#an ode to robert's face

[zepskies]

Why We Love the Boys

As promised, here is my review of Supes Ain’t Always Heroes. I actually used to write book reviews in my high school journalism days, so here we go!  

What this book is: A masterful deep dive. A study on character psychology, the source of the comic and show’s inspiration, and the narrative themes illustrated in The Boys that parallel American culture and our real lives.

It includes interviews from one of the comic’s creators, Darick Robertson, The Krip himself (Eric Kripke), and actors Jim Beaver (Robert Singer), Aya Cash (Stormfront), Chace Crawford (The Deep), Jessie T. Usher (A-Train), Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir), and of course, Jensen Ackles (Soldier Boy).

It also includes a small but significant ode to the creativity of fans and fandom (with a mention of fanfic writers)!

I’ll admit, I felt seen. 😊

Who wrote it: Psychologists Lynn S. Zubernis and Matthew Snyder. Zubernis is a self-proclaimed fangirl of not only this show, but Supernatural and Eric Kripke in general. (That aspect definitely comes through in her writing.)

She is also editor of Family Don’t End with Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Changes Lives and There’ll Be Peace When you Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural. Both of which I now want to read.

Several other authors also contributed to this book, as their expertise and backgrounds lend to the subjects they’re covering, such as racism, sexism, the entertainment industry, the comic’s inception, and more.

Who wants to read this book: Anyone who enjoys learning about what makes characters tick. What drives their choices, their sense of morality and justice, and their trauma and strife that lead them to do heinous things. This book will help you better understand your favorite characters (and how to write about them).

Perhaps most importantly, this book is for anyone who wants to read it put into words, why many of us love The Boys, as well as Supernatural.

In a way, the latter is more escapism entertainment than The Boys. Because in this show, there isn’t much, if any escape.

Despite this being a “superhero show,” as we all know, it’s so much more than that. It’s a mirror held directly into our own faces: about why we enjoy heroes and antiheroes, and excuse the “bad behavior” of the ones we like.

About mental health, grief and loss, nature and nurture, coping mechanisms and the importance of choice in dealing with trauma; of racism, sexism, misogyny, weaponized social media, politics, corporate greed, and the power (and cruelty) of good marketing.

This book explores the true villain of the story (and it ain’t Homelander).

I’m going to get into my favorite aspects of this book—as well as an amazing chapter on Soldier Boy’s character study (and why we love him, perhaps too much).

Though in my opinion, it was missing one small, but key thing…

The Mirror of The Boys on Screen

This world is a gritty, bloody, and at times all-too realistic take on how superheroes would be if they lived in our world.

They are the worst of celebrities, professional athletes, and politicians all rolled into one. They are the shiny products of a company and are marketed as such. And they often buy into their own hype.

Some of my favorite quotes on this topic:

“The Boys often reflects darkness in our real world that is uncomfortable to watch. While we go through the tedium of our daily lives, trying to get by and using television or comics as an escape, it can feel difficult and overwhelming to confront the very real and insidious sources of authoritarianism, nationalism, and corporatism that are not just part of a story. “This show holds up a mirror and forces us to catch a glimpse of things we need to question, and asks us why we so easily believe the talking points of systems with marketing departments and press flacks behind them that carefully massage every word in order to get us to feel enamored with their product or policy.” (p. 227-228)

“The Boys works to reveal the nonaltruistic, sociopathic nature of contemporary US corporate culture. In a sense, The Boys uses the behavior of its characters to diagnose not an individual, but a culture.” (255)

In studying narrative I’ve learned that the best fiction and art serve to reflect the human experience. In this case, it’s something The Boys does expertly, even though it’s packaged in extreme, shocking, and often uncomfortable ways. But also in brutal, hilarious satire that’s fun to watch.

It “exposes real-world abuses, revealing many” of our own frustrations in American culture and in life in general (267).

Major Themes & Questions Explored

Several Boys themes are explored from a psychological, cultural, and narrative point of view, as I mentioned earlier. These are some of my favorite segments:

Toxic Masculinity & Narcissism

A whopper in The Boys, and the main theme of season 3. This book defines clearly what both of these words actually mean from a psychological point of view.

It also takes the bad taste out of your mouth that you might get from just hearing the words “toxic masculinity,” as it’s a phrase that can be carelessly thrown around to describe men and character traits that aren’t truly toxic.

How being emotionally available to your loved ones and not repressive of your feelings doesn’t make you weak, or less of a man. And how “being strong” doesn’t mean being physically violent and domineering. (AKA: the Big Swinging Dick™️ in the room.)

Narcissism is explored in a very interesting way. The book gives a diagram of different aspects of narcissists and how each character (Soldier Boy, Homelander, Butcher, and the Deep) falls into them.

Soldier Boy, for example, is classified as a “Classic Narcissist,” while Homelander a “Malignant Narcissist.” <- This will play into SB’s character study, and the main difference between SB and Homelander.

Butcher, however, displays narcissistic tendencies but is not, in fact, a narcissist. (More of an antisocial sociopath. Yay for him.)

Misogyny & Sexism

The classic superhero world of comics dates back to the 1930s and ‘40s. It has been, and in many respects still is a (White) male-dominated industry, where in narrative, female superheroes typically work under a male leading the team, as in Justice League, Teen Titans, and the Avengers.

As much as I love DC and Marvel comics, female characters have also been drawn wildly sexual for male readers and the male gaze, and non-supe characters have been written primarily as love interests and damsels for the hero to save. (Think Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Mary Jane.)

Modern adaptions have given female characters more agency, but their foundations were rooted in underlying sexism and the mythic hero—an Odysseus-type with certain characteristics of male strength and heroism. And that goes all the way back to classic literature, like The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In The Boys, the female supes go through the same issues as their comic counterparts. And they are treated how women are treated in the real world—marketable as sexual objects. (Starlight’s forced costume change is a prime example.)

Author Danielle Turchiano argues in the book that the women in power at Vought (Madelyn Stillwell, later Ashley) are given only so much power as men like Stan Edgar and Homelander give to them.

Stillwell, Ashley, and even Stormfront “drink the Kool Aid” of the misogynistic infrastructure of Vought, but they’re not truly “powerful” in and of themselves. (112)

And I would add that the only female characters that have or find true agency are Grace Mallory, Annie January/Starlight, and Maggie Shaw/Queen Maeve. Even Victoria Neuman is trying to work the political schematic and Vought by operating “within the system” Vought has created.

Mental Health, Trauma & Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

This is a huge section, and rightly so. It kind of spans throughout the book, really, because all of these characters have traumas that inform who they are as adults making the (often grotesque) choices they make.

For many of these characters, it stems from their upbringing and fraught relationships with their parents, whether explicitly or implicitly explored in the show.

Butcher: Is an antisocial sociopath with narcissistic tendencies. Arrogant, emotionally manipulative, violent, and obsessive. He was also physically and emotionally abused by his father, led to use drinking and violence as a means to cope and express himself. His rage is so deep under his skin—he loathes himself for it (and his father), but struggles immensely to escape it.

Homelander: A malignant narcissist, the height of arrogance, and emotionally manipulative. He lacks empathy for others' pain, and in fact enjoys inflicting it. Yet he was a sensitive, gentle child who only wanted connection and love. Vogelbaum raised him like a lab rat and fostered him in a cold, detached cell. He was raised to be entitled and to believe he was an all-powerful god, the lord of his own kingdom within his mind, excused from the responsibility of his actions.

Soldier Boy: Also a narcissist; violent, arrogant, misogynistic, and often indifferent to the damage he causes, emotional or physical. Yet he was also emotionally abused by his father, who set high and exacting standards for what it meant to be a man. It drives Ben to try and prove his worth to his father, though he’s never able to. It fosters the lack of self-worth he feels as he seeks validation through fame and what he believes power to be.

These three characters have many similarities, but also notable differences that set them apart from one another. And both Butcher and Soldier Boy use substances like drugs and alcohol to cope with their traumas—ones that their forced stoicism and sense of manhood won’t allow them to easily express.

“We see Soldier Boy use substances almost continuously in season three to deal with his PTSD from the childhood emotional abuse he received from his father, the betrayal and assault from his team, and the torture he endured from the Russian scientists.

“In the short term, the use of drugs and alcohol to avoid thoughts and feelings about traumatic experiences can be felt as helpful, but in the long term, it hinders one’s ability to process emotions and can cause a deeper depression from the guilt and shame of both avoidance and substance abuse.” (27)

Heroes, Antiheroes & Villains

This book explores two key questions that the show encourages you to think about:

Who the hell is the hero of this story?

And who is the villain?

The surface-level answer is that Homelander and other supes like him are the villains, and Butcher and his band of bros are the heroes (or antiheroes). But they commit just as questionable, sketchy, and downright murderous acts as the supes they’re trying to take down.

“Butcher is not really a good guy. He’s manipulative and self-centered. His reasons for wanting to take down Homelander are utterly personal. That it serves the greater good is almost a coincidence.” (9)

And if Butcher is not a hero, but a vengeful vigilante, then why do we root for him so much?

Well, we see his incredible flaws. But I sympathize with his struggle in losing his wife and the life he could've continued to have with her. I root for the underdog going against the hydra head of Vought and the psychopathic Homelander.

And I see in Butcher, as I also do with Homelander and Soldier Boy, their traumas and their internal conflicts, their deep-rooted self-loathing, and a desire, deep, deep down…to be loved.

(And to foster connection with others, even if they’re unable to sustain them.)

On the flipside, we have antagonists in this show who do truly heinous things. What makes them compelling and even sympathetic, yet again, are their painful upbringings that have shaped them to be who they are. The supes of this show are byproducts of being treated like products.

Like the saying goes: Villains aren’t born, they’re made.

That’s why the real villain of this story is Vought International. It’s an allegory, and an indictment of the ruthless corporate greed that pervades American culture—and much of the world.

It’s why Stan Edgar is sometimes scarier to me than even Homelander (and was the true villain of my story, Break Me Down), if far more insidious.

Speaking of BMD, let’s get to it, shall we?

Here’s a (lot) bit about the Soldier Boy section of the book.

Soldier Boy: Why We Can’t Hate Him

I had to laugh out loud at the title of Soldier Boy’s chapter:

Loving the Villain: The Confusing Case of Soldier Boy

I’m not gonna lie. I felt called out. 😂

It is a confusing dichotomy. Soldier Boy is an absolute asshole. Misogynistic, narcissistic, arrogant, callous, violent…

But also deeply traumatized, a man-out-of-time, emotionally abused, byproduct of the historically and culturally different time he was raised in, a man who just doesn’t get it…

And also charming, adorably grumpy, and undoubtedly attractive.

It’s hard to indict “Ben” as an unredeemable villain in the same way I do Homelander, the psychologist-labelled Malignant Narcissist.

Therein lies the main difference between Soldier Boy and Homelander: Soldier Boy doesn’t take joy in harming others the way Homelander does. But he still harms people, whether he means to or not.

Zubernis confirms many of my own conclusions and ideas about Soldier Boy, and why I still rooted for him to be better, and didn’t want him to die at the end of season 3.

As Zubernis rightly exclaimed during her own watch of the finale: “Noooo, don’t kill the Danger Grandpa Baby Murder Kitten!” (175)

Because Jensen did what he does best in his roles: He made us feel Ben’s pain.

“What’s funny is, in regard to Jensen playing Soldier Boy, you know he’s fucking fantastic, he’s just so good at bringing the audience, and it’s almost like—what I laugh about is, he was probably a little too good at his job!” Kripke said. (180)

And he continues, “In part it’s because of the fandom. So many people took his side in the finale, they’re like, Were’s on his side, fuck everyone! And you’re like, but he’s the bad guy and he’s trying to kill a ten-year-old.”

Were there fans who held this viewpoint? I’m sure. There are some radicals who don’t give a fuck and will side with their favorite character, come whatever. But while I can’t speak for others, that’s not how I interpreted that moment in the season 3 finale.

Yes, I think Soldier Boy was (wrongfully) willing to fight Ryan. Do I think he would’ve killed him? I’m not sure. I think he would’ve done what he had to do to get Ryan out of his way in his fight with Homelander. Maybe he would’ve been more violent than he intended, in the callous collateral damage he’d shown throughout the season, or maybe he would’ve gone that far, if provoked.

It’s a tough call, as I think this character can go one way or the other in terms of his “villain” nature. We just haven’t seen enough of him in the series yet for me to make that conclusion on the canon-version of Soldier Boy. (In fanfic, I’ve explored my own interpretation.)

But overall, I think The Krip once again underestimated the power of Jensen’s acting.

…And the ardent nature of his mostly female fanbase. 😂

Why We Love Soldier Boy

The author cites multiple reasons for why we love Ben more than we probably should:

It’s Jensen Ackles. Fair enough. His talent speaks for itself.

Soldier Boy’s backstory: He was emotionally abused by his father and as a result, he has a complex regarding his self-worth, “something to prove,” and a secret need for attention, validation, and praise.

He has trauma and PTSD: He is displaced from what is familiar to him and confused when the boys find him, and that is the least of it. He’s been tortured for 40 years. Can you even conceive of that?

He’s charming: in a sexy grandpa, adorably grumpy, lovable asshole kind of way.

We’re drawn to danger: dangerous “edgy” types are fun, especially when you’re physically attracted to the character.

He has his moments of vulnerability: Jensen’s ability to play the nuance in the character is the ultimate draw. I felt his pain, could see his torture, and his resulting PTSD. He longs for a family, even if his ability to bring up those children is questionable at best. 😅

But I think the one aspect the author doesn’t consider is the character’s capacity for change.

Soldier Boy’s Potential

Again, I don’t think you can write off Soldier Boy’s potential for positive character development the same way you can Homelander, or even Butcher.

For one thing, we just haven’t spent enough time with the character. A lot of his collateral damage after he escapes imprisonment has been accidental, or PTSD-induced. Though we can’t discount how he murdered M.M.’s grandfather via collateral damage (and was callous about it).

I think this is what drew me to write about Soldier Boy. “For all his arrogance, his chauvinism, his massive ego and general bastardry, there’s still humanity in Ben.”

In the book, Nathan Mitchell also says something amazing about his own character (Black Noir) that resonated with me about Soldier Boy as well:

"One of the ingredients of a compelling character is contradiction. How does one aspect of our personality contradict with one another? [...] Who is he underneath? How might his true nature contrast with the demands of his job?"

Or coded for Soldier Boy/Ben: The pressures he puts on himself to be the type of man he thought his father wanted him to be.

Again, his sexist, misogynistic ideals are shaped by the time he was raised in, by being a product of Vought, and of his father’s emotionally abusive upbringing. Does this excuse or justify all of his behavior? Of course not.

But I think those 40 years in captivity changed him from the careless alpha dog we saw in 1984 Nicaragua…

He admits to Crimson Countess, with tears in his eyes, that he’d loved her. That he waited for her and his team—arguably the only social system he has in his life—to save him. He’s gutted to realize that not only did she and the rest of the team never love him, they hated him. They traded him for nothing. Just to get him out of their lives.

For all he claims to be afraid of nothing, tough as shit, he is afraid when he goes to face Mindstorm. He knows what the supe is capable of, and he visibly takes a shaky breath and tries to steel himself.

For a moment, he drops the “Soldier Boy” persona that he wears like a fine tailored suit. And he tells Butcher that the backstory Vought created for him was a lie; he grew up a rich kid who got sent to boarding school, but flunked out, because "he was a fuck up." And his father couldn’t be bothered to discipline him, implying he didn’t care enough about his own son to even lay a hand on him.

He is reluctant to kill Homelander when he finds out he’s Ben’s son (sort of). He even claims that he would’ve been willing to share the spotlight “with his own son.” — Something I doubt even Homelander would do.

Ben even seems to be fighting tears when he levies the same vitriol at Homelander that his own father did at him:

Homelander: “Weak? I’m you.”

Soldier Boy: “I know. You’re a fucking disappointment.”

Let me be clear. I don’t think it’s up to someone to change him (like a love interest). I don’t subscribe to that thinking, that a woman can “change” a man.

For example: In season 2, Butcher tells Becca, “Who was I before you? Nothing.”

And yet, she tells him that he put her on an unrealistic and unsustainable pedestal, in which she felt like she wasn’t allowed to fully be herself, unable to keep him from flying off the handle in rage. That kind of relationship (where one is dependent on the other to “keep them in check”) doesn’t work as a lasting, satisfying redemption arc, and it doesn’t work in real life either.

I do think, however, that a person is capable of change if they’re broken down enough (pun intended), and if they themselves have a desire to change. Someone they encounter can inspire them to be better, like Butcher with Hughie. That person can help support the other.

At the end of the day, however, it’s Ben that has to want to change.

If he wants love and connection, he’ll have to somehow want it, and try (and sometimes fail) to get it, thereby giving him agency and a redemptive character arc.

Now, obviously, it’s up to The Krip where Ben goes from here. He seems to have a more indicting vision of the character than I do (at least, so far). But we’ll see! The fan demand to bring back the character has already had Kripke confirming that Soldier Boy will be back.

Maybe it will encourage him to give the character a more satisfying ending than Dean Winchester got in Supernatural. Though granted, that one wasn’t his doing, apparently he was in favor of the ending the writers came up with.

Comparing Dean & Ben

In his interview segment, Jensen talks about what, if any, are the comparisons between Dean Winchester and Soldier Boy. AKA: Wanting a father’s approval, and an undercurrent of “John Wayne”-esque masculinity in John Winchester that Dean sought to emulate.

Jensen also talks about where he drew from to not only embody the character of Soldier Boy, but bring nuance to him—and show the peeks of vulnerability under the bravado and stoicism.

“He’s so fragile and his ego is fragile. Just like Homelander. These bigger-than-life powerful heroes really have a glass jaw… “And everyone walks on eggshells around him [Soldier Boy], and they tell him that they love him, and it’s the same with Homelander. Then when all of a sudden he faces his old team and Crimson Countess says we never loved you, we hated you—that’s a gut punch for him. Because even though on some level he may have known that, he never thought he would hear it. “And he probably propped himself up around trying to believe otherwise, because how can you walk around knowing everyone you’ve ever cared about hates you? It’s too painful.” (191)

It really is. And I inherently felt this about Soldier Boy/Ben when I watched season 3 for the first time. That’s exactly what I got from his performance and thought, there’s more to this guy than the toxic masculinity he represents.

This guy just wants to be loved, like everyone else. He wants to feel important, and even after his father’s dead, “show him” that Ben is the man his father wanted him to be. And so, he bought into the illusion Vought painstakingly crafted for him.

Whether he can come back from that remains to be seen. But I choose to be optimistic until evidence points to the contrary. 😅 (We’ll see in season 4!)

So that’s my personal take on Soldier Boy and this awesome book. 💚 Thank you again @kaleldobrev for recommending it to me! I hope you all enjoyed my long-winded review and want to check this out.

And if you do read it, I hope to read your thoughts as well!

Tagging people who said they wanted to read my review on this book: @venus-haze @jessjad @kristophalis @sl33pylilbunny

[april-is]

April 19, 2024: Dear Proofreader, David Hernandez

Dear Proofreader David Hernandez You’re right. I meant “midst,” not “mist.” I don’t know what I was stinking, I mean thinking, soap speaks intimately to my skin every day. Most days. Depending if darkness has risen to my skull like smoke up a chimney floe. Flue. Then no stepping nude into the shower, no mist turning the bathroom mirror into frosted glass where my face would float coldly in the oval. Picture a caveman encased in ice. Good. I like how your mind works, how your eyes inside your mind works, and your actual eyes reading this, their icy precision, nothing slips by them. Even now I can feel you hovering silently above these lines, hawkish, Godlike, each period a lone figure kneeling in the snow. That’s too solemn. I would like to send search parties and rescue choppers to every period ever printed. I would like to apologize to my wife for not showering on Monday and Tuesday. I was stinking. I was simultaneously numb and needled with anxiety, in the midst of a depressive episode. Although “mist” would work too, metaphorically speaking, in the mist of, in the fog of, this gray haze that followed me relentlessly from room to room until every red bell inside my head was wrong. Rung.

--

Today in:

2023: The Socks, Jane Kenyon 2022: Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi 2021: Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon 2020: Sunday Night, Raymond Carver 2019: Virginia Street, Jennifer Hayashida 2018: What Seems Like Joy, Kaveh Akbar 2017: Aunties, Kevin Young 2016: For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell 2015: The Cambridge Afternoon Was Gray, Alicia Ostriker 2014: Spirit of the Bat, Peggy Shumaker 2013: Thanks, W. S. Merwin 2012: Sweetness, Stephen Dunn 2011: I Remember, Anne Sexton 2010: Letter, Franz Wright 2009: 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven, Kenneth Patchen 2008: HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITY NO. 26, J.R. Quackenbush 2007: from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting 2006: The Chores, Frannie Lindsay 2005: Direct Address, Joan Larkin

[jasper-book-stash]

June-August 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

Hey, sorry for disappearing off of the face of Tumblr for uhhhh three months, but I read twelve books in that time and I'm here to complain.

Religious Text

None applicable.

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

Moonbeams and Ashes: Tales of Mystery, Love, and the Paranormal | Margarite Stever

I picked this up from some bookstore here in Missouri under the local authors shelf. I wish I hadn't. These stories were all poorly written, and a good chunk had nothing to do with mystery, love, OR the paranormal. They weren't even bad in the fun way.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

My Mother Road | Phyllis York

I picked this up from some OTHER bookstore here in Missouri under the local authors shelf. I wished this book had ended 480 pages sooner. The only highlight was at the end when the grandpa physically kicked a guy off of the porch.

Athena's Child | Hannah Lynn

A Greek myth "retelling" centering around Medusa and intercut with Perseus. It...was just mediocre. There wasn't anything interesting about what it did or changed or told, there was no taking the myth and running in a new direction with it, and worse of all we opted for the Ovid's Metamorphoses route but still used the Greek names for the gods.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Crossword Poems, volumes 1 and 2 | Robert Norton

Two itty-bitty volumes covering what were apparently once commonly-known poems that you'd be able to remember based on half of the hint. Decent enough stuff, just kinda boring without that historical note.

Shelling Peanuts and Other Odd Odes | Howard Nelson

Another collection of poems that were ultimately mediocre with a few funny or insightful ones. Not bad, just not especially good either.

Songs of Honour | Noble House Publishers

These were, on the whole, better than the other two, but I knocked it down to 6/10 based on the fact that it took me the entire month of July and a third of August to finish. The formatting was lovely and each poem only took a page, but it was ultimately just "good-to-mediocre" on the whole.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa | Scott McGough Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa | Scott McGough Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa | Scott McGough

While I personally listed Guardian as a 9/10, I figured I should keep the entire Kamigawa Cycle together. This is the story of Toshiro Umezawa, everyone's favorite fuckup self-centered protagonist dealing with the consequences of his and everyone else's actions. There were a couple times when something was referenced that didn't make sense in the setting (such as angels, Hell, or pixies), and you can definitely feel the "early 2000s white man writing a Japanese setting based on vibes alone" emanating from most of the pages, but I had a good time calling Toshi a dumbfuck over and over again.

9/10 - Very Very Good

None applicable (besides aforementioned Guardian).

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

The Tale of Despereaux | Kate DiCamillo

In my book club, we randomly pulled this one as the one for all of us to read at the same time, and let me tell you, this book hits different when you're a queer young adult in your early twenties than it clearly hit the grown women in their 50+'s. Great book, absolutely adorable, and I love the fact that we accidentally timed it to coincide with the release of Bloomburrow.

Scaredy Squirrel: In a Nutshell | Melanie Watt

Yes, this is an Easy-level book. But somehow, this squirrel with anxiety and possibly OCD (yes, I'm projecting slightly, I kept going "he's just like me for real" aloud when I read it) is now one of my favorite fictional guys. And when he was having a meltdown, the other characters actually gave him space and respected his boundaries. Do you know how impossible that is to find in fiction? One of my favorite books now, hands down.

[sclfmastery]

Quickfire hot take but, even though I totally grasp each of us having favorite regens of the doctor and the master, both individually and together, as symbols of their ever-evolving positions along their personal and relationship journey.... I will never ever understand fan (or canon...) portrayals that draw such a sharp line of favoritism from the characters themselves.

Missy said "they're all the Doctor to me" when recalling a memory to Clara, and to me that encapsulates the enduring nature of their intense bond. To me that is THE line. Regeneration is a form of death and rebirth, but certain core traits are immutable, particularly to two people who are narrative foils, who have known each other for centuries (or possibly millennia) and keep being thrown together by fate again and again and again.

Bottom line is, every Doctor is the same person, and so is every Master. Acting as though one of them only cares for select versions of the other is just so strange to me. They aren't us. To them, it's just like loving (or hating, or both) someone through the eras of their life. Their same life, broken down into stages od evolution and devolution. It's the same person.

I can point to the exact episode (a lol very polarizing episode in Series 10) where I think this "they're not the same person from face to face" trend got exponentially more pronounced, but anyone who knows me knows what that episode is. I truly believe it's a disservice to every version of every Doctor and Master involved.

And I really don't think that Spydoc, which came soon thereafter, is just the playing-out of the consequences of a MASSIVE miscommunication between soul mates. It IS that, but not JUST. I think all of the writing about Thoschei that followed the exacerbating episode was trying to force this inaccurate distortion, this illusion of separateness, which is part of what made the events in Power of the Doctor so painful to Thoschei fans. The Doctor walked away from the Master (literally and figuratively, ironically inviting his inevitable despair--and her own demise) partly out of understandable hurt and rage and caution, but also out of a cold, repulsed misunderstanding: "Missy was willing to change and you regressed, you're a different person than she was, and you have angered me to the point of indifference; I am able to turn off caring about you because you are unrecognizable from her, the version of you that I could control save."

Maybe Whittaker's response is intended by Chibnall: we're supposed to recognize that she's wrong but HAS to be in order to survive another betrayal by the Master, which is what makes it all so tragic.

But I think fan reception has taken the whole thing ( "each Doctor and each Master is an entirely discrete self-contained being") too far, and it bothers me, so much, I think, because it's a trope that enforces the idea that love is transactional and contingent (in such a way that also perhaps unwittingly targets the socially, culturally, and economically marginalized). If you're the "good, small, manageable version" of yourself, then you're easier to love, and it's worth the investment. Otherwise, "you gambled and you lost," and you deserve to die lying in the filth of your own poor decisions. I get why that's an appealing, vindicting plot device, from the POV of an audience member who has felt hurt or even abused IRL. I understand it, I've BEEN the Doctor many times. It just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's just me. I could be at peace with that, as a Whovian :P.

But, in-universe, it's based on a premise that's factually erroneous! Dhawan's Master IS Missy IS Delgado IS Simm IS Jacobi IS Ainley IS Roberts IS Beevers etc etc etc. Just as Whittaker's Doctor is a RESPONSE to Capaldi's, but ALSO still IS Capaldi's. And Tennant's. And Baker's (x2). And Eccleston's. And Gatwa's. And Pertwee's. Etc etc. Dhawan's Master was the Prime Minister of the UK and also made chairs that eat people and also cried remembering the names of people she killed. It's the SAME PERSON.

Lol, not quickfire at all. It's an old bone to pick, I know. I just can't stop finding the whole trope...very itchy.

(ok to reblog...dunno if anyone would, LOL, but feel free to reblog and to comment).

I'm gonna tag some ppl I know I've chatted about this with before to see if there are new insights. And feel completely free to disagree with me on any count. @natalunasans @mostincrediblechange @drummingncise @modernwizard @nickcagestrufflehog @rearranging-deck-chairs @koschei-no-more @likeacharacterinamusical

[scotianostra]

On 19th August 1560 the Scottish scholar and poet, James Crichton, was born.

Soldier, scholar, poet and athlete, he was a graduate of St Andrews University and a tutor of King James VI. James Crichton, known as the Admirable Crichton, was a Scottish polymath, a latin term that translates to “universal man”, basically he was good at everything!

Crichton wasnoted for his extraordinary accomplishments in languages, the arts, and sciences. One of the most gifted individuals of the 16th century, James Crichton of Clunie Perthshire, was the son of Robert Crichton of Eliok, Lord Advocate of Scotland, and Elizabeth Stewart, from whose line James could claim Royal descent.

At the age of eight Crichton’s eloquence in his native vernacular was compared with that of Demosthenes and Cicero. By fifteen he knew “perfectly” Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and commanded native conversational fluency in Spanish, French, Italian, “Dutch”, Flemish, and, oh, “Sclavonian”, don’t worry I looked it up for us, it’s basically Slovenian.

That was the mere beginning of Crichton’s admirableness. He was also a champion athlete, a horseman, a fencer, a dancer, a singer of rare voice, and the master of most known wind and string instruments. His St. Andrews professor, Rutherford, a noted commentator, judged him to be one of the leading philosophers of the era.

After sucking all the available education to him in Scotland, it was only natural he should start on mainland Europe, he studied in France at the College of Navarre at the University of Paris. Here the young Scotsman cut a broad swath, though according to his jealous fellows his arenas of greatest activity were the tavernia’s and the whorehouses, rather than the lecture hall. Young Crichton did like the ladies, who in turn found him most–admirable.

He may have been liked by the ladies, but nobody likes a big heid, and that is how Crichton must have come across to many, nowadays he would have been one of the Chasers, or an Egghead on our TV screens, but back in the 16th century there were no such outlets for Crichton to show his big heid off, so he had posters printed up declaring that on a day six weeks hence, at nine in the morning, in the main hall of the College of Navarre, he intended to present himself to dispute with all comers all questions put to him regarding any subject. He had these put up on all the appropriate notice boards and church doors, before disappearing into the red light district to prepare himself for the contest. His adversaries had to quit laughing when on the appointed day Crichton appeared as advertised and bested the greatest local experts in grammar, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, logic, and theology.

The Crichton Show, having conquered Paris, moved next to the Italian peninsula. The young Scot performed memorable feats of academic disputation first in Rome and then in Venice. There he became fast friends with the famous scholar-printer Aldus Munitius, who is a credible witness to some of his more amazing intellectual performances. One of his ways of showing off was giving off the cuff instances of Comedic verse, a sort of Stand Up routine, but with that Crichton twist, the odes he told were in Latin!

Tradition has it on the street in Mantua one night he was accosted by four swordsmen, with superb sword play Crichton disarmed them all and forced them to show their faces. One of them, their leader indeed, turned out to be one of his pupils and prodigy, Vincenzo Gonzaga who was the son of The Duke of Mantua. Crichton was in the Duke’s employ and the youngster was jealous of the Scot, Crichton was also romantically linked to Vicenzo’s ex mistress. On seeing Vincenzo, Crichton instantly dropped to one knee and presented his sword, hilt first, to the prince, his master’s son. Vincenzo took the blade and with it stabbed Crichton cruelly through the heart, killing him instantly. James Crichton of Cluny was then in his twenty-second year.

There have been many accounts of Crichton in literature through the years since, mostly fictional but with hints of the story, the most famous is arguably the J M Barrie play, but the title of the play is the only semblance to the story of the Scottish Polymath.

[denimbex1986]

'One windy night in March 2022, in the desert outside Belen, New Mexico, Cillian Murphy was waiting to climb a 100-foot steel tower, a copy of the one that held the first nuclear bomb ever detonated in 1945. The conditions were right for summoning the emotion of the historic scene the Irish actor was about to play as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. “You could see this sand coming up off the desert and the skies were ominous,” Murphy says. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is fucking great.’ “

Nearby, as gusts whipped at the production tents, producer Emma Thomas was having the opposite reaction. “Imax cameras shooting film in the middle of a windy desert. The absolute worst,” says Thomas. “Miserable for people. Terrible for cameras.”

Though tense for the film crew, the sandstorm on the set of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer replicated the one the scientists and military officers had faced the night before the real Trinity test, as the U.S. Army code-named the effort. And Nolan — the rare filmmaker who can still convince a studio to back such an ambitious movie — was determined to keep shooting. “Chris always gets told that he’s lucky with weather, and I think he is,” says Thomas, who is also Nolan’s wife and the mother of his four children. “But I think he also feels like he creates his own weather.” As it had in 1945 before the nuclear test began at dawn, the wind stilled abruptly, and Nolan got his shots.

It says something about the director’s reputation for a near-religious commitment to big-screen spectacle that when news first broke online about Nolan shooting the Trinity test scene without using CGI, a fair number of movie fans assumed that meant he had literally detonated an atomic bomb on set. “It’s flattering that people would think I would be capable of something as extreme as that on the one hand, but it’s also a little bit scary,” Nolan says during an interview in mid-June, in the Los Angeles offices of his and Thomas’ production company, Syncopy Inc. All the interviews for this story were conducted before SAG-AFTRA called a strike on July 13 — a move which prompted the cast members in attendance that day to walk out of Oppenheimer’s London premiere.

It’s not just in his filmmaking that Nolan prefers to rely on analog methods. He doesn’t use email or carry a smartphone, and when he writes his scripts, he does so on a computer that isn’t connected to the internet. “My kids would probably say I’m a complete Luddite,” he says. “I would actually resist that description. I think technology and what it can provide is amazing. My personal choice is about how involved I get. It’s about the level of distraction. If I’m generating my material and writing my own scripts, being on a smartphone all day wouldn’t be very useful for me.”

Oppenheimer, which chronicles the Manhattan Project’s development of nuclear weapons and the political and emotional fallout for the people who built them, is both an ode to and a cautionary tale about humanity’s ability to harness science and technology. The $100 million movie, which Universal will release July 21, is inspired by the 721-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

The sprawling, starry cast boasts 79 speaking roles, including Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty; Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officer who directed the project; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, chair of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; and Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist with whom Oppenheimer had a passionate but tortured affair. The group of actors playing the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, including Josh Hartnett, Benny Safdie and Swedish actor Gustaf Skarsgard, are so numerous that they have their own WhatsApp group, called the “Oppenhomies.” Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Modine and Gary Oldman also appear. “It was the cast of Ben-Hur,” says Downey. “Everybody would have their moments. There were no small scenes.”

There are seat-rattling explosions, multiple steamy sex scenes and existential stakes. But Oppenheimer is also a biopic of a theoretical physicist, a man whose work is so abstract that it’s impossible to see. It’s R-rated, three hours long, with large chunks shot in black and white on Imax film developed expressly for Nolan and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema. And it contains a level of moral complexity that doesn’t exactly cry out summer popcorn movie — instead of the fictional CGI cities that are demolished in the third act of most summer films, Oppenheimer’s work led to the destruction of real cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more than 200,000 casualties.

“[Nolan] said to me, ‘This is the kind of movie that they used to make in the ’90s,’ ” says Damon. “It feels like when an Oliver Stone movie would come out and you’d go, ‘That’s one of the movies I’m going to see this year no matter what, because everyone’s going to be talking about it.’ But those movies have disappeared from the multiplex.”

The seed of Oppenheimer was planted in Nolan’s 2020 science fiction film, Tenet, in which a character references the physicist when comparing the creation of a doomsday device to the development of the first atomic bomb. Robert Pattinson, who co-starred in Tenet, gave Nolan a collection of Oppenheimer’s speeches as a wrap gift, and when Nolan read the speeches the physicist made in the 1950s, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he saw the makings of a fascinating character study. “When you read the words of people speaking at that time, you see them wrestling with the implications and the consequences of what’s happened and what they’ve done,” Nolan says. “I started to get very excited about, rather than using it as an analogy in a science fiction sense, telling the actual reality of the story, really trying to be there, to give people the experience of what it would have been like to be Oppenheimer in those moments.”

Nolan, 52, grew up in the U.K. at the height of nuclear anxiety. In the 1980s, he watched as young people flocked to join the country’s growing Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, saw movies like the 1986 animated nuclear disaster film When the Wind Blows and heard the 1985 Sting song “Russians,” which includes the line, “How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?” Nolan became fascinated by one point he learned over the years, which would come to animate him as a filmmaker: that there had been a moment when the Manhattan Project scientists realized they couldn’t completely eliminate the possibility of a chain reaction from an atomic bomb that would set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the world. “In the absence of being able to completely eliminate the possibility, they went ahead and pushed the button,” Nolan says. “That’s an incredible room to be in, an incredibly dramatic moment to take an audience to.”

The resulting movie is “sort of an origin story in a strange way, not a million miles away from the things we were doing with Batman and the Dark Knight trilogy,” Nolan says. “I got excited by his intellectual curiosity and adventurism in the 1920s, which was shared by all his peers. It was a revolution in physics that corresponded very closely to all the other revolutions in all aspects of life — the music of Stravinsky and modernism and literature, Picasso painting.”

One of the most unusual creative choices Nolan made was to write much of the script in the first person, including stage directions — instead of “Oppenheimer walks into the room,” for instance, the script reads, “I walk into the room.” Nolan did this, he says, to distinguish between two timelines: one from Oppenheimer’s point of view, shot in color, and the other, more objective, in black and white. The script detailed how Nolan planned to make the conceptual physics real for an audience through use of image and sound. “What does it look like, how things exploded and crashed against each other,” says Blunt. “All the visuals were very detailed in his stage descriptions.” Tonally, the movie would have to take the audience from the triumph of scientific achievement to the devastating realization of its impact. “Very often when you’re planning a film, whatever the most seemingly difficult challenge is, the way to deal with it is to embrace it as the biggest strength of the material,” Nolan says. “For me, the idea of going with these scientists from the absolute highest high to the lowest low in as dramatic and compressed a way as possible, that became the hinge point, the engine of the film.”

Oppenheimer is Murphy’s sixth film with Nolan. He has always played supporting roles: the Scarecrow in the Dark Knight films, a businessman in Inception, a shivering soldier in Dunkirk. Nolan says he doesn’t have actors in mind when he writes, but when he finished his Oppenheimer draft, casting the lead was obvious. “I’ve been staring at the cover of the book American Prometheus for so many months, and there’s this photograph, black and white, a light blue-eyed stare, very intense, of this guy,” Nolan says. “And I thought, ‘Well, I know who could do that.’ ” Murphy, who also played a physicist who designed a bomb in the 2007 Danny Boyle science fiction movie Sunshine, jokes that he has “resting physicist’s face.” Murphy was at home in Ireland when Nolan called, offering the role of a lifetime. “He’s just so understated and matter-of-fact and British,” Murphy says of Nolan. “It was like, ‘Cillian, look, I have a script, it’s Oppenheimer and I’d like you to play Oppenheimer.’ That was it.”

Nolan prefers to hand-deliver his scripts rather than email them. “People will say, ‘Why do you work in secrecy?’ ” Nolan says. “Well, it’s not secrecy, it’s privacy. It’s being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible. And to be able to sit with somebody who’s just read what you’ve written and get their take on it, see how they connect with it in a very human, face-to-face way.” In Murphy’s case, Nolan flew to Ireland and waited while the actor read the document; Downey went to Nolan’s home in L.A. to read it. “I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” Downey says. “And he was like, ‘So will you do it?’ I was like, ‘Uh, usually, there’s 38 phone calls.’ But he’s Chris Nolan. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I think I will.’ ”

Nolan’s movies have made more than $5 billion at the global box office, and he is almost singular in his ability to attract broad audiences not only to franchise fare like the Dark Knight trilogy but also original ideas like 2010’s Inception ($836.8 million) and 2014’s Interstellar ($773.8 million) and historical fare like 2017’s Dunkirk ($525.2 million). After being delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was the first Hollywood tentpole to launch in theaters in the summer of 2020, a time when most U.S. cineplexes were operating at less than half capacity. In that diminished box office environment, the movie made $363.7 million worldwide, but the film and the pandemic helped usher in the end of Nolan’s relationship with what had been his longtime home studio, Warner Bros. When the company announced in December 2020 that it was dropping its entire 2021 theatrical slate directly onto its then-nascent streaming service, HBO Max, much of the industry complained in private, but Nolan was the most prominent director to publicly criticize the studio. “They don’t even understand what they’re losing,” Nolan said in a statement to THR at the time. (Nolan is himself a voracious moviegoer with varied and sometimes surprising tastes — for instance, he and his family watch Love Actually every Christmas and he enjoys the Fast & Furious franchise. “He watches every single movie, of every type of genre,” says Blunt. “And you never hear him shit-talk other people’s movies. He knows how hard it is to direct a great movie.”)

The current writers strike is driven by many of the same issues that frustrated talent about Warner Bros.’ pandemic-era policies, including transparency and residuals. “In the last few years, it’s very often not been clear what a studio’s intention is,” Nolan says. “Why they’re making a particular project, what they’re then going to do with it, how they monetize it. Do they monetize it at all? Is it a loss leader to drive subscriber growth? A lot of the reason that there’s a strike right now is we have to make the streamers pay the true cost of production. The business models don’t work right now.”

Nolan says he voted to ratify the contract the Directors Guild struck with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in June. “The parameters of the deal are certainly going to help the other guilds in negotiations,” he says. “It’s very important that all the guilds get a great deal right now. It is a transitional moment. The move to streaming has thrown up all kinds of economic issues with all the guilds and in particular, the writers. And now is the moment that we need to fix those things.”

In mid-2021, Nolan had left Warner Bros. and was meeting with the other major studios about making Oppenheimer. “I told them it was a three-hour film,” Nolan says. “I told them it would be R-rated. I told them what the budget would be. Emma and I, we’ve taken a view that telling studios exactly what we’re doing and sticking to that is the clearest, simplest thing to do.”

Through their kids, Nolan and Thomas were friends with Donna Langley, now the chairman and chief content officer of the NBCUniversal studio group, and Langley saw Nolan as an ally in the studio’s attempt to resuscitate the theatrical business. “Coming out of the pandemic, we were wondering what would make audiences come back to theaters,” says Langley. “[Nolan] is one of a handful of directors whose name alone inspires audiences globally to go to the movie theater.” Universal guaranteed Nolan an exclusive theatrical release for between 90 and 120 days on Oppenheimer, far longer than the studio’s pandemic-era exclusive windows, which ranged from 17 to 31 days. “Given Chris’ experience with his prior movie, it was clear the theatrical window was important to him,” Langley says.

By February 2022, production was underway, with locations including Oppenheimer’s actual house in New Mexico and Albert Einstein’s office in Princeton, New Jersey. The film secured permission to shoot at the White Sands Missile Range, where the Trinity test occurred, but because it is still an active military base, the hours were inconvenient, and instead production designer Ruth De Jong re-created the site in the desert. Some of the scientists followed the shoot and worked as extras. “You’d be in a scene and you’d casually chat to someone and he was a high-end physicist working in Los Alamos,” says Murphy.

Nolan’s sets feel different from most, say the actors. “There aren’t a lot of people running around on phones. There’s no video village. There’s no chair with your name on it,” says Downey. “It was focused and Spartan, almost a monastic approach to what we’re doing.” Despite Nolan’s reputation for precision, there are no marks on the floor for actors to hit. “He’s like, ‘We don’t need to put down marks because you shouldn’t be looking for them, and my team should be able to find you wherever you are,’ ” Downey adds. “It’s actually kind of super loose within this controlled format.” Nolan’s notes to his actors are concise and focused. “We did a scene a few times and I wasn’t getting it,” says Murphy. “I may have come in a bit hard. He leaned over to me and said, ‘He’s not a boxer, he’s a chess player.’ Boom. You just go, ‘Totally get it.’ You get used to these big, huge fucking cameras moving toward you, but you’re really there in the moment doing it as truthfully as you possibly can.”

Early on in his research, Nolan had a conversation with physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf that signaled a potentially enormous problem for the film. Dijkgraaf explained that in the early 20th century, during the transition from classical physics to quantum mechanics, “one of the things that had been challenging and alienating for physicists was that, as [Dijkgraaf] put it, they could no longer visualize the atom,” Nolan says. “And of course, to me that was very frightening. I said to him, ‘Well, that’s my job. That’s what I have to do. What do you mean you can no longer visualize it?’ He said, ‘Well, you can’t because it’s energy fields lying on top of each other. It’s not ping-pong balls flying around.’ ”

Nolan came to the conclusion that he would rely on his editor, Jennifer Lame, to help him create a visceral feeling of the physics, layering visual effects, sound and Ludwig Göransson’s score. “I got excited by, how can cinema help you understand something not intellectually, but emotionally, that it’s really impossible to visualize in other ways?” Nolan says. He relied on special effects supervisor Scott Fisher and visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson to help him create a representation of the physics on film through the use of practical effects — the effects department’s experiments included smashing ping-pong balls together, throwing paint at a wall and shooting at various frame rates. Out of a desire to preserve the illusion, Nolan declines to say what actually created the finished effect, except that it is definitely not computers — there is no CGI in the film at all. “CG inherently is quite comfortable to look at,” Nolan says. “It’s safe, anodyne. And what I said to Andrew on Oppenheimer is, ‘This can’t be safe. It can’t be comfortable to look at it. It has to have bite. It’s got to be beautiful and threatening in equal measure.’ “

Oppenheimer is eerily topical. In March, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the United Nations said the risk of nuclear weapons use is higher now than at any time since the Cold War. Another technological innovation, artificial intelligence, has prompted scientists to do the kind of soul-searching that Oppenheimer eventually did — after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Oppenheimer’s story is the most dramatic example I know of the fraught relationship between science and government,” Nolan says. “The relationship between technology and government right now is one of the most difficult and frightening areas.”

Oppenheimer is set to open in theaters opposite Warner Bros.’ Barbie, which appears likely to win the weekend, a phenomenon the extremely online have dubbed “Barbenheimer” in a series of memes, including one with an atomic mushroom cloud exploding in a plume of pink smoke. Universal struck an unusual agreement with Imax for Oppenheimer to have all the Imax screens in North America for three full weeks — a move that has frustrated Tom Cruise, whose Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One opened a week earlier. “There is room for them all to do well,” says Langley. Nolan’s movies, she notes, tend to attract audiences far beyond opening weekend. “You see the movie once, you want to go back and see it again,” Langley says. “That’s going to help.”

A major part of the pitch to audiences will be that this is a movie you’ll need to get off the couch to fully appreciate. “This is not a biopic, this is an experience,” says Blunt. “There’s no way you’re going to feel the scope of it watching it on your iPad.”'

[mariacallous]

“Of course, I am not satisfied with the fact that some things are taking longer than I would like… but it is clear that we are fulfilling what we promised and that we are moving the Czech Republic forward,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala wrote on X on Tuesday.

In his trademark professorial tone, the premier was reacting to local media reports claiming, point by point, that the government had failed to fulfil its key program promises, including the consolidation of public finances, a driving force of the ruling coalition’s agenda which is seen as responsible in large part for its record-low popularity among a population yearning, by all accounts, for a change in leadership.

Bogged down by uneven policy achievements, cumbrous infighting and repeated communication failures, the centre-right government of Fiala is seeking a new momentum to enter the upcoming high-stakes election campaign cycle with renewed strength and confidence.

But as the ruling parties attempt to present next year’s parliamentary ballot as a battle for the very soul of Czechia’s democratic traditions and institutions, many remain unconvinced, instead seeing highly unpopular parties merely fighting for their own survival.

On the symbolic date marking Czechoslovakia’s Independence Day on Monday, the leaders of three of the four governing parties signed a memorandum for their joint candidacy for the 2025 parliamentary elections, renewing the centre-right Spolu (Together) alliance that saw them narrowly gain power in 2021.

The document was signed by Fiala, leader of the Civic Democrats (ODS), TOP 09 chairwoman and parliamentary speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova, and the newly elected head of the Christian democratic KDU-CSL party Marek Vyborny. They described their fight as the battle of pro-democratic forces against the radical left and populist right, and vowed to continue with the reforms they started during their first term in office.

Their detailed political program should be presented in February, more than half a year before the planned general election, but commentators note that coming up with a joint position and coordinated campaign will prove, after four years of collaboration and shifting power dynamics, more difficult than the first time around.

“We are facing opponents who are ready to lie… and appeal to the lowest of human emotions,” Fiala said as he stressed the need to come together. “We are capable of winning this fight.”

It will however be an uphill battle, as there is little doubt – among the political class, pundits or the electorate – as to who is widely expected to emerge victorious in less than 12 months.

Riding high after two victories this year in the European and regional ballots, and capitalising on popular frustrations against a hugely unpopular government, the main opposition ANO movement of billionaire former premier Andrej Babis enjoys the support of more than a third of the electorate, according to the most recent polls.

Tapping into the populist, anti-immigration, EU-bashing, ‘pro-peace’ playbook of a string of European and Western far-right leaders or wannabes – including, just across the country’s borders, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico – Babis and his ANO party are a long way from where they started more than a decade ago as a nominally business-oriented, centrist movement.

“The ANO movement is just Orban’s puppet,” Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told Politico.

“They have clearly found friends among pro-Russian nationalists and xenophobes,” he said, referring to Babis’s membership of the new Patriots for Europe faction in the EU Parliament.

The prospect of Babis returning to power – which could further strengthen the emerging axis of far-right forces in Central Europe – already has many worried, both abroad in European and NATO capitals, and at home where many fear the democratic backsliding and attacks against the country’s checks and balances that could ensue.

Even by joining forces, the centre-right Spolu is credited with only about 20 per cent of voting intentions, and only ODS would be predicted to send representatives to the lower house of parliament if the three parties had decided to run separately.

Based on current forecasts, just a few other parties are expected to pass the 5 per cent threshold – including ruling coalition partner STAN (at about 13 per cent) and the far-right and potential ANO ally SPD movement (6-7 per cent).

Two crushing electoral defeats, a bungled digitisation policy and a chaotic political melodrama have, meanwhile, seen the liberal Pirates recently kicked out of the coalition government and into some soul searching in a far-right-dominated opposition, with support hovering just above the electoral threshold.

Analysts urge caution, however, at drawing conclusions too early, especially in light of the explosive geopolitical context, volatile economic conjecture and high level of indecisiveness among Czech voters.

“You’re actually trying to measure something people don’t know themselves,” commented Martin Buchtik from the STEM polling agency, assessing that up to 50 per cent of voters made up their mind at the last minute for June’s European Parliament elections, and that early polls tend to overestimate the appeal of the strongest party at that given time.

[libidomechanica]

No lives, that will, thou rule my will I

A curtal sonnet sequence

               1

Which this maple burned back, though I became at last attainable. No lives, that will, thou rule my will I tell measuring wells of fire beneath the spirit, Ghost may die. My saucy bark in the last promoted coupled, so sane an’ twenty, Tam. As for loves around of stone the faith, hopeth all thee lust, to heauie herse, breakers face rose-wreath hard to under there thy canvas, and twice descry what kind of the weeks; four, the viewless wind.

               2

Examples of the rolling tier, for the Turk’s flower, it was certain, my choice Myrrha for this, bring honey dew. This page, Yes. The Miller’s Daughter, had not quite and disgrace of that solace can but attentive: the somber moved the word by word to repayre the foam, from harm much thine eye; who measure and join’d each dwelling. A Russians now behind I every day have different and something—the highway, and fountain roaring to you.

               3

Around his others wide world will waft him best, young and lost, a lord and rise, O moon, from decayed, his foly one, withdraw one remote Shalott. What strikes, but here prevent; nor, England! Or a beaker times. No loved a daughters, but rued the stormy east-wind keen without occasion of Eden on that Heart the end? But when the salt sea-water passengers did we weave thy first place to break. And the good: defined. She knew things were noon?

               4

Like exaggeration, humming tear, the green breckan, wi’ the love their share: their stately at his pilgrimage to Rome, if such is our city and pass of thy year is the darke their names in the secular to- be, but served their wrigle tailes, peel your lives to beate his three or for you could not, cause sometimes lonely as a torrent coin; for some odes I made a leaf tremble o’er, eternally see the pity one day was dear.

               5

Or hasted thine in the sky, and makes him ken yode lately Juliana’s strength for Heaven’s eyes morning schwa schwa in the bed’s sheath of us. ’ Other petty skipping away, quick and dry, and if this lower life. The moon. And meets my squally returning lame, for sweete what? It is well the lowlye layed, they are more, and heard from out then, had such outran thro’ four days when he turn’d to Ice, and to raise threttie yearns to arm, to breath; nothing sea.

               6

That long have this proud palace you stretched we! A Dream of the terror, darkly; but his colowres, their shadowy thoroughfare. She still my wisdom dealt with eye on earthly Muse, debased to awake, as dying child; as you wilt not for his breathe a though times had met a patriot to beaten without the crickets ticked to view a fact is the noisy town,—a hollow too, waiting to lift as thy owne smart, for the solitude.

               7

Yet in the wind, which touch my press more she got too come at night with me remain with ev’ry glen the howlings of men, and knucklebone. Moves and the redd’ning time reveal to impeded by every private sorrowed, thy dear, turns a muskets at these same, I designed, Heav’n as he loves by, can grief a stain. And nearer. Along the pig who sniff at vice of the Nightingale sings, tan sacred languish in the room of every hair.

               8

Whom Ida hyllye place and fell shores by which thought, for she wealth it stopped: they are ready to be loves to reckon, where you exist hand I rise—robert Burns: she’s the circled dancing this necessity and Terebinth good watches couch’d at length to the too cleave the camp of love, I wote my after stepping-wells through skin: little done, since, before than praised upon my life is the greene: o sorrow makes by brings the coast, thy living elf.

               9

The Christmas-eve: the yellow. They are blows of Anakim, the bonie lass o’ Ballochmyle. No wing of time, her look was locust in fact, they’ve wrang’d there is far to constructed wrong. The features to the warm; for words, they call’d men from out there she reaper wears; but knowledge the pleasaunce had he nothing farewell! In the midnight is on, as by the school and truth embodied of dying so blind and life indeed desideratum!

               10

Of cattell, and loyal knights that salt of Loue, and yet we fared; and leaps into a room is eel-black with you, and dream’d the thee from day the Turk’s flowery May, a false and remember June their face was over the ungarner’d stalk as once, and when well as vast eddies Embleme. That glad at height, and say his figured, glorious light: submitting thee will not you are for thy legs, the genial hour this ringing on this—for I do!

               11

Or beauty grow, if thou with any things in life in loue. A thousand cold spell the whisper of Heaven. How bene all things and many of cyclic stormy darlings hereafter, up from Camelot; the darken’d eyes were we go from side by whose which watched for his rapier branding memory of the night, while he turne to the won’t examine, a trebly dead? So word that pleasant, under arms. When on my past, and the soul?

              ��12

Fair Cloe is my regret, o my life, with aimless alarming, in griefs with other place the New Testament isle near in flood; but I. When in thy with a kindlier days descending;—o that I am, doth ride; or being down the day, come when more will strong he set his round, was know whether it was mere, who would toil; and everywhere, leaue me in which stick in that grow. The wonder, you canst say, is truth, they were fruitless are old bier.

               13

Nor can find my galage growth to the eyes is matter spirit should to-night the lips ill hung or their curls about the things; the bride and think is near us at our of reveal thy losse not thy burthen in the best you when all hips the team won on homecoming care, with thee which doth go. Of faith has my heart or slack doth aspire: hindering, or in hast pyne, plagues, and darken’d mind bewailed guilty things to thigh. Nor other men.

               14

Wherein morning like a light, where they when clasp Grief lest both in the glory gaping like a lewde lust of beam and his pants he fast as you’ve already stands; and Ave, Ave, ’ said, merely maid, you, but a widow’d race for dare in the same. That rose the gulfs bene yclad in Blank Verse st Simeon Stylites tears, the bells and in the blood waltzes. Other tell her head, rock’d up at here to evening slope there be light, o heauen hent.

               15

When I tune thy province, before: but chief thy passed day with the view, what earst I have to peer heroes—and suck’d from him oblivion yield that weeps, How vain travail hath left alone that once more clear song with vertuous care. Conduct by paths of this worthy; full faith interwetting to painted wood, thou will not of books in fields, and with one of mine only the Eye love my eyes morning— the ruby, pearl she claimed. Give with books forlorn!

               16

I probably trip and profligate the best at their shadowing from the body that sitting gold, that he darkness came in whisper fall: ’tis harmefull verse. And sweetest shore that point, with lewde lorrell, yet saw but he love like a harden and beneath, the moonlight, and surveying, that you that to highest gods in the frame my Ghost. Oh Shah, I am secure his alone, so void of noysome beard, how your deare all roses of old.

               17

Their place, and imaginative landlord’s blast on your with wandered first hallucination, save Loves are she foster’d sheaf, or build and hold me, fair neck; whence to break a sucking his face was only when he vsed shew might know her father, while with flowering how flew. He rosebuds steedes to whom my mouth slips the back front door. Indeed, Mamma, I did the wife and dimme and to each others in secret means my weary steeple.

               18

To-night’s starry clear; tlot-tlot, in the boy bring honey dew. Love, as Rainebowe bent my doom, who would not why, he third, in that every walk, he flames in furrows airy, beneath the sustaining of wearied eye, robert Burns: she’s the strays, her like brothers’ joy and poor, rings to save times he told me, enchain! Cunning in her grief which it bore, sufficiencies, that every kiss they are not as idlers do, and love with vain wounded first.

               19

Whiles height, her virgin head, and in the Soul relapses—and what nowe sadde winters late th’ Anatomie of a conscious and ever would toil; and no more;—Farewell, and joy be with his society? The times great work of party a slight know we’re nothing neuer ginne tasswage? Feed upon his soul on his ale instead of them ill, the kindling like sheepe: theyr throw a sheepe han they were needes bene that such vulgar miracle.

               20

Thus Nature in the bugle breathe to meet thy side. And, crown, but burnt like a man under than in hands the worst, and graceless I hoped before, but scorn, and see’st me, many world-wide fluctuate all remains while then all I knowe. My old grandfather’d lands beyond thy corbe show me such is that fills the Lights Reserved, as I ought, all who should poor, rings that out of each other and her loudly things; so Stellas shape in mine own Desire.

               21

But all the unquiet common bed were the lowest: meane, I designed, and new books frame should decrees, flutters, but matters plain, a lord it, and in misery to white hawthorn, and gowan lurk, lowly words had a grand illumination, they sang, all providence, wishing and by somethinks my friend, a godly ocean—Truth. Now all at one removed. The less to proved how vain upbraid their way again, as flies home to immortals!

               22

The knows nothing! Full: we came: till on misty mountain health I refused into a room and in clay? Your eye some high up thy flights are, most terrible as the dark, to mingling pavement of praise, his guided me: from this: in pithy phrase; and tell her Body chance, and the road was that thou would I have reaches former works of woe is after than we spoke, and bore than moon and red; but for ane and fears before, and borrell, of Hell.

               23

There was richly shrinks, priests, and deep as lythe, does never more I could we forsook the iron age, goethe hair in their own improbably broke and flung there, now she was thus our hair likewise that delirious Conscience reach—tho’ left the tumult of the night know thy splendorous, singing to drowning dream that fame to Alexandra after- loss: ah, sweetly? I leave the euill we bury alive and tell my greater smart. Man bespake.

               24

But whether orange low love-knot into absence! The race’—and cruelty. I singing dove. The halter where shouldst thou born was I bold, that myopic travelers cannot more than love and was mov’d, and silent is a hyll, as conquer’d year and go. Is there but the flocks fathers will. Love is like some poor girlonds deck’d with cold heart in the waxen heart, I’m as fresh, which little worth, to what slope the bound, and he turn’d all emong, the sea.

               25

This isolation, with rain she wouldst charity, have letters—the church do whate’er heroes fought, let us go: your live and staggers your falls in the new rays the yard, then we met, thou roll’d the forever lodging in head, rock’d upon the leanes amisse. Dumb as a chief cities of truth: and I are ouerture. And love I bore a line of limes I must be heard again. Now raise; but the heart, which this, t is the queen o’ woman.

               26

Or to smere, that high, their home, is the bound, and, feeling thing stays high, left my blood a kind of his Beauty the waning, theyr boyes can hit then the music till Phosphor, doubtful dreams? But that which makes appear’d mistaking mossy ways to raise thresh, the rainbow wroth: Is this wild pull hear the ocean’s moanings shows the yard, the scorne the nights requiescat sea Dreams is freighted vows are oaths of doubt’s a god praying hour in revive, but their ring.

               27

The cold, and trees three longer the name of mine. Without there is not any feud of riches rang, and his change do thee to its worst of cup and knowledge growes soueraignty he gate. The awful things; and where thou, O Lord, such important thing all things doen ill agreeable, opening sights, for into frowns and winds and stray; and benign, our window; and found the river Let my bed its lips; but Summer eves. For lack of us.

               28

To their feather flowres, those better her own mischievously slow, and the Bar enoch Arden flowers of silence of an eye, I go. Here, is the morn as yet in the types; Yes; and nineteen who should loved there to dying into that poor of this last lost, but at the household a might her know what I should hide? Called sky bloom-covered words! Gray, come dolorous straight that hear the never at pleasaunce no more. As flies on Fortune ends.

               29

Sometimes bene night muse express his wonted glebe, or my pass onward light charioted by the mind: it will, dream where was left. The place of some confused in form to toll me back upon the streets were to its game; it selfe hast never thou live and groveling tears amid all away. Gardens green, above, can only moment desert: but scalding amid them as noise. My sole effect flower to kind oft would light is so cold: but I.

               30

Or wanton troop of damsels glad; her now, my friend; thy blood! But when were the cups of the Severn gave the Girl, hey, sweet saint, by sage, by preachers should flings singing to these repose on still growing a small his voice four courtship grew, so equal lighted vows; she is extinguish the woe of whom Suwarrow fair, ray round about therewith him. The Lady of Shalott. And riches ranckorous of sorrow and pipe an’ twenty, Tam!

               31

Can calm despair of stars peep these have arrive again, and more you can’t hurt or tall, and forgotten except by me be blame not, when the door: I linger who turns out of woe is afternoon light. The Bird of laws; but chiefly province or a while the highwayman came riding—while the earthly songs, and o’er to the town is vanity’- most address each others, I shall move me look the crack open to those lips for ever seen.

               32

Be sunder’s roll who mused rhyme, and who shall I know how long cloak’d from day they must: puncture you for the star and brouzed, and this charnel-cave, and when you are faith that sagest her mouth opens touching balm, and as a separate claimed. A red-cross a gain of a stabled half alive: ’ but I muse thee all. Last Love, you struck the fisherman’s final berries in like a gas lamp were deeme of tall trees of barley, the bounding sky, with dead.

               33

I crave your flocke so mortars ready borne down on the frost! Still strength, he wouldest cry, will be sport and drent, didonis dear voice is extinguish’d soone I looked up a Polish moods aside, if so it was t to heauie herse, the soul of Shalott. By the bay! To feed the brakes a verse. Forged at all with poetic voice been out of state the wight, and beneath as drawing of Folly she was nine, with Death, the heauenly part ought her: to cast.

               34

Singing on thy remote and bitterness a cry to longer than the one whose loue the body where they are, where lovely hands have I see the cup, the user song of the risen to be one would preacher hand tell her earliest made her, by the blessing be? I say and read in phrases latest chiefly passes by, can grief I leaves of what delirious in the plume, fast assizes keep an adjunct to repayre the frost!

               35

Had fall’n as he told it has fall flat, with milk-white and in truths that not mickle. And caroll of shepherds swaines may be deceiving leaf, and brim with your eyes and under bancke, it like to it, you a stock the awkward from to-day, and face; no drum nor true, thoughts that roars, hath of wassail the raw materials and on the tables, mine, minerals! The laws the hours crawled out of death reason armed, to justice, ever living is mixed.

               36

It gouges out waste of Nature, my chief delight know her the great race, his Cypress Catherine. But now I what fruitless their jealousy to find great conquerings. Or distant glades: I have to thy praise the terrain around, nor other. And four hamlet curl’d, the harmless step I onward sunne laugh of Madam, and strained against the very span of the past, and than the chalice of mine: give us on our second’s ordination bore.

               37

Passing teares grew rathe and it a jewel. And sith the salt Medway his army’s loss so that come of flower the God accurst! They too highest milk and makes the faded love of growing near, theyr weed: and led by merely masons wrought to be; loved place to bear; help thy voice replied; thou shall be they will be the stands to feel! Sets you will strength to such as the isle of the way I love their feeling, or sun, or ev’n yet, day by Wordsworth!

               38

Will be show her! Born to sicker works running new hate recruits with new meaning whereon immediately shepheards that was, and and wrinkling I mighty Love clash along then, the blind and fields; yet lessen’d from the quiet scene mornefull verse, and stranger yet oft turn’d and you, fond termes, and pain, is drawn about me from the golden hands; and every daily prayer, nor changing changing to beat no pain felt only knowledge?

               39

May we pass them but an eare. An’ twenty, Tam! Where the moon is hid; the coming Garden for the unhappy region be the grass, or my store. Making to the ribbon, looping, when their due place; she is, which was rich, a quietus. The stream that all the little what chase they look’d on Camelot. You mayst thou issueless, but forbeare. He with thee one who could not sleep, I hear thy face the grounded that grows deepest last will not like wool.

               40

What passing the boats, and hoary knoll to me; nay, added praised drippings; so Stella single peal of incongruities: be her or nothing isles of herds spontaneous as any he; sma’ siller guest, they pression three columns, with winged Dryad of Orpheus could strike his life best had beneath alone, alone, so far, to wash thro’ the burdenous corpse she springeth: o stones stirring light, though not itself in his finger touch’d within.

               41

How long debate; but trusted vein. What thou Desire, that sets the free; and through; be her fair visage and being mine, that towers overlooked up by Christ: the mean they call’d me in night a fawn to my darling blue the one would sorrow will divide us not a lily from when my heart freedom to annoyed I prosperous stranger yet oft wholly round him back on whispers, Tis thus in this heath, to be blame not to retreat!

               42

And other thing I would clear song to takes the sky; from on himself in my dream’d to land; what early year. We’ll send him, on threaded some hame faintly to the wave. To wash through all that with thee too commonplace, cease upon that fly with sucke vp those they most consters, genial tablet glimmer’d, and blossoms are just music out of the landlord’s black years are our pure virgin of a divers to theme to see: why should see his armour braue.

               43

To the haunt of things which makes me cold baptismal font, make glad at heard you, I am old, ring at the end of phantom, Nature bankrupt is, beggar’d of law, to them, and deck the cast as purposeth; since the past; and cold spell thee on tower and peculiar part, because to fold in which grief makes a deserted water bathe. I see it fades the fathers in an earth the moon, this scythe of my friend is often the winter’s dust.

               44

Mouth but talk as ere I make therefore men with alone. I hear a wizard music more quickly, not alone and Lethean spring on prey, which Life inspires of that was going to this tomb, a pale, pale instead, we stand thy creatures of whom we call he, man, her young folks within. That earthly good Oake, pitied, speakes lyke a little, me of my dreams, good darkness, I mighty government; for thy help of Love that he sits, and pestle.

               45

But serves witty: he made the wakeful bird; behind her break, break in your hunts he taken up a lifetime hath been his army’s loss did ever-breaking Earth’s, and sweat or blood, survey’d the heart’s work of glitters in rank, riband or a while thy look’d on a lighter of the darken’d minds quick, the bent to beat or beauty born in flood of onward she starry heaven, her life in my own ditch. An’ I saw thro’ with love simple praise?

               46

Suffer the yellow-leaved was born of loue. An awful things, and blow the heart is full stroke with agonies, with my love bearded barley, the wilt thou, perche é vecchio, spaventa Iddio. They change your eyes were the shining slowly, till each other, in the end? Which makes a man at him great oath I see between the thou such as thou shalt meet that mortal lullabies in lowly spight: the rabid, and afternoons driving hue?

               47

The Danube could be in Nature’s earth, a level mead, or for the highway, but never lost as you will know not a word! And who sniff at once fill’d with lost: thou look down through you wilt be sport, and Langeron, and light charming;—o that are fair; and throw a shelter foreheads felt no painted light, since first fruit; for the stay to store. And let him back into Thelements on his blind, embrace, or, dying lost dear, but there a mist the same.

               48

Of either; but he replying, How change. Dip down thrice that I be corrupted: or like an idle casements the cossette, welcome guess’d there is there, light—or darkness in the North a potato. The Altars have some voices ranckorous hands, as the rooms and all be done, hath copies by, untied her hair over the love, I strive again, should represence grace and may say, farewell! And I was far more and milkier every year.

               49

Francke shepherdess, esteem me, and cloute she look’d on: if thy like the dead? And with folded arms or credulous shade, I find, I seem to looked up her last poetic arm much unblest frame she least upon the mind, no matter, lost for each product and fear to the nosegayes to slight remain unnamed boy on the dust is cruellest, and close did invite me to frost, which ripen’d every spirits bridal doors. But in himselfe contempt.

               50

The Altars had man behold, although I cannot see you once more. No love these many subtle thought the stones, are all the circle drawn a life was little silvery haze of some say loud is our life beget? So find than that here the page in her idiot lyre; they lie in an earth, and bounds of deed, for that the cot below. And if thought; who keepen long. Continues to the harp be to the men were several world we dare.

               51

To test his rags: there were in three here was brought her: to cast. Symmetrically from fame’s black waves besprint. To her I go; I cannot fight the smokes, they that make the slumber sorrow by their shadow on the flouret of the churls, and but into frostie furies former flame, and overtrail’d with what counsellors and chain and trust her moods, or village churl in spirit’s inner vileness of the body mine; and strange my swan, my complain.

               52

Beyond most, as the clash and East, and shaken hands that drench thee is but all this wants gnarr at their dying sweet is death. And ev’n as heard clymbe to striven half so fall, I bring. Muses, I oft inuoked young, and learnd a lesson from the little patience in a tale I tasted this metaphor, bright on forms have sought, and mid-May’s elder jack Smith. I have vengeance, nor streams the phenomenological spring, and misery.

               53

Nor can it purposeth; since de Ligne, and flashing from church below thro’ darkness clean, that sleeps or weedes to her buried body into a heat, but that fell out of the North End, the truth;—such than he. Fare, my grief or anticipation, with diffused to victual; such nobler leaves of your gray mosse, whose his stalks as those balefull verse. To make a stockes, great distance. Happy herself along the spare the mind the Prince defast.

               54

Thou medlest morn, by his shadows, witness— in desire! Yet in time. But others, Claudel vilifying God will be not means my deep regret becoming night; while he great; if stone at a time indeed and gazing one’s along wo in weaken’d sanctities of thy crags, O Sea! With love God, the other youth return’d; for her side! A very span of blood, but in thy course, who moves. Come vp the attentive: the trees, as much but you.

               55

Send, less thou be latest leave been the despatch it into its welcome in the regret scrawled over down, and often he was sudden those which be the city’s edge of heat; be cheek lie there in dear, made for newsletters, bind him to here he sailing mart, but where twas the coward your gloom, who graspest at time shall look on heart as strong as is over there in earth the saddles that rolls tight. This is she, chaste? He loved thro’ the grand old.

               56

Who grewest not fear: but took farewell, immortal in deeds, and only amend, the use of love! Kisses bright; i’ll be should Colin make me more for it was heavy measures right bene, as down, the closing game, nor will; but attendant aided be to seize and greet your eyes. I curse is lost dear, and hope in my heaved was, as your with thy brothers, and small demand now tis too much hope in darkness among the grass, yet could I left.

               57

It is no crime to linger; it is love? I travelers can’t answer from Paradise; and thou among mankind, against it seems, so smirke, so to hang no weight makes a dead selves complained ceiling may rise from more. So, dead ride alone I am too gross, and tried to renew: for their country skies; thy blood: so wert stronger liue, ah why liue yond Cossacques and no more, it tore than deathes a novel world. Where the dark red leaf has part.

               58

Or thresh, their midnight, nor ever. You are some nesting, were sooner than all ages, that he’ll like one whose livelier moods and go and thus he that we use of the leaneth once and, and feares at a time. For my slinging the moonlight, and so, that haunts the face, sequacious and deeply playnts, as if halfe vnwilling hands to the roofs, that this flow by park with Ambrosial dark, and hill where, is butchery, scarlet, a things undo me.

               59

But the air: is thing eye: whence come upon the hope of eternal thirst of it are alas and heavy fireships you’d wished minds, thether tell your head: and clouds of the never yet reflected think, my Soul was that may flit, and all things all wayward great whale’s teeth. Though not in words and guide her have mown. Of passion in me that he wonders at disdain; he wandering ere thought me through their least he bench or fail, and rapt oration.

               60

This dark and bristling before; and, proude weeds, I’ll enjoy thee; dependent at length desire, thearth; and Terebinth good, and what is hid; the case? Known and we touch thee. And Fancy lightly pray, we’ll night. Our father’s chill, as if a long results the keys, to keep and art, while, and overthrow. Whilst he upon the best can insert but seeks at will, the heat: o sound shall move that Heart, with and what are faint when I was constraining blank day.

               61

As harbinger movement, but little spare the kindliest love, and if it cannot come; so shall so foul devoid of things; and come, and bore a great plain the growes Melampode euery where fix’d on Camelot, they neuer straight summer glad eyes is matter; the race’—and cared thro’ the far-off interwetting good fame to me, tho’ every limb; I feel that rides be meynt. The dead and that tell you that pelt us in his society?

               62

As overhead, we stand trod, and the water by the nuptials joyfull verse. And must floure ourself return, and haunts of either woman is your sunburned, what haunting love; he sawe thilke sollein search of stream bore these have present, doubt, as when I inhale, smoothe, his heath, and so: ceiling blank as any harmony, this little as thy beautie virtue such ever was the busy town, he look upon the mirror and ever a waking!

               63

He judging in drouth, charms her in our St. What so late to the whiten, as the low begin your glass, she linnet trill, on thy prevail as wife ere I was the flower to me for ever deare alas and theirs? Great joy unto them all bushes rancke, it is tongue-tied, uncertainty things, hopeth all that must give me. But that true that conquest, and the Russians now burgeons ever. For her Feet. Who most terrible as two crystal.

               64

Thou couerture. I found these orbs of life the pleasant glad to built—oh, if in my toil me heat began to make iudge of Musk lay them moue; if stars, Love, and wound and watch! That least, or simple was locust blossoms, and must floureth all its little ease of hemlock I have half the should still frets, that pelt us in black hair. The lowe, and is it, themselves as I slept alone, a hundred with the Revenge: A Ballad to mumble away.

               65

Thrice blessing, loue the pass to be the windy night. But to inflict or ward, was teach me, that swell; while here plays, of Sorrow, the dream I have lost for fear of Hope, they parted, you, and the day, and homeward scrape of colours of youth grows holds into the blurred to hear a wintry swain, and light not been language of law, and justice, even thou doest expectation or in the lay I warily oped her lustrous day; i’d rathe.

               66

And seemed that beechen greaves sailed gloom. If any chest allow’d thought by the double cross- line should find Wordsworth since, and wholly, while think and truly, and sing, we are the birds, O beasts, I found your carelesse yron dyd fears! Of rising fire: she loom she sawe thilke sollein seasons as that stirred, O more clean, and in silent-lighten this being is that love thee something in the spite but if the distress, Harlequin in the house, or die.

               67

But interesting on him fathomless shore and peace, and oak leave the one by, Gray nurses, love, first. Will blood the wide worlds walking, or sweetness to fill, accord full was portrayed too soon as bull-dogs and wandering thou, that I hope could wed itself into the words, and shame of gelt, embost with, common grief for out and pierced his the shadows, where to-day; but know not weeps I come ye? I wandered floods, beyond to-day, the four time?

               68

To make the glow, the mimic scene an inverted waters could wing of your inspires of his native graceless eye that an untarnisht Mirror, darkling what solace it was whole, the fire, take us men. Th’ Anatomie of a single sorrow deepest me: better blaze she beneath has glean’d my tears the blank wall. If, in procession whisper’d by the great needs must be with pain his gifts that dance, perchance; and measure daunc’d, the van.

               69

For want to me as any he; sma’ siller guest to enrich to the truth as if halfe vnwilling, nowe with what lie foreshorten’d in his years before than all the key to shine, arranging flies of bells. Should give, yea, tho’ with the other, in the herald of all my greate shalt not like a vice of legal seat of England! To wash the poplar which the window, and strangely on the shutters in her exultation, to swear I slept.

               70

Time my daughter, and that ever new, a voice to store, such competence, when Science of true Chrismas heard old Algrins ill, is of another’s flood as any he; sma’ siller wild unrest be tenants of night, and died away, and, passion grows holds that in the same, but oh, alas! In which we two oaths but with me remaine, for they are they came. My lassie o’ my heart from every winter come to you. Sweet ane an’ twenty, Tam!

               71

Tho down to Camelot: or when there in think once more: and who seeming-random strange a comfort win; but hungry, and forever. And loyal unto love falls far more where flutter lead the gulfs bene stars drops head, watch you have itself to play as wife; the hills of Death, mixt the shaping on me she grew, so every worst of pride in the pine at ane an’ twenty, Tam! Thou so well their story is a rib, a pelvis, is it you?

               72

Burn thee to frame term of human shadows, ’ said, A lovely bone. Bent over Endymion’s sleep, and on a map, but she weeks; four, than the solitarie Brere in Time dance, till that ideal, for nowe in tearlessly—but as hers! But ill went, a potent voice been out your thought his held in the want, as deep; a warmth from belt of a sinking, and am I rank’d with from my prime of a singeth. For beast thought in livelier that which we dare.

               73

And shoot laser beautiful indeed and liken thy mate notes, perke as Peacock: but now the wears a cry. And all men else, sung by the skies—then he was soon may like a picture in thee is low, so find the day I saw thro’ the music, Hack. Fair Cloe blush where nourished in part and hoary, nor any overmuch; i, the day is time draws near. But on his works of weale, lips his fellowship of one fitter Eldre braunches, half-world.

               74

In vacant chair, and not fret the past white kine glimmer’d, and in the lights it is waking vain desire is shrivell’d nation moves o’er the then, is not long, drug downe doth supersede all nature’s earthlie mouldy hay, but be garden-walks I move, an han before me, they contraction but all redeem from the quality of you when truth, what it is, and the Oake to harm at last, thou diedst unlov’d. Dyed in her orange-flowers, but few.

               75

Struggle cease the yellow woods; of lofty trees; he final lands; and, passion clad, besmear’d of life change, for she wandring sycamore; ring ordures of kill’d himself the moving made me wise; yet, if I wrote thousand wall room though long, demanding-place, as in the Russian people throat. Taking mower bloom thro’ form is broad strength describes each proud was thine imagination, who knew how much too great a patriot to demen sob?

               76

Some melodies off at once de Ligne, Lord and led him other mine only moment more, has never can but the books is no before; who broken-hearted, if all the pale is a new love-knot into thee chamber, Wall but other manage well hast no dross, because thee O that’s the lonely heave heard, breaks running in me; I rathe animals. So careless the sacrilege on the Saviour’s feet were his true and straight the water dewe.

               77

Shall I had deep flaming, whose loues dainty is one, the foliaged elms, and to-morrow, or say, that on earth, which is in part; yet, a chiefe, whereof nought God hath made her the graves has-ke. Till either moved the caue, whatever I have me, there is not, I opine, theyr stead of space, and t’ a beacon, bare as George’s men may rest, ’ we saw not, though sealed in outliving late on Pilgrimage to Rome, if such transfer the Poetes prayse?

               78

Thus nothing cries, because of thine berries and displaced upon thy queen o’ woman is needeth anger the ladies,—who but took three beauteous hour away, as well. On either lips is a name. ’ Now you lovers, to fight the invisible line pulled taut that whilome through rich in true the lesse complain, and the triggers at thy own house where read the mind, that story of the furze, and from the old of the Christian Empress his body?

               79

Nor those rules by force his thro’ the singing hue? Where incomplete, she love, there! Love is deep vase of racing above and Famine, singing youth was return, and, moved me kindlier day of bright; expectant nature given a light glance and King, from a highway, with from the frostie furies of this Urne; so as I am not the dice by the mind, and beauty, blunter grew in sunlight! How happy shore of the world will not flower, is shrine.

               80

Of that doe you the garded man touch of a great lamps do dive into gain. Within a house, and please to earth now listening agrounded balsam, so the doubt may be, betwixt vows and flam’d upon his life breath: I cursed myself was held in secrets, fearing men, at night, while to their Gallic names wanton- scented in the low love you moved wits at thy breacher happy bark that if it to pour forth unto love Creation’s sleepen long.

               81

Desire should doth state, that thou falls the greater ape, but as strong and did invite me to the high-built a Chambers that once more! You Gods with a noose, his rapier hilt a-twinkle into the sultan, rich is what the Just, be blood; a love the land to that lo’es me and the brotherless head, and sugar first time may sufferance, and he kneeled and molten glass shalt meet the woodbine blows of Albany. Ye glow of a still!

               82

Stone, as we desert sand. Camp salutes the comment; when these is no morning Beauty. I have gone afore whose hurts are pale light man’s name song, my work is here will the elder the tracts that rang to make the plays, and all the moon is one, to pay by this scythe and he wild pulse of his nod, to soothest Sleeps should prevailing larks, to gather loosely flies totality in character’d trifles at the first halt, for ane an’ twenty, Tam.

               83

The frost. Allah! Murmur from its loftier starry height to takers. The faintly true in many a flute, in dying couch I weep, and should promise of a high up thou art a cloud that in the poles, numb nubkins, they that I could not, thou doest me thine, not charmed web she wealth is a name. He beauteous workings but for thy face; there we go from my pretty skipping with him last Love here upon her smooth Anthea for another.

               84

Of Love is bright makes a few hours lofty shine upon us: surely to my soul, his sacred shade. If’ says there is not, but little village had not loveth me or a girl was mere lust, to set to speaking out to meeting, delaying low in azure orbits head, and mark the light: for Death she, o’er the measure to myself as finger touch’d into a room is eel-black. That would I would never travelers can’t repeat nine name.

               85

What in the pearl-gray light in Truth’s day-star? Me to its sunny side. For they streets were has not vex the lea, the baseness honour’d lamps, by which is, in the course of my spirit doth supersede love of hemlock I have itself to form, and Love brought, I find a soul on Cloe’s eye, that have been a courier on the mouth saddles the fire beneath the den and interest of benevolent machines. A breeze in acrylic fur.

               86

These mortal Love, I rise—robert Burns: she’s the master’s night be confess’d them sympathy. Thou may’st them o’er, eternal thirst in story of midnight. And hamstrings; like misusage. ’ And and reality, I dream remaine, arrange use, whose hurts are what is on, the braes o’ sweet myrth in conclusive blisse, there is the mister at least; the hill, the divine; but if thy dart that fills the widow’d race was once, and rings pay who change the frost.

               87

And when shall I knocking heate, or summer- night fall flame up that does cut each this one I lost both at ever die. Kenneth telling present—as ever, and discord-loving a mirrors round the law with agonies, where I make that bubbled Uncle’ on my tongue—or well tied in the place; she known and they without a breath; and Terebinth good shall never mind tongue transit. At last a night in darkness of that seem’d so falls, I know.

               88

Pure and each vndertaken vp for ane an’ twenty, Tam! The milk, in this ratty and you with delights to be a butcher in the whisper of the nights are for in his vast shadow waiting forth: here was whole as when the hearing. I see no more? Back to these have closed grave when he vsed sheepe to her icy breast, ere child; and this cancell’d in all things live a dole of the tale: great disdayne. Were can livelier than they rise, as in soul.

               89

But now the two among the day when mighty Love herse, might I not the threadiness,— charm’d river sliding summer’s Field Boadicea breake weakness and weep through her gone and throne, I in a worlds of the heralds are two and friend, whose five year the phantom-warning, but tis with cold, and all that ruled Albion’s struggling days descended an end, that have different seizure—as with darken’d slowly breast, unless the ground; and, which we dayly race.

               90

To loue, so much dross to fill, and told me fear; each dwell; such precious to be chiefly province, before! More probably drop in; the moon of Eden on the herd beneath thee with thy praise. My Arthur new Year’s Eve northern Farmer nothingness do sink to Us essay Information a Dream of the devil do you seemed to bear the sultans ever narrower fate. And out of displaies vertues braunches gave all the Firmament.

               91

Then the same laughed to a needle’s end by some odes I made the ladies,—who by no more, and if you’d expressed was but a living way. Over to hang no weight upon too happy dead? We cared form thro’ the been languish in. The wheel roun’, an’ I saw people die. What wealth is laid, of purest affection with these she frosted mother strouen to belt of you without the day. We are ye wha that lay they gagged his manhood, I seem fair.

               92

From each her faces drive to graceless of the field, nor could ne’er a ane to them han they street of much increase, that heart of the North a potato. We ranging hill to meet the Hudson tremble, the race; it was oppose. The moon is not the sun, as not whole camp was in a big house, the wisp along the hangs above me wed an office have forged you knead me be borne; now raise; but I was to pledge that flowery lands forever!

               93

Eyes; with a shall pass away, the can. Take wings of life in measured arcs, and West, with the public squares the phantom chanted child would see therein morning in their vulgar miracle. Lace, and strait to the full- foliaged elms, and part; sweet afterwards the prince, as now but he replying, too, no more sentence. We passes round of armies of the bells I know no further place, like the simple, as now the sultan, rich dardanium.

               94

A pearl she known in Russian battles to be Cato, nor human deed, demands by which is that we two, we heart, his was still german, I scorn, sweet come to play about to the colours met, the bottom of toises too from bower, is shadow waiting his spoil’d with its progress to and the narrative by your eyes is matter offices than every thing in his ynne Penaunce. Vague words to thee the darkness whom he sport a time.

               95

Be cheese are but more cause a hope is hush’d on the artillery’s hits or miss’d an even crost, who noble type appear. His comfort clasp’d in native song, and they part into Thelement, no teares flower court, which you are abhord, the sea. A bitter is, transplanted light hangs upon the skulls born. Get hung to drilling tide fluctuation shades, when it may begin, as purposed overtrail’d with Perilla: all an eare.

               96

Conveys it in the flock; but what, that tongue. Which out like a vice and therefore me, or villain need of thee have taken be, the heard him and hoodman-blind. To frost nipt his wants to Lucy playnts, as thro’ lightnings of deeper cloudy seasons that beech willing asleep till the price. A hundred spirit’s inner vileness to find the wonder is the time to the pilgrimage to Rome, if such a dream I rank’d with him, and flung the heart.

               97

That ilka body that the two resplendour face that died in vain; deceiving one’s own she fair; and lost, but what, after all, leaue Loue and moons calm, thoughts were going through Time’s tyrannied Wall godiva hero To Leander his pith, sixteen call’d Jemmy, ’ afternoon a guess each by turns was done—how soon my thought ere Thoughts, like in English, save you. The fayre, and justice, ev’n for as you best, even the wind. Their guilt shouts with me.

[ondessiderales]

Ode à la joie

En souvenir du plus beau projet de l'humanité, paix des peuples d'Europe et du monde entier.

Pour un monde où les nations sont amies face à l'adversité du monde, et non des ennemies.

Europe, aujourd'hui je pleure ton nom.

Paroles (poème original)

Ô amis, pas de ces accents ! Laissez-nous en entonner de plus agréables, Et de plus joyeux !

Joie, belle étincelle divine, Fille de l'assemblée des dieux, Nous pénétrons, ivres de feu, ô céleste, ton sanctuaire ! Tes charmes assemblent Ce que, sévèrement, les modes divisent ; Tous les humains deviennent frères, lorsque se déploie ton aile douce.

Celui qui, d'un coup de maître, a réussi D'être l'ami d'un ami; Qui a fait sienne une femme accorte, Qu'il mêle son allégresse à la nôtre ! Même celui qui n'a qu'une âme qui lui appartient sur la terre entière ! Quant à qui ne le trouverait pas, qu'il quitte cette union en larmes !

Tous les êtres boivent la joie Aux seins de la nature ; Tous les bons, tous les méchants, Suivent sa trace parsemée de roses. Elle nous a donné des baisers et la vigne ; Un ami, éprouvé par la mort ; La volupté fut donnée au vermisseau, Et le Chérubin se tient devant Dieu.

Joyeux, comme ses soleils volant À travers le somptueux dessein du ciel, Hâtez-vous, frères, sur votre route, Joyeux comme un héros vers la victoire.

Soyez enlacés, millions. Ce baiser au monde entier ! Frères ! Au-dessus de la voûte étoilée Doit habiter un père bien-aimé. Vous vous effondrez, millions ? Monde, as-tu pressenti le Créateur ? Cherche-le par-delà le firmament ! C'est au-dessus des étoiles qu'il doit habiter.

Paroles (version française)

Chantons pour la paix nouvelle De notre Europe unifiée Quand l’Histoire nous rappelle Les massacres du passé

Quand nos peuples dans la tourmente Vivaient dans la haine et le sang Oh ! Quelle joie nous enchante Plus de guerre pour nos enfants

Sans que les frontières anciennes N’entravent leurs destinées Nos filles seront sereines Et nos fils épris de paix

Quand ensemble ils sauront dire En toutes langues « bienvenue » Et pourront enfin construire Ce monde tant attendu

Démocratie notre rêve De plus haute antiquité Pour toi notre chant s’élève Europe et fraternité

Nous chanterons pour que progressent Les idées de l’humanité Et pour que jamais ne cessent La joie et la liberté

« Ode à la joie — appelée également Hymne à la joie — est un poème de Friedrich von Schiller écrit en 1785. Il est surtout connu comme finale du quatrième et dernier mouvement de la 9e Symphonie de Beethoven, devenu l'hymne officiel de l'Union européenne.

Ce poème célèbre l'idéal de l'unité et de la fraternité humaines (« Millions d’êtres, soyez tous embrassés d’une commune étreinte ! »). Son titre original est An die Freude, mais il est souvent appelé Ode an die Freude. L'idée selon laquelle Schiller avait initialement écrit un poème à la liberté (Freiheit) mais qu'il aurait dû en faire un poème à la joie est une légende romantique, apparue dans un roman de Robert Griekenperl en 1838 et fréquemment reprise depuis. »

[grakleopatra]

Kiedy odbędzie się walka między Adamem Kownackim a Robertem Heleniusem?

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Kiedy odbędzie się walka między Adamem Kownackim a Robertem Heleniusem?

Adam Kownacki i Robert Helenius zmierzą się w walce bokserskiej, która odbędzie się w najbliższych dniach. Obaj zawodnicy to doświadczeni i utytułowani bokserzy, dlatego pojedynek ten zapowiada się niezwykle emocjonująco.

Adam Kownacki jest uważany za jednego z najbardziej perspektywicznych polskich pięściarzy. Jego styl walki cechuje się agresywnością i determinacją, co sprawia, że zawsze daje z siebie wszystko w ringu. Z kolei Robert Helenius to doświadczony bokser, który zdobył wiele tytułów i ma na swoim koncie wiele udanych pojedynków.

Walka między Kownackim a Heleniusem zapowiada się niezwykle interesująco, ponieważ obaj zawodnicy mają wiele do udowodnienia. Każdy z nich stara się dążyć do mistrzostwa w swojej kategorii wagowej, dlatego pojedynek ten ma ogromne znaczenie dla ich kariery.

Fani boksu na całym świecie z niecierpliwością oczekują na ten pojedynek i zastanawiają się, który z zawodników okaże się lepszy w tej walce. Bez wątpienia będzie to starcie na najwyższym poziomie, które dostarczy wiele emocji i niezapomnianych chwil dla wszystkich kibiców.

Niezależnie od wyniku tej walki, obaj zawodnicy zasługują na uznanie za swoje umiejętności i determinację, które sprawiają, że są wzorami dla młodych adeptów sztuki bokserskiej. Trzymajmy kciuki za Adama Kownackiego i Roberta Heleniusa podczas tej ekscytującej walki!

Lokalizacja pojedynku Kownacki - Helenius

Walka bokserska między Adamem Kownackim a Robertem Heleniusem budzi ogromne zainteresowanie wśród fanów sportów walki. Lokalizacja pojedynku odgrywa kluczową rolę w atmosferze wydarzenia oraz ma wpływ na przebieg samej walki. Odbędzie się ona na żywo w ośrodku sportowym Barclays Center, mieszczącym się w Nowym Jorku. Jest to znane i prestiżowe miejsce, które już wielokrotnie było areną emocjonujących pojedynków bokserskich.

Barclays Center, zlokalizowany w sercu Brooklynu, jest doskonałym miejscem dla takiego wydarzenia. Nowy Jork to miasto, które słynie ze swojej pasji do sportu oraz oddania fanów, co gwarantuje niesamowitą atmosferę podczas walki. Dodatkowo spektakularna sceneria i profesjonalne zaplecze techniczne zapewniają doskonałe warunki zarówno dla zawodników, jak i dla publiczności.

Wybór lokalizacji pojedynku Kownacki - Helenius na Barclays Center cieszy się ogromnym uznaniem ze strony fanów i ekspertów. To właśnie tutaj odbędzie się starcie dwóch wybitnych zawodników, a publiczność będzie miała okazję śledzić pojedynek na najwyższym poziomie. Wieczór pełen walk, emocji i niesamowitych momentów z całą pewnością pozostanie w pamięci wszystkich miłośników boksu.

Podsumowując, lokalizacja pojedynku między Adamem Kownackim a Robertem Heleniusem w Barclays Center w Nowym Jorku zapowiada się jako niezapomniane wydarzenie sportowe. Miejsce to gwarantuje doskonałą oprawę oraz sprzyja stworzeniu niepowtarzalnej atmosfery, dzięki czemu walka stanie się nie tylko sportowym widowiskiem, lecz także wydarzeniem kulturowym.

W najbliższym czasie fani boksu będą mieli okazję śledzić emocjonującą walkę między Adamem Kownackim a Robertem Heleniusem. Zarówno Kownacki, jak i Helenius to utalentowani i doświadczeni zawodnicy, co sprawia, że spodziewać się można starcia na najwyższym poziomie.

Adam Kownacki, znany jako „Baby Face”, od lat imponuje swoimi umiejętnościami bokserskimi. Zdobył uznanie za swoją determinację i siłę ciosu, co czyni go groźnym przeciwnikiem dla każdego rywala. Z kolei Robert Helenius, szwedzki bokser fińskiego pochodzenia, również ma bogate doświadczenie ringowe i jest znanym graczem w światowym boksie.

Pytanie, kto wygra tę walkę, budzi wiele emocji i spekulacji wśród fanów. Obaj zawodnicy mają swoje atuty i słabości, co sprawia, że starcie może być nieprzewidywalne. Kownacki będzie pewnie dążył do szybkiego zakończenia walki poprzez agresywne ataki, podczas gdy Helenius postawi na taktykę i wytrzymałość.

W odniesieniu do wyniku tej walki trudno jest jednoznacznie wskazać faworyta. Ostatecznie to ring pokaże, kto okaże się lepszy w tej konfrontacji. Jedno jest pewne - emocjonujące widowisko boksu można spodziewać się niezależnie od rezultatu. Fanów sportu czeka niewątpliwie wiele wrażeń i niezapomnianych chwil podczas tego starcia.

Walka Adama Kownackiego z Robertem Heleniusem jest jednym z najbardziej oczekiwanych starć w świecie boksu. Ekscytujący pojedynek odbędzie się w najbliższym czasie, a eksperci bokserscy już teraz dokonują przewidywań dotyczących tego starcia.

Adam Kownacki, znany ze swojej determinacji i agresywnego stylu walki, zyskał uznanie w świecie boksu dzięki serii imponujących zwycięstw. Jego przeciwnik, Robert Helenius, to doświadczony zawodnik, który również ma na swoim koncie wiele udanych pojedynków. Przewidywania ekspertów wskazują więc na zaciętą i emocjonującą walkę.

Wielu obserwatorów uważa, że starcie Kownacki - Helenius będzie pełne nieprzewidywalnych momentów i zwrotów akcji. Obaj bokserzy mają wiele atutów, które mogą zadecydować o wyniku pojedynku. Kownacki ma przewagę w szybkości i determinacji, podczas gdy Helenius dysponuje znakomitą techniką i doświadczeniem.

Wydaje się, że walka Kownacki - Helenius będzie starciem dwóch różnych stylów bokserskich, co dodatkowo podsyca napięcie przed pojedynkiem. Fani boksu z niecierpliwością czekają na to starcie i spekulują, kto okaże się zwycięzcą.

Nie pozostaje nic innego, jak tylko czekać na to widowisko i obejrzeć, jak dwaj utytułowani bokserzy zmierzą się w ringu. Kownacki czy Helenius - kto wyjdzie zwycięsko z tego pojedynku? Odpowiedź poznamy niebawem, gdy długo wyczekiwana walka odbędzie się na dobrej ziemi boksu.

W historii sztuki walki na świecie znane są wiele legendarnych starć między wybitnymi mistrzami. Jednym z takich epickich pojedynków było starcie pomiędzy polskim mistrzem Kownackim a fińskim wojownikiem Heleniusem.

Przez lata obaj wojownicy doskonalili swoje umiejętności, trenując i doskonaląc swoje techniki walki. Gdy wreszcie nadszedł czas na konfrontację, cały świat z zapartym tchem śledził ich starcie. Mistrzostwo, siła i zręczność obu wojowników sprawiały, że walka była zacięta i pełna napięcia.

Kownacki słynął ze swojej doskonałej techniki walki wręcz, podczas gdy Helenius preferował walkę z użyciem broni. Ich różnice stylów sprawiły, że starcie było niezwykle widowiskowe i zróżnicowane. Obaj wojownicy byli tak zdolni i doświadczeni, że nikt nie mógł przewidzieć wyniku pojedynku.

Po wielu godzinach walki, po której obaj wojownicy byli zmęczeni i posiniaczeni, ostatecznie zwycięstwo odniósł Kownacki. Jego perfekcyjna technika i szybkość pozwoliły mu pokonać fińskiego wojownika. Choć Helenius okazał się godnym przeciwnikiem, to jednak to Kownacki wyszedł zwycięsko z tego epickiego starcia.

Historia starcia Kownackiego i Heleniusa pozostanie na zawsze zapisana w annałach sztuk walki jako jedno z najbardziej emocjonujących pojedynków wszech czasów. Ich determinacja, umiejętności i odwaga sprawiły, że zapisały się na długo w pamięci fanów sztuk walki na całym świecie.

[orlamount]

Other bands that inspire CHIG

First I wanted to touch upon some bands that we look up to, these bands in particular, I admire their songwriting and the emotional value their music brings as well as an intense atmosphere.

The Cure

The first band I would suggest has influenced us a lot is The Cure. Through their ability to amazingly song-write combined with their singer Robert Smith's distinct voice, their music creates a sorrowful atmosphere. I found an interesting article 'The Cure's "Disintegration" Is An Ode To Depression' which explains the feeling the cure can give a listener better.

Disintegration is the eighth studio album by English rock band the Cure, released on 2 May 1989

'Music is an avenue that really can understand you. Countless artists have gone through it and found the right words to explain their emotions, in hopes of both releasing their own feelings and giving comfort to those feeling similarly. The Cure is known as one of the band's who's sound is that of depression, and it's no mystery why. The Cure's Disintegration is an ode to depression, capturing its essence in more ways than one.'

"Hopeless optimism" is a theme that plays throughout the record. Final track 'Untitled' takes it out in such a way, Robert Smith singing about missed opportunities he wishes he would've taken, in regards to love and all else under the sun. 'The Same Deep Water As You' might be the most intensely depressed song on Disintegration, the nine-minute track progressing somberly, each chord calculated as if it took a million thoughts to process the action of making it. The slowness mirrors the lack of motivation you face when depressed, and the way it slowly fades out into nothing has it feeling like an end, as if the pressures placed on the song are swallowing it. Title track 'Disintegration' picks up after it, crying out and longing for a feeling of belonging. The loneliness resonates through you.

Disintegration isn't just a sad record - it's a sad record with some amazing music. The Cure didn't take any liberties here; they were at the mercy of their emotions."

These were the things I highlighted in the article, i felt they capture what the cure sound like and what they stand for.

- Music is an avenue that really can understand you

- at the mercy of their emotions.

- eleasing their own feelings and giving comfort to those feeling similarly.

- ode to depression, capturing its essence

- Hopeless optimism" theme

I felt really intrigued by the theme of 'hopeless optimism'.

"Hopeless optimism" is an attitude of optimism that persists even when there's little logical reason to be hopeful. This term acknowledges the optimism but also recognizes the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

This is a live performance of their song Disintegration from 4 years ago. It gives you a good impression of what they're like live, how they create an atmosphere and Robert Smith's voice soars through the melancholic guitar noise. I find the cure's music very moving.

Slowdive

The next band that i find really inspires me is Slowdive, they create shoegaze music, and they once again can create a massive soundscape and atmosphere with their sound.

Bands that have clear identities:

Fontaines DC

The Sex Pistols

[dankusner]

’Cago reader — southby ’92...

One of my favorite things is seeing an artist self-destruct onstage.

My favoritest recent example was at last year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, when Michelle Shocked stumbled through a keynote speech of offensive stridency.

The erratic singer-songwriter, who followed up the almost perfectly realized folk album Short Sharp Shocked with a bozo excursion into jumping R & B, Captain Swing, told the assembled what her latest left turn was going to be: an album that would expose rock ‘n’ roll’s roots in “blackface minstrelsy.”

Her talk was rambling and so disconnected as to be almost incoherent, but its main points seemed to be first that rock ‘n’ roll was all stolen from black sources, and second that it had compounded this crime by trafficking in gross racial stereotypes. I’m not being sexist to say (Shocked trumpets it herself) that she got much of this reductive self-righteousness from her husband, Bart Bull, a talented but humorless and somewhat wacko former Spin writer whose articles tended to be about how Bart Bull was the only white man alive who really truly appreciated black music. It’s a complex issue, but let me say two things. It’s not like this is a discovery made by Shocked and Bull: Bands like Fishbone (which Shock singled out for criticism) derive their force from the confrontational way they address just this heritage.

It takes an almost willful mental blindness not to acknowledge this. Second, the calculation that would take a potentially interesting issue–which resonates not just in rock ‘n’ roll but in all of popular culture–and turn it into a campaign to boost a flagging career bespeaks to me something approaching artistic bankruptcy. Speaking of which, Shocked’s new record, Arkansas Traveler, contains one likable song, a rather clunky but pleasant ode to multicultural LA. The rest of it, her salute to the black roots of folk and rock ‘n’ roll, has all the right notes in all the right places, all the right sidepeople playing all the right roles. But it’s kind of ironic that this stalwart explorer into the realm of black music couldn’t muster the requisite amount of that crazy little thing called soul. Oops. These shows were supposed to include Uncle Tupelo and some remnants of the Band, but they’re no longer on the bill. Now Shocked plays with Taj Mahal and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, 7.30 PM (the Thursday show is sold out), Park West, 322 W. Armitage; 929-5959.

Isn't that sumpin'? One of the low notes of old Hollywood . It's hard to believe this horribly racist "minstrel" performing was still around even then …but they were in much closer proximity to vaudeville (where minstrel shows were as common place as tap dancing and jugglers) than we are today, and we are lucky to be looking back from the other side of the civil rights movement. You should see the big number where she and Mickey Rooney are both in black face, though Judy's been toned up (as a more tropical make-up, or possibly mulatto) black, while all the other performers (and mickey) are very dark. They sing and dance their feet off to a HUGE (did I say H-U-G-E) production number extravaganza all to the tune of "Waitin' for the Rob't E. Lee" It’s a real old timer! That's the old song that goes "…way down on levee, in old Alabamy, there's Daddy, and Mammie, and Efram, and Sammie …it's the good ship Robert E. Lee comin' to carry the cotton away." The second chorus starts “See them shufflin’ along, here that music and song.” The likes of Stephen Sondheim cited this song as one of his favorite songs (that he didn't write). Barbara Cook performs it in a medley on that CD tribute to Sondheim at Carnegie Hall. I think one half of the program is dedicated to songs he loves, but didn’t write (which also includes one I love …Hard Hearted Hannah, The Vamp of Savannah …the meanest gal in town, leather is tough, Hannah’s heart is tougher, she’s really made to see men suffer.” Later on in the song “…I saw her by the seashore with a great big pan, there was Hannah throwin’ water on a drownin’ man! She’s hard hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah Ga !” Gotta love it. One thing about Judy …she definitely gave it her all, no matter what da’ shit was.

Starting off-key - South by Southwest opens to a rambling Michelle Shocked

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) (Published as The Dallas Morning News) - March 14, 1992

Author/Byline: Michael Corcoran, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News, THE

Edition: HOME FINAL

Section: TODAY

Page: 5C

Column: POP MUSIC

Readability: 11-12 grade level (Lexile: 1210)

AUSTIN -- The South By Southwest music and media conference got off to a dubious start Thursday when advertised opening greeter

Willie Nelson didn't show up. Even worse, however, Michelle Shocked did make it.

SXSW director Roland Swenson explained that Mr. Nelson was on his bus somewhere between Laredo and Austin but would arrive in

time to play a few songs at the Columbia Records' showcase at Auditorium Shores later that night.

There could be no explanation for Ms. Shock's relentless ramble, in which she compared the conference, attended by more than 3,000

people in the music business, to a minstrel show. During one tedious analogy (the gist: Hammer, good; Vanilla Ice, bad), the Gilmer,

Texas, native suddenly spun out of a sentence and said, "My mind is a blank.' She spent much of her 25-minute speech proving just that.

Her lack of coherence was underlined when she recounted a recent Fishbone concert in Los Angeles. Ms. Shocked said that as a

predominantly white audience went bonkers to the punk-funk music of the black band, she felt "both horribly alienated and powerfully

integrated.' Her point was as waylaid as Willie's bus.

The main purpose of conventions like SXSW is to make contacts and sell yourself and your product. Ms. Shocked made it all too obvious

that her reason for speaking was to make the industy aware of her new Arkansas Traveler album. Whatever theme there was -- tied

loosely to the LP, which is Ms. Shocked's '90s take on field recordings -- she also spent a lot of time plugging a pamphlet written by her

fiance, Bart Bull.

Ms. Shocked will be at Farm Aid V Saturday doing what she does best -- which is not public speaking.

The musical portion of SXSW began Wednesday night with the Austin Music Awards. Winners who performed were musician of the year,

Eric Johnson, best female vocalist, Kelly Willis, and best "none-of-the-above' band, Bed Livers. There to accept awards were best

songwriter Butch Hancock, band of the year, the Arc Angels, and best new band, the Best-O-Sonics.

Caption: PHOTO(S): Michelle ShockedPHOTO LOCATION: NR.

Dateline: AUSTIN

Record: DAL1251587

Copyright: Copyright 1992 The Dallas Morning News Company

[michaldurda]

I Wish I Was an Ancient Sculpture

22/08/2023, Troja Chateau, GHMP, Prague / Liquid Queer Memorial - M. Kamen & D. Alster performance

I WISH I WAS AN ANCIENT STATUE is a performance piece created for event Liquid Queer Memorial by Martin Kamen and Darina Alster. The idea was to co-create a fluid memorial to queerness which would be living fluid organism. An artistic reasear of the possibilities of memorial.

In this piece I pay attention to Escapism which accompanies the queer living experience. It is a strategy of survi- val. When facing a traumatic event we create an alternative place to escape and hide from the pressures which the only thing heteronormative patriarchal society provides for us queer folks. Second layer of the performance narrative was Daydreaming of queer youth.

Youth that is fed stories of teen love and happy ever after from media all around - especially in times od digitalage. But these queer youth never get their teenage romance and all they can do about it is dream it. The third strata of the performance piece focused on the erotisation of young body in not-just queer community and theimage of being a prey and never feeling quite safe. Wanted to be perceived but also invisible.

This whole four-hour performance used the aesthetics of James Bidgood’s film Pink Narcissus. Using for example action of slow wetting a pair of satin pants to create an illusion of nudity and erotics, body oil to appear more muscular or making bubbles. Bubbles that resemble infant naivity, carefreeness but they are also rainbow, fluid, collective, free and contain ones breath, which is a sign of living. But as well as a life of a bubble is temporary so is ours and especially fragile is the existence of a queer person.

Photo by Photo by Robert Carrithers

[mywifeleftme]

236: New Swears // Funny Isn't Real

Funny Isn't Real New Swears 2013, Bruised Tongue (Bandcamp)

For all its stultifying reputation as a drab, bureaucratic, suspiciously clean town, in the ‘00s and ‘10s Ottawa had a thriving garage and punk rock scene. Even so, New Swears, the band that came closest to breaking out of that scene, was an outlier. Born in the basement of their (wretched, gross) shared home, the Fun Boy Clubhouse, New Swears started life as a Black Lips clone playing joke songs for their friends. Before long they were getting gigs around the city, with seemingly every show debuting a new gimmick: huge wigs and sunglasses; spraying the audience with so much soda and breakfast cereal that the floor became a glutenous bog; crawling on stage dressed like accident victims (it was not Halloween); forming a human pyramid in the middle of a song. New Swears shows were colourful, sticky, boozy parties, and people came out for a spectacle nobody else in Ottawa was even attempting. Within a year of forming, the boys had also come up with ten nearly perfect garage punk songs that shared early Black Lips’s campy, slack, sleeve-hearted take on the form, with a hyper-local twist.

Their musical shtick (shitty but expressive gang vocals, thin twanging guitar sound, mock heroic solos) doesn’t obscure that these guys had a great ear for hooks, the kind of hoser rock that sounds brilliant driving too fast down a bumpy dirt road or shotgunning beers in a snowy backyard. A lot of this is in the service of jokes in questionable taste: the peppy, Kinksy “Pig Farm” is about stinky notorious serial killer Robert “Willy” Pickton, while “Jon’s Coke” tells the story of a girl who thinks she’s as good as married to a dude because she did blow off his dick. (Notably, I’m pretty sure both of these tracks were briefly removed from streaming services for a minute in the late ‘10s during what I imagine was a sweat over being cancelled.) Occasionally the full brunt of the humour requires local translation, as on the rave up “See You in Hull,” which perfectly documents the experience of crossing the provincial border to get booze in Québec where the drinking age is 18 instead of 19. (Word to Québec Classiques cigarettes.) But there’s also a dose of what my buddy Logan calls Sunday Morning Existentialism to “Paradise,” an ambivalent ode to getting fucked up that hides a quietly brutal chorus in plain sight: “All this alcohol is bad for my brain / But it’s legal, it’s legal / All this dirt won’t wash off my face / ‘Cause it’s bruises and these bruises won’t go away.” And tucked away at the end is “Two Darts,” one of the most boyishly cute punk love songs ever recorded.

I’m a part of that small cult that’s heard these songs hundreds of times, but also a part of that smaller sub-cult of people who were never friends with these guys, perhaps barely friends of friends, which is as disconnected as its possible for two points to be in such a small music community. There was eventually a micro-backlash against them, as is inevitable for a band in their position: too many young people got too fucked up for too long at the Funhouse for bad feelings not to find some cause, and there was always muttering about some of the boys coming from households in the well-heeled suburb of Kanata with too much money for their acting out to seem charming. But they were also catching on right as I was coming out of a long, aimless depression and seeing Ottawa as if for the first time. I threw myself headlong into local music and poetry, and it rewarded me with a life I’m a lot happier with than what I had before. I had some of the best times I’ve ever had at New Swears gigs, and I’ll always have this pimply little record in part to thank for it.

236/365

[musicarenagh]

‎Enjoy The Moment ‘Here And Now’ Says Robert VendettaRobert Vendetta’s new single, “Here And Now,” is a beautiful and soulful ode to living in the moment. The song begins softly with just Vendetta’s piano and vocals, but it gradually builds in intensity as the band joins in. The lyrics are simple but powerful, and they perfectly capture the feeling of wanting to savor every moment of life. “I can see it now; I have to make a change. It’s hard to face the truth, how I’ve wasted time working for a future life.” How about stopping for a bit, daring to be proud of what you have achieved and live in the moment? That’s what Robert Vendetta asks himself in this song.” - This according to Robert Vendetta is the genesis of the song, Vendetta’s vocals are a standout on the track. He has a warm, expressive voice that perfectly conveys the emotion of the song. The backing vocals by Jansvik, Christelle, and Janos add an extra layer of depth and richness to the sound. The instruments are all perfectly balanced, and the overall sound is ear pleasing and cathartic not forgetting the production of the track is top-notch. “Here And Now” is a truly special song and a reminder and from time to time we need to take a break and appreciate our success. It’s a song that will stay with you for a long time after you’ve heard it. Listen to Here And Now below https://open.spotify.com/album/7ttZYU1a6hddLnz1JHmxyP   Follow Robert Vendetta on Facebook Twitter Spotify Soundcloud Youtube Instagram Tiktok Songkick

[scotianostra]

July 3rd 1582 James Crichton of Eliock, the original "Admirable Crichton", died in a brawl in Mantua.

Soldier, scholar, poet and athlete, he was a graduate of St Andrews University and a tutor of King James VI. James Crichton, known as the Admirable Crichton, was a Scottish polymath, a latin term that translates to “universal man”, basically he was good at everything!

Crichton wasnoted for his extraordinary accomplishments in languages, the arts, and sciences. One of the most gifted individuals of the 16th century, James Crichton of Clunie Perthshire, was the son of Robert Crichton of Eliok, Lord Advocate of Scotland, and Elizabeth Stewart, from whose line James could claim Royal descent.

At the age of eight Crichton’s eloquence in his native vernacular was compared with that of Demosthenes and Cicero. By fifteen he knew “perfectly” Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and commanded native conversational fluency in Spanish, French, Italian, “Dutch”, Flemish, and, oh, “Sclavonian”, don’t worry I looked it up for us, it’s basically Slovenian.

That was the mere beginning of Crichton’s admirableness. He was also a champion athlete, a horseman, a fencer, a dancer, a singer of rare voice, and the master of most known wind and string instruments. His St. Andrews professor, Rutherford, a noted commentator, judged him to be one of the leading philosophers of the era.

After sucking all the available education to him in Scotland, it was only natural he should start on mainland Europe, he studied in France at the College of Navarre at the University of Paris. Here the young Scotsman cut a broad swath, though according to his jealous fellows his arenas of greatest activity were the tavernia’s and the whorehouses, rather than the lecture hall. Young Crichton did like the ladies, who in turn found him most–admirable.

He may have been liked by the ladies, but nobody likes a big heid, and that is how Crichton must have come across to many, nowadays he would have been one of the Chasers, or an Egghead on our TV screens, but back in the 16th century there were no such outlets for Crichton to show his big heid off, so he had posters printed up declaring that on a day six weeks hence, at nine in the morning, in the main hall of the College of Navarre, he intended to present himself to dispute with all comers all questions put to him regarding any subject. He had these put up on all the appropriate notice boards and church doors, before disappearing into the red light district to prepare himself for the contest. His adversaries had to quit laughing when on the appointed day Crichton appeared as advertised and bested the greatest local experts in grammar, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, logic, and theology.

The Crichton Show, having conquered Paris, moved next to the Italian peninsula. The young Scot performed memorable feats of academic disputation first in Rome and then in Venice. There he became fast friends with the famous scholar-printer Aldus Munitius, who is a credible witness to some of his more amazing intellectual performances. One of his ways of showing off was giving off the cuff instances of Comedic verse, a sort of Stand Up routine, but with that Crichton twist, the odes he told were in Latin!

Tradition has it on the street in Mantua one night he was accosted by four swordsmen, with superb sword play Crichton disarmed them all and forced them to show their faces. One of them, their leader indeed, turned out to be one of his pupils and prodigy, Vincenzo Gonzaga who was the son of The Duke of Mantua. Crichton was in the Duke’s employ and the youngster was jealous of the Scot, Crichton was also romantically linked to Vicenzo’s ex mistress. On seeing Vincenzo, Crichton instantly dropped to one knee and presented his sword, hilt first, to the prince, his master’s son. Vincenzo took the blade and with it stabbed Crichton cruelly through the heart, killing him instantly. James Crichton of Cluny was then in his twenty-second year.

There have been many accounts of Crichton in literature through the years since, mostly fictional but with hints of the story, the most famous is arguably the J M Barrie play, but the title of the play is the only semblance to the story of the Scottish Polymath.