#Winthrop Building

[rabbitcruiser]

Doors, Gates and Windows (No. 89)

5 North Square, Boston

36 Hull Street, Boston

Old State House, Boston

Winthrop Building, Boston (two pics)

129 Essex Street, Salem

Peabody Building, Salem

Salem Museum

The Gardner-Pingree House, Salem

Central House, Salem

[z3r0-c001]

I had a dream about eating a bunch of mangos soaked in LSD then getting on a big sailboat in the Charles that got picked up by a huge gust of wind and landed in memorial drive and I had to try and sail it down the street to Harvard where the coast guard could help me get it back in the water. When the boat landed in the road I got my leg smashed btwn the side of the boat and a median at one but I made the conscious decision that it has not been broken by this. Also ermes costello was on the boat heckling me for my ability to drive a sailboat down a busy road.

[stoat-party]

Things Fallout 3 did better than 4, in my opinion:

Giving every character a canon age

On that note, a game guide revealing all the flirting going on when the player character isn’t looking. (Did you know Greta has a thing with both Carol and Winthrop?)

Dialogue tree instead of wheel. (1. It lets you explore every dialogue option, 2. You can avoid triggering unwanted quest paths without ignoring a character entirely, and 3. Maybe I want Liam Neeson to tell me he’s proud of me more than once, okay?)

Weapons and armor degrading. It keeps caps tight for longer, so there are actual stakes when you forego profit to do the right thing. Also makes looting enemies more fun.

Skills.

Notes and holotapes have their own tab, aren’t in the inventory, and are sorted chronologically.

You can get Rad-X from the health status tab instead of scrolling infinitely in the aid items menu.

The Wasteland’s so empty. In 4, you can’t go very far without running into enemies. In 3, you can watch the scenery and listen to the radio for a good long while before you run into anything. (Though the city does take up less of the map.)

I get that they had to sacrifice this so the settlement building and radiant quests could operate, but I liked it better when you fought through a location, and the location stayed the way you left it, with enemies dead, locks/terminals open, and containers looted. 4 feels more like a fighting game while 3 feels like it’s about exploration.

Followers being able to die. There are benefits to being able to leave them to their own devices, but the extra stakes are more challenging and realistic. (But if followers could die in 4, you’d be able to fail every questline in the game right off the bat, so it’s understandable.)

Tell me yours if you have any!

[shiorimakibawrites]

Baking with Love

Last-minute final entry to Mandy's Sweater Weather Challenge presented by @she-likesorchids.

This one uses the prompts - baking/cooking together combined with the "You taste like cinnamon" and "Your hands are freezing."

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Reader

Word Count: 1,287

Summary: Matt Murdock and You make pumpkin bread and cookies.

Tags/ Warnings: Established Matt / Reader relationship, Tooth-rotting fluff

Tagging: @bellaxgiornata thought you might enjoy some Matty fluff.

Baking with Love

You sighed with relief when you entered Matt’s building. You were very happy to be out of the wind. It hadn’t been a long walk but your cheeks, nose, and ears felt like they had been scrapped raw by the biting wind. Your hands weren’t much better. You had tried to switch your tote between your hands so each got the chance to hide in your pocket but it hadn’t helped much.

The door to Matt’s apartment swung open just as you were about to reach for the knob. Matt, of course, having likely between aware of your approach for at least a block. He did this trick all the time but it still managed to make you jump each time. Judging by the grin on his face, Matt found your reaction just as amusing as he always did.

Along with any other time he sneaked up on you. Which happened a lot. Because in addition to being a lawyer, Matt was also a ninja. You keep threatening to make him wear a bell. Which only made him laugh harder. He is so lucky that he’s cute.

He looked especially cute today. First, he was smiling wide enough for the dimples to come out. That was always going to be adorable. Second, since he was at home and neither of you was planning to go anywhere until later, he hadn’t put on his dark glasses. So you got to see his lovely hazel eyes sparkling with mirth. Third, he was wearing a snuggle sweater.

Cable-knit and dark brown in color, it looked incredibly soft. You hoped you’d get to find out later. There were plans to snuggle together on the couch under the blankets, after the baking was done, but you knew how easily those plans could get disrupted for either lawyer or vigilante reasons.

If the former, you would sigh but accept the situation. Unless it was Burke, Winthrop, & Associates being themselves again. If you had to spent your snuggle time working through another pile of motions that dance right up to the edge of being frivolous from those bastards, you might actually kill someone.

As for the later . . . Daredevil might end up being the last of their worries. You might not have Matt’s fighting skills but you had connections. The benefit of feeding the local vigilantes like the semi-feral cats that they are. You could delegate your vengeance.

You also enjoyed how that sweater clung to those board shoulders and hinted at the solid muscle of his torso. That he had paired with jeans that showed off his perfect ass was just a bonus.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Matt greeted you as he ushered you into his apartment. It was toasty warm in there. You sat down your tote on the bench and flexed your hands. Then winced. It might have been a short walk but it was long enough and air was cold enough to leave your hands stiff and aching.

You did another little startled jump when your hands were engulfed by Matt’s hands. His big, wonderfully warm hands. He started massaging the backs of your hands with his thumbs.

“Your hands are freezing,” he said. “Still can’t find your gloves?”

“No,” you said. And sighed. “I’ll find them eventually. I know they are somewhere in my apartment. They have to be.”

“Not giving up?” he asked, almost casual. As if we weren’t discussing the gloves he had given you for Christmas. The ones you distinctively remembered packing when you put away your fall and winter clothes this spring but were inexplicably missing from the box when you opened it last week.

“No,” you said firmly. “I really like those gloves. I’m not giving up on them.”

You silently prayed that Matt got the message that you weren’t just talking about your gloves.

“Thank you,” he said softly, squeezing your hands and looking a little misty-eyed.

You smiled. Looks like he got it. You squeezed his hands back. “Hey mister, where’s my kiss?”

He laughed as he dropped your hands in favor of cupping your face. His thumbs stroked your cheeks, then he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours. It was a slow but thorough kiss. The kind of kiss that soon had your hands gripping his upper arms. That sweater was just as soft as it looked. Definitely going to kill anyone who prevented snuggle time.

The unfortunate need for air meant the kiss had to end. You tried not to pout about that.

Matt kissed your forehead and murmured, “You taste like cinnamon.”

You hummed, then remembered. “The coffee cake has cinnamon in the streusel topping.”

“And you didn’t bring me any?” he asked with a mock pout.

“Sorry but I was running out of space in the tote,” you said. You leaned up and kissed his forehead. “Maybe one of these cold night, Daredevil will come to my apartment looking for a little snack.”

“Maybe he will,” Matt said with a grin. A grin that shifted into something coy. “And afterward, he might also have some cake.”

You felt your face get warm. Along with the first stirrings of arousal. Your voice was a little breathy when you answered, “Sounds like a plan. I look forward to seeing it in action.”

Matt smirked, the cocky smug one. He knew the effect he was having on you. But he let his hands fall away from your face. He stepped to the side of you and reached the tote bag. Curiously weighted it in one hand.

“What’s all in here?”

“Cookbook, mini-loaf pan, cookie sheets, parchment paper, pumpkin puree, apples –”

“I thought we making pumpkin bread?”

“We are but I saw a recipe that I want to try for apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies. Thought that we could make those too.”

“Those do sound good,” Matt said with smile.

You both got to work.

Since the whine of the motor in your hand-mixer, especially at point-blank range, made Matt wince, the butter and sugar would need to be creamed by hand. Since Matt had giant arm muscles and superhero stamina while you didn’t, you gave him that job.

While he did that, you peeled, cored, and chopped apples. Then tossed them with a little lemon juice to prevent them from oxidizing and because it enhanced the favor of the tart apples. You might occasionally gotten distracted by Matt’s . . . everything.

Like that play of muscles under that sweater while he did the creaming.

Or his ass when he had to bend down to retrieve a larger bowl – you had underestimated how big of a bowl you need for the pumpkin bread dough. Which, it seemed to you, happened a lot with pumpkin. At least it wasn’t pumpkin pie. You always seemed to end up with more batter than you had pie shells.

But what caught you eye the most was that sweet, dopey smile that kept returning to his face. This was the most relaxed you had seen Matt in a while. You supported what he did but that didn’t meant you liked seeing him frustrated and stressed.

But the soft, loving look in his eyes after you kissed his forehead and said “I love you” that – that really made your heart flutter. And it was in that moment that you knew you wanted to marry him.

Matt’s predication proved to be accurate. The cookies were delicious. You are definitely adding those to your fall treats, you thought as you snuggled against Matt on the couch. Your predication about the sweater was also accurate. It was wonderfully soft.

“What are we watching, sweetheart?” Matt asked. It was your turn to pick the movie.

“Hocus Pocus.”

Ending Note

They are making the pumpkin bread and cookies for Foggy, Karen, Marci, Claire as well as their circle of vigilante friends – the Defenders, Frank Castle, and Spider-Man.

[wawamouse]

Oz Rewatch 3: S5E04: Next Stop Valhalla

Storylines

Jaime tries to kill Guerra and is killed instead; Miguel feels guilty; Alicia Hinden comes to Oz with the dog training program; Augustus, Penders, and Miguel are selected

Miss Sally’s Schoolyard to become Sallycise; Brass confirms to Rebadow he bought the lottery ticket; Martinez hits Brass with a shit cocktail; Gloria tries to get Martinez put in the hospital and then beats him up when he keeps touching her face

Beecher and Schillinger fight during an interaction session; Schillinger antagonises Schibetta;

Peter Marie visits Keller; McClain visits Keller

Winthrop and Guenzel arrive at Oz; Guenzel is taken under Beecher’s wing while Winthrop becomes a prag for the Aryans in Unit B

Frank Urbano arrives at Oz; Beecher asks Pancamo for the Italians help in protecting Guenzel; the Aryans and Italians get into a fight

Gloria tells Ryan he has to tell his mother about his crimes; Ryan breakdances instead; Shupe tells O’Reily that Li going to rape his mom; Ryan and Cyril kill Li

Augustus continues to grieve his mother and ends up breaking his sobriety

Omar annoys Emerald City and Said with his singing, McManus gives him a supply closet to practice in; Redding demands Omar use it to sell drugs; Lalar and Arif complain to Said that he’s neglecting his role as leader; Robson tortures and kills Lalar

Sister: That’s why they gotta stop announcing everything they do in this show, like...

Sister: I feel like [Norma’s] just dead at this point.

Sister: I feel like they’re leading up to him being like a mass shooter or something. Me: You think he’s gonna snap? Sister: He seems like the type...

Sister: …I think being free would making him happy. I mean, [Toby] had that whole vision about being free that did not include [Chris], so I think he’ll be fine.

Sister: You can just tell them anything and they’ll let you through…

Sister: What’s wrong with this guy? What’s he in for? Me: Hate crimes… Murder, officially, I think. Sister: Hate crime? What’s he sniffing people for? Me: He's just a perv...

Sister: …That’s so gross… In my sickened state*, I can’t even summon a bleugh. Me: [Retching noise] Sister: Thanks. (*We got some booster shots yesterday and Sister always gets sick afterward lol)

Sister: When are they going to address that guy whose wife also died? Me: Never. Sister: So why did they introduce her?! To spout off some facts and get shushed by the priest?? Me: Maybe there was originally supposed to be more of a story to it and it go cut. Sister: No, they just wanted to do their little after school special moment and then not deal with it. You know, if any of the Muslims should be having the issues in these episodes, it should be the other guy (Arif), not Mr. Said... Me: They could have issues together. Sister: Yeah. Kill the Nazi helper dude. The one who's egging everything on. Schillinger doesn't even really do stuff on his own anymore. Before, he didn't want to fight and wanted to become a Jesus freak and it was always that guy whispering in his ear. And now look.

Sister: How we know he’s not gonna build a bomb in there? … Oh, I guess they took away all the cleaning supplies…

Stray Thoughts

Sister says Jia Kenmin and Li Chen’s plan to provoke Ryan so they could kill him in self defense was really not thought-out

Sister is convinced that someone is going to die for one of the dogs

Sister believes that killing Robson would get rid of most of the Aryans’ bite since she views him as being the worst out of all the Aryans

Final thoughts

The scene where Robson and what’s his face torture Lalar is the toughest scene to watch in the entire show, imo. And it pisses me off (like, I’m actually getting mad thinking about it right now, lol) that Robson gets more expansion in terms of character as the show progresses, too, because whooooooooo gives a shit about a Nazi?! They still haven’t followed up on Arif’s wife LMAO. Also Urbano gets introduced this episode and they don’t end up doing shit with him, really, either. But let’s learn about this asshole!!

Sister: I feel like they’ve run out of storylines with the Muslims and are just repeating past ones. Wasn’t it [Arif] who was the one complaining about Said’s leadership the last time? And then he couldn’t handle it which caused the whole thing… and now he’s doing it again? Me: I think they just don’t like when Said helps other people. They complained when Said was spending time on Beecher, too… Sister: Yeah, [Arif] is so needy… He’s like “you’re spending too much time with your roommate who you have to stay in a cell with” and also every time he is around, [Said] just wants [Omar] to be quiet anyway…

[urbs-in-horto]

From the family photo collection. My Mom was raised in the neighborhood near Leland and Winthrop in Uptown. Somewhere in the area was a backyard grotto, with rockwork terraces and miniature buildings. In researching the possible location of the images I learned that there were a number of these backyard grottos in Uptown in the 1930's and 40's. Never was able to pinpoint this one's location.

[lauren-no-why]

No idea uhhh either Cobb Avery or Z'Oiseau or both perhaps idk

Yeeeeahhhh!!! okay I have admittedly way more thoughts about Cobb Avery than Z'Oiseau so while I do think the latter is a super fascinating character who I definitely need to spend more time mulling around in my head, we're going with Mr. Ender here for now. Maybe if I wind up with extra time later tonight I'll revisit this for the spooky blackbird man.

First impression: WHAT A COOL DUDE. I mean, watching the music video was one of the very first things that clued me in to the existence of the lore and it's nice that it's mostly a self-contained little mini-story that tells us so much about him in under 5 minutes. Big fan of our undead revenge murder hero living out everyone's not-so-secret fantasy to just fucking kill the rich bastards who ruined your life. Relatable.

Impression now: I mean same, but now I've also had a whole lot of time to consider all of the social and political and cosmic horror implications so it just only gets better. It's not just an undead dude coming back to kill Andrew Winthrop. His is ultimately a story about a working class man from a colonized and marginalized population of people in this country gains mystery cosmic horror powers to take power back into the hands of those people. People much better-educated than I on Chicano history have written extensively about US colonization in the regions that were formerly Mexico until their land was stolen from them, and so Cobb Avery's story, while set in the... 1950s? sort of? also has extremely strong echoes of the outcome of the Mexican-American War in the 1800s, and meanwhile extends the power fantasy out beyond him to the gang he has assembled which particularly in the film are shown mostly to be working-class nonwhite folks (and certainly mostly Latino but not exclusively) who have suffered from discrimination, deportation, racism and lynching and so many other awful fates throughout our country's history, and it's those people now who have been able to build something for themselves that puts the power to destroy back into their hands with Cobb Avery as a sort of dark folk hero.

idk I think about this a lot. I'll stop. I'm bordering on that other essay I threatened to write.

Favorite moment: Man.... so many. But the one I personally find really really satisfying in the music video at least is when the one girl stabs him and he just sort of smiles, and it's at that point they realize this dude is the best thing to ever happen to them and they are now ride or die for him and his cause. Coming together to defeat capitalism under the banner of a freaky undead guy.

But runner up in terms of how deeply intrigued I am is when Buck smacks into him in the movie and just gets temporarily flung into his own future in that dark forest after he's been black-brained. Cobb Avery what the fuck are you, man. Like what REALLY are you. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions.

Idea for a story: I have an unfinished WIP that isn't really a story with any real plot but a reflection by Johnnie (so far, other character POVs would work here too) about how it feels to have this nonhuman creature living in their midst. This thing in human shape that was human once but is definitely not quite human now. I really love exploring the idea of Avery returned as someone who has very little grasp on who he once was except for the memories that drove him to revenge, and that somehow that scrap of humanity is filled out by the sort of dark World Ender entity that he is now a part of. More cosmic horror, and the gang as cultists who take his eagerly granted permissions for chaos and violence and just run with it. But because I don't have any actual plot I probably won't figure out how to finish writing this.

Unpopular opinion: Once again I don't think there are enough opinions in general for me to have one that's unpopular here. I think we all agree that whatever he is, the dude is a badass.

Favorite relationship: Not with any particular individual but with the gang as his thriving band of trouble, almost a force of nature themselves that spills forth not to exactly follow his instructions but simply to interpret his desire for destruction in however they like. But also, then, their reliance on each other as a family, with him at the center as some sort of inscrutable nonhuman leader they're in between respecting and worshiping, and how he meanwhile molds them into what he wants them to be by selecting leaders to serve directly under him and letting them loose. It's not a hierarchy it's a miasma. Found family but extra fucked up.

Favorite headcanon: I guess particularly my interpretation of what he is now, as being something much less human and probably slipping farther and farther away from it, except for those core retained memories that drove his revenge. Maybe he's soft for someone every now and then who reminds him of his wife, or daughter, but never in a way where that person could really be close to him or get to know him as a person, because he is a fraction of a much larger and older thing that sees them as a means to an end at best, and as little more than bugs to be occasionally herded otherwise. More alien, more monstrous, while he slicks back his hair and enjoys a cigarette and appears on the surface to be just another guy.

[danses-with-dogmeat]

D.W.D. Kinktober 2023 Character List

Hey y'all! Alright, so the poll (i.e. majority vote) says that I'm just to post the characters for this spicy October season event, so that's what I'm gonna do! Thank you all so much for voting! 😁

Also, this is your preliminary warning if you're a minor and you follow me, or if you're uncomfortable with/ just don't like explicit/nsfw content, that I will be posting mainly things pertaining to those subjects all throughout next month! So please, if you are underage, I love you, thank you for being here, you're amazing, but please do not interact with my NSFW tagged content (I always use the tag dwd.nsfw if you want to just block that tag). Thank you! ❤️

So, without further ado, the characters for this year's Kinktober are just below the cut!

So, this list comes predominantly from the series of alphabetical character polls (in the form of the 2nd and 3rd placers). I also didn't want any repeat characters from last year, just to keep things unique and interesting, so that was taken into account as well. Lastly, I wanted to adhere to the Official Kinktober List as much as possible, so some characters were chosen to meet very... ah, particular criteria. And while this is my official list, things are still subject to change (but I think characters are likely to stay the same no matter what else changes). Any who, here they are!:

Fallout 3:

Amata Almodovar

Dukov

Eulogy Jones

Clover

Flak & Shrapnel

The Gary(s)

Harold (& Bob)

Uncle Leo

Reilly

Sarah Lyons

Winthrop

Fallout New Vegas:

Beatrix Russell

Caesar

Dazzle

Julie Farkas

Legate Lanius

Neil

Red Lucy

Rose of Sharon Cassidy

Rotface

Fallout 4:

Curie

Edward Deegan

Glory

Kent Connolly

Pickman

Proctor Ingram

Tinker Tom

Vault Tec Rep

Yefim Bobrov

There's also not exactly 31 of them, just because I felt it necessary to build in a couple "off days" of writing because... well, mental and physical health reasons 😅 but either way, I hope y'all are excited as I am! I know some of these folks are less popular and others are... unorthodox, but I hope y'all have a good time with it, and maybe find love for a character you didn't know as well before? Idk, I do think it's gonna be loads of fun though 😁

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Christopher F. Rufo

Published: Dec 18, 2023

Harvard president Claudine Gay has been embroiled in controversy for minimizing Hamas terrorism and plagiarizing material in her academic work on race. Both scandals have discredited her presidency, but neither should come as a surprise. Throughout Gay’s career at Harvard—as professor, dean, and president—racialist ideology has driven her scholarship, administrative priorities, and rise through the institution.

Over the course of her career, Gay quietly built a “diversity” empire that influenced every facet of university life. Between 2018 and the summer of 2023, as the dean of the largest faculty on campus, Gay oversaw the university’s racially discriminatory admissions program, which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. Even after the court issued its ruling earlier this year, Gay said that it was a “hard day” and defended the university’s policies, which were deemed discriminatory against Asian and white applicants. Gay promised to comply with the letter of the law, while remaining “steadfast” in her commitment to producing “diversity”—a not-so-subtle message that Harvard would find a way, as the University of California has done, to evade the law in practice.

While affirmative action has been a longstanding practice at Harvard, other programs led by Gay were new. Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Gay commissioned a Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, which released a series of recommendations the following year for engaging in the “historical reckoning with racial injustice.” The recommendations included a mandate to change “spaces whose visual culture is dominated by homogenous portraiture of white men.” In particular, the report maintained, administrators should “refresh” the walls of Annenberg Hall, which “prominently display a series of 23 portraits, none of [which] depict women, and all but three of [which] depict white men.” Who were these white men and why were they honored in the first place? The report does not say—their race and sex alone provided sufficient justification for their banishment.

In 2022, Gay implemented an initiative at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for “denaming” any “space, program, or other entity” deemed racist by the faculty and administration. According to the report, commissioned by then-president Lawrence Bacow, these decisions would be “based on the perception that a namesake’s actions or beliefs were ‘abhorrent’ in the context of current values.” In other words, Harvard would use the standards of present-day social-justice activism to pass judgment on men who lived hundreds of years prior—at best, an ahistorical and deeply ambiguous method. As part of this project, Gay sent an email to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences community soliciting “requests for denaming,” promising to address the situation “through the lens of reckoning.” Since then, the university has grappled with denaming multiple buildings, including Winthrop House, named after John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his great grandson, also John Winthrop, a Harvard professor and president.

As president, Gay leads a sprawling DEI bureaucracy—officially, the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging—that seeks to influence how students speak, think, and behave in relation to race. Though the university deleted nearly all DEI materials from its website following President Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony related to the Hamas terror attack, I have recovered some of these documents through an Internet archive. Harvard’s DEI administrators encourage students to internalize the basic narrative of critical race theory: America is a nation defined by “systemic racism,” “police brutality,” “white supremacist violence,” and the “weaponization of whiteness.” In another resource, students were invited to “unpack” their “white privilege” and “male privilege,” and to consider their “white fragility,” which stems from “the privilege that accrues to white people living in a society that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.”

What is one to make of Gay’s record as a whole? She is hardly a “scholar’s scholar,” as the university magazine tried to portray her, having published, according to her curriculum vitae, just 11 academic papers—nearly half of which include plagiarized material. Nor is she a competent administrator, having botched the response to rampant anti-Semitism on campus and, by one estimate, lost the university more than $1 billion in donations. But she plays one role perfectly: the dutiful racialist, skilled at the manipulation of guilt, shame, and obligation in service of institutional power. For instance, she wrote last year in a message to the campus announcing a report on Harvard’s historical connection to slavery: “We have been excluded and denigrated for centuries from an institution where we now work, study, and lead. Our presence here should not feel so extraordinary. But now we see it was anything but inevitable.”

The irony: Gay was, in fact, somewhat inevitable. In the long season of racial guilt and animus that followed George Floyd’s death, the university was desperate to recruit a “first,” as Gay put it in her inaugural address, and disrupt the university’s nearly 400 years of whiteness. As Harvard is now learning, however, naming as president someone who sees race and sex not as incidental human attributes but as ideological constructions that must be imposed on the institution comes with a significant downside.  Consequently, Harvard’s trustees find themselves in a bind: they hired Gay in large part for her identity and cannot fire her for the same reason. They seem resigned to muddling through the “racial reckoning,” however long it lasts and whatever further damage it inflicts on America’s oldest university.

[jellicle-chants]

@ride-a-dromedary Since you asked, here's my beef with Hugh Jackman Meredith Willson's The Music Man Sutton Foster. (No really, that's what the soundtrack album cover looks like.) Basically, I think the revival did a terrible job of capturing the soul and energy of the original show. If you want to read my protracted rant about it, then by all means, continue below.

(Note: I'm mostly going off of the movie adaptation to count for the "original" since it's the version I'm used to, but I also listened to the OBC recording occasionally to see what was shortened for the movie.)

I think the first big thing I should mention is that Hugh Jackman is simply a terrible choice to play Harold Hill. No offense to him, but in my eyes he's always been better at playing a character who seems very charismatic but is actually a bumbling fool (i.e. PT Barnum). Harold Hill might be a conman, but his whole livelihood revolves around getting people to believe that he means what he says and then believe that, too. You need an actor with an incredible amount of charisma and presence to be able to pull that off, and IMO, Jackman is not that actor.

He's also (again IMO) really just snoozing his way through this recording, especially on 76 Trombones! He's dropping R's left and right (to the point where it almost sounds like he's making the effort to sound Southern) and they had to add in a trombone sound behind his mimicking one because it sounds SO dull. Then he mispronounces "Creatore" somehow?? I know that's the littlest thing to get upset over but it also just shows how little this show's creatives know or care about what this musical is all about (more on that later).

And then: they do the MMM thing from Cats 2019. AKA, where they drop out all of the orchestra and sing the biggest song, probably the song that the most people in the audience will know, in a really annoying, slow build-up that entirely kills the flow of the piece. Speaking of killing the mood, the dance break in the middle of the song really does that as well. "76 Trombones" is about the farthest you can get from broke, so I have no clue why they tried to "fix" it in this way.

My least favorite Hugh Jackman song from this soundtrack, however, is not 76 Trombones, but Marian the Librarian. Just from the off, this is one of my favorite musical theatre vamps ever and they absolutely ruined it by playing it at like twice the normal speed. It also starts in the wrong key and then keys up again (???) before he starts singing, and from there it only gets worse. He basically gets every single vowel he possibly could wrong (my favorite being the classic Brit-as-American "Watt can I do") and just trips and falls through the entire song extremely uncharismatically. He says "li-berry" at one point, for goodness' sake! Please, if you haven't listened to the original Robert Preston version of this song (either from the movie or the show), go do it now and then listen to the mockery Hugh Jackman makes of it. It's so obvious that Preston has such a better command over his voice and sound that it makes Jackman sound like he has no clue what he's doing.

Sutton Foster is not nearly as bad as her co-star, although I think she's also miscast. Obviously a Shirley Jones-style voice is really hard to recreate these days, but she's just got such a bright singing and speaking voice that if you had told me in 2021 that she was going to be playing Marian I would've thought you were bad at fancasting. I think she still does a fine job with the poor directing choices she was given — a true professional.

OK, some quick things before I get to the most infuriating part of this revival.

It was also very bold of the creatives to not only keep My White Knight, which is one of my always-skips of the original, but to also add another one in in "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean".

Why the hell is Pick-A-Little so slow??? It's a patter song, folks, it's supposed to be peppy.

I guess they directed the poor kid playing Winthrop to exaggerate the lisp as much as possible (could they have considered maybe just hiring an actor with a lisp instead?) because it straight up sounds like he's putting it on as a joke most of the time. 😬

I think the new lyrics to "Shipoopi" are cringe. Is it that hard to suspend your disbelief that people in 1912 had antiquated views on relationships? Is "hussy" really even that bad of an insult anymore? This song also gets the slowed down + long-ass dance break treatment, God save me.

So, if you're familiar with The Music Man, you might have noticed that I haven't yet mentioned a few key songs/moments. This is genuinely the part of the story of this revival that makes my blood boil. If you're unaware, 4 side characters in The Music Man make up a barbershop quartet, played in the original Broadway production and movie by the Buffalo Bills, a pre-existing quartet who Willson had become friends with even before writing the show. The Bills get multiple songs in the show, all sung in the barbershop style, and they all show off the iconic barbershop effect known as ringing chords, created from the quartet's just tuning. (I don't know enough about music theory to get into the weeds about this, but suffice it to say that barbershop singing and musical theatre singing are not interchangeable).

Apparently, when the revival was first being produced before the pandemic, a barbershop quartet called Category 4 was approached to play the quartet members. Great! Then, allegedly, post-pandemic, it was, to quote a spokesperson for the revival, "in the best interest of the show" for them to suddenly cut ties with Category 4, which would have broken contracts Category 4 said they signed. Less great. Instead, the 4 men credited as playing the quartet are Phillip Boykin, Eddie Korbich, Daniel Torres, and Nicholas Ward. I say "credited," but keep in mind that the OFFICIAL cast recording on Spotify does not credit Nicholas for "Sincere" AND "Lida Rose" (where Phillip's name is also misspelled), and on the two songs he is credited for, Spotify seems to have him confused with a violinist/conductor of the same name.

I bring this up to say that I don't blame these men for the situation Category 4 was put in — it seems the producers or someone else behind this production is extremely sloppy and willing to cut corners, including casting four musical theatre singers as a barbershop quartet. Because of this mindset, the songs are distinctly missing those ringing tones that are present in the Bills' versions, replaced with what I can only describe as "tricks" to make it seem like the harmonies are ringing, like a heavy overuse of dynamic changes, especially sforzandos. There's also at least one moment where one member (I think it's the tenor?) straight up sings the wrong note and completely changes the chord. Obviously I don't blame him for not being good at a singing style he literally isn't a professional at, but if there were at least one person in the booth familiar with barbershop or the original song, it hopefully would've been re-recorded.

And that's what hurts me the most — Meredith Willson was a huge fan of barbershop music and the Buffalo Bills especially, and now the music he wrote for them is being butchered by people 60 years later who want to make a quick buck. This revival has "cash-in" written all over it, from stunt casting the leads regardless of how well they fit the roles to not bothering to get actual professional barbershop singers to play a barbershop quartet. It's a soulless attempt to resurrect a great musical that didn't need to and shouldn't have happened.

[disruptiveempathy]

During the initial phase, in which invading Europeans first confronted Aborigines defending their territory, Aboriginal resistance was subverted as a result of the combined effects of four related factors: homicide, introduced disease, starvation, and sexual abuse. The scenario is, of course, broadly familiar in the U.S. context. There is, however, a major difference. In the United States, depictions of black sexuality dominated miscegenation discourse to an extent that led Winthrop Jordan to claim, albeit with some exaggeration, that 'the entire interracial sexual complex did not pertain to the Indian.' In Australia, on the other hand, which lacked a comparably 'third race,' miscegenation discourse came to focus primarily on indigenous people, whose blackness became correspondingly salient. Aborigines who survived the disaster of the first phase found themselves reduced to improvising whatever livelihoods they could in the pores of the alien new society, which generally found them repugnant. Measures were introduced to confine the surviving Aboriginal 'remnant' to fixed locations, either by the lure of rations or by coercive measures. This constitutes the second, carceral phase of settler-colonial policy toward Aborigines. In keeping with Social Darwinist premises, as corroborated by Aborigines' manifest decimation, their confinement on missions and reserves was seen as a temporary measure, since they were believed to be a dying race. Although framed in philanthropic rhetoric (as in missionaries 'smoothing the dying pillow'), this phase maintained the logic of elimination in that it vacated Aboriginal territory and rendered it available for pastoral settlement. Mission boundaries were not enough, however, to prevent the sexual encounters, conducted under conditions of radical inequality, that characterized relations between white men and Aboriginal women. These encounters produced offspring who, growing up as they almost invariably did with their maternal kin, identified themselves as Aboriginal. Moreover, far from dying out, this section of the Aboriginal population threatened to expand exponentially. As the nineteenth century moved to its close, the romance of extinction progressively gave way to the specter of the 'half-caste menace.' Aboriginal people became racialized—in the full genetic sense involved in blood quantum legislation—during the years surrounding national independence, in 1901. These developments coincided with the end of the frontier, an uneven process that marked the final internalization of the 'Aboriginal problem.' They also coincided with the introduction of the so-called White Australia Policy. Seeking to build a white man's paradise in the South Pacific, and encouraged by trade unions keen to eliminate cut-price labor, the newly federated national government in 1903 introduced legislation that curtailed non-European immigration and targeted non-white residents for deportation. Since no external homeland could be plausibly assigned to Aborigines, the remedy for the challenge that they posed to white Australia was not projection without but absorption within. From around the turn of the twentieth century, a range of measures were introduced that were designed to detach individuals from Aboriginal communities, stripping them of their Aboriginal identities and incorporating them into white society. Thus the assimilation police was a symptom of Aborigines' containment within Australian society, constituting an internal correlate to the White Australia Policy.

—Patrick Wolfe, from "Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race," published in The American Historical Review

[pcttrailsidereader]

We Are Not Alone

A few years ago we were hiking the PCT in Rockland Basin near the Domelands in California. As we ascended from the basin toward Bear Mountain my hiking partner Rees easily marched ahead. For the record, he is faster/stronger than I am on the ups while I am a little faster on the downs. I had drifted a good distance behind Rees as we began this four mile climb.

As I reached what turned out to be, to my a dismay a false summit, I could see Rees sitting by the side of the trail. I was elated to have caught up to him. He greeted me with the news that as he reached the top he had been met by a wild cat...likely a Bobcat. They had checked each other out until I approached and the feline skittered away. I was disappointed to have missed this encounter. It did remind both of us that there were other beings we are sharing the trail with.

The Seattle Times published an article in their Pacific Magazine describing one more effect of the fires we have experienced with consistent frequency here in Washington state. Specifically how these fires have devastated Lynx habitat. However with careful management may also create potential opportunities for this native wild cat. The Canadian Lynx population is slowly coming back in Washington. This includes places where the PCT makes its way ever closer to the Canadian border. I found this article hopeful and like the encounter above Rockland Basin, reminded me of yet another being we share the trail with. The article follows below.

WINTHROP, Okanogan County — On a subfreezing morning in March, Carmen Vanbianchi is crouched in the snow, cramming chunks of roadkill deer into a pouch she calls her meat purse.

She wrenches the zipper closed, then lines up a half-dozen tiny bottles of scent lures — pungent concoctions laced with urine, glandular extracts and mystery ingredients meant to attract wildlife. Some are so skunky, staff at the local post office told Vanbianchi she could pick up her next delivery behind the building.

But when you’re trying to nab Washington’s most endangered native cat, a little stink is the least of your challenges..... link to article here

[intonightcity]

xxx Migrating some muses from solo blogs here as they fit/connect in with the story I'm building. Along with the obvious interconnection with Landon ( @wynterlanding ) who has a lot of plots & stories he covers in this city OR in the Hollywood verse is connected to a lot of the entertainment & beyond districts. Particular muses here are also part of his backstory, as well as the backstory of his twin Lance Wynter, which adheres to one separate universe in particular etc.

Muses established from blogs a long time ago but moving here include:

Dawn Black. Model & Adult Star. Esme's ex gf. Kristen Stewart

Lucian Craven. Owner of Diamond Casino & Head of Severin. Abel Tesfaye

Esmeralda Domingo. Diamond Casino Manager & Assistant. Shay Mitchell

Cristobal Mardones. Gold & Gloss CEO. Esme's ex bf. Pedro Pascal

Nadine Moore. Doctor of Pathology at Dawn's Light Hospital. Freema Agyeman

Jade Winthrope. Forensic Analyst at Night City PD. Shailene Woodley

[thelandofsims]

Winthrop and Belle had enough to build the layout of the house. Praying that they can make lots of money in a short time because Belle had three babies(?) in the asylum.

Fortunately, her first baby,Perseus, was given back to her. The biological father of Perseus is Flynn, but Winthrop will be raising him.

Winthrop is doing a great job already.

[bookish-loner]

“Powerless” by Elsie Silver

5⭐️/5⭐️

3🌶/5🌶

“Like we’re two opposite ends of a magnet, there’s no resisting the pull. There are forces beyond us at work now, and we’re at their mercy. Maybe it’s science. Maybe it’s fate.”

Sloane Winthrop’s wedding day has arrived, but something doesn’t feel right. After receiving information about her fiance’s less-than-faithful behavior right before walking down the aisle, she decides to leave him at the altar. Her best friend and childhood crush, Jasper Gervais helps her escape to their refuge: Wishing Well Ranch. Once the two are alone, they’re forced to face the feelings they’ve denied for years. What’s more, devastating news about Sloane’s cousin, Beau, rocks their fragile happiness. Wanting to support their loved ones, Sloane and Jasper volunteer to take a roadtrip to Gold Rush Ranch and help Violet. Could time alone be the perfect solution to their problems? Or will it only accelerate the tough conversations they’ve been putting off?

-I was really hyped for “Powerless”, and this book absolutely delivers. Somehow Elsie managed to top “Heartless”, and Jasper is my new favorite MMC. This book is full of great tropes: runaway bride, there’s only one room at the hotel, childhood friends to lovers. But more than that, Sloane and Jasper are really interesting characters. I enjoyed every second of this book and their love story.

-I haven’t read very many friends to lovers romances, but I think it’s a trope I need to explore further. Elsie did an excellent job establishing a background for Sloane and Jasper that was easy to buy into. Jasper is a character readers are somewhat familiar with, he makes appearances in “Flawless” and “Heartless”. However, Sloane’s first appearance is a brief scene in “Heartless”. Jasper and Sloane are best friends, but readers aren’t privy to their relationship until “Powerless”.

-Jasper’s backstory is in many ways a mirror opposite to Sloane’s. Jasper comes from a low income family, and his parents abandoned him after a horrifying accident involving his sister. Sloane’s father is a wealthy businessman, allowing her to grow up in a protective bubble. Yet, despite Sloane and Jasper’s differences, they begin to confide in each other and build a strong friendship. Outside of their romance, I enjoyed their friendship, and learning more about how they’ve constantly supported each other for nearly two decades.

-Sloane’s character arc is one that I think will resonate with many readers, it certainly did for me. I loved the comparison between Sloane being a people pleaser, and a ballerina in a music box. You open the box when you want, wind it up, and the ballerina pops out dancing and smiling. It’s not much different for Sloane. All of her life she was told what to do, including who to marry. The breaking point for her is simultaneously sad and satisfying. We can see how deeply she cares for her parents and their approval, but along the way she lost sight of her personal identity and happiness.

-The spice wasn’t what I was expecting, but I mean that in a good way. Readers will get to enjoy a level of intimacy not seen before in Elsie’s novels. By the end of the book Jasper’s kinks make a lot of sense, and Sloane’s ability to accept them proves how compatible they are.

-I loved reading about all the previous couples, including the ones from the Gold Rush Ranch series; it felt like checking in with an old friend. While these books do contain stories about singular relationships, I think the Chestnut Springs series will be more enjoyable if they are read in order.

[drakinq]

112524

Winthrop Harbor, IL 10:42AM

I was just saying I see how I’ve acted like the Israelites in tons of ways and it doesn’t do justice to show what God has done for me. Even today, eating fast food to quickly make me feel better. Constantly complaining about the family to the family instead of bringing it to God or saving it for therapy. Trying to give insight to nunu about my struggles when they’re clearly not meant for him to see. Some other ways I sin against God is wishing I was out of here instead of giving gratitude he brought me to a place for weakness to build a stronger foundation with him for his plan for my life which is exactly happening through the struggles of being in a constant state of triggered. Not praying more than I’m talking to others and putting my faith and trust and others to have the same understanding that Gods blessed me with. Caving into my flesh. God giving me a stable place to rest my head, shower and feed myself properly and rebuild and me complaining about the tools aren’t up to my standards so they are hard to use instead of just appreciating what I am working with because with would be way harder going back without. Just because it’s not the way I like it, or it’s causing me discomfort doesn’t mean it can’t get the job done. So leaning into acknowledging what God is providing that’s getting through. I think there’s a fine line between acknowledging my injustices and mistreatment vs being consumed by them to a point of making you want to sin for comfort. Because when we make those acknowledgments, we allow ourselves to feel the emotions behind it and it’s super easy to let those emotions consume us to a point of discomfort where we seek outside of the Lord. If you are seeking outside the Lord, hopefully God puts people in place that will comfort you, uplift you , encourage you and send you back to him. ( I think my brother just wants to send you back to the Lord without trying to uplift and comfort. ) I also think if we don’t have those people to lean on when we are to a point of seeking outside the Lord, it’s important to set up our own tools that will bring us back to him. I think this is where the fear of my brother acknowledging how is trauma and who it made him today because it makes him him feel like he’s losing sight of God or not acknowledging the things God did for him to fill everything he lacked. I, on the other hand, think it’s important to acknowledge your struggles, emotions and injustices and mistreatments as they can bring you to a place of weakness, to receive Gods understanding, as well as fully appreciate when God leads you out of the wilderness. If you have the proper support in place, whether that be in the people god placed in my life or the wisdom God gave me to be self sufficient at bringing myself back to him. Those safety nets really allow myself to explore the emotions God gave me, and vast majority of other things. & I think that’s what my brother is trying to tell me. That if I just acknowledged Gods goodness more than I acknowledge my mistreatment and injustices then I would be at peace. What I’m trying to get him to understand is that I ultimately do which is why I’m able to still have such ambitions as well. I feel like anytime I acknowledge and injustice or mistreatment and how it makes me feel, I’m ignoring Gods peace and I don’t think that true. If he let me talk he would see how I always bring it back to God. I also am trying to set him up to be a support in my life that shows him when you uplift and encourage someone they can always use that to bring themselves back to God. But Nunu doesn’t want to be that for me, he wants me to be hyper independent in the same way that he is. And in a way this is another way to give gratitude to God. My families coldness to me and constant neglect of my emotional needs is allowing me to get closer to God. Nunus form of tough love is forcing me to stop seeking and setting up a system to pull myself back to him without leaning on outside help. & although this a good foundation for me so I can stop feeling so heartbroken when those can’t show up for me

The only problem with that is, I think God wants us to lean on our brothers and sisters