#bloodsport boys my beloveds

[myceliumelium]

The Thrall Children of Himring

A continuation of this here, with the help of @apocalypso-36 with Elrond, and @animeandbooksarelife who created itty bitty beastie.

Correspondence between Lord Elrond of Imladris and Lady Idril of Dol Amroth

Scholar Idril, I am an attentive reader of your works, especially when my own name comes up in it. I am writing to you now to inform you of an error you made, in referring to my blessed late brother, King Elros Tar-Minyatur, and myself as the 'Thrall-Children' of Maedhros Feanorion. I strongly believe I speak for both myself and my beloved twin when I humbly beg you edit your works to instead refer to us as his 'foster children'. While the conditions were far from ideal, and there was no shortage of problems with our relationship, he and Maglor Feanorion took care of us to the best of their ability. Thank you for your consideration. Lord Elrond Peredhel, Herald of High King Gil-Galad, Bannerman of Lindon.

My lord Elrond, I would like to start by profusely thanking you for taking a moment to correspond with a humble scholar, such as myself. As for the error you mentioned, it is no error at all, for I was referring to Maedhros’ apparent tendency to take in the children of escaped thralls or young escaped thralls themself, if they found themselves in need of shelter. I have only found two of these children ever referred to by name, the first named Ruinmir and the second only ever referred to as levain or little beast, but there is substantial evidence that they were not the only ones. Though I see now that my phrasing was confusing and I should reword for the sake of clarity. Though, now that you have opened dialogue, I find myself compelled yet again to ask if you would be willing to shed some light on certain details, as we seen the confusions that may come from working without the invaluable insight of people such as yourself. With admiration and hope of continued dialogue, Lady Idril of Dol Amroth

Excerpts of “On thralls and their lives in the north-east of Beleriand” by Saelgol of Lothlorien

“The greatest thrall communities were indeed centered on and concentrated around the fortress of Himring. Census data recovered from the ruins on Tol-Himling explicitly marks out it’s thrall populations, in a similar way to how they denote other elven cultures. Thralls are identified much the same way as the vanya, noldo and sinda populations. Though they enjoyed an additional measure of acceptance within Maedhros’s lands, does not mean they were considered a culture of their own right, rather than outcasts, living along the fringes of elven territories.” pp. 17

“Heavy policing of thrall communities was a common enough practice. Many lords feared that they were a threat to public order, “bringing back from angband barbaric practices and dark ghosts in their hearts”(Helcariel) such as bloodsport, a musical tradition named “night howling” by outside observers, and post-mortem cannibalism of their dead. These practices shook Exiles to their core, though Maedhros himself is said to have been disturbingly unbothered by it, which only added to his orcish reputation.”pp. 48

“Parentless children were a distressingly common sight amongst thralls. Often their caretakers had gone to great pains to smuggle them from the cursed land with no consideration for their own escape, or had been killed in the arduous trek. Others still were given mercy deaths at the hands of their brethren as they were too far gone to survive outside Angband. As a result, many children arrived alone into the care of thrall communities.” pp. 69

“Lord Maedhros was often noted to take in these children. Some of the very few written records we have from the hand of a thrall comes from a village chief, who wrote to Himring saying “We have two more mouths that we can feed, otorno. Two boys and a girl. The young boy and the young girl are desperately ill and we do not think they will survive, but the elder boy is healthy, he says his name is Ruinmir, and that the two younger are his little beasts.” And about a century later, we have records of an elf named Ruinmir Aldion, working in as a scout for Maedhros, and listed to have a dependant recorded as Levain, which I have verified is not a proper name but an epessë roughly translating to “Beastie.” By the accounts we have, the lord Maedhros fostered them both personally, though he never adopted either of them in earnest.” pp. 70

[the-goth-catte]

[ PANDEMONIO GRAND OPENING 01-01-2023]

Scandroid - Neo-Tokyo (Dance w/ The Dead Remix) Reaper - The Devil is Female KMFDM vs Skold - Bloodsport Pixelgrip - ALPHAPUSSY SITD - God's Blessing Faderhead - When the Freaks Come Out Anne Clark - Sleeper in Metropolis (Spacemees 1927 Remix) Ghost - Year Zero (Saint Remix) Beastie Boys - Intergalactic (Dunisco Remix) Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger (Nemix Remix) Accessory - Ruff Fuxxx Rankka - Satisfaction Goldfrapp vs Funky Town Suicide Commando - Hellraiser (Agonoize Remix) Apoptygma Berzerk - Starsign (hard_code remix) Covenant vs Boney M - Daddy Dead Stars SPOCK - Never Trust a Klingon (Verfluchte Remix) God Module - Round & Round NamNamBulu - Deception Metallica v Sisters of Mercy v NIN - Reflection of Puppets Echo & The Bunnymen - Lips Like Sugar (Soulson25 Remix) VNV Nation - Beloved Apoptymga Berzerk vs Blutengel Skold - Error 404 Christian Death vs Creux Lies - Spiritual Cramp Sisters of Mercy vs Billy Idol - Temple of Love/Rebel Yell Wumpscut - Wreath of Barbs (Unheilig Remix) 3TEETH - Pumped Up Kicks The Anix - Cry Little Sister Papa Roach - Last Resort (Fury Weekend Remix) Aeon Rings - Pale Blue Android Lust - Warlock Depeche Mode - It's No Good (Dominatrix Remix) Siouxsie & The Banshees vs RevCo - Happy House of Horny KMFDM vs Front 242 - Professional Headhunter And One - Technoman Age of Love - Age of Love (Dominatrix Remix) Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart (vs TEE) Prince - When Doves Cry (Extended Freestyle) William Control - The Monster New Order v Depeche Mode v Daft Punk - Better Blue Master People Daybehavior - A Train to Moscow De/Vision - Bipolar (Intuition's Alive Remix) Wumpscut - Soylent Green (Extended) Dance or Die - Dance or Die (Solitary Experiments Remix) Covenant - Lightbringer Type O Negative - My Girlfriend's Girlfriend (Fear the Priest Remix) Absurd Minds - Master Builder Bow Wow - I Want Candy (Razed in Black Mix) VNV Nation vs Daft Punk - When Will We Get Lucky in the Future? KMFDM - Liquor Fish & Cigarettes Oscillian - In the Company of Robots Ace of Base - All That She Wants (Self Help & Tanner Rework) Dead When I Found Her - Magic Dance Blutengel - Save Our Souls Night Club - Vampires Ministry - Everyday is Halloween (Razed in Black Remix)

[cinna-boop]

What if Adam Francis and Seer met? 🤔

[i-am-kind-of-lost]

Amanda Waller(Viola Davis’s version) is the closest alternative to Umbridge.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

@vclyrias asked:

Hi Butterfly! I just wondered if you know if they changed Helaena’s character for HOTD? I haven’t read Fire and Blood but in TWOIAF she is described as a pleasant and happy girl, and in the show so far she is very serious and gloomy. Do you have any thoughts? 🦋

F&B's description of Helaena isn't that much different from TWOIAF — it only says she was plumper and not as strikingly beautiful as most Targaryens. She was pleasant and happy as a 13-year-old at her marriage (sigh grrm) to her brother Aegon, and gave birth to twins (Jaehaerys and Jaehaera) a year later, and to another boy (Maelor) 4 years after that.

However, by the time of Viserys's death she seemed somewhat displeased with Aegon to the point of sarcasm — when they came to her rooms to tell him his father died and he was king, Aegon wasn't there, and she was like, "Aegon's not in my bed, you can check under the blankets to make sure." As Aegon was actually (depending on the source) either in his mistress's bed, or in a skeevy den in Flea Bottom (featuring bloodsport of feral children) with an extremely underage prostitute, you can see why the years of marriage to him might try her patience.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot else about Helaena during the pre-war period. At the reconciliation banquet (that failed miserably), there's no mention that she minded that Jace asked her to dance, but Aegon was offended and things nearly came to blows. She was apparently close to her mother and close to her father and took her kids to visit them every day. Dreamfyre, her dragon, is described as "beloved". After the Green and Black coronations but before the war actually started, Helaena was in favor of a parley (along with her mother) instead of immediate outright war. Pretty basic until the war began, until "a son for a son", after which she became suicidally depressed. 😭

However, Helaena's daughter Jaehaera is described with terms that seem to be implying (by the author, not the in-world writer who doesn't have the knowledge or vocabulary) she was on the autism spectrum, some sort of neurodiversity — that is, lack of emotion and affect from infancy. It seems likely that HOTD is borrowing from Jaehaera for their version of Helaena, giving her some behaviors that a lot of neurodiverse fans are identifying with. Note that they've also made her a dreamer, like they also did with Viserys; there's no textual basis for either of them to be so, but the skeptic maester of record wouldn't know such details or likely believe in prophecies anyway. (Mind you there's also a popular epic fanfic where Helaena is a dreamer, but she's somewhat of a minor character and it's so au that it's almost certainly just a coincidence.)

Oh, also, here's an illustration from F&B (by Doug Wheatley) of Helaena and the kids visiting Viserys shortly before he died:

It's interesting, while the text says the twins listened attentively to the king's fantasy adventure tale while the 2-year-old Maelor played with a ring Viserys gave him, instead Wheatley chose to draw the boys enthralled by the story while Jaehaera ignores it, instead apparently fascinated by the ring. Makes me wonder if the text was changed last minute? Or if Wheatley read Jaehaera's earlier description and thought she'd be the one more into the ring than the story, and so picked it up when the baby dropped it? (But then the twins don't really look 6 and Maelor definitely doesn't look 2, plus it looks like Viserys has all his fingers, so I shouldn't be too picky.)

Either way, you can imagine the HOTD creators seeing this image and deciding that Jaehaera is how they'd like to characterize young Helaena. (Though with bugs instead of rings. 🐛🕷) We'll just have to wait for the next episodes to see how she's characterized as a young adult...

[persephoneflouwers]

Besties, you seem to be about fic recs lately, so… Do you have a list of fics you would love to see as movies/tv series?

Best fic request ever!

I don’t want to sound repetitive but I can’t not mention all the fics in my bookmarks (x) and actually the most famous ones. We had a teaser of TTS with adore you lol but it would make such a pretty movie. Escapade could be the best gay romcom of this century with the right director and screenwriter. Young&beautiful of course… Bloodsport is the perfect tv series Twitter would support like crazy (more movie-able than unbelievers in my head). Buuuut *clears her throat* here’s my list, based on absolutely zero competence to analyse critically any screen adaptation of books and fics, but these fics just have something I would love to be brought to life, little details and/or descriptions that just would work for me.

Fic I would love as movies

ferricadooza! by suspendrs: this is already a cult for me. Set in 1963, homosexuality is illegal in the UK, Louis owns a gay bar, and Harry’s an underground boxing champion with an unfortunate enemy.

Come as you are by stylinsoncity: this story was meant as a director cut or something. The setting, the dialogues, the characters are so good and very original (especially Louis!). I think it would make a great movie (and there’s a sequel too, so you’ll have the fan service too lol).

Love is a rebellious bird by 100percentsassy, gloria_andrews: They are Orchestra prodigies, who start with the wrong foot. Lots of angst and lots of music talk. 

Love after the end of the world by mercurial-madhouse ( @mercurial-madhouse ): a dystopian AU must be a movie. This one is the best I’ve read in fic form yet! 

No pressure, no diamonds by karamelised: is it even my fic rec post if i don’t mention this fic? Look, it’s just pure enterteinment at some point. Thieves, heigh tech heist, ex to lovers drama. I love it.

You and all of heaven’s of other wonders by devilinmybrain ( @thedevilinmybrain ): Harry is an angel. Like a real angel sent from heaven to protect Louis. And Harry loves humans... maybe a bit too much. Heaven can’t have that. 

Don’t want shelter by kingsofeverything ( @kingsofeverything ): Louis and Harry were childhood friends, but then something happens and they stopped talking. When Hurricane Nicole threatens the coast, they end up stuck together in their families' old vacation home that they co-own. During the storm, and in the months after, they’re both forced to reevaluate their history and what they mean to each other.

Cocaine for breakfast by guccikings:  Louis has drug addiction, sent away from his beloved party-scene to recover. There, he discovers that small towns have just as much access to drugs as London did, plus something even better that he just can't get enough of. That something is a boy with green eyes and bouncy curls named Harry Styles. this gave me skins vibe, a bit of beautiful boy now that I think about it. 

Like cranberries on a winter evening by  4ureyesonly28: no cause this would make such a perfect Christmas movie 🎄

On the edge by zanni_scaramouche: Louis is a figure skater and Harry is a Hockey player, they met at the Olympics. You’ll fall in love with them, the dynamics between them are just so cute and well described. Very unique setting too

Strangers Stars by shaylea: the safari fic. It’s probably the slowest slow burn I’ve ever read lmao but I think it would work as a movie. There are a lot of wild activities happening and obviously as a road trip the scenes would be full of incredible landscapes. Academy award for the photography incoming!

Drink and the devil had done the rest by fel:95: this is an Italian fic translated in English. Gay pirates cinematic universe? I’m ALL in.

Soft hands, fast feet, can’t lose by dolce_piccante: I think the world deserve a story where a quaterback falls in love with the boy from the ballet club. 

Wild and unruly by 100percentsassy, gloria_andrews: this fic makes my heart melt. The cowboy fic featuring Louis in the vest of  paralegal assigned to pressure him into selling his land and pregnant cows (i love cows so much).

Walk that mile by purpledaisy: the classic road trip. God, they’re both insufferable, yet so relatable 

Victorian boy by audreyhheart: I read this long time ago, but I think it would work as movie. As the title suggests, it’s an historical book. Beautiful dresses, galateo, horses and the prettiest landscapes. Louis is an aristocrat who acts like a dandy. Love him

Into the blue by zarah5: the scuba diving fic! this would be funnnn

Someone to fly home to by kingsofeverything: This authore works are sublime, so literally anything would do. Silver fox Louis!!!!! Ex to lovers!!!! but also angsty and romanticly mature.

mine would be you by crinckled-eyed-boo ( @crinkle-eyed-boo ): this is a tough one, tons of angst, jealousy that made my stomach churns. The drama of it all would make a good movie 100%

Nothing but you on my mind by nonsensedarling: Royal AU with a little bit of spice. 

If you read them and want to talk about, hit me up! 💖

[heli0s-writes]

hey Helios! i was wondering what some of your fav books (literally anything - essays, novels, biographies, etc) are, and more specifically, fav poets? i'm trying to actively read more stuff from writers of colour bc i am one lmao, and i thought i might enjoy your recs bc i love your writing 💕

Hi Fay!! You're welcome to trawl through my reading recs tag for more, but I'll also be repeating a lot of titles here. These are my favorites off the top of my head. As always, if you are downloading, please use a VPN :)

Poetry

Bloodsport - Yves Olade (short collection! this one is good for immediate reading)

Night Sky With Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

Crush - Richard Siken

Post Colonial Love Poem - Natalie Diaz

Bright Dead Things - Ada Limon

Brute - Emily Skaja

Like A Beggar - Ellen Bass

Don’t Call Us Dead - Danez Smith

Prelude to Bruise -Saeed Jones

Bone Tongue - Scherezade Siobhan

Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines - Natalie Wee

if you are a podcast listener, The On Being Project has a great series called Poetry Unbound that really breaks down a poem and gives insight on how to listen and experience. 

Fiction

Edinburgh - Alexander Chee

Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

The Things We Carried - Tim O'Brien

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Non-Fiction:

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog - Bruce D. Perry

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents - Lindsay C. Gibson

Graphic Novels/Manga

Clumsy - Jeffrey Brown

Fun Home - Alison Bechdel

Blankets - Craig Thompson

American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang

Blue - Kiriko Nananan

Akira - Katsuhiro Otomo

Eternal Sabbath - Fuyumi Soryo

And, of course, some good ol mainstream superhero comic stuff:

Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon - David Aja, Matt Fraction

The Killing Joke - Alan Moore

Watchmen - Alan Moore

[hale-of-stiles-heart]

the Suicide Squad

starting off strong with Johnny Cash

is that fucking Michael Rooker?

oh poor bird

I forgot what accent Rick Flagg has and had to do a double take

not to be mean but I hope Pete Davidson isn't in the entire movie

wtf is that weasel thing????

HARLEY!!!!

I'm so glad they're going back to her black and red color scheme!!!

is that Flula Borg as Javelin???

not a betting pool jfc

the entire plane scene I'm cracking up

oh ok he died

fucking TDK omfg

okay but he's already gonna die either way why tf would he go back?

THERE'S MY BABIES!!!! TEAM 2!!!!!

the fucking goldfinch eating him

Bloodsport's cleaning scene, malewife behavior

his screaming match with his daughter was so funny and sad at the same time

oh shit Waller is such a bitch

KING SHARK MY BELOVED!!!!!

"so smart me" yes you are baby 😭

shake Sebastian's hand you monster!

they really using the Suicide Squad for a US coup of a foreign country

fucking Peacemaker taking notes

"Starfish is a slang term for butthole, is there any connection?"

Nanaue I fucking adore you that is your hand!!!

Peacemaker ready to eat a beach full of dicks for liberty, gotta respect that

Javelin giving Harley his javelin with his dying breath

stop hurting my shark boy he's just hungry!!!

Peacemaker's fucking underwear I can't

Bloodsport has a rat phobia omfg

Sebastian offering him a pretty leaf 😭

Cleo I fucking adore you and that's such a cute quote!!!!

the fucking dialogue in this movie is so fucking good

yesssss let my boy eat!!!!

really love Bloodsport's helmet, reminds me of the Super Predator

did that dude just have his whole dick out????

"TMI mate"

noooo they did not just kill the freedom fighters

Bloodsport's helmet reminding me of Predators is especially fitting with Alice Braga starring in both movies

I'm about 40 minutes in but I think I'm gonna have to stop bc it's just buffering so much and it's taking me outta it

[scarletgardensrpg]

LIVING ♦ TWENTY ♦ NEUTRAL

MAURICE-ALEXANDER VAN ORANJE-NASSAU is the Royal Prince of the Netherlands, who has recently returned to Amsterdam following the discovery of he and his sister, Luana, in southern France. Although an heir to the Dutch throne was named in the late Queen Catharina’s will, he and Luana have so far refused to disclose this information, both publicly and privately. Although he is a beloved public figure like his sister, Maurice is more reserved, disliking the attention. He has recently received permission from Agostina to live part-time in The Hague.

BIOGRAPHY

They’d only ever really fought once: Luana, white-faced at the foot of a marble staircase, the front of her thousand-dollar dress smeared with cake, a lavender party hat crushed in her small palm—and Maurice, standing five steps above her with dark eyes and a scowling, mean mouth. In the empty, vast hall, he and Luana had glared at one another, the frigid silence echoing, before Luana spoke at last. Her voice was high, arrogant, accusatory: Mijn broer is een beest. Years later, by a seashore in southern France at the end of the world, they would laugh about it—what a stupid thing to have divided them for an afternoon, when now they had only each other. At the beach, Maurice massaged Lu’s head until she fell asleep, sparkling grains of sand still in her wet lashes. Those same hands had broken skin, splintered bone just hours before: without remorse, with pleasure. He turned the phrase over and over in his head like a well-worn coin. My brother is a beast.

- ❀ -

They tumbled into the world one after another: a girl, who wore cascades of sunshine atop her head in perfect curls, then a boy, silver-eyed and fox-faced, luminescent as the moon. These became their pet names among the royal maids and wet-nurses, the chauffeurs and visiting diplomats; zon-je, maan-je. At Christmas, Minister van Buskirk had placed a warm hand atop both theirs and smiled at Queen Catharina with familial tenderness: They are so lovely. And, perhaps, they really once were: twin dolls of the Dutch crown adorned in lace and jewels, running along open courtyards, laughing together by sparkling waterfronts—Luana the wild, Maurice the clever. They looked alike, but were distinguishable by their temperaments: where his sister socialized with ease and shone brightest standing in the center of a ballroom, Maurice longed for quiet—and where she was a rare blooming rose, he couldn’t help but feel like the thorns which covered her. Indeed, he made for a handsome, yet arrogant, little prince: standoffish to all but his twin sister, solitary and bellicose, as precocious and regal as he was boyishly bratty. 

In another world, he might’ve outgrown this hardness; he might’ve swept into adolescence with carefree contentment, learned not to bristle so much, had more than just Generaal de Jaager’s delinquent son for a friend, and ascended the throne with true kingly grace. You’d be a good leader, Gabriël always insisted, half-serious and half-laughing. I’d be good, for once. For a king like you. In another world, they might have really both been good. He could think of no other thing but this, shivering in the back of a black-clad woman’s car covered in his mother’s blood. He thought of it still, standing ankle-deep in the wet sand of the Mediterranean, watching Cecile shake hands, watching Luana sob, watching Dimitri’s pitiless gaze glance disinterestedly off him, and settle instead on Blue, who merely cocked her head and, at last, gave a shrug. Show the little ones to their new home, then. I haven’t got the time to. In another world, I am kissing Luana on the nose at our birthday party, Maurice thought to himself, but that life was already fading from his memory, buried under twenty-eight bodies and a dead lineage. In another world, I am feeding her cake and complimenting her dress and I am not so cruel.

But then again, maybe Maurice had always been destined to turn into what he did: a moon-child in love with the solitary night, hardness cracking and giving out to even more hardness, one nightmarish day after another no longer inciting fear, but curiosity. Call it a morbid longing, call it a refusal to spend five years shackled to terror. Was he not a prince? He, somewhere along the way, had become entranced by them: the black-eyed children of Cecile, so lovingly nicknamed bloodhounds. In a single safehouse, how did power fall so totally into the hands of the dead? The way Dimitri and Blue brawled with teeth and knives, the way Jacques could not be put at ease without some carnage to appease his appetite, their unapologetic adoration for their Mother of Death: Luana loathed to see it, but Maurice found himself drawn to their chaos like a moth to flame. What was a lonely boy-king to three gods of the New World? Maurice would work at tamping down his want, his need, to follow them like a pupil, years and years after they left. He could not leave Luana, of course, but Maurice also knew, with unspoken, slow-falling surety: to chase after the dead into the dark was to begin down an irreversible, treacherous path. And yet, some smoky, coiling voice whispered, like a hand around the throat. Which man can deny his heart forever?

CONNECTIONS

LUANA – ANOTHER WORLD. Beautiful Lu, whose name means lion, means happy, could never understand him. But he understands her, and he loves her—isn’t that enough? God, he hopes so. They have been joined at the hip since birth: two darling halves of a whole, each one with the secret keys to a lost kingdom. In youth, he had found her conceit so irritating, her shrieky charm so gauche—but seeing her now, a girl of only twenty who walks the halls of the Royal Palace burdened by the haunting of a hundred ghosts and battered by unspeakable heartbreak, he’d do anything to have his obnoxious, wonderful sister back for just a day. Once, she had been the one protecting Maurice: sheltering him with her great galloping laugh, her bright eyes, daring anyone to speak an ill word of him—so that now, he feels he must return the favor. A great, terrible secret of inheritance sits between them, and Maurice understands it is this single secret that will define whether they survive together in the New World or not. As far as Maurice is concerned, they will. They must. He’ll do whatever it takes.

DIMITRI – VIOLENT DELIGHTS. Boys will be boys, and beasts will be beasts. It’s strange to think that Maurice came of age in the company of wolves—and even stranger still that, at thirteen, he had stumbled into their lands so fearful and angry, only to be forced out five years later with an empty, wanting heart. Luana hates them all, but Maurice finds he can’t fully share in her opinion—particularly when it comes to Dimitri. There’s something mean-spirited to Blue and something grotesque about Jacques’ brand of violence; Dimitri, on the other hand, has always been able to wear bloodsport so well. He’s as refined as he is barbaric, as caustic as he is charismatic: and if anyone could embody the alluring dark, it would certainly be him. In Nice, Cecile’s bloodhounds had all largely ignored he and Luana, too preoccupied with each other or whatever errands they were sent on by Cecile. Nonetheless, Maurice had watched him: his manner of walking, the smooth cadence of his voice, every elegant arrangement of his handsome features—and unconsciously, learned to emulate him. Since his return to Amsterdam, they’ve crossed paths once more; and if Dimitri wasn’t looking before, he’s looking now. It’s too soon to say what they are, now, only that he no longer looks to Maurice with cool disinterest—and instead, is beckoning him forward into a dark, dark world.

GABRIËL – IF WE’D ONLY LAY DOWN OUR WEAPONS. His was the first face Maurice looked for, amidst the thousands who had come to greet the van Oranje-Nassaus: a sea of the living braced against the golden shores to watch the ship dock, hands outstretched, eyes brimming with glad tears—and there, beside Thalia: Generaal Gabriël, whose beautiful face betrayed no more feeling than that of a marble statue. When they were children, they had spent time together—more time than Maurice cares to admit, hours and hours reading beneath the trees and boating on the lake, sneaking away, exchanging secrets, all of it culminating in a kiss, or two, or three—but of course, he was Luana’s in the end. All lovely things were. Maurice isn’t completely sold on the convenient narrative Agostina tells of who is responsible for the massacre—but Gabriël’s partial involvement is, to Maurice, undeniable. He and Luana had both seen it: the exchange with PYTHIA, the handshake and head nod, the words spoken like a curse from Gabriël’s lips: Red de kinderen. Dood de rest. Luana may not have it in herself to exact vengeance—but Maurice, who has always been the worser of the two, certainly can. So blind he is with bitterness, that he can’t seem to see beyond it—if he were to look a little closer, he might find Gabriël isn’t the enemy he’s made him out to be.

OPEN ♦ FC: OTTO SEPPÄLÄINEN

[bloodydamnit]

And Neil had never felt freer.

CHAPTER 7 OF BLOODSPORT NOW POSTED!!!!!

READ HERE!

This chapter took... a LOT out of me. Overall, I’m satisfied with how it’s turned out and it is FINALLY up!!!  Ugh, I loved a scene in this so much, I simply had to make a quick render of it. A new origin story to a beloved setting in AFTG and a brief moment where the boys were happy and fluffy and yeah... I hope you all like it. 

Shout out to my amazing beta @jyajyan and @fuckyeahdisreputablekibeth for holding a bitch down, letting her sort through her thoughts in the middle of the night, and talking me out and into good and bad ideas! Yall are honestly the fucking best and I literally couldn’t do this without you T^T

Please check the tags before reading! But nonetheless, yeah :) 

[junker-town]

Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, supercut edition: A conversation with Felix and Jon

Secret Base is re-releasing our MMA documentary series as a single cut. Here’s a talk between its creators, Felix Biederman and Jon Bois.

Secret Base now has one million subscribers on YouTube. It’s a big moment for us, and it’s a testament to all the ambition, creativity and years of hard work put in by our team: Alex Rubenstein, Clara Morris, Graham MacAree, Jiazhen Zhang, Joe Ali, Jon Bois, Kofie Yeboah, Mike Das, Phil Pasternak, Ryan Simmons, Seth Rosenthal, and Will Buikema.

Out of appreciation for our viewers, we’ve decided to re-release our 2018 documentary series, Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, as a single two-hour video. Jon spent years working with Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House fame to tell a story of mixed martial arts, sketchy business dealings, power-hungry families, the fading of American empire, and the refuge offered to us by our weird, stupid, beloved bloodsport.

Jon and Felix also took the occasion to have a long talk about what the project means to us two years later. It was a free-flowing conversation that sort of went where it went. We hope you enjoy.

Jon: I’ve been on the internet making all kinds of different shit for a really long time, and two years down the road, Fighting in the Age of Loneliness is one of the things i’m very proudest of. One reason it was such an interesting experience for me is that tonally, it’s just so different from other things I tend to make. It’s fundamentally a bittersweet story and it refuses to forecast a happy ending. It’s honest until it hurts.

I know you grew up watching MMA, and you’d wanted to make a large-scale MMA project for quite some time. Was there a specific point at which it stopped being merely a fun Saturday night for you, and you started to notice the erosion of the things that made it so special? Did it go hand-in-hand with you growing up and beginning to see the world for what it is? I’d be really interested to hear how and when you arrived at this place.

Felix: First of all, I want to say that FITAOL is the sort of thing I have dreamed of making since before I ever knew I’d work in media. It was a distant glimmer and I would never have been able to do it with anyone else. The way it looked and felt outpaced even what I had imagined something like it would feel like as a kid.

As for MMA, I didn’t notice the decline until I was in my early- to mid-twenties. Maybe there’s something to be said about the final parts of your childhood now dying around that time nowadays as opposed to earlier. I definitely became more prone to noticing seedier, more depressing, hollow aspects of things I enjoyed, but it was something more than that. There are tons of things I love that I now see the darker aspects of, but I’ve never gone from full obsessive mania to not touching it like [I have with MMA]. Or at least not as an adult. I knew everything, every fight, every event, who left which training camp, whose manager is an asshole, etc. I didn’t go from that to not watching instantly, though.

I think the moment my enjoyment declined too much for me to love it was 2016. I had more responsibilities and worked a ton that year, but to put it bluntly, I developed a life. I don’t think I really had one as a 22-year-old, and suddenly it felt like I had been dropped one from the sky. That’s never gotten in the way of me getting obsessive about things and drawing a singular focus, but in this case I had started missing fights I never would have and not really missing them. There was nothing drawing me back. If you can maintain an interest, hobby, obsession, or mania in a time of new meaning and excitement, there’s something at the core of it that’s radiating out to you on a very deep level. MMA did not have that for me anymore. I felt like that core had been hollowed out and it took me a while to figure out why.

Jon: You know, I think there’s something singular and special about that age you’re talking about, somewhere around like 20. A lot of parts of your life and things you always believed kinda melt off and float away. At the same time, the “rest of your life” – maybe not in everyone’s case, but in mine and by the sound of it yours – hasn’t started yet. So you’re left in this sort of twilight where you’re just sort of there, trying to make it day to day and clinging to whatever resonates with you. Despite all the confusion and indirection, while I’m glad I’m no longer there, I do get very nostalgic about it. It was this age of time-wasting, aimlessness and stupidity, and at the time it never dawned on me that I should cherish it, that it’s something I’d never experience again.

That was a time I thought about a lot as I started reviewing your script, actually. In most of the chapters you slotted in an interlude that painted a picture of the sorts of people this resonated with. People who were forgotten and rudderless in one way or another, and took refuge in a thing that was so unique and tasteless and off-the-path that it could feel like it was theirs. That was the case with me. Although my appreciation of MMA was much more casual than yours, it picked me like a lock. I was just like, so much of the shit I thought I was supposed to care about doesn’t make sense to me. But this does, perfectly.

We’ve talked about this a little before, but the thing about this I’m proudest of is its determination to try and capture that lonely, disjointed, forgotten feeling that countless people around our age experienced (and still do!), but is virtually never talked about. I mean, this isn’t new. Every previous generation has 900 million pieces of media documenting what it was like to be them. While each one is no more or less important than the next, each is different and shaped by different conditions. I don’t know if you wanna venture a guess. Do you think future generations are in for more of what we were in for, but worse? Can you imagine a realistic possibility that things will get better?

Felix: When I think about coming generations, I think about what Jarvis Cocker says in “Common People”: “you’ll never watch your life slide out of view.”

It’s a gut-wrenching line in a song that’s musically upbeat. It hits at something very deep emotionally with me that I could never put into words. That’s exactly it: peoples’ lives just fall out of the collective field of vision. They’re forced to live at the periphery of everyone’s vision. They’re UberEats guys or they wipe down the aisles at CVS every 15 minutes, or they’re the saving someone else’s place in line for a COVID test.

The next generations will have a few carefully-doled-out seven-figure futures, and then a fleeting and tenuous middle class that is only defined as economic “freedom from” and not “freedom to.” Your purchasing power is shit compared to your parents, you’re going to live like a bug in a major city or in a new construction monstrosity that’s built to collapse on itself, and you have fewer family and friends every year.

Your dream of having someone you love and somebody that loves you, much less bringing someone new into this world, seems like more of a distant fantasy every day. But you’re the person ordering the food on the delivery app. You’re the guy who those CVS workers make way for when you sadly waddle down the aisle. Aren’t you glad you’re not those people who you only ever see in the corner of your eye? And that’s where everyone else will be: increasingly invisible. They’ll leave your food at your doorstep and be penalized at work if you make eye contact with them. They’ll bring you pallets of agribusiness-grown chemical bullshit that makes you feel sick and fucking miserable all the time. Your greatest fear on that middle class iceberg will be drifting off and becoming someone who does not exist to people like you, and it will keep you in line.

I don’t know how that changes. I don’t think anyone currently holding federal office gives a shit about those people or even putting their finger in the dam to momentarily pause the constant degradation and pain most people in this country feel that you never hear about. I don’t know what the path out is.

Jon: I don’t know either. I’m an optimist by choice because being that way makes me happier and motivates me to make whatever infinitesimal speck of difference i can make. It’s like religion. I can’t justify it, I can’t tell you you should be, it’s just the way i choose to be. One thing i’m fairly sure of is that if it gets better, it’ll happen over a long, long span of time, in increments usually too small to collectively celebrate, and so slowly that neither of us will ever really see it. It’ll be as imperceptible as Jarvis Cocker described. The small, illusory prize of seeing Bernie lose, for instance, is the fantasy that we were THIS close to getting on the right course, that we’re only a few breaks away from pulling the switch and rolling down another track.

And since it happens so slowly, we can’t let ourselves be driven to agony. I mean, we can, but we’ve only got one of these lives. We have to have things that make us happy, even if the avenues toward those things grow narrower, and even though the very nature of community crumbles and sends us seeping between the floorboards looking for it.

I remember during the aughts, when I was first trying to work my way into sports media, the popular line among the cool kids was that things like sports are a distraction that monopolizes peoples’ attention and energy that otherwise would go into enacting real political change. But things like sports are the fucking point! MMA, or learning how to play the lap steel, or thrift fashion, or Counter-Strike, or Scrubs fan fiction, or whatever in the world it is for you. That’s what you’re fighting for, if you’re fighting. Every hour you get to spend in that world is your victory against all this. Maybe it is the bread-and-circus shit that every guy on an aughts forum with a name like TheChortlingAtheist or whatever said it was. Maybe it is. But what exactly would we ask? Can you blame them? What the fuck else would you suggest, annoying guy i remember?

Felix: That’s exactly it. There’s this thing that happens when people get monkeys as pets: they go insane from a lack of enrichment and play (as well as not being around other monkeys). They never learn how to be a monkey. They’re just naked and vulnerable to the world because all they can do is hit the button or make the face that makes their owner give them food. That’s all their life is and it’s fucking miserable and terrifying. Sports isn’t the thing you strip away and then find meaning. It’s part of the palette we color our lives with. It’s the only way left we have to describe certain things.

I think it’s interesting, that for however highly Americans poll on the military on paper, the military feels it absolutely must have this massive presence at American sporting events. That for all the polling, no American recognizes someone from the joint chiefs of staff or the ranks of SEAL Team Six like they do someone from the NFL or NBA. I think people reflexively say they worship the military in this country, but they clearly don’t seem to believe we have any war heroes. We haven’t made any of them celebrities in a long time. We fundamentally don’t believe our wars are heroic. Our actions show we think our athletes are. That’s the thing actually giving our lives enrichment and color.

How to channel that, I don’t know. Maybe our Napoleon is at Michigan or Clemson right now. If we ever have a highly transformational single ruler who washes out the old, it will be an athlete.

Jon: RIGHT! It’s in sports where we find some of the most pure, honest expressions of humanity. To borrow one of my favorite lines of yours from the series, nothing about it lies to you. It’s so intensely expressive in ways people can almost never achieve even when we script it. I think about this moment a lot:

Looking at this, you’d never know the Astros would win the next game and go to the World Series for the first time ever. A stadium full of people is losing their shit, Pujols hits a ball 700 miles, and in an instant, the entire place sounds like a shopping mall. There’s no lesson in it, there’s no narrative arc, there’s nothing being sold, no message sent. It’s just 50,000 people having their hearts ripped out. You’ll never see a more essentially human moment. Give me times like those over every TV show i’ve ever seen.

I’d love to say the military’s days of polling high are numbered, that younger people are beginning to see things for what they are. But hell, however old you are, odds are that either Vietnam or Iraq shaped your upbringing and understanding of the world in some way, and apparently that’s failed to sufficiently register. Once again, everything progresses so slowly and silently that maybe it’s just a foregone conclusion that most of us come to accept it.

I gotta reference the Civilization games here. The start of a Civ game is a hell of a time. You’re exploring the world, discovering things, introducing new technologies, building all over the place. then you start waging war as a colonizing piece of shit, and that’s a great time. After a healthy amount of that, Brazil invades and burns down half your cities, and you spend the next 700 years plotting revenge. And one day you strike back and take that revenge, and it’s so satisfying. It feels like it should be good times from there on out, but to your surprise, the late game is incredibly dull and lifeless. All you’re doing is researching how to build fighter jets and bombers. You hunker down, and you stop giving a shit about whether all your cities have enough food. All you’re doing is selecting a stealth bomber, scrolling across the map, bombing Barcelona. Then you scroll back to Philadelphia, select another bomber, bomb Barcelona again. This is all you’re doing now. You don’t even know why you’re playing anymore. You just keep doing it because that’s all there is to do.

Then sometimes you’ll scroll around and notice some ancient unit you forgot you had. Like a spearman or something you left on a far-flung part of the map in 400 A.D. and forgot about. You could disband the unit, but you don’t. You could send him to bum-rush a helicopter unit and get destroyed, but you don’t. Because you care about him. He’s all that’s left about what you once loved about all this, back when you at least thought you knew why you were doing what you were doing.

Felix: I think we’re headed in this strange fragmented direction none of us can quite place. Very few people want to admit that this is the end, the beginning of an imperial unraveling. I see all these debates over whether China is communist or not, whether they’re the fucking Third Reich or something ridiculous, or they’re the saviors of humanity. They all miss this very basic fact: China overcoming mass poverty on a scale we’ve never seen, China modernizing on the timeline and scale that it has, is the only generational human accomplishment of the last 30 years. That’s it. That’s the only thing anyone actually remembers in one thousand years if we’re still here.

They’re the only nation that has done anything at all. The United States, European Union, India, no one has any equivalent accomplishments. Oh, uninterrupted peace in Europe? Shut up! No one gives a fuck! You’d have to dig deep for something one one-hundredth as impressive.

In America, though, you never hear about it. You never hear about how they’re fucking spitting in each other’s mouths at water parks while we’re toiling in the slush. And you know what? I don’t care if more people died than what they said. I know nations lie, blah blah blah. The simple fact is that we’re squirming around in the mud while they are living in the present and that’s an unmistakable fact. Sorry. We may have the capability to kill some people and knock some governments over still, but we’re done. We’re revealed as pathetic. No one is actually afraid of us. So what happens next?

The one thing working in the military’s favor is that they’re the only institution with the resources and manpower to assume control and/or fight current oligarchical powers if it came to that, but I don’t know if the military will have the same emotional powers in people’s minds then. It may leave a different taste in people’s mouths if there start to be falls of Saigon every day. Maybe that happens under a Mike Lindell presidency in 12 years. We’re dragged kicking and screaming out of the world. We never acknowledged our time was up. That’s certainly the direction we’re heading in as Biden drools out something approximating “we’re going to restore global leadership.”

MyPillow / YouTube

Jon: In high school I was annoyed by this dude I knew who liked to go on about how America was in a state of decline. He was also a guy who signed his homework as Tyler Durden, but 20 years down the road, can you argue with him? I’m glad we talked about Hurricane Katrina in the series, because that wasn’t an aberration. It’s all Katrina. Sometimes it manifests loudly, like it does with this pandemic, but most of the time it happens completely silently. Someone sitting in Rikers for years without a trial. A $45,000 medical bill sitting on a kitchen counter. Whatever we collectively thought this was is long gone if it was ever here at all.

I’m watching an NFL game at the moment and it feels just like 1996. Aside from flipping on an old movie, sports might be the only thing that can do that for me. The material realities of our world completely evaporate there. Colin Kaepernick was blackballed from the league in his prime and the league’s owners knew they would never have to admit why. The moment it seemed like NBA players were on the precipice of the most radical labor action we’d seen in ages, it was whittled down to something compatible. Granted, they are stenciling END RACISM behind the end zones now. But it just dries up here, and a consequence of that is that we get this world that sort of exists outside of time. It’s our constant. It’s like you said: that’s where our heroes are, that’s what captures our imagination.

There’s no prescription I feel qualified to offer for any of this. Fighting in the Age of Loneliness doesn’t really either! We ended it with, keep fighting, keep putting one foot in front of the other, the only way out is through. But ultimately, a lot of this project’s ambitions lied in simply acknowledging the feeling of living in a time that we argue is unquestionably an era of American decline. Nobody wants to try to tell that story, and understandably so. It wasn’t us because we’re so smart or insightful or brave or whatever the hell. We just got a chance to try to tell it through Google Earth, iMovie, and inconsistent audio leveling on YouTube, the world’s most prestigious and important platform. As with any project that’s a couple years old, I’ll sometimes see something and wish I’d done it better or cleaner. That’s inevitable. But damn if it isn’t one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever worked on. It was fantastic to be able to make this with you, man. Maybe we’ll do it again someday.

Felix: Every day I have to remind myself that we did this. It doesn’t seem like something I really got to do because it’s so completely our own. I could not have written this with anyone else. Whatever happens, whether we’re just the next Turks or Brits, sad crusts of a water pie, a former imperial core driven insane by the frontier we created, whether we live in a Chinese century or the next power is some unexpected axis, or maybe even something good happens, I hope we can do this again.

[kiss-my-freckle]

2x9 Rewatch: Shiizakana

Doing a season three watch prior to Randall Tier's storyline allows the ability to see things as they are in the moment, not only the point in which Will started to change, but why he had the desire to run away with Hannibal. I felt his change started during Randall Tier's storyline, so I'm doing a second 2x9 rewatch, and including bits of season three storyline as I believe season four would've fed off season two. As Chiyoh said, Hannibal grew up to be one of the big cats. Given his power and level of aggression, I'd consider him the tiger. He's attempting to pull the lion out of the lamb while that lamb is baiting him for Jack.

The episode opens with Will having a nightmare. Even in dream, he's unable to get intimate with his instincts. Difficult to do when you love someone. He's got Hannibal tied to a tree, demanding he admit the monster he is. He whistles for the stag to walk forward, tightening the rope around his neck. Every bit of their conversation is in Will's own mind. It’s stewing from his time at the stables, in his time spent with Peter. Will envies his hate because it would allow him to kill Hannibal. Even after everything he's done, he still loves him. "No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love, we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true." Killing Hannibal in dream or imagination is the only power he's able to feel. 

Hannibal's therapy helps to bring out Will's second self because it's outside of the FBI. He's the one who hired Hannibal, so everything that happens between them is completely confidential. "Therapy only works when we have a genuine desire to know ourselves as we are, not as we would like to be." It's been the core since the pilot episode. Who Will is, and how his relationship with Hannibal will change him. It gives reason for dialogues such as this one: "I don't care who I am, tell me if he's real." Killing Hobbs made the lamb feel powerful. Killing Randall gave the lamb his first taste at being the lion. This gives need for the human-animal crossover in Randall Tier's storyline. Margot’s line, "Did you just dehumanize me?" What happens at the end of season three. Will sheds the rest of his humanity, embracing the lion and taking his lovely tiger with him.

They discuss Will's therapy in front of Jack in a roundabout way. "And he's not denying its natural instincts, he's evolving them." Jack refuses to understand. Animals act on instinct, they know nothing of bloodsport. I'm sure many species play with their food prior to killing and eating, like domestic cats like playing with mice before they tear into them, but I've never seen an animal shed blood for sport. Will visits Peter, a character that I love very much becuase of his love for animals. Every conversation Will has outside of his sessions with Hannibal is an experience because it’s not to service an agenda. He learns just as much about Hannibal from other people. Peter is perfect example. "Um, I mean, you could - you could train - train a bear to be a wolf, or a wolf to be a bear. Train - train them long enough, and they will hunt together, feed together. Enough - enough time, there's - there's a great deal I could train even you to do, Will." Forward this to Hannibal's conversation with Bedelia regarding the shepherd's dog. "Almost anything can be trained to resist its instinct. A shepherd dog doesn't savage the sheep." With Peter, discussing the opposite. The instinct will always be there no matter the training, resist or embrace. "Animals, they, they do have, they have friendships just - just like us. We're the same." As Jack said, Will and Hannibal are identically different. The tiger and the lion are capable of friendship. "Please, don't - don't blame - blame the animals. Don't. Man is the only creature that kills to... kill." Tigers don't kill to kill. They kill to defend their family, they kill to protect their territory, and they kill to eat. "They're just... meat to him. Prey." Animals are... animals. The tiger, the lion, and the dragon.

"It's not rage. Rage is an emotional response to being provoked. This is something else." Will accepts this is instinct rather than rage. "Instinct. It's the way he thinks." Hannibal could've trained Randall to resist his instinct, but an animal is more likely to unleash another rather than train it to resist. Hannibal continues this with Will, trying to pull the lion out of the lamb. "You were hiding... behind the gun. You must allow yourself to be intimate with your instincts, Will." Hiding beind the gun, behind the nurse at the mental hospital, behind the stag in his nightmare. He's unable to get intimate with Hannibal's kill because he loves him. Jack’s line, "He didn't build a bridge, Doctor... he built a suit." One person suit for Hannibal, one person suit for Will. "During our therapy, he reported a moment of clarity." What Will stated after killing Hobbs. "With noise and clarity." Will could sense Hobbs’ madness like a bloodhound. "He understood in that moment, he was an animal born in the body of a man. He kept a solitary life. He would hide and behave in ways resembling animal behaviour." The man who builds a family of dogs and has difficulty socializing with others. "A therapist's life is equal parts counsel and curiosity. We set a patient on a path, but are left to wonder where that path will take them." He's the same with Will, equal parts counsel and curiosity. "What have I done?" Randall's question, like Will after Chilton was set on fire. "Are you accusing me of something?" And like Randall, Will bore the same screams from Chilton... "like a sculptor bears dust from the beaten stone." The shy boy isn't so shy anymore, as Randall isn't that crying boy anymore.

"This threatens to be a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, so I will thread carefully." Hannibal informs Jack about Randall, and at the same time, prepares Randall to go after Will. "But they will find you, Randall. When they do, it's important you do exactly what I say." More when Jack and Will visit with Randall. "Well, look inside the skull and you'll find what the job is." Look inside the skull, the way Hannibal tried sawing into Will's. "Used the right tool for the job." Jack uses the right tool to find killers. It takes one to catch one. "Do you know what it's like when the skin you're wearing doesn't fit?" Will knows, he doesn't have to imagine. "There's something so foreign about family…like an ill-fitting suit." Randall knows exactly who he is. "I know who I am now. And I'm doing much better." Will still struggles to identify. "I don't care who I am, tell me if he's real."

When Will is interested in a woman, he looks at Hannibal’s calendar to find out her name. "I tried to kill my brother." Will assumes Mason had it coming, then hides his feelings about whether or not Hannibal did. I don't think he truly knows because his love for Hannibal blinds him. I’m still not sure what bothers Will more. Hannibal's therapy being successful with Randall would give him reason to fear his therapy being just as successful. Or Hannibal treating more patients like him and Randall, igniting his jealousy... something I saw in Will when The Dragon came into storyline. He pulls Bedelia into the conversation, reveals what she said to him, then adds that she knew there were others like him. Will asks if Randall believes in God. I believe this is his jealousy caring too much what Randall believes in, so it feels more like an invite to me. He wants Randall to face the man who feels he's doing God's work. Hannibal bites. I love the slow-motion run Will does through the snow. “Even Steven.” I don't believe Hannibal was trying to kill Will. I think he wanted to see what would happen, see if the lion could get intimate if love was cut out of the equation. “If we learn our limitations too soon, we never learn our power.” Love limits Will. 

[racingtoaredlight]

More Holiday Filler

Every year, television stations trot out the same stable of holiday movies and replay them all for weeks leading up to Christmas Day. Most of these movies are genuinely beloved by millions, and really do deserve to be shown at least once. But, as someone tasked with meeting the demand for content (albeit on a much smaller scale), I can assure you that those in charge of network programming are beyond ecstatic that they can basically slap these babies into their timeslots without a second thought, and with minimal effort. Nobody wants to bust their hump around the holidays, so reusable content is a godsend. 

It’s in that spirit of abject laziness that I’m presenting a classic RTARL holiday  post for you today. Please enjoy, and bask in the familiarity. 

Howdy, folks! Rick Steves, here. I’ve long held that the best way to find the cultural heartbeat of an area is to take in a local competition. What better way to get a sense of the traits people value, then to see how they determine the best among them? For example, if I’d never attended the annual Ejaculation Relay Races of Salamanca, I’d have never discovered the superhuman and borderline cruel level of sexual endurance the locals possess. It’s that same thirst for knowledge and absolute authenticity that drove me to take an extra special, once in a lifetime trip to the North Pole. I’d long heard rumors of a tournament that could fundamentally alter the lives of spectators, to say nothing of those directly involved. I decided this was something I needed to experience for myself, and then pass along to you. I present to you my firsthand account of the 2016 North Pole Elf Kumite.

Trying to pin down the exact origin of the Elf Kumite proved to be a thorny task at first. Given that the event takes place in a fanciful land only accessable via Christmas Magic, the reporting on it has been practically non-existent. I quickly learned that the locals were a bit reluctant to share the secrets of the Kumite with “outsiders.” Fortunately, I was able to corner the Snowman who operated the local laundromat, and after a few minutes of light torture with a hair dryer, he told me everything he knew.  

Legend has it that on Christmas Eve 1990, a VHS copy of the Jean-Claude Van Damme classic “Bloodsport” somehow made it’s way into Santa’s magical bag from a home in rural Florida. Somebody had rented this particular copy from a Dunedin Blockbuster in June of that year, and then just never returned it because Florida. How it made it’s way into the bag remains one of life’s great mysteries, but make it’s way it did. At some point during the post-Christmas cleanup, an elf named Smiley rescued the film from a dumpster. Smiley had spent that particular year in the Home Theater department of Santa’s Factory, so he recognized instantly what it was. Exposure to human culture beyond toymaking was strictly forbidden by Santa, but something compelled Smiley to defy the jolly old elf’s wishes. Whether he was driven by a desire to rebel against an authoritarian regime, or by the sight of Van Damme’s smooth, tree-trunk-like quadriceps, who can say for sure?

Smiley brought the tape home, and proceeded to sneak VCR and television components from the factory, bit by bit. After a few weeks, he had what was allegedly a pretty sweet setup. There was but one thing left to do: watch the movie. And Smiley did. And as soon as it was over, he rewound it and watched it again. And again. When Smiley didn’t show up for work the following day, another elf named Kickstand was sent to check on him. Incidentally, Kickstand was so named because his father was legendary for his bicycle building abilities. It had nothing to do with the size of his genitalia. Although when I pressed the Snowman for details he revealed that in a hilarious bit of whimsy, Kickstand was in fact swinging some serious pipe. Anyway, upon knocking on Smiley’s door, Kickstand was immediately grabbed and dragged into the makeshift theater, where he too became enchanted by what he saw. When neither Smiley nor Kickstand were heard from all day, a group of concerned elves made their way to Smiley’s to try and get to the bottom of the situation. They too, were mesmerized by Van Damme and his preposterously flexible groin. 

By now, there was no more room left inside Smiley’s home, but more and more elves were showing up to see what was happening. Smiley had an idea. He and a band of allies went to the factory, and quickly rounded up the parts necessary to build a large projector and a pair of giant speakers. They worked tirelessly, and built a projector that would broadcast a picture 500 feet across and 250 feet high, along with a sound-system that would make Hollywood composer John Williams shit his dick. A team of elves dragged the contraption to the edge of town, and aimed it at the giant glacial wall that served as their border. Smiley pressed “play.”

The Asian-influenced synth beats of the opening theme rattled buildings and shook the very ground beneath them. Every elf in the North Pole was drawn to the clearing at the edge of town. They stood in awe, and absorbed the heroic journey of Frank Dux. When it ended, there was a minute or so of absolute silence. And then: rapturous applause. Just when it seemed as though it had reached a crescendo, it somehow became even louder and more primal. Somewhere within the crowd, an elf whose identity to this day remains unknown, threw a Chong Li-inspired palm strike into the nose of his nearest neighbor. The domino effect was instantaneous. Hundreds of elves paired off and threw down in no-holds-barred, hand-to-hand combat. The elves not engaged in battle chanted in full-throated unison “Kumite! Kumite!” The frenzy only lasted perhaps 15 minutes, but for the elves those few minutes contained an entire lifetime of vitality, excitement, and a not unwelcome twinge of fear. As the final battles wound down, a familiar refrain cascaded over the crowd from high above: “HO, HO, HO!”

Santa Claus landed his sleigh and gazed at the battered and bloodied elves massed before him. He demanded to know what had just taken place. Smiley stepped forward, and told Santa everything. After Smiley finished, Santa furrowed his brow and said “You’ve told me WHAT happened, but I still don’t understand WHY, Smiley?”

“Well Santa,” Smiley began, “We love making toys for all of the boys and girls, really! Making millions of children happy each and every year is the greatest job an elf could ever want! But, even the nicest and most generous elves need to take time to do something for themselves once in awhile. The greatest gift you can give a loved one is a happy you, after all.”

Santa thoughtfully considered Smiley’s words as he stroked his famously bushy beard. Finally, he spoke. “You know, you’re right, Smiley. You elves have been loyal workers for hundreds of years, and you deserve to do what you want to. From now on, ‘Bloodsport’ will be shown once a week in the brand new state-of-the-art theater I’m going to have built for you. In addition, we’re going to build an exact replica of the arena from your movie in the center of town, and once a year, you may hold your own Kumite.” The elves cheered and began to sing and dance, and the merriment lasted well into the night. The next day, the elves returned to the toy factory with a renewed sense of purpose, and true to his word, Santa saw that the facilities he promised were built. Every year since, The North Pole Elf Kumite has gone off without a hitch, and you could make the case that it’s very existence is the reason we still have Christmas as we know it.

Now that I had the backstory, I felt I could truly appreciate the event I was here for. I thanked Mr. Snowman, and told him that if he breathed a word of this encounter to anyone I’d lock his firstborn in a tanning bed. I left his laundromat, and started down the street toward the arena. Before I got there, however, I was drawn off course by the unmistakable sound of back-alley fellatio. I peered around a corner and happened upon a prospector servicing an Abominable Snowman.

This was something I needed to be a part of, and I made my presence known. They turned out to be a married couple looking to spice things up by engaging in a public sex act. I suggested that if they were REALLY looking for some spice, they’d bring me back to their place for the weekend. They thought that was a fantastic idea, and it was! I’m sad to have missed the entire Kumite, including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, but the chance to engage in a no-strings-attached sex bender involving a creature thought only to exist in myth was impossible to pass up. Evidently, the Elf Kumite was won by an elf named Clancy. So… congrats Clancy, I guess. I mean, I DID end up in a dimly lit room while someone was being pounded with babyarms. It’s pretty much the same thing. Happy Holidays, everyone!