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margridarnauds · 6 years ago

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laz, fox, ivanova, delenn, lyta

THANKS AVERY.

Lazare de Ga-Peyrol

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav

otp(s): *Opens up Wip* *The ghost of a dozen Ronan/Lazare WIPs come back to haunt me*

other ship(s): Ronan/Laz/Olympe is still Very Important to me, I ship Charles/Laz in terms of “Things That Happened in Laz’s Past that fucked him up badly so now he can commiserate with Olympe over unrequited crushes on the royals”. Personally, I don’t see that one as anything more than a one-sided crush that Charles took advantage of, but, like, it’s a Thing. (Also, the curtain calls for Toho are…suspect for me, given that the two of them are paired together. Could be nothing, I don’t know, and I’m trying to keep myself from asking anyone who’s seen it because I want to see the Toho with as untouched a mind as possible. I know, I know that’s funny coming from me.)

#noromo ship(s): Laz and Solene spend most of their time together laying back and talking shit about Ronan, with Laz occasionally going to her for advice because I THINK I BROKE HIM WHAT DO I DO which then involves Solene having to reassure him that, no, Ronan’s just Like That.

When I don’t ship Olympe/Laz (which is…..90% of the time,) I highly support them as a BROTP who routinely beard for one another at important events, bullshitting some reason for why they can’t be together while they bond over both ditching the royals for their own respective Mazurier siblings and both being repressed in different ways. Olympe isn’t as emotionally represssed as Lazare, but “Les Mots que l'on ne dit Pas” confirms that she doesn’t say a LOT of what she thinks, and Takarazuka!Olympe is obviously always restraining herself to an absolutely insane degree of politeness, especially in her interactions with Charles. Also, Lazare would at least be aware of other gay men, though I can’t feel it was something Grandpapa de Fuck encouraged, whereas the extent to which women were allowed to know about the possibility of being in a sexual relationship with another woman is...debated. Like, the rumors around Marie Antoinette really were a watershed moment there and Olympe should PROBABLY be aware of that, but...it’s dicey. It’s very dicey

Also, Papa du Puget and Laz had a father/son type of relationship, with Pierre-Francois essentially taking one look at this broken, emotionless wreck of a human being and going “OLYMPE? DID YOU SAY YOU WANTED A BROTHER?” This was sadly cut short in the Zuka version by Laz doing…that, effectively losing two people close to him with one hastily made order.

crack ship(s): Given Laz’s relative lack of screentime, nearly ANYTHING he’s involved with is inherently a crackship. As far as “things I’ve toyed around with but generally refuse to acknowledge”: Lazare/Louis. It would put a new perspective on Laz’s devotion to the royal family and drive to protect them, and parallel even closer to Olympe’s crush on the Queen. It would also make his eventual, inevitable failure to protect the King even worse. I did toy with a one-shot for Herbert from Tanz der Vampire and Laz, where an older Laz would have to fight off the vampire’s amorous advances while on a mission from Napoleon.

fav headcanon(s): I will die on the hill of Sugar Daddy Laz, even if Toho seems dedicated to ruining my hopes and dreams. (”BUT THE COOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAATTTTSSSSSS” I cry out into the abyss, to which they reply, “Lol, what coats?”) Like, it’s a fantastic excuse for having Ronan and Laz be in regular contact, deepening that relationship while also explaining where the fuck Ronan is sleeping every night. (And gives us Insufferable Neatnik Lazare VS………Ronan)

Also, the idea that Laz never learned Latin or Greek and that, in general, his education was constrained only to military shit, which opens him up to ridicule when he’s around other aristocrats at Versailles or whenever he’s invited to, say, a ball in Paris. (Charles in particular enjoys playing with him, because it’s a means of asserting himself even if he himself doesn’t keep up with most of it, historically having said that he couldn’t read 4 pages without being bored.)

After the Bastille, no matter what, Laz resigns from the army or is yeeted out. Like, I genuinely can’t see any real way where he sees everything he’s seen and done everything he’s done and is still in the army. I think he’d either be a good scapegoat for the violence in the streets (with a HUGE possibility of retaliative violence by the mob, especially in the immediate aftermath), or he would resign himself out of guilt and the realization that the army that he joined and devoted himself to was never going to be the same again.

ALSO. HE IS AUTISMS. I WILL FIGHT FOR THIS ONE.

Fox

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav

otp(s): Xanatos/Fox/Owen

other ship(s): I could ship Elisa/Fox, especially after “Eye of the Beholder.” I’m not sure where I stand on Hyena/Fox. Like, I think there’s *potential* there, given that OH MY GOD THEY WERE CELLMATES, but it’s not a dynamic I’m particularly interested in.

#noromo ship(s): Fox/Dingo, as the two members of the Pack who were able to break free of that shit.

crack ship(s): ….I don’t think I really have any, at least for her? I’d have to rewatch Gargoyles again (oh, the pain, the pain), but yeah, I don’t think I really have any solid crackships for her.

fav headcanon(s): She, Owen, and Xanatos are a throuple who raise Alex together, with Owen looking after Alex when the other two are away. (I mean, this verges on canon but…)

Also, we know that canonically, Irish Mythology exists in the Gargoyles, and Fox is half Third Race, so, like…there’s some huge magnificent crossover potential there. I have mixed feelings about how she and Bres would get along, but, like…Bres has always had a soft spot for the troublemakers, and they could bond over their shared daddy issues. (Real angsty shit: His son, Ruadan, was a redhead with a penchant for theft and trickery, and seeing Fox might trigger Dad Mode in him.) Catch her and him conspiring to steal back the sword Orna from Bres’ brother Ogma to give to his old friend and ally Tethra as a birthday present. (Though he was less than pleased when Puck tried to troll HIM, Bres and Puck have DEFINITELY conspired at some point to troll the Tuatha dé and might or might not have had a brief fling before Bres met Sreng, I don’t accept constructive criticisms on this one. Puck gives him Hell on occasion for being an absolute sap for a boring Fir Bolg with no sense of humor that he’d met [1] time, Bres is thrilled when he finds out about Xanatos/Fox/Owen because it gives him so much ammunition.)

Titania is less than pleased with the situation, Oberon is amused, and Bres doesn’t give a fuck what either of them thinks because he ran out of fucks in the 18th Century BCE. Like, c’mon, my dude’s buried the body of a freaky Grecian witch, he’s died from being poisoned by a bunch of bogstuff, he’s died multiple times, he doesn’t care WHAT the King and Queen of the Third Race think. And, of course Fox is always going to be best bros with someone who doesn’t care about what her mother thinks, this is the woman who canonically went in a ninja outfit to break into her father’s airship just to tell him she was pregnant after trying to ruin his company. That woman lied to her for years and tried to steal her son, like...No.

The only issue would be that Xanatos and he would probably get into intricate debates on Capitalism VS Socialism at the dinner table, both of them sporting smarmy little smirks as they do so. (Puck is thrilled even if Owen stoically handles the whole situation, exchanging long-suffering looks with Sreng.) Also at some point shortly after the debacle with Orna, Alex ends up with, like, a HUGE Irish wolfhound (not a Gargoyle beast like Bronx and Boudicca, since they’re too closely associated with Cu Chulainn and, by extension, Lugh for Bres’s taste), slightly bigger than a miniature pony with red ears, golden eyes, and a crimson and gold collar of velvet, which Owen has to explain is a gift fairly given and that to refuse it might be to offend him. (Bres’ initial idea was to give a giant pig, a descendant of his prized monstrosity Babgiter before Owen talked him out of it, which his inner Puck greatly resented because having a huge pig running around Xanatos enterprises would be hilarious.) Fox routinely threatens the thing, but somehow it can often be found curled up on the couch next to her or seated next to her during chess games with Xanatos. At some point, it bites Oberon’s leg when he gets a little too pushy in his opinions on childcare, earning Fox’s eternal love and respect (and the best kibble money can buy + unlimited scratchies because he’s a Good Boi.)

Ivanova,

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav

otp(s): Talia/Ivanova

other ship(s): Delenn/Ivanova.

#noromo ship(s): Sheridan/Ivanova are so good as a brother/sister team

crack ship(s): I seem to vaguely recall shipping her/Kelsey from the one ep. with Jason Ironheart but I’m too scared to go back into our pm logs to find it because I feel like that would be going into a dark, dark abyss. Also, a lot of scrolling.

fav headcanon(s): LET HER AND TALIA LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER, DAMMIT. THEY LEFT THE AVENUE OPEN.

Delenn,

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav

otp(s): Delenn/Sheridan (Fuck you JMS)

other ship(s): Ivanova/Delenn

#noromo ship(s): Lennier/Delenn, unfortunately for Lennier.

crack ship(s): None that I can think of, atm? I know I’ve probably thought of at least ONE with you during one of our Cursed conversations, but none spring to mind.

fav headcanon(s): I didn’t want to say it, but fuck I’m starved for headcanons atm because thinking machine broke. (I blame it on the terrible combo of Bres + Lazare, AKA The Long-Haired Idiots With Daddy Issues And Terrible Coping Mechanisms Club).

That band around her head that is left over from when she was more...Minbari in appearance is hella sensitive. Most of the time, in the little amount of quiet time they get, she’ll lay her head on John’s shoulder and he’ll gently rub his fingers over it as she closes her eyes in meditation, the movement roughly akin rubbing the back of a cat’s neck. During frick fracks, it’s a little bit more...intense.

Lyta

overall: who? / i hate them / i dislike them / kinda wanna fight them / they’re alright / i like them / i love them / *accidentally drops thousands of pictures of them*

opinion: again, who??? / the purest bean / cinnamon roll / who knows really / sinnamon roll / the problematic fav

otp(s): I don’t think I really have any solid Lyta ships yet? On some level, I feel like she’s kind of, unfortunately, flown under my radar? (Which is definitely going to impact the headcanon section as well) I feel like she’s going to be one of those characters where I’m going to have to watch things over a few times. Lyta/Black leather?

other ship(s): Lyta/G’Kar, Lyta/Kosh (I hate that this is the extent of ships I’ve got for the obvious lesbian character, but Lyta is a kinky fuck and I’m going to expose the little vorlonfucker for who she is.)

#noromo ship(s): Zack/Lyta. LET ! LYTA ! HAVE ! A ! FRIEND !

crack ship(s): Lyta/Ezri Dax from DS9. Don’t ask me why, just…trust me on this one.

fav headcanon(s): Honestly, I don’t feel like I know her well enough to have formed anything solid for her. I have a half-baked idea that her current issues as far as feeling kind of used and alone has its roots in first being used by Psi Corps and then by the Vorlons, being in this position where she really couldn’t ask for or receive that recognition even when she was starved for it.

#janetcarter #asks

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 7 years ago

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hi!! so ive started reading more about Napoleon, tho I really don't know anything tbh lol but i have a super random question and i thought to ask you cuz you are a great knower of things. but i was reading about the infernal machine plot and I was kinda confused by the fact that he punished like all the jacobins but only kinda sorta punished the royalists even tho it was a royalist plot, and i just wanted to know why he hated the jacobins so much, at least in comparison? (sorry if this is dumb)

So two things:

1) Napoleon convinced himself that the attempt was made by the remainders of more extremist Revolutionaries (particularly the Jacobins) and had over one hundred suspects rounded up. He expressed feeling betrayed by the Revolutionaries and that they were “ungrateful” for all he had done. But, this is Napoleon who was a) super melodramatic and b) a great political manipulator.

2) Fouche, head of police, went after the Royalists. He found François Carbon, the man who made the bomb who then gave up the names of his compatriots: Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régent, Joseph de Limoëlan, Georges Cadoudal, Jean-Baptiste Coster, Joyaux d’Assas, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and La Haye-Saint-Hilaire.

Carbon and Saint-Régent were executed on April 20, 1801. Limoëlan fled to the United States where he died in Charleston in 1826. Caduodal fled to England and maintained commitment to his anti-Bonapartist plotting (there were a few other plans he was part of including a ridiculous kidnapping plot that went nowhere).

(Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régent, a royalist officer, igniting the wick of the infernal machine)

So, where does this leave us?

If you believe Napoleon truly thought the Jacobins were guilty then it’s just a very plain reading of a man who got the wrong end of the stick.

With Napoleon, though, I am cautious about reading things too literally. I think Napoleon very much was aware of the opportunity the Plot presented to rid himself of the vocal remaining more-left, more-Republican Jacobins.

The Plot and its aftermath was therefore a convenient opportunity to round up and frighten anti-Bonapartists (of all stripes).

Prior to the attempt, several Jacobins had published pamphlets calling Napoleon a tyrant, comparing him to Caesar and other less than favourable accusations. Napoleon was a great believer in nipping problems in the bud and clamping down on insurrection before it got too big. So to this end, the Plot fell right into his lap and was used accordingly.

Innocent people had died! Innocent people had been wounded! It was a threat to the government! He had all the politically emotional leverage he needed to eradicate whoever he felt was a threat to him, his allies and the government.

Early January 1801 Napoleon exiled 130 Jacobins (the “remains of Robespierre”) and four were executed.

A side effect of the Plot was the increase of consular powers. Intended? Untinended? I would hedge bets on the latter but Napoleon certainly took advantage of the opportunity to consolidate more power into the hands of the first consul position and weaken the other organs of government.

The other thing to remember is that Napoleon in these years was attempting to unify a fractured country. Going after the Royalists could have been read, at the time, of a continuation of Revolutionary extremism which was something Napoleon was attempting to distance himself from (especially as a former Jacobin). Whereas targeting the remaining vocal Jacobins was not only a means of showing that the current government was more centre and moderate but also a means of procuring some credit with the royalists.

Napoleon was trying to balance two very disparate views in French society and that affected much of his early policy and navigation of events.

The Infernal Device Plot also occurred only months after the “Conspiration” des poignards which happened in September/October 1800. That one is a fun, very Vetinari-ish, plot. Basically, the police infiltrated an anti-Bonapartist group and facilitated their schemes then “caught” them red handed when they tried to stab Napoleon at the theatre (Napoleon just get Netflix, stop going to the theatre).

The “Conspiration” des poignards was also presented as a Jacobin plot. The reason I mention it is that (it’s a fucking hilarious plot and I love it) it lends credence to the idea that Napoleon was just cleaning house of the more extremist revolutionaries left over from those heady Thermidorian days.

Thank you for the ask! :D I hope this helps (and makes sense).

#napoleon #napoleon bonparte #19th century #history #ask #reply #Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise #infernal device polit #Conspiration des poignards

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omnianon · 7 years ago

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Dissecting the #PizzaGateConspiracy Theories

By GREGOR AISCH, JON HUANG and CECILIA KANG DEC. 10, 2016

In the span of a few weeks, a false rumor that Hillary Clinton andher top aides were involved in various crimes snowballed into awild conspiracy theory that they were running a child-traffickingring out of a Washington pizza parlor. The fast evolution of thefalse theory revealed how a powerful mix of fake news and socialmedia led an armed North Carolina man to investigate the rumorsabout the pizza place, Comet Ping Pong, last Sunday. Related Article

How the #PizzaGate conspiracy theory evolved

WikiLeaks began releasing emails hacked from the account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, a month before the election.

Social media users on a popular Reddit forum dedicated to Donald J. Trump and 4chan’s far-right fringe message board searched the releases for evidence of wrongdoing.

Within the emails were discussions that include the word pizza, including dinner plans between Mr. Podesta and his lobbyist brother, Tony Podesta.

A participant on 4chan connected the phrase “cheese pizza” to pedophiles, who on chat boards use the initials “c.p.” to denote child pornography.

Following the use of “pizza,” theorists focused on the Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong. The WikiLeaks emails revealed that John Podesta corresponded with Comet’s owner, James Alefantis, who had connections to Democratic operatives.

The theory started snowballing, taking on the meme #PizzaGate. Fake news articles emerged and were spread on Twitter and Facebook.

The false stories swept up neighboring businesses and bands that had played at Comet. Theories about kill rooms, underground tunnels, satanism and even cannibalism emerged in fabricated stories and on social media.

On Dec. 4, Edgar M. Welch, a 28-year-old from North Carolina, arrived at Comet with a military-style rifle and a handgun. The police said he fired the rifle inside the pizzeria, hurting no one, and surrendered after finding no evidence to support claims of child slaves being held there.

The shooting did not put the theory to rest. Purveyors of the theory and fake news pointed to the mainstream media as conspirators of a coverup to protect what they said was a crime ring.

The conspiracy theory took the internet by storm. YouTube clips pushed the false story, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. Tens of thousands of individuals subscribed to message boards, feeding into theories with fake news reports and crowd-driven detective work. The police refuted the claims of an online pedophile ring running out of Comet Ping Pong, but the theories continued. Here are eight that gave #PizzaGate momentum.

Claim: Podesta’s leaked emailscontained secret code language.

Combing through John Podesta’s leaked emails, members of a far-right fringe community on the social media site 4chan and Trump supporters on Reddit pulled out a number of emails unconnected to politics. Several of them mentioned pizza or other Italian food.

Did you leave a handkerchief

09-02-2014

From: Susan Sandler

To: John Podesta

The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yorus? They can send it if you want. I know you’re busy, so feel free not to respond if it’s not yours or you don’t want it.

Source: Wikileaks

09-04-2014

From: John Podesta

To: Susan Sandler

It's mine, but not worth worrying about.

Source: Wikileaks

The most cited email revolved around a handkerchief left at a house Mr. Podesta visited with a real estate agent. It led to speculation that the handkerchief and map on it were clues to some sort of wrongdoing.

Claim: The emails containedcoded messages about pedophilia.

The term “cheese pizza” had previously been used on 4chan as code for “child pornography.” An anonymous user speculated that other food-related terms could also have double meanings.

An anonymous post on 4chan’s “so-called alt-right” discussion board in November.

This interpretation spread, and other emails containing supposed code words were reinterpreted as evidence of pedophile activity. For example, this 2015 email was taken as an inquiry about providing sexual services.

Walnut sauce?

04-11-2015

From: Jim Steyer

To: John Podesta and Mary Podesta

Hey John,

We know you're a true master of cuisine and we have appreciated that for years …

But walnut sauce for the pasta? Mary, plz tell us the straight story, was the sauce actually very tasty?

Source: Wikileaks

04-11-2015

From: John Podesta

To: Jim Steyer and Mary Podesta

It's an amazing Ligurian dish made with crushed walnuts made into a paste. So stop being so California.

Source: Wikileaks

The Podesta brothers were famous in Washington circles for their Italian cooking and big salon and fund-raising dinners, often cooked by their mother.

Claim: Comet Ping Pong is at the center of it.

Some pizza-related emails mentioned a Washington pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, whose owner is connected to prominent Democratic figures. An email about a pizza fund-raiser there fed speculation about sex parties.

Comet Ping Pong and OBAMA...and Podesta?.

09-27-2008

From: James Alefantis

To: John Podesta

Hello. Some young lawyer type friends of mine are hosting an Obama Fundraiser at Comet Ping Pong on Thursday Night and then watching the debate. Should be about 150 people and they are raising between 25 and 35 thousand dollars. Would you be willing to stop by around 8 o'clock or so and make a little speech. They (and I) would be thrilled to have you of course. I understand if you are not available.

Also, I saw that you are reading at Politics & Prose soon. What can we do afterward? Would you like to have a dinner at my places?!?

Big or small. What do you think?

Source: Wikileaks

The pizza parlor owner was swept into the rumormongering on message boards. Amateur online sleuths linked the pizzeria’s signage to satanic symbols. Fake stories emerged putting the restaurant in the center of a child-trafficking ring.

A conspiracy theorist analyzes Comet Ping Pong’s signage. DC PizzaGate

Claim: An Instagram photo is proof of alink between Obama and Comet Ping Pong.

A photo of President Obama playing table tennis was used by conspiracy theorists to connect him to the pizza restaurant. In a video, this photo is introduced with “here is Obama at Comet Ping Pong.”

Scene from the “#PizzaGate - What We Know So Far” video YouTube

However, this photo is of a framed picture within the White House, and the original photograph was taken inside the White House, not the Comet Ping Pong restaurant. Mr. Alefantis took the picture of the photograph at the White House and posted it on his Instagram account, according to a spokesperson for the restaurant.

From “Celebrities Playing Table Tennis,” original submission by Timmy La

Inside the White House, where the picture was taken.

Google Streetview

Claim: Comet Ping Pong and other nearbybusinesses use pedophile symbols in logos.

According to an F.B.I. document released by WikiLeaks, the following symbols are used by pedophiles to identify sexual preferences.

“Boy lover”

“Girl lover”

“Little boy lover”

“Child lover”

Conspiracy theorists claimed that other design elements used by businesses near the Comet Ping Pong restaurant also resembled pedophile symbols.

Besta Pizza logo

Comet Ping

Pong logo

Symbol found in Comet Ping Pong menu

Icon found on

Terasol website

However, countless other major American brand logos contain similar shapes. Hearts, triangles and spirals are widely used symbols in business logos.

AOL

Wall’s ice-cream

Time Warner Cable

MSN

Claim: Comet Ping Pong had a secret killroom and posted a picture of it on Instagram.Fake stories claimed underground tunnelsand child trafficking in the basement.

Instagram

The photo shows a walk-in refrigerator supposedly in the restaurant, described as part of a network of underground facilities. However, a reporter can confirm that there is no basement in Comet Ping Pong.

Comet’s spokesperson said the photo was taken during a visit to a restaurant Mr. Alefantis was considering leasing. Comet uses a low-slung refrigerator at Buck’s Fishing & Camping, Mr. Alefantis’s other restaurant two doors down on the same block, to store produce, cheese and proofing dough.

The walk-in refrigerator filled with Comet’s ingredients. Photo by Cecilia Kang

Claim: The owner of Comet Ping Pongadmitted he was a pedophile – on a T-shirt.

Instagram

This photo was found on James Alefantis’s Instagram account, and #PizzaGate believers claimed it as proof that he is a pedophile.

However, the man with the black T-shirt was not James Alefantis. It was a co-owner of a different restaurant in Washington, named L’Enfant Cafe-Bar.

(And in case you’re wondering, that restaurant was named after Pierre Charles L’Enfant, an American colonist from France who served under George Washington during the Revolutionary War.)

Claim: John and Tony Podesta personallykidnapped Madeleine McCann fromher bed at a Portugal resort in 2007.

Another part of the conspiracy theory was a supposed link between the Podesta brothers and the child abduction case of Madeleine McCann on May 3, 2007. Two e-fit (electronic facial identification technique) photos released by British detectives were repeatedly used as evidence.

A conspiracy theory poster comparing the Podesta brothers and police sketches. This version has been edited to remove Madeleine McCann’s image.

However, the two e-fits were based on descriptions of a single suspect by two witnesses, not two different suspects, a crucial detail that was left out.

According to The Guardian, the witnesses described the man as “white, aged between 20 and 40, with short brown hair, of medium build, medium height and clean shaven.” In 2007, Tony Podesta was 64 and John Podesta was 58.

The information that the Podestas were in Portugal is solely sourced to “FBI Anon,” quoted in Victurus Libertas, a conspiracy-minded news site that suggests, among other things, that the Titanic was deliberately sunk and that the queen of England is a reptilian alien.

#washington (dc)#pizzagate #democrats #republicans

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theconspiracyconstruct · 6 years ago

Audio

Episode 9: All Good Things Must Come to an End

Click “Keep Reading” for the transcript!

Hey, welcome back. I’m Madi, and on this episode, the final episode, we’re going to be taking a look at everything we’ve learned so far. Let’s get into it.

When I started this podcast there were several key questions I wanted to answer. The first is what do people in my everyday life think of conspiracy theories? To answer this, I interviewed three people that represented three different circles within my life: my parents, my teachers, and my friends. In the interview with my parents, I found out my mom believes in the theory of aliens landing in New Mexico, which I never knew before. However, I did know that my dad was involved in JFK assassination theories. In that episode, you can hear me laugh in the background when he starts talking about the JFK assassination because I knew he was going to talk about that. In fact, I wrote that interview question with him and his fascination with that theory in mind (Prentice and Prentice).

My friend Abe’s views were similar but different in that he did believe in conspiracies but not in any “big-name” conspiracy theories, because the conspiracies that actually occur “are usually a lot less interesting than the ones that people talk about” (Weinstein). Like Abe, Dr. Coven asserted that there certainly have been conspiracies, but not to the extent that people reported them. He differed in that he showed a much greater distaste for conspiracy theories than the other interviewees. Dr. Coven stated that “belief in conspiracy theories takes away the understanding of true underlying causes. And that can’t be helpful because you’re not attacking the problem you’re attacking this fairytale version of the problem”. If people were simply “entertained”, there was no issue. It becomes an issue “the minute it becomes a substitution for actual knowledge” (Coven).

This leads to my second question: do conspiracy theories have consequences? In terms of affecting higher decision making such as bureaucracies, what I saw was that, no, not really. Most of the time, they’re just up against big groups that just dismiss them as fringe theories. For example, NASA merely dismisses the moon landing hoax theory. There have been some impacts. For example, the conspiracy theories around the JFK assassination did prompt Lyndon B. Johnson to call for the creation of the Warren Commission. (Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy and Schechter). Then, the critique of the Warren Commission led to the House Select Committee on Assassinations publishing another report (Gillon). But, in my research, I didn’t see any of the theories create long-lasting, permanent changes in a bureaucracy or government.

However, I agree with Dr. Coven that the real consequences arise when conspiracy theories become “a substitution for actual knowledge” (Coven). The documentary Behind the Curve also touches a bit on what Dr. Coven is talking about. In the documentary, it speaks about how a lot of believers in fringe theories cherry-pick their evidence in the way that they only choose to look at things that prove their theories. This can be seen in one of the experiments that flat earthers conducted in the documentary. They used a gyroscope, a device that can pick up the motion of the Earth, to try and disprove the fact that the Earth rotates. However, the gyroscope does, in fact, pick up the Earth’s rotation. But, they’re not willing to accept that. So, they dismiss it as it just picking up the motion of the sky. So, they put it in a chamber to prevent it from detecting the sky’s motion, but even then it picks up motion. Even though this is directly proving the rotation of the Earth, they dismiss it because it doesn’t lend evidence to their belief (Behind the Curve). Thus, as Dr. Coven said, the theory morphs into a substitution for knowledge (Coven).

Also in the documentary, Dr. Joe Pierre, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, talks about the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is when people who don’t really have any expertise about something have this false confidence and believe that they are incredibly knowledgeable about something. (Behind the Curve). This brings me into my next question, which is why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Well, different people believe in them for different reasons.

A 2011 study conducted at the University of Kent asserts that “individuals use the social-cognitive tool of projection when making judgments”, and thus found that “individuals were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories if they thought they would be willing, personally, to participate in the alleged conspiracies”. They also found “a relationship between Machiavellianism and conspiracy beliefs” (Douglas and Sutton, 2). Machiavellianism is a term in psychology that refers to someone who will manipulate and deceive others if it serves their own interest. They’re focused on their own ambition and prioritize their own goals over relationships. These tendencies stem from a lack of morals (“What Is Machiavellianism in Psychology?”). But what does all of this mean? Well, looking at this information, we can summarize that people who have a looser grasp on their morals—such as those who exhibit Machiavellian traits do—are more willing to subscribe to conspiracy theories. This is because they use the tool of “projection”, projecting their own lack of morals onto others (Douglas and Sutton, 2). Those with loose morals may be more likely to think that other people would also have loose morals. Thus, they can more easily envision people conspiring and falling prey to corruption. This also translates into how we’re likely to believe a conspiracy theory that highlights our own morals. For example, when people dislike a political figure, they’re more likely to subscribe to a conspiracy theory that paints said figure in a poor light. Those who dislike Trump are more likely to believe that Trump conspired or conspires with Russia.

People can also use conspiracy theories to protect themselves. For example, in the JFK assassination conspiracy, it’s scary to think that just some guy—someone like us, someone who lives among us—could commit an atrocious act like that. Instead, it’s easier to adopt a conspiracy theory that the government orchestrated it because we view the government as an other. We view it as this large, powerful group, so it’s easier for us to comprehend that a group like that could orchestrate the assassination rather than just someone like us. As Mr. Coven said, this can be dangerous because it’s not addressing the real problem, it’s “attacking this fairytale version of the problem” (Coven).

Another reason has to do with schizotypy. Schizotypy is a collection of traits including “relatively untrusting, ideologically eccentric and prone to having unusual perceptual experiences (i.g. sensing stimuli that are not actually present)”. Schizotypy is considered one of the strongest predictors of conspiracy belief. Why is this? Well, people with higher schizotypy levels have a stronger urge to feel unique. Thus, they take to believing in unconventional and “non-mainstream” ideas because it allows them to stand out. Joining these conspiracy theories also introduces them to a community of people that think like they do (Hart).

This also ties back into Behind the Curve. Near the end of the documentary, there’s the assertion that it’s an identity struggle. And it is. All conspiracy theories are. In fact, all beliefs in general are. It’s human nature to want to try to find your identity. In terms of flat Earth, it’s something that flat earthers can define themselves through because it makes them feel special. It gives them a higher purpose in life. It makes them a protagonist of something (Behind the Curve). Moreover, it means they’re not alone anymore. As I spoke of before with individuals who exhibit schizotypal behavior, it gives them a community of people who think like they do and who have been through similar things they have.

And I was speaking in the context of flat Earth there, but that’s the case with any cause. One of the things that stuck with me most from the documentary is the question “Where are you a flat earther? Where are you and your people the protagonists in some sort of fight?” (Behind the Curve). Because everyone has something that they fight for and something that they view themselves as the protagonist of. Just as it’s human nature to want to identify, to want to be around a community of like-minded people, it’s human nature to want to ascribe greater meaning to life.

Another piece of Behind the Curve that really stuck with me is its call for empathy. Argument isn’t progressive. When you attack someone’s belief system, all that’s going to do is make them defensive. They’ll shut down. There’s no way they’re going to listen to anything you have to say after that. If there was anything that I wanted to accomplish with this podcast series, it was to encourage empathy. There may be some things that you heard over the course of this podcast that you thought was incredibly unfounded. But you need to understand that just as strongly as you believe in the causes you fight for, other people believe in fringe theories and conspiracies.

In conclusion, some curiosity is healthy. Whether or not you like conspiracy theories, you can’t deny that we are not always told the complete truth. And that’s all for this episode, and for this podcast. Thank you so much for listening! If you’d like to contact me or ask any questions, you can do so on my blog, theconspiracyconstruct.tumblr.com. Bye!

Works Cited

Clark, Daniel J, director. Behind the Curve. Netflix, 2018.Fleming, Chris. “Flat Wrong: the Misunderstood History of Flat Earth Theories.” The Conversation, 26 Nov. 2018, theconversation.com/flat-wrong-the-misunderstood-history-of-flat-earth-theories-53808.

Coven, Robert. Interview about conspiracy theories. 18 Mar. 2019.

Douglas, Karen M., and Robbie M. Sutton. Does It Take One to Know One? Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories Is Influenced by Personal Willingness to Conspire. 2011, https://kar.kent.ac.uk/26187/1/Douglas%20&%20Sutton%202011%20BJSP.pdf.

Gillon, Steven M. “Why the Public Stopped Believing the Government about JFK's Murder.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 30 Oct. 2017, www.history.com/news/why-the-public-stopped-believing-the-government-about-jfks-murder.

Hart, Joshua. “Profiling a Conspiracy Theorist: Why Some People Believe.” LiveScience, Purch, 26 Sept. 2018, www.livescience.com/63658-why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories.html.

Knopple, Barbara and Danny Schechter, directors. Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy. 1992.

Prentice, Kim, and Michael Prentice. Interview about conspiracy theories. 17 Mar. 2019.

“What Is Machiavellianism in Psychology?” Harley Therapy™ Blog, 30 Dec. 2017, www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/machiavellianism-psychology.htm.

Weinstein, Abe. Interview about conspiracy theories. 18 Mar. 2019.

0 notes

metawitches · 6 years ago

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In episode 4, SYZYGY, Karim and OA finally meet and the series finds a way to incorporate the telepathic octopus that the entire fandom has been clamoring for into the show. Or maybe that was just the tentacle fiction fans. 😘 At any rate, we get some almost naughty tentacle on OA action, an escape from Treasure Island in an orange car driven by a woman who can’t drive, a couple of bad dates, and references to Snow White and the Phantom of the Opera.

Only one of these things happens in a dream, and it’s not the octopus.

This is a pretty wild episode.

Plus, three wise, man.

Shall we get started?

Recap

The episode begins with OA dreaming that she’s chasing her (and Nina’s) child self through a deep forest. OA is wearing Homer’s wolf sweatshirt from their captivity in Hap’s basement, making her the Big Bad Wolf. Nina leads her to a floating, empty glass box the size of a coffin. In Russian, the little girl says, “You won’t find Homer without her.” OA asks, “Who?” Little Nina looks back at the glass coffin, which is just like the coffin Snow White was in after she ate the poisoned apple. Rachel is now inside, lying still, with her eyes closed. OA touches the glass, and there’s a whooshing sound. The wind blows in the trees. Rachel turns into adult Nina, whose eyes open. She pounds on the glass, wanting to be let out. The dream ends as the glass cracks.

Every instance of cracking glass in this show has been positive so far. It allows escape.

OA has been telling Dr Roberts about her dream. He asks if the child is OA or Nina. OA thinks they’re the same person at that point, until OA got on the bus and was in the accident, and Nina didn’t. Dr Roberts asks if their shared childhood means she and Nina are the same person now. OA explains that everything in their lives was different because of that one decision.

Dr Roberts wonders if she’s sublimating Nina.

OA: “I don’t know her. I don’t want to know her.”

Roberts: “Then aren’t you just like Hap? You said Hap was your captor.”

OA: “Is my captor.”

Roberts: “So he’s holding you hostage?

OA: “Us hostage. You think he’s Dr Percy. He’s not. He’s Hap inside. He’s a hunter.”

Roberts: Okay. so he’s a hunter. He captured you and he put you in a box. But you’ve put Nina in a box, too. Buried her somewhere deep in your mind. She wants to come out. She’s knocking at the door of your dreams.”

Since he’s got her cornered, OA changes the subject to Rachel. She wants to know if Roberts checked on what happened to her. He says she was transferred to another facility, closer to her family. OA doesn’t believe that’s the truth. Roberts asks what she thinks happened. She tells him she believes Hap murdered Rachel so that she couldn’t talk about his lab.

Homer asks what OA thinks Hap could be doing in his lab. OA asks if Roberts has been inside the lab. He has. OA guesses that there’s a locked room in the lab, that Roberts hasn’t seen. “Tell me there’s no room like that, and I’ll stop talking about it.”

Roberts can’t, of course, so he goes for the psychobabble cop out. “It’s natural for you to feel like the doctor is the killer. He wants to cut a piece out of you, your delusion.”

Hap’s taught him the fine art of medical gaslighting.

OA: “[Hap] knows you’ll never see me, the real me, as long as I’m your patient.”

It’s Hap’s turn for a long drive out into the country. He’s not on a spiritual journey. He’s hiding the evidence of a murder he committed. As he drags Rachel’s body out of his car so he can burn it, then bury it, he says, “This is Prairie’s fault.”

It always is, going all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Karim presents himself at the Treasure Island front desk, and intimidates the front desk receptionist into getting Prairie out of therapy. He waits for OA in the rec room, where a very passionate patient named Lionel is upset about Swedish fish. Due to the lack of said Swedish fish, he’s cutting off NASA and their thought crimes.

Stay strong, Lionel.

Karim feels like he’s met Nina before, but OA doesn’t feel the same way. The music tells us this is an important moment. Also, Swedish fish are red.

Karim properly introduces himself and tells OA about the house and the missing and damaged kids. He asks if she knows how to access the secret entrance to the house. OA thinks quick, and promises him if he helps her get out of Treasure Island, she’ll get him into the house. Right now, she’s so medicated the she can hardly think.

It’s a complete reversal of Karim’s usual conversations with sources, where he smooth talks whatever he wants out of people. He’s met his match. He thinks for a moment, then agrees, as long as she doesn’t exhibit signs of serious mental illness. She has him list his criteria, so she can try to avoid them while he’s around: Delusions, mania, lapsed hygiene, sociopathic behavior, incessant repetitions, inability to follow a logical train of thought.

OA: “I’m not mentally ill, but I do think logic is overrated.”

She takes a flower out of the glass vase on the table they’re sitting at, and throws the vase at the wall near Lionel, shattering it. The nurse gets up and scolds Lionel. OA tells Karim to follow her and they make their escape.

The front receptionist sees them on the back stairs and sounds the alarm. Karim fights off orderlies, while Prairie runs to get the orange car (this is why it’s orange). Except, Prairie was blind, then trapped in a basement. She has no idea how to work a car. She gets it running and over to Karim, then away from the clinic. Dr Roberts runs out to the parking lot as they’re disappearing.

Hap has taken the afternoon off and gone swimming. Submerging his head in water helps his tinnitus, which has bothered him since the jump. While he’s floating underwater, he notices a woman doing the same thing at the other end of the pool. Later, she joins him in the sauna. She makes sure they’ll be alone by sharing the men’s sauna with him. The other men scurry away.

She doesn’t waste time, bringing up their shared hearing issues immediately, and telling him that she can hear the ringing in his ears, too. She knows that he’s a tourist in this dimension,too, just like her.

After the big breakout, OA and Karim go to Red’s Java House to talk. OA asks Karim to tell her about the mysterious house, supposedly because he might say something that will jog her memory. He says that the house was built in 1910 by an engineer, who got rich during the Gold Rush. His wife was a medium and was into séances and spiritualism, like the Victorians.

Karim shows OA plans for the house from the 60s and 70s, when it was split up into separate apartments. It was left that way until Nina and Pierre bought it two years ago. They relocated the tenants and restored the house to its original design, which is also on the plans.

So, Karim wants OA to point out the secret entrance on the plans. Poor thing, he’s new to this game and still expects things to be straightforward. While he’s talking, OA makes him an ice pack for his jaw. When he’s done, he can tell that she has no idea where the hidden entrance is. She promises she’ll get him in.

He moves on to showing her the “Three Wise, Man” clue and the other images on his phone. When she gets to the photo of Michelle, she’s disturbed because she recognizes Buck. She covers for the dimensional confusion by saying Michelle reminds her of a young man she knew in Michigan.

OA asks Karim what else he knows about Dr Percy. Karim tells her about Percy’s famous book, Quantum Psychotic, which is about unmitigated reality as madness. He was also Pierre’s therapist. OA realizes that Hap and Pierre conspired to have her sent to the clinic on the unnecessary psychiatric hold.

OA: “It’s all connected.”

Wait, that’s Manifest’s tag line. Are all of the shows connected into one universe now, too? Is this where Manifest’s plane went for 5 1/2 years?

OA figures out that all of her questions and Karim’s questions are connected. Finally. She sees his photo of the keypad at CURI and decides they need to see what’s inside the closet in her apartment that has the same keypad.

When Hap turns his phone back on after having it off all afternoon during his swimming and sauna adventure, he discovers multiple messages from Roberts, who’s trying to report OA’s escape. Hap calls Roberts back and tells him to impress upon the police just how dangerous Prairie is and to keep calling them back to check on their progress. While they’re on the phone, Hap has a flashback to burning Rachel’s body. Then his new friend, Elodie, comes out of the elevator, and he hangs up on Roberts.

Roberts supervises group therapy with Scott and Renata, but he’s distracted. Scott talks about OA and Homer talking him down from his suicidal thoughts in the other dimension, and how they helped him so much more than Roberts has. Roberts is having a tough day, and lets it show. Renata has come around to remembering her real self.

Renata: “She gets under you skin, doesn’t she? She gets under everyone’s skins. Just how she’s made.”

Roberts: “Well, she’s gone now, so maybe that will be a relief for you.”

Scott: “She ain’t gone, Doc. She’s got a plan. OA’s always got a plan. She’ll be back.”

Roberts: “What makes you say that?”

Scott; “Well, somehow, on one of those 2500 some odd nights underground, Homer, that aw-shucks football quarterback, got under her skin. And in my experience, she ain’t the kind of person to give up.”

Karim and OA are stuck on finding the correct PIN for the closet’s keypad. OA asks him to tell her a story, to distract her from thinking about it for a minute.

Karim: “You know, my brother, he’s the kind of guy who never let a woman keep a toothbrush at his place. You know? Just never wanted to go down that road. Until one night at a noise show, he meets this punk woman with a shaved head.”

OA: “What’s a noise show?”

Karim: “You listening or you asking questions? The point is, they liked a lot of the same stuff, and they didn’t BS each other. He tells her on the very first date, before they even order dinner, he don’t believe in bringing kids into this world. She agrees with him, says the world is in need of a lot of things right now, but another human isn’t one of them. My brother and this woman, they fall in love. They’ve been together for seven years. He’s so happy it hurts his chest when he sees her toothbrush in the cup thing next to his. Then one day out of the blue, she comes home from work and she says she wants a baby. What’s the number?”

OA: “10-15-87.”

OA’s birthday?

The closet is full of dated tapes. They are all Nina talking, probably describing dreams. The first one is sexual. In the second one, Pierre has cut out her tongue. Karim looks through the closet and finds a post-it that says SYZYGY. He realizes that he’s looking at 3 Ys, man, the clue from the game. They check Nina’s phone to see if they can figure out what SYZYGY is.

Roberts makes a date on Tinder, texting with his date while he’s talking to the police sergeant on the phone. He tells the police that OA can’t be trusted and promises his date he’ll be in red vinyl.

SYZYGY is in Nina’s phone, so they dial the number and OA fakes her way through the call. The person who answers recognizes her and asks when she wants to come in. She says tonight. He says he’ll see her at 9, and she should come dressed for the occasion.

Hap and Elodie go out to dinner, but it’s a working date for him. He pumps her for information about traveling. She says that she recognized him as a fellow traveler because you can just tell when you travel a lot. Hap asks if you can control your destination, but Elodie isn’t interested in doing that. She says you can influence and plan, but that’s not enough for Hap.

Elodie tells Hap a story about visiting one of her alternates who was an actress, and watching all of the films the woman had made. She saw herself go through many deaths and other experiences, encountering almost everything you could live through. She realized that she and the actress weren’t that different. Something about this speech leads Hap to a revelation, which he doesn’t speak aloud right now.

They get sidetracked when Hap brings up gathering people together to do the movements. Elodie is surprised he’d use such a primitive method. He’s surprised there’s more than one. She’s tells him, “there are many methods, but they all require fuel. Fuel allows you to get where you want to go.” She can’t explain how the fuel works, but she can show him.

That sounds a bit sketchy.

Roberts’ date, Yossi, thinks he’s more attractive in person. At dinner, she tells him about her work, which is to culturally redesign death. Or at least how people approach it. She wants to get people “dealing with their mortality, rather than running from it.” Roberts is comfortable with death, but Yossi says most people don’t even want to think about it, even though it’s a universal underlying motivation.

Roberts mentions that he has a new patient who’s obsessed with death. Yossi insists that he tell her about it. The first thing he says is that his patient claims he’s her soulmate and they lived together underground for 7 years in another dimension. Yossi makes some very good guesses about their situation, and has some interesting insights. She says that their story is “very Pyramus and Thisbe.”

Roberts finishes the story by telling Yossi about his NDE, then choking on his food when he suavely reenacts eating the sea creature. This is not the soulmate you’re looking for, Homer. He did sound comfortable relating the story, like it could have happened to him.

OA gets dolled up for an evening out while practicing Nina’s Russian accent. When Karim sees the police cars circling, they decide it’s time to go. She’s wearing a floor length, deep red dress with a thigh high slit. Karim looks at it and remembers seeing her in the dream that began the season, but that dress was sequined, whereas this looks plush.

Karim tells OA that in his dream, after he saw her in the dress, he fell from a great height.

Roberts splits the restaurant bill down to the penny. Yossi didn’t realize that dating a doctor who’s still a resident, instead of someone in tech, finance or tech-finance, meant she was dating someone who has to worry about money. Though Roberts probably doesn’t need to be this obsessive about it. Will he want to split the cost of the condom, too?

At er suggestion, they split the bill half and half, then the date is over.

OA and Karim have the doorman show them out the back way. Once they’re in her car, with her driver, who knows the way to SYZYGY, she asks if the story he told about his brother was really about him. It was. “You don’t believe in bringing children into this world?” “No, I don’t.”

That explains why he refused to touch Mo’s belly to feel the baby kick. It also makes that an incredibly sad moment, because she’s clearly the woman he was talking about. They were together for 7 years, while Hap had the captives in his basement.

They arrive at SYZYGY, which is an underground club, in the sense of hidden. There is a sign out front, with only the word SYZYGY. Visitors must enter through a tailoring shop, walking past the rows of seamstresses at work. The club itself has novelties such as dancers, acrobats and a choir of blind children. The bartender makes Nina’s regular drink, which looks like a white Russian that’s mostly vodka. The choir and the visual of waves behind them triggers Nina’s memory of the moment before OA jumped to her body.

Karim leaves to search the building. He thinks they’re half a mile or less from the green puzzle house. He’s not back when Victor, the manager, comes to escort OA down for her performance, but Victor says they’ll find him. OA has no idea what she’s expected to do.

Hap calls Roberts and tells him to question Scott in detail about his NDE. Hap says something occurred to him tonight which could be a major breakthrough, if Roberts doesn’t let him down. Roberts is just grateful to be given a chance.

As they inexplicably walk through a tunnel of neon blue lights, OA tells Victor that she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. He tells her she says that every time, and every time, it comes to her once she gets started. She’s shown to a sturdy chair, on a stage, and sits down. A tech guy asks her if she wants to be restrained, and reminds her that she said it helped, last time. She agrees and her arms and legs are strapped to the chair. Victor tells her to say the safe word if she needs to.

Karim finds his way to the lighting booth. The tech in the booth sets up a tape to record the session. The curtains open on the crowd in front of OA, and a giant, live, octopus in a tank behind her. The octopus throws its arms out and holds onto OA’s arms. This is where her odd rows of bruises are from.

Suddenly, the octopus is in OA’s head. He tells her to greet the audience and tell them not to be afraid. She’ll translate for him to the audience.

Octopus: “I am Azrael, but Nina calls me Old Night.”

OA: “His brothers and sisters in the sea think… communicating with our kind is a waste of time… But he holds hope for our species.”

Old Night: “Nina has been my medium to connect to you… But tonight, we cannot have the performance as usual… Tonight I have the rare opportunity to converse with the OA.”

OA doesn’t want to blow her cover in public, but Old Night insists she repeat his words. After a moment, she does. Then he pressures her to “tell them who you really are.” Old Night’s tentacles wrap further around her torso, appearing naughty, but actually a threat.

Old Night: “I have something to show you. Something that will help you solve your mystery and rescue the others. But I can only be honest with you, if you are honest with them. Tell them you are an angel.”

OA tells the crowd that she’s an inter-dimensional traveler. Old Night asks if that feels better. Up in the booth, one of the surveillance feeds shows a door in the wine cellar that looks like the door image from the game. Karim sees it. Is this what Old Night promised to show OA?

Old Night: “Lying ages you and time is already not on your side, in every dimension.”

He tells her to continue translating, so that this appears to be a performance. OA goes back to repeating out loud what old Night tells her.

Old Night: “In the future, you don’t know who you are. You forget your true nature. I want to send you there. To the moment you can show yourself your true face, your pure being. and reawaken to your mission. To do this, I must kill you for 37 seconds.”

Old Night wraps a tentacle around OA’s throat and says that he needs her consent to proceed. She asks if she’ll survive. Old Night says, “That’s up to him.” OA doesn’t know who he means. Old Night says, “Your brother.” Except, she doesn’t have a brother.

Old Night: “In every dimension, she sent him to protect you.”

Who is “she”? Khatoun?

Karim is watching from above, and watching the surveillance camera flip through its vantage points, which include the stage. the door and OA on the stage appear one right after the other.

OA consents to being killed for 37 seconds. Karim is really not okay with this, and heads for the stage.

In her vision, OA is crawling through the cargo space underneath a plane. She opens a hatch and climbs into the bathroom. The lights are on in the bathroom, but it’s dark in the rest of the plane when she opens the door. The pilot announces that he’s turned on the seat belt sign, since they’re entering an area known for turbulence. OA walks through the plane until she sees a woman with short, blonde hair, sitting with her back to the camera. As the woman turns and her face begins to appear, the vision ends.

Karim has killed Old Night and revived OA. He used a large chef’s knife to cut off Old Night’s tentacles, but there’s no explanation of where the knife came from.

I’m not okay with the gratuitous murder of rare sea creatures, and I don’t understand why they’d put that in this show. It was bad enough to show Old Night being kept in such a tiny space, apparently as a telepathic slave.

Hap and Elodie are at the opera. She explains how traveling works by comparing the difference between an opera as written on paper and as performed. All of the magic comes from the will of the people who put on the production, who decide to create something.

Hap finally understands that Prairie willed herself to Homer, which means he didn’t die in the field in the other dimension. He’s in this dimension with the rest of them. He’s just hiding. This is what Prairie’s been telling him and Dr Homer Roberts from the start. D1 Homer is inside Dr Roberts. She just needs to find a way to bring him out. Now Hap knows he needs to find a way to stop her.

The police raid SYZYGY, so Karim drags OA out before she’s fully recovered and tells her he’s found the secret entrance. She’s angry with him for killing Old Night. Karim says, “He killed you first.”

Roberts takes Scott outside as a peace offering and asks him to tell the story of his NDE. First, Scott wants to know how he met Dr Percy. Roberts is happy to tell the story. He was injured in his sophomore year of college and couldn’t play football after that, so he got more serious about school. He read Percy’s best seller Quantum Psychotic and it blew his mind. He decided to go into clinical psychology. Then, Percy randomly showed up in one of his classes one day, working on a study and Roberts became his student.

Scott tells Roberts that he’s like a moth being distracted by artificial light when it’s supposed to be guided by the stars. Roberts is lost, and he needs to find the real light again, while he still can.

Don’t go toward the light, go toward the stars.

Roberts is recording their conversation for Hap. This version of Homer has been insidiously corrupted. He asks Scott again to tell him about his NDE.

Karim and OA find the wine cellar and the door from the game. Before they open the magic door, Karim checks in with OA.

Karim: “You sure you’re okay to do this?”

OA: “Yes.”

Karim: “You’re tougher than you look.”

OA: “You’re kinder than you seem.”

They smile at each other, clasp hands, and go through the door together.

Commentary

Phantoms and Fairy Tales

This whole episode feels like a reworking of Phantom of the Opera, with Hap as the Phantom who’s come out of the shadows in this new dimension. We have his muse, OA, the original angel instead of the angel of music, being coerced onto a stage and restrained in a chair, then pulled into a basement. She and Raoul Karim, her brother? potential boyfriend? fellow angel? take the secret passageway to escape the Phantom’s power. The octopus and the tank replace the boat ride.

Phantom Hap gets to go to the opera properly, with Elodie as Madame Giry, the one person who recognizes his genius and is sympathetic to him. But he doesn’t really see her, because of his obsession with Christine Prairie and what he thinks she can do for him.

The house, theater and club work together as the opera house, a beautiful, mysterious structure with public and private spaces, plus magical, secret spaces that can only be reached by a select few. The secrets of both the opera and the house promise transformation, but at great cost, possibly even one’s life.

The other fairy tale, dream-like qualities of the season also continued in this episode, from OA’s dream in the beginning of herself and Rachel in a deep forest inside Snow White’s glass coffin to the ending, with OA and Karim setting off like Hansel and Gretel into the dark and dangerous unknown. In between we had a literal giant octopus, the dream-like qualities of the opera, the bar and the underwater scene at pool and the adventure of the escape from Treasure Island. Now we have OA running around in her princess dress. And there were multiple prophetic visions and dreams, some of which have already come true.

Somewhere inside, OA knows that Rachel is dead but not dead, even though the patients have been told she’s transferred to another facility. Snow White was kept in stasis in the glass coffin by the 7 dwarves, after she’d taken a bite of the poisoned apple, when she was in a coma. The prince eventually kissed her awake. For Rachel to be in a glass coffin suggests she could still enter another body and come back to life.

Nina was also in the glass coffin, but she was trying to get out. OA has Nina trapped in her own mind. Dr Roberts’ insights were correct on this issue. OA is inadvertantly holding her alternate hostage, and needs to find a way to share their mind.

The blind children singing in front of an image of water seem like they must have been taken from a connection between Nina’s subconscious and OA’s. Maybe when Nina was in the house, she saw OA’s path, or maybe she felt it when their paths diverged as children.

Connections

SYZYGY= An alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet (Dictionary.com)

There is an inevitability to Homer, OA and Hap. None of them want to be bound to both of the other two, but they are. They’ve been out of alignment/syzygy since Hap left OA on the side of the road near the end of Part 1. The events of this episode bring new understanding to each of them, which puts them on the path to realignment.

(Being aligned and bound to each other has nothing to do with their feelings toward each other. It probably has more to do with the complementary nature of the spiritual journey each is on. You can learn a lot from someone you loathe. As Hap mentions, they can challenge you to be your best self.)

Did Dr Percy and Dr Roberts “randomly” meet in this dimension when Hap kidnapped Homer in D1 and their fates became entwined? Homer wasn’t clear about where he was in his education when he met Percy, but we know he’s at least done 4 years of medical school and three years of his residency since he read Quantum Psychotic. That would be the 7 years that Homer spent in captivity. Nina and Pierre came into their lives at some point as well, but I haven’t picked up the timeline clues, if they gave them to us.

When OA sees the picture of Michelle, Karim tells her she looks like she’s seen a ghost, which is ironic, given what Buck’s been up to, and the connections that are appearing between what happens to the spirits of the dead and living souls jumping dimensions. Is there any real difference between the soul of a living person or a dead person, once it’s freed from the original body?

Rachel stayed disembodied in D1, but she was dead in that world, so she didn’t have a home body to jump into. OA, Hap and the rest of the captives died in D1, but jumped into living bodies in D2, so they are considered alive. Can a soul that knows what it’s doing travel in and out of bodies and dimensions at will, a ghost in some, inside a body in others?

I think Rachel’s spirit is inside of Yossi, directing her actions during the date. Yossi is wearing a black top with red spots that looks similar to the red sparks in Rachel’s eye when she moved from one dimension to the other. She looks similar to Rachel, talks about death, and encourages Roberts to talk about his soulmate, OA, which is a strange thing to do on a date.

Then she decides she just wants to be friends, leaving him free to unite with OA, after she’s gotten him to talk about her. Rachel could be acting as a guardian angel for the tribe, jumping between dimensions and doing whatever she can to keep everyone on track. That could include having the power to briefly possess other bodies.

Random Thoughts

Quantum Psychotic= unmitigated reality as madness. Unmitigated reality would mean no break from reality for REM sleep, daydreams, or fantasy of any kind. It would be an exploration of the opposite of this season of The OA, which is exploring dreams, their connection to reality, and their necessity to mental health. Dr Percy’s theory is that being denied any kind of fantasy or dream would eventually cause madness, a state of continuous departure from reality into fantasy and delusions.

Everyone Yossi dates is in tech, finance or tech-finance. Probably some of them work for Netflix, given her Upside Down (Stranger Things) reference.

Pyramus and Thisbe were star-crossed lovers in ancient myth, from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. They were the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. OA and Homer did end up separated, then dead in D1.

My current theory is that green represent a spiritual threshold. Whatever it is that happens in the green house, it definitely involves change. And it stimulates green plants to grow out of the ears of people who reach some point in the puzzle, far enough in that they’ve also been exposed to dozens of their alternate selves. Maybe they reach a crossroads and can see multiple dimensions at once. Homer was wearing his green vest in this episode, and it feels like he’s on the threshold of discovering the truth. It’s not a very firm theory at this point, but green definitely means something.

Swedish fish are traditionally red, the color of spiritual growth, and besides Lionel’s reference to NASA, Scott specifically told Homer to follow the stars, not the lights. Lionel may be onto something. Those thought crimes may be voices from other dimensions, maybe dimensions where we live in space. In Part 1, Hap was obsessed with the Rings of Saturn, and there were many other space/star references. Just sayin’.

And don’t forget, a giant octopus felt up OA while sending her a vision of the future. Multiple arms symbolizing multiple realities? Remember Michelle’s text to Mrs Vu? She’d been to SYZYGY. She might have foreseen what happened in this episode.

This really was the most wild episode the show has ever done. But after this recap, we shall never speak of what Karim did to Azrael again, or I won’t be able to like Karim at all. That text could be saying that Azrael is the key to everything, but now we’ll never know.

Follow the Stars

I think the message of the episode was Scott’s comparison of Homer to the moths.

“See them moths up there. They use stars to guide them, but they get distracted by the artificial light. It’s too much for ’em. They get lost in it. You gotta open your eyes, man. Find that real light again. Before it’s too late.”

Last season, the characters had one clear goal, and they were focused on it. They had major conflicts, but were able to put them aside to work toward their goal. This season, they have multiple agendas and distractions and the goals aren’t clear. They are all moths fluttering around a flame, trying to figure out what their next step should be. Homer is just the most confused and off track.

None of them are sure where they should go or what they should do next, except for Hap and Steve. Steve wants to will himself to OA and Hap wants to go to a dimension where she doesn’t remember how awful he is. Losing Homer would be a bonus. Steve and OA had an immediate connection when they met. His drive to find her seems like it’s about more than his own desires. He has a need to protect her and join her spiritual journey that gives his life meaning and purpose. Hap, on the other hand, is made of nothing but his own selfish desires, which he convinces himself are justified because of his grandiose scientific discoveries of how the universe works.

Azrael the Archangel

Azrael, which was Old Night’s real name, is an Islamic Archangel who’s one of the angels of death. He said that OA’s brother would save her, and that “she” sends OA’s brother to her in each dimension. That suggests that Karim is the brother in D2, but does the brother always take the same form in every dimension? Then where was Karim in D1? Did Karim inherit the title of Angel of Death from Azrael? Is he an archangel now?

One of the translations for the Greek word that we get archangel from is “angel of origin”– original angel. Maybe OA isn’t just an angel- Maybe she’s the original archangel, and the brothers who are sent to each dimension are also archangels. If my theory is correct I don’t think that everyone in her tribe has reached the status of archangel. Reaching the level of archangel would require an unusual level of suffering and growth. All of Hap’s captives would be archangels, with the possible exception of Renata, who’s still learning to let things go. Among the Michigan tribe, I think Betty and Buck are archangels.

Their are as many ideas about archangels as there are people writing about angels. A few sources:

The Pagan’s Path- List of Attributes for Each Archangel

Wiki Article on Archangels

Beliefnet- The 7 Archangels and Their Meanings

Images courtesy of Netflix.

The OA Part 2 Episode 4: SYZYGY Recap In episode 4, SYZYGY, Karim and OA finally meet and the series finds a way to incorporate the telepathic octopus that the entire fandom has been clamoring for into the show.

#alternate realities #Brit Marling #Kingsley Ben-Adir #metacrone #netflix #recaps #review #science fiction #speculative fiction #SYZYGY #The OA #Will Brill #Zal Batmanglij

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pilferingapples · 8 years ago

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Count of Monte Cristo 1-6

...Yeah I’m moving slowly.

I am hoping, and expecting , that the rest of the novel is going to get easier for me to read, but right now this is really agonizing reading for me; false accusation is somewhere between a squick and a phobia for me, and this horrible slow buildup to it when I know it’s gonna happen and the judgement is gonna fall is just hell. I keep having to take breaks to freak out slightly.

Absolutely zero useful commentary or analysis under the cut, but lots of emotional flailing!

That said, the character--like, the actual personality being described-- of Edmond Dantés has been kind of irrelevant to me; he’s got my sympathy , but so would almost anyone about to be falsely accused (and especially anyone about to be accused of political crimes , oh gad. Oh gad.). So I don’t have much to say about him yet; I have sympathy for him and then some, but I’ve got too much to actually have any deeper feelings there than AAAAAH RUN MAN THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU.

Mercedes, besides the minor dissonance caused by her name belonging to a car in my head, thus making her a bit Ford Prefect-y, is also kind of...Perfectly Protagonist? I like her, of course I like her, Dumas has built her to be liked and he’s good at what he’s doing, but she’s in too much of a plotlocked position for me to think about her much without wanting to scream. (I will say that I like that she’s specifically not a proper bourgeois girl, and doesn’t abide by that particular set of social rules, but is still allowed her own set of mores and standards. I would not even begin to guess how accurate or not those are, though!)

Soooo the villains I guess!

Danglars is so horribly plausible, ugh. He’s petty and spiteful and smart and has ambitions just close enough that a little nastiness will get him there. The way he plays Fernand and Caderousse just feels gross to read, like I actually got shuddered. Human bite of tinfoil, geez.

Caderousse I could almost feel sorry for, if he were just a pure coward--I mean, I like Pierre Gringoire, who does some really crap things in the open cause of “I don’t wanna die or be tortured”--, but he’s a coward who convinces himself that whatever’s convenient is true, so HEY SURE DANTÉS IS A CONSPIRATOR, isn’t that convenient! Wow! OWN YOUR ASS-COVERING NATURE, CADEROUSSE.

Fernand I really do feel sorry for, even though he’s committing a genuinely horrific act; he’s being played by someone older, richer, and with less to lose if the plot doesn’t go off. From what we’ve seen, Danglars seems to have every advantage of connection and social position over him, and while I don’t think that figured into Fernand’s decision at all, it does mean if this DID all come out, Danglars would have a good chance of just going “noooo of course I wasn’t involved, it was that darn Catalan, you know what Those People are like!” I mean...he’s vengeance-driven (and whatever kind of ‘love’ he’s got for Mercedes it sure ain’t one that respects her happiness so like fuck off on that score) but he’s also 21 and pretty damn isolated and getting his obvious weakest points played on by this dollar-store Iago here. This being the Vengeance Sandwich novel, I’m assuming he’ll get a comeuppance, but I feel like I’m not really gonna enjoy it.

The Royalists are all horrible and I want to toss sawdust in the Marquise’s face and then blast the Marseillaise from giant hidden speakers for an hour at this party. :[ ANYWAY THE FORESHADOWING AND ANTICIPATIONS IS KILLING ME DEAD and now I have to go back to it, augh.

#CoMC17 #CoMC week 1

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torentialtribute · 6 years ago

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Fans slam ‘trash’ atmosphere in Europa League final – THINGS YOU MISSED

Chelsea demolished Arsenal in the Europa League final 4 -1 with a devastating second half performance.

There were plenty of talking points both on a pitch as Didier Drogba dressed up in a Chelsea shirt to give his old side a pep talk and fans blasted the terrible atmosphere in Baku.

As ever, Sportsmail was on hand to sweep up any little nuggets or info you may have missed from the final.

Drogba pep talk

The legendary Chelsea striker had his Blue shirt back on and filmed himself giving a quick motivational message to the players.

'Come on guys, you know who we're playing, win this one, bring the cup back home. Come on you Blues! I'm already wearing my shirt ready to celebrate, "the Ivorian said.

Drogba so often tormented the Gunners during his time at Stamford Bridge and would no doubt have loved to lace up the boots again in Baku.

Mkhitaryan feels the love

The decision to hold the Europa League final in Baku has come in for an enormous amount of criticism for a variety of reasons but Mkhitaryan is arguably the worst affected.

The Armenian decided it simply would not be safe enough to travel to Azerbaijan given the violent and bloody history between Armenia and the host nation.

Gunners supporters sung his name in the streets of Baku and he replied: "Much love to Arsenal fans." He also posted a picture on Instagram in his shirt, writing: 'Let's go Gunners, let's go out there on that field and conquer this trophy – for our club, for our fans and our promised ones I'm with you with all my heart . '

Henrikh Mkhitaryan posted this picture on Instagram and wrote a message of support

Rob Holding, who is recovering from a ruptured cruciate ligament, supported his side from the stands and former Chelsea stars Tore André Flo, Eddie Newton, Michael Essien and Paulo Ferreira were among the old Blues invited to support their former side.

(LR) Tore André Flo, Eddie Newton, Michael Essien and Paulo Ferreira were in attendance

There always one

Stack of baked goods? Check. Pint of ice water? Check. Half and half shirt? Check.

This sacriligious practice has to stop surely … I mean, who takes three boxes of pastry to a game?

A multi-national final

Between both Arsenal and Chelsea, there was an astonishing 15 different nationalities in the starting line-ups alone.

This equated the record for most in a European Cup final.

The other two on a par with this one are Atlético Madrid – Fulham (EL, 2010) Ajax – Manchester United (EL, 2017). If you can name all the nationalities in those you have my admiration but should also probably leave the house more.

Incidentally, Chelsea were the first team since 2010 (Inter vs Bayern), to start a European final without a player from their home nation starting.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang or Gabon was one of 15 different nationalities to start the game

Fans slam atmosphere

Plenty of supporters took to Twitter on what seemed to be a rather drab atmosphere in Baku.

The fans who had made the trip attempted to make their voices heard but the distance from the playing surface and unsold seats conspired to damage the sense of occasion.

One described the atmosphere as a 'trash' and another compared to a midweek League Cup game

There were plenty of empty seats at Baku Olympic Stadium contributing to a poor atmosphere

Milestones for Giroud

The powerful French striker often goes under the radar and seems to attract unwarranted criticism at times but he's a man for the big occasion.

A World Cup win last summer, a European final victory to cap off the domestic campaign and his 200th career goal in the showpiece against his former side. Not bad.

He is also the first player to score 11 goals in major European competition for an English club since Alan Shearer scored 11 in 2004-05 for Newcastle United. (Opta)

Olivier Giroud celebrated scoring Chelsea's opener and his 200th club goal in his career

The Frenchman diverted a diving header fits Petr Cech to give the Blues the lead

Arsenal on a par with Middlesbrough

The Gunners collapsed in dreadful fashion in the second half as Maurizio Sarri's side ran riot.

As Eden Hazard stretched in his second, the north London club became the first team to concede four in a Europa League / UEFA Cup final since Middlesbrough lost 4-0 to Seville in 2006.

The Blues spurned a number of decent opening and the scoreline could have looked even worse.

Arsenal looked shellshocked by Chelsea's second half onslaught as they conceded four

Steve McLaren's Middlesbrough side were the last team to concede four in a UEFA Cup final

Zappacostas wayward aim

The Chelsea defender missed as itter after the game.

In one of the worst attempts at rehydration you'll ever see, the Italian squeezed water bottle and the jet spurted past his head.

To be fair to Zappacosta, he smoothed it out by then hitting the target if nothing had happened.

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#Fans slam ‘trash’ atmosphere in Europa League final – THINGS YOU MISSED"

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heimwee2456 · 6 years ago

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Autumn is here!

You know what that means?

Whole temperate zone, including Brussels, is covered in incredible mesmerizing colours and breath-taking views! The city glows up, once again, with details, shades and inspiring landscapes that are just waiting for us, wanderlusts, to see, experience (and catch) them. And a good cup of tea (or Belgian beer – that’s just up on you) is a must-have, of course!

As always, let’s start with the parks!

Whether you go biking, horse riding, running or simply photo hunting, Fôret des Soignes is the perfect place to get lost and enjoy the colours this fall. With nearly five hectares, the forest spreads from Flemish to Wallonian regions. Some of the oak and beech trees are more than 200 years old! The well-known urban park Bois de la Cambre is basically a lateral part of it.

Brussels’ parks are all beautiful in the autumn, but there’s something special about the Park Royale. Nothing signals autumn in Brussels like crunching through the leaves and kicking fallen chestnuts in there. This small park is located between the Royal Palace and the Belgian Parliament buildings and is a favourite place for office workers at lunchtime. The park was built in the late 1700s, where the gardens of the former Palace of Coudenberg once stood. Dotted around the park are various statues and fountains and a beautiful cast iron bandstand. It’s also home to concerts and art installations throughout the year; and joggers who circle all around the park’s paths and dog-walkers with their darlings.

Or you can head outside the city centre, to the commune of Tervuren, for one of the most beautiful parks near Brussels. Just behind the Royal Museum for Central Africa is a huuge Tervuren garden. Joggers and walkers frequent the network of paths through the forest and lakes are populated with fishermen on weekends. The park is home to the largest Flemmish Giant Redwood tree and there is a good deal of wildlife inhabiting the lake and trees. It’s particularly lovely in this time of the year, as the leaves are changing their colours and crackle under your shoes.

Fôret des Soignes

Get into the Halloween mood!

Around Halloween, the spirits come out: mischievous or evil, they elude the witch’s stake or stick to the paws of spiteful cats and leave behind exhalations of mystery.

Follow their traces through the streets of Brussels, which are less innocent than they seem. All this livened up with breaks for particularly apt refreshments! Watch out for the gargoyles and for the bloody stories vampires love. Don’t forget your lanterns and your rabbit’s feet to make sure you reach the end of this wicked walk alive!

Search for lost skulls at the Halloween Festival, from 27 October to 4 November 2018! All sorts of monsters will scurry about in the Musée d’Art Fantastique in Brussels.

The Hard Rock Cafe is once again hosting one of its traditional breakfasts, Lil Monsters Ball-Spooky Breakfast. Enjoy a family moment in a Halloween setting on Sunday 28 October from 9.30am to 11.30am.

The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Val need your help to thwart the Machiavellian plans of the terrible witch! If you fancy adventure, and you are in search of thrills and dizzying ziplines, be sure to visit the adventure park Sortilèges.

Celebrate the most terrifying evening of the year as it ought to be celebrated, by taking part in the special Halloween Party hosted by Hard Rock Café Brussels. On the programme: a make-up artist for customers who want their face painted, a magical show during the meal, DJ sets and costume competitions with prizes at stake!

The vampire teeth, the cape of count Dracula, witches’ brooms and lots and lots of blood. Essential accessories (and much more) can be found in Palais des Cotillons and Picard megafun partystore.

Definitely not my photo. Is it only me, or you find carving pumpkins (and eventually failing) so irritating, too?

Have a much needed cup of warm beverage

On an island right in the middle of the Bois de la Cambre lake, Chalet Robinson will delight grown-ups and little ones alike. Warm yourself up in a charming setting with an uninterrupted view of nature, while enjoying a hot chocolate or a Brussels waffle; or relax over a dinner with friends.

Whether you are pleasure-loving or nature-loving, you’ll find plenty to make you happy at the Lodge, a restaurant/bar/club in Watermael-Boitsfort, one of the greenest communes in Brussels. You can also taste the brasserie cuisine in a house at the edge of a pond, in a little corner of paradise tucked away in the city.

Do you fancy a unique gastronomic experience in a cosy, intimate atmosphere? The Cabane du Fou in Uccle is just like your childhood tree-house, actually perched in a tree, and entered by climbing a wooden ladder. For those who prefer big tables packed with merry, singing people, the Fou Chantant restaurant is a unique structure, where a friendly, musical, festive atmosphere reigns just below the Cabane du Fou.

The Maison Renardy was founded in 1912 and has been offering a wide choice of teas, coffees, chocolate, bread, pastries and confectionery ever since.

Just opposite the Manneken Pis, you will find the Poechenellekelder, a genuine medieval hostelry where you can get together with your friends for a drink. In the past, the building was the meeting place for several guilds, and conspirators of all kinds.

A sumptuous Art Nouveau café next to the Bourse, Le Cirio is a real period café where you can imagine meeting Hercule Poirot the detective, while you enjoy your “half and half”, the house speciality.

Can’t forget about the waffles!

Regardless of whether you have a sweet tooth or not, Belgian waffles are so good that they will make you consider not just travelling to Brussels but maybe even moving permanently! Every single visitor has commented how the air smells like waffles all around the city centre, so it’s practically impossible not to give in. Make sure to spot the little yellow waffle trucks or head directly to Maison Dandoy for the best gaufres in town.

Oreo on the left, Speculaas on the right!

What’s better than waffles? Chocolate!

If waffles did not convince you, then I’m sure Belgian chocolate will do the trick! Brussels will tempt you time and again with its chocolate shops, so this is the place to indulge. Browse the creations of famous chocolatiers (Laurent Gerbaud, Pierre Marcolini and Frederic Blondeel for example), buy some for your loved ones and make sure to learn how to make your own chocolate next to the masters.

Or just get a beer. You know.

Belgians love their beer (who doesn’t?) and Brussels is an ideal place both for beer experts and travellers who are curious to discover more about it. There’s a beer for every taste and countless bars around town where you can get a pint, like Moeder Lambic on Place Fontainas, A la Mort Subite but you can also go directly to the source and visit some of the local breweries like the Brussels Beer Project, Brasserie Cantillon or En Stoemelings. Feel free to enjoy different kinds of beer and don’t worry – it’s always beer o’clock in Belgium, hih.

See museums from a different perspective

From September 13 to December 6 2018, the Brussels Museums Nocturnes offer to discover 73 Brussels’ museums in a completely different way. Every Thursday evening, 5 to 8 museums invite you to explore Brussels as a city of neighborhoods, treasures and unexpected charms. For 13 weeks, a program of new exhibitions, workshops, music, food & drinks, guided tours and much more is set to soften the first signs of winter.

Just a couple of photos from the nocturnal city centre on the way to the hotel because I prefer sleep over museums. But aren’t these lights just amazing?

Last but not least…

Get pampered in a 40 minute massage for 10 euros only. In Brussels, you’re wondering? Yes, it’s possible at La Tricoterie, a restaurant/bar/cultural forum. Housed in an old factory in St. Gilles, the industrial décor is well present in this link factory. Spacious and luminous, the building has three storeys and a large terrace where they grow fresh herbs to season the food. The concept is not new but it’s promising: from Sunday brunch with the family, to late hour parties, there are also workshops, conversation tables, yoga, swing dancing and massages. Basically everything you can think of. What a good business, right?

I really liked this city, but it still didn’t have enough of charm to convince me to put it on the 1st rank in my so-called “List of beautiful places”. Amsterdam is still in the leading position!

A BONUS:

Hanging Christmas décor in early October, who would’ve expected that?

Have a great day!

Why to visit Brussels in autumn

Autumn is here! You know what that means? Whole temperate zone, including Brussels, is covered in incredible mesmerizing colours and breath-taking views!

Why to visit Brussels in autumn Autumn is here! You know what that means? Whole temperate zone, including Brussels, is covered in incredible mesmerizing colours and breath-taking views!

#autumn #Belgium #Brussels #Europe #Fall #photo #photography #travel #traveling #trip

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