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War Part 3 - Group Psychology - Freud and Beyond

Death toll

At the end of WWI the unimaginable losses piled up. Margaret MacMillan, in Paris 1919, lays out the historical aftermath. "Four years of war shook forever the supreme self-confidence that had carried Europe to world dominance. After the Western Front, Europeans could no longer talk of a civilizing mission to the world...Millions of combatants died in those four years: 1,800,000 Germans, 1,700,000 Russians, 1,384,000 French, 1,290,000 from Austria-Hungary, 935,000 from the British Empire...Children lost fathers, wives husbands, young women the chance of marriage. And Europe lost those who might have been its scientists, its poets and its leaders, and the children who might have been born to them. But the tally of deaths does not include those who were left with one leg, one arm or one eye, or those whose lungs had been scarred by poison gas or whose nerves never recovered." To add a bitter sting to the end of the war, the Spanish Influenza was estimated to have killed more people than in the Great War.

Sigmund Freud described very well the empty void people feel when the light of life is snuffed out by an invisible enemy, including his daughter Sophie. "This afternoon we received the news that our sweet Sophie in Hamburg had been snatched away by influenzal pneumonia, snatched away in the midst of glowing health, from a full and active life as a competent mother and loving wife, all in four or five days, as though she had never existed." When consoling Ludwig Binswanger, who was suffering from a similar loss: "We know that the acute sorrow we feel after such a loss will run its course, but also that we will remain inconsolable, and will never find a substitute. No matter what may come to take its place, even should it fill that place completely, it remains something else. And that is how it should be. It is the only way of perpetuating a love that we do not want to abandon."

Sophie Halberstadt-Freud: https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/halberstadt-freud-sophie-1893-1920

Group Psychology

After focusing so much on individual dynamics in psychology and healing from trauma, Freud found so many group dynamics that it became necessary to study the influence of groups separately. "In the individual's mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent, and so from the very first Individual Psychology is at the same time Social Psychology." Humanity provides labels for all these individuals in our lives, but we also provide labels for groups. Whether it's our country, ethnicity, institution, or even a makeshift crowd that spontaneously gathers, labels for groups have emotional significance for us. One of the main ways to see how powerful this impact is, is to notice how one reacts when one is by oneself, and how that quickly changes when a person interacts with another person or a group. Freud surveyed the literature on group behaviour and quoted heavily from Gustave Le Bon, who viewed these behaviours as evidence of a collective mind. "'There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a group.'" Here a collective mind has less to do with a shared brain, but more to do with a part of the mind that activates in certain ways when people are interacting in a group.

Le Bon believed our influences from others starts in our biological inheritance and those influences coming out of our unconscious. "'The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. One of the changes we undergo when we move from individual to group life, is that we start to become more like others...What is heterogeneous is submerged in what is homogeneous.'" What worried Le Bon was the unconscious connection people had and some of their ill effects. "'...The individual forming part of a group acquires...a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would...have kept under restraint.'" The key for Le Bon, on what leads to bad individual behaviour in a group, is how he uses the words invincibility and anonymity. He viewed that individuals were much more responsible by themselves than when in a group. Modern examples of this would be anonymity in a chat room. A person can insult, or 'troll,' a person that they would never do face to face, because of anonymity. People behave differently when they don't fear social consequences, and not fearing consequences means they feel they can do anything, which is what I think Le Bon was getting at. The feeling of omnipotence or invincibility is the feeling that there are no consequences and one can do what one wants. There is pleasure and relief when social inhibitions are lifted. So here, the example is one type of group interaction, where group members condone bad behaviour, as opposed to the typical expectation of people being bad when they are alone, and good in public. Both situations, of course, exist in their own contexts, and as we will see later, will require leadership that steers the group more one way or another.

Le Bon viewed the unconscious as what was inherited and what gets unleashed in group behaviour. For Freud, he is more interested in what was imitated and repressed, than what was inherited. One way or another, there is a predisposition coming from the unconscious. "...In a group the individual is brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instincts. The apparently new characteristics which he then displays are in fact manifestations of this unconscious, in which all that is evil in the human mind is contained as a predisposition. We can find no difficulty in understanding the disappearance of conscience or of a sense of responsibility in these circumstances. It has long been our contention that 'dread of society' is the essence of what is called conscience." What is curious is Freud's view of repression, which can create a super-ego of conscience, partially from a dread of social punishment, yet at the same, as can be seen in the Great War, society can condone the dark side of people's personality, so that it operates very different from a conscience per se, or a conscience that uses social excuses and reasons to condone sadistic behaviour.

Moving into the power of suggestion and hypnotism, Le Bon asserts that the mind switches from a personal interest to a collective interest when in a group, but he slips in a power differential between the hypnotized and the hypnotist. "'The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the [hypnotist].'" The power differential leads to reciprocal condoning that strengthens what is typically inhibited. "'Under the influence of suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of groups than in that of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all individuals of the group, it gains in strength by reciprocity...He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will....Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian - that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.'"

Reading Le Bon, Freud sees his version of the Unconscious, in that it "may desire things passionately, yet this is never so for long, for it is incapable of perseverance. It cannot tolerate any delay between its desire and the fulfillment of what it desires. It has a sense of omnipotence; the notion of impossibility disappears for the individual in a group." As the rationality decreases to simple rationalization a collective unconscious can appear. "A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. It thinks in images, which call one another up by association (just as they arise with individuals in states of free imagination), and whose agreement with reality is never checked by any reasonable function. The feelings of the group are always very simple and very exaggerated. So that a group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty." Freud then describes what we see in ALL political parties where followers have to toe-the-line and follow the group objective, no matter the facts or the doubt. "[The group] goes directly to extremes; if a suspicion is expressed, it is instantly changed into an [established] certainty; a trace of [opposition] is turned into furious hatred." Freud characterizes group psychology as incapable of nuance. It is only moved by suggestions from others that "paint in the most forcible colours." There must be exaggeration and repetition to convince a group. If there is too much nuance, it naturally breaks down the cohesiveness of a group. I would add to Freud's theories by saying that a group has so many people with individual perspectives, that they will only agree on a small group of ideas. Any motivation in a group has to be influenced by simple, but also precise ideas, that many can gather around to agree on. If they agree on enough, they will be willing to let go of some of the disagreements because their core issues are agreed upon. Often politicians will defect parties because the core ideas of a political party have shifted so much that there is not enough in common to keep that individual identified with that group.

Freud then sees the eternal difficulty the individual has, especially one who is different, with new ideas, to make changes, and advancements in society as a whole. "Since a group is in no doubt as to what constitutes truth or error, and is conscious, moreover, of its own great strength, it is as intolerant as it is obedient to authority. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. What it demands of its heroes is strength, or even violence. It wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters. Fundamentally it is entirely conservative, and it has a deep aversion from all innovations and advances and an unbounded respect for tradition." Now here one has to be careful of the term conservative, because this could apply to any group, including scientists. Once a new scientific theory gains strength it can be ossified by the group and turn into a dogma. The people who decried a lack of scientific rigor and open-mindedness, can turn into a theocrat attacking all newcomers. This ironically can be seen in psychology itself. If a financial well-being and the pleasure of positive attention is in danger, leaders of an old movement will feel threatened by new theories purely out of addiction. Losing what you enjoy is always a cold bath and painful. It brings up all the individual resistances that naturally motivate, those who have enough power, to scapegoat and oppress. To me this hints at a personal self-interest that hides in the collective interest. People are always monitoring a self-interest in a group, and as described above, there's plenty of repression of desire in groups, not just condoning. Individuals can support group goals that also support individual goals, a sense of harmony, but not all those goals are constructive.

Freud then describes this dichotomy of unleashing condoned desires, and restricting prohibited desires, pushing people into a collective super-ego. "...One must take into consideration the fact that when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts, which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification. But under the influence of suggestion groups are also capable of high achievements in the shape of abnegation, unselfishness, and devotion to an ideal. While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with groups it is very rarely prominent. It is possible to speak of an individual having his moral standards raised by a group. Whereas the intellectual capacity of a group is always far below that of an individual, its ethical conduct may rise as high above his as it may sink deep below it."

This is why looking at those in power in a group becomes essential. Leaders and followers. Here followers are described by the book as people who are looking for someone to take care of them. The words of the leader are "'considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers.'" It's so much easier to believe than to test. "They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true." For Freud, the followers have an unfulfilled wish that they hope will be fulfilled by the group or leadership. "...What neurotics are guided by is not ordinary objective reality but psychological reality...Just as in dreams and in hypnosis, in the mental operations of a group the function for testing the reality of things falls into the background in comparison with the strength of wishes with their [emotional investment.]" As can be seen in my Cult Psychology review, the wishes of the followers are so emotionally invested in their leaders, they often tolerate abuse and maltreatment at the hands of authorities, rather than to test reality and to find better environments to satisfy wishes in a realistic way. The internal super-ego can be masochistic and self-destructive when the follower moves into self-austerity and slavery, while the leader exploits. Followers with no willpower are at the mercy of leaders.

How leaders can attract followers is through the wishes of their followers by being a promise of satisfaction, an "idea...to awaken the group's faith...[Leaders] must possess a strong and imposing will, which the group, which has no will of its own, can accept..." Freud's two examples are religion and the army. Promises to satisfy wishes involve some form of love that followers sense from the leader "...who loves all the individuals in the group with an equal love. Everything depends upon this illusion; if it were to be dropped, then both Church and army would dissolve..."

Prestige

The danger of this abstract symbol of love can be seen how wishes appear in the minds of followers. In War Pt. 2, I briefly reviewed Freud's Project, and how hazy wishes appear in the mind. This abstract, unrealistic, hazy wish is looking for satisfaction in the real world, but the real world always seems to have imperfections that disappoint wishes, and sometimes devastatingly so. It's interesting how hazy, abstract and dreamy a lot of promises are that are made by leaders, or I would say seducers. They are designed to be appear as reality to the follower because they are displayed in the environment. The hazy dream matches the hazy symbol and feels motivated, and continues chasing it. This is often why we like art, which isn't real, except for being in the environment for us to view, because it can appear as an escape from the real. The abstractness can cover hyper-realistic flaws, but our craving lights up when we see few flaws or cannot find flaws. Virginia Postrel quotes, in The Power of Glamour, the fashion writer Alicia Drake: "Glamour offers 'the implicit promise of a life devoid of mediocrity.'" If a habit to chase these hazy symbols develops, an idealization, a person can move from one disappointing group, political party, cult, relationship, and product advertisement after another. The person may even ask for help from one group, after escaping another, only to be equally abused by their new saviour group. The hazy, abstract quality of promising symbols fools followers again and again because of how precisely they ignore important contradictory detail. Reality testing always looks for more detail than what is provided and doesn't shy away from disenchantment. Followers have to see their motivation to run away from reality to see what they are doing to themselves. Almost like a childhood playhouse with unrealistic exaggerated colours, we are trying to find an abstract heaven on earth.

La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_hfZoe9FHE

In these groups, the leader definitely exploits, but the follower is actually hurting themselves with their need to believe, or their hope. You can even imitate these abusers into your mind and have it abuse you inside of you with false abstract symbols and promises of happiness. The internal symbols become a dangerous Siren, "Greeks bearings gifts", a backstabber, a Fifth Column in your mind. A form of bodysnatching. The belief goes too far, because the emotional investment is so strong, and the embarrassment so powerful. It is often worth tolerating more abuse than to admit failure. When people get out of cults they feel like they've snapped out of a dream. In reality that's exactly what they did. They allowed healthy scientific doubt to add the detail that the wish didn't want to look at. Many wishes can't be satisfied, and no matter what your faith, political inclinations, scientific theoretical inclinations, relationship hopes are, reality is reality, and there is no group or person that has a monopoly on reality. We are all still trying to figure this thing out called existence. If someone on a podium says that they've figured it out, they at best are only partially correct.

This dangerous symbol was defined by Freud and Le Bon as Prestige. "Prestige is a sort of domination exercised over us by an individual, a work or an idea. It entirely paralyses our critical faculty, and fills us with astonishment and respect. It would seem to arouse a feeling like that of fascination in hypnosis...[but] all prestige is dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure." Prestige has to be earned, but is often only a hazy promise. Like in Totem and Taboo, when the followers are disappointed enough, they depose their leaders with hostility, because their entitlement was disappointed, like a child disappointed in their parent, or like an infatuated lover disappointed in their love object. The entitled follower can go from idealizing to scapegoating, all the while not seeing their complicity in trying desperately to avoid reality. This putting a leader on a pedestal and tearing them down can go on endlessly with constant new leaders that always disappoint, as can be seen in numerous dictatorships. It's also a learning process for people who are political junkies who find that responsibility is much harder than criticizing. There's a natural disappointment and disheartening that happens every time one actually succeeds in getting their politician in power. Deep down people know that they will be disappointed because their expectations were way too high. The healthy and peaceful mind can finally let go of the need to get excited with every new leader who makes a promise. Until those promises are fulfilled, there's no need to get emotionally invested. Peaceful minds also know that it's nice to take responsibility for oneself and there's a pleasure in taking credit for what one has contributed, instead of giving all credit to our favourite leaders. There is no soul-mate, one has to work at relationships and constantly negotiate. Reality becomes much more beautiful, despite the flaws, because at least it is real. The imperfect positive things in reality can now be appreciated. They don't have to be perfect, and reality testing can confirm their true value instead of chasing a carrot of promises.

The freedom that comes to the person who has a love of reality is partially painful because one now realizes that one has accumulated habits, tendencies and beliefs that steered the personality in a distorted direction. If one was more skeptical like a scientist, and demanded more proof before a decision was made, a lot of damage could have been avoided. Identification is just a series of imitations of suggestions from others, who have varying grasps of reality. "Why, therefore, do we invariably give way to this contagion when we are in a group? Once more we should have to say that what compels us to obey this tendency is imitation, and what induces the emotion in us is the group's suggestive influence." As in War Pt 2., Vittorio Gallese viewed the source of suggestion as imitation of goals and I naturally posit that goals are about what Freud described as The Pleasure Principle, The Reality Principle, and Freud's later welcoming of death, The Nirvana Principle. Those three general umbrellas include all of Freud's categories for desire including friendship, family, community, self-love and intimate partners. When leaders of a cult are wearing those abstract symbols of success in robes, in expensive accessories, and advertised lifestyles, we followers are partially wishing to be in their place, or we want them to be cooperative for our goals or lovers if we can't be them. When leaders show weakness, tensions escalate with those who are led, as they see opportunities to replace the leader with themselves, or so they hope. Followers can have desires for revenge, and in some cases it's achieved, and power shifts in the hierarchy. In some cases, leaders see the writing on the wall and work on a succession plan, or conflict increases until they are ousted.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle: https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html

Bloodied Colonel Gaddafi filmed pleading with his captors before death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLLa8xDns04

Identification for Freud is a social psychology that is based on imitative desire, but it can have an aggression to it. "Identification, in fact, is ambivalent from the very first; it can turn into an expression of tenderness as easily as into a wish for someone's removal...The object that we long for and prize is assimilated by eating and is in that way annihilated as such. The cannibal, as we know, has remained at this standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his enemies and only devours people of whom he is fond." Like in the Oedipus Complex, Freud looks at sexual organization as something that can have a sense of feeding, starting with desires to imitate parents. "In the first case one's father is what one would like to be, and in the second he is what one would like to have." In a way it depends on upon whether the feeding is a hostile and competitive one or a cooperative one. From an ancient logic, it makes sense that early humans would eat many different things and some of those good things would lead to an individual to feel better. Through basic thought association, it would be possible to believe that one could gain the qualities of what is eaten. One might then, by thought association, gain the qualities of a competitor in victory or preserve characteristics of a lost loved one, through eating their flesh. Whether it's a competitive or cooperative feeding, there's a desire to replace distinctive people or to have them as romantic partners, or friends. In the case of leaders and followers, the leader is someone to replace or to have. As the saying goes, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Or you can follow in their path. "The mechanism is that of identification based upon the possibility or desire of putting oneself in the same situation." In some cases one can see how people can flip between one or another mode unconsciously. For example, if a leader corners people by being a source of leverage, it's possible that the targets will have no chance but to be subservient. The secret of inhibition, is how people feel when the obstacles are too high so they can't put themselves in the same situation as the leader, or like when you desire someone who is "out of your league." That stress happens so quickly because the mind likes what it sees in the love-object, but instantly moves into stress and concern because of how love-objects can easily remove attention and presence. We become intimidated.

When in identification mode, chasing after a role model, there's always a desire to close the gap. The reward of success is to turn the tables with the old leader and to now be looked upon by others as a desired love-object. If the goal is too hard, or actually impossible, the goal changes for the imitator. The role model is viewed as a friend or a love interest. Either way, people are feeding socially, and the unconscious can quickly find replacement objectives if the initial ones fail.

Caniba - Issei Sagawa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEbzcqJ29uc

Emotional Feeding - Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://rumble.com/v1gqvl1-emotional-feeding-thanissaro-bhikkhu.html

Power and sexuality

As we have already explained, people can move into the powerful position to gain benefits or to give transference of prestige and regard to the leader to siphon off some of the benefits that way. Here Freud finally explains his male homosexual theory with a bit more detail, but it ended up being more applicable in many situations that have nothing to do with homosexuality, and can appear in any dominant and subservient posturing. For Freud, masculinity is being a master and useful. Femininity is being cooperative, but also paradoxically, needing help. "The genesis of male homosexuality in a large class of cases is as follows. A young man has been unusually long and intensely fixated upon his mother in the sense of the Oedipus complex. But at last, after the end of his puberty, the time comes for exchanging his mother for some other sexual object. Things take a sudden turn: the young man does not abandon his mother, but identifies himself with her; he transforms himself into her, and now looks about for objects which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother....In this process the object itself is renounced." Freud uses an example of a child that identifies with a lost kitten, as if to preserve the lost qualities of the missing pet. This is what Freud calls an introjection. In the Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Charles Rycroft describes how this mental model of a lost love object is introjected into the mind. One of it's motivations is to "diminish separation anxiety." Freud described introjection and projection as opposites, and again using the feeding model, the instincts make judgments that say "'I should like to eat this', or 'I should like to spit it out'; and, put more generally: 'I should like to take this into myself and to keep that out.'" Like with the Dora review, we can reject influences we don't like about ourselves to outside targets [projection], and we can adore what we don't have and empathize with the lost loved object and introject it to maintain the loved presence. Introjection, the way it's described, is almost like a desperate need to remember and repeat something important so as to not forget it. It becomes a habit in us very quickly because of how important those details are to remember. We practice them so well in our minds that we can become skilled with the imitation.

Another type of identification is a love connection treated as a status symbol where we actually want to be in that position [identification], but instead of authentically liking that person, we choose a love object that provides positive social attention that we couldn't get otherwise. "We see that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on to the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our narcissism."

On Narcissism - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtgdl-on-narcissism-sigmund-freud-narcissism-1-of-4.html

In these relationships Freud expands love to include pretty much all forms of desire. It embraces any power differentials you can see in the workplace, politics, and economics, that all have these dynamics. With introjection "the ego has enriched itself with the properties of the object...In the second case it is impoverished, it has surrendered itself to the object, it has substituted the object for its [ego.]" So like with being in love, or any other contracts, the master is developing ego skills, while at the same time wanting a companion that is willing to surrender their ego to rely on the master's ego instead, a form of dependency. The sexuality can then follow in some instances, or fawning, brown-nosing behaviour to curry favour. "From being in love to hypnosis is evidently only a short step. The respects in which the two agree are obvious. There is the same humble subjection, the same compliance, the same absence of criticism, towards the hypnotist just as towards the loved object." For Freud, there's always some love going on in the background when there's a sense of prestige. "The hypnotic relation is the devotion of someone in love to an unlimited degree but with sexual satisfaction excluded; whereas in the case of being in love this kind of satisfaction is only temporarily kept back, and remains in the background as a possible aim at some later time." With friendships and intimate partners Freud sees again, like in his Love trilogy, the love we have for friends and family has to be applied to our intimate partners to help us go beyond lust, which without tender love, will dangerously drain into boredom every time we satisfy it. "It is interesting to see that it is precisely those sexual tendencies that are inhibited in their aims which achieve such lasting ties between men. But this can easily be understood from the fact that they are not capable of complete satisfaction, while sexual tendencies which are uninhibited in their aims suffer an extraordinary reduction through the discharge of energy every time the sexual aim is attained. It is the fate of sensual love to become extinguished when it is satisfied; for it to be able to last, it must from the first be mixed with purely tender components..." Some insights appear with this explanation. Love and tenderness can become a useful template for comparing a loving introjection, imitation, or the enriching of our ego, to a reaction formation where a person is forcing themselves to be like others. In the later situation the motivation is not supported by love and tenderness but instead by stress. To truly take on details from others, inspiration essentially, one has to love those details and the skills involved. Until a person has repeated those skills with loving attention, it remains unsustainable. Similar to an "mmmmm" feeding, we have to get to the point that new skills are tasty and create an appetite in us to use them. A good sign that a new skill you are developing is finally something that you deeply love, is the stress and yearning that appears when you are away from those activities. For example, a creative person without a creative objective to feed on would likely fall apart emotionally.

Violence and the Sacred - René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html

Love - Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html

Where'd You Go, Bernadette?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqnroADyAqQ

Relationships can work well enough when the master has enough skills to maintain the economics for the family, business, or department. If that fails or the dependent becomes bored and wants more, as in more rewards from the master's ego, the relationship can fall apart when needs aren't met. It's hard for the master to maintain prestige, or the façade of prestige, and the dependent is restricted in that their success and failure is tied to the master. Success allows sexuality to flourish, and failure the opposite. The man gives his ego-penis, so to say, and the woman receives it. It turns into a castration complex, or a sore spot in manhood if he cannot succeed in business, politics, or to raise a family. As an extension of his penis, the man symbolically gives love by giving a lifestyle. The women wants the lifestyle, and has the pressure of being attractive enough as the object of desire. The man is going through all these hoops and women have pressure to be "worth it!" This predicts Jacques Lacan's theory of the Phallus and the pressure both sexes are under, and the reaction formations [pretending] caused by the pressure to sell themselves. I remember a very crude example of that at an expensive restaurant. When the bill was brought out to this couple nearby the man literally looked at the bill, looked at the woman, and back and forth between her and and the bill as if he was thinking, "I paid that much, for you?!" The woman had that look of stress of not being good enough but doing her best to pretend, just as predicted. Men have to pretend that they are more successful than they are, and women have to pretend they are more beautiful and seductive than they are. Men have to dress stylish, like a God, as if their door-to-door photocopier salesman job is so lucrative, and women have to pressure themselves with extensive grooming and exercising to appear more fit and youthful than they actually are. The Façade eventually cracks if it's too inauthentic and there's relief when the burden is let go of. The realistic fear that remains for each side of a relationship implies the rejection: "You are not worth it!"

The signification of the phallus - Jacques Lacan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415708029/

Worth It - Fifth Harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBHQbu5rbdQ

Work from Home - Fifth Harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws

Just as there's conflict between love interests on who's pulling their weight and making the right decisions, groups have to encounter people who aren't as enamored with them as they would want them to be. If we love a particular group, it's quite easy to hate those who don't belong to it, and especially non-conformists who endanger it. Freud here showed some subtlety by not only picking on religious people for their "cruelty and intolerance...Personally, we ought not to reproach believers too severely on this account...If today that intolerance no longer shows itself so violent and cruel as in former centuries, we can scarcely conclude that there has been a softening in human manners. The cause is rather to be found in the undeniable weakening of religious feelings and the libidinal ties which depend upon them. If another group tie takes the place of the religious one--and the socialistic tie seems to be succeeding in doing so--, then there will be the same intolerance towards outsiders as in the age of the Wars of Religion; and if differences between scientific opinions could ever attain a similar significance for groups, the same result would again be repeated with this new motivation." We are all religious when we succumb to the naive imitation of suggestions of ideal leaders, experts, taste-makers, celebrities, and even "soul-mates." For all of us, this habit has already been developed since birth. Andrew N. Meltzoff in Mimesis and Science, describes this early development as "gaze following." It's a mother-baby-object triangle paradigm where the child follows the "mother's gaze to an external target in order to see what she is looking at. Such gaze following is not the duplication of exact bodily movements, but rather a taking into account that mother's behavior is directed toward (or “about”) an external target...Infants begin to pay attention to the fact that mothers do not always look at them, but also cast their gaze on external objects, siblings and spouses in the environment." The danger of this habit is a lack of reality testing. As a child, it makes sense that you would be aware of the intentions of others, and be dependent on their suggestions. Children don't have enough capability of reality testing, and rely on mimetics in order to learn, but adults need that capability. Yet the habit to follow suggestions blindly can be so strong. That sense of comfort in relying on the suggestions of strangers, is often on shaky ground, especially when we find out that the product wasn't that good, the romantic partner was a narcissist, the expert was wrong, or the con artist was duping us. Being in a position where we need people too much is a dangerous dependency because those in power can always withdraw their resources, attention, and they can also hurt us with their mistakes. At the extreme end of relying on suggestions, wouldn't it lead to a kind of self-brainwashing where one doesn't trust one's own reasoning and reality testing, or in Freud's description, not being able to rely on one's own ego? If there's a target for a predator, I can't think of a better one.

The freedom of letting go of chasing prestigious leaders, and following their suggestions, has it's difficult qualities, though. If one isn't used to it then it requires a lot of practice to pull off. There is a lack of comfort when the illusion is seen through, especially if a large section of moral imitation was coming from the leader's illusory belief system, and aping Nietzsche's death of God, Freud predicted that followers would release their inhibitions to extremes. Of course, all institutions are open to this kind of disillusionment that seems to sanction a letting go of restraint to the extreme opposite. When dependent followers have to drop their substitute ego, their empty void of skills to face the world can lead to regression to unskillful ways of living, or searches for a new leader. We can hurt ourselves when we don't have anyone to look to for guidance.

Just - Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIFLtNYI3Ls

Cult Psychology: https://rumble.com/v1gvih9-cult-psychology.html

Totem and Taboo - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html

The 'Wolfman' Part 2: Sergei Pankejeff: https://rumble.com/v1gug9n-case-studies-the-wolf-man-23-freud-and-beyond.html

The 'Wolfman' Part 3: Sergei Pankejeff: https://rumble.com/v1gulsf-case-studies-the-wolfman-33-freud-and-beyond.html

The Herd Instinct

How leaders and love interests are able to worm their way into power over us is how they can feel their sense of power by how we react. The way towards mastering another person is to have leverage to take away resources and attention. Prestige, "contains an additional element of paralysis derived from the relation between someone with superior power and someone who is without power and helpless--which may afford a transition to the hypnosis of terror which occurs in animals." Here Freud finally get's to the individual element of group psychology that adds onto Le Bon's work. The terror we feel around a love-object is their ability to be helpful to us and their power to remove their presence and resources. It's not just a group-mind. It's the same for an employer or political leader. Comparing power to hypnotism, Freud says that "the hypnotist awakens in the subject a portion of his archaic inheritance which had also made him compliant towards his parents and which had experienced an individual re-animation in his relation to his father; what is thus awakened is the idea of a paramount and dangerous personality, towards whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one's will has to be surrendered,--while to be alone with him, 'to look him in the face', appears a hazardous enterprise."

Our brain senses this power and unless we gain independence, we are stuck feeling this danger. The other side of mastery is dependency. If the leader, or love-object needs us, we can be comforted by them. We can both loathe the lack of independence and love the benefits of someone taking responsibility for us. "The individual feels 'incomplete' if he is alone. The dread shown by small children would seem already to be an expression of this herd instinct." This explains well the rapt attention we give to those in power and our suggestibility. We would like their power, but because there are obstacles, we surrender and try to cooperate in order to gain a substitute power within the rest of the group. Freud starts this development with childhood. There's a rivalry with other siblings for their parents' attention which doesn't always have a clear winner. Then there's a surrender and each rival focuses on the other to prevent either from being a favourite. Fandom, worship, and infatuation can co-exist without the jealousy because the target has too many boundaries. So we can't be the celebrity, or have them, but we still like the products, services, art, and philanthropy they provide. In a way, this is a prescription for success, but also for isolation. Unless you are able to keep people from trying to pilfer your success you won't keep it. Freud describes a scene that is eerily similar to celebrity today. "We have only to think of the troop of women and girls, all of them in love in an enthusiastically sentimental way, who crowd round a singer or pianist after his performance. It would certainly be easy for each of them to be jealous of the rest; but, in face of their numbers and the consequent impossibility of their reaching the aim of their love, they renounce it, and, instead of pulling out one another's hair, they act as a united group, do homage to the hero of the occasion with their common actions, and would probably be glad to have a share of his flowing locks. Originally rivals, they have succeeded in identifying themselves with one another by means of a similar love for the same object." Freud's description of this phenomenon moves closely to a description of communism when talking about the herd instinct, starting with children. "What appears later on in society in the shape of 'group spirit', does not belie its derivation from what was originally envy. No one must want to put himself forward, every one must be the same and have the same. Social justice means that we deny ourselves many things so that others may have to do without them as well, or, what is the same thing, may not be able to ask for them. This demand for equality is the root of social conscience and the sense of duty." The mentality almost says that if the love-object is forbidden to me then I will only feel better if it's forbidden to everyone else.

Isolation - John Lennon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lOLNfnCBg

Now how about the leader? Freud, continuing with Nietzsche's tradition, places the leader into the template of ancient human groups as he does in Totem and Taboo, a narcissistic father. "...The father of the primal horde was free. His intellectual acts were strong and independent even in isolation, and his will needed no reinforcement from others. Consistency leads us to assume that his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one but himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs. To objects his ego gave away no more than was barely necessary...He, at the very beginning of the history of mankind, was the Superman whom Nietzsche only expected from the future. Even today the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterly nature, absolutely narcissistic, but self-confident and independent. We know that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it would be possible to show how, by operating in this way, it became a factor of civilization." The early group, or family, would always want to succeed the father as a way to get out of the egalitarian envy of group psychology. This naturally spread to many different systems of government that we have seen. The independence that everyone seeks can be different in their goals, different businesses, or different government positions. Everyone is trying to seek their own path of independence, to escape, with all the struggles of envy and narcissism when people imitate and compete for rewards that can't be shared. Some of this need for independence comes from goading from abusive powerful people who feel omnipotent, and feel they can do anything they want to people they have leverage against. When people receive enough abuse, some will surrender, but many won't and will continue trying to gain power to satisfy revenge, but if that's not possible, then to gain revenge on targets who have less power and to vent their abuse on easy targets, as can be seen in War Pt. 2. Having powerful people in one's life who only care about themselves means they have no scruples with anyone else.

"I drink your milkshake!" There will be blood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-9wXFQRgA

"Because I can."

The strongest knowledge —that of the total lack of freedom of the human will— is nonetheless the poorest in successes, for it always has the strongest opponent: human vanity. — Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

The above lessons remind me of the all powerful ring in Lord of the Rings. The more power one has, the more desires can be satisfied. When a dictator, like Sauron, has unlimited power, they unleash desire associations that were thought about continually in relation to power. It's like spring waiting to be sprung in the right environment. If I achieve this power, then I can get all these goodies, and there may even be a feeling of entitlement for those things. "I should have these goodies." If one is indispensable, then one can demand as much as the unconscious wants. As John Bargh described, "by definition, power is the ability to attain one's desired goals, and so when one is in a position of power those goals are likely to be selected and pursued." As we gain power, what was filed away in unconscious memory starts to pop up. This is why we can point out corruption when others do it, especially when it damages us in some ways, but we have an unconsciousness about it in ourselves. "Situational power [automatically activates] those goals one has thought about and pursued in the past in situations where one is in a position of power. Over time, the connection between the mental representation of powerful situations and those goals becomes so strong that those goals become active and operate without the person consciously selecting those goals." If few people have little to no desire, then that means most people have large or indefinite sources of desire, but they are inhibited by obstacles and their safety, with a reduction of temptation, is what we are unconscious of and take for granted. Yet we don't have to be completely unconscious. One way is to notice what people do when they gain more money, or have less obstacles to power. Economists look at the rule that as people make more money they tend to spend more. With each of us having unlimited desires, it's quite easy to see how we could unconsciously be the same as those we accuse. The healthy admission, and also an admission that provides relief from perfectionism, is that everyone in a power position can be more or less guilty. Awareness and self-restraint become paramount when there's temptation. Doing the right thing, when one has power, may actually feel wrong.

The way to gain pleasure from doing the right thing, in Freud's estimation, is gaining pleasure in satisfying the ego-ideal by making it into a conscience, and this is especially true if the conscience is independent of a corrupt leader. "There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of inferiority) can also be understood as an expression of tension between the ego and the ego ideal."

Tullio Jappelli and Luigi Pistaferri, Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity, Published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2014, vol. 6(4), October, pp. 107-36.

On War and Death - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gv78n-on-war-and-death-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-13.html

Gandalf "Don't tempt me Frodo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Jjj6oI5fg

Boromir "It's a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHHaKtVdfa0

Galadriel "I pass the test": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3VOf3CBGvw

Bombshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2IsaFaB1iA

Disclosure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgEtlGdx_zo

Landlords are targeting vulnerable tenants to solicit sex in exchange for rent, advocates say: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/landlords-are-targeting-vulnerable-tenants-solicit-sex-exchange-rent-advocates-n1186416

The War to end all Wars?

Margaret MacMillan described in Paris 1919, all those attempts to create a satisfactory ideal to the end of the Great War, starting with President Wilson's 14 points, but the final Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 wasn't able to satisfy all critics. "The Germans were horrified by the peace terms, which they saw as a betrayal of a pledge they felt they had received from the Allies at the time of the armistice: that the peace would be negotiated on the basis of Wilson's new diplomacy with no unjust retribution." As long as there are grievances and resentments, there's always room for war to rekindle again when new generations are energized and motivated. "The young Adolf Hitler was in Munich that June, taking congenial courses on the glories of German history and the evils of international Jewish capital. Already he was discovering his own talents as an ideologue and an orator."

The circumstances of the Great War showed how the future could hang on hairpin turns. Tim Cook in Vimy: The Battle and The Legend described the horrible twist of fate. "After recovering from an October 1916 wound to his upper leg (and possible loss of one testicle) on the Somme, [Corporal Adolf Hitler] had returned to the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, which was stationed on Vimy Ridge. But the unit was moved later that month about 15 km north to La Bassée, where the Sixth Army expected a British attack. Had his unit been on Vimy Ridge during the ramped-up Canadian artillery blitz, Adolf Hitler might have fallen victim to the shellfire, as did thousands of his German comrades, and world history might have turned out very differently."

By 1940 Hitler was able to return to Vimy Ridge and there was a photo taken of him at the memorial proving to the allies that he hadn't destroyed it as they had thought. The irony was that Hitler didn't demolish the monument because he enjoyed it's peaceful nature. The age of personality disordered leaders was reaching its apex.

The Sith Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKYy4sT4pPM

Galactic Empire - Star Wars - The Imperial March: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nohQReM7BpI

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Group Psychology - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393007701/

Paris 1919 - Margaret MacMillan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780375760525/

A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis - Charles Rycroft: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140513103/

The language of Psychoanalysis - Jean Laplanche: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780946439492/

The Use and Abuse of Power - Annette Y. Lee-Chai, John Bargh: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781841690230/

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479.

Vimy: The Battle and the Legend - Tim Cook: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780735233164/

Mimesis and Science - Scott R. Garrels: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611860238/

The Power of Glamour - Virginia I. Postrel: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781416561125/

"The Canadian Unknown Soldier." After the Battle. Battle of Britain Intl. Ltd. (109).

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#group psychology #sigmund freud #war

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gazetotheabyss · 1 year ago

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Mind Over Matter

It was the year of our great lord 1919, and in this great state of Massachusetts, we flourished in both knowledge and pride. My dearest friend of so many years, the professor Dr. Richard Bartholomew Price was a man who once taught ethics of science and evolution, a topic he himself had practically invented, at the accredited Miskatonic University. For all his faults and misgivings, he was a man who desired for nothing more than the betterment of humankind. When his tenure at the university came to a close, it was a more active role he took in this endeavor. A scientist observing and studying greatly the field of health among peers. It was with great shock that I had heard in the following months he had become discredited among them.

“Neanderthals. Primitive subhuman who don’t understand the importance of my advancements in research.” Richard bemoaned to me in great fury and distress over the telephone. On that night he had been quite disheartened by his banishment from a field he deemed so important to the progression of civilization. Yet the next day, he had asked as if nothing at all had occurred. A mere speed bump upon the road to greatness he was endeavoring to pave for himself and all others. He had seen so many of his brothers in blood and covenant fall in such grizzly fashion in the preceding years while embroiled in war. I feared… I feared it had unleashed something upon him. Burying brothers in earth, when he could not even see them off properly. The idea of suffering in such a grand way as they experienced, perhaps, was far too much for him to carry alone.

On the chilled deathly night of January, the following year, on the eve of what he and I foresaw to be a decade of prosperity once more, he hailed me as I trudged through snow and slush outside of my estate. He appeared near rabid, disheveled and covered in clothes so filthy you could not discern their original color, far from the kindly and well put together man I had last seen only months ago. His gaunt and bony fingers clung so desperately to the tweed of my coat, and with such strength he heaved me like I was nothing. Through all his miserable state, however, those eyes of his brilliantly shone not with madness… but glee. Happiness, I had not seen grace his features in all the years I had known him. Curiosity poisoned my mind, wondering with great intrigue what could have so blessed his demeanor, but cursed his appearance.

“Charles. Charles my boy, the world of man is going to change.” He spoke with such haste I could not for even a moment catch any sort of lingering brevity on his tongue. “I have taken what has made us all war, what has made us turn like savages upon one another, and I have destroyed it. I am going to change the world.” My dearest friend, I feared, had gone utterly raving mad in the months following his dismissal from his field. Perhaps seeing the doubt in my fearful gaze, he acted almost as sudden. Giving me a date to appear, an address to appear at, he then disappeared into the storm of the night almost as quickly as he had come. Not even had I a single moment to have breathed let alone spoken in that moment, let alone process it all. But I am not and had never been one to disappoint my friends with disbelief. Much less those I knew were bathed in such brilliance as Richard Price.

Though still my doubts lingered, hung at the back of my mind to poison the optimistic desire I tried so desperately to hold onto, I kept my chin boldly held high. Faith had never been a strong grasp of mine in any other force, but that in my dearest of friends I would always put. But in the case of paranoia, I invited with me a fellow colleague of mine and Richard’s, Professor Baxter Johnston—Tenured was he at Harvard, a rivalry that had blossomed among the three of us. Of whom I had been a friend of as many years as Dr. Price and had equal measures of my trust as well.

On the leading with pride to the fateful night I had found my dreams plagued with nothing but suffering nightmares. The boundless possibilities of what could be coming weighed so heavily upon conscience and mind that, in truth, I slept very little. I lay awake after each momentary doze into the world of dreams to stare without purpose or drive at my ceiling. Laid there in quiet, the only music to accompany my anxiety seemed to have been the ticking of my mother’s old Grandfather clock that stood proudly down the hall. While at the forefront I had all but faith and optimism set into the cause of my great friend, at its hind was worry. Fear for what sort of hellish knowledge or feelings had overtaken my friend to have crazed him so. His research never had been the common sort a doctor of similar fields tests, and with his dismissal from their shared cause there had been thought that perhaps the ‘ethics’ of his evolutionary research had been all but abandoned in favor of advancement. Of this I had no evidence, but feelings require little of that to turn to wildfires in the soul.

In truth, I had tried to reach out to fellow professors at the university in forays from my own work, and they admitted with great confusion that they had not spoken to my companion in the preceding year following his dismissal. Of his colleagues at the laboratory, he had consumed himself at before being exiled, I could find nothing. Names, addresses, all that I had come upon lead to obituaries and grieving families that seemed to have been abandoned for a cause of which they had little to no understanding. To those I disturbed with my presence I bid my apologies and retreated all the same. With the vitriol he had spat venomously at his once-colleagues, my fears had been far from abated by my spontaneous investigation.

Come the eve of the fateful night, I found myself once again vacantly fixated upon the smooth surface of my ceiling. Counting the strokes of the white paint me and my father had swiped upon its surface when I was but a boy, near forty years prior. It was, in my isolation, the little solace I found to appease my mind. Nostalgia for bygone memories and happier days to fill the ever-deepening pit that bore itself into the depths of my stomach. All of this felt so unlike the friend I had come to know. Unhinged ravings, animalistic slobberings about advancements he had once spoken of so elegantly.

Baxter came first to my estate. For long hours I had confided in my friend the depths of my concern, and with gentle ears did he ever listen. Often, he would endure to assuage my aching mind and heart, doing all he could to assure that it was all fiction worked up in my head. Of all this, I had great appreciation. Though it is with regret that they’d fallen upon deaf ears. Especially in the hours before we were to depart. I could only transfix my thoughts upon the harsh bite of the evening’s air. The tremors in my hands being far too great, my colleague so generously drove the both of us to the address given to me, at the time specified. His gentle hand rest upon mind as we sat in the bitter night of that hateful February. It would be alright, he told me with his calming tone and by God himself if you are reading this and knowing how I felt in that moment you would know I wished by all measure I could have believed him. The dimly lit streets of that sardonic corner of dark unfriendly Boston offered even less comfort of mind than my investigations had.

That pit within me had only come to deepen, and I could feel my heart's unhappy throbbing behind my tongue. We did not wait to be greeted. Perhaps we should have been, but if we had I do now fear what would have become of me. As we entered what had been little more than a ramshackle abandoned warehouse, filled to the brim with various instruments I believed to be stolen before his departure, it is more than the brisk night air that chilled along every nerve in my spine.

The sight curdled the blood as it flowed within my veins, for a sight such as this would even have brushed a crimson blush upon the features of Mary Shelley herself. Cadavers. He insisted. Ones acquired through grants and agreements with both government and family approval to work upon. I did all I could to hide the doubt that furrowed my brows so readily.

I had not met, with any sort of frequency, any of the colleagues my dearest friend had worked alongside. But I met them enough to recognize the hollow lifeless face I saw before me stretched and detached from human form laid flat under magnifying glass to be studied. I no longer knew this man before me, all the accolades he had worn with badges of grand honor had seemed to vanish beneath this thick wash of madness. So readily he spewed talk of his tests and experiments out of the side of his mouth. I believed little of it anymore, an agreement had been made between me and my guest should my fears had been realized, and when Dr. Price’s back was turned, our shared look had been all it took to know that indeed it had come to this. We would play our parts, friends and colleagues speaking science not madness, but at first breath of escape we would contact the authorities.

We could not have even been there, and he would still speak so fervently about subjects and ideas I could never have considered or understood. This tour felt mind-numbing, and I desired only for it to end so I could be free of this man’s atrocious sins, and the gore he had subjected my soul to that night. Between large glass tubes of an indiscernible green fluid, he led the both of us. Showing us subjects of his own design. The horror was such we could no longer contain. A living being, what had very clearly once been a man, strapped down to a long metal table lifted parallel to our horrified gaze. Though to say it was strapped down rather than suspended feels a tad misleading. Though it had once been a man, he spoke of how he had broken man down to see the very base needs. How much he could strip away and still have enough man to live. But not to war.

Before us was suspended this armless, legless thing. Supported only by the table, and thick leather straps, its purposefully blinded eyes looked in our general direction. Hearing our presenter speak of his work. Though we could not listen, only stare in horror at his creature. It writhed with the weakness of a sickly foal. Skin pulled so taught, ribs pressed through to the surface as though it were wet paper. Hair had been stripped and shaven down to scalp. Every detail of remaining mutilated musculature was visible through the gaunt living torso. Our focus was stolen when it gurgled, showing us a jaw that had been ripped asunder leaving behind only its top half, and tongue to dangle freely. Reasoning was given for each horrific act.

If a man has no legs he cannot march under the banner of war, has he no arms he cannot lift the rifle to kill his brothers beneath God. To strip him of sight is to rob him of prejudice, to remove speech is to remove hate from his dialogue. All else had been in the interest of evolution, he clarified. This had been what he viewed as the epitome of what the next stage of man should be. Prisoners of our own mind, robbed of the gift of free will and fire Prometheus had risked all to give us. I knew my friend was gone. In that moment I grieved as he had done his brothers. It was with greater sadness I realized he would not live through the night, and it would be by my hand that he was to die.

I did not take pleasure in these revelations, but I felt the divine justice I had never known from God before that moment. Be it all in my mind or not, I gripped leather wrappings that protected from cold American steel and without hesitation I unloaded half of my six shots into his torso before the stroke of midnight and watched him fall to the ground a muttering heap. Then wrought mercy upon that horrific corruption of a man and emptied the remaining three into Dr. Price’s final experiment. I knew if it had a voice to speak on its own it would have thanked me for such. Though Baxter flinched at my sudden brandishing of what should have only been a weapon of self-defense, he did not look upon me with any judgement. Quietly confiding to me that had I not done so, he would have done so himself with a makeshift weapon from whatever object had been nearest.

I did not have time to grieve. Nor process the death of my friend.

Hollow rhythmic clicks rung through the air against the stone floor beneath our feet. Curses were leveed my way, by a voice I am horrified to say I recognized. Looking to the floor I witnessed as my friend, the once great scientist of such acclaim, slither head and spine free of shoulders to leave what remained of his feeble dead body. Like a practiced serpent he swam and skittered his new form along the ground and away from our prying eyes. Disappearing into darkness before I could even open my revolver to introduce more bullets into its cylinder. We would endure not to be victims that night, without a word we stood hind to hind, slowly shuffling in a circle to remain protected from the thing that lurked in the darkness.

More curses were spat, venom that lingered hatefully as all the eloquent man had left within him.

Further horror befalls us to find the other mutilation would not be the only experiments we were to experience that night. Cerebral tissue, slumping and undulating best it could in its swollen state, protected by a thick membrane of mucus sloughed into view. A brain, with no more than thick calloused nerve endings as tissue to drag it from point to point. I do not know if it thought u to be the doctor when it attacked, or if he had so broken this man to leave only an animal on a leash, but it mattered so little in that moment.

Baxter... sweet Baxter... Needle pointed ends of those nerve clusters wrapped themselves around him, boring into flesh and spraying the blood of my companion all over me. Were those horrors to end there perhaps would have been a mercy I deserved but did not receive. Baxter’s screams could have peeled the varnish from wood, the agony he must have felt as this thing of nerves burrowed down to his own and merge itself with them in all but a fraction of a second. Words were not discernable from this new horrific thing that had made itself before my very eyes in such rapid time. This monster, of bare brain sat atop Baxter’s perpetually screaming face, slumped and limped towards me as what clearly remained of my dear friend fought.

I saw the terror in his eyes, the tears that poured from them. So much pain and for what? To this moment I do not know for what reason it happened. Was it the suffering? Was it because he felt himself slipping away? Would he have rathered it this way than to have harmed and assimilated me as well? Or perhaps, when it gained the gift of sight, was the man who that brain belonged to coming to life and realize all of the suffering it continued to endure? Baxter’s hands grabbed the revolver in an instant, swallowing the end of the barrel, and squeezing my hand down upon the trigger to end both of their sufferings all before I could have even thought to stop him.

I searched that whole lab for sight or trail left in the wake of Dr. Price but could find nothing. To know that man slithered off into the night to cause more harm and pain sickens me deeply. So selfishly he forced his pain upon others in an attempt to preserve the greater good. No good is worth the loss of our humanity in ways such as that.

Only days have passed since I have seen the worst torments man can enforce upon their fellow children of God. I ask forgiveness from all in this endeavor. For I cannot persist in this world knowing that such evil exists still, and I have not the strength to hunt it to the ends of the Earth. It is selfish of me to make all this pain about myself, but my heart is burdened by sorrow, and it has not quelled the ache I felt since that night and it grows harder and harder to lift my weary head.

None would believe me if I had gone to the authorities. Instead, I burned that house of misery to the ground, and watched until I was sure there was nothing left there but ashes. I only regret that I could not have given my trusted companion a proper burial among his family as he would have wanted, and further curse myself for not keeping this suffering to myself. Perhaps in death there will come answers? Perhaps not. I will take solace in that I no longer be a bird caged as I have been.

Baxter, I am sorry.

-Professor Charles Stroupe

It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer.

-The Thing on the Doorstep; H.P. Lovecraft

#creepypasta #horror story #creative writing #horror #horror fiction #short story #lovecraft

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orville-j-clutchpopper · 2 years ago

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Medical science has always believed in the superstition that the use of chemical substances which are harmful and destructive to human life will prove an efficient substitute for the violation of laws, and in this way encourages the belief that a man may go the limit in self indulgence that weaken and destroy his physical system, and then hope to be absolved from his physical ailments by swallowing a few pills, or submitting to an injection of a serum or vaccine, that are supposed to act as vicarious redeemers of the physical organism and counteract life-long practices that are poisonous and wholly destructive to the patient's well-being.

Benedict Lust, writing in Universal Naturopathic Encylopedia Directory and Buyer’s Guide Yearbook of Drugless Therapy for 1918-1919.

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the-penandpaper · 2 years ago

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Stephen Bandera was a hero

The History of Nazism in Ukraine. Who is Stepan Bandera?

Most Americans do not know about Ukraine’s politics or its history.

The Father of Nazi Ideology in Ukraine: Stepan Bandera

His name was Stepan Bandera, considered a Ukrainian hero who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II and who was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN/B), an extreme far-right organization. Bandera was born to a Greek-Catholic family in Galicia which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but later in life he became a radical Ukrainian nationalist after his country of birth had collapsed thus becoming the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, but then it became part of Poland after the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918-1919. In 1934, Bandera who was very angry with the new geopolitical development had organized the assassination of Poland’s Minister of the Interior, Bronislaw Pieracki.

Adolf Hitler as Ukraine’s “National Idea”

Bandera was arrested for the crime, found guilty and sentenced to death but his conviction was later commuted to a life sentence.

In 1939, following the German–Soviet invasion of Poland also known as the September Campaign divided the country under the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. Soon after, Bandera was released from prison and moved to Kraków, Poland which was already occupied by the Nazis.

Bandera was convinced that working with the Nazis would allow him to establish his own government in Ukraine leading to an independent nation that would be allied with the Nazis and free from Soviet occupation. It was well-known that the Nazis, Bandera and his lieutenants from his organization blamed Jews for establishing communism in Ukraine as a statement from Bandera at the time read that

“The Jews of the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.”

Then in June 1941, the Nazis invaded the USSR and occupied the East Galician capital of Lvov and this was where the OUN/B and the National-Socialist Greater Germany under Adolf Hitler collaborated and launched ‘pogroms’ of genocide against jews and poles including men, women and children of all ages over the duration of the war.

Then the relationship between the Nazis and the Bandera faction got complicated. During the war, a declaration of independence or what is known as the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State was announced in homage to Bandera by his own lieutenants.

At the same time, the declaration for an independent Ukraine became a serious concern for the Nazi regime since they wanted Ukraine under their sphere of influence. So, the alliance between the Ukrainian nationalists and the Nazis became problematic.

On September 15th, 1941, the Gestapo began to arrest its leaders including Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko who was the prime minister of the Ukrainian National government for refusing to dismiss the Act of Renewal of Ukrainian statehood.

By January 1942, Bandera found himself in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for high-profile political prisoners.

In 1944, the Soviets and allied forces advanced on Nazi-occupied territories, so the Nazis recruited Bandera and Stetsko to create diversions to help destroy Soviet forces who were gaining ground.

Bandera who was still the leader of the OUN/B moved to West Germany with his family and continued to work with anti-communist organizations or we can say the fascists for many years to come such as the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

In 1959, Bandera was poisoned by cyanide gas and two years later, the German judiciary claimed that the KGB was behind his assassination. In 2022, Bandera remains a hero to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The US and the European Union support Ukraine who happens to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world with proven human rights abuses that has strong ties to neo-Nazis who admire Adolf Hitler and Stepan Bandera, now if that is not hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

In other words, these groups, especially the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and the Russians, are separated by different views of history, different languages, and different political representation.

Article written by: Timothy Alexander Guzman, an independent researcher and writer with a focus on political, economic, media and historical spheres. He has been published in www.Globalresearch.ca, The Progressive Mind, European Union Examiner, News Beacon Ireland.

The CIA and the Nazis: A Match Made in Hell

According to author and journalist Wayne Madsen in 2016 entitled: ‘CIA: Undermining and Nazifying Ukraine Since 1953’

“the recent declassification of over 3800 documents by the Central Intelligence Agency provides detailed proof that since 1953 the CIA operated two major programs intent on not only destabilizing Ukraine but Nazifying it with followers of the World War II Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera.”

Nazism has been in existence in Ukraine for a long-time under the CIA’s Project AERODYNAMIC which was “to provide for the exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movement for cold war and hot war purposes” it included several groups including the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UBVR) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Foreign. Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (ZPUHVR) in Western Europe and the United States, and other organizations such as OUN/B will be utilized.

We can say that for close to 70 years, the CIA’s operation of Nazifying Ukraine had been a success.

Burned alive: How the 2014 Odessa massacre became a turning point for Ukraine

#anonymous #Bandera #Stephen Bandera #nazi #ukraine #russia #ask #poltics #war #CIA #odessa massacre

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forensicfield · 2 years ago

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Indian Laws Which Are Related To Drugs And Poisons

In Article 47 of the Indian Constitution, it is stated that the "State should endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption of intoxicating beverages and of narcotics which are harmful to health, except for therapeutic purposes." The same....

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#Indian Laws Which Are Related To Drugs And Poisons #Small Quantity And Commercial Quantity Of Drugs Under NDPS Act 1985 #The Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) 1973 #The Drugs Act 1940 #The Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 #The Drugs and Cosmetics Rules 1945 #The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954 #The Drugs Control Act 1950 #The Indian Evidence Act (IEA) 1872 #The Indian Penal Code (IPC) 1860 #The Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act 1985 #The Pharmacy Act 1948 #The Poison Act 1919

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contremineur · 2 years ago

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Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya (née Levchenko, 5th August 1893 – 16th February 1919), Russian cinema actress

Kholodnaya was the first star of Imperial Russian silent cinema. Only five of her films still exist and the total number she acted in is unknown, with speculation ranging between fifty and one hundred.

Official Russian records state that Kholodnaya died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1919. Other stories claim she was poisoned by the French ambassador, with whom she reportedly had an affair and who believed that she was a spy for the Bolsheviks.

image from here, text abridged from here

#vera kholodnaya #cinema #imperial russia #silent cinema

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lostfunzones · 4 years ago

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Raquel Meller in La venenosa (1928)

French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 517. Photo: Raquel Meller in La venenosa/Poison Ivy (Roger Lion, 1928).

Spanish actress, singer, and diva Raquel Meller (1888-1962) acted mainly in French silent films. She was already a highly popular singer before debuting as a film actress in 1919.

#raquel meller #silent film #1920s

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fricpic01 · 4 years ago

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Peggy O'Neil: [NPG] The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 and the Unexpected Husband in 1930. She was born Margaret O’Neil on June 16, 1898 in Gneeveguilla, Co. Kerry, Ireland (note: there is conflicting information about her birth and early life so I'm going with what was reported by the New York Times). Her family immigrated to America when she was a child, settling in Buffalo, New York. She began performing when still little and in 1910 made her professional stage debut in Chicago as a dancer in The Sweetest Girl in Paris. Peggy O'Neil with her co-star in Peg O' My Heart, 1914. Peggy O'Neil, Reginald Mason, and Christine Norman in Peg O' My Heart, 1914. O'Neil had a few more small stage roles and starred in some film shorts for the Lubin Manufacturing Company before her big break on September 2, 1913. That day theatre producer Oliver Morosco auditioned more than 400 young girls for the lead in a road production of J. Hartley Manners' comedy Peg O’ My Heart. O’Neil won the part and the following year was sent to Chicago to star as Peg. The play was a hit and ran for 26 weeks. The Chicago audience fell in love with the girl with the blue eyes, dark curls, and bubbly personality who embodied the quintessential Irish lass, a popular type on stage at the turn of the century. The play itself proved to be such a hit that at one point eight different versions were in production at the same time. Both Laurette Taylor (who originated the role) and Marion Davies would go on to star in film versions. O'Neil's turn as Peg led to other roles. Morosco casting her in two other Chicago productions—A Tale With a Wag and Mavourneen. Back in New York she starred on Broadway in The Flame. After a run in Chicago with Patsy on the Wing, she returned to Broadway in 1919 for Tumble. The New York Times singled her out for that last performance as being “much of the life of the show” and Theatre Magazine said "the other performers might well benefit from watching her acting." In 1920 she travelled to London where she had her greatest success playing the title role in the comedy Paddy The Next Best Thing. Adapted by William Gayer MacKay and Robert Ord from a novel by Gertrude Page, it was the story of a tomboy named Paddy (short for Patricia) whose father had wanted a son but got the next best thing. Opening on April 5, 1920, it ran for more than 850 performances at the Savoy Theatre, and O'Neil became the darling of London. One reviewer said of O'Neil's performance, "She has something of Ellen Terry's power of communicating her smiles and tears to the audience. I suspect that every young woman in the audience feels, in her heart, that she has been a Paddy." Yet she had her detractors. On October 20, 1920, the papers reported that O’Neil had been sent a box of poisoned chocolates. She ate one and was ill for days. Her little dog was not so lucky. He died that evening after eating one of the candies. Tests later found that the chocolates contained arsenic and strychnine. No suspects were ever arrested. In 1921, O’Neil inspired Harry Pease, Edward G Nelson, and Gilbert Dodge (two of whom were reportedly trying to court the actress who never married) to write a song in her honor. If her eyes are blue as skies, that's Peggy O'Neil If she's smiling all the while, that's Peggy O'Neil If she walks like a sly little rogue If she talks with a cute little brogue Sweet personality full of rascality That's Peggy O'Neil With its sweet melody and Irish tones, “Peggy O’Neil” proved to be a huge hit and at the Savoy, the song was played between the show's acts. The success of Paddy was followed by a role in Mercenary Mary at the London Hippodrome. O'Neil would spend the 1920s primarily in London but did return to New York in 1927 for a part in the Ziegfeld Follies and again in 1930 to star in the comedy Unexpected Husband. Peggy O'Neil at the height of her popularity, May 1921. On September 30, 1928, O'Neil tried out a new medium. She agreed to be "televised" as part of a demonstration of the Baird television system. https://youtu.be/2D_yFxCgqNQ

youtube

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astroninaaa · 4 years ago

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clarke griffin sucks here’s why

Hi! I’ve wanted to actually write some anti-Clarke discourse for a while now, specially because I’ve hated her since I first heard her talk to someone else in the show, but I was always hesitant because of blorkes and Clarke stans and all that. Well, I’m doing it anyway.

(DISCLAIMER: all this comes from her depiction in the show. I have no idea how book Clarke is, since I’ve never read the The 100 books. Now buckle up and enjoy my angry and not-that-thought-out rant.) (And I’m putting it under the cut because it is... a lot.)

I know many people started to dislike Clarke after season 3 or whatever, but I believe she has been problematic since the beginning.

For starters, she put herself in a position of power during season 1, and that’s a fact. People say she “had no choice but to become a leader”, but that’s a lie. Just like Bellamy did, she made the decision to bear leadership: from the moment they arrived, she was already making orders and trying to boss people around. Was she wrong? No, she wasn’t! She wanted to keep herself and others alive, which is a good thing. But she didn’t have to. Btw, if she had never done anything things wouldn’t have change, to be honest, since they did not get to Mount Weather and built their little cute camp around the dropship. I mean, Jasper wouldn’t have been speared and they would have found out about the Grounders a bit later, but I think nothing much would’ve happened. Actually, maybe things with the Grounders would have been easier, considering I firmly believe the theory that the only reason they attacked Jasper in the first place was because he was all happy about finding Mount Weather, the place that had been kidnapping and killing Grounders for a long ass time.

My point is: I believe Clarke wasn’t actually needed as a leader when they first came down to Earth. I think she was just a spoiled priviledged girl, just like Bellamy said she was, who could not get around to letting go of the power she held. There was no more priviledged and non-priviledged, so she secured her influence by becoming a leader.

An important statement that people tend to forget: she was just as guilty as Bellamy was for Murphy’s hanging, if not more. She was always talking about justice and whatnot, but when she had the chance to be just, she wasn’t. A knife is not enough evidence to fucking accuse someone of murder — during 1918 and 1919, there was a serial murder going around called “The Axeman of New Orleans”, who used axes he found in people’s houses to kill them (I’m a fan of true crime sorry not sorry). If police went by Clarke’s logic, the dead would’ve been the murderers, which certainly does not make much sense. The least she could’ve done was talking to him separately, conducted a trial or whatever, anything but accusing Murphy of murder before the whole camp. She knew they hated him, and so did Bellamy, and that’s why Bellamy didn’t want her to tell everyone about Wells’ yet. And yes, sure, she was grieving, but grief is still not an excuse for what she did to Murphy, it isn’t. She might have tried to stop the hanging later or whatever, but it was still a direct consequence of her actions and would not have happened at all if she had stopped to think for even a moment. The truth is that Clarke does not comprehend that she can actually be wrong, a fact that repeats itself multiple times throughout the series.

(There are other times she fucks up during season 1, but Murphy’s hanging is what stands out the most to me, so I decided to leave it on that. But don’t worry, I have many other examples!)

I can’t even express how much she pissed me off during season 2. Yes, Mount Weather was a very suspicious place and she was right to be wary, but how could she leave her people and escape? She wanted to get help and all that, but she fucking knew they were bleeding out the Grounders and was definetely aware they would soon try something alike to the 48, and she still left them. She left them alone and clueless to the danger they were in, and she didn’t even know if the Ark had come down alright or if there were other survivors. Mount Weather was lying to them about not finding anyone but she couldn’t be sure of that — everyone could have been fucking dead and she would have left her “people” to die too.

I’m not even gonna talk about Lexa’s betrayal because that wasn’t actually her fault, I admit that. Was she stupid to trust a Grounder? Yes. Should she have considered the fact they tried to kill Raven the first opportunity they got (when Lexa’s cup was poisoned) and the fact that the Grounders did not trust them because of Finn and wrongly Raven? Obviously. Does that make Lexa’s betrayal her fault? No, but she should have seen it coming, tbh.

And, again, she put herself in a position of power where she wasn’t needed. There were actual adults ready to look for a better solution, but she didn’t let them. Of course she didn’t — how could Princess Griffin let go of her power?

Letting Mount Weather drop the bomb on TonDC was... horrible. It was not the act of a leader and it was not the act of a good person. It was selfish, it was the act of someone who leaves their people to die with the excuse of “looking for help” without even knowing if there is help waiting for them at all. It would have revealed Bellamy’s position, yes, but Bellamy would have preferred that than letting people die like Clarke and Lexa did. THEY LET PEOPLE DIE. Hundreds of people! God, they didn’t save the Grounders and the Skaikru that had come for a DIPLOMATIC AND PACIFIC reunion, but Clarke really thought her deal with Lexa would mean something if a better deal appeared, right? Damn, that was naive.

And then she left her people again by the end of the season, of course. “I bear it so others don’t have to” my ass — Bellamy still went apeshit and Jasper still got depressed and no one actually saw her bearing it, so they bear it too. The only thing girlie did was leave behind responsibility and betray her friends so she didn’t have to face regret for her actions. Meanwhile, people needed her, since she had put herself in a position of power for so long that everyone actually looked up at her, for some unknown reason, since she mainly fucked things up.

I don’t remember season 3 that well, but I know that Bellamy’s rant to her when she came back and was trying to be his friend was absolutely reasonable and true. She fucked off into the woods, represented Skaikru in Polis without them knowing for a while, came back to Arkadia and tried to get some power again, but then no one cared about her. Bellamy was too busy making the wrong decisions because of his emotional pain and sorrow to actually give a shit and they had greater things to solve than filling Clarke’s need to be worshipped.

Also, the whole “blood must not have blood” shit? Funny, real funny. It’s just like Lexa pointed out: “blood must not have blood until it applies to your people”. She is SUCH a hypocrite it pains me. And she did not spare Emerson for “blood must not have blood”, she did it because she knew it would make him suffer more and that came back to bite her in the ass. Karma’s a bitch, I guess. And she tried to make Luna become Commander against her will, which I’m not gonna talk about, but was just really fucked up.

I think my hatred for Clarke peaked during season 4. First, she didn’t want to tell the Grounders the world was about to end again and was apparently okay with letting them burn, until Roan found out and got mad about it. She tried to become Commander, blatantly disrespecting Grounder culture just so she could boss all the people in the world around. “She wanted to help!” “She had no choice!” Yes, sure, she had no choice but lying to everyone and disrespecting a whole nation. She couldn’t, you know, talk about it. Okay. I mean, that’s how Clarke does things, right? Kill and deceive first, give a half-assed apology later. It has been working so far, there’s no reason for her to stop.

Forcing Luna to give them her bone marrow? Very problematic, but “Welcome to Mount Weather” was one of my favorite Raven quotes. Abby was also a fucking bitch for being alright with killing Emori but throwing a tantrum when Clarke finally came to her senses and decided to test Nightblood on herself instead of murdering people who went all the way there to help her, but that’s not what I’m focusing on.

Locking Murphy up while she attempted to kill Emori? Not good. Emori knew from the beginning she would be chosen for testing Nightblood — she is a Grounder, and Clarke’s disregard for Grounders has been made very clear before. (And no, having a Grounder girlfriend in a very unprofessional and non-diplomatic way does not excuse her from discriminating against Grounders.)

And then she took over the bunker, disrespecting Grounder culture once again by betraying the conclave and, well, many people. (I know Echo did it too, but I’m not talking about Echo right now so if someone brings this up I’m gonna riot.) I also think it’s funny how she was always talking about saving everyone and all that shit but was so fucking fast to leave Raven, Octavia, Monty, Harper and Kane to die. You know, the people who were supposed to be her friends and all that. Oh, well.

Then Octavia won. And she still did not open the bunker. Man, opening the bunker would save so many lives, including the life of her oh-so-called best friend’s sister, but she still didn’t do it. Classic Clarke God-complex: she decides who is worth saving, and the Grounders aren’t. Then there’s the whole thing with holding Bellamy at gunpoint and then using “but I didn’t shoot!” as an apology. Bitch, it isn’t about shooting, it is about the fact you looked your supposed best friend straight in the eyes and pointed a gun at him, threatening to kill him if he dared to try and save his sister and many others of certain death.

She sacrificed herself by the end of this season, great. I mean, yeah, that was nice of her. Congrats for doing a good thing for once, I guess, even though she knew she probably wouldn’t be able to get back in time anyway so the least she could do was making sure the others lived. I wish she had actually died then, it would’ve been a great end to her arc (finally saving her friends at the cost of her life after betraying them and leaving them to die repeatedly — damn, I might had even started to like her a bit after that) and I would be able to stand the worshipping of her done at the start of season 5, since she would be, yk, dead. Sadly, that did not happen.

She was a villain during season 5 just like Octavia and I wish she had been depicted that way. She wanted to kill Blodreina (because just overthrowing her wouldn’t do) but she wasn’t okay with letting Madi take the chip. I know these are different things, but see it like that: killing Octavia was a way of taking control of Wonkru at the expense of a life. Madi becoming Commander was a way to take control of Wonkru at the expense of Madi’s childhood. Are any of them good? Not really, but Commander Madi does not envolve killing someone and even has a nice ring to it. Besides, Madi had given consent to taking the chip.

(Another point: Octavia was actually thrown into a position of power, just like everyone claims Clarke was. Octavia was the conclave’s champion and was expected and even obligated to lead, while Clarke simply decided she was more competent than the others and became a self-proclaimed leader. After that, she whined for all seasons about how she didn’t want leadership. Octavia never did that, despite being the one who became a leader unwillingly. Just like Raven put, Octavia and Clarke are the same, but Octavia doesn’t pretend to feel bad for empathy points. Damn, I love Raven.)

She left Bellamy to die in the fighting pit, because now Madi is the one she cares about so fuck everyone else. She gave over Raven and Shaw and let them be tortured for nothing. She betrayed literally everyone and was the one to put McCreary in a position strong enough he had the power to literally destroy Earth. Clarke Griffin was directly responsible for Earth’s end.

And then she said “sorry, I had no choice” and most characters fucking forgave her. I hate the way this series throws Clarke’s half-assed apologies onto us and expect us to accept them. I think it is very annoying, since Clarke would be an awesome villain, but they insist in making her one of the good guys, even with the whole “there’s no good guys” theme, which I wholeheartedly believe to be just a way to justify why Clarke needs to be forgiven again and again and again. It is not much more than bad writing, to be honest.

During season 6 she again becomes a leader without being prompted to. I loved Josephine and I think that the fact Clarke wasn’t actually Clarke was the only reason I didn’t absolutely despised her like I have done for the previous seasons. Again, I would have loved it if she had actually died then. Imagine Josephine becoming a main character for season 7 too? Amazing, brilliant, showstopping, incredible.

And she is not even there for season 7, at least until “The Queen’s Gambit” lol. Guess they finally saw how much of an annoying character she is. The only thing I remember of her is the “I don’t believe in Karma” thing, which was... expected. I mean, someone who has done as much harm as she has can’t believe in Karma anyway or she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, and Clarke’s whole thing is about pretending to be sorry but not actually trying to change, so we can’t have that.

In conclusion, Clarke Griffin fucking sucks. She is a bad person and the way everyone always forgives every bad thing she does is bad writing. The series tries to sell her as one of the characters on the “good” side, but she actively works against it. She is not even a GOOD villain to watch, like Murphy was for many seasons. She is just an annoying character with a God complex who fucks things up, betrays her friends and lets people die again and again and then is forgiven because she is supposed to be an admirable main character. She is selfish and abusive and manipulative and power-hungry and fucking sucks, so please don’t stan her.

And that’s on that! Nice.

(DISCLAIMER PART 2: this blog DOES NOT support Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley, specially after Arryn Zech’s accusations. I know we cannot be sure of anything, but I prefer to side with a potential liar than with a potential abuser.)

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lgbtqiahistoricalromance · 5 years ago

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LGBTQIA+ Historical Romance Novels with Ghosts, Ghouls, and Gothic themes 2019 - Updated October 17

A list of titles that either came out after the last update in 2018 or were published this year. Many series!

Gentleman Wolf by Joanna Chambers

- An elegant werewolf in Edinburgh…

1788. When Lindsay Somerville, the most elegant werewolf in Paris, learns that the man who held him in abject captivity for decades is on his way to France, intent on recapturing him, he knows he must leave the Continent for his own safety. Lindsay cannot take the risk of being recaptured—he may have been free for a century but he can still feel the ghost of his old chains under his fine clothes.

… on a mission…

While he’s in Edinburgh, Lindsay has been tasked with acquiring the “Naismith Papers”, the writings of a long-dead witchfinder. It should be a straightforward mission—all Lindsay has to do is charm an elderly book collector, Hector Cruikshank. But Cruikshank may not be all he seems, and there are others who want the papers.

… meets his match

As if that were not enough, while tracking down the Naismith Papers, Lindsay meets stubborn architect Drew Nicol. Although the attraction between them is intense, Nicol seems frustratingly determined to resist Lindsay’s advances. Somehow though, Lindsay can’t seem to accept Nicol’s rejection. Is he just moonstruck, or is Nicol bonded to him in ways he doesn’t yet understand?

Note: this is the first book of a duology – the story continues and will complete in the second book, Master Wolf.

A Hidden Beauty by Jamie Craig

- Student of letters, Micah Yardley wants one thing: to meet the poet Jefferson Dering. After hearing his idol speak at Harvard, Micah travels to Jefferson’s home in nearby Wroxham, entertaining visions of discussing poetry over dinner and drinks. What he experiences exceeds anything he ever anticipated. Jefferson finds Micah mesmerizing and passionate, everything he has ever wanted. But after getting caught in a compromising position with another young man a decade earlier, he exiled himself from Boston and from affairs of the heart. Jefferson represses his longing for Micah, but his tumultuous emotions cannot be contained. Micah denies the truth of his desire for Jefferson. Jefferson refuses to act on his passion for Micah. But all it takes is a single kiss in Wroxham's haunted church to change the course of their lives ... and ignite the flame that could fulfill a generations-old promise.

Deosil by Jordan L Hawk (Whyborne & Griffin series finale!!!!)

- Whyborne, Griffin, and their friends have faced down cultists, monsters, and sorcerers. But their greatest challenge is now upon them. On the return voyage from Balefire Manor, Whyborne receives the worst news possible: Widdershins has fallen before the onslaught of the Fideles and their servants. There’s still time to stop the return of the Masters, but that window grows shorter by the hour. Together with Christine and Iskander, Whyborne and Griffin must reach Widdershins to face the ultimate test—and decide the fate of the world, once and for all.

The Ingenious Mechanical Devices series by Kara Jorgensson (bisexual, pansexual, asexual, persons with disabilities, and POC characters in this series!!!)

Book One = The Earl of Brass

- Eilian Sorrell is no stranger to cheating death, but when a dirigible accident costs him his arm, he fears his days of adventuring are over. As the eldest son of the Earl of Dorset, Lord Sorrell knows he will face a bleak future among London's aristocracy unless he can escape. On a quest to return to his old life, Lord Sorrell commissions a prosthetic arm, but the craftsman isn’t quite what he expected.

Fenice Brothers Prosthetics is in trouble. Hadley’s brother is dead, and she is forced to pick up the pieces and finish what he started. When clients begin turning her away, she fears she will fail until she crosses paths with the enigmatic Lord Sorrell. In exchange for a new arm, he offers her a chance at adventure in the deserts of Palestine.

Beneath the Negev’s sand lies something far more precious than potsherds or bones. A long lost crystal city has been found that could change Eilian and Hadley’s world forever, but they aren’t the only ones who know its secrets. Will they make it out alive or will they, too, be buried beneath the desert sands?

Shinigami by Xia Lake

- A coming-of-age love story between an orphan and the heir of the richest family in the Land of Yamato. The human world meets the yōkai in a power struggle for the fate of Fujiwara no Hirotsugu. While he battles to find his own path, Hirotsugu finds solace in a boy who will become his secret friend, then his salvation, and then as they become adults together, the love of his life.

The Sea May Burn by Rose Lerner (Part of the St. Lemeston universe, a f/f retelling of Jane Eyre!!!) COMING SOON!

- Goldengrove’s towers and twisted chimneys rose at the very edge of the peaceful Weald, a stone’s throw from the poisonous marshes and merciless waters of Rye Bay. Young Mary Palethorp had been running wild there, ever since her mother grew too ill to leave her room.

I was the perfect choice to give Mary a good English education: thoroughly respectable and far too plain to tempt her lonely father, Sir Kit, to indiscretion.

I knew better than to trust my new employer with the truth about my past. But knowing better couldn’t stop me from yearning for impossible things: to be Mary’s mother, Sir Kit’s companion, Goldengrove’s mistress.

All that belonged to poor Lady Palethorp. Most of all, I burned to finally catch a glimpse of her.

Surely she could tell me who cut the strings on the guitar I found in the music room, why all the doors in the house were locked after dark, and whose footsteps I heard in the night…

Lost in Time series by AL Lester

Book One = Lost in Time

- Lew Rogers's life is pleasantly boring until his friend Mira messes with magic she doesn't understand. While searching for her, he's pulled back in time to 1919 by a catastrophic magical accident. As he tries to navigate a strange time and find his friend in the smoky music clubs of Soho, the last thing he needs is Detective Alec Carter suspecting him of murder. London in 1919 is cold, wet, and tired from four years of war. Alec is back in the Metropolitan Police after slogging out his army service on the Western Front. Falling for a suspect in a gruesome murder case is not on his agenda, however attractive he finds the other man. Both men are floundering and out of their depth, struggling to come to terms with feelings they didn't ask for and didn't expect. Both have secrets that could get them arrested or killed. In the middle of a murder investigation that involves wild magic, mysterious creatures, and illegal sexual desire, who is safe to trust?

We Met in Dreams by Rowan McAllister

- In Victorian London, during a prolonged and pernicious fog, fantasy and reality are about to collide—at least in one man’s troubled mind. A childhood fever left Arthur Middleton, Viscount Campden, seeing and hearing things no one else does, afraid of the world outside, and unable to function as a true peer of the realm. To protect him from himself—and to protect others from him—he spends his days heavily medicated and locked in his rooms, and his nights in darkness and solitude, tormented by visions, until a stranger appears. This apparition is different. Fox says he’s a thief and not an entirely good sort of man, yet he returns night after night to ease Arthur’s loneliness without asking for anything in return. Fox might be the key that sets Arthur free, or he might deliver the final blow to Arthur’s tenuous grasp on sanity. Either way, real or imaginary, Arthur needs him too much to care. Fox is only one of the many secrets and specters haunting Campden House, and Arthur will have to face them all in order to live the life of his dreams.

The Clearwater Mysteries by Jackson Marsh

- Book One = Deviant Desires

The Victorian East End lives in fear of the Ripper and his mission to kill rent boys. Silas Hawkins, nineteen and forging a life on the streets could well be the next victim, but when he meets Archer, his life changes forever. Young, attractive and rich, Archer is The Viscount Clearwater, a philanthropist, adventurer and homosexual. When Archer suspects the Ripper is killing to lure him to a confrontation, he risks his reputation and his life to stop the madman's murders. Every man must play his part, including Silas. A mashup of mystery, romance and adventure, Deviant Desire is set in an imaginary London of 1888. The first in an on-going series, it takes the theme of loyalty and friendship in a world where homosexuality is a crime. Secrets must be kept, lovers must be protected, and for Archer and Silas, it marks the start of their biggest adventure - love.

Highland Haunting: A Townsend Halloween Story (The Townsends) by Lily Maxton

- For the past few months, Ian Cameron and Robert Townsend have been settling into their new life together, but when a series of odd events occur at Llynmore Castle, Ian begins to suspect that he's being haunted. The question is, is the spirit malevolent or benevolent? Does it want to harm him or warn him of something to come? As Halloween draws closer, the ghost becomes stronger. Ian and Robert will have to trust each other and trust themselves to find the answers they need before it's too late. *Highland Haunting is 16,000 words and features the main characters from A Scot's Surrender

The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall by Sebastian Nothwell (f/f!!!)

- Heatherhurst Hall

Cumberland, England

1892

American heiress Kit Morgan is heartbroken at the wedding of her dearest school-friend. At her lowest moment, she is rescued from her agonies by the mysterious and alluring Alexandra Cranbrook, sister of a visiting English baronet. Alexandra is beautiful, charming, and effortlessly beguiling. Kit cannot help but fall in love with her.

When Sir Vivian Cranbrook proposes marriage, it seems natural for Kit to accept—if only to live with the woman she desperately loves.

But the Cranbrook’s ancestral home of Heatherhurst Hall is not all it seems. The attic is forbidden. Strange scratching noises echo from within the walls. Wraiths stalk the corridors by night. And worst of all, Alexandra’s love has turned to scorn.

Still, Kit is determined to earn her happily-ever-after and save the Cranbrooks from the horrors of Heatherhurst Hall.

If only she could know Alexandra loved her in return.

~The Haunting of Heatherhurst Hall is a Gothic romance rife with horror and heartache, wherein an American heiress makes an ill-advised marriage to bring herself closer the woman who’s stolen her heart.

Read by Candelight series by Gillian St. Kevern (7 book so far, with m/m and f/f love stories!!!)

- Book One = The Secretary and the Ghost: A Gothic Paranormal Romance

Pip Leighton is in a fix. His sister’s marriage hinges on him staving off the family’s impending financial ruin by taking the job of secretary to Lord Cross, a reclusive man with a temper befitting his name. Developing a passion for his employer was not on the cards. Neither was getting caught up in the deep mystery surrounding Foxwood Court and its resident ghost, but Pip has never been one to shirk a duty. As Pip delves deeper into the past, he discovers that his only hope for a future with Cross may depend on a man long dead—a man with a curious resemblance to himself.

The Gentleman Attraction: a short victorian mm paranormal romance by Connor Peterson

Emerson Mallory never mixes business and pleasure. His eyes might wander but he certainly wouldn’t risk his professional reputation over a tryst. Not even for a silver-haired scoundrel who clearly knows his way around a bedroom and makes his heart race with just one look.

When a flirtatious train ride turns into a weekend in close quarters, Bennet Clarke doesn’t agree that it would be best to leave their attraction at the door. He gave up worrying about human sensibilities the night he became a vampire centuries ago, and right now he wants more than one taste of Emerson’s charm and unnerving ability to see past his cavalier masks.

Their host has a few secrets of their own and a madcap plan that requires Emerson to enlist Bennet’s help. When the inevitable happens, Emerson begins to think that maybe Bennet’s way of looking at things isn’t so bad. Bennet, however, is faced with a dilemma. Keep up the ruse, or confess that Emerson has no idea who he’s gotten involved with.

Amidst the flurry of activity surrounding their host, the two men will have to keep their affair secret, plan a successful party, and decide if forever is too much to ask.

Spellbound: A Paranormal Historical Romance (Magic in Manhattan Book 1) by Allie Therin

- To save Manhattan, they’ll have to save each other first… 1925 New York Arthur Kenzie’s life’s work is protecting the world from the supernatural relics that could destroy it. When an amulet with the power to control the tides is shipped to New York, he must intercept it before it can be used to devastating effects. This time, in order to succeed, he needs a powerful psychometric…and the only one available has sworn off his abilities altogether. Rory Brodigan’s gift comes with great risk. To protect himself, he’s become a recluse, redirecting his magic to find counterfeit antiques. But with the city’s fate hanging in the balance, he can’t force himself to say no. Being with Arthur is dangerous, but Rory’s ever-growing attraction to him begins to make him brave. And as Arthur coaxes him out of seclusion, a magical and emotional bond begins to form. One that proves impossible to break—even when Arthur sacrifices himself to keep Rory safe and Rory must risk everything to save him.

Hayden Thorne is reissuing many of her LGBT romances this year, with some of the most original content in the genre. Many are YA options, but very enjoyable for adults!

Extensive 2018 Halloween List

Since links have been failing in Tumblr, here is the URL for Halloween 2018: https://lgbtqiahistoricalromance.tumblr.com/post/188457088709/lgbtqiahistoricalromance

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aethelar · 5 years ago

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So, uh, a while back you wrote a thing for Magizoologist!Graves and Head of Magical Security!Newt. I found the Newt piece, but did you ever write the one for Graves?

Nonnie, I did not. Very remiss of me. We shall rectify; in part one, we had Newt Scamander, Head of Security at MACUSA - now let’s bring on part two and introduce Percival Graves the Magizoologist.

How, you might ask.

Percival Graves of the boss-man suits, the judging eyebrows that judge without shame, the complete lack of chill and the vocabulary that is primarily swear words - that’s the Graves we’re going with, and we’re asking him to abandon his promising career as an auror in favour of playing Mummy to a host of, of assorted highly illegal most likely viciously poisonous things.

Graves does not have the background that would suit a magizoologist. His entire resume can be summed up by: grew up with two dogs, once managed to redirect a sparrow outside after it had got stuck in the office.

So. How does he become a magizoologist?

By accident.

Newt joins MACUSA in the early days of 1919 and, although he doesn’t cross paths with Graves, his mere presence has an impact. Newt takes the spot on the Criminal Investigations team that Graves was angling for but that’s fine, that’s ok. At least two of the of the other teams are interested in the promising new recruit and have offered jobs to the latest heir of the Graves’ vaunted line.

Three teams, if you count the Traffic team, but Graves does not count the Traffic team, so. Two other teams. Special Ops try and tempt him with a frankly ridiculous wage packet to join their diplomatic missions, and let’s face it, Graves is tempted. International diplomacy is what makes and shapes the world, and America might be newer on the scene than some of the other magical nations but the Graves name will still carry some weight. He could do a lot of good. He could also royally fuck up and cause the next world war, because maybe his however-many generations back ancestor was good with words but Graves himself finds punching things a much better solution. With that in mind, he ends up in the Defence and Response Corps and, blunt and straightforward as DaRC are, he thrives.

Maybe in another world he’d learn how to talk the talk to back up his walking the walk and be part of the ICW, but in this world his job consists of identifying threat, taking threat down with extreme prejudice and/or explosions, and shielding the fuck out of whatever target he was sent in to protect. Nothing gets passed his shields. They’re multi-layered frequency-shifted beauties and they earn him the nickname Gravestone for how immovable he becomes once he plants himself, and in four years of working with DaRC he never once loses a target. Not once.

In his fifth year, his target is a short, scrappy woman beset by a pack of Black Dogs. The malevolent ghosts come out at night, baying their omens of death and plaguing the people of the town - three children have already vanished, stolen, most likely, by the evil creatures. The woman is running her magic dry trying to keep them away, and though she’s reluctant to call in DaRC she fears she has no choice if she wants to survive.

That’s how she puts it, at least. Graves turns up, and something sits wrong with him, but - well, he’s not with Criminal Investigations. He’s with Defence. He digs in, builds his shields, and waits for nightfall. The sun sinks, the temperature drops, and he turns his lumos down low to preserve his night vision. The thermos of coffee in his pack has a careful combination of warming charms and space-distortion, and it holds enough to keep him going for several nights in a row, but - if the dragon-fire flares do their job - he’ll only need it for one. He waits. Occasionally the woman peers suspiciously from her window or opens the door to check on him under the thin guise of offering him tea. Once she starts singing loudly, off-key, to a song she doesn’t know the words to. There’s a thump, a hissed shut up, one more line of the song and then silence.

Roughly twenty minutes after midnight, the Black Dogs arrive. The pack is a dozen strong, maybe more, and under the grey moonlight they look pallid and sickly. Their fur is tattered, their eyes glowing baleful red; one of them has bleeding stumps in place of its ears, another flickers between ghost and corporeal, a third has too much skin for its bones and the folds make it misshapen and grotesque. Graves raises his wand and lets one hand hover over his flares, but though they circle him, they don’t attack.

Inside the house, a soft whimper. A hissed reprimand. A slap, and a stifled gasp of pain.

The Black Dogs hover just out of reach, their crouched forms as tall as Graves at the shoulder, their pupil-less stares heavy and expectant. They’re all here. All within reach, and he isn’t going to get a better shot. If he were doing his job, he’d burn the pack now and be done with it.

“Miss Glover,” he says into the charmed pin on the collar of his coat. “Remind me again why the dogs are targeting you?”

Her voice crackles back, high and angry. “They’re evil! Dark creatures, foul children-snatchers - they don’t need a reason!”

He hums, considering. They still haven’t attacked. “Some people say they protect children,” he says lightly. “Watch over them in the night, warn them away from danger. Guide them home when they get lost.”

There is a pause. The dogs are so still they barely move. Graves keeps his grip light on his wand and doesn’t breathe.

The spell she fires at his back is not unexpected and he twists easily to dodge it. The child standing behind her, eyes blank as he holds a jagged knife to his own throat, that Graves’ hadn’t predicted. He curses himself and stops his own spell before he fires it.

“I’ll kill him,” Glover says. “You think - you even think of firing, and I’ll tell him to do it.”

“The Imperius curse is illegal,” Graves grits out. “Under section 7 part C - “

She spits a hex at him and he dodges again, not daring to risk using his wand to deflect. “Go fuck yourself,” she snarls. “The law doesn’t protect no-majs, does it? I’ve done nothing wrong.” Graves’ mind races because that, that really doesn’t sound right, but he doesn’t know for sure, in this universe he hasn’t studied the laws enough to know, and if she’s right - if she’s right then legally, there’s not a damn thing he can do to her. MACUSA protects magicals. If the children aren’t magical he can’t act to protect them. That sounds bullshit, but the law says is a solid block he’s coming up against, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

She gestures impatiently at the silent, watchful dogs. “Well?” she prompts. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

Graves hesitates, but eventually lifts his wand slowly, hands outstretched to show her what he’s doing. “I need my spells,” he says cautiously, carefully not looking at the child-hostage in the doorway. Glover waves a negligent hand at him and he grits his teeth, thinks fuck it and resettles his wand in his grip, raises his magic in preparation for the spell -

and brings his shields crashing down.

The Black Dogs move as one. Graves dives for the kid, grabbing the blade and ripping it away. Behind him, Glover shrieks, firing one, two, three spells at the pack, but outside the protection of her house and wards she’s no match for them. She doesn’t fire a fourth spell.

When it’s done, the dogs paw at the doorstep, whining and plaintive until Graves goes in. He finds the other two children in the upstairs bathroom, huddled behind the shower curtain and armed with a half-empty bottle of shampoo. They cry when they see him, and cling to him, the girl in stoical silence, the boy asking again and again to go home. Graves carries them both downstairs to where the other boy is waiting, shell-shocked, on the front step, and when they won’t let go of him he carries them to their respective homes.

The dogs follow him every step. The no-majs don’t see them, of course, which is probably for the best - at least four of the dogs stayed with the kids, two with the first boy and one each with the children from the bathroom, circling the house like particularly ominous guard dogs. Graves doesn’t know what Glover wanted with the kids, what she used them for - he probably should have obliviated them just in case, but it’s unwise to obliviate wizards soon after traumatic experiences and he sees no reason why it would be different for no-majs.

When he gets back to the house he’s down to three dogs following him, and the witch - her corpse? - is gone. He pointedly doesn’t acknowledge his shadows, just checks the perimeter, shuts the front door, and apparates out.

He has the following morning off (he always does after working nights) and he uses it to pull the auror-issue law books from underneath the wonky table they’re propping up. By midday, he’s discovered that Glover was right; the law sees nothing wrong with kidnapping no-maj children and keeping them trapped in your upstairs bathroom. By two in the afternoon, he’s tracked down the precedence and the sub-clauses that make it legal to use the imperious curse on no-majs, so long as the statute of secrecy is upheld. By four, he’s several hours late for work, and is eighty percent certain that he could be prosecuted for murder and the use of dark creatures as a lethal weapon. DaRC will have to send out a second team, a full hit team to cleanse the area of the Black Dogs, Graves’ career is in ruins - if not his life, if Glover has enough family to push for his prosecution, and this whole being an auror to protect people schtick is sounding far more naive than it did this time yesterday.

By six, he’s packed what he wants from his cramped auror flat; by eight, he’s left his badge on the table and psyched himself up to walk out the door.

There are three dogs waiting for him when he steps out onto the street, each one as tall as he is with glowing, pupil-less eyes. The no-majs walk through them as though they aren’t even there.

“What, am I a kidnapped child now?” Graves jokes, but even to his own ears it falls flat. His entire life is packed into a worn leather backpack and a standard-issue field belt with three night’s supply of hot coffee in one of the many enlarged pouches. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s doing, and he’s pretty sure he’s majorly fucked up. More than fucked up. He’s a murderer on the run in league with demonic ghost dogs. Fucked up doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The largest of the three dogs, thin and bony with a whip-like tail, turns to walk down the street. The other two follow, one on either side of Graves, their bodies surprisingly warm as they press him along. Graves only goes because he doesn’t have anywhere else to be. Because, right at that moment, he’s a little bit scared and a little bit disbelieving and a whole lot lost.

And, you know, Black Dogs are good at leading lost souls home.

(the first place they lead him is a construction site with a snallygaster chained behind the piles of steel girders, and Graves isn’t sure how the snallygaster ended up following him after he freed it but it did)

(the second place is a garden beset by knarls, and they move into one of the pouches on the utility belt which Graves really wishes they hadn’t done, but they’re there now and they don’t seem to be moving out)

(the third place is the sea, no creatures, no-one to save, just the empty beach and the open sea and Graves sits curled against the dog he’s called Sadie with the dog he’s called Spot sprawled over his feet while Snally the snallygaster plays with the waves and Knarls Ay Cee and Dee start digging in the sand. He lifts up Knarl Bee from where she’s curled, prickly side out, in his lap and it’s been a month, now, since the dogs led him away from New York.

“I,” he tells her, “am clearly insane.” She waves tiny clawed feet at him and wriggles her quills into all the sensitive parts of his palm. He nods in agreement. “That too, but mostly insane.”

Bee sneezes, and that settles it. If she’s staying, then the pouch is clearly an insufficient home for her - today a cold, who knows what she could catch tomorrow? Graves has spent most nights so far sleeping under his jacket with a shielding charm pulled over him, what kind of home life is this for a growing Knarl? He might not have Newt’s flare for fitting pocket dimensions into a suitcase but what he does have is a great deal of experience expanding his coffee thermos to unreasonable sizes and a handy field belt with a handily unspecified number of pouches on it. They’re meant for ammunition and flares and the odd potions vial, but they’ll do well enough. By the time the sun rises and his dogs fade into ghost-fog for the day he’s made enough space on his belt to carry half the population of Manhattan around with him, Snally has haughtily demanded trees in his pouch, and Bee has progressed to nesting in his hair and sticking quills in his ear whenever he moves his head too vigorously.

Graves might not know enough about magical creatures to know if this normal behaviour but it makes her happy, so why not.

He should probably learn about magical creatures though. Seeing as, you know, he appears to be collecting them.

Maybe.)

#percival graves #magizoologist!graves #reverse!au #fun fact #the knarls were originally One Two Three and Four #then I remembered that that's what the /crups/ were called #so now they're Ay Bee Cee and Dee #and let's pretend that it's Graves that has the naming abilities of a preschooler rather than me #my writing #Nonnie

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