentences like a stalling engine.

Plus, he’s sort of intrigued by this rugged version of the prep jock that he’s used to seeing in the hallways. The dissonance was disorientating at first, but he can’t deny that it’s a good look on him.

Steve gazes at Eddie’s shoulder-length hair again, dropping his eyes to the backpack against the couch that’s half open and spilling onto the floor, his school notepad and maths textbook peeking through. “Remind me, Eddie. What grade are you in right now?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, trying to think if they had any classes together today to justify the annoyance that runs through him. If nothing else, a returning senior is still noteworthy he thinks a little bitterly. “Come on, Harrington. It’s day one of our final year, don’t tell me you’ve checked out this early.”

“Right,” Steve nods to himself, Eddie’s irritation not even registering. “1984. You were at the desk in front of me in Click's. I’d catch you drawing your characters and monsters for Hellfire rather than taking notes.”

Eddie’s eyebrows fly up in surprise, “You know about Hellfire?”

Steve takes in Eddie’s expression, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yeah man, my kids love that club.” He rolls up to his feet in an easy movement that has Eddie vaguely jealous.

Standing tall above Eddie with one hand curled around his hip he looks like he’s about to outline the Tiger’s new gameplan, Steve continues to explain, “I was a bit jealous at first, but Dustin loves it and really that’s what matters, right? Dustin…” He snaps his fingers, lips firming, “He’ll know what’s going on.”

“Uh, you might be thinking of some other club then, because we don’t have a Dustin,” Eddie says.

Steve’s smile deepens, a small secretive thing like he’s laughing at a joke that Eddie may not know but oddly he doesn’t feel like it’s at his expense either. “No, not yet. You’ll love him though.” He hums thoughtfully, “It’s hard not to like the little butthead. Hey, you have the van yet?”

Eddie blinks from the abrupt change of topic and at Steve as he unerringly strides to the space on the wall by the front door. “Yeah?” He says, confused as Steve plucks the Chevrolet’s chain from the hooks where he and Wayne keep their keys.

It’s out in the open so Eddie’s not exactly shocked that Steve went there first, but his confidence at finding the location in one go is weird.

Eddie supposes the ghoul figurine that he had painted and tailored to work as a key chain makes it even more obvious since Steve Harrington apparently knows about Dungeons and Dragons and thus can guess that the monster hanging on the hook is likely Eddie’s.

Eddie, who he has noticed in class. Or will. He’s not sure about the whole thing concerning Mrs Click’s class since they didn’t have history today.

The jarring difference between Steve’s words against reality must be the reason that Eddie feels a half step behind, which is also why it takes a moment to launch into action when Steve twirls the key ring around one blunt finger before stepping out of the trailer. The screen door slaps shut behind him.

“Hey!” Eddie calls out, scrambling after him only to find that Steve is waiting outside. He moves Eddie gently down the steps with his hands around his biceps before turning to close the door. After the quiet snick of the lock turning, he presses the keys into Eddie’s hand. “Give me a lift?”

Eddie closes his gaping mouth and nods dumbly. Sure, why not, he thinks, swallowing down a giggle at the ridiculous circus his afternoon has devolved into. Steve jogs over to the unlocked van door and launches himself onto the passenger seat, wincing and grabbing at his side with a soft curse.

Eddie frowns as he follows him into the driver’s side, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Steve just smiles, pushing a hand back to rap against the passenger window, “You should lock your car door, man. It’d be pretty easy to hotwire, right?”

Staring at Steve, whose tongue is firmly in his cheek and looking less lost and more amused, Eddie wonders aloud, “What is even happening right now?”

“Ignore me,” Steve shakes his head, eyes glimmering with humour. “Can you get to Piney Wood Drive off of Church Street?”

Eddie nods slowly, not completely sure about why he’s allowing himself to be directed by Steve’s whims. He thinks that a sort of morbid curiosity for this mystery is pulling him along like metal fillings drawn to a shiny magnet.

“Sure,” he finally answers, turning the key. Judas Priest blasts from the stereo and Rob Halford growls about the growing storm. Eddie reverses off the gravel while Steve reaches over to turn the volume down, but surprisingly doesn’t flick it off.

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looking out at the blur of houses past the window and tapping his finger against the car door in time with the beat. “Is this Ozzy?” He asks.

Eddie blinks at the stop sign they’ve paused at, “You know Black Sabbath?” Has his soul left his body? Maybe Eddie’s the one tripping balls back at home because surely Steve doesn’t know Black Sabbath.

“Not really,” Steve chuckles. “I just know he’s pretty metal — bit a bat onstage, right?”

Again with the bats. “You have a thing for small flying marsupials?” Eddie turns left onto Highland Drive, slowing down as an older couple cross the middle of the street. “I don’t think they are. Marsupials, that is.” Steve gestures to his stomach, “No, uh, pouches, right?”

Eddie reroutes his thoughts to safer, saner places than a world where he’s being taught species characteristics by someone he’s fairly sure he’s not exchanged two words with before today. He decides to flip the script instead, “No, this is Judas Priest. The Sentinel.”

“Is that a D&D reference?”

Eddie huffs in disbelief, “No, it’s the song title. It’s about a protector that’s ready to defend against any threat. He’s pretty badass, has blades and everything.”

“Sounds like D&D,” Steve snorts as Eddie turns down Church Street.

Eddie inclines his head, “Touche. Now, where are we heading?” Steve directs him to the top of the incline on Piney Wood Drive where a cluster of birch trees surround a wide, single-storey house. The peaks of the roof charmingly peer out between the tall, white trunks like a little hobbit home.

And it’s as the house’s entrance swings open—Eddie helpless to do anything but follow behind Steve at this point—that he finds himself in front of a little hobbit as well.

A pipsqueak pulls the door back with a demanding sort of energy, his face is framed by tight brown curls shoved under a blue and white baseball cap and when he opens his mouth to speak, Eddie sees that his top front teeth are missing. “Steve?”

“Dustin!” Steve steps forward and roughly pulls the kid into his arms. Dustin’s expression looks like an echo of Eddie’s earlier bewilderment, but he gingerly reaches a small hand up to awkwardly pat him on the back.

Steve hangs there for an extra second before roughly clearing his throat and standing up again, though his hand continues to rest on Dustin’s shoulder. “Buddy,” he says, “You’ve got to help me out here: I’m a freaking time traveller.”

(This will have a similiar release schedule to The Gift, with Ao3 always updated first :) )

Tag list under the cut

My taglist is always open, so let me know if you want to be added. Likewise, if you want to be removed, let me know. :)

@bookworm0690, @cinnamon-mushroomabomination, @ellietheasexylibrarian, @finntheehumaneater, @goodolefashionedloverboi, @hallucinatedjosten, @just-a-tiny-void, @ledleaf, @littlewildflowerkitten, @manda-panda-monium, @mightbeasleep, @nburkhardt, @newtstabber, @stillfullofshit, @tartarusknight

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

The Landless Rural Workers Movement Celebrates 40 Years, Altered and Facing the Challenge of Renewal

After antagonistic governments, the movement holds relative disillusionment with the Workers' Party

The MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement) celebrates its 40th anniversary with objectives and perspectives different from those that motivated its creation, a history of conflicts with farmers, ruralists, and antagonistic governments, a certain disillusionment with the PT, and challenges that include difficulties in recruiting new members, political emptiness, and Bolsonaro's siege.

Founded during a national meeting held from January 21 to 24, 1984, in Cascavel (PR), the MST became the most famous Brazilian movement for agrarian reform inside and outside the country.

A protagonist in land invasions seen by left-wing groups as legitimate pressure instruments and by right-wing groups as violent violations of private property, the MST remained at the center of political debate in recent decades.

Continue reading.

[vintagerpg]

UK3: The Gauntlet (1984) is the wrap-up of the Adlerweg two-parter. The party has obtained the magical artifact (which turns out to be intelligent AND bossy, ugh) and have to set about defeating its foes for it. I hate this. My lone consolation is that it is destroyed at the end of the adventure.

This adventure is far stabbier than the first part. The initial problem is regaining the keep that has served as the prime defense for the region and was recently taken over by an army of evil humanoids led by an ogrillon, who wears the gauntlet that is the enemy of the glove the players have. Once they seize the keep, though, the ogrillon escapes into the keep’s unique (and admittedly pretty cool) magical prison. Meanwhile, a fire giant’s army lays siege to the place in order to free his daughter (also currently also in the magic prison). Eventually, the daughter is freed, the ogrillon slain, the army routed and the nagging glove destroyed (by touching the gauntlet and creating the sort of explosion you expect from a collision of matter and anti-matter). The end!

I like the first one more, mostly because it has xvarts in it and lacks a chatty glove. If it didn’t require the glove’s steering, I’d probably like this one more — I kind of love the idea of taking a keep and then immediately having to defend it — but the fact that it is pretty impossible for the PCs to organically succeed at unraveling the plot without the glove’s commentary is a significant flaw.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

1 In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. 2 Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. 3 Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. 4 Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. 5 Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.

6 I hate those who cling to worthless idols; as for me, I trust in the Lord. 7 I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. 8 You have not given me into the hands of the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place.

9 Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. 10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. 11 Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends— those who see me on the street flee from me. 12 I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. 13 For I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!” They conspire against me and plot to take my life.

14 But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” 15 My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. 16 Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love. 17 Let me not be put to shame, Lord, for I have cried out to you; but let the wicked be put to shame and be silent in the realm of the dead. 18 Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous.

19 How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you, that you bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in you. 20 In the shelter of your presence you hide them from all human intrigues; you keep them safe in your dwelling from accusing tongues.

21 Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. 22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.

23 Love the Lord, all his faithful people! The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he pays back in full. 24 Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord. — Psalm 31 | New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide. Cross References: Genesis 40:23; Numbers 6:25; Deuteronomy 32:30; 1 Samuel 2:9; 1 Samuel 23:7; 2 Samuel 4:9; 2 Samuel 22:2; 2 Samuel 22:33; 2 Kings 19:16; Job 5:21; Job 14:5; Job 19:13; Job 36:21; Psalm 5:8; Psalm 6:2; Psalm 6:7; Psalm 18:6; Psalm 86:2; Matthew 27:1; Luke 23:46; Romans 2:4; 1 Corinthians 16:13; Jude 1:15; Revelation 2:10

[whoreviewswho]

A Finely Tuned Response - Frontios, 1984

An analysis of Doctor Who of the early to mid 1980s is, somewhat inevitably, an examination of wasted potential and this is a particularly pertinent point to consider when embarking on a critical look at Frontios. To some extent, Frontios is business as usual for the Peter Davison era. Along with The Awakening, it stands-out for being one of only two stories in the season that is not carrying the weight of an enormous event. It is four episodes long, features a typical Doctor Who monster, slots itself effortlessly into the action-packed militaristic flavour of the Davison era and repurposes the trappings of past base-under-siege serials for good measure. This is probably why it gets such little attention from the fandom on the whole; Frontios is a story conceived to slip under the radar.

But I think that Frontios does anything but be unnoticeable. It is screaming to be noticed because I think that this story, more than any other of the Davison era, is the story of untapped potential. Frontios takes everything that we know about the Davison era, every aspect of it that was working, and offers us a glimpse into an alternate reality where everything else also works just a little bit better still. This is thanks to former script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, one of a handful of writers who could comfortably stake the claim of one of the most underrated in the series' history. Bidmead script edited the show from 1980-1981, the entirety of season eighteen, and is notable for following through with John Nathan-Turner's intention to shift the style of storytelling in Doctor Who away from the high-concept, camp adventure series of the previous regime toward more serious-minded stories that had a basis in real-world science. In Bidmead's own words, "[Doctor Who] exemplified for young viewers the power of scientific thinking to solve problems. Science stretched into fantastic future shapes, yes, but the show had a serious social purpose. It must never be silly, never be mere magic....we tried to build our stories on solid, if fancifully extended, scientific ideas." 

It is worth stating the obvious here; this philosophy returns the show to its 1963 roots of being educational as well as entertaining. The result of Bidmead and JNT's collaboration was a run of seven stories that had an entirely unique flavour for the franchise. Stories that were rich in theme and subtext, revelling in the unknown possibilities of bleeding edge theories. Take Warrior's Gate, for example. Taking place in the theoretical zero point between positive and negative space, that serial watches like a surreal, poetic and atmospheric novel that meditates on I-Ching philosophy, exploring notions of action, free-will and entropy. Warrior's Gate is a dense and thoughtful production whose characters and setting all interlink to form a greater thematic whole. A bit over twelve months later, Doctor Who was broadcasting stories like Earthshock. 

That sounds a little bit more disingenuous than perhaps it should because Earthshock is not a bad story in and of itself but it is a very different story. The tumultuous production of Warrior's Gate and the overall difficulties of Bidmead's position lead to his resignation at the end of season eighteen. The post would eventually be filled by Eric Saward whose conception of what made for a good Doctor Who story wildly contrasted with Bidmead's. Earthshock proved to be the template, the definitive statement for what his ambitions were with Doctor Who; a thrilling, action-packed adventure with a confident blend of character drama and sci-fi serial antics. To use a low-hanging and easy shorthand example, if Bidmead's Doctor Who could be compared to say a Christopher Nolan film then Saward is somewhat of a Zack Snyder.

But this brings us back to the accusation of wasted potential because I would argue that the Fifth Doctor's era is marked by inconsistency more than it is by abject failure. I find it rather interesting that both JNT/Bidmead Who and JNT/Saward Who make a concerted effort to return the programme to something resembling the original conception of the show but in polar opposite ways. In the latter case, it was a more superficial attempt with the turn back toward an ensemble cast and the attempt at tighter stitching from one serial to the next. Most episodes of the Davison era connect in some direct way to the previous one, even if that connection usually little more than a couple of lines at the top of the episode addressing something from the previous one. 

The approach that JNT and Saward were aiming for in these three years together, that of an explosive science-fiction soap-opera, is a perfectly valid take on the programme. It was even an effective one on occasion. The problems with Saward's tenure as script-editor are myriad and deserving of dissecting in a piece more dedicated to him but suffice it to say that what Frontios accomplishes is a case of a serial coming together in spite of its circumstances instead of coming out of them. When Bidmead was invited back as a freelancer for Davison’s third, and final, season, he incidentally offered a tantalising glimpse into the era that might have been if he had stuck around with the show. If nothing else, he reaffirms one thing; wildly creative and conceptual science-fiction stories can work hand-in-hand with serialised, evolving character drama.

In contrast to what one might expect, Frontios can perhaps best be described as Bidmead’s most traditional Doctor Who story. Saward invited him to contribute a pitch for a serial in season twenty-one but on the condition that he was to craft something in the mould of a traditional Doctor-Who-monster-plot. As Bidmead recalled in a 1988 interview for Doctor Who Magazine; "Eric Saward phoned me up and asked me to do ‘Frontios’. They wanted the monster element, which was a struggle because I always hated ‘Doctor Who’ monsters – partly because they tend to look cheap and mainly because they are so limited on dialogue. Dialogue is so important in a low budget show – it creates the whole effect". In so far as being a typical monster story for Doctor Who, the broad strokes of Frontios appear to offer little in the way of innovation. Our trio unexpectedly find themselves among colony of humans in the far future only to quickly discover that an unknown, alien threat is causing colonists to disappear into the planet itself. On one level, perhaps this is disappointing for the staunch season eighteen fans (god forbid those nerds ever out themselves) that Bidmead’s final effort on-screen is such traditional fare but, make no mistake, this is Bidmead all over. Where else would one find a story that revels so much in making the setting a character unto itself, or an active threat in this case. There is an almost primal irrational fear underpinning the horror of Frontios which is that of the Earth dropping from beneath you, consuming you without a trace. It is a great idea and legitimately terrifying at a conceptual level. Frontios is the last hope for humanity, the final place that they can run to and this here is the horror at the end of human existence; what comes for us all when there is nowhere left to run?

Frontios is a story about people being where they shouldn’t which is about as clued-in to the central premise of Doctor Who as one could possibly be; the entire franchise is a story of things being where they shouldn't. I love the Doctor’s initial flat refusal to explore Frontios in any way because “knowledge has its limits”. It is an interesting slice of lore, that never really gets picked up on again, that the Time Lords have a limited scope of the arc of history. Perhaps because pulling on this thread could lend too much credence to the theory that Time Lords are future human beings. After all, is there any particular reason why the Time Lords knowledge has a cut off point that coincides with the near end of humanity? It is an effective shorthand to illustrate the stakes at play here and set the scene for the audience but remains an oddly intriguing nugget of lore too. I would not be surprised if this story directly influenced Russell T Davies when he came to writing Utopia since that story also presents the Doctor as going further than ever before and having the immediate reaction of wanting to leave. In this case, I adore that as soon as the Doctor does land, he immediately launches into helping the humans despite what his rational mind has concluded. It is also a little bit weird that the Doctor’s behaviour ultimately leads to no consequences from the Time Lords. We are told repeatedly that he is forbidden to interfere here and that the time laws do not permit his actions. If Saward were a bit more on his ball, perhaps this could have been the inciting incident that puts the Doctor back on trial two seasons from now as opposed to just…well, nothing really. 

Bidmead does not write small scale stories. Even this one, which is relatively small fry in the narrative of this season, is as high stakes as actually destroying the TARDIS. Bidmead claims to have done this to give the Doctor no form of security, have him just as desperate and endangered as the humans. Everything is against the Doctor here which makes for a nice unintentional parallel to The Caves of Androzani (also penned by a former script editor) where the same can be said but he’s just a lot less lucky. What is frustrating is that the script makes really no attempt to explain exactly why or how the TARDIS is destroyed. The Gravis does not even know it is there. The Doctor does have one line about it toward the climax; "It's, er it's been spatially distributed to optimise the, er, the packing efficiency of, er, the real time envelope" which sounds dreadfully like he is making it up. Is he suggesting that the TARDIS folded in on itself in an effort to protect itself from the meteor strike? Or was the meteor strike actually supposed to have splintered it? Surely not that second thing since Tegan and Turlough found it to be largely closed off just moments after landing, I have no idea what is really going on here and have yet to find a clear answer in the text but it is a lovely way to visually illustrate the consequences of the Doctor going behind where he even feels he is permitted to travel.

If there is anything that significantly hurts Frontios then it is the production. While not necessarily cheap, the horrific cliffhanger to part three is realised about as well as it could be, this story is hampered by shoddy direction from Ron Jones and some generally poor design. A lot of the horror that ought to be here is nearly squandered by the way the thing is assembled and that is truly frustrating. There is some god awful acting attempting to ‘lift’ some rubble in episode one. How that made it to screen I will never know. In concept, the Tractators are a deeply disturbing villainous creature with their inhuman features and mental powers to ensnare any victim they choose no matter how hard they run. Their plot to chop up human beings to ensure their machinery works was so freaky that Steven Moffat likely stole it to be much scarier in 2006. Bidmead based the monsters on woodlice and, while that intention extended into the design, the Tractators are the textbook definition of a lumbering “Doctor Who monster”. Practically every moment of action they have in the entire story falls completely flat and the monsters are not even remotely scary. They just look like crap. Apparently Jones hired dancers as he imagined the Tractators to curl up like woodlice, something that Bidmead intended in the script. Visual effects designer Dave Harvard did not get this memo it seems. There is a distinct lack of menace and thrill displayed onscreen here despite what are, really, a perfectly strong set of scripts to work from. It is a real shame.

Thankfully, the production can deliver on Bidmead's well-developed supporting cast and he provides a compelling far-future colony for the TARDIS team to get entangled up with. Range is a much an endearing scientist figure to pair the Doctor up with as Plantagenet and Brazen make an irritating opposing force. It is a decidedly bleak vision of the future; a fascist, totalitarian state. In her analysis of the serial, Elizabeth Sandifer makes the suggestion that Bidmead’s more cerebral, world-building story is constantly under jeopardy by Eric Saward’s stock-standard military story, invading the scenes as an opposing force that tries to stop the story from happening. Whether Bidmead was deliberately poking at Saward's tendencies as a writer remains to be seen but it is a very fun read regardless. Bidmead has cited the 1982 Lebanon War as an influence on his scripts which, as of time of writing this article in March 2024, is an interesting situation to cite. The Lebanon War took place between June 6 1982 and June 5 1985 between the Israel Defence Forces and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The inspiration from the war can certainly be identified in what Frontios would become though it would be absurd too suggest that the story is analogous for the conflict itself. Certainly, the broad strokes of the situation informed the plot but the most significant contribution was an aesthetic one with the serial's war-torn landscape that is clearly suffering from a near constant bombardment that has slowly increased in frequency and intensity over several decades. Indeed, as Range and the Doctor state;

RANGE: Captain Revere assumed that the barrage was some sort of softening up process. Heralding an invasion, he said. DOCTOR: Hmm, someone else thinks this is their territory.

Revere is half-right. Frontios is an invasion story; the humans are the invaders. This flavour of anti-colonial storytelling is not particularly new ground for Doctor Who to tread and would certainly continue to be well-walked although the allegory becomes a little bit murky in this case with the suggestion that the Tractators are not indigenous to Frontios either. Perhaps the situation of two invading forces staking claim to a land that rightfully belongs to neither was ripped straight from the headlines but the absence of a third party makes it a rather more simplistic and less challenging situation to depict. Again, the influence is purely aesthetic. Cutting edge political satire doesn’t seem to be something Bidmead is particularly interested in anyway, regardless of his effectiveness in writing it.

So, we can conclude that the Tractators are likely not indigenous from pretty early on in the story thanks to Turlough who is awarded one of his strongest roles in any story pos-Enlightenment. Following his failed plot to murder the Doctor, the shifty and morally ambiguous nature of Turlough became an aspect of his character that was largely cast aside. Turlough was introduced as an untrustworthy and selfish survivalist whose past life before exile on Earth were primed to make him a greatly compelling member of the TARDIS team moving forward. However, instead of gradually unravelling this mystery and pushing Turlough’s relationship with his “friends” to their furthest extent, the character spent most of his stories was just separated from the Doctor for about half of the runtime to simply complain and look a bit suss from time to time. A lot of potential character work seemed to be abandoned and relegated to these four scripts and his final story, Planet of Fire. This is yet another example of Saward's limits as a script editor and really the most damning one considering part of this period's mission statement was to be a quasi soap-opera.

After laying eyes on the Tractators, we see a new side to Turlough; pure, genuine fear. Our first glimpses at his origins are finally awarded to us when a race memory is unlocked within him that sees him recoil from the action in a catatonic state. He has a primal reaction to the creatures below the surface. Being the only person with knowledge of the monsters, he gradually pulls himself together and returns to help the Doctor. While not especially interesting an arc in itself, this is a rewarding series of events to put Turlough through if you have been following his story since Mawdryn Undead since it seems that only now he has truly embraced being a force for good with the Doctor and not just a traveller in it only for himself. This is all really solid stuff and Mark Strickson does a decent enough job with it. Turlough lamenting that nobody expects anything heroic of him is a really lovely character moment and this story marks a significant turning point for the character that comes too late. This is the kind of on-going melodrama that should have been present in this era the entire time and this particular development for Turlough needed to happen at, at the latest, the end of the last season. Not two stories before his departure. For his active role as a companion to be claimed eight stories into his run (effectively after twenty-eight episodes on the show) is ludicrous. Even more frustratingly, Turlough takes a backseat again in the next story leaving Planet of Fire to race his character to the finish line and it proves once more that the potential for greatness is all there but this was too little too late.

Tegan is the most sidelined of the three which is irritating not only because this would prove to be her penultimate appearance on the show but also because it officially becomes a pattern of the third story now to give her no kind of active role in narrative. The next serial would do that too though it could be argued by design which is a weak defence in the face of a whole season awarding her next to no material. Given where her character was set to go in Resurrection of the Daleks this and the nature of her departing the TARDIS, this would have been a great time to highlight the brutality of the Doctor’s travels and drop her in the midst of some truly awful acts. Long-form story was really not Eric Saward’s strongest skill. 

And then we have the Doctor. Three stories away from his own dramatic exit and finally he feels like he has fully come into his own. This is perhaps the most frustrating realisation to grapple with in regards to Bidmead’s leaving the show; the man knows how to write the Doctor. His take on the character sees the frustratingly underdeveloped Fifth Doctor in a fully authoritative role; barking out orders and opinions to whoever he pleases and commanding presence as much as he needs to. This is a character I would have loved to see for three seasons and it pains me that he is only really found here and in Androzani. At the heart of Frontios is a very simple story that about leadership in a decidedly anti-militaristic sort of way. The humans are being driven by the military but lacking in unity as their leadership in Brazen and Plantagenet is a self, arrogant and narrow-minded leadership that dismisses their scientists and the Doctor when he arrives. As we learn about the Tractators, their leadership is flawed too as the creatures are revealed to be naturally passive without the command, being enslaved, by the Gravis. So, we have the Doctor who is driven but understanding. He listens to the facts, he makes measured judgements and he considers the breadth of his actions. The Doctor is the shining example of good leadership in this colony. It is a very simple moral but who ever said that simplicity was a bad thing?

Sandifer made the acute observation in her Warrior's Gate article that "The Doctor that Bidmead wants are the Doctors that [David] Whitaker wrote for – the small and seemingly harmless men who skulked and observed and learned to understand the system before making a single decisive move within it. Not the Doctors of the 70s – big, starring leading men who were the centre of attention and whose charisma and likability drove the entire story". Here we have found ourselves with, frankly, the biggest victim of wasted potential in Peter Davison's run which, obviously is Peter Davison. It is well-documented that part of JNT's strategy in casting Davison was to provide a stark contrast to the scene-stealing Tom Baker. The Fifth Doctor was a less commanding and intrusive presence by design which is all well and good if your target is a more Whitaker-style take on the character. The problem is simply that they missed.

To this day, the Fifth Doctor comes under fire for being a bland incarnation but that is only half of the truth. What fans criticise as blandness is what I would sooner articulate as a lack of definition. The Fifth Doctor as a character was primarily defined by the things that he was not in comparison to the previous four actors instead of the things that he actually was. This Doctor was not old, he was not commanding, he was not infallible, he was not funny, he was not flippant, he was not cruel, he was not Tom Baker – he was not a lot of things and the things that he was varied greatly from one story to the next. Perhaps this is a little unfair since there was at least an intention of who the Fifth Doctor was supposed to be, even if it was not fully realised onscreen. It is at this point that I feel compelled to clarify also that Davison was not at all the problem here. He is an excellent actor who had very strong and compelling instincts of how to play the part, some of which he and JNT agreed on. In 1981, Davison conducted an interview with Radio Times where he made an attempt to outline his vision for the role;

"I’ll be a much younger Dr. Who, and I’ll be wearing a kind of Victorian cricketing outfit to accentuate my youth. I’d like my Doctor to be heroic and resourceful. I feel that, over the years, ‘Doctor Who’ has become less vital, no longer struggling for survival, depending on instant, miraculous solutions to problems. The suspense of ‘Now how’s he going to get out of this tight  corner?’ has been missing. I want to restore that. My Doctor will be flawed. He’ll have the best intentions and he will in the end win through, but he will not always act for the best. Sometimes, he’ll even endanger his companions. But I want him to have a sort of reckless innocence."

This is not quite a description of who the Fifth Doctor is not but in terms of being a definitive statement on what he is it is still somewhat lacking. “Heroic and resourceful" are satisfactory descriptors and the suggestion that he has a “reckless innocence” seems to indicate that he is perhaps simply naive. To say that he is flawed is not particularly revealing without actually delving into what the flaws are but this is certainly a start. There is a blueprint here with which to construct a fully-realised character but the one that made it to screen oscillated wildly from seeming compelling to inoffensive to, yes, bland.

Given the revolving door of script-editors during season nineteen's production, it is perhaps not surprising that, despite having some strong stories on the whole, it was not a definitive opening statement for the Fifth Doctor. Castrovalva took the Doctor out of action for most of its runtime and then had him in the post-regenerative non-character state that left him open to hopefully be defined later on down the track. The larger part of season nineteen fails to define him particularly well with Four to Doomsday, Kinda and Black Orchid each shooting for the unassuming observer type but fail to give him any truly distinct character traits nor a particularly engaging role in the narrative. It shows a near complete misunderstanding of the Whitaker-style Doctor depicting him not as a mercurial learner but a passive observer. The Visitation and Time-Flight shift gears from this to am extent presenting something in the mould of Jon Pertwee's Doctor on paper. The former, however, leaves him still largely sidelined by its comedy supporting character and the latter makes the unfortunate misstep of being Time-Flight. 

The Fifth Doctor in season nineteen is a character whose role in the story is dictated by the narrative conventions of Doctor Who. His name is in the title, he is a heroic character therefore he will heroically save the day even if the plot could have happily rolled on much the same without his involvement at all. Black Orchid even takes this to the extreme when it, upon stumbling upon an opportunity for some drama when the Doctor comes under suspicion for murder, he gets away with it by taking the supporting cast into the TARDIS and going "See? I'm Doctor Who so I must be innocent". The only story to offer any glimmer of the characterisation and subversion that was promised is Earthshock but even that immature, emotionally unregulated character would never really come back onscreen.

Season twenty seems to bring little else to the table besides his being generally nice but a bit exasperated at times (and it is worth noting that the subpar quality of the scriptwriting in season twenty is what ensured Davison would not sign on beyond his three year contract). The Fifth Doctor's lack of authority too often came as a failing in the storytelling instead of a failing in the character. Take how he fails to command a scene with the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead or the lack of interest anybody has in him during Warriors of the Deep. Snakedance is really the only serial that took this idea and ran when Christopher Bailey had to the good sense to present a realistic reaction to the Doctor showing up prophesying doom for all and made that escalation most of his role in the story. The problem hit its peak by the time The Five Doctors made it to screen which, of course, made an embarrassing show of what little characterisation the Fifth Doctor was awarded. Standing next to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee would be difficult for anyone but the Fifth Doctor managed to make it seem impossible.

Part of the problem with the Doctor's lack of definition, of course, stemmed from the approach, or rather the production team's inability to scale the mountain that they had raised for themselves. Having a leading cast as big as four and small as three for all but one of his stories often left the Doctor struggling to command the narrative in any way. It became easy to lean on an archetypical idea of who 'the Doctor' is to make the stories work. This is symptomatic of the broader issue that this production team was not up to the task that they set themselves of introducing a larger cast for a soap-opera style. Darren Mooney, for the m0vie blog, articulated the issue well in his article “Doctor Who?” The Deconstructed Davison Doctor;

"[T]he Fifth Doctor’s era offered a weird funhouse mirror of the [soap-opera] genre. The companions were all given strong archetypal personalities that were designed to play off one another, but without any detail or humanity to round out those archetypes into characterisation. More than that, there was no real sense of progression or character development. None of the companions grew or evolved."

Consequently, this left the most valuable asset for character definition, his relationships to everybody else, severely under-utilised. Again, this was not Eric Saward's strength but, further to that, it was not even his interest. Saward often claimed that the aspect of Doctor Who that compelled him the most were the worlds and characters explored rather than our main ensemble. A perfectly fine stance but not a particularly good focus to take in the most serialised version of the show since it first began.

Something always worth considering when engaging in any form of art criticism is the relationship between artistic intention and audience interpretation. Obviously, the former informs the latter; an artistic work presents evidence and information that is collected and interpreted by the audience. There are a number of ways with which to use this relationship as the basis of a critique. One option is the focus primarily on intention; the artist means for the piece to accomplish X thing and I have assessed the evidence provided to form a conclusion as to why I think it is or is not successful in that endeavour. This option is only viable if that intention has been made clear in some context outside of the actual work itself. Another way to engage is to ignore intention entirely, the death of the author approach; I gathered evidence from the text and interpreted it in this way which I did or did not enjoy for X reasons. Generally speaking, I find that the most insightful and compelling criticism comes from a mixture of both approaches. I find it equally as valuable to glean the context of which the work is made and what the artist is intending to do as I do being able to allow the work to speak to me and take on a life of its own.

In the case of the character of the Doctor between 1982 and 1984, there is a lot to engage with here. As established above, the artistic intention of the Fifth Doctor was deeply confused and underdeveloped. So let us turn to an interpretive reading, the most popular one that has developed among fans over time which is that the story of the Fifth Doctor is tragedy. This reading suggests that this Doctor is a victim of a circumstance, a moral crusader and conventional hero who becomes worn down and killed by the cruel and ruthless universe around him. It is a really compelling take and there is a good amount of evidence to substantiate it. Earthshock is the earliest example where the Doctor’s role in the climax consists primarily of him failing to negotiate with the Cyber-Leader with no option left but to just murder him as he watches his young friend die in an act of heroism he inspired. Then we have Snakedance where his walking into the story doing his typical Doctor thing sees him vilified and antagonised for the larger part of the runtime. Season twenty-one is where the evidence really ramps up. Warriors of the Deep attempts a similar outcome to Earthshock with the Doctor’s lack of authority leading to him enabling a massacre. Frontios sees him literally drawn into a place he shouldn’t be despite his best intentions. Resurrection of the Daleks is such a clusterfuck that it causes Tegan to leave the Doctor altogether and then his simply being on Androzani places him squarely in the middle of events so devastating that everybody there except for Peri winds up dead.

As a reading on his era, this interpretation holds up very well. It is exactly the kind of character development that should have been the crux of Davison's time on the show and is the kind of thing suggested by the publicity and discussions of his character back in 1981. What makes it so frustrating is how much this was not really present in the artistic intent. Yes, the Fifth Doctor was fallible and one of his companions died but this was little more than an aesthetic choice for the larger part of the era. As Sandifer articulated perfectly in her Earthshock analysis;

"What we get [with Adric's death] isn’t drama. It’s the hollow shell of drama – a major character death, a silent credit sequence, a few minutes of horrified and morose main characters at the tail end of this and the start of Time-Flight, and then everybody – the audience included – moves on. It’s not one of the most dramatic sequences of the 1980s. It’s a cheap sham designed to look like drama. It’s a sequence designed to rile up controversy – the exact sort of death scene that would be created by an executive who believes that art should 'soothe, not distract'".

Earthshock was the most important story of the JNT/Saward administration and it makes it also emblematic of a number of things it fails to get right. Adric's death was wasted potential. If the overall arc of the Fifth Doctor's story is a man who has the best intentions but gets beaten down by everything around him, that needs to be in any way at the forefront of his character and his actions in the stories. Eric Saward thought it important to depict violence in a visceral and impactful way which serves the interpretation but was not a calculated move to develop an actual arc.

By the time season twenty-one came around, Davison had hit breaking point with the bland material and an actual character began to emerge. Beginning with this serial, his Doctor finally showed signs of some consistent characterisation. His Doctor had become snarkier and wittier, his occasional emotional outbursts in season nineteen filtering through as a genuine resentment for authority and pig-headedness. As Davison himself stated;

"Frontios was excellent, an extremely well-rounded script that got hold of the way I saw the part of the Doctor, and made his dialogue and actions fit in with this. I enjoyed it because there was really something there to latch onto in rehearsal and make your own. If you like, it had enough there without the actors having to try to embellish a weak storyline." 

Thus, this is why Frontios shines so brightly. With some stronger material to play as well in this story through to his final appearance, Davison gets the best chance of his era to actually act. The Doctor is no longer a passive afterthought in the narrative and the season gains a genuine momentum with escalation from one story to the next until the entire narrative structure of Doctor Who breaks down in The Caves of Androzani. Frontios marks the beginning of the Davison era finally starting to land on what really works. We have a Doctor that is genuinely compelling, a very compelling and unique companion in Turlough and a genuinely interesting story that nails the Eric Saward approach to thrilling, action-packed Doctor Who (if only really in the script than actually on-screen). Frontios is really spearheading this last leg of the Davison era and not by mistake.This is a highpoint of season twenty-one and, indeed, of all ‘80s Who. While this is probably Bidmead's weakest script technically (I'd probably watch this over Castrovalva), it demonstrates that old ideas done well still undeniably make for a story that is done really well but it is no surprise that this solid story is consistently overshadowed by the more obviously ambitious milestones of the Davison era. This is the story the Davison era needed but it is a story that just came too late to save it altogether.

A final word: I had no other place to mention this but the Doctor’s line about being a hat person is a little amusing at this point in his life since he hasn’t been seen wearing one for three stories now – he last donned it in The King’s Demons and won’t again until the story after this

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE GRAVES OF THE '80s MEETS BUTTON FORM -- NOT FOR POSERS OR WIMPS.

PIC(S) INFO: Part 2 of a few -- Spotlight on more 1 inch button/badge designs of various hardcore punk/80s punk/metal punk bands, pressed by Macedonian-based record label, Fuck Yoga Records.

Man, don't even get me started on a "top three" because I wanted all of these yesterday. Every single button is of an '80s band, too! The graves of the '80s live!!

Source: https://fuckyoga.limitedrun.com/categories/patches-pins.

[pocoslip]

After they made a New Bigger G1 Optimus Prime Figure, they gonna have to make a New Megatron Figure too

(Whether the Decepticon Leader turns into a Gun or a Tank, which is Fine by me)

[nerds-yearbook]

Appendix: Some Nerd Appearances of David Warner

Teen Titans Go! - The Lobe (2020)

Mary Poppins Returns - Admiral Boom (2018)

The Alienist - Professor Cavanaugh (2018)

The Amazing World of Gumball - Dr Wrecker (2015 - 2016)

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear - Jon Irenicus (2016)

Southern Troopers - Admiral Warner (2015)

Penny Dreadful - Professor Abraham Van Helsing (2014)

Doctor Who - Professor Grisenko (2013)

Wizard - Merlin (2013)

The Evil Clergyman - The Evil Clergyman (2012)

The Secret of Crickley Hall - Percy Judd (2012)

A Thousand Kisses Deep - Max (2011)

Tron: The Next Day - Ed Dillenger (2011)

Graceless - Daniel (2010)

Doctor Who: Dreamland - Lord Azlok (2009)

Hogfather - Lord Downey (2006)

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse - Dr Erasmus Pea (2005)

Cyber Wars - Joseph Lau (2004)

Cortex - Master of the Organization (2004)

Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde - Sir Danvers Carew (2003)

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy - Nergal (2001 - 2003)

The Code Conspiracy - Professor (2002)

The Little Unicorn - Ted Regan (2001)

Planet of the Apes - Senator Sandar (2001)

Men In Black animated - Alpha (1997 - 2001)

Star Trek: Klingon Academy - Chancellor Gorkon (2000)

The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne - Arago (2000)

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command - Lord Angstrom (2000)

Batman Beyond - Ra's Al Ghul (2000)

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)

Star Wars: Force Commander - Grand Gen Brashin

Superman animated - Ra's Al Ghul (1999)

Descent 3 - Dravis (1999)

The Outer Limits - Inspector (1995 - 1999)

Total Recall 2070 - Dr Felix Latham (1999)

Wing Commander - Admiral Geoffery (1999)

Toonsylvania - Doctor Vic Frankenstien (1998)

Houdini - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1998)

Fallout - Morpheus (1997)

Spider-Man animated - Herbert Landon (1995 - 1997)

Preversions of Science - Dr Nordhoff (1997)

Freakazoid - The Lobe (1995 - 1997)

Captain Simian & the Space Monkeys - the Glyph (1997)

Privateer 2 - Rhinehart (1996)

Beast Master III - Lord Agon (1996)

Gargoyles - Archmage (1995)

Iron Man - Arthur Dearborn (1995)

Batman animated - Ra's Al Ghul (1992 - 1995)

Final Equinox - Shilow (1995)

Biker Mice from Mars - Ice Breaker (1995)

Mighty Max - Talon (1994)

Babylon 5 - Aldous Gajic (1994)

Lois and Clark the New Adventures - Jor-El (1994)

Adventures of Brisco County Jr - Winston Smiles (1993)

Quest of the Delta Knights - Lord Vultare (1993)

Body Bags - Dr Lock (1993)

Wild Palms - Eli Levitt (1993)

Dinosaurs - Spirit of the Tree (1993)

Star Trek the Next Generation - Gul Madred (1992)

Captain Planet and the Planeteers - Zarm (1992)

Tales from the Crypt - Dr Alan Goetz (1992)

Return to the Lost World - Professor Summerlee (1992)

The Lost World - Professor Summerlee (1992)

Star Trek VI - Chancellor Gorkon (1991)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II - Professor Jordan (1991)

Twin Peaks - Thomas Eckhardt (1991)

Spymaker - Adm Godfry (1990)

Star Trek V - St John Talbot (1989)

Worlds Beyond - Ken Larkin (1988)

My Best Friend is a Vampire - Professor Leopold (1987)

Frankenstien - the creature (1984)

The Man With Two Brains - Dr Alfred (1983)

Tron - Ed Dillenger (1982)

Time Bandits - Evil Genius (1981)

Time After Time - Dr John Leslie/Jack the Ripper (1979)

[oww666]

This Is Orwell’s 1984 in Real Life: Internet Archive Under Siege in Mass...

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Time Heals all Wounds

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/P0zFYbn by Blu_bird3 Bella O’Callaghan is a fourteen year old child of Hecate and in need of a break.She has been through alot,she somehow managed to survive the battle of the labyrinth,the battle of manhattan,the battle of the acropolis,the siege of camp half blood,Nero's attack on chb and gotham foster care.with her lack of self preservation it's a wonder shes still alive at this point. Now she's being transferred to a new foster home wich just so happens to be the wayne manor.So she has to keep her other life as a demigod a secret from the Waynes while the Waynes are also trying to keep there nightly activities a secret from bella.what could go wrong?a lot actually. Words: 1984, Chapters: 1/?, Language: Dansk Fandoms: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Batman - All Media Types Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con Categories: Other Characters: Bruce Wayne, Original Female Character(s), Original Characters, Chiron (Percy Jackson), Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Nico di Angelo, Frank Zhang Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent Additional Tags: Rick Riordan Demigod Universe | Riordanverse, Canon-Typical Violence, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), why cant the gods deal with the fate of the world themselves?, The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo) Spoilers, Pre-The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo), Post-The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo), Apollo is Lester, for a while, Panic Attacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily Shenanigans (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Feels, Jason Todd is a Batfamily Member, Fluff and Angst, Rom Dick Grayson read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/P0zFYbn

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — In synagogues, schools and ordinary streets across Europe, Jews are voicing a similar refrain: They live in a different world from the one they knew before Oct. 7.

That’s not only because Hamas’ attacks in southern Israel killed the most Jewish civilians in one day since the Holocaust. Across Europe, the rate of antisemitic incidents has fueled an atmosphere of fear and motivated some to conceal their Jewish identity.

European governments have made it a point to protect their countries’ Jews from antisemitism in recent decades. The fruits of those efforts are seen in the increased security at Jewish institutions across the continent and the continued public statements by Western leaders meant to call out and condemn hatred against Jews.

But there is a new wrinkle to that arc: a clear, tortured confusion in European governments and police departments about how to distinguish between anger against Israel and antisemitism, between the right to assemble at pro-Palestinian rallies and the crime of hate speech. The debate was punctuated on Monday by the firing of British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who made a series of divisive remarks about pro-Palestinian demonstrators last week.

A new era?

Over a month into the bloody aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israeli towns and Israel’s bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip, antisemitism is soaring far from the scene of the conflict.

France has registered over 1,000 antisemitic acts since Oct. 7, exceeding in weeks the number recorded over the past year, according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. The Community Security Trust, a group that tracks antisemitism in Britain, has reported 1,205 incidents in that time frame — the highest total in a 35-day period since it began recording offenses in 1984. And in Germany, the federal agency RIAS verified 202 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7-15, up 240% from the same week last year.

The incidents run the gamut: Assaults, threats to Jews and Jewish businesses, damage to Jewish property, hate mail and online abuse.

On Nov. 4, a Jewish woman in Lyon was stabbed in the stomach at her home, while a swastika was found graffitied on her door. French prosecutors have also opened a probe into a viral video that showed a group of youths chanting on the Paris metro: “Fuck the Jews and fuck your mother, long live Palestine, we are Nazis and proud of it.”

Meanwhile, Berlin police are investigating two Molotov cocktails thrown at the Kahal Adass Jisroel synagogue, along with multiple Stars of David marked on apartment buildings. The Oct. 27 cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel, one of the most widely circulated news magazines in Europe, read “Wir Haben Angst” (“We are scared”). One of the four German Jews pictured on the cover is 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal.

Marina Chernivsky is the founder and director of OFEK, a Berlin counseling center that specializes in antisemitic violence and discrimination. The group has struggled to manage a 12-fold increase in requests for psychological counseling since Oct. 7, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In just three weeks, OFEK received 390 requests; its previous record was 370 in an entire year.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Chernivsky. “It’s just one indicator of the situation now, because it’s a very high barrier to decide to call an institution and tell the story and also ask for support. It’s not easy and many people do not do it.”

London police received reports of 657 antisemitic and 230 Islamophobic incidents between Oct.1 and Nov. 1, a significant jump in both categories. On Nov. 2, staff at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library — the world’s oldest Holocaust library and research center — found graffiti that read “Gaza” across their building’s sign.

In Italy’s capital, four Holocaust memorial plaques were found blackened with a torch and spray paint last week. The bronze blocks, called “pietre d’inciampo” or “stumbling stones” in Rome, are embedded on the sidewalk in front of apartment buildings where Jews were rounded up from the Nazi-occupied city and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. They show the names of the Jews who lived there and the dates when they were born, deported and murdered.

Milan officials are also investigating dozens of antisemitic incidents, including death threats graffitied in a hospital, a bakery and a nightclub. At a recent Milan rally, some protestors chanted, “Open the borders so we can kill the Zionists.”

Spain and Portugal have seen their share of synagogue graffiti, too. In Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, a group of protestors gathered in front of a synagogue and burned an Israeli flag.

In the Netherlands, the number of antisemitic incidents reported to a leading Dutch-Jewish watchdog is up 818% from the monthly average of the past three years. This figure only includes interpersonal incidents, such as threats, verbal and physical abuse and direct messages, not general antisemitic statements on social media.

“We see lots of incidents at schools, where Jewish or Israeli kids are being attacked because of what’s going on in Israel and Gaza,” CIDI director Naomi Mestrum told JTA. “One kid was threatened with a knife and hit with a bottle, while the other kids were swearing, ‘kankerjood’ — in Dutch, that means ‘cancer Jew.’”

The Dutch Jewish Weekly changed its delivery packaging from transparent plastic to an anonymous white envelope after Oct. 7, according to editor-in-chief Esther Voet, because subscribers were anxious about their neighbors finding out they were Jewish. Their requests follow a pattern of fear among Jews taking measures to hide their identity in Europe, from removing or camouflaging their mezuzahs to taking off their kippahs in public and avoiding speaking Hebrew on the street. One Syrian Jewish refugee in the Netherlands told JTA he no longer sleeps in his own apartment after his window was defaced with a swastika.

Although antisemitism typically flares in Europe when there is fighting in Israel and the Palestinian territories, tracking groups in France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands all report that European Jews are living in a new landscape.

“We’ve never seen this before, both this increase in numbers and the threatening types of incidents,” CIDI researcher and policy advisor Hans Wallage told JTA. “I also hear from the Jewish community that they’ve never experienced this before, and they’re very afraid and anxious for the future.”

The free speech debate

In the face of this crescendo, European governments have been conflicted over how to crack down on antisemitism without inhibiting free speech.

In France, Darmanin attempted to impose a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, declaring them “likely to generate disturbances to public order.” Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer for the Palestine Action Committee, called this order a “serious attack on freedom of expression.” The ban has since been overturned by France’s top administrative court, although local authorities can still block protests on a case-by-case basis.

London’s Metropolitan police have been open about their difficulty in determining which protest chants are lawful and which could incite violence. In a bulletin on Oct. 20, they discussed the popular chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which has various interpretations. Some activists say it means that Palestinians should be free of Israeli occupation, with rights and dignity equal to Israelis. Critics, including Israeli leaders and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, say the chant calls for a Palestinian entity that has eliminated Jews and Israelis between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“While we can envisage scenarios where chanting these words could be unlawful, such as outside a synagogue or Jewish school, or directly at a Jewish person or group intended to intimidate, it is likely that its use in a wider protest setting… would not be an offense and would not result in arrests,” said the Metropolitan police.

Meanwhile, the British government is divided. Ahead of a massive pro-Palestinian rally in London on Saturday, Suella Braverman wrote an op-ed calling the protestors “hate marchers” and accusing the police of being overly lenient with them. In a letter to senior police officers last month, the former home secretary argued that waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “From the river to the sea” should both be considered as possible criminal offenses.

Britain’s Labour party, just a few years removed from a longstanding antisemitism scandal, is similarly divided. Party leader Keir Starmer has shown a zero-tolerance policy for anything he sees as approaching hate speech against Jews. Labour parliament member Andy McDonald was suspended, pending an investigation, after the party alleged that he made “deeply offensive” comments at a rally on Oct. 29. He said in the speech: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

Although Germany’s constitution protects freedom of expression, opinion and assembly, various local authorities have imposed bans on pro-Palestinian protests — including Hamburg, the second-largest city. In some places, resistance to these orders has led to clashes between protestors and riot police. Berlin’s education senator Katharina Guenther-Wuensch has allowed schools to ban the keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, along with the phrase “Free Palestine.”

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has said he believes that protest bans are “definitely justified” to prevent “anti-Israel, aggressive and antisemitic” actions.

But some vocal opponents of the protest bans are Jews. In an open letter published in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung and the New York-based magazine N+1, over 100 Jewish artists, writers and scholars in Germany said the suppression of pro-Palestinian rallies did not make them feel safer.

The group noted the surge in violent intimidation against German Jews and expressed fear that “the atmosphere in Germany has become more dangerous — for Jews and Muslims alike — than at any time in the nation’s recent history.” However, they denounced bans on nonviolent protest, saying these restrictions often come with brutality to immigrants and minorities and can escalate instead of preventing violence.

“As Jews, we reject this pretext for racist violence and express full solidarity with our Arab, Muslim, and particularly our Palestinian neighbors,” said the letter. “What frightens us is the prevailing atmosphere of racism and xenophobia in Germany, hand in hand with a constraining and paternalistic philo-Semitism. We reject in particular the conflation of anti-Semitism and any criticism of the state of Israel.”

[bluenpinkcastle]

20240201: the History of LEGO Castle day 32. 6085-1 Black Monarch's Castle (1988, 688 pieces, 120 different parts). The Black Monarch's Castle is the first stronghold for the Black Knights, a subtheme after the Black Falcons, Lion Knights, and Forestmen. Featuring a black castle with light gray highlights, this castle is built on three thin green baseplates with two rounded corners in the back left and right hand areas, a thick dungeon door in the back right hand side, a black drawbridge and portculis in the front, and the second gate that's actually big enough for the carts and wagons so far to actually fit through. This set contains twelve minifigures - on par with the 6080-1 King's Castle from 1984. -Four archers wtih a new red torso with red arms and a printed scale mail pattern and blue legs with a black belt. -Four blue torsos with black arms and a printed scale mail pattern and red legs with a black belt. -One knight with a black torso, black arms, the silver breastplate print, and black legs with a red belt. -One knight with a blue torso, blue arms, the silver breastplate print, and blue legs with a black belt. -One knight with a blue torso, black arms, the silver breastplate print, and red legs with a black belt. -One knight with a red torso, blue arms, the silver breastplate print, and blue legs with a black belt. Unique and rare pieces for this set include: -The black 2x5x6 castle wall panel with light gray bricks, which is ONLY found in this set. -The black 2x5x6 castle wall panel with light gray bricks surrounding the window, which are only found in this set and 6086-1 Black Knight's Castle from 1992. -The black 3x3x6 corner wall panel with light gray bricks, which was found in six pirate and castle sets between 1985-1995. -The blue hard plastic 2x2 flag with a blue dragon with yellow wings on a red background flag, which was only found in three other castle sets (1888-1 Black Knight's Guardshack, 6057-1 Sea Serpent, and 6086-1 Black Knight's Castle). -The blue horse barding with a blue dragon on a black background was only found in two other castle sets (1584-1 / 6060-1 Knight's Challenge and 6086-1 Black Knight's Castle). -The red horse barding with a red dragon on a blue background was only found in one other castle set (6086-1 Black Knight's Castle), which is honestly kind of a relief because I find this specific barding really difficult to look at :) Back of the box, top flap, and other alternate builds for this set include: -A small fortress with a three-story tower with stairs along the outside. -A wall and a siege engine. -A medium-sized boat with two different masts and a rowboat. -A fortress with two separate sections connected by a tall bridge. -A drawbridge with two towers on either side. Additionally, n2brick and recifaliste both have free downloads of alternate builds on Rebrickable. Parts inventory for this castle can be found at BrickLink or Rebrickable with a free download available at ToysPeriod. This set was designed by Niels Milan Pedersen and you can find more of his designed LEGO sets on BrickSet.