#cannot wait to revisit that one with the commentaries

[dashawfrostart]

This... Month? In "Time & Again" #20: Die Herausforderungen des Schreibens 📚 - und mehr

Here, I thought I'm finally coming back with some truly awesome news quite shortly - but alas, it turns out it's been roughly a month. Sounds like the frequency of my overly giant posts is rigorously dropping... But I intend to let it simply flow, following its own pace, so I write whenever. I have probably already mentioned that writing doesn't always go buttery smooth for me (and I'm pretty sure I said that somewhere before; it's not just the title of this post signifies that). If the posts do not form in my head - then I simply don't write, and I don't force the process either. The spark is very, very important when creating.

But enough of digression, let's get straight to the business! First things first!!! And the news is truly fab!!!

Chapters 1, 2 and 3.1. of "Time & Again" now exist in the physical world!!! 🥳🥂

This is so cool, I cannot contain myself!!! 🤪 This is a very odd and somewhat awkward feeling, to hold your own book in your hands. Back in the day, I started working on it as an exclusively digital release - and yet, I designed it (just in case!) as a book almost right away, with the covers, inner artworks, and the proper page count that was suitable for physical printing, if need be, although without the bleed areas.

Well, turned out the "if need be" situation happened in the end. And after all, it's just very nice to have a physical copy of your own work on hand... Well, because I'm an old-school person and I love paper books. Once the entire story is done, I will definitely prepare and order a hardcover copy just for myself. And if the local (and beyond local) readers so desire, I'll print some for them, too. But that is just a potential plan for the future consideration 😁 Right now, the succulently depressing Chapter 6 is waiting for me.

Preparing it for the physical printing was a bit of a struggle - the topic I already mentioned in one of the previous posts. I have spent a month working on all of that, plus refining some little things and adding "Notes, Commentaries & Hints" section to each one of the chapters. Ordering prints, unfortunately, was also a struggle, in an odd way.

But I succeeded. And now I am very happy.

Please note that I also added a QR code that leads to the landing page with all my art links and socials for everybody to explore. That was also yet another one little thing I've worked hard on for a while last month. It even has a link to my Doomworld profile 😁 *a happy smiling and spinning cacodemon smiley should go here*

Now, I am ready for yet another one juicy announcement on today's agenda:

The script for Chapter 6 is finally done!!! Yaaaaaay!!!11!!1!1!!! 🥳🥂

Revisiting the fruits of my labour yesterday, I can say I did good. It made me happy. And that's saying something. Chapter 6 is going to be very, very wordy (thank you Lothar for thinking non-stop). 19 pages with approximately 12500 words sure will make a big impression on some readers, I'm certain... However, a large part of that whooping page number is actually commentary only. But there's still a little more reading than in any average previous chapter. Now, off it goes directly to my editor-in-chef for the proofread. Which means that incredibly soon I will finally be able to start working on the page templates for the actual release. Excited. Chapter 6 is going to be highly experimental and daring. ... and unbearably dark, too. Darker than Chapter 5.

Returning back to our aforementioned topic of the writings, as well as the ultimate torments and tortures of the process, I must share something that you might find interesting to clarify the situation - or at least entertaining to some extent. Yet again: writing does not always go smooth for me. In the previous post I have shared my fears and concerns in regard to Chapter 6 in general, particularly the writing. Well, here's the full story for a disclosure: back in the day, approximately around the time I created Lothar (and shortly Jeanny), sometime in 2015, I attempted to write a large novel about the catpeople named Freia and Fjolvarr. That story has never been finished, and the problem with it happened to be, as I ponder now, the lack of self-organization of the author. Meaning, I could write separate notes for the story in multiple notebooks, because a lot of different ideas and thoughts would swirl in my imagination, so, like fools, I would try to save them all. Which was a good tactic - and I still think it is!.. The real problem, however, emerges from the depths of creative process later on, when it's time to stitch everything together into a logical and consecutive narration. I ended up with a lot of parts that were very difficult to tie together. Usually, when I used to write my text-only stories, I went with the flow and let the logic of the characters' conversations circulate naturally - and in most cases, it yielded great result. But with the things written split in parts right from the start, finding the right chain link to link them all together into a naturally flowing conversation was... a nightmare to say the least. Perhaps I was not persistent enough, or maybe the amount of work was a little too much, for that story was supposed to be, well, at least 200 pages in total (I approximate), therefore there as a lot of unrefined material to work with. As for "Time & Again", I definitely didn't want it to die in a swamp of creation that went awry. "Time & Again" bears ENORMOUS importance to me. I could not simply let it disappear into nothingness, because that would've been easily the most disappointing thing in my life. By the time I sat down to get to finishing up and polishing the script in July, there were indeed parts of the dialogues and Lothar's delirious monologues that required connection links. I cannot really say that I dreaded working on it. But I had fear that it might end up being as unfinished as the aforementioned catpeople story. This time I was aware of the weaknesses and failings of my previous, almost 10-year-old outdated approach. So I was ready to embrace a potentially tremendous amount of works that was waiting for me.

And I did really good this time!

Have I ever told you that narratology interest me very much? Narratology classes were something I've never taken. The same with psycholinguistics and the its lesser known, more targeted subdivision called ethnopsycholinguistics. And now I feel like I have missed out on INCREDIBLY MUCH. For a language nerd such as myself, it's shameful. But nothing's impossible (am I, like, in the mood for Depeche Mode quotes today or what?..), and there are lots of books available on the above mentioned topics, so I am not sad one bit. I love sciences 🤓 And I am always up for self-education (basically almost everything I've learnt very willingly was thanks to self-education alone).

I thought I wanted to mention some other fun topic, but I no longer remember what it was. That's alright; chances are by the time I decide to return to make another post, it will shape itself a tad better anyway. So I'll save my currently improperly shaped thought for later.

See you soon! 👋 I really gotta pick up the slack and start posting more frequently 😅

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

today's unhinged mini film festival:

the last ~40 min or so of The Sting (1973), dir. George Roy Hill, that I didn't get a chance to finish rewatching last night

(The Great Adventure of) Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968), dir. Isao Takahata

The Snow Queen (1957), dir. Lev Atamanov

La règle du jeu (1939), dir. Jean Renoir

The last ~20 min or so of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), dir. Isao Takahata, a gorgeous movie that took me weeks to finish for no reason

Only Yesterday (1991), dir. Isao Takahata

boy HOWDY i am powering through my watchlist today

[americanphysco]

for me interview with the vampire where i saw two men closer than friends on the screen. This is why I loved it so much. Growing up in a very oppressive christian-conservative southern home, Interview with the vampire was a taste of escape and freedom, a look into a different world where two men could raise a child, and fight, and love,and be ..them. The grapple between humanity and monstrous nature of being a vampire really spoke to me deeply, as I fought with what I was raised to think and what I felt.

All in all, this is what I love about IWTV, and what I watch over and over for. It gives me a feeling of escape and freedom.

I guess I can understand getting attached to it at a young age but I feel as though the racism and the pedophilic elements are so deeply ingrained in the story itself that you cannot separate them from the narrative. like if you're very young and desperate I could understand (a little bit. not much) overlooking questionable elements because you're blindsided by the need for validation, but I don't see how an adult can revisit the film just as fondly. I'm not saying this to attack you or claim you're a bad person, but I cannot grasp how you can watch something this flawed and not feel gross by the themes present in the film. honestly if you're looking for a queer vampire film to take comfort in that explores tragedy and desperation id recommend the hunger 1983. it has an explicitly wlw relationship and does an excellent job making commentary on vampirism. and david bowie doesn't prey on black women.

and also the part about being faced with one's own monstrosity is interesting, but that theme falls flat for me when you remember that brad pitt plays a wealthy slaveowner. I can't sympathize with a man who has inflicted so much violence on people while alive, and I can't understand why he's suddenly against harming others now that he's a vampire. like I know he never killed his slaves, but isn't imprisoning ppl, forcing labor upon them, and using physical violence as punishment for disobedience a date worse than death? isn't that even less humane? for me at least a film like ginger snaps explores these themes so much better. the entire story is centered around a teenage girl and her struggle with embracing her inner monster and grappling with her moral compass while using lycanthropy as a vehicle to do so. it's much easier to relate to ginger as well because she doesn't end up kissing her adoptive daughter by the end of the film :/

I just don't think I can ever really get why this film resonates with people. like in theory I get how the messages the movie is trying (and failing) to portray would hit close to home, but I really don't know how you can look past the film's racist aspects. like I said before, maybe when you were younger it'd make more sense, but as an adult I feel like you could find better movies to supplement these desires.

wait id also like to add that being young doesn't justify enjoying racist movies. if you're old enough to recognize your own queerness you're old enough to be grossed out by the framing of woc within the film.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

My Personal Opinions on Some French Grand Opéras

Here we go. I’ll be focusing solely on pieces in what’s widely considered the “Golden Age” of grand opéra (from 1828 to about 1870).

1828, Auber: La muette de Portici: never seen or heard so I cannot comment, but I do think it slaps that it helped start both the Belgian Revolution and the genre of grand opéra.

1829, Rossini: Guillaume Tell: I love this one. it’s one of the few grand opéras that has a happy ending and it’s fully deserved. it’s long but it all has a point-- the first act introduces us to the community spirit that drives the rest of the action; even though it’s called Guillaume Tell, it’s not just about Guillaume Tell. it’s about a whole movement coming together, with all these vividly-drawn people of different social statuses, ages, heritages, and livelihoods coming together to do good in the world in the face of oppression. also it’s Rossini so it bops start to finish. the finale is one of opera’s best. I could not have higher praise and admiration for this piece.

1831, Meyerbeer: Robert le diable: another rare case of a grand opéra with a happy ending, but it feels a bit more contrived, something I wrote about when I watched it about a year ago for the first time. it’s quite a clever ending, however, and I love that these lovely characters get a happy ending. Robert is the least interesting principal character both musically and dramatically; the musical highlights of the show are mostly Bertram and Isabelle’s big scenes. the former is also arguably grand opéra’s most exciting ballet sequence, the Act III ballet of the nuns (or as I like to call it, the Zombie Nun Ballet). it’s long but it is incredibly worth it. overall, I really do enjoy this opera although it is very much an uneven piece.

1833, Auber: Gustave III, ou le bal masqué: here’s a thing I wrote about it like 3 months ago and I stand by every word.

1835, Halévy: La juive: It’s damn near impossible to find an even remotely close to complete recording. However, what the recordings have is excellent. The score is marvelous all the way through, although for the most part I tend to prefer the ensembles to the arias (the exception, of course, being Éléazar’s 11 o’clock number). Speaking of Éléazar, he’s an extremely complicated and frankly uncomfortable character, toeing the line between being one of opera’s most complex characters, an even more complicated proto-gender-swapped-Azucena if you will, and being an unfortunate vessel of antisemitic stereotypes. This is made even more complicated because Halévy was an assimilated Jewish composer. On the whole, Rachel is the only wholly sympathetic character in the piece, although all five of the principals are lovingly scored. 

1836, Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots: *holds things in because otherwise I would write an entire essay about this opera and you all know that because I have done that several times* Both a great strength and a great weakness of this piece is its sheer wide-ranging-ness, particularly in terms of mood. Unlike, say, La juive, this opera does not have one overall mood, instead steadily progressing from bright, brilliant comedy to one of the most horrifying endings in opera. Dramatically, this is great for the most part, although the sheer amount of exposition in the first two acts may take getting used to. Just as the drama gets more intense and concentrated as the opera goes on, the music gets more intense- and frankly, more often than not better- as the opera goes on. The window/misunderstood engagement business is something I still struggle to see the exact dramatic purpose of, because I think the question of religious difference would likely be enough to separate Raoul and Valentine at the beginning anyway; to me, it feels like Scribe and Deschamps were struggling to find a way to integrate Nevers into the story, as he is crucial to the opera’s lessons about love and tolerance, so they stuck in a quasi-love-triangle in order to justify his presence earlier on. (Also, for goodness sake, could you at least have given him an onstage death scene?) Anyway, in this way the story can be a bit unwieldy and uneven at first, but stay the course with this one...and even a lot of the first couple of acts are wonderful. The characters are all wonderfully written if rather episodic in many cases, but this opera is ambitious and by the end, it’ll tear your heart to shreds. It’s amazing. Uneven, yes, but amazing nonetheless, and I will defend it to the death.

1840, Donizetti: La favorite: I’m not as familiar with La favorite as with some of the others on this list (I’ve seen two different productions once each and I have a recording of it saved to my Spotify library that I listen to bits and pieces of very occasionally) but I do think it’s an excellent piece overall. LÉONOR DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER. The music is lovely all around; I know Donizetti wrote at least one other grand opéra in full and part of another, both of which I need to check out because in its own way, Donizetti’s style works wonderfully with grand opéra.

1841: Halévy, La reine de Chypre: here is a post I wrote about La reine de Chypre. basically all my thoughts remain the same except I have to add: Halévy as a whole just needs more love. there’s a few other of his operas I have waiting (a recording of Le dilettante d’Avignon that has been sitting in my Spotify for who knows how long and a film of Clari with Bartoli and Osborn I’m also sitting on) but there are so many pieces that sound fascinating but have basically ZILCH in terms of recordings.

1849, Meyerbeer: Le prophète: before I say anything else about this opera, I need to ask a burning question: WHY THE HELL IS THERE ONLY ONE GOOD VIDEO RECORDING OF THIS OPERA?!?! on the one hand, I adore the Osborn/Aldrich/Fomina production; on the other, I would also like other productions, please. anyway, I said one time in the opera Discord that while Les Huguenots will probably always be my favorite Meyerbeer opera for an array of reasons, this one is definitely Meyerbeer, Scribe, and Deschamps’ strongest work. it is both unusually dark and unusually believable for an opera of its time—and the fact that it still holds up so well is disturbing to say the least. this opera thrives on complexity in all forms and yet has probably (and paradoxically) the simplest plot to follow of the four Meyerbeer grand opéras. the score is brilliant start to finish, mixing the best of bel canto, Romanticism, and something altogether darker, stranger, and more original. definitely one of the most underrated operas ever. the aforementioned production is on YouTube with French subtitles; give it a watch here.

1855, Verdi: Les vêpres siciliennes: Vêpres is an opera I love dearly although I have yet to find a production that is completely satisfying. I think it’s because this opera is a lot deeper, a lot more complex, and a lot more troubling, frankly, than people are willing to go. also it should be performed bilingually and I am dead-set on this: the dissonance of an opera about French capture of Italian land being sung entirely in either French or Italian is always a little off at least (and also part of the reason why my brain probably adjusted to hearing this opera in either language better than, say, Don Carlos). but anyway, neither side comes off particularly well here, particularly due to the violence and sexual assault on both sides of the equation: both Montfort and Procida are heavily in the wrong, and while Verdi sympathizes with both for personal reasons (Verdian Dad in the former case, Italian Liberator in the latter), there is a lot of troubling stuff in here. nevertheless, the music bops, the story is intriguing, and I think we can all agree that Henri and Hélène both deserved better, especially considering how close they got to bliss (although I think we can also all agree that the end of Act IV twist to almost-rom-com is pretty abrupt).

1863 (full opera: 1890), Berlioz: Les Troyens: I wrote this review of Troyens after watching it in the Châtelet 2003 production in December 2019 (first time ever watching it) and I still stand by just about every word. Such a fascinating opera, great adaptation of the first few books of the Aeneid, marvelous score (of course, it’s Berlioz!)...but could there be a ballet or two fewer, Berlioz? Or at least shorten them up? And that’s coming from someone who likes ballet. But anyway, in every other respect it’s absolutely marvelous. Some people say it’s the greatest French opera ever, and while I hesitate to say that, it comes pretty damn near close.

1865, Meyerbeer: L’Africaine (Vasco de Gama): Vasco da Gama/L’Africaine is even more troubling—much more troubling—of an opera than Vêpres to me and I wrote a whole thing here as to why. I still stand by most of it, although upon reflection, I feel like the ending that drove me so crazy has virtually the exact same idea behind it as the end of Troyens/Book IV of the Aeneid: empire has consequences and those consequences hurt real people, who, though different and not among those perceived as “heroic”, are worthy of being treated as human, not being collateral damage. (I’ve written at least two essays about this for different classes, both specifically in regards to the Aeneid.) It may be time to revisit this one. The score is lovely, after all, although it didn’t stand out to me as much as others by Meyerbeer.

1867, Verdi: Don Carlos: *holds myself back from writing a 10-page essay* y’all, there is a reason that when someone asks me what my favorite opera is, I always choose this one even though I’m horrible at favorites questions. it’s Verdi, grand opéra, romantic drama (SO MUCH romantic drama and SO MUCH gay), political drama, religious/social struggle, personal struggle, social commentary, spectacle, intimacy, masterful characterization all in one. what more could you want? I first saw/heard this opera in Italian long before I did in French, so my brain is more hardwired to hearing the Italian but both are good. my motto is “Italian or French, I don’t care, but Fontainebleau has to be there.” fuck the four-act version. I mean, I will watch four-act versions but five-act versions are just superior. I’d prefer uncut performances (the first part of the garden, the Lacrimosa, the extended opening and ending), but these aren’t dealbreakers for me. it’s the perfect synthesis of Verdi and grand opéra, much less unwieldy than Vêpres (as much I love that one), both musically and dramatically.

1868, Thomas: Hamlet: Part of me wishes this was more faithful to the actual source play (why??? the??? fuck??? does??? Hamlet??? live??? although there are alternate endings), but part of me also realizes that the play is already four hours long as is and singing it plus ballet would make it WAY too fucking long. This does a pretty respectable job. The music is gorgeous, by turns almost sugary-sweet and thrillingly ominous. The Murder of Gonzago scene is an absolute masterpiece. The Mad Scene is justifiably one of opera’s best (although I’m not sure it was a good idea to have that and a frequently-cut 20-minute ballet with no relation whatsoever to the main plot to make up all of Act IV). There are a lot of bops in this one. The four principals are closely followed and still very well-drawn. Both of the stagings I have seen were excellent. An underrated opera.

1869 (grand opéra version), Gounod: Faust: Another of my absolute favorite operas. Since this existed for a decade before its transformation into the grand opéra we all know and love, I won’t comment much about its actual format and adherence to grand opéra tropes aside from saying the Walpurgisnacht ballet is one of grand opéra’s best and extremely good at giving off Vibes TM. I used to hate how the character of Faust was written and thought he was incredibly boring. Not anymore (although of course, I still hate him as a person. fuck him tbh). This opera has a reputation for being saccharine and old-fashioned and I think that’s a bunch of garbage right there. It’s about the search for eternal youth and the expectations of conforming to social values and people’s struggles with themselves when a) they “fall short” and b) when the world ostracizes them for being “different” and “out of line”. I am also firmly convinced that Marguerite is the real protagonist of Faust (like how I’m convinced that Valentine is the protagonist of Les Huguenots if there even is a singular protagonist in that opera but I digress). The music slaps. People need to stop cutting whole scenes out of this. I’m still undecided on the order of the church and square scenes of Act IV. Marguerite and Siébel just need everything good in this world.

Anyway, those are my two cents! I tried to keep these pretty short, so if y’all want any follow-ups, let me know!

[jadelotusflower]

Roundup: August 2021

This month: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Don’t Call it a Cult, The Secret Garden, Showbiz Kids, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Lucifer.

Reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - I’ve been meaning to read the Wide Sargasso Sea for a long, long time, but first I thought I’d revisit the source material. I find my opinion hasn’t much changed - I still love the prose, still love Jane as a character, and still find Rochester extremely unappealing. The section with Jane at school is the most engaging for me, and her early time as a governess at Thornfield, but as soon as Rochester shows up I just find him so irritating I have no idea why Jane loves him so much (other than he was the first man to ever show her a scrap of attention). I mean, I know to an extent - I've read the Takes, and part of fiction is accepting what you want for the character as a reader and what they want for themselves can be two different things, and that's not the fault of the text. I can be satisfied by the ending because Jane gets what she wants, I just can’t help but wonder about a Jane who was found by John Eyre before she went to Thornfield, or who took her inheritance and made her own way after Moor House. Byronic heroes just aren't my thing I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) - The first Mrs Rochester of Jane Eyre strikes an uneasy tone to a modern reader; she does not utter a word in the novel, is depicted as animalistic and almost demonic, her story only told in a self-serving manner by Rochester, and conveniently disposed of so Jane can return to claim him. Rhys reimagines Bertha as Antoinette, a “white Creole” of Jamaica in a postcolonial take on the racial/social prejudices and hierarchy only hinted at in Eyre, where Bertha being Creole primarily an aspect of her Otherness, and in which Rochester describes himself as being desired as a husband because he was "of good race" . In Sea, although Antoinette is white (passing, perhaps), he sees her "not English or European either" and this contributes to his rejection of her (and perhaps his willingness to believe she is mad). The novel is surprisingly short - it skips over the meeting and courtship of Antoinette and Rochester (tellingly unnamed in the novel) entirely, jumping directly from her childhood/coming of age to the couple already married, and over much of Bertha's (renamed by Rochester) sad life in the attic. Still, there's a density to the writing, much is implied beyond the sparse use of words and recurring imagery - subjugation, reflection, and of course, fire - when freed slaves (Rhys changes the timeframe to after the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1833) set fire to Antoinette's family plantation, a pet parrot whose wings have been clipped by her English step-father Mason, cannot flee and falls to a fiery doom, in a grim omen of Bertha's fate. It did, however, leave me wanting more - I understand Rhys' stylistic choices and restraint, but in her effort to give voice to the voiceless, Antoinette/Bertha remains somewhat an enigma. Don’t Call it a Cult: Keith Raniere and the women of NXIVM (Sarah Berman) - I continue to be disturbed but intrigued by the NXIVM case, not only because of my abhorrence of MLMs/pyramid schemes, but my bafflement as to how this thoroughly unremarkable man was able to hold sway over so many women. My mild criticism of the two documentaries on this subject was that they tended to jump around in time so you never really got a good idea of what happened when. This book provides a well researched, detailed summary of events and linear chronology of Raniere’s perverse pathology reaching all the way back to childhood, and so is both an excellent supplement to the already informed, and broad overview to those new to the case. Berman is a Vancouver-based journalist who was present at Raniere’s trial and gives insight into witness testimony, supported by her own interviews and extensive research. There's less of a focus on the sensationalised celebrity members, with greater emphasis on the lesser known victims - including the three Mexican sisters who were all abused by Raniere, one of whom was kept confined to a room for years. It's difficult reading, consolation being the

knowledge that Raniere is rotting in prison and that his crimes finally caught up with him. Watching The Secret Garden (dir. Marc Munden) - Spoilers, if one needs a spoiler warning for a 110 year old novel. One of those stories that is adapted every generation, and generally I have no problem with this, since new adaptations can often bring something new or be a different take on old material (see Little Women 2019). But a part of me can’t help feel why bother with this when the perfect 1993 version exists. There is an Attempt at something new with this film, moving the setting forward to 1947 (Mary’s parents having died during the Partition), and turning the garden from a small walled secret to a mystical, huge wonderland full of ferns and flowers and endless sun. But in doing so, the central metaphor is lost - rather than Mary discovering something abandoned and run wild, gently bringing it back to life with love and care, she merely discovers a magical place that requires no effort on her part. There’s also less of a character arc for Mary, remaining unpleasant far into the proceedings, forcing Colin to visit the garden instead of it being his true wish, and generally succeeding by imposing her will on everyone else. In many ways she’s more like Burnett's other child heroine Sarah Crewe - the film opens I’m with her telling stories to her doll including Ramayana, which is eerily reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's (also perfect) 1995 adaptation of A Little Princess. But I suppose a sliver of credit where it's due - Julie Walters' Mrs Medlock is less of an antagonist, with Colin Firth's Lord Craven being Mary's primary obstacle. There's also a subplot with Mary's mother's depression following the death of her sister being the reason for her neglect (and Merlin alum Rupert Young shows up briefly as Mary's father) but like shifting the time period, there just doesn't seem to be a point to it. The climax of the film involves the Manor burning down (writer Jack Thorne stealing from Rebecca too, lol), with Mary and Craven have a very calm conversation as fire and smoke surrounds them. It’s all very bizarre, but also…rather dull? Don't bother with this, just watch the 1993 film again. Showbiz Kids (dir. Alex Winter) - a really interesting documentary on the titular subject - Winter was himself a child actor on Broadway before his film career kicked off in The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted, and has been able to assemble a broad range of interview subjects - Mara Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood, Wil Wheaton, Jada Pinkett Smith among others - former child actors, those still in the business, and some up and comers like Disney star Cameron Boyce (who I was sad to see in the coda has passed away). We also follow two young hopefuls - Marc, attending acting classes and auditioning in pilot season, yet to book a job but his parents are invested in "his" dream, and Demi, already established on Broadway but having to start to make choices between a career and a childhood. There's no voiceover, no expert opinions in this, letting the actors speak for themselves, but there is a telling juxtaposition of Marc returning home, jobless but having fun in the pool with his friends, while Demi has to cancel the summer camp she had been so looking forward to because she has booked a new role. The film is fairly even handed, but ultimately I took away that there just seems to be more harm than not in this industry, and abuses of many kinds. It does make you wonder about the ethics of child acting, at least in the current system where the cautionary tales are plentiful. Masters of the Universe: Revelation (episodes 1-5) - Mild spoilers I guess? I was never really into He-Man as a kid, other than the Secret of the Sword movie, so most of the in jokes and references in this went over my head. I have to admit, it was actually seeing all the outrage that made me want to check this out and see what all the complaining was about. I actually…really enjoyed it?!? I’m sympathetic to the complaints of a bait and switch (creators really need to learn to say

“just wait and see”), but other than that in my view the rest seemed completely unfounded. Adam/He-Man being killed in the first episode and the impact that has on Eternia and those left behind is actually a really interesting premise. This isn’t a TLJ situation; in contrast everyone (except Evil-Lyn) is always going on about how much they miss Adam, and the whole point of the first arc is him coming back. There’s also a nice little detail of Adam in Preternia (heroes heaven) choosing to remain as he is rather than as He-Man where all his predecessors have chosen their “ultimate” forms. I love him and his Magical Girl transformation. As for Teela - female characters can’t win, it seems. If they are perfect, they’re Mary Sues, if they have flaws, they’re unlikeable. Teela is Going Through things and is on a journey, but I often feel (and it seems the case here) that people confuse a character arc with author intent. No! Just because a character says/does something it doesn't mean you're supposed to agree with them! Some of Teela's actions may be petty and her demeanor less than sweet, but people make bad choices as a response to grief, and I actually thought her anger over Adam never telling her his secret and how that manifested was a pretty interesting take. I'll be interested to see the next half of the season, and ignore the ragebait youtube commentary. One more thing - Evil-Lyn (perfectly voiced by Lena Headey) was an absolute delight. Lucifer (season 5 part 2): They’ve basically given up on the procedural side of things by now and are leaning heavily into the mythology, which works for me since the case of the week is always the least interesting part of any show. It also struck me this season that there’s gender parity in the main cast (Lucifer, Amenadiel, Dan and then Chloe, Maze, Ella, Linda) - and actually, that’s more women than men. How often does that happen?!? I can’t say I’m particularly engaged with the Lucifer/Chloe pairing, but am happy to go along with it since that’s where the whole plot revolves. The best scenes for me this season were with God’s Dysfunctional Family, even if the lead up to the finale felt rushed (I understand the need to wrap things up in case of cancellation but still). I would have liked to see more of the sibling dynamics between the angels and less romantic drama, but hey. The character death got me, as well. I didn't see it coming and I didn't realise how much I had enjoyed that character until they were gone and well...it got me. I see the last season is coming soon, I'm not exactly sure where they can go from here, but looking forward to it nonetheless. Writing I was actually quite sick this month with a throat infection, so wasn't in the best frame of mind to get anything finished like I had planned to. I'm going to hold off posting the word count this month and roll it over to September when hopefully I've actually posted things.

[kinnoth]

AVENGERS INFINITY WAR MEGATHREAD

-really doubt i'm gonna be able to finish this movie so we'll just see where i get to

- we already know how i feel about loki and thor, we don't need to revisit this

- ok but if i were going to revisit this, i mean come on, who wants to talk about "hela draws her power from asgard, same as you" cos i wanna talk about that

like what if that's the reason thor, god of thunder, king to a civilisation of warriors, was unable to fend off like, 4 dudes and a big purple dinosaur? the royal family of asgard draws its power from asgard, and without it, they are weak, they are mortal. maybe that's why heimdall is unable to just, you know, bifrost everybody off the fucking ship the minute it comes under attack. maybe that's why loki can't fucking conjure up a swarm of fucking microscopic knives to fillet the invaders from the inside out. MAYBE THAT'S WHY LOKI TRIES TO KILL THANOS WITH A FUCKING DAGGER. BECAUSE TAKE AWAY HIS POWER, TAKE AWAY HIS GODHOOD, WHAT DOES HE HAVE LEFT OTHER THAN HIS WILE, HIS TRICKS AND HIS BROTHER

WHAT IF IN SAVING THE UNIVERSE AND DESTROYING ASGARD, THEY'VE LOST EVERYTHING INCLUDING WHAT MAKES THEM GODS

somebody talk about this

- etc etc what if the reason loki is unable to attack the purple dinosaur with magic is because when he tackled thor earlier, he used whatever magic he had left to spare in order to heal him

checks out cos thor goes from flat on his face to swinging his fists in the space of like 30 seconds and the only thing to happen to him in between is said bit about loki tackling him

- why does heimdall save hulk? i mean, i could understand it if he were trying to aim the bifrost at thor and somebody somehow knocked off his aim and he accidentally saves hulk, but like, we've established that heimdall's loyalty is to the royal seat of asgard upon whom sits thor's mighty ass. thor who, in this scene, has just been incapacitated by a metal eggshell(?) and is at the mercy of their assailants. given heimdall's priorities, it is baffling to the point of inconceivability that he would preferentially save fucking HULK over his own king.

- if this next scene isn't the guardians of the galaxy coming across thor clutching loki's dead fucking body floating through space then i don't know why any of us are even here

- "he sent loki! the attack on new york was thanos!" makes no sense? like, if loki's scepter had the mind stone in it, which we established it did in the last movie when we broke it open to retrieve vision, then.....why didn't thanos just....take the mind stone in the first place? cos rock collecting is and has always been his goal?

what, do you think that just because you assert a thing makes us forget all the shit that happened before?

- i.....am actually with tony stark. why don't they just destroy the stones they have so that thanos can't get to them? oh, you made a promise? well promises change and circumstances change! you tell him tony! you tell that stupid fucker --

oh my god i'm gonna be ill

- i think the only person whose ego can match tony stark's is probably a neurosurgeon so 👍 i guess

-i love how we immediately went back to the "so dark can't see shit" aesthetic after ragnorak because ensuring that one's audience can SEE what is HAPPENING IN YOUR MOVIE is apparently for radical directors like taika waititi

- cannot believe that tony stark staring at captain america's phone number is being played with the same emotional intensity as thor losing his soulmate entire people

- honestly how many times is the mcu gonna invoke 9/11 imagery til someone calls them out for being terrorists

- lmao i know i said this before but peter's spidey senses tingling AFTER the giant alien anus has already started sucking up new york and it is right outside his window is fucking hilarious. that's just called using your eyeballs peter

- "friday notify first responders about the giant alien anus sucking up new york" lol like the first thing somebody did when the alien anus showed up wasn't to fucking call 911 GREAT IDEA TONY

- still can't believe that they let failed neurosurgeon dr strange do more magic than god of tricks and sorcery loki lol

- i know i rag on dr strange a lot about the fact that he's a neurosurgeon it's just that he sucks.

as a neurosurgeon eyy.

- i hate that peter parker has to be here!!!!! leave him alone!!!!!

- tony stark should not be allowed within 100 feet of children or minorities

- it is very weird to me that steve "brooklyn" rogers has an area code from georgia

- since when was hela a half-sister? ODIN'S DAUGHTER AND THOR'S BLOODED SIBLINGS OR BUST YOU FUCKING COWARDS

- i am very disappointed that thor is going to go get another weapon after we spent the whole last movie talking about how he is not the god of hammers

- i just need thor to have much more PTSD than he has right now. fucking hulk has ptsd. maybe they're saving the ptsd for later. one can only hope.

- i am glad that they are letting him be cleverer though

- THEY ARE LETTING VISION DATE A TEENAGER WHY

GOD. FUCKING GROSS.

- wait when did vision turn into a white man again? did i miss that movie?

- i am disappointed that vision the computer techno robot apparently has a penis. like what a stupid limitation to give your computer techno robot, gender. 🙄

- i think that the mass destruction of infrastructure and architecture in the MCU is because of the pg13 no blood limitation that disney has set? like there's no way to show destruction to the body, so one may only show the exponential destruction to one's surroundings. like imagine how much more dramatic intensity you could wring out of a regular fight scene would be if people were allowed to bleed?

- cannot believe that a computer techno robot and a witch are having a punch up with the bad guys. of all people to fight with something not their fists, it's these two

- wanda has no enhanced strength or durability? she's a regular teenager who's a bit witchy. the first time she got thrown through a glass door should have shattered her vertebrae. again i don't understand why we insist that everybody must have the same powers and capabilities when it's clear they don't. think about how much more interesting it would be if some avengers were more fragile than others and had to be given accommodations as such

- IT IS INCONCEIVABLE TO ME THAT FUCKING BLACK WIDOW (regular human), CAPTAIN AMERICA (enhanced human), AND FALCON (regular human with wings) CAN DEFEAT THE CHILDREN OF THANOS WHEN THOR COULDN'T UNLESS THOR (god of fucking thunder carved of steel and stone) WAS NERFED

- still don't understand how we'll lend aliens afro features but not afro hair, like, seriously? you're gonna dream up green aliens with gills who look like black people but imagining them with black hair is a step too far?

- the gap of commentary in this liveblog is simply because i do not care at all for the galaxy defenders

- "earth just lost her best defender" who? who does captain america consider earth's best defender? it's not thor; he doesn't know thor's presumed dead. it's not tony; he doesn't know tony's on an alien anus. who else has died so far?

- love how exhausted bucky looks. have always loved how exhausted bucky looks. love bucky.

- i forgot that tony was with peter parker. god i hate that.

- "i'm peter btw"

"dr strange"

"oh you're using the made up names then. i'm spider man"

ok that was cute, but peter's cute, we knew that already

- i want to fling both strange and stark into space and i'm having a hard time deciding which one to push first

- "you went to bed hungry, scraping for scraps" oohhhh thanos is just anti-poor people, he would literally rather poor people be dead than struggle, i get it nowww

this is on brand for mcu

- oh my god thanos gets 2/6 stones by torturing siblings in front of other siblings, seriously? you couldn't come up with 6 different ways to find his stupid rocks you had to reuse one twice?

- which one of thor's friends was stabbed through the heart....? fandral??

- "if i don't get my vengeance what more could i lose" more like what else is there eh? what else is there for a king of no people but their vengeance?

- CANNOT BELIEVE THEY GAVE HIM BACK AN EYEBALL JESUS CHRIST IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE THOR RAGNORAK JUST SAY SO YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO FUCKING

VEHICLE FOR AUTHORITARIANISM, NOTHING IS ALLOWED TO CHANGE, FUCK YOUR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT I GOT MINE

FUCK

- i do enjoy that thor is now science fiction rather than fantasy, i don't think anybody knew what to do with fantasy cos fantasy is again, ultimately about conservatism and the status quo. so i do like that we're embracing the new and boundless for whatever that's worth.

- marvel is a cesspool of toxic masculinity. at no point are characters allowed to actually feel anything because weakness is uncool i guess and therefore unmanful. like thor lost ALL OF HIS PEOPLE. fucking ALL of them. he watched his brother die in order to save him. he is not allowed a single fucking response of mourning. i don't care if he's pushing it back because revenge or whatever, this is the sort of grief that rules you, which will bring all your load bearing structures down to heel, and they let him do nothing; he does not even rage. perfect control. smooth witticisms. why. why aren't we allowed to see his sadness?

- yo i can't believe red skull is a scifi villain now lol space nazis for real

- OH MY GOD THEY WASHED BUCKY'S WIG AND IT LOOKS SO BAD

- michael b jordan was right btw wakanda is complicit in africa's exploitation

- i do LIKE black panther i guess in the way you technically like that cousin you met once when you were like 9 and never saw again?

i like how we have here in wakanda the sears tower (chicago), the batman building (nashville), and the gherkin (london)

- ok but like, presumably not a death cult super technologically advanced wakandans who are deffo made of human flesh and human blood still arm their people with spears

i mean unless wakanda is also a death cult

why is this chicks entire fucking face cgi'd she looks like a fucking cut scene video game character

- oh ok they have LASER spears, ok

so then why did they give bucky a fucking gun

- what is bucky supposed to be able to contribute here exactly, like fucking, again, he's spycraft isn't he? he's a one man, dead of night, operation go loud and then immediately silent kinda operation. why do they have him on the front lines of a fucking lock-step formation battle??

- "it will be the noblest ending in history" WHAT, FIRST COUNTRY TO EVER BE OVERUN BY ALIEN JACKALS??

- stormbreaker is just leviathan axe, somebody's said this already right

- omfg i'm so glad they're finally acknowledging that thor is OP as fuck and does not belong amongst the fucking squabbles of earth

-"titan was like most planets, too many mouths to feed not enough to go around, so i proposed a plan, dispassionate to rich and poor alike" JUST SAY YOU HATE POOR PEOPLE MCU. YOU CANNOT HAVE RICH AND POOR, YOU CANNOT HAVE DISPARITY, YOU CANNOT HAVE SOME WITH TOO MUCH AND OTHERS WITH NOT ENOUGH AND CALL IT EXTINCTION. THAT IS NOT A QUESTION OF OVERTAXED RESOURCES THAT IS A QUESTION OF RESOURCE FUCKING MANAGEMENT. IT IS AN ARTIFICIAL CRISIS IF THERE EXISTS ENOUGH TO GO AROUND BUT SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST HOARDING IT THAT'S WHEN YOU KILL THOSE PEOPLE AND TAKE THEIR SHARE. KILLING HALF THE PEOPLE IS THE KIND OF FUCKING SOLUTION TO INEQUALITY THAT RICH PEOPLE COME UP WITH

GOD. ITS LIKE NONE OF YOU EVER READ

-you've got the big fucking boss in an ambush AND YOU ATTACK HIM WITH A MAGIC SWORD STEVEN STRANGE?????

THIS FRANCHISE HAS NO IDEA HOW TO UTILISE MAGIC USERS FUCKING HELL

- when will somebody please utilise ironman like the one man artillery he fucking is WHY IS HE FIGHTING WITH HIS STUPID FISTS HE IS LITERALLY ONE CONTINUOUS CARPET BOMB JUST USE HIM THAT WAY

cut of his arm CUT OFF HIS ARM YOU BLOODLESS SPINELESS USELESS FUCKING CUNTS . this is a manufactured crisis, KIND OF LIKE THE ONES THANOS LIKES I GUESS LOL

- dr strange could have very easily prevented or stopped quill from punching thanos but he didn't cos i guess even the movie forgets steven strange exists sometimes

- i like that the shield around wakanda has the same weakness as a poorly constructed chicken coop -- you always build into the ground a couple feet to stop the diggers man, come on, what is this, your first energy shield?

- oh disgusting, a girl boss moment. whatever you're all fascists.

- nobody adores martial might like fascists do fucking change my mind

- " avengers: not one person in this fucking cast is able to stomach ANY AMOUNT of personal sacrifice" more like

- "why did you give away the time stone?" "we are in the endgame" THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER THAT'S A FUCKING MOVIE TEASER FUCK YOU

- why didn't strange just trap thanos in a timeloop again? we've already established that is a perfectly acceptable way to deal with planetary annihilation. IS IT POSSIBLY BECAUSE NOBODY ON THIS WRITING STAFF KNOWS HOW TO DEAL WITH MAGIC

- THOR OP BLIZZARD PLS NERF

-CAPTAIN MARVEL SERIOUSLY THAT'S WHO YOU'RE GONNA SEND YOUR LAST PAGE TO JESUS FUCKING DISGUSTING

[archivedatl]

Alex’s Myspace Blog, 2008 (two entires)

Undisclosed Rant No. Uno

So I stumbled upon some writing that I’d apparently attempted to hide from even myself, n’ I thought I might as well share it with y’all since we’re all friends here. This was written at a time when I was completely and utterly in love with the idea of a girl that I knew I could never actually have. It also may be the origin of the song "Coffee Shop Soundtrack". Juicy, ain’t it? Bon Appetit Love is not only blind, but a fool, a stumbling mess falling backwards through showroom doors into atmospheres unwelcoming of his presence. He is the unruly show-stopper, bringing the piano’s hook to an untimely end, groping in sultry salutation towards the nearest burlesque beauty, an untouchable object of obsession in the selfish eye of man, to which all occupants react with disapproving sneers and spiteful, sideways glances. They know better than to touch what they cannot have, but faced with such infatuation, he is but a child in a candy shop. Love is the fumbling mess who finds himself caught between a drop-dead-gorgeous match made in heaven, and a promise she made to her family, yet he seeks comfort in the concept of brief, brash contact, while Beauty seeks escape in the promises he makes under cover of dim moonlight and coffee-shop sound tracks; promises he would whole-heartedly keep if the situation called for such a thing... He wishes she knew. Love seeks to prevail when common sense is lost beneath the faint aroma of warm mint in the air she exhales over his smile, and he struggles to come to terms with the fact that Rationality and Reason play larger roles in her life than he ever could. Although her response is as seasonal as the green of the trees, he is content waiting for each and every Spring - the time spent alone in hiding - when they can forget the world and let butterflies multiply inside them, and let warmth spread throughout appendages to disregard a mid-winter’s bitter chill. Above all else, he will remain steadfast as trees do, through the harshest of Januarys, as time is but a matter of context, where in his wasted heart will beat for her always. Hope you like it.

Recent late night musings; part two.

Everyone knows the story of the rock-star and his punk-rock princess. Everyone knows that the rock-star finds himself a new princess in every kingdom he visits. Its common knowledge. There is no happy ending for the princess. There are just too many fair maidens out there. Band dudes are no good, I’ve learned this from experience, and I’m pretty sure your mothers would tell you the same. I’ve lived it. I’ve witnessed it. I’m beginning to grow a little bit sick of it, and yet, I completely understand why it happens. I’m going to post this piece of writing as a cryptic message to those of you who don’t quite understand why a person could bring themselves to act in such a manner, but its my hope and intention that you come to realize just why it all goes down the way it does, and why it continues to happen. We don’t mean to be as shady as we may seem, ladies, but its so damn hard to hold on to a heart back home, when there’s so much in between. Consider that you may be part of the problem. Don’t throw yourself at someone because of who you think they are... Throw yourself at someone because you know you’re both in it for the memories. Temptation is a bitch for everyone. Here’s my bitter and cynical analysis regarding the dogmas of band guys and their "relations" with girls they meet on tour. Hope you enjoy it in all of its brutal honesty. (Note: This doesn’t pertain to all people, nor instances. Its merely my commentary on an observation I’ve made over time. I’m not calling anyone out, nor am I saying that this pertains to myself. Its simply an undeniable truth that lingers, and has lingered since a minstrel first strummed a lyre. Tragic, but true. C’est la vie. However, hope arises in the individual’s ability to change, so don’t let it bum you out too much.) It isn’t that he’s using you, its that tomorrow you won’t exist, until the next time he comes full circle to a city near you, billboards flashing - posters posted, sickeningly honest, brutally blunt, but refreshing, all the same. A familiar face, Guest-list plus one, bring a friend and let the auction begin, Welcome to the lions den. Just think, if nothing were to transpire, you’ll both go on wondering what it could have been like, to hold your very own ammunition, and for a night, fire rounds at the stars, with no fear of restless retaliation. Simple redemption, Sweet, lust-less, redemption, because you’ve been through it all before, you know what to expect, so does he, there are no lines left to cross, no buttons previously left buttoned, so a simple kiss won’t hurt anybody, will it? After all, he lives to revisit familiar lips, unbridled affection, exhilaration, and you show up, Again, and again, and again, fuel to the fire, another notch on temptation’s prison wall. When it comes down to it, what I mean is this, young guys in bands will always act like young guys in bands; brash, fickle, relentless and foolish, and girls will let themselves fall for it. The good news is, everyone grows up. xoxo

[dailyaudiobible]

12/04/2020 DAB Transcript

Daniel 11:36-12:13, 1 John 4:1-21, Psalms 123:1-4, Proverbs 29:2-4

Today is the 4th day of December welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy to be here with you as we…well…prepare to round out another week. This week we've been reading from the Christian Standard Bible. That's what we’ll continue to do until the week is up, which…which is tomorrow. But we are here now, and the next step forward leads us back into the book of Daniel. Today we will read Daniel chapter 11 verse 36 through 12 verse 13.

Commentary:

Okay. So, yesterday when we were reading to the letter of first John we just formulated questions that were answered in the letter in our reading from yesterday and what began to emerge was this theme that love is non-negotiable in the kingdom of God. In fact, without love there’s no way to connect with God. Can we let that sink in for a second? Like I know sometimes we talk about these themes that get talked about often and they become cliché. And, so, we kind of tune out. We…we listen dimly. We think it's more of a reminder than something that's like a full front and center. And, so, we listen, and it just kind of passes by and it serves as a reminder, “yeah, I’m supposed to live and love. I’m supposed to love the Lord. I gotta do better. I gotta get around to that kind of thing”, when what's being talked about here is front and center, like there is no knowing God without love. And loving one another is the evidence that we know God. Can we let that sink in? Can we let that be front and center because it's absolutely paramount? So, I actually want to revisit again a portion of what we read today because the theme is relentless at this point and…and as we turn the page in today's reading it's not letting go. So, if this first letter of John we find in the Bible in the New Testament is being front and center and direct, then we should give it our full attention. And, so, I'm gonna reread some famous passages here. But can we put this front and center? Like, can we not listen dimly? Can we be present? Can this overlay our lives and then reveal to us what we must do from here? And, so, I quote. ��Dear friends let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way, God sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent His son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us, he has given us of His Spirit, and we have seen, and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world's Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God remains in Him and He in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and the one who remains in love remains in God and God remains in him. In this love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love. Instead perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So, the one who fears is not complete in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And we have this command from Him, the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

Prayer:

Father, there’s nothing else I can say. You have said it clearly in Your word that's…it's clear…it's…it's not ambiguous. It's right front and center that this is the bed rock, that without this, without love, without love into the world for our brothers and sisters, without love that is active without actively loving people that we don’t love, without loving people that we don't agree with, without actively bringing Your love into this world we are wasting our time. And, so, come Holy Spirit, reawaken us here in these last weeks of this year to why we are here and what we are to do because our culture does everything possible to make us self-absorbed and self-focused, not because we need to be lifted up because that's the way to get our money. And we have been deceived. We are here to actively love the world and to bring light into the darkness. And this happens by our very lives, not by our very words this happens by the way we live our lives. It doesn't really even take a lot of words. It goes to the transformation happening within us. When this transformation reaches the tipping point, and there's no going back and we have been transformed and we are no longer who we were then we begin to see things as You see things, and how You hurt for the world is how we hurt for the world and the compassion and the long-suffering that You have for the people of the earth we have that long-suffering compassion, even for those that we absolutely do not see eye to eye with. Love covers a multitude of sins You say in Your word. Love is such a central thing and we just coast by it. We just live into it dimly because it's ubiquitous. We all know this is how it's supposed to go but it's time to become who we are supposed to be instead of struggling, struggling, struggling for the next decade trying to figure it out. It begins here. Love, love, love. Actively love as God has loved us. So, come Holy Spirit, this is not even remotely possible in our own strength. We can organize it and work it out for a half a day. We may be able to bite our tongue for even a week, but to be transformed until the default posture is first love instead of some sort of defensive position that we first, that we lead with love, we can’t do this without Your Holy Spirit. And it's not like You've been withholding. And, so, we have not been paying attention, and that we have been living dimly into this. Now we are awake. Holy Spirit come, show us how to love. May we actively love through the rest of this season and into the new year we pray. In the name of Jesus, we pray this. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the website. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here, it's the home of the Global Campfire.

It’s where the Prayer Wall is. It’s where the links in the Community section to different places to interact on social media lives. This is how you get connected.

But also, the Daily Audio…the Daily Audio Bible Shop is there. And, yeah, this is Shop time isn’t it, we’re finding the unique gifts for those that we love and figuring it all out and the Daily Audio Bible Shop is a resource to check out. There are some things there, especially for the journey that we’ve been on all year. So, there are written resources there, there are musical resources, there are video resources there, there are of wearables, apparel, there. All the different writing utensils that we have in the Daily Audio Bible Shop because we’re strong into journaling because the Bible continually invites us to remember, to remember things, to write things down or to pile rocks up as a memorial, to have memorials in our lives of things that happened that were like game changers, when the story changed. And, so, a modern version of that would be to Journal, to build a remember what that was like, what that felt like, what was going on. So, all of those resources are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, I thank you all my heart with a humble, humble gratitude. We wouldn't be here. We would not exist. We wouldn't…there would be no Global Campfire if we weren't all in this together. And, so, thank you profoundly for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline…you can hit the Hotline button…I can’t talk…all of the sudden…you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi everyone, this is Harold from St. Louis. I’m just calling in for a prayer request for my son Jonathan who is in Houston. He was taken to the hospital last night. He’s a type I diabetic. Basically, his sugar was over 300. He’s got a bit of an infection in his foot. They’re doing an MRI of his foot now, but they’ve already told him it looks like they might have to amputate his foot off. Just praying for him for strength and for healthiness and for courage and I just thank you everybody who will take the time out to pray for him.

Hey DAB family its Sky and Rebecca team Skybecca from Michigan with a funky black van named rhino. We just wanted to celebrate with you today that we’ve made it by the grace and strength of God to our seventh-year anniversary today. Yay. All praise and glory to God for all He’s doing in our marriage. We want to say a prayer of gratitude and blessing for all those who are faithful to their spouses and to God’s refining fire through their marriage. We would love prayers as we are leaving December 9th in our self-contained van and putting our few belongings in storage once again after losing everything in a large storage fire a couple years ago moving to Michigan to care for my dad. We are reminded again it’s good to lighten the load as we are only tent dwellers on this earth. So, Lord I pray protection over our belongings and for our family that we are leaving behind. I also pray for protection for us from COVID as we travel and safety over our van. And I would also like to pray continued healing for my older sister’s family, my aunt, Sue and Uncle Tim and my friends Sherry and Scott who are still recovering from COVID. And then also Lord we’d love prayers for all that we are to meet and share stories with and pray for along the way. And then last but not least love to have prayer for a new friend named Nina and her young family, her husband Johnny and the three little ones. Johnny’s recovering from a brain aneurysm and he needs surgery for another one. And, so, my prayer is that the Holy Spirit and Jesus would heal that aneurysm and it would disappear in the name of Jesus altogether.

Hey this is Micah in Awe in Kansas City. I just wanted to give a shout out to Sally or Stelly, I couldn’t hear your name that clear. They played your message on November 30th and you said you’re new to the DAB family. I just wanted to welcome you. I’ve been…I’ve only been here about a year and ½ but I love it here and I love my DAB family. All you other new listeners whether you called in or not, welcome and it’s great to have you and I know a lot of you are praying without calling in. It’s awesome to know that there’s praying happening…happening every day all the time.

Hello everybody it’s God’s Smile here. I’ve got some wonderful news for you. So, Maria had another attack, my helper. She had another horrible demonic experience and she turned to me and I was able to encourage her in the Lord and said I was praying and…and gave her a verse, a life verse for her to speak. And I just…just thank God for all that He’s doing in this young girl’s life. And I gave her the Bible and I showed her around it and I wrote her a card and so she…she read that and I gave her…I wrote down a lot of verses so that she can look up salvation. Not all of them of course because it’s…it’s a treat to find them yourself isn’t it? And when she went home, she’d only been home half an hour and she sent me a WhatsApp picture of the Bible verses she’s been reading. So, you know…she’s not fully got Jesus in her…insider her yet. I have challenged her. I said, do ask him into your life Maria. What have you got to lose? We’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain, haven’t we? So, I don’t think it’s going to be long. I really don’t. I’m so thankful for…just being able to share Jesus. It is the reason I live you know. It is the reason I live, to give his love and to reach those who are lost. So, please hold her and please thank Jesus for her life. Please cover her in prayer while we are dealing with this but I said to her…I said to her just quickly, when Jesus isn’t inside of you Maria the evil will say it and they will have __ . Anyway, times ticking away again. I’m so happy. Kiss kiss everybody.

Hello DAB, I just wanted to say hi to I think your name was Jaelyn, the lovely young person who sang that beautiful song to us and it aired on December 1st. I just want to thank you because that…that really gave me hope, you know, that we worry so much about the future but if the future includes kids like you who sing their prayers over a family of believers there’s hope. So, thank you. And I love you family. Bye.

[duhragonball]

Potpourri

I’ve been thinking about various storytelling things, not really Dragon Ball related, but I figured I could write them all down here and make something out of it.    Yeah, like an old school Livejournal post, except I can’t write a sassy message in the read-more cut.

Okay, first, I’ve been watching a lot of AEW Dark episodes on YouTube, because AEW puts out a new one every Tuesday and it’s easy to fall behind on them.   So it’s like reliving wrestling angles that I watched on AEW Dynamite back in June and July.    One of these angles was a world title match between champion Jon Moxley, and “The Machine” Brian Cage, who debuted by winning a ladder match in dramatic fashion, along with his new manager, Taz.

Taz does a lot of the color commentary for these episodes of Dark, and Cage debuted around the release of Episode 35, so after that, Taz started using his announcing job to promote the upcoming title match and gloat about how his guy Cage was going to destroy Jon Moxley and win the title.   Taz’s main argument was that Cage is absolutely jacked, which made him a success before, but now he’s got Taz coaching him in all the cool stuff Taz used to do in ECW: suplexes, submission holds, etc.    Taz sells you Brian Cage’s world title victory like a lawyer presenting a case to a jury.   At the center of Taz’s argument was his claim that Cage was simply too big, too strong, and too prepared for Jon Moxley’s finishing move, the Paradigm Shift.    Taz predicted that Mox wouldn’t be able to apply the Paradigm Shift properly, and even if he could hit it, it wouldn’t be enough to stop Cage. 

The plot twist came from real life, when Moxley had to stay home because his wife contracted COVID-19.   There was a lot of speculation that he might get sick, and even if he didn’t, that he wouldn’t be able to appear for the title match.   Fortunately, it didn’t come to that, and the match was simply postponed an extra week.    During that time, Taz accused Moxley of ducking Brian Cage, which I wasn’t crazy about, since I didn’t like coronavirus being used in a wrestling angle.   On the other hand, it did give Taz a couple of weeks to run down the champion unopposed.   At one point he reintroduced his old FTW title belt and gave it to Cage because the world title match had been postponed.    Good stuff.  

So finally, Moxley comes back, and he did one promo before the title match, and this was his chance to respond to all the shittalking Taz had been doing.   It was brilliant, because for weeks, Taz had been declaring victory, and he shut it all down in one quick segment.    He brought up Taz’s claim that the Paradigm Shift wouldn’t work on Cage, and Moxley just said “well maybe I won’t try to use my finisher on him.   No, instead, I’m going to target his left bicep, which was surgically repaired last year, putting Cage out of action for several months.”

And just like that, the tone of the show changed, where suddenly it looked like Cage might be in trouble, because his camp only seemed to have a perfect game plan, and here was the champion announcing his own counter-strategy in advance.   “You talked shit about my wife being sick, so I will reinjure your arm.” 

And it was awesome.    At one point Moxley went for a pin, and Cage kicked out, only for Moxley to reverse the pin into a submission move on the arm.    There were points where it seemed like he couldn’t decide which arm to target, and eventually I realized he was going after both of them, switching from one to the other as needed.   It’s smart, because if you go after the good arm, he’s gotta use the vulnerable one to fight you off, and by doing that Cage basically handed it to Mox for his next hold.  

Finally, Moxley had Cage trapped in an arm hold, and the whole time he was looking Taz in the eye, basically waiting for a submission or a ref stoppage, and Taz had no choice but to throw in the towel to save Brian Cage’s career.    It was a beautiful finish because it sewed up the whole story.   Cage never tapped out, so he still looks like a relentless badass, but Taz had to let discretion be the better part of valor.   He mocked Moxley for playing it safe when his wife got sick, so Moxley forced Taz to make the same choice.    Great stuff.   

Second.   I’ve been reading Darth Vader comics since Marvel started publishing new Star Wars stuff again.    Disney bought Marvel and Star Wars, so it was only a matter of time before the comics began to reflect this.   The smart thing they did was to give Vader his own title, which I like because I’m not that into the adventures of Luke and Han.   

The first Vader series was twenty-odd issues featuring his fall from grace after the Death Star’s destruction, and his rise to command of the Imperial Fleet.     Basically it charts Vader’s career between Episodes IV and V, though there’s plenty of room for other side-stories.   

The second series flashed back to the final scenes of Revenge of the Sith, and tracks Vader’s actions before A New Hope.   It doesn’t cover the entire period, but it hits a lot of the important notes.   How he got his red lightsaber, how he trained the Inquisitors and hunted down the surviving Jedi, and how he built the castle on Mustafar seen in Rogue One.   So it handles everything important Vader was known to have done between Episodes III and IV. 

The third series, currently ongoing, starts right after Vader’s final scene in Empire Strikes Back, and I would assume it’s going to lead him right up to his arrival at Death Star II in Return of the Jedi.   I’m really into this, because I feel like this is an especially overlooked stage of Vader’s career.    Starting out, it seems to be mostly about Vader investigating how his son survived Padme’s death, as he seeks revenge against anyone who hid the boy from him.    Of course, nearly everyone involved in that cover-up is already dead, so I’m not sure where this is going to lead.   

All three volumes of the Vader title focus on the utter futility of Vader’s quests for power and revenge.    His hunts for Jedi survivors was just something for him to do in his spare time, since the Jedi were no longer a threat to him.    His castle on Mustafar was designed to give him special knowledge of the Force, but it only revealed truths that he already knew, or had long since rejected.    His plot to regain the Emperor’s favor after Yavin was very satisfying to watch, but also pointless: The Emperor needed him too badly to dispose of him, and Vader’s still a patsy whether he’s the #2 guy in the Empire or the #5 guy in the Empire.    And now this new series sees him chasing ghosts, trying to make sense of Luke’s refusal to join him.     He wants some sort of answer to his dilemma, but the only answer he’s ever going to find is the one in ROTJ, where he sacrifices himself to kill the Emperor, the one thing he cannot bring himself to contemplate until the time comes.

What saddens me, a little, is the realization that there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for Marvel to go with the guy.   We’ve got an arc of Vader between Episodes III and IV, an arc between IV and V, and now V and VI, and that’s it.    The only way to do another Darth Vader series after this would be to go back and cover one of those three periods of his career.   And I’d be up for that, but the three series Marvel has done seem a little too decisive for this.  Like they purposely planned these comics because they weren’t going to revisit the character again for a while.   At least, not as the star of his own feature.   

I guess I could deal with that.    Maybe Marvel could finally get around to exploring the Sith career of Count Dooku between Episodes I and II, or work out some loose ends with the Emperor between Episodes VI and IX.    The main thing that’s been on my mind about Vader, though, is this idea that the character could just be done, and laid aside.  

This is something I’ve often observed about Cell and Frieza in DBZ.   I still think it’s dumb how they brought back Frieza after Trunks killed him, because there really wasn’t anything left to do with the character after he got turned into a cyborg and instakilled.   There’s nowhere to go after that.    His character arc was to start as the Final Boss of the entire Universe and then to get reduced to a pathetic, minor threat.    You can bring him back, but your only choice, dramatically speaking, is to reset the character, which means putting him back on the same track he’s already covered.     There’s no way to bring back Frieza and not have it be a retread of stuff he’s already done once before.

Cell might have some interesting applications beyond his original story, but he’s too much of a slave to his purpose.    His job was to carry on Dr. Gero’s revenge scheme, and that all ended when the saga ended, so he just seems out of place whenever he appears after that.   This is why I’m glad Toei and Toriyama haven’t brought Cell back, although at this rate it feels like it’s only a matter of time.   The thing is, if they brought him back, what else could they do with him?

With Darth Vader, all of his most important moments have already been covered in the movies, so all that’s left is to produce some side-story content.    The old Expanded Universe tended to steer clear of Darth Vader, probably out of respect for George Lucas’ prequel plans.    Later, the Clone Wars projects gave us more Anakin Skywalker than anyone knew what to do with, which is basically Darth Vader content, but not quite.   That’s why I dig these Marvel books so much, because there’s never been such a sustained effort to tell a Darth Vader story like this.   But once it’s run its course, the only way to keep using the character would basically be to start over.     I have a hard time seeing Marvel do that.  They’d have to get a new writer to retell those years like the first set of comics didn’t happen.    That could be very entertaining, but it doesn’t sound likely to happen.  

I’m not terribly worried about getting my Darth Vader fix in the future.   They’ll keep making stories about him long after I’m dead.   It’s just that I’ve been thinking about the limits of what you can do with one character.    I’ve long thought that you can always find gaps in the narrative that can be filled in with new stories, but maybe that isn’t true.    Maybe at some point, for some characters, there’s a finite amount of things to do with them.    You look at all of the Anakin Skywalker Clone Wars stories, and I’m sure someone could write a few hundred more, but would it really accomplish anything that hasn’t already been covered?   Is it possible to “use up” a character?   I probably won’t know for sure anytime soon.  

[jayne-hecate-writer]

The Secret Commonwealth: A review of sorts-ish...

So on a cold fresh autumnal morn, I closed the cover of my book, sat back and almost wept. I have waited for this book for so long, I had had it on pre-order from the despicable Amazon (notorious for tax avoidance, low pay and bad working conditions) for so very long and yet, I cannot contain my disappointment.

This is a cold brutal book, filled with anger and sadness, as much a critique of our society as it is a fairy story. My friends, I present to you The Secret Commonwealth, the second in The Book of Dust trilogy and if you have not yet finished the book, be aware that I am about to discuss some events that could be classified as spoilers.

La Belle Savage was at times a dark book, revisiting the lives of Lyra's parents and explaining how she came to reside with in the walls of Jordan College, safely out of the hands of the Magisterium. It also contained a story of heroism as the young Malcolm Polstead struggles to maintain the safety of the infant Lyra during a catastrophic flood. Although it felt detached from the other stories given that it was in effect a prequel, it was complete and did not leave us with a bitter cliff hanger. Alas, I cannot say the same for the sequel, which is set several years after the events of both The Amber Spyglass and Lyra's Oxford.

The book opens with Lyra and Pantalaiman not speaking, during the episodes when they do speak, they communicate though angry argumentative exchanges and mutual misunderstanding. Pan resents Lyra's depression as she discovers the theories and philosophy of Nihilism, a system of thought that denies the existence of the Dǣmon and even of pleasure itself. Her adherence to the subject matter is fairly typical of every pretentious philosophy reading young adult and borders on the self denying extremes of Emo subculture, without stepping into the grotesque regions of cutting and self harm. There is throughout the book a feeling of abandonment and depression in the main character and it is linked directly to this bleak denial of light and goodness as she struggles to come to terms with her own feelings and knowledge, despite her having had first hand physical experience of the spiritual realm. This is an important part of her self denial that has led to the schism between Pan and herself, as she denies the existence of part of herself.

There is also a feeling of animosity towards the modern day society of Brytain which is clearly very similar in many ways to our own modern Britain, with self serving political posturing and power grabbing being clear goals for some of the characters. Gone is the clear evil and avarice of Mrs Coulter, replaced by the cold brutal spite and vengeance of her brother, Marcel Delamare. The main antagonists of this book are both motivated by revenge and power with the protagonists being somehow dirtied by modern life. The previously heroic Malcolm borders painfully close to the paedophilic with his obsession with a young woman who does not yet have adult status, being ten years his junior and whom he has nurtured since she was a child. In fact throughout the novel, there are many characters who it is implied may have flawed sexual relationships, starting with the loveless flirtations of Lyra herself and moving onto the strangely asexual Marcel, possibly even the Saint Simeon as he craves the touch of his boy, the shamed Princess who delved into lesbianism to satisfy the lusts of her own Dǣmon and finally the revolting actions of a group of rapist Turkish soldiers. Speaking of which, the sexual assault of Lyra is both heart breaking and brutal, it is described as a near rape, but it goes into enough detail to sicken the reader and if I am honest pulls too readily on the cliché of powerful men destroying the spirit of the young woman until she is rescued by another powerful man who berates her for daring to go out in public. This is in some ways  the commentary of a middle class academic man, who has tried to imagine what it is to be a marginalised woman and it does show. However, if you wanted to be less critical, you could see this as a brutal statement on the suffering of women not just in the middle east, but the world over as we struggle against sexism, religious persecution and the removal of our bodily self determination.

With the first trilogy, His Dark Materials, there was an innocence to the story telling, even during the vicious battles and violent murders committed by some of the most beloved characters. With this book, there is a bleak world weariness in the subtext, it is every miserable moment distilled and condensed from the twenty four hour news networks, from global war to Brexit and with the reading it does towards the end of the book grow tiring, if not actually despairing. After closing the dust cover, I am left wondering how Pullman can raise the tone of the next book and I wonder if it is even possible for him to give Lyra the sort of ending she deserves, given that she has silently saved mankind across the myriad of realities. Seeing her fall in love with Malcolm would feel somehow lazy, when given her status as the biblical Eve to Will's Adam and their eternal love.

I think that it has also been forgotten that Lyra and Will killed the self aggrandising deity known as the Authority during the last battle in The Amber Spyglass, she knows for a fact that the fortress of heaven is ruled by tyrants, having battled them both directly and indirectly. She is also aware of the presence of the soul having witnessed it first hand escaping from the land of the dead to the plains of land of the Mulefa. Making her a nihilist in everything but name seems somehow incongruous, but maybe this is a comment on the nature of where the world stands at the moment. After all, did not Star Wars do something very similar with the failure and then redemption of Luke Skywalker in the Last Jedi?

As I grew closer to the end of this novel, I knew that it would not and could not end happily. Pullman does not even give us the moment of reconciliation between Lyra and Pan, instead we are left with a cliff hanger and an obtuse poem and worst of all, the knowledge that it is going to be many more months if not years before we get the answers to our questions. Given that his book is nearly seven hundred pages long, there is a great deal in here that is drudgery, misery and depression; which frankly I found heart breaking. Lyra has been soiled by the things that she has done and which have been done to her. I only hope that for the next book she retains her autonomy, does not fall into the predatory arms of Malcolm and finds the reconciliation with Pan, because otherwise this trilogy is going to be bleak and will see the destruction of one of the most beloved characters created in the twentieth century. I also think that Pullman has sank a great deal of his own personal despair with modern society into this instalment, carefully skirting the more usual tired tropes and cliché.

Is the Secret Commonwealth a good book? I cannot answer this question because it has left me feeling unsettled and hurt. What I can say is that as the original readers of the first trilogy have aged, the tone of the second trilogy has aged with us. Where I would have no qualms about letting my ten year old niece read The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife or The Amber Spyglass,  I would have some reservations about allowing this book to fall into her hands until she was significantly older. The tone of this book is just too dark at times and in some cases just too brutal. Do not forget that it is actually two of our beloved characters, both young women, who have been raped in this second trilogy and on each occasion they have been over powered and violated, while their struggle has been shown to be useless, there was nothing that they could do to prevent it. Yes, misogyny like this does exist, but do I want to encourage my niece to read such things or do I want to protect her from just how awful society can be?

I suppose that I shall just have to wait for two long damnable years to find out what is going to happen next to our dear Lyra, but while we wait we do have the new BBC show to look forwards to. There were moments while reading this book that I looked up from the page to discover my partner was watching the television and there before me was the young woman who had portrayed Lyra in the film of the Golden Compass. Her depiction of Lyra and all of her depth was remarkable for a child who had never acted before and it is uplifting to know that she was able to put the film behind her and continue with her career. I am bitter about that film because it feels like it was scuttled by the studio and the blame was placed at the feet of the religious bigots who had probably never ready the books. The shame of it was that much of the anti-catholic rhetoric had been removed and still the religiously indoctrinated were not satisfied until they had ruined it and stripped it of meaning and value. If anything, that just makes the making of this series even more important. I very much doubt though that should this series be a success, The Secret Commonwealth will also be filmed for this age group.

[fortheheavenssake]

💜💜PG MM ANON💜💜 Interpretation Collection- 5

Anon said:

You go PG!!! 😊😊😊🌸🌸🌹🐼🐼🐝🐝👍👍👍💖💖💖🌻🌻🌼🌼🌼😊😊😍😍💜💜🌹🌹🌹🌺🌺🌺💙💙💙🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌹🌹🌹❤❤❤👍👍👍👍 Violets 🌼

Anon said:

💗🌲🌞😺 hi Skippy this is for PG and JG🏡🌲🥰🥰🧚‍♀️👑👑🐱🐰🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🐥🌺🌹🌼🌸💐🐿

******

36.

💜💜nothing went through but MM ANON’s riddle🥃💜

MM ANON … smokescreen’ it’s a bloody forest fire …… feed the mushrooms ……… interview ‘off the record … financial litigation …… not your average SNAP-shot?…… “ hiding in full sight”……… a complicated appearance ……🎼it’s a little bit funny🎼………Balmoral revisited part two……” dark or white meat”…… 👁🤝☎️🏰🔐…… a sordid publication!!!!…… but’but,look on the bright side.

Smokescreen’,it’s a bloody forest fire…

‘Fake photos’ of PH, mm amw, the child in huge, doesn’t move, dressed in clothing as if it’s January. The two alleged Sussexes, wore hats/caps, heads down, no way to ascertain for sure the identities. Flying via private jet, EJ pipes in that he footed the carbon footprint 🤨🧐mmmmm’kay 🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥. All look here look here, don’t pay any kind to PA and the forest fire raging, lies, obfuscations, major monarchy shaking issues happening, but watch the private jet issues. Puh -leeze? This is just a major amount of ordinance thrown into the fire and explosions rumbling worldwide. I have said this three times, but it bears repeating, watch the stock market, JE played in a league beyond what any of us could imagine, the real $$$$£££££€€€ of the world. Have your portfolios in order.

Feed the mushrooms….

Mushrooms grow best in dark, dirty soil, fertilized ie manure conditions l so there is more filth coming, and it will continue …..this is not a one big news break and it’d done, no no no.These investigations have been ongoing for years…think back to LLM, 1955!!! The F.B.I. started in earnest gathering any and all intel on his behaviours!

Interview off the record

Is this PA and the BRF demand? As thus far it’s an American issue, he has not cooperated , this is madness, absolute insanity.

Financial litigation

Lawsuits being threatened or actually filed against PA/BRF for financial compensation to the underage victims he allegedly had sex with.

Not your average SNAP-shot

Who sent sex photos via the web? Or via mobile? Who has underage naked photos???

“Hiding in full sight”

PA? Galavanting around Europe on private jet unheeded and seemingly unbothered l except “appalled “ at JE behaviour. What we have in a man who has been untouchable, pardon that horrible pun. Untouchable when the palace denied any allegations years ago and he still living large , doing his thing , with a smug smile on his face ten days or so ago, when he attended Craithie Chapel with HMTQ. Makes me so angry!

A complicated appearance

HMTQ will have a few outings chapel, facing the public. I still feel haunted by those two photos of her last Sunday in the car in the rain going to Chapel.😢.

🎼 its a little bit funny 🎼

Your song by EJ. LOVE that song but he pipes in regarding the private jet/paying carbon emissions BS. Why is he piping in now?? The whole world is going crazy, even ED from L.A. Is piping in her opinion.

Balmoral revisited, volume two

Oh MM ANON, giving me fond memories of Brideshead Revidited😊. PA taking another trip to see HMTQ? I soooo badly want to say mummy, but l cannot.

“dark or white meat”

OMG! I think l know what this means but l cannot type what l think. Victims of human trafficking and sex rings and those whose utilize them, those individuals have certain things they favour in a victim. I just cannot say more!

👁 🤝 ☎️ 🏰 🔐

Things have been seen, intel, maybe even satellite data as MM ANON had a mentioned a satellite dish in a very recent riddle. Calls have been made and received. When l see a red phone, l think of a secured phone, with technology to prevent any possible ‘listening in ‘. The palace ie The Firm LG and HMTQ have sealed the deal, l see this regarding mm. PA is a whole other kettle of 🐠. Sorry MM ANON, I just HAD to use an emoji, in your emoji clue😊.

A sordid publication!!!!!

Ok folks, get comfortable, get popcorn 🍿 and 🥃 and watch the show. Photos, videos, the whole lot is going to be published. I hope PM flying es back from Nice not in coach but private jet because HE WILL be one of the tellers of this! I CAMNOT WAIT!!!

but, but look on the bright side..

Reassurance that hey we finally getting mm dealt with, distract from the looming tsunami with PA.

Thank you so much PG…looks great!😊💜💜💜💜

69 notes

Aug 20th, 2019

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37.

💜💜PG INTERPRETATION 💜💜

Thank you MM ANON💜🙏🏻😊👋

Sorry it’s so late l have had a houseful of family today. This one took me longer, my hands are so numb today. So, please forgive any spelling or grammar errors GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

MM Anon

MM ANON … buy one,get one free …… baffle them with itinerary …… Lack of FIB-RE…… Bury this one Charles …… “And by opposing end them”……… The devil is in the (denial) detail……Sierra’Charlie’Alpha’Mike……… 👎🦷🤫🏁🗯🔓……… something borrowed,something BLUE…… “throw another million on fire, darling”…… “when the wind BLOWS”………… Sorry’ I don’t see a reservation!!

Buy one get one free

This lovely PR, the faux-manitarian behaving like a teen shopping for her grad dress! This whole Smart Works is such a $$$€€€€££££ grab.

I seriously cannot believe respectable companies are involved, but than again M&S are on their last leg and pinning hopes on this working. As far as presenting herself professionally, one would not ever show up for a job, a DECENT job dressed thus and acting like that and have any hopes of attaining the position. At least not in my world or any professional l know.

But l digressed sorry just had to add that.

Baffle them with itinerary

This is hilarious because nobody here was baffled. People were clever enough to search out the planes call signs . We are not teenage ‘squad’ members. The fun addition of commentary from EJ, ED and P**K, l refuse to spell her name!

Lack of FIB-RE

FIB in the UK is the Fraud Intelligence bureau. Well our girls loves to merch, and there have been a lot of financial questions. Is this agency investigating?? I find this interesting. I also this, as a healthy body needs fibre to cleanse the body of waste and helps ease its removal, very likely that the work this agency and other are assisting is removing waste from the Royal system. Just a thought.

Bury this one Charles

Buried secrets. Things PC has kept secret, and they need to stay buried. I strongly alluded to one the other riddle regarding LLM, but is PC compelled to keep schtum about PA.

“ and by opposing end them”

MM ANON SHAKESPEARE…Hamlet….to be or not to be, that is the question, whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. Hamlet soliloquy, on suicide or action, what to do…..one of many soliloquy’s we had to memorize in school. Mans action or inactions. JE chose suicide, others like PH , PA have not. There are two ways to deal, this is a quagmire.

The devil is in the denial(detail)

The saying is the devil is in the details, meaning if you forget the small things, the entire project, plan etc, may collapse I see this as the strong denial put foreword years ago regarding the allegations against PA, it’s the cover-up of the sin.

Sierra ‘Charlie’Alpha’Mike

Acronym obviously SCAM, however deeper Charlie?Charles Alpha?the Alpha son who would be King. Was he aware of the PA behaviour, allegations denied years ago? If he was a party to the cover-up that will be a knell to his being King. This was referenced in recent riddle regarding regency.

👎🦷🤫🏁🗯🔓

Offer not accepted, someone is gritting their teeth over this but must keep this quiet. The race is over, shouting of excitement or anger depending which one is party of and the locks are open, for now. So for now PA remains free, at some point, unless things go completely pear shaped and The Firm hides him, he will be compelled to answer questions.

Something borrowed, something BLUE…

Old wedding saying, you all know it… Smart Works regency to the program of providing clothes for women seeking employment our faux-manitarian is playing at. BLUE please PLEASE FINALLY! Let the video, filthy photos of yachting days and all the garbage be made public. PLEASE!🙏🏻

Throw another million on the fire darling

More more and STILL MORE PR! SICKENING!

When the winds BLOWS….

The cradle will fall….little rubber doll will fall but whoa miracle child unhurt! Please let this ongoing lie be made know please! BLOWS, well, we know whose the expert!

Sorry, l don’t see a reservation!

She is done! Backs turned…….over! PLEASE!

Wonderful job! Thank you so much PG! So happy you had a great family filled day!😊❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

55 notes

Aug 21st, 2019

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38.

💜💜PG INTERPRETATION 💜 💜

💜💜Hi everybody, l am so sorry l couldn’t do the riddle yesterday 😞. I have been working on today’s. I don’t know how good it is, l have been so poorly glad my sister is here. I have read heard any news except what was said about our little George💜💜

Thank you so much MM ANON

MM ANON … Highs and LOWS……… FAMILY concerns …LOOSE cannon…… Morgan/sorry Megan “ a suitable case for treatment”. …… “this is not a rehearsal!!”…… Carra-BEING…… detected, rejected, Sub-jected…… 🏌️‍♂️👁🤫👯‍♀️🌪…… at last we can relax ‘ for a few weeks …… another holiday ( fetch the jet)…… THICK SKIN-ned …EX-COMMUNE-negated.

Thank you MM ANON

Highs and LOWS

Her behaviour has been repeatedly witnessed high, low, bizarre, etc

FAMILY concerns

The entire BRF is FAMILY , mm is not. There are numerous serious issues at play here, PA, PH, what’s to be done, what truths are to be told and what’s best just left as it is. GOT “nothing buried stays buried “ The entire family now is at Balmoral, l am not 100% certain where PH is.

LOOSE cannon…

Several layers of secrets as the are exposed the public’s reaction will be very unpredictable, many are onto her fake ness and are already now aware of PA friendships with various nefarious individuals. I say several loose cannons.

Morgan/sorry Megan “a suitable case for treatment.

Notice Megan is spelled without the H that mm uses. Morgan a suitable case for treatment is a 1966 film.

DescriptionVolatile artist returns to London after having been institutionalized, hoping to reconcile with his wife. When he learns she is leaving him for art dealer he is determined to win her back. While stalking her, he becomes obsessed with Marxism and gorillas. In his new monkey costume, the artist begins a campaign of harassment against her and her lover.

Hmmm stalking, obsession, years of pre-planning, substance use/abuse. Sounding like institutional treatment for long time, versus prison at this time.

This is not a rehearsal

Reminds me a few days ago there was question regarding London bridge falling down code, rumours rampant someone had passed. So what we are going to see now is the real deal, no more f***ing kabuki. Sorry language, you have no idea how FURIOUS l am at that tv lady, l can’t use the word journalist.

Carry-BEING

As the Duke of Windsor was exiled to the Bahamas, PA may well be given such a post. Or PH to Africa, or both!

Detected, rejected, subjected

We have had this before. Substance detected, application for citizenship rejected, she will be subjected to face her legal consequences , will be subjected to medical care, treatment, rehab, than legal issues. ? In UK or US?

🏌️ 👁🤫👯 🌪

Golfing relaxing, someone saw something that was to be very confidential. Man involved with women, in any public knowledge of this is coming and it will be a massive tornado of news and public reactions.

At least we can relax for a few weeks

With mm dealt with finally, they can spend time at Balmoral together and relax. There will be one huge firestorm when the fake wedding, fake pregnancy etc etc etc and the millions of £££££££ spent.

Another holiday ( fetch the jets)

PH going likely to Africa, not holiday but public may see it as holiday. Or keener still, LG releases that MM ha jetted off and she is really in custody. THAT would be brilliant!

THICK SKIN-ned

The royals, Brits is general have tough stuff, despite the firestorm that is going to be unleashed, they will all carry on with their duties. LOVE THEM SO💜GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

EX-COMMUNE-gated

Someone ex behind gates oh we are all praying it’s mm, and she will be ex, if the wedding was legal even.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

I have a lot of blog to read but this was my priority. I will be here when l am able. Love and prayers for you all.💜🐼🙏🏻🐼😊🐼👋🐼💜💜💜💜💜💜

Thank you so much PG! Prayers for you!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

70 notes

Aug 23rd, 2019

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39.

Thank you MM ANON 🙏🏻💜💜

MM ANON … August Bank Jolly-stay……”were gonna need a bigger statement”…… “the boys a f#@ing embarrassment” …… “ it all went tits up when he met that bloody woman”…”calm down Philip” ……… I’d stay put if I were you ……on the Fly-bee……… smelling of (slightly wilted) roses…… “and that day may never come”… blame Fredo …… her “Diana” moment …… 👎🏉🎟.

August Bank Jolly-stay…

Play on words of the August Bank Holiday/long weekend term used in 🇨🇦

ABJ all capitalized, meaning?? PA et al are vacationing in Spain, or last l heard. Seems golfing is fun, doesn’t outwardly seem bothered, blows my mind. Jolly, when l was in Scotland was the coolest restaurant in Dundee, but l don’t think it is that. Some having a jolly stay , certainly the Royal family has circled the wagons at Balmoral. Please, PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE , PULL THE PLUG ON HER ALREADY!!

We’re gonna need a bigger statement”

PA released a letter today decrying JE behaviours but absolute denial of any awareness of illegal sexual conduct. Continues Spanish vacay and not going to U.S. to be interviewed. They NEED cooperative from him, not just a flighty statement signed Andrew!

The boys a f#@ing embarrassment..

This is definitely PP talking about PA, dragging such filth into the monarchy. Fed up with this ongoing issue for years now.

It all went tits up when he met that woman…calm down Philip

Two possibles PA and GM or PH and MM, both are horrific but l think he’s referring to mm and the embedding into the Firm. I hear HMTQ tellingly him to calm himself. So awful at their age, after a lifetime of service, they are having to deal with this!

I’d stay put if l were you

PA stay in Spain, golf away, enjoy your family vacation. Oh how l feel for Beatrice and Eugenie. Fergie is in things £££€€£££

On the Fly-bee

The Cambridge’s et al flew to Aberdeen on Flybe £78 each, now it has come out, the airplane was directed to fly to Norwich empty to pick them up. What started as a good carbon footprint has gone pear shape, to no fault of theirs.

Smelling of (slightly wilted )roses

Is this the nonsense PR about mm , PH and MM going to Princess Diana’s grave? Oh how foul a beast that breathes the breath to use that as PR. A fell wind doth blow!!

“And that day may never come”

The facing of American justice by PA, if anything they hope for financial settlement. At this point SDNY is too far in, he needs to cooperate SOON,

Blame Fredo

Godfather reference. Fredo was the useless brother who sold out the family and paid with his life. This scenario, who is the brother that sold out the family???PA, Although he will not lose his life, he’s betrayed everything his mother holds dear!

Her “Diana” moment

Again this is the vile PR putrid words that she, MM and PH will make a visit to Diana’s grave around the anniversary date of her death, next week. This enrages me almost equally as that “tv lady” making fun of PG. (Prince George, not me ie PG🤣)

👎 🏉 🎟

Only PH at the rugby, no mm! But he is not himself at all!Oh how l,wish l knew more!!!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

💜💜🙏🏻God bless you MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

Thank you PG…..😊💜💜💜💜💜❤️

Aug 24th, 2019

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40.

💜💜PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON💜💜

MM ANON … airmiles the Sunday roast!!…expect a Murky PR blitz…public poll’ most hated …… “ just f@# them off to the colonies”…a heavy toll…… (A HEALTH CONCERN)… “rest is recommended”……contemplating a Ruling change …… This much loved family …2025?👑👑……A brave new word…… A Monarchy Renaissance … OUR COMMON-WEALTH. …… A holistic answer

air miles the Sunday roast!!

Sunday roast may be Sunday dinner as a family. This is a different roast , as in mocking something or someone, remember the old roasts on US network tv, the ones on now are so vulgar they are unwatchable! I believe this this is family discussion, conversation regarding all the jet-setting, were they real or LG PR?? The fall-out with the public has been enormous after The woke ‘preaching’ over eco-living/carbon 👣.

expect a Murky PR blitz!!

She who shall not be named is continuing and will worsen her agile, loathsome PR, it’s sheer evil!!

Public poll, most hated!!

Mm will be listed as the absolute most hated ‘royal’ likely ever, but truly she is NOT ‘royal’.

“Just f@# them off to the colonies”

This is PP 100% his solution send mm and her issue, back to America, just be done with it already.

A heavy toll, A HEALTH CONCERN

This is taking a heavy toll on the entire family, the reputation etc of the entire BRF. Decades of dedication and service washed away by this person and behaviour. I have been and vocally before stated my concern for the health effects of this on HMTQ, PP, and PH. I am triply concerned and out Harry now, after the suicide of his friend in early August. PTSD and it’s high rate of suicide, he is high risk, add to that the role he has been compelled to play for two years now. I keep him close in prayers 🙏🏻. Please everyone do🙏🏻.

“Rest is recommended”

I think for HMTQ , PP and escape PH. oh how l am concerned!

Contemplating a Ruling change, this much beloved family, 2025 👑 👑,

Again l wonder, if Regency is on the table, for discussion, and coronation deferred until 2025 for PC and C, he would rule as Regent in HMTQ stead. I highly doubt they would jump over to PW and DC.

A brave new word

Regent! New paradigm of how the BRF is viewed, titles and their role.

A monarchy renaissance.

Renaissance ,a revival of or renewed interest in something. Regency, and dealing with the horrid fall-out of mm, would be the public’s view of our Royals that we love so much!💜🙏🏻💜. Requiring a whole new paradigm for all our Royals and function.

OUR COMMON-WEALTH

we, are the Commonwealth, the UK and all the Common Wealth, we love so dearly, we are part of BRF, their role in our daily lives, they visit, on our money, at any political decisions, the Governor General is HMTQ official representative. Also the actual $$$££££££€€€€ the family shares, property jewels owned by HMTQ. It’s all at play, how much will be paid in recompense if any regarding PA , if any legal civil penalties are levied.

A holistic answer

Helping PH cope with all he is, PTSD likely, the fallout of one bad decision regarding mm, and all the fallout of that, the suicide of his friend, the public changing their feelings for him. WE STILL LOVE YOU HARRY💜💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜

PLEASE GOD, LET THEM ALL BE WELL AND RECOVER FROM THIS. PLEASE PLEASE REMOVE SHE, WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED!!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

THANK YOU MM ANON💜💜🙏🏻💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

Thank you so much PG…yes prayers!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜😊💜

Aug 25th, 2019

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41.

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

MM ANON ……🎼 O’ honey honey 🎼…… a Northern anticipation?……A cleaner Subpoena … desperation, exasperation , instigation ……… “Spend, spend, spend”…… “The Wicked Lady”…… “The naming of parts” …… This poignant reflection …… a Flushing visit.…… Harry Pottering………much MORE Wien-ing …… 🙀👤👂🌧⚡️……🎼you ain’t seen Nnnnnothing yet 🎼

🎼 O’ honey honey

Old song by the group The Archies. Typical pop song cheesy love lyrics. Well we sort of know who Archie is, but nothing for certain, age, father, where he is etc. I also wonder the use of candy is reference to substances?

A Northern anticipation?

Is mm going to Balmoral? Will there be an intervention type confrontation? Will there be some sort of law/taking into custody or hospitalization/rehab destination first?

A cleaner Subpoena

I hear the word cleaner and in any criminal event, my thoughts go to what has been referenced before, those silent,,quiet grey men/women in suits who clean up after the messes of the wealthy or politically important people. In this case however, l suspect the Subpeona capitalized may mean PA interview with the F.B.I. with very clear line of questions that may be asked has been sorted and agreed to by his legal representation but then it would not be a subpoena if he willingly answered questions. Subpoena, for interviews when someone is not voluntarily wanting to testify or give an interview, in this case it’s very likely a female we know. The word cleaner mystifies me, other than there are so many issues allegedly involved, the subpoena may be restricted at this point to the issue, my usage of the word issue here means quite literally her issue, meaning the child that may have her DNA, via surrogate. The subpoena then involving the subterfuge of the child and fake pregnancy, violation of the “ of the body” law.

desperation, exasperation, instigation

She is desperate, PR shows that, anything and everything horrid is being put out, worst being Involving Harry’s mother. Everyone is beyond exasperated with her, plain sick and tired a year ago. People would just like her to leave the country and go live quietly elsewhere, yeah like that’s going to happen. Instigation is the action or process of instigating an action or event. Well she has been instigating a long time repeatedly, but what will be the final time? The brutal use of Princess Diana the final straw.

Spend, spend, spend

PR up the wazoo $$$$££££££€€€€€ . PR is getting crazier, inhumane, interesting consistent SPLASH, etc same paps used by the players…..seems unending and the depths gone to, l almost can smell the sulpher from the evilness..

“The Wicked Lady”

1945 film, plot is In 17th-century England, a woman lives a privileged yet humdrum life as the wife of well-heeled land-owner. To stave off boredom, she begins impersonating a famed highway robber stealing precious jewels and valuables from coach passengers. A chance encounter with the actual thief propels her into a dangerous double life with potentially lethal consequences. Hmmmm double life, lies, stealing, treachery, danger reminding you of anyone???

“The Naming of parts”

Naming is capitalized, is this to do with Archie, part of his name is Mountbatten Windsor. These parts of his name are stolen as he is not of royal blood, most certainly does not fit the “ if the body” requirements of the laws regarding royal succession. Lies more lies.

This poignant reflection

As the time approaches, or rather the anniversary date of Princess Diana’s death approaches, the boys, the entire family undoubtedly reflect on the what if’s? Especially now, with a new baby Prince Louis, and all the horror of mm, how things might/would be so different were she still there. So precious how PW spoke about telling his children about their other grandmother!💜

A Flushing visit

Might mm visit the tennis? Might she break her toilet and have trouble flushing?😄😂😂🤣sorry l had to interject some humour, this is taking me forever, my blasted hands😖.

Harry Pottering

The first thing comes to my mind is MISCHIEF MANAGED!! Has she and her ‘mischief’ been finally dealt with/managed and is she out to a place where doors may be locked? Prison or institution? Either way, she is managed!

No More Wiening

No more whining from her in the media/PR etc. Wien and Vienna are different names for the same city. Wien is the German word, Vienna is English word. JE had an Austrian passport. Hence no more new behaviour from him, and likely NO MORE MONEY TO SUPPORT THE PLOT/mm alleged funding.

🙀👤👂🌧⚡️…

Silent, hidden observers hear and see something shocking, that will cause a major storm , hypothetical thunder and torrents of hill now secret information, like torrents of rain. I don’t know how the kitty cat is involved unless one wants to use a vulgar word.

🎼youain’t seen nnnnnnothing yet🎼

I know these guys BTO……there is so much filth, information yet to come …beyond our wildest imagination l think.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

💜💜🙏🏻Thank you MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

Thank you so much dear PG! MM Anon can you give some feedback for PG, she struggles and yet it’s more important to her to help us out…..God Bless you PG!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Aug 27th, 2019

————-

42.

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON … THE ENIGMA THAT IS HARRY… that painful public display Of wedded bliss-ters will forever be etched in the National psyche as a comedy of errors the likes of which we will never recover from, the consummate Kabuki. On the left a collective of Hollywood riff-raff, on the right the monarchy in all its 1200 years glory. Dear sweet Jesus ‘ the humiliation. Only one person can end this interminable farce. And sooner than later. Courage is now a necessity.

MM ANON … “ it was the epoch of incredulity”… “she doth protest… Rumbold on retainer …… the ribbons of retribution …… micro evidence in camera …… in contempt of a pardon ……” softly softly……”…… an agreeable conclusion …… “return to this green and pleasant”…” long and winding mode”……in blogs good time.

“It was the epoch of incredulity”

Quote from famous Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, During the French Revolution Paris and France wanted republic, the guillotiine was the means to employ beheadings of royals. In London, during the Victorian time the long ruling Victoria, much beloved by many. The monarchy remained strong.

Are we to believe the entire British monarchy is at risk of republic? People are very angry, across the Commonwealth. When it’s all publicly released as fake, a lie, fake pregnancy, fake 30£ million wedding and on and on, there will be fury like never before. Again not so much the liE, BUT THE COVER UP OF THE LIE! The entire truth must be told now!

She doth protest

Well she doth protest too much which in itself can be inferred as overcompensation for lying.

Rumbold on retainer

Are you being served? Hugely popular vintage British comedy show about the staff at a store. Cuthbert Rumbold managed the lot of characters in employ of the store. So him being on retainer, do we need an excellent manager to deal with the motley crew which is mm et al, of course. The connection to JE via GM via her father below is just interesting!

Grace & Favour, which was known by the title Are You Being Served? Again! in the United States and Canada, is a Britishsitcom sequel to the long-running series Are You Being Served?

The idea of a spinoff was originally suggested by the cast of Are You Being Served? almost immediately after the original series ended in 1985. But though creators-writers liked the idea, they agreed that the department store format was exhausted and that any spinoff would require a change of location. The plotline that brought the cast from the store to the manor was considered remarkably topical, since it aired just a few months after the death of British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, who was revealed to have borrowed heavily against his own employees’s pensions.

The ribbons of retribution

Retribution is punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act. When crimes are international, or war crimes etc the court is the International court at The Hague, Netherlands. It is a blue ribbon panel, meaning a variety of legal experts very highly regarded. Think blue ribbon as the prize flowers at the flower show but on a massive scale.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) sometimes called the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). The ICJ’s primary functions are to settle international legal disputes submitted by states (contentious cases) and give advisory opinions on legal issues referred to it by the UN (advisory proceedings). Through its opinions and rulings, it serves as a source of international law

I would encourage you all to educate yourself regarding this body.

Ribbons of retribution is also found in X box Gears of War 3, ribbons/medal of honour, service, etc are worn proudly!! PRINCE HARRY SHOULD RECEIVE THE HIGHEST OF HONOUR FOR HIS OVERT COVERT ROLE OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS. YES I MEANT OVERT COVERT!

Micro evidence in camera

In camera, legally or in board meetings etc , in camera comments are those not recorded by the note taker, it’s for the group knowledge or discussion only. Having served in numerous of such capacities l know only too well how difficult those situations can be when people want all the data. Here we have micro, could be DNA. DNA /parentage of baby Archie to remain confidential.

The other obvious could be spy like micro film in a camera but l highly doubt that, just mentioned it as an obvious but MM ANON is never obvious.

In contempt of a pardon

Contempt is disrespect in any form or disrupting court proceedings or non compliance the judge can declare contempt of court. Contempt of a pardon is odd wording. If mm were pardoned , had she been charged, convicted and sentenced, CONTEMPT would be the least of the adjectives. So if PA , neither has been charged of anything to my knowledge, continued to refuse interview by the F.B.I. A subpoena could be issued. The wording of this confuses me. Basically if someone gets pardoned there will be contempt.

“softly, softly “

Softly, softly, catchee monkey”, this old Engllish proverb means that if do not rush or if you avoid being too hasty, then eventually you will achieve your goal - in other words, be patient. How many times has Skippy said, be patient there is a lot we don’t know, and a lot of working going on in the background, globally! Have your ducks in a row is similar!

Softly, Softly was a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It was created as a spin-off from the series Z-Cars, which ended its fifth series run in December 1965. The series took its name from the proverb “Softly, softly, catchee monkey”, the motto of Lancashire Constabulary Training School.

an agreeable conclusion

They have reached a decision of when and how to end this. We must watch and wait. They have all agreed.The fallout will be horrendous.

Return to this green and pleasant

Once again be settled, able to enjoy a Balmoral as well as the beauty that is family love, PH, PW DOC all publicly able to be themselves once again. England has numerous times been referred to the green and pleasant land in books etc.

Long and winding mode

Song by the Beatles we all know long and winding road. This l believe to be the way or mode in which the information will be shared and the way it will be dealt with. I also think it refers to our Harry and his emotional recovery and the modalities/modes which may have been and might be employed to help him.

In blogs good time

Things will happen In God’s good time. Dare this Skippy be a reference to you and your blog, which has for over 21/2 years been at uncovering the liar….perhaps refers to all the people who via social media blogs have kept the faith GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you so much PG! You are amazing!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

41 notes

Aug 27th, 2019

[mfackenthal]

MFackenthal: A Week in Reviews

Welcome all to the first ever “MFackenthal: A Week in Reviews” - the post where I list everything I have read this week and provide a short description to entice you to read them too.  This is where we learn that I spend too much time on tumblr.  As this is my first post like this – if you have suggestions for how I should do this post in the future – please let me know.  I consider this blog always to be a “work in progress” and I welcome ideas for how best to organize things so to be better for you my dear readers!

What follows is a list of the fics I reviewed this week.  Quick note: This list does not include headcanon posts, ABC posts or any post that wasn’t directly related to a story or storyline.  This also only includes reblogs and not work I “liked” but wasn’t able to provide commentary on.

This means that if you want to find out what I specifically thought about each chapter, that can be found on my blog.  To more easily search my blog, search the phrase “mfackenthal reviews ________” and fill in the blank with the blog name.  IE “mfackenthal reviews maxattack-powell” to find the work I reblogged specifically by @maxattack-powell.

In case it’s not obvious: I recommend ALL of these fics and ALL of these authors.  I cannot say enough about the fabulousness that is these authors. 

The list is organized by love interest.

If the “read more” works then you’ll find the full list under the cut.

Maxwell:

1.  Maxwell gets an education – MC can thank Adelaide later … 

Wild Thoughts by @pbchoicesobsessed

Liam:

2. Does Liam even know what love is?  Catch up with me – I think parts 7 and maybe even 8 are out now.  I’ll be reading those this week for sure!

You Have Never Loved Me Part 4 by @kawairinrin

You Have Never Loved Me Part 5 by @kawairinrin

You Have Never Loved Me Part 6 by @kawairinrin

3. When a couple isn’t on the same page about children … when does separate pages turn into different books altogether?  When mistakes are made how do we come back from that?  I cannot wait to see where this series goes next!

An Heir (Part 16) by @viktoriapetit

An Heir (Part 18) by @viktoriapetit

An Heir (Part 19) by @viktoriapetit

An Heir (Part 20) by @viktoriapetit

4. Honestly – I live and breathe for this series!  I am currently so pissed at Liam. 

TSS: Part 35 by @choicesfanatic86

TSS: Part 36 by @choicesfanatic86

TSS: Part 37 (1/2) by @choicesfanatic86

TSS: Part 37 (2/2) by @choicesfanatic86

5. If I’m pissed at Liam in the TSS series, I am head-over-heals in love with him in this series.  If this was the Liam of the books, Drake would not stand a chance.  

If only: Chapter 9 by @choicesfanatic86

If Only: Chapter 10 by @choicesfanatic86

6. This story is about Liam and MC, but damn if I didn’t fall in love with Drake in this one. 

Terrible Love – Chapter 15 by @confessionsofabrokegirl

Terrible Love – Epilogue by @confessionsofabrokegirl

7. The conversation you didn’t know you needed MC to have with Liam.  It’s so beautiful! 

Wait by @mrswalkerwrites

8. If MC is gonna be the mistress – she should have some fun – and she does!  It’s not all fun though ...

The King’s Mistress by @captainkingliam

The King’s Mistress – The Duchy – Pt. 3 by @captainkingliam

9.  All the Scandals that the King gets to see … 

Arrangements by @hellospunkiebrewster

10.  I’m still mourning the loss of the corgi.  This story in three parts is sad, it’s angsty, it’s going to set us up for so much more drama.  

When Three Became Two by @laniquelove

When They Give Up by @laniquelove

When They’ve Had Enough by @laniquelove

11. Husband and wife swap lives. Let’s just say she does a better job at being him than the reverse.  A very humorous read.  

Freaky Friday – Part 1 by @xxrainbowprincessxx

Freaky Friday – Part 2 by @xxrainbowprincessxx

12. If you haven’t started this series yet, it’s time to do so.  Then start whining for more with me! Find out what happens with MC leaves, Liam is hurt, Olivia gets a little too much power, and Cordonia moves towards democratization ...

We the People Ch. 6 – A Dinner Party by @captainkingliam

Drake:

13. I am absolutely in love with this series.  In the AU, everyone is working at an elementary school.  I need more ASAP @larryssunflower!

TRR AU – Teachers (part three) by @larryssunflower

14. It’s built into the title – this is Everything You Ever Wanted. It’s funny.  It’s creative.  Read it.

Secrets – Part 12 of “Everything You Ever Wanted” by @lizeboredom

Foreign Affairs – Part 13 of “Everything You Ever Wanted”  by @lizeboredom

14.  This is another series that I live and breathe for.  Catch up and learn one more reason why I hate Constantine!

Queen of My Heart – Chapter 19 by @walkerismychoice

Queen of My Heart – Chapter 20 by @walkerismychoice

15.  I live for the snarky teasing that Drake provides as written by @tmarie82.

Fireside Games (Part 1) by @tmarie82

16.  Did I mention that I love Drake and snark?  Drake gets the last word in this fic … 

Idle Threats by @lizeboredom

17. An AU where Drake met MC first and while he was in college … I can’t wait to see where this goes!

Bonfire by @traeumerinwitzhelden  

18.  When Drake is fluffy my heart melts. 

3 AM by @drakewalkerwhipped

19. A Poly story where Savannah is less than supportive.

Ours Forever by @bobasheebaby

Conflict by @bobasheebaby

The Blow Up by @bobasheebaby

Bastien:

20. A slow burn that is anything but slow.  Check this series out and you may never see Bastien quite the same way again … 

More Than This – Part Seven by @honeylightningambition

More Than This – Part Eight by @honeylightningambition

Leo:

21. Liam and Leo fall for the same girl ... so far only one of them has admitted it ... Catch up on this series and cheer Leo on with me. 

Duties of a Prince – Chapter 17 by @theroyalweisme

22.  Catch up on this series and help me decide if I want the father to be Liam or Leo … 

The Waterfall, part 7 of The Other Brother Series by @captainkingliam

The Test, part 8 of The Other Brother Series by @captainkingliam

Original Characters:

23. Okay – if I had to choose a favorite of the week – this would be my favorite.  Of course, this piece was written for me and makes me character in the world of A Prince of the Sea as written by @captainkingliam.  This references the only fic I have ever written and may be the only fic I ever write.  (We’ll see.)  I still claim what I wrote was more support than fic.  You can read it here: The Case of the Maligned Prince. Luca sends me my favorite flowers.  I love you, @captainkingliam!

The Case of the Maligned Prince – Luca Tribute by @captainkingliam

24. I love Luca!  This is the series about Luca.  I’m the president of a fanclub about Luca and his siblings. Obviously, I’m invested in this story and think you should be too.  In case you don’t know, Luca is the oldest son of Riley and Liam and this story is about his social season.

A Prince of the Sea – Chapter 9 by @captainkingliam

A Prince of the Sea – Chapter 10 by @captainkingliam

A Prince of the Sea – Chapter 11 by @captainkingliam

Damien:

 25. I know these were listed about but it’s a crossover.  So I’ll simply repeat what I said above: It’s built into the title – this is Everything You Ever Wanted. It’s funny.  It’s creative.  Read it. 

Secrets – Part 12 of “Everything you Ever Wanted” by @lizeboredom

Foreign Affairs – Part 13 by @lizeboredom

26. Damien gets played by MC.  Win win really.

Tell Me You’re Mine by @mrsnazario1223

27.  Romantic comedy meets realism in this beautiful fic. 

The Moment by @mrswalkerwrites

Chris:

28. When MC feels guilty for spending time with Nathan … 

Wake Me From This Nightmare by @darley1101

29. If you love Chris and haven’t yet found the better more thorough recount of The Freshman as written by @maxattack-powell, then today is your day!  This chapter highlights the way Chris and MC support each other.  I love it.  You’ll also get just a little time with another OC who I love: Ethan. 

The Freshman 2-8a: The Hospital by @maxattack-powell

30. Chris struggles with the “no strings attached” line he has given MC … 

Caught During the Storm: Part 3 … Out Came the Sun … by @emerald-bijou

Seth:

31.  When one Minah is mad at Seth … he finds comfort with a different Minah.

Lucky by @lizeboredom

Kenna x Val

32.  Chapter 2 of 23 about the Queens of Stormholt.  I’m a bit behind on reviewing this work, but I think we’re up to chapter 9.  I’ll be reviewing this week, if I can.  Catch up with me.  If you read The Crown and The Flame – or even if you didn’t.  It’s time for us to revisit it through this series. 

The Queens of Stormholt: Chapter 2 by @kennaxval

note: Another big thanks to @drivenbyfantasy for creating the graphic.  She and many others (notably: @maxattack-powell, @captainkingliam, @theroyalweisme, @trianiasti, @queencatherynerhys, @tmarie82, and @lizeboredom) helped me think through what this post would look like each week.  Thank you to all of you for your help and to any of you who read this!

One final note:  I reblogged 56 fics this week.

Yes, I have a problem. No, I don’t (yet) want help.

Last, but not least, on the off chance that I missed a fic that you know I reblogged, my apologies! It was unintentional and is not a reflection on you, but upon my inability to maintain my own blog.  Also, if a link or a tag doesn’t work - I am sorry! My excuse:  56 links. 

[oliverpdaniel]

Advent of Code 2020: A (very timely and not late at all) Reflection on Days 15-25

...Um. Oops?

Honestly, everything has been happening so much lately, I'm not super frustrated that it's been a clean month between finishing these puzzles and commenting on them. During these weeks, along with finally finishing my first-ever Advent of Code (as did my roommate! Well done, buddy.), I also wrapped up my second semester in quarantine, including a few brutal final projects and exams. After a nail-biting few weeks of awaiting grades, I finally had the confidence to withdraw for the second semester, and to begin hunting for work. (If you're reading this and I'm not hired yet, hire me!)

Anyway, the obvious downside to the sheer magnitude of the delay is that most of these puzzles aren't super fresh in my head, and thus my commentaries may not be as detailed as I would like. Hey - if I ever get such a massive executive-dysfunction-killing buzz as I did over the winter break to finally clean and redecorate my room, maybe I'll revisit these too.

Day 15: Now we're seeing some REAL slowness! The primary data structure for both parts here was the dictionary, mapping "seen" (spoken) numbers to the last turn on which they were spoken. That being said, I don't know what I was thinking in Part 1, with code like this:

Code ``` for k in seen.keys(): seen[k] += 1 ```

As soon as I saw the spicy thirty million in Part 2, I knew my naive solution wouldn't even touch it. [1] I had to do my least favourite thing - off-by-one debugging, but I ultimately came up with a relatively clever insight:

Spoilers Storing not just the last turn on which a number was spoken, but the last *two* numbers (if they exist). Doing this allows for a three-case scenario, for some current number `curr`: 1. `seen[curr]` is empty or doesn't exist. This is the base case of a new number; output 0, as stated in the problem. 2. `seen[curr]` has 1 value. It's only been seen once, so we can calculate the number of turns since it was last seen. 3. `seen[curr]` has 2 values. This number has been seen twice, so we can simply subtract the first- and second-most recent turn numbers to get the gap between them!

This problem took a bit of fiddling, but runs okay. Python really shows its ugly side here, as even a fairly efficient solution like this one, using efficient data structures, takes quite a while on Part 2.

Day 16: Boy oh boy. I spent far too long on this one, and perhaps if there are any to revisit for a future post, it's this one. My solution for this one features no less than:

regex;

closure functions;

constraint satisfaction;

functions that return tuples of variable length; and

walrus operators.

I consider this problem a 'sweat' for future years; I learned a lot about what makes constraint-satisfaction engines tick, and how it's important to assign constraints to the smallest possible element of a search space (here a column, rather than an entire permutation of columns). I think there's a much more concise and semantic way of outlining this problem, that lets the solver do much more of the work than I did.

Day 17: Not much to say here; it's a cellular automaton with extra for loops. I'll share two cute things that I'm proud of:

Spoilers 1. I experimented with various thresholds for the size of the 'infinite' space, making specifically sure not to to index checks, so that I could have the smallest possible subspace to check over. I ended up settling on a value of `20` units in each direction from: 2. the origin I specified, which is simply `LIMIT // 2 - H // 2` (where `H` is just the dimension of the input grid).

My roommate complained that it took him a long time to parse and understand the problem; I'll confess that I barely read it. I guess that's the advantage of experience, in that I saw "Conway" and "space" and knew immediately what needed to be done.

I didn't do anything special for Part 2; it's just my Part 1 code, copied and pasted, with an extra for loop here and a variable there. sum(sum(sum(sum())))s for everyone!

Day 18: I think that, out of all 49 unique problems in this year's Advent of Code, I'm most proud of my solution to this one. It's (relatively) fast; the code is pretty easy to read and works for both parts (and more! [2]); and I came up with a solution before knowing the name for what I had built. (Update: it's a shift-reduce parser. Hooray for stacks!) One especially cute thing, that incidentally ended up defining my approach to a lot of the later problems, was

Spoilers creating a lookup table between a certain input symbol, here math operators, and an internal function, here the builtin `int` math functors. This allowed for a dead-simple evaluator function, for when the top of the stack was ready to be converted from an expression to a workable number. Also, I had the bright idea to recursively evaluate bracketed expressions, in such a way that an expression like `(((1 + 2)))` would quickly reduce down to `1 + 2` before the rest of the parser got to it.

Day 19: Aaaaaaaaargh! Herein begin the Two Days of Terror - the two hardest problems. Lucky I had returned from my partner's by now, as I think they would have been quite upset with how much I was ignoring them to code. After solving Part 1 in the morning I finally finished Part 2 at around 7pm, having forgotten to otherwise eat or attack my household responsibilities, and only after my roommate sat down with me and pair-programmed for a while. This one stung the most, because... I'm a linguist, for crying out loud! No generative grammar problem, especially ones over a finite search space like this, should be causing me such grief.

Day 20: I am still emotionally recovering from this problem. My roommate somehow managed to get both parts to run instantly, using the most cursed CSP setup I've ever seen. I still need to study his code better to understand just how he did it. Also, his usage of scientific Python packages finally shows its rewards, as convolution over a matrix is a friggin' builtin function. Grr.

Day 21: I consider this day an apology for the previous Days of Terror. Some fun, but not terribly difficult, set-fu. My relative inexperience with set theory shows its stripes here; I'm sure there are much more semantically sound ways of accomplishing what I tried to do here (e.g., manually removing an allergen from each ingredient's list of hypotheses once it was confirmed to go with a certain ingredient).

Day 22: Spicy spicy numbers! It would have served me much better to read the instructions before starting, as then I would have known that

Spoilers in Part 2, players don't take their entire deck with them. Since, y'know, that would just cause an infinite race to the bottom.

Day 23: Even spicier numbers! If you're going to be cute like me and establish 9 as a constant, make sure that you don't use it in Part 2 when constructing the initial circle, or you'll wonder why 9,999,990 of the cups aren't attached to anything.

Day 24: I couldn't sleep, so I solved this problem at 3 in the morning. Not going to lie, a little disappointing for a penultimate problem, especially Part 2. Part 1 required at least a modicum of cleverness to develop a meaningful coordinate system, but then Part 2 just felt like a relative rehash of the Conway Cubes problem. 3 cellular automaton problems out of 25 is a little bit much, considering how formulaic they can be.

Day 25: As true evidence of how much I learned over this Advent of Code, I was able to finish Day 25 on the couch without even bothering my partner. Utilizing what I had learned about pow made defining the transform (i.e., repeated multiplication and mod) incredibly easy. Though, I did get a little bit lucky, due to a small oversight in problem setting...

Spoilers Rather than having to generate and test a whole bunch of different pairs of loop sizes for the card and the door, it turns out that if you `zip` together two streams of all such valid loop sizes for the card and door, respectively, the correct size for both (i.e, the solution) appears at the same time; for me, just the second such pair of sizes.

Day 25 Part 2, as always, was a delight and a pleasure. If you've never clicked that final button before, crack open a text editor and start solving challenges until you can. It's deeply satisfying.

I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to the entire AoC team, setters, testers, and maintainers alike, for all that they do. A daily stream of bite-sized (or, sometimes, sea-monster-sized) challenges is just what I need to keep me going, and my skills sharp, over the dreary holiday season. Especially in a year like this, it was just what I needed to keep me moving, motivated, and thinking about code. I can't wait for next year's challenges and, hopefully, I'll convince the roomies to do it with me again.

Sorry about the little delay, and the relative lack of detail. But, the enemy of perfect is good enough. If you're reading these at some point in the distal future, I hope you've enjoyed watching my journey through these problems, and maybe learned a little bit about what it means to think like a programmer. Thanks for tuning in!

[1]: I tried it anyway; it obviously didn't work. And, once my roommate turned me onto tqdm, I was able to see just how long before the Heat Death of the Universe for it to run. It was about 3 days. Lol.

[2]: The way I constructed the code, it would be extremely easy to add in the remaining integer operations.

[littleredchucks]

Hi. I kind of wanted to ask you about Lives in Abstraction for the fanfic commentary ask but found it so hard to chose just one section. Could you possibly do it for the letter by Victor in chapter 37? I’ve always kind of wanted to know what actually happened to Victor because the letter doesn’t say much.

Okey-dokey, so… when I wrote this it sort of killed me. I hated how sad it was and I fudged over a lot of details in the letter because it just seemed a bit much. Cos I know what happened to Bauer but I didn’t want to put it in the story. Nevertheless I’m going to give it a go, because I love Bauer and Rosey so much and it’s nice to revisit them from time to time, even the sad bits. I’ve written too much beneath the cut.

“I am so sorry, my Rosey (he wrote) for all that you suffered, for what befell you. I loved you so fiercely. I love you still. I am sorry you were stolen from me, that I had not the chance to grow old with you as I always hoped. I wish that we were still in possession of the crab phones that we fashioned, do you remember those? I am sure they could cross such distance, could connect us. But they are gone, I suppose. Everything is gone now. I do not talk of those years, do you know, because when I have tried it has made the people who heard my words rather upset, but you have asked me, and I can deny you nothing, and besides, perhaps writing shall be easier than talking. Perhaps I should apologise now, in case I write something which does not agree with you. Will you forgive me, my Rosey, my dearest one, for all that befell me?

(I really wanted the tone of this letter to be soft and melancholy and quite slow, especially to begin with, like Bauer is struggling with putting the words down and with ordering his thoughts. This is basically the only time when the story is in his voice but it’s not the voice he would have used in any other chapter, because he’s been through so much and is mentally fragile and just so tired in body and soul. The crab phones are a reminder of their time at Nice, obviously, of that most happy time, and when Rosey first felt a strange sense of foreboding about their future, because Bauer talked of dying together. And the phones are sort of their thing, in the Dali film and in a lot of fan art of them. Bauer is wishing there were some way they could communicate. I wanted to show that they were as important to Bauer as they were to Rosey, that Rosey’s feelings weren’t one sided, and that his narrative can be trusted, I guess, even when he’s been focused on only one thing, or stuck in the darkness of his own mental illness. And truly, no one understands Rosey’s mind better than Bauer, hence the apology in case he writes something that upsets him, because Bauer spent so much of their time together attempting to shield and protect Rosey. Still, he knows he can’t deny Rosey’s questions.

I spent some time at first still in Milan, at the San Vittore Prison, but not in any part that I had previously broken in to. I suppose they knew me. They kept me underground instead. They asked many questions, in a wide variety of ways, but I convinced myself to unlearn the answers they were looking for after a while, and so was no use to them, and told them nothing. They took things from me. They hurt me. My feet - my fingers - I - they … I cannot -I fear am not so easy on the eye as your letter seems to suggest that I was all those years ago. They kept me in the dark, in the very dark, for a very long time. I could not-

(Yeah. So, San Vittore was built in the late nineteenth century and housed a lot of political prisoners in Italy in WW2. It tends to be referred to as ‘notorious’ in most books. Not a nice place. My mother’s father and brothers were imprisoned in Spain during the war and I’ve been informed it was a similar sort of shit show. Also, books I have on San Vittore talk of how there was a lot of torture. My great uncle had his toe and finger nails forcibly removed during interrogation. Victor wants to be able to tell Rosey what happened, about all this terrible stuff, but in a way it’s too difficult to write it down, it still hurts him too much, and he also doesn’t want to think of Rosey getting upset, or worse, sighing at him for getting himself in to such trouble. I wondered for a long while about the phrasing “in the very dark” but in the end left it like that because it just seemed right. I felt like Bauer would struggle to describe that as well, he’s still afraid of that cloying darkness and believing he had been forgotten and left to die, but also that, as he ages, his ability to navigate between the languages he knows might be slipping too, hence the odd nature of his writing and wording and sentences going unfinished.

But then there were explosions and fire and I was able to count the nights by the sounds of destruction and then the guards fled but they did not unlock the door and no one unlocked the door Rosey and when they finally did it was not for freedom but for a new prison. Risiera di San Sabba. I believe they thought I was someone other than I am for they asked a great many questions, and did so much, so many things, to me, my body, to try and get answers. I recited for them my mother’s prayers in response to their demands and so they allowed me the job of carrying the corpses to the furnace rather than joining them in the oven. Then there was more fire, more death, and then they too were gone, and we were called free and expected to go on our way.

(I guess this is a continuation of that fear of the darkness and being left for dead. And I also wanted to somehow show that for Bauer, in writing this, a panic is rising. When he says “and no one unlocked the door Rosey” he’s panicking because he’s back in that moment and it’s terrifying him. It also affects his punctuation, he’s just trying to get the words out and doesn’t care that the sentence is running on. Until Risiera di San Sabba. I struggled with my history nerdiness here because I didn’t want to do a whole lot of background or filler information because Bauer just wouldn’t, that’s not where his head is at in this. Risiera di San Sabba was a concentration camp in northern Italy. It was a transit camp for Jewish prisoners being sent to Auschwitz but also a permanent camp for political prisoners. In the section a bit before Bauer notes that the guards knew him, or something about him, and so it made sense that he would end up there. It wasn’t a nice place. My partner’s family lost a lot of family in WW2. The story goes that they converted to Christianity to try and avoid the Nazis but it didn’t save many of them. To my mind Bauer talked his way out of execution by creating another character, and it because it was nearing the end and things were in such chaos in northern Italy at the time, he managed to survive. I also imagine Bauer has a rather poetic kind of speech most of the time. He is, through the story, occasionally crass but he also has a rather lovely way of speaking and so that final line “more fire, more death, and then they too were gone” seemed to fit. A lot of freed prisoners and refugees got stuck at San Sabba for years after the war because they had nowhere to go and in my mind Bauer, in a state of shock, was there until Maria found him, by chance, and took him with her. She tried to settle back in Milan but just couldn’t do it, too much had changed for them both, and so they began a slow drift toward Nice, ending up there without really meaning to, certainly without Maria knowing the full significance of the place.

I am sorry. I have written too much, things you do not want to read and-I still wait for you to finish my sentences, do you know. Still expect to feel the squeeze of your hand in mine. But you never shall, never again. I know. You are dead and I write these letters to a ghost. I even thought that I had received a reply from you, a beautiful thing full of love and memories and it brought such joy to my heart, but now I cannot find it anywhere. For how could you reply? It was a small consolation, a tiny shred of comfort, that at least you had died and they could not do to you what they did to-I miss you so. But even if you were living I do not think I could bear to have you see me. Though I long to see you, oh my beautiful Rosey, I could not live if you were to see what I have become. Such a vain creature I am. I used to revel in the way that you gazed at my form, at the press of your hands against my skin, as if you worshipped me. Childish fool that I was. But you did love me. You did? I found a copy of your poems. Not my copy, another copy, and I signed it for you and she said she would send it off to you, as if she could send a book of poems to the underworld. Did it find you, my dear, beloved, constant Rosey? I hope so. I hope that you know what your love has meant to me.

(The idea of finishing sentences is pretty integral to this story. It was the whole focus, wasn’t it? But it’s also a Noel and Julian thing, because a lot of this fic goes back to that relationship and that magic they have when they look at each other across the stage, that holding hands, trade mark tenderness. Hmm. But this is also where it’s revealed that Bauer thinks Rosey is dead. Maria didn’t say it to him, he was sure Rosey was dead when she found him and she just didn’t tell him otherwise, because she had honestly assumed that Rosey would attempt suicide again and possibly succeed. She didn’t want to give Bauer hope and then have it destroyed. I found the idea of writing to a ghost fascinating. To me it was a way of further showing where Bauer’s mind was, the level he was functioning. The lines between dream and reality are blurring and he can’t quite remember what’s true and what he’s just thought up or remembered from long ago. He’s pretty blunt and clear in his assessment of himself though, but not when it comes to his belief that Rosey loved him. I actually hate that his certainty in that might have been broken a bit, over the years. The memories of Rosey worshipping him are a real kick in the guts for Rosey though, they’re designed to be, because those memories are so sacred and he’s refused to acknowledge them. I also quite liked the notion of sending a book of poems to the underworld.

It gave me the thought to write to you, simply so that I might not be so alone. I try to paint, it is only water and colour and lines now on paper, and when I mumble to myself about the form or the colour they look at me strangely, so I try to hide what we all know, that I have lost myself, slipped almost completely from a mind that was never quite secure to begin with.

(So, this is really the way I feel about painting, more so now actually, than when I wrote it. And this is the most lucid I think Bauer is in this letter, strange considering he’s talking about the fact that he feels his mind is ebbing. And acknowledging that his mental health has never been great. I guess I wanted to show that Bauer was always aware of that, he wasn’t ignorant of his problems.

I miss you. But I am gad that you cannot see me. I am as dead to the world as you are in my way. It is for the best, I think. I only wish I could have laid bougainvillea at your grave, for it grows here, up the wall by my window. I wish I knew where you lay so that I could send some now. Who will know to do the same for me? It will be my turn so soon. Who will leave flowers for me to remind of the night I found my twin, my ‘found remembrance of spiritual love’, of complete love, who will there be to hold my hand? I miss your hand in mine…”

He signed it: “With all the love in the world, always and forever, your Victor”.

(I think I forgot to mention before how the idea of Bauer not wanting to be seen was important for me in this as well. Because the story covers so much of their lives I felt it was important to show that views can shift and evolve and that Victor’s understanding of his own body has changed, though not for the better. He always used clothing to hide or play characters but not with Rosey, with him he would waltz around nude or use clothing as an in joke. He always showed his heart so openly and clearly to Rosey and now he can’t even bear the thought. It’s not just that his body has been altered by age and torture and hardship, it’s that his heart has as well, and the idea of Rosey seeing that, which he would, is horrifying to Bauer. Finally I wanted to throw in the mention of the bougainvillea because that was another image that carried through the story. I love bougainvillea, they’re fascinating plants and I have several growing around my little house. I saw a lot of them in Europe when I was a little kid and have such strong memories of them. They are so vibrant, so strange in their colouring and flower formation and once they’re established they are hardy as fuck. But here the remembrance is sad. Bauer doesn’t know where Rosey’s grave is and worries that there will be no memory of what they were together. He’s not so fussed about being forgotten as an individual but the idea of losing the life they had together is painful for him. It was really quite sad. Damn. Um. And then it ends with the refrain of “always and forever” but is signed simply Victor. I tend to refer to him as Bauer, Rosey does too for a lot of it, and Bauer don’t self-refer in that way much. He calls himself an idiot or refers to his titles like Madman and General but I wanted this to be very pared down. Rosey calls him Victor when he’s being tender, and that’s what Victor is remembering most.I actually hated writing this a bit. I wanted to change my mind and have them find each other and have a happy ending. I had a good readership of about five who talked me through it and understood that it needed to go that way and I gave them fair warning, and that helped me feel less horrible about it. Sorry this has run so long but thank you for the ask.

[igotopinions]

BLOG RUNNER

I have some thoughts about Blade Runner 2049. Spoilers and unsolicited opinions below the cut!

Hello! I am a white North American scifi fan man in his thirties, ergo I fuckin’ love Blade Runner. Own the final cut DVD. Seen various cuts many times. Threaded Blade Runner-y stuff into a lot of my early writing. I’m also a fan of Ryan Gosling, and was otherwise primed to like the hell out of Blade Runner 2049.

You might guess by my set-up here that I did not like it. Well, let’s start with some...

Simple, easy criticisms

How were there even less Asian people in this than the first one? Weird in general, super weird for a setting that evokes many modern Asian cities and with so many elements of Japanese culture woven into it. Also an LA without any Spanish in the signage feels odd...

Where are the male sex-bots & hologram pals? Also, if there were any queer characters or content in the film I must have missed it.

This movie was miserable in its portrayal of women, outside of a few main characters. More on that below.

Holy crap was there a missed opportunity for something amazing when Deckard is being tempted by Fake Rachel. Could have had some amazing meta-commentary on trying to recapture the feelings of a past love but instead was just a tired “What if I could give you what you’ve missed all these years?” villain tease.

Seriously, what is up with Villeneuve’s addiction to twelve year old boy titty doodles? 

Simple, easy praise

Luv & Joi, aside from their names, were pretty great. Joi’s spin on the scene from HER was a worthwhile exploration of a different take on the same thing. It was very satisfying following the line connecting Luv’s hitting on K by way of commenting on the beginning of Rachel & Deckard’s relationship all the way through to her kissing K after beating the shit out of him, then yelling “I’m the best one!”. Lieutenant Joshi was also fantastic as the order obsessed boss who hits on her employee/slave.

That fight at the end, just outside the seawalls, was rock solid. Maybe it was the (intentional?) reminder of when Gosling went full Jason Voorhees on Ron Perlman in DRIVE, but the dread of the dark, indifferent, steadily pounding waves did wonders as backdrop for everything in that scene.

The kids put to work extracting nickel from e-waste was a nice nod to a very real, shitty thing from life.

Um, well...let’s move on.

And more!

That Cityscape, Costume & Set Design, Tho

I get why you’d go the CGI route, but dang I wish they’d done what the new Star Wars films are doing and tried to use CGI more as a garnish for practical models in line with the original films. The sense of texture and plain old presence would have helped greatly, while better evoking what they were trying to - the original. Those high up shots of the city near the beginning made the copy/paste-ness of the city blocks mimicking the classic old setting very obvious, and thus even close up it was hard to think of them as being anything special. That’s a kick right in the low hanging reason a lot of people, including myself, would want to see this film in the first place. Individual set designs were much better - I never thought I’d be so pleased to see scuff marks around a door handle like you do in Lieutenant Joshi’s office - yet still suffered a bit for often being designed to prod you in the ribs all “Hey, hey remember that scene from the first one? This is like that, only we tweaked it a little!” Overall, none of the locations looked bad per se, they just never did anything terribly new or interesting. That said I feel like I should give the film a bit of a handicap on this front if only because it’s specifically trying to build on a look that was original as hell when it showed up 35 years ago and has since been re-visited to death by umpteen works made in-between then and now. I found myself reminded of when I first saw the scene in ANNIE HALL with the subtitles of the characters thoughts and said “This is so tired...”, then realized it was the actual point of origin and I only felt that way because of later works who riffed on or copied it.

The women of 2049 vs Villenueve and his twelve year old boy titty doodles Much like The Truth, the think pieces are out there (same with the curious racial demographics). So I’ll just add that I found some moments of violence against women pretty jarring (ex. Leto cutting his nude, oiled up and freshly fondled ladybot) and, as much as I love the three main female characters, they’re all pretty one-note...any one of which I could handle if there was another, complex female main character to balance things out. There is not. Oh and those absurd statues that dominate the first shot in Las Vegas with what what can only be legally described as “titties” and their perfectly round, open, waiting mouths kicked me right out of the story. It took me a long time to get back into it. If that and things like it (see: giant holo-nipples) were supposed to be commentary on the crassness of commercialized male desire, they hewed too close to being what they were potentially commenting on for it to be clear. As good ol’ Vonnegut says in MOTHER NIGHT, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.“ I gather Villenueve does better by women in ARRIVAL, which I’m overdue to see, but that wasn’t the film I just watched. I don’t know about queer characters which, again, genuinely felt strange not to see any evidence of in the film. I know some charming folk will think I’m just “virtue signaling” or whatever with this stuff but replace “no queer characters plus poor representation of women & POC” with “Nobody with all ten of their fingers, people had a dick sticking out of their forehead which was never explained, plus everybody kept being really shitty to dogs for some reason” and hopefully that’ll get across that if nothing else this kind of thing is just sloppy, incomplete storytelling that distracts the viewer. The nut of it is... ...when I zoom in - enhance, if you will - on a specific part I can find an awful lot to like in Blade Runner 2049. When I pull back to look at it as a whole, I’m left with a movie that felt at most like a good version of a tired, tired, tired format -  re-booting or re-visiting old properties instead of creating new stories. I’m not convinced this film achieved what many of the most celebrated scifi sequels did, which was to really re-imagine - not just revisit - what was done in the first film, like with ALIEN becoming ALIENS. Could you switch genres like James Cameron did, when the neo-noir feel is so integral to Blade Runner? Maybe! It’s not like there wasn’t any horror in ALIENS to go with the action, and it would at least have been a more audacious approach to mix neo-noir with another genre, or outright sublimate it to that newly introduced genre. Sure I find new things to appreciate about 2049 as I read more articles after the fact, but a story shouldn’t need follow-up research to raise it above “Bad film with some bright spots”, which is where I was at right after leaving the theater. I did have another, very positive feeling while heading home that night. I felt free. Free of franchise re-visits, re-boots, sequels etc. of properties from the 80′s and 90′s, of which I cannot for the life of me imagine another that I might be interested in. This feels great, and I suspect it’s this more than anything which has compelled me to add to the mound of commentary & criticism on Blade Runner 2049. Join me for a moment and just imagine going the rest of your life without ever watching another long-delayed sequel or franchise re-boot... FURTHER READING This Twitter thread by Monika Bielskyte that did the rounds a few months ago when Ghost In The Shell came out feels relevant, even if the point in Blade Runner 2049 was to build on the original Blade Runner. I’ll always love the original, warts and all, but man oh man do we need to move past it.

[liugeaux]

Repost Vol. 55: March 25, 2007 -"A Stroke of Luck" or "The Disgruntled Vending Machine's Attack of Irony"

Here’s the fifty-fifth in a series of reposted articles from my old Myspace blog. See this for more explanation.

I’m creeping closer and closer to the end of this re-post project and I think I’m really gonna miss reading young Sergio’s idiotic ramblings. This one, from early 2007, I remember being super proud of. However, reading back over it, it wasn’t that clever or that funny, and not even well written. Even the name isn’t that great. 

I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at this over time, but I guess when Tumblr inevitably shuts down in 15 years and I revisit all the new stuff I’ve put here I’ll be able to answer that question.

Ok, let’s get to it. I’ll be providing commentary, it’ll be in Bold.

"A Stroke of Luck" or "The Disgruntled Vending Machine's Attack of Irony"

A week ago I broke my keychain hook. Starting with a show stopper I see. It was a simple spring-loaded hook for me to attach my keys on my belt loop. Initially, this was not that big a deal, but as a side effect, I had to start putting my keys into my pocket. I legit cannot remember this, was I actually a beltloop-hooked-key-guy? Other than being uncomfortable, this too was not a life-changing event.

For those of you who didn't know this, I have 6g earrings (holes) in both my ears (at least when I'm not at work.) When at work, I have to take them out because the policy at work is that male management individuals cannot have earrings. So much back story, get to the point. My favorite earrings (plugs) are a pair of black plugs that I normally wear every day. Still my favorite. 2 days ago, I put my keys in the same pocket that my earrings (plugs) were in. At some point during the day I pulled the keys out of my pocket and they caught one of the two earrings (plugs) and it fell out of my pocket. That night I noticed the earring (plug) discrepancy when I went to put them in after work. 

I was absolutely crushed (and by crushed, I mean unhappy and/or slightly upset that I would have to hit up eBay for another pair of these wonderful earrings (plugs) .) Wut?  I put a different pair in my ears and went on with my life. (End of story, there’s nothing else to see here.) Today I went to Wal-mart to get a new heavier-duty keychain hook so I wouldn't have to deal with that again. Sigh  When I got home, I took my keys out of my pocket to unlock the door, and to put the new hook on. As I was unlocking the door, I looked at the ground and what did I see? My Fucking Earring (plug) was sitting outside of my apartment on the concrete waiting for me to find it. This isn’t interesting...I feel I should point this out. When it comes to lost stuff, have you ever had such a weird thing happen? That plug could have been anywhere from work, to Burger King, to Gamestop to my apartment and it was just sitting outside on my "doorstep."  (we don't have a doorstep, but you get the point.) Wait, was this plug outside of the one place that you typically use your keys, a thing you typically pull out of your pocket? Fucking amazing!!!!  The weirdest thing is that I found the missing plug directly after the trip that I made to replace the hook that caused me to lose the plug in the first place. I know it's really a small occurrence (do you though...you seem to be making a really big deal out of it?), but It's one of the luckiest things that have ever happened to me. Ever?! like really, EVER!? So many questions. 

On the flip side, a really unlucky thing happened today too. During that same trip to Wal-mart, I had a handful of change.  I decided that I wanted a Coke. I have been on a diet as of late and I wanted some real sugar, kidney killing, corrosion cleaning, death in a bottle...Coke. I didn't just want a coke, I wanted one of two very specific drinks. I either wanted a Cherry Coke or a Code Red Mountain Dew. This hasn’t changed much, I still really love both of these sweet nectars. I have seen both of these drinks in the vending machines at that Wal-mart before.  So I checked the machines on the far left part of the store with no luck.  I then went to the ones outside, still no luck, so I decided that I would just get a Dr. Pepper. DP is never a suitable replacement for either of these.. blasphemy!  

I put my money in and it fell straight through. Apparently, the machine was broken, but it only gave me 75 cents back. I had to reach like two inches into the coin return to fetch my remaining quarter. WTF, why is this even part of the story...I sincerely feel bad for anyone that read this when it was originally posted. After I got my quarter back, I decided that I didn't want Dr. Pepper, and remembered that the Wal-mart I was at had 4 sets of vending machines. Solid meta-data...tottally useful. I decided to hike my happy ass to the other side of the store to see what was in those machines. The set of machines outside had nothing, so I went inside. The last set also had nothing, and I was pissed. Not nearly as pissed as I am right now, say something interesting! I wanted a fucking Code Red, or at least a Cherry Coke. Finally, I decided on a Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. It was the closest thing that they had to the two wonderful drinks that I desired. 

It was in a "Try something Different" Coke vending machine. This is without a doubt the most long-winded and pointless repost I’ve ever done...geez I totally apologize...for real. I inserted my rescued dollar in quarters and pressed the button for the Black-Cherry adjective bleeding Coke and grabbed the bottle that it spat out. "What the hell!!!!!!!!" I thought to myself. The machine gave me a friggin Coke Zero! This was the exact drink I was trying to avoid! That you never actually mentioned during your story! I'm sure I looked like a winner kicking the vending machine and flipping it off, but I had just endured a hike inducing beverage fiasco and was not very happy. Sigh, I can’t support the content of this post in any way...why did I ever think this was important? I drank the Coke Zero and bought the keychain hook from the aforementioned story, but the stark contrast of these two tales makes me believe that if there is a god he's having a hell of a fun time fuckin with me. What...I...you know what, I’ll just let it be, that’s really the been I can do here.