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bibliocratic · 4 years ago

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litany An exploration on endings. Or: all the ways it could have gone wrong and right.

jonmartin, spoilers for 200, content warnings in the tags

This is not what she thought victory would feel like.

Basira’s fingers tense and smart with overexerted aching when she stops to stretch them out. There is a geography of broken blood-vessels under the bruising that lies puddle-splotched over her hands which scrabble and claw talon-bent at the rubble. They are scored with scratches and tears where her exposed and dust-ruined skin has snagged on fractured brickwork.

She uncovers a foot first, as she pushes up and over the twisted mental of a window frame with an exhausted clatter. A trainer, the white doused with mud, the trailing laces caked stiff and russet. More heaving and hauling, her breath purging from her faster now – maybe, maybe, maybe, but she has lived too long now to believe in miracles. Overturning a fire-blasted section of what could have been once part of the imperious and grand stone stairwell, she reveals the leg the trainer is attached to, pulverised and off-angled by the weight of the collapse, the fabric of it drenched in soot. She peels back a cascade of plasterboard with a grunt, and there is a twisted pelvis, shattered ribs caved in under an acrid-smelling jumper. She’s not surprised at the dull punch of revelation, when she digs out hunched shoulders, coils of hair turned grey-white like swans’ down with the dust.

Martin is obviously dead. She hopes it was quick, fears it was not. His body lying stringless is curved around something, clutching it to him with his bruised and broken fingers. It takes many minutes of labouring, her spine seizing with complaint, sweat pooling at her brow and under her arms, but eventually she reveals Martin’s tender quarry, bundled up against his chest, blood-soaked from a wound long congealed. His own long and bloody fingers clenched and moored into the weft of Martin’s jumper.

She doesn’t need to check his pulse. She is cursed with enough sentiment to do so anyway. Crouching for a moment in the thick of the settling devastation, the fug of dust coating her nostrils, before she murmurs ‘I’m sorry’.

As she stands, she takes off her coat to lay it over them respectfully, the only shroud she can offer.

When her voice is composed, its cracks flattened out, she shouts the others over to tell them to stop searching.

The knife does not go in easily. There is force behind its thrust, a manic wave-shock of hysteric intent, and Jon’s lips part in a gasp as skin and sinew and flesh split. The noise wrenched from Martin is soiled with ruin, tremulous and saw-toothed, and he will never be able to forgive himself.

Jon’s eyes close. Peace of a sort granted to Magnus’ last and most beleaguered of Archivists.

And then they open. All of them, like the unfolding back of petals during blossoming, a meadow’s expanse of sight flowering on his face.

“No,” Martin whispers, the refusal almost lost over the tumult of the building around them. He pulls the knife out, and it drips onto the floor, making damp the material of his trousers. “No, nononononono.”

The wound presses together like lips, and then it is gone.

“I think it’s too late for that, Martin,” the Archivist says in that calm and reasoned voice of his.

It is a surreal, poorly-rendered mirror of before. A way the record of the world has slipped, juddered aground in a repeat. For all they have both changed, outgrown the casings of the people they were, for all they have endured both together and apart, it is a sick homecoming of sorts to stand again a second time round at the entrance to his hospital ward.

She’s brought supermarket flowers bunched in plastic, the last of a bad crop and too late to get the freshest, the stalks of baby’s breath drooping, the petals on the carnations mottled slightly and past their glory days. Jon lies submerged in sleep, the focal point in a placid storm of machines and wires. This coma chemically induced with no inkling of the supernatural, a last-ditch effort by the doctors to reduce the swelling on his brain. To give the body a chance to heal from the damage sustained during the collapse, his frame bludgeoned and punctured like a shrike-caught mouse, the smoke that has snarled like brambles in his lungs. The almost comically neat wound punched into his chest, nicking his heart.

She hopes his sleep is dreamless.

It takes him weeks to wake up.

“… Georgie?” he finally gasps out on an otherwise uneventful Thursday. His vocals are ribbed and scored with smoke damage. He’s sluggish as he blinks and turns and groans at the complaint of his body around him. “What – er?”

“Hey Jon,” she replies. “Good to have you back with us.”

She lets him acclimatise. Without his glasses, he squints and peers owlishly, like an inquisitive bird, absorbed by the novelty of his environment, the mundanity; the hospital-blue curtain that’s been pulled back around his bed, missing a few rungs and so hanging lopsided in places. The wilting flowers on the side table. The IV needles threaded into his arms.

“Did it work?” he asks finally.

“We think so.”

Georgie doesn’t add more. The conversation is one she knew they’d have, but it still feels like stepping out on frozen water. She is waiting for it to give beneath him, for the drop and drown in the unmoored cold.

His relief muddies in increments. His brow crinkling with a frown, glancing around again at the other beds. Their occupants dredged up and out and recovering from their private terrors, bringing the lessons of their landscape with them.

“Where - ?”

He looks up at her. The ice cracking.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Jon,” she says.

“We made it. L-look, see, we’re – I don’t know where we are exactly, b-but that doesn’t matter, does it, because we’re together, yeah? We’re together and that’s… that’s what we promised.”

The blood is drying on his trembling fingertips, the crevices of his palm, and it flakes off like decaying leaf-fall. The front of his clothes is clogged and sodden, the slick slow to harden. The weight in his arms is making his shoulders scream but he can’t let go.

“We – we did it,” he repeats hollowly. Desperately. “We did it, s-so you can come back now. You can come back. Together, you promised.”

The winds of this new world blow as cold as the old one did, and it is Martin’s only reply.

“It’s for the best, Martin,” the Archivist says.

“Shut up,” his furious watcher snarls. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t play st – Like him! Like he would! Using his voice.”

“It’s my voice. It’s me, Martin.”

Martin doesn’t respond to that. Their arguments are cyclical as roundabouts. He tells Martin he loves him. Martin tells him to fuck off.

The place where Jonah Magnus met his End, crumpled up on the dais of the Panopticon, has been cleared of blood. It distressed Martin to look upon, as evidence of his ascension rather than his capacity for brutality, so the servitors saw to its removal. The body he gifted to the mulch of the bone gardens, and the wailing growths flourished beautifully with the nutrients it bore.

The screams beyond the walls of the Panopticon cut off faster as he hastens them towards the End. He observes a world in its twilight. There is still torment, and it is unendurable and unfair but it will end under his reign, for good and for ever, and he will ensure that there is no more.

“You don’t have to stay,” the Archivist says. Considered. Gentle. “I know… seeing me like this is not what you wanted. I want us to be together while it ends, but I won’t force you.”

“And how is it any better out there?”

“It’s not,” he admits. “Here, I can keep you safe. I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.”

“Well, you fucked up there then,” Martin snaps.

His anger is righteous and flint-spark, makes barriers that almost waylay his grieving. He looks at him, and for a moment, his gaze shakes. He will see nothing less than he expects to see, a man, unkempt from travel, a bit grubby. Coarse hands he has held, lines he has attempted to smooth. In many ways, this makes it worse.

Martin turns away, and the Archivist lets him go.

He needs time and they have more than enough of it now.

He is inconsolable when they dig them out. A horrible, anguished keening like he’s being struck, a gasping that violently gags and stoppers in his chest. His face twisted, blotching, his eyes swollen, and the picture he makes is ugly, rent-open, decimated, bawling into the body he’s crushed up against him. Rag-doll limbed. Ashen.

They can’t make him let go. His cries transform and degrade into wails, garbled wordless, the horizon of language lost. They aren’t even sure if he knows they’re there. The sound pouring out of him is frenzied, delirious and anguished by surviving the unsurvivable alone. He fades hoarse through the ruin he has made of his throat and then he just weeps into Jon’s chest, and still he will not let go.

Melanie’s the one that stops him using the knife the first time. Wrestling it from his grip more out of surprise than shock at Georgie’s shout, and her anger is poisoned with her panic, throwing it to one side and hearing it clatter, snarling that I’m not going to fucking bury both of you, you hear me, don’t even think about it, fuck you, you think this is what he would have wanted, you think we want to lose you too?

Martin doesn’t reply.

They are not fast enough to stop him the second time he tries.

There are two men, strangers to these parts, who moved into the village from elsewhere like seeds caught on breeze. They plant their roots in uneasy soil. They talk to no one, versed in polite but guarded pleasantries, their greeting smiles to-the-point and weathered like coastal walls to withstand even the most inquisitive of questioners.

The one who is tall has the pared-down appearance of someone who has lost a lot of weight through some wasting that gnaws upon him. A gauntness that accentuates the furrows and gulleys and crags of his face, worsens the snow-stark white of his hair. The one who is short has been formed naturally sharp in features, although the brown of his eyes is mellow, prone to distance and otherwise unremarkable. The rumour mill, that tumbles in cycles of chatter that rolls from suspicious to musing, supposes some great and devastating fire to account for the injuries on his hands and the exposed skin of his face and neck, the pocked divots like scattered spark burns, ragged scars from shrapnel of some kind.

The one who is short limps on a sturdy walking stick, fashioned from an oak branch divorced from its tree in a storm. Any travel ventured upon is slow and demonstrably an effort. His free hand clasped in the hand of the one who is tall, who decks himself in layers even in the mildest of weathers, whose eyes are biting as hailstones, awashed grey and framed with bruising as though his dreams are rarely kind.

They re-painted the outer walls of their house last summer, when the temperature wallowed sticky and dense and glorious. The tree in their garden has fruited its first pears, few and stunted but a start that promises better crops come next year.

There is the hope that the strangers are happy.

If they are, it remains nobody’s business but their own.

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spacehorrors · 3 years ago

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tma review aka I'm off the deep end this time.

you guys know where the other reviews are. if you don't drop me an ask. let's get rolling.

also I've had to adjust the structure of my normal reviews a bit because I am experiencing so many things.

idk where to start. actually yes I do I eagerly await elias' long and painful death.

top five episodes:.

E111 Family Business - immediately my favourite episode I loved it I loved hearing about Gerry and the impact the obsession with those books have on people. like the way he was marked by them right from the beginning and didn't really have a chance. excellent times.

E101 Another Twist - MICHAEEELLL I miss him so much I was actually devastated when he died he scared the shit out of me so much. just an epic character and his use of architecture to supplement his power is excellent.

E103 Cruelty Free - THAT PIG??? ough I love the Slaughter and the Hunt stuff it's so fucked up I love it so much nothing will top the first one they did but this was excellent. scary shit.

E107 Third Degree - what can I say I love trains and fucked up train stations and fire and heat. epic episode hit all my favourite things on the head.

E117 Testament - sorry this was really vying for its spot with the next episode I just had such a sense of dread listening to them.

characters thoughts

elias please die <3 slowly and painfully I hate you so much. that's it. explode and die.

jon. where do I start. I'm enjoying very much his powers and how he's using them and what an effect it's having on his sense of self. keep it up but stop getting kidnapping and being dumb god bless.

tim..... daisy...... I'm upset. I saw it coming and I thought they'd be the ones to die but I'm also caught up more in the reactions of the people they were close to. basira...... hope she's ok. tim's "I don't forgive you" line.....

martin. oh dear. um. I absolutely adored his scene with elias. yknow THAT one. was it emotionally harrowing? yes. did it create my favourite quote "I can't hear you elias there's a door in the way!" also yes. I'm enjoying his arc keep at it my guy keep with the tea!

MELANIE PLEASE MARRY ME. I am free every day of the week for you I love you I'm writing our initials in heart shaped glittery pens etc. in all seriousness she's one of my favourite characters and I hope they do more with her.

GEORGIE. another loml. as well as basira who I want to know more!! basira and daisy.... gah I'm inconsolable.

sighs. where do I start. where do I start so much has happened.

so these are my general thoughts

ok so first thing is all the different phobia things. ok when I tell you days before I had made a list of phobias to make short stories of and then I find out that that's the case for these avatars my mind was blown. it's very clever. makes a lot of sense and I love the idea of feeding them.

top ten unlikely team ups is julia and trevor damn nice!! they're hanging out and killing monsters!! um. yeah fascinating hope we find out more about julia....

I'M STILL DEVASTATED ABOUT MICHAEL. AND GERRY. MY PALS. my weird guys!! I literally miss michael so much.

tbh I have just been having a great time. just been enjoying episode after episode.

THE SENTIENT TAPE RECORDER fascinates and compels me so much I love thinking about it.

love the new focus on death and dying and zombies etc I've found that cool. 10/10 like what does it mean to build a body very epic.

my predictions

OK NO.1 PREDICTION IS THAT more of the gang are going to become hosts/avatars of the different fears. like I've got my bets on basira becoming a patron of the vast. I think they're all slowly going to see the impacts of living under the conditions of the archives soon.

dreams..... will become significant I am sensing perhaps they will all start having one collective dream.

think jon is going to be faced with a die to save the world moment. but like a proper one. a proper this is the end of the line only to be yanked back moment.

more trapped in the web moments pls.

ngl I think the next villain might be a proper serial killer. like yes most of them are but I mean hunting people down style.

this is not going to end well. like I think it will end very very tragically at this point.

episode 120

ok so I don't have the time nor the energy to dissect it but it did rule. tying together a bunch of statements and just being weird yknow. I just felt I had to acknowledge it. so glad I didn't get it and then nothing else I'm sorry to the people who did lol I would've lost my mind.

feels a bit shorter this time round but honestly I'm just tired and don't know what more to say! feel free to ask me questions about things I love answering questions <33 can be anything at all as long as no spoilers ofc!

#tma review #dont look at what time it is here lol

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corvidbones · 5 years ago

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I have no idea what this is! I just wanted to try writing some Jonah dialogue, I think, and it somehow turned into 1k.

Mild warnings for some eye/body horror, and Jonah’s, uh... general level of Beholding worship.

Edit: AO3

—–

"Oh, beautiful," Jonah all but breathes, and Martin feels like someone's just stuck a hot poker between his ribs. "I'd always thought they'd be brown, you know. Dark, like knots in wood, but this—" he lets out a low chuckle, "this blue, it really is quite fitting."

Jon's hand, gripped tight around his sleeve, is the one and only reason why Martin hasn't launched himself at the snake standing before them.

As it is, he has his axe held firm in his free hand, still glistening with the… the blood, or whatever kind of dark fluid went spraying from the last thing that had attacked them, as Jon stared and Martin swung. He was getting better at going for clean arcs that took off the head in one go (when it came to creatures that had them, anyway), leading to a lot less hacking involved, which tended to mean less ruined clothing, and that was always a good thing. Especially considering that the last time he’d checked, there were only three intact shirts left between him and Jon.

Which, speaking of. Here they are, still damp from the previous night's rain and covered in several days worth of disgust, looking at a man dressed head to toe in a fine, laundered suit. He even has a lapel pin on, for fuck's sake; some shining, metallic green beetle. Martin wants to grab it from his coat and stab him with it, but as the urge rushes him, Jon's fingers tighten on his arm in silent warning. Not yet, the touch says. We don't know how powerful he is, now.

It's true that they have to be careful, even if Martin despises letting him just stand here like he owns this random, crumbling street corner. Because if opening the door affected Jonah in the same way it did Jon, well. It wouldn't be good news for anyone, he thinks, but probably, especially not for them. He's honestly a little surprised that Jonah hasn't found them before now, but perhaps he's been distracted. Perched like a buzzard on a telephone wire, watching all the little field mice run from the moggie stalking below. He certainly has the eyes for it, angled and sharp, fixed so entirely on Jon that it's as if Martin doesn't exist. As if he isn't presently holding a weapon and seething.

To his credit, Jon's staring back at Jonah with just as much focus, and with far more eyes than Jonah's ever swapped in his lifetime.

The first twenty-four hours after the start of the apocalypse were rough in a way that Martin can't bring himself to think about, not without feeling sick to his stomach. Jon had been inconsolable, fading in and out of a fugue state, and things only got worse once the Beholding's unbound influence started causing… changes. Christ, It was one of the worst things Martin's ever had to watch, Jon's skin splitting into raw pockmarks that blinked and wept with pink saline, flushing the blood away to reveal eyes of a piercing blue. And for hours on end Martin could not even touch, could not do anything to help take Jon's fear and pain away because at the time, there had been nothing else left.

It had taken days before Jon was present enough to leave the safe house, and Martin doesn't think he's let go of him since. Always has a hand on him, on his shoulder, his waist, his wrist, needing to know that he's there after having nearly… no. It doesn't matter, because Martin hadn't lost him, and he's not going to let Jonah take anything else away from either of them.

Jon's fingers clench against his arm, and Martin wants to say— something, but not now, not with this bastard of a man watching them.

"What do you want," Jon grits out, and the air hisses with static that Martin can feel prickling at the nape of his neck.

Jonah sways back on the balls of his feet, but the expression on his face is unperturbed. "I have what I want," he says, lips curling into a tight smile, "thanks to you, Jon."

Something flashes across Jon's face, and though Martin only catches a glimpse of it he knows the hurt that Jonah's just sunk his hook into, reeling it up to the surface.

"I just figured, what with how far you’ve had to travel back to London," Jonah continues, "that I should pay at least one visit in person. And I must admit, I've been curious to see the Beholding's work for myself. You really shouldn't be ashamed of it, Jon; I'm sure that Seeing has saved both of your lives many times already."

Jon flinches minutely, expression pained, and Martin's veins are burning. He shifts the weight of his axe’s handle, feeling the sturdy wood beneath his palm, just for something to focus on that isn't the thoughtful look smoothing over Jonah's face.

"I do wonder if the blue hails from the Lonely's influence," he practically croons, and Martin is rooted to the spot by Jon's grip as Jonah steps forward, casual as can be, to brush a hand over an eye on Jon's cheek. It's a barely-there touch to the fluttering eyelid, gone in a second, but Jon shivers from it anyway. "Such a similar shade to Peter's. Did you take that from him, too?"

"No— no, I..." Jon's words catch on his tongue and refuse to leave. His hands are shaking.

"Go away, Jonah," Martin says at last, and those needling eyes finally turn on him. "If you don't have anything useful to say, and I find it highly unlikely that you do, then leave. Us. Alone."

There's static again, and Jon looks up at him in alarm. Martin's pushing it, he knows, as the air turns frigid and heavy, like a storm rolling in from the sea. The endless shores of the Lonely have been left so terribly hungry, after all, and he can't help but imagine how easy it would be to pull this man, whose only close acquaintance is dead and gone, into a cloud of smothering fog.

If Jonah can tell what Martin's thinking, he doesn't show it. All he does is shrug, stepping back with a tilt of his neck, running the same fingers that had touched Jon down along the length of his tie.

"Certainly," he says. His tone is agreeable, and it only worsens the nausea coiling in Martin's chest. As he turns to leave, his gaze lingers on Jon, and he almost seems to sigh. "For what it's worth, you're holding onto that sliver of… hm, humanity, I suppose, far better than I had thought possible."

With that, he walks off down what remains of the sidewalk, and is gone. Jon slumps as soon as he’s out of sight, releasing his hold on Martin's arm.

"A sliver," he echoes, and Martin's about to go off on how Jonah Magnus is nothing but a lying bastard when Jon's hand presses against his own, a request. Martin complies with a low huff of breath, lacing their fingers together.

"Can— can we just keep moving," Jon says, and he sounds so worn that Martin cannot bring himself to argue.

"...Yeah, 'course," he says, and finds himself leaning down to press a kiss to the bridge of Jon's nose. They can try and parse through whatever the hell that whole interaction was later, once Jonah's lingering presence has faded. "Let's go."

#the magnus archives #tma #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonah magnus #my writing

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watanuk-i · 3 years ago

Photo

[Image Description: two versions of the same digital painting of the scene at the end of the magnus archives with jon and martin. the drawing is dynamic with jon on his knees, smiling with tears in his eyes, but fully suported by martin's hand on the small of his back. martin is leaning almost entirely over jon, also on his knees, and dipping jon back looking inconsolable. jon has one hand cupping martin's cheek and the other directing martin's other hand to grip a sharp knife, aimed right at jon's chest. jon is a brown skinned man with extremely long curly brown hair. martin is a chubby white man with grown out orange curles and glasses. jon has multiple eyes but all of them are black with whtie irises. End Description]

local artist is physically incapable of drawing anything other than jon and/or martin

#this is gorgeous #tma #fave

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acsversace-news · 7 years ago

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FX’s second American Crime Story entry could be far more accurately titled The Dissection of Andrew Cunanan.

But in the realm of readily recognizable names, that doesn’t ring many chimes. So it’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace, even though Cunanan is the driving force while two of his other younger victims -- there were five in all -- get fuller treatments than the iconic fashion designer.

Former Glee star Darren Criss inhabits Cunanan with more flash and impact than any model who ever wore one of Versace’s creations. He’s alternately chilling, pathetic, conniving and deluded without ever being visibly remorseful. It’s a fully committed, crazily energetic performance that carries this nine-part miniseries through its peaks, valleys and at times disjointed timeline. Assassination of Gianni Versace also is very nice to look at, except when the corpses left behind are not.

Ryan Murphy, lately the busiest man in Hollywood, again shows that he’s generally on firmer ground when dramatizing real-life events rather than fictionally concocting them in series such as Nip/Tuck, Scream Queens, Fox’s new 9-1-1 and FX’s ongoing and very uneven American Horror Storyanthology series.

His first American Crime Story deservedly won a wealth of major awards with its up-close look at the O.J. Simpson trial. The deliciously bombastic Feud: Bette and Joan, likewise for FX, and the HBO movie The Normal Heart, also were almost uniformly critically praised. Murphy’s biggest fictional triumph, Fox’s Glee, notably stayed away from physical gore and succeeded as an empowering high school musical series.

Assassination of Gianni Versace, adapted primarily from Maureen Orth’s 1999 book Vulgar Favors, is fact-based but clearly not averse to taking liberties in depicting Cunanan’s “journey” from vainglorious poser to cold-blooded serial killer. Eight of the nine chapters were made available for review. And composition-wise, the storytellers err in waiting all the way until the eighth hour to detail Cunanan’s destructive upbringing at the hands of an abusive, duplicitous father (Jon Jon Briones as Modesto “Pete” Cunanan) and terrified mother (Joanna Adler in the role of Mary Ann Cunanan). The “sissy kid with a sissy mind,” as Pete puts it in a climactic scene, is put a path to self-destruction but never really toward self-awareness.

It all begins on July 15, 1997, with Versace (Edgar Ramirez) waking up to another day in his splendorous Miami Beach mansion. Servants await him. But he also willingly walks the nearby streets, giving off an air of accessibility while also politely declining an autograph request.

By the end of the first hour he’s dead and on a slab, his face gruesomely disfigured from a point-blank bullet wound. Versace’s partner of 15 years, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), is inconsolable. But the deceased’s steely sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz), dismisses D’Amico with contempt as a leech whose contributions were less than minimal. She’s now determined to protect the Versace company by keeping it privately held.

“They’ll judge the killer, yes,” she says. “But they’ll judge the victim, too.”

This lays the groundwork of much of what is yet to come. Being gay in the late 1990s was still a considerable detriment, business-wise and otherwise. Versace, Cunanan and three of his other victims were all gay, with only the killer unabashedly coming out as a high schooler.

The subsequent story of Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) is especially poignant. He was proudly a Navy officer until being “found out” and thrown out. Trail’s eventual ill-fated involvement with Cunanan encompasses several episodes, as does the back story of David Madson (Cody Fern). Both ran afoul of Cunanan’s rages after recognizing him as a fraud and “betraying” him. Chapter 4, subtitled “House By the Lake,” telescopes Cunanan and David at the height of the latter’s fear of him. It’s one of the most powerfully chilling hours of television you’ll ever see -- if you have the wherewithal to see it through.

Assassination of Gianni Versace includes two other veteran, recognizable actors, Judith Light and Mike Farrell. For an earlier generation they respectively were the stars of Who’s the Boss? and M*A*S*H. In Chapter 3, they’re paired as Chicago’s very prosperous Lee and Marilyn Miglin. She peddles her perfumes on home shopping networks while he’s a developer with designs on constructing the tallest building Chicago has ever seen. But Lee is also a closeted gay man who can’t get enough of Cunanan. They get together again while his wife is on a road trip. “I feel like I’m alive,” he tells Cunanan after they kiss. Well, not for long. Farrell’s performance is first-rate, but Light steals the episode as the all-business Marilyn, particularly after her husband’s mutilated body is found.

Although her time on-screen is limited, Cruz makes some strong impressions as the ever-demanding Donatella Versace. But Martin’s characterization of D’Amico is too one-note and largely inconsequential to really register. Ramirez has some solid scenes as Gianni, but doesn’t resonate nearly as strongly as Cunanan’s three other principal victims.

The pursuit of Cunanan, who’s already known to authorities before he murders Versace, is barely a subplot of the first eight chapters. Some viewers may become restive in the process. But the to-and-fro timeline serves both the stories of Cunanan and his victims. Cress’s performance is a force throughout, but not to the point of “humanizing” Cunanan at the expense of those whose lives he took with varying degrees of glee. The deaths of Jeff Trail and David Madson in particular hurt deeply.

This second installment of American Crime Story, which jumped ahead of a planned look at Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is unlikely to match the ratings or impact of the O. J. Simpson opener. Andrew Cunanan is a no-name killer in comparison, as are all but one of those whose lives he took so violently. So yes, Gianni Versace’s murder is the overall reason this miniseries came about in the first place. But no, he’s not nearly the half of it.

GRADE: B+

#acs versace #uncle barky #review #article #january 2018

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sonofhistory · 8 years ago

Note

What was Jefferson's reaction to Hamilton's death?

Thomas Jefferson didn’t have an outward reaction to Hamilton’s death. He mentioned it in a letter to his daughter Patsy on July 17th, 1804:

“P.S. I presume mr Randolph’s newspapers will inform him of the death of Colo. Hamilton, which took place on the 12th.”

That is it. That was Jefferson’s reaction to Alexander Hamilton’s death. I spoke more about Jefferson’s more later talks about Hamilton here.

But do not be Ron Chernow. Chernow spoke about Hamilton’s death and how Jefferson didn’t even care. But in fact, just about a month before Hamilton’s death, another of Jefferson’s children died–Maria “Polly” Jefferson Eppes–this made his fifth child to die and he was still inconsolable with grief. In Art and Power, Jon Meacham states from a primary source that one walked into his room at the President’s Home only to find him crying. Jefferson wasn’t ignorant over Hamilton’s death, he was just already grieving the death of his daughter.

A day later on July 18th, Jefferson wrote to Philip Mazzei:

“…remarkeable deaths lately are Samuel Adams, Edmund Pendleton, Alexander Hamilton, Stevens Thomson Mason, Mann Page, Bellini, & Parson Andrews. to these I have the inexpressible grief of adding the name of my youngest daughter who had married a son of mr Eppes, and has left two children. my eldest daughter alone remains to me, and has 6. children. this loss has increased my anxiety to retire, while it has dreadfully lessened the comfort of doing it.”

August 28th he mentions to Robert Smith:

“Willing is Presidt. of the bank of the US. you may also observe he was Chairman at a meeting when they agreed to hoist the black cockade on the left arm in honour of Hamilton.”

October 11th, 1805 to Albert Gallatin:

“I imagine Colo. Hamilton had assays made wherein he founded his rates of foreign coins. indeed I think I recollect his having stated in some of his reports the particulars of his assays.”

To William Short, 12 October 1806:

“…you had, in your letters to Hamilton, indulged yourself in the same expressions of disgust towards the revolution of France.”

To Walter Jones, 5 March 1810 and my personal favorite:

“…Washington’s practice for the first two or three years of his administration, till the affairs of France & England threatened to embroil us, and rendered consideration & discussion desirable. in these discussions, Hamilton & myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks. we were then but 4. in number, and, according to the majority, which of course was of three to one, the President decided. the pain was for Hamilton & myself, but the public experienced no inconvenience. I practised this last method, because the harmony was so cordial among us all, that we never failed, by a contribution of mutual views, of the subject, to form an opinion acceptable to the whole.”

To Benjamin Rush, 16 January 1811

“[telling a story]I invited them to dine with me, and after dinner, sitting at our wine, having settled our question, other conversation came on, in which a collision of opinion arose between mr Adams & ColoHamilton, on the merits of the British constitution, mr Adams giving it as his opinion that, if some of it’s defects & abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect constitution of government ever devised by man. Hamilton, on the contrary asserted that, with it’s existing vices, it was the most perfect model of government that could be formed; & that the correction of it’s vices would render it an impracticable government. and this you may be assured was the real line of difference between the political principles of these two gentlemen. another incident took place on the same occasion which will further delineate Hamilton’s political principles. the room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton & Locke. Hamilton asked me who they were. I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them. he paused for some time: ‘the greatest man, said he, that ever lived was Julius Caesar.’ Mr Adams was honest as a politician as well as a man; Hamilton honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.”

Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Patrick Henry, [before 12 April 1812]

“…from being the most violent of all anti-federalists however, he was brought over to the new constitution by his Yazoo speculation before mentioned. the Georgia legislature having declared that transaction fraudulent & void, the depreciated paper which he had bought up to pay for the Yazoo purchase was likely to remain on his hands worth nothing. but Hamilton’s funding system came most opportunely to his relief, & suddenly raised his paper from 2/6 to 27/6 the pound. Hamilton became now his idol, and abandoning the republican advocates of the constitution, the federal government, on federalprinciples, became his political creed.”

To John Melish, 13 January 1813

“…others with all it’s corruptions & abuses. this last was Alexander Hamilton’s opinion, which others as well as myself have often heard him declare, and that a correction of what are called it’s vices would render the English an impracticable government…in this they adhere to the known principle of General Hamilton, never under any views to break the union. Anglomany, Monarchy, & Separation then are the principles of the Essex federalists, Anglomany & Monarchy, those of the Hamiltonians, and Anglomany alone that of the portion among the people who call themselves federalists…he did this the more repeatedly, because he knew Genl Hamilton’s political bias, and my apprehensions from it.”

To Josiah Meigs, 18 September 1813

“…mr Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, of course a federalist and Angloman, and who was with the British army in Spain some time, declares it is their constant practice, and that at the taking Badajoz, he was himself eye-witness to it in the streets, & that the officers did not attempt to restrain it.”

To Walter Jones, 2 January 1814

“…and these declarations he repeated to me the oftener, and the more pointedly, because he knew my suspicions of Colo Hamilton’s views, and probably had heard from him the same declarations5 which I had, to wit, ‘that the British constitution with it’s unequal representation, corruption and other existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever been established on earth, and that a reformation of these abuses would make it an impracticable government.’”

To Elijah Griffiths, 15 May 1820

“Genl Washington’s negative to the law, but after a long. struggle in his mind, Hamilton prevailed in the last hour and let in this torrent of swindling institutions which have spread ruin and wretchedness over the face of our country.”

To John Adams, 1 November 1822

“I think Genl. Washington approved of building vessels of war to that extent. Genl. Knox I know did. but what was Colo. Hamilton’s opinion I do not in the least remember.”

To William H. Crawford, 20 June 1816

“…this most heterogeneous principle was transplanted into ours from the British system, by a man whose mind was really powerful [he was talking about Hamilton], but chained by native partialities to every thing English…”

To William Johnson, 4 March 1823

“…the life of Hamilton is in the hands of a man, who, to the bitterness of the priest adds the rancour of the fiercest federalism.”

To William Johnson, 12 June 1823

“…when, at the end of his second term, his Valedictory came out, mr Madison recognised in it several passages of his draught, several others we were both satisfied were from the pen of Hamilton, and others, from that of the President himself. these he probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence it may all appear in Hamilton’s handwriting; as if it were all of his composition.”

To James Madison, 13 June 1823

“…mentions a dispute between Genl. Washington’s friends and mrs. Hamilton as to the authorship of the Valedictory…”

To James Madison, 18 October 1823

“The jarrings between the friends of Hamilton and Pickering will be of advantage to the cause of truth. It will denudate the monarchism of the former and justify our opposition to him, and the malignity of the latter which nullifies his testimony in all cases which his passion can discolor.”

To Martin Van Buren, 29 June 1824

“we met at my office, Hamilton and myself agreed at once that there was too much ceremony for the character of our government, and particularly that the parade of the installation at N. York ought not to be copied on the present occasion; that the President should desire the Chief Justice to attend him at his chambers that he should administer the oath of office to him in the presence of the higher officers of the government and that the certificate of the fact should be delivered to the Secretary of State to be recorded, Randolph and Knox differed from us, the latter vehemently, they thought it not advisable to change any of the established forms, and we authorised Randolph to report our opinions to the President…he made these declarations the oftener because he knew my suspicions that Hamilton had other views, and he wished to quiet my jealousies on this subject. for Hamilton frankly avowed that he considered the British constitution, with all the corruptions of it’s administration, as the most perfect model of government which had ever been devised by the wit of man; professing however, at the same time, that the spirit of this country was so fundamentally republican that it would be visionary to think of introducing monarchy here, and that therefore it was the duty of it’s administrators to conduct it on the principles their constituents had elected.”

To William Short, 8 January 1825:

“…he takes great pains to prove, for instance, that Hamilton was no monarchist, by exaggerating his own intimacy with him and the impossibility, if he were so, that he should not, at some time have betrayed it to him. this may pass with uninformed readers, but not with those who have had it from Hamilton’s own mouth. I am one of those, and but one of many. at my own table, as well as elsewhere, I have heard him and mr Adams both avow their preference of monarchy, and especially that of England, over all other governments. both agreed it was the most perfect model of govmt ever devised by the wit of man: mr Adams adding only ‘if it’s corruptions were done away,’ and Hamilton that ‘with these corruptions it was perfect, and without them it would be an impracticable government.’”

Thomas Jefferson also had a bust of Alexander Hamilton.

If you are interested in more information on the rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, be sure to read up on what I wrote about their relationship here.

#sincerely anonymous #flood pressles box

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