#Walter White ass logic

[langernameohnebedeutung]

honestly, blaine being like "I wasting my life as a human!" is so funny. Like what, running orphan murder butchery was meaningful? Have you found your calling? biohazard zombie virus blackmail scheme was that so very eat, pray, love of you? are you going to write your memoirs now??

[wishcamper]

Heavy Lies the Crown: Rhysand, greatness, and the pressures of power

Or: the librarian’s daughter, former playwright, licensed counselor mashup of my nightmares dreams because I am vast, I contain multitudes.

No content warnings and no real HOFAS spoilers, I don't think, other than that he's in it but I feel like you know that by now. Spoilers for Breaking Bad (lol).

---

In working on my current fic (on ao3 here!) I've been thinking a lot about Rhysand and how he really goes off the rails in ACOSF and HOFAS. It's easy to chalk it up to poor writing, but I like the challenge of trying to make it make sense. What are Rhys’ motivations, truly? What would explain the vast array of heinous shit he does the text tells us is justified?

Rhys is shown over and over to be quite Machiavellian ('ends justify the means' dude, who was maybe writing satire). It's easy to list the times he shows this. The 50 year Velaris hostage situation. The bargain UTM with Feyre. The Weaver's cottage. Stealing the Book from Tarquin. CLARE BEDDOR. Infiltrating people's minds. Torture. Assassination. Allying with Kier. Concealing his wife's medical information. Being an ass to people in general. According to Mr. Machiavelli, any action is warranted if it the goal it achieves is morally important enough.

It seems like Rhys can justify anything to himself if he believes it will serve the greatest good at the end of the day. He does so many things with the air of “it’s for your own good” or “you’ll understand why one day” but that day never.. comes? Not yet anyway, which begs the question: is he that unself-aware, or is there a longer game he’s playing that all of these minor skirmishes are leading up to? What if he knows what's coming? And what kind of cause or threat would feel so great he could justify everything he does up to this point?

Okay I'm gonna talk about Aristotelean literary structure, please don't leave me.

The idea of a tragic hero is a character whose downfall is inevitable but who fights against it anyway. Hamlet is a classic example of a tragic hero, Oedipus being the de facto first, Walter White from Breaking Bad a more modern version. We see Walt learn he’s going to die in the first episode, in the middle he does a bunch of stuff to prevent his physical death (cancer) and metaphorical death (failure/obscurity), and then both his body and reputation die in the last episode as a direct result of his attempts to avoid fate. It’s blissful Aristotelean symmetry. *chef’s kiss*

Every tragic hero has hamartia, more commonly known as a ‘fatal flaw’. In Hamlet, his fatal flaw is procrastination, and his delays create space for all kinds of the fuck shit he was trying to prevent. It’s important to note that hamartia is by design a neutral term - not so much a flaw, but a trait, motivation, or decision that sets off the chain of events the character is trying to avoid. Tragedies have occurred equally from too much love as too much hate, and doing nothing is just as much a decision as doing something. The word itself comes from the Greek for ‘to miss the mark’. To try and fail, the backbone of tragedy.

One of the most common hamartia is hubris, a modern synonym for arrogance but which more specifically means an outsized belief in one’s ability to affect and control the future. Well-known tragic heroes taken down by hubris include our boy Walter White, Tony Soprano, Viktor Frankenstein, Achilles, Jay Gatsby, Kendall from Succession. It exists in real life, too: Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of a modern tragic hero brought down by hubris. And what do all these men have in common? Power, via money, fame, strength, the state, intellect, violence etc.

I’ve been enjoying looking at Rhysand through this tragic hero lens because while it doesn’t really make him more sympathetic, it does make his actions easier to understand logically, which is its own kind of humanization. If Rhysand is aware of a prophesied or fated event sometime in the future and is pulling the cosmic strings now, it must be incredibly important, like annihilation-level important, which is so much pressure. 

So he grows to maturity with an understanding that he will one day have to face this intense evil that could completely destroy his world, and it plants in him a hubris. He believes that his immense power grants him a certain amount of influence automatically. And honestly, is he wrong?

And this is where it’s important to think about how power makes people weird. Power gives people a false sense of confidence in their actions and choices, because their status and privilege protect them from so many more consequences. In this way it’s easy to see how someone can get a big ego - no one is stopping me, so I must be doing well! Or: everything is going well for me, so I must be really killing it! I know I feel that way in the first tingles of hypomania, but hypomania is fundamentally a distortion of reality and I believe so is power.

Power not only gives people confidence but also access to make decisions for others. They begin to think they should share the success they’ve found by leading and guiding others to see how great it can be if you do what they say. Just look at one of those cringe 'billionaire morning routine' videos to see what I mean. It’s a very patronizing form of altruism, because the leader genuinely believes they have the people’s interest at heart. And I use the word patronizing intentionally - leaders have often referenced feeling paternal towards their people, Winston Churchill + FDR, 'God the Father'. Power and fatherhood have been linked for a long time. And direct from our girl Wikipedia, "paternalism is action that limits a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good".

I was talking with a girlfriend of mine recently about how I think some men don’t have the experience of other people depending on them in a significant way until they get married and/or become fathers. Like, afab and femme people learn very early to be considerate of others, to think about how others feel, to act in ways that keep others happy, etc. This plants in us a sense of duty to perform in ways that please others, to smile, to create comfort and provide caretaking in every environment we enter. So by the time we get to marriage and motherhood, we already know how to put others’ needs before our own because we’ve been doing it from the jump.

For men, however, this can be a completely novel experience. And it seems like it's SO HEAVY FOR THEM. George ‘Father of his Country’ Washington just wanted to go back to Virginia the whole time he was President. So many men talk about the pressures of being a provider and their families depending on them in a way women don’t, and I think it’s because for the first time others truly depend on them and they don’t know how to handle it.

In response, they either shove down their emotions as patriarchy demands and have a midlife crisis, or they abdicate that responsibility and go completely absent physically and/or emotionally to continue living for themselves. (Obviously there are good men and dads out there, and bless you if you’re lucky enough to know, have, or be one.)

And this aspect of power feels relevant because from the text it seems like Rhysand is unraveling. Between Feyre, the baby, the Trove, Nesta and being threatened by her power, Koschei, Bryce, the whole High King shit - I think he’s starting to crack under the pressure. And honestly, I’m kind of surprised it didn’t happen before now.

According to Aristotle, the tragic hero must:

Be significant (virtuous/capable/powerful/important etc.)

Be flawed

Suffer a reversal of fortune.

Rhysie boy definitely ticks the first two. I wonder what it would look like to get to three? I don’t think Sarah has the balls, but it’s definitely enhanced my reading experience and given me a lot of interesting things to think about.

Okay that's all I've got. Love ya, see ya soon xx

[harveydenttiephysics]

From Teen Titans #48 (1977)

1977? Flash from the Past 1977? The year of the first flight of the United States Space Shuttle? The year Uranus' rings were discovered? The 7th year Columbo was nominated for at least one Prime Time Emmy? The year The Commodore PET was introduced? The Year The Clash released "White Riot"? The year Allen Bussey did 20,302 yo-yo loops? The year Star Wars was released in theatres? The year the International Computer Chess Association was formed? The year Electric Light Orchestra released international chart-topping song "Telephone Line"? The year the United States State of New Jersey started allowing casino gambling in Atlantic City? The year Paul Hackett was on the cover of Skateboarder Magazine? The year Silver St. Cloud made her first apearance in Detective Comics #470? The year we started using fiber-optics for communication? The year the musical Annie won a Tony Award? The year that one guy was struck by lighting for the 7th time? The year Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams won Best Original Song? The year Sadaharu Oh hit his 756th home run? The year the Eagles won Record of the Year with "Hotel California"? The year DC Comics raised the price of a standard comic book from 30 to 35 cents? The year Ellen Berryman won the women's division in the Skateboarding Freestyle World Campionships? The year Fleetwood Mac won Album of the Year with "Rumours"? The year General Motors introduced the Oldsmobile 88? The year The Carpenters released "I Just Fall In Love Again"? The year the MRI was becoming viable for medical use? The year the circus opera "Houdini" premiered in Amsterdam, Netherlands? The year Ringo Starr released "Ringo the 4th"? The year Alan Alda won M*A*S*H their 8th Emmy? The year DC revived Aquaman? The year Princess Beatrice opened the Amsterdam metro? The year Faye Dunaway won Best Actress? The year Canada started showing a regular TV broadcast of parliament? The year Walter Browne won his third straight US chess championship? The year of the Snake? The year Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver was nominated for 4 Academy Awards? The year A. J. Foyt became the first person to win the Indianapolis 500 four times? The year Freaky Friday made $25,942,00 at the box office? The year the Apple II computer entered the technology market? The year The Sex Pistols release chart-topping album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols"? The year Joel Benjamin became a chess master at the age of 13? The year of the Dover Demon sightings in the town of Dover, Massachusetts? That 1977? 🫠 x40

Green 🛑

Two-Tone Coat! With Pattern! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

uneven split 🛑🤔🛑

two-tone hair ⭐

pussy ass shirt 🛑🛑🛑

Two-tone tie! ⭐⭐

Clip on Tie? 🤔🤔🤔

OH HI DUELA! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Duela in jonker form 🛑

debated filicide 🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑

FUCKED UP HAND!!!11!!1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Split teeth, but in a way that could logically make sense ⭐⭐

no glove 🛑🛑

tie and coat cordination ⭐

Oh i so wish I could see your shoes 🤔

Dick is also Here 🤔

Gilda Mention ⭐

Awareness of his own disordered thinking ⭐

continued deranged behavior ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

STAR TOTAL ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

HMMM TOTAL 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

FAIL TOTAL 🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑

LOSS OF ALL SELF CONTROL TOTAL 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[litres-of-cocaine]

i cannot believe that people genuinely dislike skyler white it is so strange!!! like even my dad called her manipulative and yes, sure but like that’s what makes her so fun??

like i think the direction they took her in s5 was the right and logical one for her character but s4 was PEAK come on.

in the early seasons she is essentially the embodiment of the stay-at-home mum existence and she’s an interesting and assertive character in conversation with that but ultimately used a plot device. like the family life she represents conflicts with the meth trade that walt is getting involved in. obviously she has an inner life going on, i.e. her pregnancy and the arguments with marie about the shoplifting, but she more seems like an individualised portrait used for walt’s deception. she’s propping up the narrative where walt lies to himself about the reasons he does it and parallels his family life to his business life.

like this is not to diminish that side of her character at all (although it is irritating that we don’t get a female character that isn’t a family member or love interest be a larger part of the narrative until s5) but i feel it’s more of a setup not just for walt but her later arc.

s4 where she is actively involved in the money laundering, buying of the car wash etc. is so so dear to me as it’s such an interesting view into her naivety but her skills in doing this.

where krazy 8 said walter wasn’t suited to that life and then he turned out to be works in a similar to manner to how skyler adjusts to this sudden criminal enterprise that she is a major part of. she also turns out to be good and criminal-minded when she gets involved even if she is unsceptical that what walt (and her by extension) are doing is hurting people.

she doesn’t want to be involved because she’s afraid for walt but it’s undeniable that she is good at it. i would argue that this characterisation of her as so overly cautious and nearly paranoid is paralleled to gus’s cautiousness and care and is probably the most successful businessman that we see throughout breaking bad. certainly more successful if we are thinking in terms of caution and longevity. skyler. beyond this parallel she is already shown to be good with tax evasion in that whole ted plotline and then manages to get him off of prison after the irs discovered him. the irs. the people who are literally ruthless when it comes to that kind of stuff.

it creates such an interesting contrast with walt who likes that world not only because he is good at it but also because he likes the power it gives him over others. it makes him ‘feel alive’ blah blah blah etc etc. but skyler doesn’t enjoy this power. when ted is afraid of her she is devastated and feels the guilt of her actions come up on her all at once and this is the start of her unhappiness and fear of walt. like in s4 she’s not *happy* but she’s not necessarily unhappy either. there’s a whole ass scene of her bouncing holly on her knee while she’s looking up money laundering on wikipedia.

this all comes crashing down in s5 and becomes particularly obvious after the midpoint of the series. she’s practically a shell of herself. those looks between her and jesse at the car wash?? could not be more obvious kind of submission to walt’s gross authority from either of them.

(don’t get me talking about the parallels between skyler and jesse it will set me on a roll)

and again this makes sense for the changing dynamic between her involvement and the increased understanding of how violent the business the both of them are a part of is. her character is not less interesting but definitely less fun to watch. it’s not presented as cathartic suffering for the audience either which i think brba did a good job with. she’s not assertive anymore and i think that’s a great example of the effects it’s had on her. she’s lost a key component of her character. like i guess you could call her high-maintenance or difficult in s1 if you found her annoying and that’s an opinion but realistically i’d say she was just assertive in way that’s alienating for some of the misogynistic sides of the fanbase.

she regains some of this right at the very end where she confronts walter thinking he’s going to say he did it for the family again. it’s only a small thing in refusing to let walt walk all over her but at least it has some reclamation of her initial character!

this has been a ramble and i think i had other things to say but in conclusion:

skyler white is overhated

[stillswearing]

I may be too stewy-pilled here but. I think he's been cut out of Ep 9 because he has a major role in the finale and they want to perserve all his pussy cunt energy for those last 90 mins. If I recall correctly, the only significant board members we know is him (with the Sandies), Ewan, and Frank? But unlike Jess and Rava and the kids - whom we knew were finally gonna leave Kendall as he girlbossed too close to the sun - I actually still don't know how Stewy will decide in regards to Ken.

See, I think Succession is set up for Kendall to "win" in the end, thus losing his soul completely ala Michael Corleone. I don't think he will Walter White this - where he loses his empire, realizes his monstrosity, and regains whatever sliver of humanity left in him before dying. I think Kendall is DOOMED to win (sorry shiv ily). He's written to be at a disadvantage at the end of this ep; the finale will be about his ascension to power.

So given that, where does Stewy land? Because one part of me is like, "Shiv clearly has the upper hand so logically he's not voting for Ken regardless of their history. And Kendall's finally going lose literally everyone who cares for him, thus completing the cycle."

But another part of me is, "Ken's gonna do some shit, isn't he, because of course he will. His shady ass will tip the scales to his favor in some way so he comes out on top. And I think Stewy will respect that. Stewy will always follow the money; he doesn't have moral lines like Jess and Rava. Who cares about being a person of color who's backing the guy who backed a nazi president. Kendall is the money now."

So I don't know. I think what I'm saying is, I know we're all about Kendall losing people who actually care about him. But Stewy is an anomaly since he's so upfront about being as morally corrupt as the next finance bro. There's a weird chance KenStewy can happen, where they live happily ever after on the dark side, like some Wall Street version of Will/Hannibal.

[moonglittering]

12 & 19

✨ @seeasunset. meme. still accepting!

12. what is your muse’s love language?

i know you didnt ask for astrology, planetary ho facts but this guy is a virgo venus, 3rd house. gemini mars, 12th house. very logical and helpful in how he displays love. so his love language is basically acts of service. he’ll say ‘ i love you ’ and he loves to say it but for him it sometimes doesn’t have the same impact as say… ironing his boyfriends clothes or making him a little container of hand lotion mixed with ingredients he picked out himself.

he’s very practical about it. like… he’ll give his mans something, but its something useful. he’ll run his errands for him. run a bath for him. display his love by making life easier for the lucky fella he chooses…. cooking, closet rearranging, etc…. doin the taxes heehee he loves doing other peoples taxes that’s the business degree side of his education peekin thru. so his way of going about it is a bit mature~

vi also likes to give books and letters. <: ) the letters are never sappy, theyre usually very just. sweet and almost boring lol. he just wants to rant for 2 pages about how he was cold in the morning, his new favorite smoothie joint, and a nice park bench where yall can sit later in the evening. 

this kind of goes in how he likes to be loved, too. he doesn’t want any empty, useless gifts that he can’t use. he likes flowers ‘cause those have a billion ways to be re-purposed, books, art supplies, unique jewelry from a corner market or something. he’s not a very…. ‘ take me to an amusement park / touristy place / mass manufactured garbage location and buy me a cute lil trinket that serves no purpose or something that can’t at least be displayed in an artful fashion ’ type. that’s…

oh his dignity withers at the thought of it lol. 

really…. get him a cute, handmade bowl sold at some cute shop in town.

he’ll return the favor by making a really gorgeous salad for yall to share in said bowl.

everyone wins!

how he feels about the other love languages, officially:

- doesn't give a fuck about words of affirmation, because he doesn't like that kind of sap like just tell him his ass is phat and he's smart. - physical touch is nice. :) like super nice... he likes to hold hands while watching pretentious movies. - he likes his quality time so he doesn't like too much of it. he's busy also he likes his space... he doesn't like feeling smothered. - the only gifts he like are handmade ones or stuff he can use.

ultimately the ultimate romantic gesture is him rollin his man a joint and his man rollin him one in exchange and it's very perfect rolled! in gold foil!

19. is there someone your muse has a crush on, but who you don’t actually have a ship with?

strictly speaking to his main verse, which is the verse where all of these super duper apply? ... nope! still looking into buying a walter white body pillow.

[fourmarkdove]

Locked.

Title: Locked

Summary: Marshall is haunted by his current homicide case. You comfort your husband the best way you know how during a birthday party.

Pairing: Walter Marshall x Reader

Words: 2.4k

Warnings: Smut. Fluff. Angst. Vague reference to murder. Slightly rough (?) sex.

A/N: This is my first Cavill character one shot. Comments are welcome! Thanks for reading!

Walter wasn’t usually the sort to want to bring too many details of his work home with him. Especially because it was either violent, gruesome or dangerous and he didn’t want you to worry too much about your detective husband.

“When I’m with you, I wanna be with you,” he’d tell you if ever you asked if he needed to get some of it off of his chest. You didn’t ask often but you could tell when things weren’t going well with a case. He wouldn’t sleep, barely ate, and kept his broad shoulders rolled forward and down as if he was literally carrying the weight of the case on his back.

As difficult as all of his cases were, this one was particularly rough. He had dark circles under his stormy blue eyes from not enough sleep and too much coffee keeping him propped up.

He was losing weight, not that he had any body fat to lose in the first place. Muscle still showed through his skin but the sweater he’d filled out so nicely four weeks ago was starting to hang from his long, increasing lean frame.

Had your four year old nephew not called and all but begged his favorite uncle to come to his birthday party, there’s no way he’d have gone. Not that he didn’t love your family; he did, it was just that he knew he’d be a stormcloud at the party while life moved on at the speed of joy around him.

You offered your husband some cake; a corner piece with extra frosting while the kids ran and screamed and climbed the walls at your mom’s house.

“Babe?” you called gently, touching one of the forearms folded across his chest. He was there physically but his long, vacant stare at the kitchen floor indicated he was still at work.

“Cake? Wanna share with me?” you cooed gently, lifting the plate up to show him the icing smeared masterpiece you’d created yourself.

His wide eyes took an unusually long time to find yours. He sighed and glanced at it, the corner of his mouth twitched into an appreciative smile. “You enjoy it, angel. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Slipping a large hand to the nape of your neck, he placed a gentle kiss against your forehead and turned to stalk down the hallway.

He never said it out loud, but you had the sense that he didn’t deserve even the simplest of comforts, especially when his victims would never feel any comforting of their own ever again.

After a few minutes when he didn’t return, you followed down the hall to your childhood bedroom. The door was shut so you knocked twice and peeked inside.

“My love? They’re going to unwrap presents soon. Would you like to join us?”

Facing away from you, he was holding something in his hands. “Just need a minute.” His voice was low and rougher than you’d expected.

Coming up behind him, you ducked your head under his arm and saw he was cradling a picture of you. It was your fourteen year old self, grinning next to a softball trophy.

Silently, you wrapped your arms around his waist and he turned just slightly toward you. His clear blue eyes were dark and tear filled.

“Fuck if she doesn’t look just like you, baby.” He swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple bounced as he willed the tears away, but they rolled down his cheeks anyway.

“You know she’s not me though. I’m here. With you.”

“She should be with her family, celebrating birthdays, but instead she’s…” he cut off his own words and frowned so severely, it made you mew from the pain in your chest.

Stepping out from behind his shadow, you took back the picture frame and laid it on the desk.

More tears spilled down his cheeks and he growled at himself, rubbing his face with the back of his hands.

Slipping your fingers into his, you turned him toward your old twin sized bed and climbed up on it. Lying on your side facing him, you patted the pink comforter and made a grabby hand motion.

His eyes were still wet but he sighed and pulled off his boots. He climbed onto the bed which sank considerably under his weight and rested his heavy head on the pillow.

You snuggled up behind him, nuzzling between his shoulder blades, and drew your knees up to spoon him despite your obvious size difference.

Sliding one arm around his waist, you flattened your small hand against his stomach like he always did to you. Glancing over his shoulder, he cocked an eyebrow and offered a slight amused huff of breath.

“I’m here,” you cooed softly, and he interlaced his large fingers with his.

“I know baby.” Lifting up your hand to his mouth, he placed a soft kiss inside your palm and then rested it over his heartbeat.

You sighed, pushing your free hand through his thick hair, tangling your fingers and scratching his scalp lightly.

You could feel the muscles in his back relaxing the more you scratched and tugged at his hair.

“Fuck I love you,” he groaned, rocking his face forward into your pillow as you massaged the base of his scull.

Spreading your legs, you wrapped a thigh over one of his and pressed a warm kiss to the nape of his neck.

“I adore you, husband. We’ll get through it together, I promise.”

His breathing became slower and deeper until you heard the faintest sound of a snore. Just as you closed your eyes too his body jolted awake with a gasp.

“Shhh I’m here,” you comforted your panting husband. Thinking maybe more contact would help ground him, you slipped your palm up inside the front of his shirt, inside his tee under the sweater, and you pressed your warm hand and forearm against his bare stomach.

He swore under his breath, frustrated that he couldn’t let himself sleep or even relax in your arms. You continued to coo soft things to him, encouraging him to relax and just be still with you.

He only started to settle again when you stroked your fingers through the smattering of hair across his pecs in slow soothing caresses.

“How is a little thing like you so strong?” His voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

You only kissed behind his ear in reply and continued to stroke the line of hair down his center.

He groaned a pleased sound as you rested your palm flush to the skin just below his belly button. “Fuck you know how to touch me.”

“Mhm I make it my business to know,” you sighed warmly, lifting up onto your forearm to kiss the shell of his ear.

His thick hand reached behind his thigh and grasped behind your knee, pulling you just that much closer.

“Turn over, angel. Big spoon time.”

You purred, feeling your husband coming back into his own body, and turned over toward the wall.

He rolled after you, the bed creaking under the weight shift, and his huge arms engulfed all of you.

“My beautiful bride,” he sighed deeply, kissing over your shoulder.

You smiled, closing your eyes. “I haven’t been in this bed since the night before our wedding.”

“I remember,” he chuckled lightly, “climbing into that bedroom window and joining you in this bed the night before our wedding.”

“Shh! No one is ever supposed to know!” You giggled, teasing him the way you used to.

His smiling lips pressed into your hair, and then the back of your neck when he swept the hair away. “...Should have never worn white…”

You elbowed him and he chuckled out loud, rubbing his ribs where you’d barely touched him.

“Yeah… well… when you look like you, YOU try keeping your hands to yourself.”

Glancing behind your shoulder squinting, he arched an eyebrow and grinned. “Perfect logic, honey.”

“I know, right!” You rolled your eyes and curled up with him again. Both of you giggling and just being close like this felt so good you could have almost cried.

He gripped your whole body so tightly, even drawing his thighs up behind yours, perfectly encapsulating you. You loved how his forearm pressed across your breasts so tight that it made them almost flatten out. You caressed over the thick vein popping out along that forearm and sighed lazily. He hummed a pleasant sound into your neck and drew his legs back. You chased after them though, drawing your legs back to his.

“Babe, stop…” he groaned into your hair, a slight warning in his tone.

“Hm? Why?”

Feeling his hips shift back, you chased then too, wiggling your ass back against him.

He huffed a sharp sound and then leaned you forward just a bit so he could spread your thighs with his knee.

You gasped feeling the heat of his bulge pressing against the front of his jeans between your legs, right against your core.

“Your whole family is on the other side of that door and I can’t…” he squeezed your body so tight you squeaked. “Honey I adore you, but you can’t be quiet. Ever.”

“Yes I can!” You whined and then whispered. “Yes I can.”

He’d have chuckled at your playful tone, but he was far too gone to his arousal, so instead he pressed, and let you work your hips, grinding slowly back against him.

He swore under his breath and gave your neck a hungry kiss, holding your hip firmly in one hand and groping your flattened breasts with the other.

“Fuck I need you,” he purred, kissing your ear.

“I need you, my love,” you shuddered and whispered, feeling his thumb dig into the front of your hip bone to keep you angled back against him. Turning your head to the side, you whispered, “Fuck me.”

Immediately he reached between the two of you, unzipping his jeans and tugging down your leggings just past the curve of your ass. He panted hard, open mouth breaths against your neck as he lifted your thigh with his knee, pushed his throbbing cock down between your cheeks and rutted until he found the opening between your slick folds. He plunged in all at once, not giving you a second to get used to his thickness. To stifle a cry, you buried your face in the pillow and bit down on it. He withdrew almost to the tip, angling your hips back with his thumb again, and plunged in to the hilt again, emptying and filling you so suddenly, so completely, your whole body shuddered and you groaned into the pillow. Catching the right angle, he started pistoning inside of you, dragging his cock in and out of your slick tunnel. The muscles in his arms ticked from being so tense. He was trying desperately not to fuck you any harder than he already was. Through gritted teeth, he huffed, “I’m… babe… I can’t…”

“Fuck me…” you repeated, really enunciating on the “k” sound.

You rolled forward, unable to keep up with his pounding, and landed on your stomach. He knocked apart your knees even wider on the bed and thumbed your leggings down your one hip even further. Slipping a thick forearm under the front of your hips, he lifted you off the bed. Putting his forehead down against the back of your shoulder, he grunted and plunged in even deeper than before. You clawed into the sheets under the pillow and he wrapped his other arm around your chest, hugging you to himself as he pounded you from behind. Your slightly lifted breasts bounced hard into the mattress. The only sound was the box springs creaking quickly, your panting and his shuddered breaths.

When his thrusts got sloppy, you tightened up your core so he’d be forced to push his way through. That way you could milk the orgasm out of him without having to move any other part of your body.

He swore and hissed in a sharp breath, pressing his teeth posessively to your neck.

“Come in me,” you breathed whisper quietly, relaxing to let him in deep and then gripping down on him like a vice, drawing him right up against your lifted cervix.

“Fuckkkk,” He panted and gasped, his hips jerking forward as his cock pulsed wildly inside of you, filling you with every single drop of his heavy load.

Pulling out a lot more gently than he pushed in, he tucked himself back into his jeans and collapsed face down on the bed next to you. Without even looking, his large hand reached over and pulled up your panties and leggings. He smoothed over your ass and then dropped his heavy arm on the bed between you.

He opened up one eye and glanced over at you from under his messed curls that had all fallen forward. “You okay?” he panted, still catching his breath.

“Mhmm,” you purred, pushing your much smaller hand through his slightly damp hair.

“I didn’t hurt you did I?” He asked gently, catching your hand and caressing circles inside your palm with his calloused thumb.

“It’s nothing I haven’t felt before,” you cooed pleasantly but his brows lifted in the center and his reddened lips parted, horrified. Turning over onto your side, you hugged his bicep between your breasts and kissed his open mouth.

“It always hurts a little bit, my love, at least to start. Until it doesn’t. You’re pretty huge you know.”

He wrapped a massive hand behind your knee and squeezed, pressing his lips together and shifting his jaw. It made you kiss along his stubble and stroke along his muscular back soothingly.

“I didn’t say it to make you feel guilty. I love every bit of you. Every inch of you. Besides it gives you a reason to make it feel all better.”

His features lifted and he dragged you partly under him, keeping more than half his weight off of you. Just as he nuzzled and pressed his lips to yours, the door squeaked open and a giggle came from the door followed by a gasp and another voice calling down the hall: “Ewww mom! I found ‘em. And they’re kissin’!”

You clawed into the arm that he’d protectively tried to cover you with when the door opened.

“You didn’t lock the door?”

He looked down at you with wide eyes. “I thought you did.”

[successionsideblog]

austerlitz is truly the breaking bad succession crossover episode

not only because of new mexico and meth but also because of this walter white ass logic

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[piscesliketheconstellation]

A Handy List of Character Fears

So, inspired by this post I saw by @word-nerds-united (a prompt blog), about people having the same old run-of-the-mill fears, I decided to make a post.

I’m noting that NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE MINE. They belong to the people who originally posted them. They’re just things I stumbled upon and searched for.

So onwards with the rant :)

Personally, I find it fun when a character has a fear. Fears can propel or set back an entire plot, character development or even relationships within a story. Sometimes these fears ARE the plot. They can result in conversations, events and sometimes even hilarious inside jokes.

Spoilers ahead y'all.

In Spiderman Homecoming and Infinity War, Tony Stark is constantly worried about Peter Parker. This is a driving point–he often risks his life to keep little Pete safe. This is what makes his death so much worse, and even more compelling. In Breaking Bad, the entire plot revolves around how Walter White has a huge fear of not being able to provide for his family and leaving them helpless and financially ruined. Fear causes him to make a really stupid decisions for money. The Shadowhunter Chronicles boasts an entire bloodline terrified of ducks. Odd? Yes. But it makes for some funny moments and often it is used for foreshadowing. It gives the Herondale family a defining trait.

This doesn’t mean fears of failure or losing loved ones or helplessness are completely useless. But you need fears that are constantly challenged throughout your story. 

For instance, Emma Swan from Once Upon A Time is afraid of losing her only family, or being separated from them. This fear works, because it is constantly challenged. But if we were to place this on a character in a story where their family stays safe, healthy and happy, it won’t work at all.

Fears can change: a character can overcome a fear, and no longer be afraid of it because it is irrelevant. They can gain fears, outgrow fears, or even have fears evolve from small to big, or from big to small. 

In The Mortal Instruments, Alec deals with the fear of coming out as gay to his friends and family, might cause them to reject him. When he does overcome this fear, it is replaced by his fear to tell them he is dating a Warlock, because he might suffer the repercussions. After this, he grows afraid that Magnus’ immortality might come between them--and later accepts that it would be his fate. His fears constantly shift, allowing for more character development

Fears can lead to obsession: People will do anything to avoid what they fear. It can be for self preservation, or because they just plainly don’t want to deal with it. This is usually something nice to add to a villain’s character sheet. 

Walter White starts as a man who is terrified of leaving his family alone and struggling financially. First the drug manufacturing starts as a way to avoid his fear. Then it becomes an obsession with power and money. A gradual transition from method into madness.

Fears can be small or big. A big fear (phobia) of spiders can send someone running. A small fear of heights can have someone hesitating to step onto a rickety old bridge, but doing it anyway.

While Harry Potter is afraid of spiders (like most people), but Ron Weasley has has an intense fear, or agoraphobia. Harry is slightly disturbed and somewhat terrified when they are faced with gigantic spiders. Ron, however, is so terrified he can’t speak. Phobias would perhaps cause the sufferer to go into a state of shock, immobility and speechlessness.

Fears are taught. Think children: small children aren’t afraid of nearly anything. Yesterday I saw a 3 year old little girl wanting to pet a huge ass tarantula. Or think of Pavlov’s dog--conditioning and training is a big part of fear.

Truman in The Truman Show (I love this movie so much omg) is deathly afraid of boats and the ocean. Why? Because his father died at sea while they were sailing. Your character’s background and experiences can reinforce fears, or even cause them. 

Fears can be rational or irrational. Rational fears are fears that have a clear, logical fear of a danger that is present. Irrational fears are unrealistic and exaggerated, and often pose no immanent threat to the sufferer.

Infernal Devices’ Will Herondale has an irrational fear of ducks. Ducks pose no real threat, and while he had a slightly bad experience as a child, his fear is slightly exaggerated in adulthood. Dr. Frankenstein from Frankenstein has a very rational fear of the  creature he created. Why? Because the creature is a big, scary, undead monster created by science. It also kills literally everyone he he cares about. Irrational fears do not have to be discredited--they can be funny or even scary if used correctly. 

Overall, fears make characters relatable, and makes them seem more real.

HELPFUL RESOURCES:

Character fear reference sheet

Enneagram personality types (each type has a corresponding fear)

Phobias A-Z (Apparently there should be around 530 phobias on here)

Random phobia generator

Another random phobia generator

110 most common fears

Difference between fear and phobia

Writing a character’s fear

Finding a character’s fear

[spacewlkr]

ok SO heres my initial thoughts&feelings after literally just having finished the new bojack season

- ANA IS BACK!!!!! my fav character and ya i wont say she was being the greatest but i lov her and the fact that she was back makes me happy if only because it means supporting chars dont have to be obsolete once theyre not playing an active part in the life of a main character

- speaking of, im glad we saw ralph and stefani again. i liked him and pc and its fine if theyre not back 2gether but i wish they couldve worked it out or at least have gotten closure. him an\d stefani are nice characters and who knows? im jst glad theyre not gone

- im sad abt pb and diane, man. not to sound like some het apologist here but jst like w pc and ralph i liked them! at first i liked that pb wasnt bojack but over the seasons i grew to like them and i knew theyd divorce but im jst sad abt it all and esp that pb proposed to pickles as if that wont be his fourth marriage. i wanna see angry pb, hurt pb, real pb learning from his mistakes and if he cant do that to the point of a fourth marriage .. he said hes an old dog who wont learn new tricks but this aint working for me. i wanna see ‘bojack how could you kiss my girlfriend’ pb, ‘do they know things ft zach braff why dont you like me’ pb, ‘crying over my brothers twisted spleen’ pb. the good thing abt this show is that characters can be archetypes like pb is the foil to bojacks cynic, but they are allowed to be more than that, and im sad that pb didnt get to be more than that. i genuinely feel like theyre wasting him as a character in moments like the proposal

- speaking of wasted potential, todds arc was a boring mess. listen i didnt care abt this arc in the first place but the least you can do is not have it be all over the place! s4 did a better job at the whole ace storyline and this whole thing was a mess. also, the whole meeting yolandas parants thing was rly cringey and i think i like todd at his best in his more serious roles when he interacts w bojack, which he rarely does these days. i liked him living w pc though, it was nice

- pcs arc is amazing and i lov her character every single season! she deserves happiness and her focus episodes and arcs hit every damn time! its never bad! the amelia earhart story was one of my favourite episodes this season, if not my favourite. on a sidenote, the ending credits were amazing. in general i loved the different versions of back in the 90s but that one was my fav

- i also loved the ep w diane going to vietnam and it was a rly nicely paced episode and im glad they do justice to smth serious that people can relate to. ive heard ppl say good things and it was jst. it was good

- free churro was a ride and i think it was a good one but also its. its hard to place obviously. but it didnt bore me which i think was the one thing it needed to avoid being so thats good

- ppl put bojack in this list of chars men look up to that are actually pieces of garbage; rick sanchez, walter white, etc. id say now theres no way to excuse this shit anymore but look at what happened in bb, even walter saying hes the bad guy still had people liking him more than skylar because society hates women lol. but im uncomfortable w what he did. a lot more than i ever was w what happened to penny and sarah lynn. in fact i dont even blame him for what happened to sarah lynn when they were on a mutual bender of destruction! penny obviously was entirely on him. but how can i watch a show w a main character that has such a long ass list of shitty things and still root for him? everyone roots for bojack to be okay as opposed to in bb where you end up rooting against walt and for jesse (and logically skylar but hey. ppl didnt get the memo that abusers shouldnt be picked over female characters) but you root for bojack because the show is abt his mental health issues, substance abuse, etc. his struggle. and you want him to be better not as a farce but because you cant watch someone spiral out of control for ten seasons. and im not sure i can root for someone that chokes a woman. but also i saw it happen like an hr ago so i need to process basically the entire season! its. its a lot

[thepinkmancut]

Outfit #172 “I Don’t Know If You’re into That”

Breaking Bad S05x07 “Say My Name”

So, I’ve been sitting on this one for ages. I love this scene so much and I’m like, how do I do it justice in my own stupid way? ◔.◔

Babe is in casual mode with a burgundy v-neck, grey hoodie and what I think is a black, coated denim jacket. It could be just a synthetic mimicking that look, but it’s effective regardless. I love casual Jesse, not just because he’s super cute in layers, but because it’s in his casual, ‘out of hours’ moments we get many of the best, emotionally raw scenes with Walt. The amount of times he nearly cries in this scene, but holds himself back, murders me. ⊙﹏⊙  That burgundy v-neck he wears gives us foreboding bad vibes, which feels right considering he gets his ass Heisenburn’d to high Hell here. He’s come to see Walt to tell him he’s out of the business, but is Walt having that? I should think not. Here’s a nice little summary of Walt’s Heisenburns from this scene:

You have nothing in your life except video games and go karts (extra points for burning J on a hobby he invited you to do with him)

If you aren’t working as Mr. Meth Maker, it’s only a matter of time before you turn to drugs again ↜ LOW

Let me remind you of your terrible, laughable coping skills, ie. curling up in a ball and crying, and hiding away to get high whenever something bad happens

We’ve done things just as bad as Todd killing Drew Sharp, but mostly GALE. You. Killed. Gale.

You’re a quitter who’s laying down like you’re already dead in Hell since you don’t want to cook meth with me any more (a bit over the top even for Walt, methinks)

You’re pure and have great emotional depth, and so you deserve no filthy blood money (he wasn’t even hiding his burn level behind manipulation at this point, it was just straight up imma cut you)

So, Walt brings up the concept of Hell here when he’s laying down the sick burns. After making a point of reminding Jesse that he killed Gale, he says:  “If you believe there’s a Hell, I don’t know if you’re into that, but we’re...we’re pretty much going there, right? But I’m not gonna lie down until I get there.” The crappy philosopher in me wants this scene rewritten so badly so we get a direct response from J (I wonder what The Schnauz would have written into Jesse’s mouth!). Does J think he’ll burn in some sort of Hell for everything he’s done, or does he believe redemption is possible? 

Walt is not at all concerned about a torturous, eternal damnation. He bridges Hell, and then introduces the concept of blood money, which I’m pretty sure J would’ve taken much longer to get to without the seed being planted, all to stir up Jesse’s emotions. This scene is really the introduction to Jesse’s arc for the rest of the series. Walt knows he’s losing Jesse to his conscience, and so he attempts to empower him by offering him his Very Own Cook™ using the logic that he’s every bit as good as him now (barf). He tries to persuade J that you can’t just throw away the luxury of being the very best at something. Talent is so rare, guys! But, once again Walt has misjudged the situation, and when these ‘empowerment’ techniques fall flat, he resorts to cold, hard manipulation. He decides to implant the seeds of life-ending guilt. He’s like, you’re going to Hell, AND I’ll be there! Oh, and good luck trying to do anything else with the rest of your earthly life ‘cause that money you think could save you from me, it’s tainted. Every dollar you spend will drag you further into the depths of Hell. Guys, if I thought I’d have to spend eternity spit-roasting in Hell with Walter White, I’d want to live the LONGEST LIFE possible. Omg. Vitamins and exercise every goddamn day. Wheatgrass shots. Even spinning class, for christ’s sake. 

Although clearly upset by every single thing Walt says to him (he needs a hug), J doesn’t allow himself to be swayed by Walt’s manipulations this time. He says nothing to insult Walt in this entire scene, and instead challenges Walt when he, yet again, says that if Jesse were to stay cooking with him, no one else will die. In the end, Jesse merely walks out on Walt. And damn, that shit is good. 

I’d kill to know what Jesse does with himself after this absolute onslaught of vileness from Walt. He’s gonna be real low all night. Since he’s been staying sober, I’m guessing he’s not going to lock himself up and get blitzed, and I would imagine Walt put him off both video games and go karts. Pizza, beer and Discovery channel? Wendy? Does he still ‘hang’ with Wendy these days? Maybe he’s moved on to high-class call girls, like Pretty Woman style. Oh, someone who’s not me please write that story. 

[georgiecarrfilmreview]

The Highwaymen

This review originally appeared in Ghoul Magazine:

https://www.ghoulmagazine.com/home/2019/5/31/the-highwaymen

Die! In the name of the law! This is the engine that drives The Highwaymen, Netflix’s retelling of the exploits of Depression era bank-robbers, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, and the men who killed them. The Highwaymen follows two ex-Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) who are brought out of retirement by the no-nonsense state Governor, Ma Ferguson (Kathy Bates), for one last job - the extrajudicial execution of outlaws deemed too famous and too violent to be brought to justice any other way.

The Highwaymen is constructed, from its opening shots, around symbols of American Opportunity - vast space, straight roads, Ford cars. The dust of the dirt track and the vintage car show that this is an America of the past, nostalgically rendered through long, loving shots of Ford emblems on car bonnets. Both the outlaws and the law drive Fords - one stolen at gunpoint, one bought with hard-earned pay from a job in private security. The opening song of the soundtrack, composed for the film by Thomas Newman, is called ‘Ford V-8 Deluxe’. The outlaws drive recklessly, switching cars to avoid detection. Hamer’s car is sleek, the dark paintwork reflecting the sky above, almost always in motion. Hamer cares for his car - as he sets out his wife’s parting words are, ‘If you're covering miles, keep oil in her’.  By contrast the Barrow Gang cars are brash cherry red and often sit, unnaturally still, waiting in lure for policemen, the sinister score confirming the sense that these cars  have been mispurposed or misused.  Who, the film asks, has the right to drive this most American commodity and how does this define their relationship with the state? The film, after all, is Based On A True Story, set in actually existing America.  Hamer and Gault track the Barrow Gang across the country:

‘North to Kansas or Iowa,

east to Illinois or Indiana,

south to Arkansas.

Then right back to Texas

to start over again.

We got no jurisdiction north of Red River.

Maybe Hoover will take 'em up there.

Carthage.

Carthage...

Carthage, Missouri.’

Hamer and Gault discuss a lead in Bienville Parish, East of Shreveport. Seconds later, a title card - the Ford draws in to - ‘Bienville Parish, East of Shreveport. Kansas’. This verisimilitude established between the historical narrative and its cinematic representation lends the film a documentary weight, a realism. It also creates a of logic of believability in which the accuracy of small things - dates and place names - suggests, by extension, the authenticity of bigger things - the character of Hamer and Gault, the evil of Bonnie and Clyde and the ideological integrity of their mission.

The tightly scripted geographic references also link The Highwaymen to the Western genre - to cowboys and cattle drives to Missouri and the Red River. The film is attuned to this, Gault remarking, ‘I don’t remember a saddle being as hard on a man’s ass as these seats’. In typical Western tradition Hamer and Gault are old men positioned against progress, washed-up and beat, who ‘might go to hell’ for what they have done - their hard justice set against the softer sensibilities of the modernising police force who believe that the time ‘to put a pair of man-killers on the trail and let them do their job’ has passed. This is a recurring Western motif, personified in the clash between James Stewart and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance wherein lethal violence is discounted as Old West, soft and dangerously out of date - until someone comes along too evil to be stopped by sensitive, modern means. Violent and scored into American geography -  the history of the Western genre is replete with gun-toting double-acts:  John Wayne and Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, or Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These partnerships work because of contrasts between the characters  - their differences and their attempts to bridge these are often the source of humour or poignancy. In The Highwaymen, however, Hamer and Gault are both firmly characterised as gruff curmudgeons, their monosyllables providing little space to riff off one another. There are attempts to add lightness to their characters - Hamer has a pet boar (Porky), Gault has bladder issues. But these grueling additions to the script are a side-note to the main focus: their damaged Old West masculinity which can only be redeemed through a job well done.  The Texas Rangers (founded during colonial expansion into Mexico, historically both a police force and patriotic militia, and symbolic of state power at home and abroad) have been disbanded by Ma Ferguson - the time of the violent cowboys is past. Instead Hamer and Gault must work on ‘special assignment’ - as Highwaymen.  But under whatever modern bureaucratic aegis they are assigned, Hamer and Gault are cowboys in their mind’s eye. Figuratively, they pick up their sheriff’s star from the dust, pin it ceremoniously back to their jacket and saddle up.

The film works hard to characterise Hamer and Guilt as inherently good, whilst Bonnie and Clyde are intrinsically bad. The faces of the outlaws are hidden throughout. In place of a character for Bonnie we see only an immaculately stockinged and shod foot (the violence thus eroticised and gendered) as she blasts cops’ heads with a sawn off shotgun. Any scenes which might go somewhere to explain the lawlessness of Clyde and Parker or flesh out their characters are set up to damn rather than mitigate. Clyde’s first brush with the law, we learn, was to ‘steal a goddamn chicken’. But in the black and white logic of good and evil this is proof enough of bad character; in a climactic line Hamer asks ‘You ever think maybe there was something in Clyde that made him steal that chicken in the first place?’ Assertions of their immorality take the form of rhetorical questions, barked at anyone who might defend the gang. They must not be romanticised. As Ma Ferguson asks, ‘Did Robin Hood ever shoot a gas station attendant point-blank in the head for four dollars and a tank of gas?’ Bit Characters line up to confirm the justice of the death sentence. Ma Ferguson, the Texas police force, Clyde’s Father and Hamer’s wife confirm that ‘there is only one way this is going to end’. These are reasonable people - adults, property owners, elected officials - conferring reasonableness and a humanitarian drive to their mission. On the afternoon before the execution Hamer and Gault undertake a pre-killing cleanse - shave, fresh suits - bathed in beautiful white dusky light. Killing may be dirty and distasteful but they will be wearing crisp white shirts when they pull the trigger. And my god, when they pull the trigger - over 167 bullets are fired into Bonnie and Clyde’s car, ripping the outlaws, and their 1934 Ford Deluxe, to bits.

But how does the film want us to see these deaths? At times the message seems confused. Sad music plays as the hail of bullets come to an end. We see Bonnie and Clyde’s faces just once - terror-stricken - as Hamer and Gault must have seen them as they opened fire. A tragedy has occurred. But whose tragedy? The lingering shots on Hamer and Gault’s careworn faces assure us that it is theirs. This scene is the most dramatic encapsulation of the film’s aim - a new telling of an old story from the other side of the law. The credits underscore this idea of a story re-told for different tragic emphasis. We are shown black and white 1930s photographs of Hamer and Gault and the Texas police force, the chromatic colouring asserting their everyday heroism and the historical truth of the drama. In monochrome lettering suggestive of Objective Historical Fact (rather than Carefully Selected Fact) we are told that Clyde and Parker’s funeral attracted 35,000 mourners. They, at least, were celebrated.  Hamer and Gault, by contrast, return to relative obscurity as unsung heroes. But the final title card informs us that an even greater justice resulted from Hamer and Gault’s success - the full restoration of the Texas Rangers Department, justifying the central argument of the film and of policing practice; that sometimes, people have to die.

[mbtizone]

Walter White (Breaking Bad): INTJ

Dominant Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Walter always has a plan. When he finds out he has lung cancer, what does he do? He immediately begins coming up with a way to provide for his family once he’s gone. While Walt is on a drug raid with his brother-in-law, he discovers his ex-student, Jesse, has become a meth dealer and immediately sees potential. Walt can cook meth, enabling him to make money to keep on the side for his family. Walter always has his mind on the big picture and can easily think several steps ahead. He knows exactly what he needs to do to accomplish his goals.

Auxiliary Extroverted Thinking [Te]: After Walt gets the idea to start cooking meth, he decides to seek Jesse’s help. How does he go about it? He searches the school records, tracks him down, and blackmails him into assisting. He purchases an RV to use as a rolling meth lab. Walter knows how to devise effective plans. He does whatever he needs to do to serve his Ni vision. He’s direct and cuts to the chase. Walt doesn’t like to explain things. He just want people (particularly Jesse) to do as he says. Walt is rarely sensitive to the needs of others. When he develops a plan, he expects you to go along with it. He has no time for your feelings about it. Just do it.

Tertiary Introverted Feeling [Fi]: Sometimes, Walt’s principles go head to head with his Ni vision. When he and Jesse capture Krazy-8, he knows that he needs to be put down. After all, they were held at gunpoint for the recipe and with Emilio dead, Krazy-8 never would’ve left them alone. Logically, Walt knows this. But the idea of taking someone’s life is morally wrong, and he spends a great deal of time trying to decide what to do. While Walt initially decides to follow his moralistic ideals, he changes his mind when he notices that a piece of the plate he broke is missing. This realization makes Walt see that Krazy-8 will kill him the moment he sets him free. After this, Walt feels he no longer has a choice. Walt doesn’t make a habit of sharing his feelings with others and he dislikes explaining himself. When Jesse asks why he’s doing this, instead of explaining that he has cancer and is trying to earn money to leave for his family, which is a perfectly noble cause, he neglects to tell him anything. He has a lot of pride and will do anything to keep it from being compromised. At first, he refuses the idea of chemotherapy because he wishes to die with honor, as opposed to losing what remains of his dignity by suffering the side effects of treatment. His pride also prevents him from accepting Gretchen and Elliot’s job offer. He then becomes angry with Skyler for asking them for a handout. He refuses financial aid from Hank and Elliot. There are many times where Walt will eventually put his morals aside for the sake of his vision and plans. As he gets deeper and deeper into the drug game, his ego inflates. At a certain point, he revamps his moral code. if you cross Walt, chances are that will be the last thing you ever do.

Inferior Extroverted Sensing [Se]: Despite Se being his inferior function, Walt knows how to think in the moment and can see potential in his environment to help him get out of sticky situations. Walter is very future focused and always has a goal in mind. As time progresses, Walt begins to enjoy being on top. The danger that once terrified him becomes thrilling, and eventually, his goal shifts from being able to provide for his family to being on top. He gets off on taking risks. The danger makes him feel alive.

Enneagram: 6w5 Sp/Sx

Quotes:

Walter:But what good is it to survive if I’m too sick to work, to enjoy a meal, to make love. For what time I have left, I want to live in my own house, I want to sleep in my own bed. I don’t want to choke down 40 or 50 pills every single day, and lose my hair, lie around, too tired to get up, and so nauseated that I can’t even move my head. You cleaning up after me. Me… me some um… some dead man, some artifically alive, just marking time… No. And that’s how you would remember me. That’s the worst part. So… that is my thought process, Skyler… I’m sorry, it’s just I choose not to do it.

Walter: We’re done when I say we’re done.

Walter: Name one thing in this world that is not negotiable.

Walter: Now… Say my name. Declan: Heisenberg. Walter White: You’re goddamn right!

Walter: I am the one who knocks.

Walter: If you don’t know who I am, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly.

Walter: Sometimes it just feels better not to talk. At all. About anything. To anyone.

Walter: No speeches. Short speech. You lost your partner today. What’s his name – Emilio? Emilio is going to prison. The DEA took all your money, your lab. You got nothing. Square one. But you know the business and I know the chemistry. I’m thinking… maybe you and I could partner up. Jesse: You want to cook crystal meth? You and, uh… and me? Walter: That’s right. Either that… or I turn you in.

Skyler: If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family… Walter: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.

Walter: You didn’t follow my instructions! Jesse: Oh well, heil Hitler, bitch!

Walter: After we finish cleaning up this mess… we will go our separate ways. Our paths will never cross and we will tell this to no one. Understood? Jesse: Oh, what I can talk now?

Walter: Jesse, you asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.

Skyler: Where did that come from? And why was it so damn good? Walter: Because it was illegal.

Skyler: Walt, please, let’s both of us stop trying to justify this whole thing and admit you’re in danger! Walter: Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see? Do you know how much I make a year? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe it. Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly up. Disappears! It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!

Gretchen: Let me just get this straight – Elliot and I offered to pay for your treatment, no strings attached. An offer which still stands, by the way. And you turn us down, out of pride, or whatever. And then you tell your wife that in fact we are paying for your treatment, and against our knowledge and against our will you involve us in your lie. And you sit there and you tell me that it is none of my business? Walter: Yeah, that’s pretty much the size of it. Gretchen: What happened to you? Really, what happened? Because this isn’t you. Walter: And what would you know about me, Gretchen? What would your presumption about me be exactly? That I should go begging for your charity? And you waving your checkbook around like some magic wand is going to make me forget how YOU and ELLIOT cut me loose!

Walter: And now you tell my son what I do after I’ve told you and told you to keep your damn mouth shut. You stupid bitch. How dare you? Skyler: I’m sorry. Walter: You, you have no right to discuss anything about what I do. Oh, what the hell do you know about it anyway? Nothing. I built this. Me. Me alone. Nobody else!

Walter: I told you, Skyler. I warned you for a solid year. You cross me, there will be consequences. What part of that didn’t you understand?

Walter: You mark my words, Skyler. Toe the line, or you will wind up just like Hank. Skyler: Walt. Tell me what happened. Where is Hank? Please. We need to know. Walter: You’re never gonna see Hank again. He crossed me. You think about that. Family or no. You let that sink in.

Jesse: Wait. Wait. Hold up. Tell me why you’re doing this. Seriously. Walter: Why do you do it? Jesse: Money, mainly. Walter: There you go. Jesse: Nah, come on, man. Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass all a sudden at age, what, 60, he’s just gonna break bad? Walter: I’m 50. Jesse: It’s weird, is all. Okay, it doesn’t compute. Listen, if you’ve gone crazy or something, I mean, if you… If you’ve gone crazy, or depressed. I’m… I’m just saying. That… That’s something I need to know about. Okay, I mean, that affects me.

Walter White (Breaking Bad): INTJ was originally published on MBTI Zone

[topbeautifulwomens]

#Sonny #Rollins #Biography #Photos #Wallpapers #clouds #fashiondesigner #fashionkids #food #girlpower #instagram #night #star #water #youtube

Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he started out on alto saxophone, inspired by Louis Jordan. At the age of sixteen, he switched to tenor, trying to emulate Hawkins. He also fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, Bebop.

He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and listing with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.

“Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way,” Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. “They’re not here now so I come to feel like I’m sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I’m one of the last guys left, as I’m constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people.”

In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.

Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography wrote that he “began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill Harlem crowd…anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere else. He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians. Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird. I know one thing–he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off…” Sonny moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding ingredients of negativity around the Jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous flavor of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that located him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.

It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,”Newk.” As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: “Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or “Newk” as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab…when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you’re Don Newcombe!” Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn’t thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the amazing hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening…”

In 1956, Sonny began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomas initiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Blue 7 was hailed by Gunther Schuller as demonstrating a new manner of “thematic improvisation,” in which the soloist develops motifs extracted from his theme. Way Out West (1957), Rollins’s first album utilizing a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (Wagon Wheels, I’m an Old Cowhand). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.Rollins’s first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance.

Sonny remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because “I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I essential to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I’m going to do it my way. I wasn’t going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time.”

When he returned to action in early `62, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60’s, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. “I was getting into eastern religions,” he remembers. “I’ve always been my own man. I’ve always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It truly is never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it’s a good thing for anybody to do.In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. (Working at first with Orrin Keepnews, Sonny was by the early â€80s producing his own Milestone sessions with Lucille.) His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label created two dozen albums in various settings – from his working groups to all-star ensembles (Tommy Flanagan, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams); from a solo recital to tour recordings with the Milestone Jazzstars (Ron Carter, McCoy Tyner); in the studio and on the concert stage (Montreux, San Francisco, New York, Boston). Sonny was also the subject of a mid-â€80s documentary by Robert Mugge entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.

He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004â€s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for “Why Was I Born”). In addition, Sonny received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.

In June 2006 Rollins was inducted into the Academy of Achievement – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences.

“I am convinced that all art has the desire to leave the ordinary,” Rollins said in a recent interview for the Catalan magazine Jaç, “and to say it one way, at a spiritual level, a state of the exaltation at existence. All art has this in common. But jazz, the world of improvisation, is perhaps the highest, because we do not have the opportunity to make changes. Itâ€s as if we were painting before the public, and the following morning we cannot go back and correct that blue color or change that red. We have to have the blues and reds very well placed before going out to play. So for me, jazz is probably the most demanding art.” And Sonny Rollins – seeker and grand master – is jazzâ€s most exacting, exhilarating, and inspiring practitioner.

Name Sonny Rollins Height Naionality American Date of Birth 07-Sep-1930 Place of Birth America Famous for

The post Sonny Rollins Biography Photos Wallpapers appeared first on Beautiful Women.

source http://topbeautifulwomen.com/sonny-rollins-biography-photos-wallpapers/

[republicstandard]

The Striptease of Toxic Feminism in the Brett Kavanaugh Freak Show

The first time I saw a striptease show was at the ripe age of six. A snooty, upper-crust cousin from my mother’s side was setting fire to rupees as if they were autumn leaves by hosting a wedding at a five-star hotel in Bombay. The cousin printed the invitation cards in Portuguese. The pomposity instantly pissed off my dad. He didn’t bother to read the notice below the RSVP, which stated that the reception was Strictly Adults Only.

So there we were – pop, mom, yours truly and little sis (aged four) in tow – witnessing our first cabaret. Since Post-traumatic Striptease Disorder hadn’t yet been diagnosed by the American Psychiatric Association, little sis and I were scurried in under cover of darkness to watch a nymphet-of-sorts casting away various outer and inner garments, while a spotlight played light and shadow tricks with her anatomy and a jazz band with an Indian-imitation Louis Armstrong musically massaged her with velvety notes from the musical Cabaret.

(function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:10817585113717094,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7788-6480"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.lockerdomecdn.com/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

Like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, I don’t remember the day or date or the place but I do recall being driven by taxi to the hotel and I can assure my readers that the artiste didn’t try to grope me although she did offer me a cuddle of a non-sexual nature, amused that a dwarf (I’m sure she thought I was a retarded adult) would take time to come and applaud her Nijinsky-like acrobatics.

The second time I saw a striptease show was yesterday, today and each day since the commencement of the Brett Kavanaugh freak show. All this while I had assumed that this was essentially about the Democrats holding power in the Supreme Court—the politburo of the American Left for over seventy years. The façade began to wear thin when Diane Feinstein and her fellow-vampires like Kamala Harris ganged up to crush Kavanaugh on his views regarding abortion.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Harris asked if Kavanaugh knew of any laws “that the government has power to make over the male body?” The entire room was silent for three seconds before Kavanaugh replied: “Um … I’m happy to answer a more specific question, but …” “Male versus female,” Harris snapped. Kavanaugh fumbled. Harris repeated the question. “I’m not aware of any right now, Senator,” Kavanaugh finally responded.

As the process accelerated to its finale and a victory for the white male judge became certain, toxic feminism revealed its real, repulsive face. The feminist matriarchy began flinging off every threadbare garment of gender equality, justice, oppression, etc. that forms the socially acceptable accoutrement of feminist ideology in its striptease dance of death. It was like a Grimm Brothers’ fairytale with the nice lady inviting Hansel and Gretel into her house constructed of cake, candy and confectionery revealing herself as an ugly, cannibalistic witch.

The feminist cannibalism of Kavanaugh climaxed with false accusations of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford followed by sirens Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. The culmination was the collective feminist aneurysm and the mob-of-the-matriarchy gone mad with protests, arrests, screaming, wailing and an outbreak of hysteria and delirium tremendum that would have led Arthur Miller to write an updated edition of The Crucible.

And what the world saw is feminism stripped naked, displaying raw toxicity and flashing itself as the virulent and noxious sepsis of civil society. Feminism exposed its primal quest: making a Faustian deal with the devil in order to become like God, as in the archetypal story of Eve and the serpent in Genesis.

Needless to say, feminist matriarchs from Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan to Sandra Lee Bartkey and Gloria Steinem explicitly outlined the aims and objectives of feminism in their writings—but who bothers to read this junk philosophy unless you are doing a degree in Gender Studies? Don’t worry. Now, you can watch the toxic feminism in all its glory on television or YouTube.

The striptease around the Kavanaugh show trial is revealing to us how gender feminism isn’t fundamentally a pro-woman but an anti-man movement. It isn’t driven by the adrenaline of a genuine concern for women, but by a deep-rooted hatred of men. Feminism isn’t trying to correct misogyny; it is seeking to create a dark and bigoted misandry.

Just before the Kavanaugh event, sociologist Suzanna Danuta Walters, Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University wrote a Washington Post column titled “Why can’t we hate men?” arguing that it was “logical to hate men”. She rankled at the women who said accused the “system” and not men. She thundered;

“We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.”

Toxic feminism is about winning. Not just the war, but the spoils of war. “You have to ask yourself, why would anybody put themselves through this if they did not believe that they had important information to convey to the Senate?” asked Hillary Clinton. “Nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron,” echoed former vice president Joe Biden, referring to Anita Hill, who falsely accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment for telling off-color sexist jokes.

Cauldron, my ass, Joe! If anything it is jumping into the cauldron of instant celebrity fame and success. In a culture where the self-proclaimed victim is instantly canonized the rewards of accusing a Very Important Man at a Very Important Moment of sexual assault can be colossal. Leveling an accusation is the easiest task in the feminist DIY manual. Fabricating a story with a pedestrian plot does not require the genius of a Dostoevsky.

Guess what happened to Anita Hill, the paradigmatic victim of the patriarchy? “For Hill, the cauldron of attention cooked up a lot of career opportunities,” notes Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa in her video called “The Anita Hill School of Success”.

Following her testimony at the Thomas hearings, 1992, Hill received the American Bar Association’s “Women of Achievement” Award. In 1993, she was inducted into Oklahoma’s Women’s Hall of Fame. In the same year, she co-edited a book called Race, Gender, and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings.

In 1997 she was given a visiting scholar position at UC Berkeley, and soon after that she was hired by Brandeis University, where she teaches courses on gender, race, social policy and legal history. In 1997, she made her role in the Thomas hearings the subject of her autobiography, self-effacingly titled Speaking Truth to Power. She now regularly makes guest appearances on news and current affairs shows as an expert on sexual harassment.

“I think it’s fair to say that nothing Anita Hill ever did contributed more positively to her public profile than her claims about Clarence Thomas, even though they were never proven,” says Fiamengo. Even liberal Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor emeritus admits, “One fact is beyond dispute: Anita Hill has made a fortune off speaking and book fees solely on the basis of her accusations.”

You can already see a new star added to the feminist Milky Way in the person of Christine Blasey Ford. Her supporters have already raised over half a million dollars to cover her costs and you don’t need to look into a crystal ball to predict her meteoric career rise. As Che and the workers sing in the musical Evita: “When the money keeps rolling in, you don’t ask how. Think of all the people guaranteed a good time now.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist, once quipped that if Jesus were alive at the advent of television, the devil would approach him and offer him a slot on primetime global TV so instead of a ragtag lot following him in Galilee, everyone will know him. There will be no commercials, just one public relations sponsor—Lucifer Inc. No more than: “This program comes to you courtesy of Lucifer Inc. at beginning and end with credits.” Jesus, of course, says “No,” and is dismissed by all as irrelevant and “crazy.”

Christine Blasey Ford and her fellow-feminists have said a resounding “Yes” to the fourth temptation. This is not surprising because the Hebrew root for “Satan” means “adversary” or “accuser” while the Greek “Diabolos” means “accuser” or “slanderer”. The book of Revelation calls the devil the “accuser of our brethren”. Jesus refers to him as a “murderer from the beginning” who “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies”.

More than anything else, abortion is the holy grail of feminism and the Brett Kavanaugh freak show was all about abortion. The striptease of feminism exposes feminism as a baby-murdering movement. In Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker’s study of attitudes on abortion, one feminist put it this way: “we can get all the rights in the world … and none of them means a doggone thing if we don’t own the flesh we stand in”. Feminists, of course, have to first dehumanize the fetus by telling a scientific lie that it is “my body” before they can murder the baby, even if it is a girl baby!

(function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:10817587730962790,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-5979-7226"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.lockerdomecdn.com/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

But the biggest revelation of the striptease is the gargantuan effort to perpetuate the diabolic slander that women in the West continue to be oppressed by men. It was left to the truly brave Kristy Swanson, who originated the role of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 1992 film, to expose this monumental lie.

Woman have ALL the power. We decide Everything, when to eat dinner, go to sleep, wake up, date, have sex, get married, when we will have babies, go to school, go to work & have careers, play sports, run for office & even for potus. What’s with the victim train? #WomenHaveItAll https://t.co/ZJRq8RXq85

— Kristy Swanson (@KristySwansonXO) August 21, 2018

I had felt a great deal of sympathy for Christine Blasey Ford when I watched her testify. As more and more of her lies were exposed and as more and more of the feminist agenda was unveiled, the spotlight in the striptease fell on Christine’s face. To my horror, I saw that the plaintive victim Christine had morphed into the manipulative Queen Jezebel. In the biblical story, Jezebel gets “two worthless men” to bring false accusations against the peasant Naboth. Jezebel’s husband King Ahab steals Naboth’s vineyard and Naboth is stoned to death.

The feminist lynch mob is spitting blood. Jezebel is back with a vengeance.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2IINzEG via IFTTT