#fetes teachers

[the-crow-binary]

Im quite curious about your opinion on the portrayal of the french revolution; I know it was a super complicated political moment with multiple fronts from the commoners wanting better life conditions, the bourgeoisie wanting to get the nobility out of the way (which it's part as to why it cant be directly translated into 21'st century american capitalism analogy 🙄), how multiple nobles supported the revolution for moral values despite going against their families interests (bc social class influences but doesnt instantly determines your morals) and that many revolutionary groups supported the independence of Haití (heck, many members of my countries independence participated and almost got beheaded in the resulting mess. And ad hundred and something years later France would try to invade us lol). What im trying to say behind my ramble here (sorry for that lol) its that im sure nfcv made it a slavery bad black ppl vs white ppl american dilemma without getting into the complexity of it and i say this as a foreigner with basic history knowledge, so i do wanna see your take on it

Which portrayal of the French Revolution? 🙃

I swear this very important Historical event that affected not just France but all of continental Europe and is considered as one of the world's biggest events was just used as background for the characters to fight and be racist. The characters keep throwing around the word "revolution" from all sides, but we don't see shit. Maria gives context in the first episode (there's a revolution, they overthrown the monarchy and declared a republic, they arrested the king...), talking to a group of revolutionaries, and from then on the story could've literally taken place in an imaginary country with imaginary politics it would've been the same.

Oh, what am I saying, there IS one thing. Our motto. 🙃"Liberty, equality, fraternity" 🙃 Yeah it has been thrown here and there... Except that it wasn't our official motto yet. We had the notion of liberty and equality, sometimes fraternity, and it was in the middle of other words such as "friendship", "sincerity", "charity" and "union". There is some people and even some books who used this motto but it was abandoned then taken back later... Just this is a mess lmao but the point is. I cringed everytime the characters screamed "Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!". And while we're on the subject, Richter, at some point, meets three girls during a festival (I suspect one of the girls to be Marianne, who wasn't a real person but the symbol of Liberty) talking about dressing up as Liberty and Equality and Fraternity. And Richter, thinking he is so smart, say that you need to be a man to dress up as Fraternity, because it means "brotherhood" (and the girls go "sisternity then" and don't correct him). Oh, and the writers clearly thought it was very clever too, since later on Annette's teacher (and even the Messiah I think??) will ALSO talk about the motto, saying "liberty, equality, brotherhood". IT DOESN'T MEAN "BROTHERHOOD". I MEAN IT CAN. BUT IN THIS CASE IT MEANS "FRATERNITY". IT'S A TERM TO TALK ABOUT A BOND EXISTING BETWEEN PEOPLE CONSIDERED AS MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. AKA IT CONCERNS EVERYONE. YOU ARE NOT CLEVER, AMERICAN WRITERS.

Also I thought a fucking festival at a time like that where people dress up at the concepts of our not-exactly-official-motto-yet was stupid, and it is. There was no such festival, however, we did have the "cult of the reason". To put it simply: it was a serie of events and civic holidays wich were organized by a group of atheists. In it there WAS an event called "Fete of the Reason"... Where one ACTOR dressed up as Liberty. It was NOT multiple people representing liberty, equality or fraternity.

The fun fact is, the French Revolution was a pretty good occasion for NFCV to promote it's CHURCH BAD mentality. We were taking away the church's power, more people became atheists, anti-christian vandalism and blasphemy was actually encouraged, it was a mess. Paris even ordered to shut down churches at some point, wich did not happen in the end. So yeah, this precise moment, right before the Vendée War, was perfect for the church-haters those writers are. And it ended up just being as bad as the original show, without any nuance... Ok there might be a little bit of nuance because of Mizrak, a guy who served the church and in the end actually team up with Richter and the gang, and it looks like he's there to stay. Emmanuel (the abbott) tries to be complex, but in the end, he is still a God-obsessed man that makes terrible decisions and is not a good representation for the church. So okay, it might be a BIT better than the original show thanks to Mizrak, but it's not saying much.

Another thing. Only the main characters are shown to have a dislike for the church. We don't see ANY of the french people doing anything against the church (but we do hear the church complaining about the revolutionaries, tell don't show y'know), not even talk about it. It's mostly jokes about how haha priests are sexual predators/they can't keep it in their pants (with the occasional "it exploits the people and take their money" line, and by occasionnal I mean once). There IS a few shades thrown at God here and there, honestly I didn't bother remembering the exact lines because they are so cliché and really not that deep. I think Maria is the one complaining the most.

What angers me the most is the lack of ANY ACTION FROM THE FRENCH PEOPLE. It's like nothing is actually happening except vampire killing people and vampire hunting (wich begs the question: WHY bother making it happen during the FRENCH REVOLUTION?). Nocturne literally made the french people the side (oh what am I saying, the BACKGROUND) characters in their OWN REVOLUTION. AND ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS. WHAT THE FUCK. Maria is supposed to be a revolutionary leader but she doesn't lead anyone. We never see anyone do anything outside of the main characters. The french are literal planks, except from those three girls from the festival and villains, they don't even have a voice. At some point the vampire Messiah arrives in town, in plain view, and people are like "OUR SAVIOR IS HERE! OUR DELIVERER!" and I thought the people shouting were vampires, but no, there is humans TOO. ALL TOGETHER. And you have no idea how much I hate that they basically portray the french people as not doing shit and needing someone else to save them 🙃 To do things for them 🙃 And also. That that someone else is not even french themself. 🙃 Even without the Messiah... the revolutionaries we saw were led by Richter (romanian/american/british idk at this point), Annette (Haitian, even if Saint-Domingue was owned by France at the time), Tera (Russian) and, of course, Maria, who's both Russian and French, at least. Those four were doing most of the work while the french people were in their houses cooking baguettes, I guess. And by "work" I mean fighting vampires and night creatures, there was nothing done about the Revolution. Almost like there is NO REASON TO MAKE A CV SHOW ABOUT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Oh and I just HAVE to talk to you about Saint-Domingue, and the BLACK PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED theme going on with Annette. And that's when I'll have to take out this magnificent dialogue again:

"Even these french with their high ideas, what do they know about we've suffered? And what do they care? They're building new world, but it won't be freedom, or equality or brotherhood for US"

This is said by Annette's teacher. Worth to note that before that, in episode 3, she also shat on the French revolution and our motto. Basically, the show portray the French Revolution as being one thing and the slaves in Saint-Domingue having their own other revolution. And not just that, it implies that the French did not care about slaves, and that they do not know what suffering is (yeah, people just start revolutions because they feel like it y'know 🙃). And the anti-white dialogues are portrayed as normal and are even applauded, btw. And it is BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLSHIT. MY FUCKING GOD. OH THIS SHOW MAKE ME SO ANGRY.

First off: Only the colonies were pro-slavery. The french pretty much weren't. A "Society of friends of black people" was even created in France in 1788 to fight for the abolition of slavery. People fought for black people's rights during the French Revolution. Books written by black people to join the fight came out. The French Revolution scared the colonies who were very against losing their slaves and it led to Haiti's own revolution (slaves rebelling, killing their owners, burning the plantations... Nocturne at least got that part right). So both revolutions are very closely linked and the slaves might not have rebelled at this point if it wasn't for the French Revolution threatening Saint-Domingue's economics and creating social upheavals.

And what does those shitty american writers remember? BLACK PEOPLE OPPRESSED. BLACK PEOPLE SUFFERED SO MUCH MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE. LOOK AT THESE POOR BLACK PEOPLE. WHITE PEOPLE ARE SO POWERFUL. THE FRENCH ARE UNGRATEFUL ACTUALLY. BLACK CHARACTER IS RIGHT TO SHIT ON THE WHITE FRENCH WHO DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM.

FUCK.

Oh, and I mentioned the Vendée War earlier... So, fun fact, during the revolution, we have what we call "la Terreur". It's a pretty gruesome period of time during the Revolution that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. La Terreur happened from 1793 to 1794. So one year after this first season of Nocturne. 🙃 I'm just saying. It wouldn't surprise me if they used this for season 2. 🙃(I literally do not trust them)

And the vampires... Look the vampires have their own can of worms that I'm not motivated enough to open. I'll just say that, of course, in classic NFCV fashion, the message the show is trying to pass is not subtle at all. They're just evil. All of them. All of the french nobles. Evil evil EVIL EVIL!! NUANCE AND COMPLEXITY ARE FOR PUSSIES.

Also the count of Vaublanc? Annette's ex-owner? This guy existed. And he never owned slaves. He was pretty pro-royalty, at some point he voted against slavery, then later voted in favor of it... but he did not own slaves. But honestly I don't care about that guy much, I just wanted to show that NFCV really doesn't care about nuance. Everything has to be black or white (lol) and that's why we have no human nobility in Nocturne.

Urgh. UUUUUURGH. I SWEAR WATCHING THIS SHOW WAS A PAIN AND THE MORE I THINK ABOUT IT THE MORE PAINFUL IT BECOMES. THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NFCV IS DOING JACKSHIT WITH IT. I MEAN IT'S SO MUCH FUNNIER TO SHIT ON THE BELMONT CLAN AND SHOW TIDDIES TO MAKE THE FANS HORNY.

So, my opinion on the portrayal of the French Revolution: CREATE YOUR OWN FICTIONAL REVOLUTION NEXT TIME AND LEAVE THE HISTORY OF MY COUNTRY ALONE.

[johndpg]

SPANKING ON TV #7

His Mother's Lover (2012) d. Nica Noelle

This film is set in the early 1930s and follows an American boy struggling with his homosexuality while attending boarding school in England. When Robert is caught in a passionate tryst with another lad, he’s beaten by the Headmaster with his own belt and given a four-week suspension. Back at home Robert meets his mother’s new fiancée, the older, nurturing Daniel. Feeling an instant, mutual attraction, the two look for ways to get closer, while dark family secrets begin to emerge.

Well, where to start with this… It’s basically a gay soft porn film with delusions of grandeur (it’s even got a mournful score)—but you’re probably well ahead of me and worked that out from the synopsis. The fact that the director is feted as a trend-setter and "the most important adult film director of her era" says it all really, although all the hyperbole is undermined somewhat when you find out she works for Lust Cinema.

Obviously, the main thrust (ho, ho) of the movie isn’t the corporal punishment, but that’s what we’re here for. It’s an American production, so of course they get British schools totally wrong (I’m not sure what Sting Pictures’ excuse is lol).

In this scene Robert finds out he’s going to get a flogging (sic) and a suspension, and must take off his own belt and give it the Head, who surprisingly doesn’t seem to have any suitable implements of his own tucked away. Robert is told to drop his trousers and bend over the desk to be belted, at which point the Head removes his jacket, loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves to show us He Means Business. I was caned and slippered at school and none of my teachers felt the need to turn into Bruce Willis, so I kind of feel like I missed out. Anyway, he’s belted for real eight times (does that count as a flogging?) and then off he goes to meet mum’s fiancée, who I’m certain will turn out to be a top bloke (sorry).

Not much is known about youthful lead Chase Austin other than he’s clearly over 18. This was his first big break, and he went on to feature in such cinematic masterpieces as He’s Tempted by Cock and For Your Eyes Only (no, not that one). The Head should probably be on a list somewhere and Ian Whitcomb, who plays him, delivers his lines like he’s recovering from a stroke. Meanwhile, whilst Chase looks young enough to play a convincing schoolboy, Travis Irons, who plays his young lover at school, is anything but. I’m reminded of that bloke Brian McKinney who sneaked back into his old high school in his 30s to resit his exams.

Here’s the clip for your eyes only (sorry, Chase):

[kirkenovak]

Due to a popular request (one person mentioned it) here is your Midsomer Murders Dreamling AU:

- Dream’s family is one of the several hundred Extremely Wealthy Posh Upper Class families that seem to be dotted all over Midsomer, living in their 18 rooms mansions, on their 400 acres of land

- Dream forsakes his family and chooses to live as a Poor Artisté (TM) in a small cottage at the outskirts of the village. The cottage is worth more than an average person will earn in their lifetime. Dream has a £7m trustfund.

- Hob is the village teacher. He’s very popular and liked, adored even. Nobody gets him and Dream as a couple.

- the Burgesses are the rivals of the Endless. Roderick Burgess is the victim, so naturally, all Endless are suspects, especially the odd painter that, as a popular rumour states, once was kidnapped by Roderick Burgess and kept in a basemen due to some Rich People Drama

- yes, Dream is a painter here. He paints dark, disturbing, goth-y paintings, has a raven called Matthew and wears eyeliner

- Hob wears beige sweaters with patches on the elbows. Him and Dream are known in the village as “that nice teacher and his weirdo goth boyfriend”

- Dream has no alibi and his hatred of Roderick Burgess is well known. He admits it’s because Roderick’s son killed Dream’s pet raven Jessamy and when Dream confronted him about it, that’s when The Basement Thing happened. None of Dream’s family cared and that’s why Dream abandoned them (took his money tho)

- Hob is the next suspect, as it turns out he has a dark and shady past he’s hiding from everyone. He was suspected of multiple robberies, he gained and lost a fortune in very bizarre circumstances, and both his wife and son died. A man like that would have no problem killing someone.

- Death is Dream’s favourite sibling who was away from the village during the Basementgate. It’s finally revealed that the real reason why Burgess kidnapped Dream was because he had a beef with Death, blamed her for his elder’s son death. Was she attempting to avenge her brother?

- then, of course, there’s a very nice and charming Corinthian who is not a suspect at all because why would he be? :)

- John Dee, the village I’m Just Saying It As It Is!, is found out to be Burgess’ yet another son. A secret son. Whose mother he seduced then rejected (well actually she robbed him and run but you know) If that’s not a motive I don’t know what is.

- Alex Burgess inherits everything. Money are a motive as old as money itself.

- Desire, Dream’s sibling, and their twin are found to attempt to frame Dream for the murder. Why? “Oh why not, darling?” But maybe they were trying to frame him because they are guilty.

- The Corinthian did it. Turns out he’s a serial killer and killed Roderick because he wanted to.

- additional scenes: village fete goes wrong when Alex Burgess publicly accuses Dream of murdering his father and then tries to fight him. Hob knocks him out.

- additional scene 2: Barnaby gets an epiphany because of something random that Matthew does

[justforbooks]

Henry Kissinger, who has died at the age of 100, was the most controversial US foreign policy practitioner of the last half-century, the architect of American detente with the Soviet Union, the orchestrator of Washington’s opening to communist China, the broker of the first peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and the man who led the US team in the protracted talks with North Vietnam which resulted in US forces leaving Indochina after America’s longest foreign war.

Feted for these accomplishments as national security adviser and later secretary of state under Richard Nixon, Kissinger achieved global celebrity status and in 1973 was awarded the Nobel peace prize. But it later emerged via leaked documents and tapes and former officials’ memoirs that behind his diplomatic skills and tireless energy as a negotiator there lurked an inordinate love of secrecy and manipulation and a ruthless desire to protect US national and corporate interests at any price. His contempt for human rights prompted him to ask the FBI to tap his own staff’s telephones and, more seriously, to give the nod to Indonesia’s military dictator for the invasion of East Timor, to condone the actions of the apartheid regime in South Africa in invading Angola, and to use the CIA to help topple the elected government of Chile.

A formidable academic before he worked for the government, Kissinger reached greater heights of political influence than any previous immigrant to the US. His nasal German accent never left him, an eternal reminder to his adopted countrymen that he was a European by origin. To Kissinger himself, the fact that a man born outside the US, and a Jew to boot, could become its secretary of state was a never-ending source of pride.

Although Kissinger was often seen as a supreme believer in a world order based on realpolitik and a balance of power, at heart he was ultra-loyal to the individualistic American ideal. In love with his adopted country, he was infused with a missionary zeal to maintain American hegemony in a shifting world.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born to a comfortable, middle-class family in Fürth in Bavaria. His father, Louis, was a teacher, his mother, Paula (nee Stern), a housewife. As a boy, he was old enough to comprehend the collapse of their domestic stability when the Nazis came to power. He and his younger brother were beaten up on the way to school, and eventually expelled. His father lost his job. The family emigrated to New York in 1938.

Kissinger rarely discussed his refugee past, and once told an interviewer to reject any psychoanalytical link between his views and his childhood, but some observers argued that his personal experience of nazism led to his horror of revolutionary changes as well as to the underlying pessimism of his analysis of world affairs.

After George Washington high school in Manhattan, his accountancy course at the City College of New York was interrupted in 1943 when he was conscripted. He was with the US army in Germany for the Nazi surrender and the first months of occupation. He won a bronze star for his role in capturing Gestapo officers and saboteurs in Hanover. In 1946 he went to Harvard, where he stayed intermittently for the next quarter of a century. He received his PhD in 1954 with a study of the 19th-century European conservatives Metternich and Castlereagh, which he turned into a book entitled A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (1957).

His subsequent studies led him to become a specialist on nuclear weapons, who caught the eye of Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York and a bastion of east coast liberal Republicanism. Kissinger’s desire for influence on policy was already leading him to spend time in Washington, and he combined his academic work with consultancies for various government departments and agencies, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council under Dwight Eisenhower.

Kissinger’s patron, Rockefeller, failed to make much headway in the presidential campaigns of 1960 and 1964, but after Nixon won the presidency for the Republicans in 1968, Kissinger was appointed national security adviser, with an office in the White House. His intellectual drive, as well as geographical closeness to the president, allowed him to turn what had previously been a backroom job into a high-profile, decision-making post.

Kissinger knew that access is power, and that the relationship goes both ways. Having the ear of the president gave him the ear of a competitive, news-hungry Washington press corps which admired his charm and brilliance and eagerly printed a generous amount of his on-the-record comments while finding ways to divulge unattributably the confidential titbits and insider gossip that he loved to drop.

A battle developed between Kissinger and the secretary of state, William Rogers, the nominal architect of US foreign policy, during Nixon’s first term. Kissinger won it easily. Rogers was excluded not only from the administration’s central concerns – Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China – but even the Middle East, the one area where he achieved some praise in 1970 with the so-called Rogers plan. The plan was a US effort to impose a settlement between Egypt and Israel with the backing of the Soviet Union. Israel rejected it while Kissinger felt that the goal of US policy in the region, as indeed throughout the developing world, should be to reduce the Kremlin’s influence rather than give Moscow equal status.

When Rogers eventually resigned a few months after the start of Nixon’s second term, Kissinger got the job he coveted most. Four years of private advice and back-channel negotiating were to be crowned by formal acceptance as Washington’s senior international representative and America’s major speechmaker on foreign affairs. Kissinger had already scored the two biggest coups of his career, proving that he was more than just an academic consultant and bureaucratic in-fighter, but a cunning negotiator. He ran the secret diplomacy which culminated in July 1971 with the stunning announcement that Nixon was to go to China to meet Mao Zedong the following year. He also led the negotiations in Paris with Hanoi for the peace treaty that sealed the departure of American troops from Vietnam. For the second of these feats, he shared the Nobel peace prize with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator, though the latter refused to accept it.

The award aroused a huge controversy since it coincided with revelations that Kissinger had supported Nixon’s decisions to mount a secret campaign of bombing Cambodia in 1969. Cambodia had long been used by North Vietnamese troops for bases and supply depots, but Nixon’s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, resisted pleas from the joint chiefs of staff to bomb them. The country was officially neutral and its leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was desperately trying not to take sides.

But the Nixon administration wanted to send a strong message to North Vietnam that the new president would be tougher than Johnson. Tapes of White House conversations (the Watergate tapes) revealed that Nixon called it the “madman theory” – “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war,” he told his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. Kissinger endorsed the concept, though he preferred to put it in more academic language by arguing that US policy must always retain an element of unpredictability.

In March 1969 Nixon and Kissinger ignored the reluctance of Rogers and launched waves of B52s on carpet-bombing missions over Cambodia, as they had already done in Vietnam. The raids went on for 14 months, although officially the administration pretended the targets were all in South Vietnam. Initially, Kissinger did not even want the pilots to know they were striking Cambodia, but he was advised that they would soon find out and be more likely to leak the information unless sworn to secrecy ahead of the raids.

The bombing remained secret in Washington for an astonishing four years, becoming public only when a military whistleblower wrote to Senator William Proxmire, a prominent critic of the Vietnam war, and urged him to investigate. In Cambodia the campaign led to an estimated 700,000 deaths as well as 2 million people being forced to flee their homes. It also led a pro-US army general, Lon Nol, to seize power from Sihanouk in 1970 and align the country with the US. The bombing and the coup fuelled popular unrest, added to the strength of Cambodia’s communist guerrillas, the Khmer Rouge, and paved their way to power in 1975.

The Paris peace talks on Vietnam also coincided with an escalation of US bombing in Vietnam itself. At the height of the negotiations at the end of 1972, Nixon and Kissinger took the war to new heights with the “Christmas bombing” campaign, comprising targets across North Vietnam. It enraged the US peace movement and provoked a huge wave of new protests and draft-card burning by conscripts. Kissinger’s aim was not so much to intimidate Hanoi as to persuade Washington’s ally, South Vietnam’s president Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept the accords which the US was making with the North. The bombing was meant to assure him that if there were any North Vietnamese violations after the accords came into effect, they would be met with all-out American force.

Kissinger was aware that the Paris deal was flawed, and might well lead to Thieu’s replacement by a communist government. His goal was merely to win a “decent interval” between the pull-out of US troops and the inevitable collapse of the regime in Saigon so that the US could escape any perception of defeat. The phrase “decent interval” appeared in the briefing papers for Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in 1971 that were later declassified. They show he told the Chinese that this was US strategy in Vietnam. A year later he informed China’s prime minister, Zhou Enlai: “If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.”

When the North Vietnamese army and its southern allies, the Vietcong, stormed into Saigon in April 1975, forcing the US ambassador into a humiliating helicopter escape, the image was clearly one of defeat, in spite of the two-year interval since the departure of most US troops. But Kissinger blamed Congress, claiming it had undermined the peace deal by refusing to finance new arms shipments to Thieu. This was a favourite refrain. He continually attacked Congress for interfering in foreign policy, apparently never recognising the value of democratic checks on strong executive power.

Turning his skills to the Middle East, Kissinger gave birth to the concept of shuttle diplomacy, a term first used to the press by his close aide Joe Sisco. He flew between Jerusalem and Cairo during the October 1973 war to hammer out a ceasefire after the Israelis had sent their troops across the Suez canal and come close to the Egyptian capital. He later secured Israel’s withdrawal back across the canal, and shuttled to and from Damascus to make a deal with Syria for the Israelis to withdraw from a small part of the Golan Heights.

Behind all three issues lay the Americans’ competition with the Soviet Union, then at the height of its international power. The US opening to China was designed to wrong-foot the Russians by turning what they thought was an evolving, bilateral relationship of parity and mutual respect with Washington into an unnerving triangle which seemed to ally China and the US against them. Kissinger hoped to exploit the two communist powers’ rivalry to persuade both of them to abandon the Vietnamese, thus making it easier for the US to win the peace, if not the war. So he threatened Moscow and Peking (now Beijing) with the argument that they would lose the benefits of dialogue and trade with Washington if they did not stop their arms supplies to Hanoi.

In the Middle East, Kissinger’s aim was to exclude the Russians, who had been longtime allies of Egypt and Syria. By extracting concessions from Israel and brokering a ceasefire in the 1973 war, Kissinger persuaded Cairo and Damascus that only the US could achieve movement from the Israelis, thanks to its unique influence. A year before the war, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, had shown his distrust of Moscow by asking thousands of Russian advisers to leave Egypt. The move was meant as a signal to Washington that Egypt preferred good relations with the US, provided Washington put pressure on Israel. Kissinger missed the signal and did nothing until Sadat, in desperation, launched his attack on Israel in October 1973.

Kissinger’s strategy of detente with the Soviet Union was also designed to reduce Moscow’s room for manoeuvre. Although rightwing Republicans criticised it as appeasement, he argued that Washington should not just contain the Soviet Union, as previous American administrations had sought to do. The US should tame it by giving it a stake in the status quo. Instead of going for ad hoc deals with the Kremlin, Kissinger was the first senior American to try to establish a complex of agreements with a range of penalties and rewards for bad and good behaviour. This, he argued, would limit Soviet adventurism. Sometimes he called it a network, at other times a web, but in both cases the aim was to provide the Soviet Union with benefits from expanded trade, investment and political consultation with Washington.

The strategy failed to produce a new world order because Kissinger was not willing to abandon adventurism on the American side. In the developing world, in particular, Kissinger pursued policies of confrontation with Moscow, often based on faulty analysis of what the Russians were doing or exaggerated claims of the extent of their influence. The successful US effort to overthrow the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973 fitted into the long US history of intervening in Latin America against leftwing governments that nationalised US corporations (in this case, the big copper companies). But Kissinger also disliked Allende’s closeness to Moscow’s ally, Cuba. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he commented.

By 1974 Kissinger’s boss was being engulfed by the Watergate scandal. Although Kissinger was involved in secretly taping his own staff, he was not connected to Nixon’s decision to burgle the headquarters of the Democratic party at the Watergate apartment complex in 1972 and then cover up the truth – the charges that brought the president down. In spite of the scandal – or perhaps because of it – Nixon’s relationship with Kissinger remained close, in large part because the beleaguered president saw Kissinger as his best ally in foreign policy, the area where Nixon felt that he had been most successful. He wanted Kissinger to be the man to preserve his legacy.

In his memoirs, Kissinger described how Nixon virtually clung to him during his last hours in the White House in August 1974. The disgraced president asked him to pray beside him in the Lincoln bedroom for half an hour. “Nixon’s recollection is that he invited me to kneel with him and that I did so. My own recollection is less clear on whether I actually knelt. It is a trivial distinction. In whatever posture, I was filled with a deep sense of awe,” Kissinger wrote.

Although Kissinger was not charged over Watergate, his image nonetheless became tarnished. Damaged by revelations of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the favourable media bubble burst. Kissinger’s path from miracle worker to being perceived as a cynical trickster proved short. If Nixon was a serial liar on the domestic stage, Kissinger was seen as a similar villain on the international one. Nevertheless the next president, Gerald Ford, who had limited foreign experience, kept Kissinger on as secretary of state as a symbol of continuity. But Kissinger’s star was in decline. He tried to change his focus by shifting his attention to Africa, which he had ignored until then.

His results were far from positive. He may well have set back the fall of apartheid by several years by approving the involvement of the CIA in the Angolan civil war and giving the nod to South Africa’s invasion in 1975 as the Portuguese withdrew from their erstwhile colony and granted it independence. The South African intervention prompted Cuba to send hundreds of troops to support the Angolan government, thereby launching one of the bloodiest “proxy wars” between the superpowers.

When the Republicans lost the White House to the Democrats under Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger’s time was up. He spent the next decades as a consultant to multinational corporations, and speaking on the international lecture circuit. In 1982 he founded his own firm, Kissinger Associates.

Although he had brief hopes of a comeback when Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, the new president and his men did not feel comfortable with Kissinger’s image or the strength of his personality. His public persona of pragmatism did not fit their crusading ideology of anti-communism and their constant claims of Soviet expansionism. They were from the school which felt his contacts with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, during the period of detente, had smacked of appeasement.

The charge was absurd. It reflected the difference between subtlety and simplicity, as I discovered at one of the occasional deep-background “non-lunches” which Kissinger gave for representatives of European newspapers. Europe was never a high priority for Kissinger, in large part because it was not a region of US-Soviet competition. He favoured a strong and united western Europe so as to keep Germany in check, hence his much-quoted comment: “If I want to call Europe, who do I call?”

But he seemed to like meeting European correspondents, flattering us with the sense that we asked deeper questions than our American colleagues. At one such lunch, I was staggered by Kissinger’s emotional outburst when someone delicately raised the appeasement charge that rightwing senators were making. “Do you really think a man who stopped Allende wouldn’t want to stop Brezhnev?” he retorted.

If ever there was an American super-patriot, it was Kissinger. As a European intellectual, he knew better than his adopted compatriots how to run an empire. The bedrock of his policies was fear of a resurgent, “unanchored” Germany, a firm desire to keep western Europe closely tied to the US, and a fierce determination to outwit the Soviet Union and maintain American dominance, if necessary through the use of military might. It was no surprise that in his 80s, long after the Soviet Union had collapsed, he became a close consultant of George W Bush, supporting his invasion of Iraq.

Kissinger’s private life was a tempestuous subject in the Washington gossip columns, at least in the interval between his two marriages, which happened to coincide with his years at the apex of power. His first, to Ann Fleischer, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and David, ended in divorce in 1964. Ten years later, he married Nancy Maginnes, one of his former researchers. She and his children survive him.

🔔 Henry Alfred Kissinger, statesman, born 27 May 1923; died 29 November 2023.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[mrdirtybear]

Alexander Kiselev (1838-1910) was feted by the Russian state, and was well known beyond Russia as a painter and a teacher of the art of landscape painting.

[genderlessginger]

Get Back, McLennon: Day 1

Check out the other Get Back posts here.

Read this first:

I'm going through the whole Get Back documentary (so if you’ve watched a bunch of Get Back, this could get really repetitive for you) day-by-day, telling what’s happening and scouring it for anything that is McLennon. 

Take everything with a grain of salt. This is all speculation. But, hate to break it to ya... McLennon is real. 

I'm going bizarro. Let's get started.

[Ep. 1, 1:51]

Get Back Refresher (skip if you want)

Get Back has been edited from more than 60 hours of video and 150 hours of audio. Some of the bits have been edited, showing video that isn't part of the audio. We're gonna kinda roll with that, because there's nothing I can do about it. They said they did their best to have an accurate portrayal so I'm forced to trust it here.

Before the documentary really gets started, there is a 12-minute refresher of the Beatles' history from the Fete to the Hey Jude live performance in September 1968. It had been two years since their last live performance.

The Beatles enjoyed doing a live performance so much they decided to record their next album in front of a live audience. The recording would be a live TV broadcast. The album would be played all in one take, with no overdubs or edits.

Important Note:

It is my belief that John and Paul (actually, all of the Beatles, but especially JP) communicate, forgive and heal through music. They weren't playing together a lot, a lot (not like before) during The White Album and things were just messy.

When John and Paul play, they usually look at each other. They look at each other for minutes straight, with breaks to look at their instruments, distractions, etc. They always do if they’re in each other's line of sight. Eye contact and how all of the Beatles look and act while playing together will be a major part of these posts. 

I will also be scrutinizing how John and Paul look at George and Ringo, Yoko and Linda.

Day 1 (2 January 1968)

Dress rehearsal is planned for 18 January, live shows are planned for 19 and 20. The bugs will have to come up with 12-14 songs for an album in 16 days. Paul is the last to turn up. This is the first look we see between them.

Here are some angles of how they look at each other, including George looking at Paul and John looking at George.

And putting this here. What a fucking legend.

Paul "teaching"

When Paul is teaching a song, he goes into this teacher mode, similar to a boss babe mentality, but music-ier. Anyway, Paul goes into this teaching place, which is hard to get screenshots to properly demonstrate it. There's a lot of head nodding as if to say, "There you go! You're getting it!" A lot of enthusiasm, a little overbearing. But there's nothing distracting him.

And John looks at Paul;

And when John went to pull Paul out of it, Paul cracked pretty quickly.

These are two separate instances:

And then a little later (I really like this sequence):

This is how everyone is sitting. George is sitting on a cushion in front of Ringo's kit. It doesn't seem like Yoko is disrupting much, as Paul and John are sitting, idk, two feet apart?

I'm not sure if they choose just the footage of these two looking at each other, but it's everywhere.

The dry bun thing:

It's one of the times in their lives where they are not getting along. And they're still so clearly in love.

.....And that's everything for Day One! Day Two coming soon!

[holyshit]

About how young they (especially h) were - I'm a year younger than him and when I was sixteen I would have thought I could handle it no problem. Well, I'm a teacher now and I look at my students and I wouldn't want ANY of them to go through that and I don't think they could even. I get fiercely protective of fetes 1D now, whenever I think about it too much.

yeah exactly :/ like, i recognized at the time how wild it was that they were around my age just in the sense of them travelling the world, being famous, etc, but i really did not fully understand the gravity of how intense and how much it must have affected them to be under that much pressure, to be that over-worked, and to go through all that in front of the whole world at such a young age until i was old enough to see my own teenagehood/early 20s more objectively and to be able to compare how i was at that age to where i am now, with my fully developed over 25 year old brain. and then to see people who are that age now through that lens as well. it's a lottt, and i can imagine a lot of their 20s has been working through some of the after effects of that

[hollysoda]

I’m gonna get a bit emotional for a bit because I suddenly remembered how much I miss my Year 3/4 teacher. She was honestly the kindest, funniest and most understanding teacher I ever met. Shit was so rough for me as an undiagnosed autistic child as so many other kids would pick on me for my inability to control my emotions and/or intense interests. I would always be getting in trouble for lashing out without meaning to, and while most adults severely punished me she made sure to talk to both me and the bully. I also took longer to understand/learn how to do things, and while my horrible maths teacher destroyed my confidence my main teacher let me do things at my own pace and encouraged me. She loved how creative I was, and encouraged me to continue writing and drawing. We had the same birthday and one year she bought me a little bracelet (which I think I’ve lost now). When I left her class she would always look for me on the playground and chat to me about how I was getting on. The rest of my teachers in junior school were great, but I always wanted to go back to her class.

Obviously I eventually went to high school and didn’t see her for years until there was a fete at the junior school. She was there. Her hair was still neat and curly, but it was grey. She still wore the same shape glasses and was starting to get wrinkles. The funniest part was how small she was next to me (I was 14 then). She hugged me, asked me how I was getting on and what GCSE’s I was doing. We couldn’t chat for long but I remember her wishing me luck with my exams.

I didn’t visit my junior school again until September 2022 when they had a grand reopening after having a huge remodel. My Year 6 teacher was still there and gave me and my mum a little tour and I obviously asked about her. She retired at the end of the 2020/21 school year and moved probably as far away from where I live in the UK as you could. My Year 6 teacher didn’t have any contact with her. Maybe at the time I didn’t really think anything of it, but now after I’ve been diagnosed with autism I wish I could see her again. I think she knew long before anyone else did. It hurts a little, and maybe I wish she’d said something, but I think all I want to do is just say thank you and hug her one last time. I just hope she knows what a positive impact she had on my life.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

L'écriture est suspension pour moi de toutes les sensations autres que celles qu'elle fait naître, qu'elle travaille.

- Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory, declared the Nobel communication committee when awarding the Prize. Her work, which is mostly autobiographical, turned her in a prominent French literary figure from the unassuming teacher in literature at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. She wrote about 20 novels all around the theme of “impersonal biography”. Ernaux is 82 years old and has been publishing for nearly 50 years. She has long been feted in France, where she is one of the few female authors to appear on school curriculums. The extraordinary thing is how long it has taken the anglophone world to catch up. Despite a flurry of translations around the turn of the millennium, it was only in 2019, when her masterpiece The Years (Les Années) was shortlisted for the International Booker prize, that she began to be widely noticed. Ernaux began writing - in secret, without her then-husband’s knowledge - in the French tradition of auto-fiction, a term now bandied about beyond recognition. Les armoires vides (1974) and the two books that followed were novels based on her own life, written in a conventional form. The last of these, La femme gelée (1981) was about a married mother of two who has been “frozen” by domestic life. It offered a view of women in society that would preoccupy her for decades and led readers to assume she was talking about herself. At that point, she made an emphatic switch from fiction to fact: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony,” she resolved. She wanted to write about her late father, who had run a cafe in Normandy and from whom she had become distanced partly as a result of her education. Halfway through writing the novel she began to feel “disgust”. A novel, she later explained, was “out of the question. In order to tell the story of a life governed by necessity, I have no right to adopt an artistic approach.” Instead, she would “collate” her father’s words, tastes, mannerisms, and give an account not just of the man but of his generation and class.

It’s important to understand this about Ernaux’s work: though it is written in memoir form, she features largely as an observer or as a conduit to a shared emotion.

Despite their modesty and precision (many of her volumes run to fewer than 80 pages), the books aim to show something broader than any given self, which is why she is sometimes thought of as an ethnographer or sociologist. In the book she eventually wrote about her father, La place (1983), later translated as A Man’s Place, she admonishes herself: “If I indulge in personal reminiscences… I forget about everything that ties him to his social class… I have to tear myself from the subjective point of view.”

This viewpoint was combined with an extreme attentiveness to, and an erudite knowledge of, literary style. “This neutral way of writing comes to me naturally,” she said. “It is the very same style I used when I wrote home telling my parents the latest news.” La place was the first of her books that she felt was not “false”, and it marked the beginning of a life’s work.

Other volumes were borne of, among other things, terror (her mother’s descent into dementia), desire (a love affair with a married man), physical pain (an illegal abortion), familial pain (the death of an older sister Ernaux never knew), shame, grief and guilt (should she be setting any of this down at all?). “Literature is so powerless,” she writes. And, in Passion simple: “Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things.”

The Nobel jury praised her for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. Her work is part of a European tradition of auto-fiction that has since produced Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgård and Ernaux’s young compatriot Édouard Louis. She now joins sixteen other French recipients for the Literature award. They include major French writers who became true leading figures of international literature of the 20th century: Romain Rolland (Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915), Roger Martin du Gard (1937), André Gide (1947), François Mauriac (1952), Albert Camus (1957), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008), and Patrick Modiano (2014).

[amiramorozova]

Best Friends to Eternal Lovers- Five years, Anna starts training

When we arrived I was tired but also hungry as he got down and helped me down as he led me in. I knew that it wasn't like I did much with not using my small science knowing it wasn't in the cards right now. So when people came to him asking about for the fete he handled it but never let me go. 

You'll never let me go again..will you? I thought

His hand tightened around me as if he heard what I thought but I knew that was impossible. Yet as time went on I had to miss the first fete cause Anna and Nikolai both came down ill and someone had to take care of them. I didn't mind since there was plenty of opportunities to meet the king and I just had to wait but we'd decided on doing a long engagement so it didn't give the wrong impression.

So for five years this was our life, everytime Baghra tried to get close to me something came up that I was detoured away. I think she was starting to get the idea. Anna turned seven and Nikolai was nine, they'd ended up becoming friends with Anna under my care and Nikolai seeming to always be under his and by engagement mine. 

Now Anna was old enough to go train with the kids her age as I was doing some paperwork that morning and I felt Aleks come up behind me kissing my neck on a hickey he'd gave me. "Amira, you should take Anna to the kids training grounds. As her guardian, you would be the best fit for this job and if anything happens to her you may come to me immediately." Aleksander said as I looked up and closed the file. "You're right.." I said as I stood up

I put my kefta on and finished up as I was about to leave when he pulled me close and kissed me. I kissed him back as I was completely in love with him and he was with me as I couldn't wait till the day I was his wife. "In a few months Amira, we'll do the wedding. After things calm down from this years fete and you can finally go now that Anna will be able to figure things out with kids her own age." Aleksander promised

I nod as I smiled and went to get Anna as Aleks had kept her in his hallway with her being my charge as I went to get her as we'd already all ate and knocked on her door. Anna opened the door as she looked up and smiled. "Anna, you get to socialize with the kids here your age." I said as I held my hand out to her and she took it as I led her there. Aleks had shown me all the places there and I was glad that he did so I knew the little palace like the back of my hand. 

Anna: 

When we made it there I was able to relax knowing she'd be fine and we made it. The teacher of the kids approached me and showed respect as most respected me here. "You are the General's fiancé." The teacher said knowing most of them didn't even socialize with me. "Yes, but please call me Amira. This is Anna, she's in my care but she's finally old enough to start training with the other kids." I said as the teacher nod and looked at Anna. "Nice to meet you Anna." 

Anna was still shy so she kept close but I had her come around me as I made sure she stayed infront of me and I kneeled down to her height. "I'll be back to get you after your training unless I have to go with Aleks by the fold. If that happens your friend will come get you and bring you back." I said as she nod and then went with the teacher. 

Nikolai and Anna are such good friends..kinda reminds me of me and Aleks at that age. I thought 

I walked away to get back to Aleks when Baghra was out of her hut and she'd used her cane to cut me off from walking as I stopped. "You're quite lazy, aren't you?" Baghra said as I looked at her like she was crazy. "I am not, I work with him. I'm constantly doing things to help when he needs me even if you don't see me." I said as I was going to walk around when she went to swing her cane at me and again I grabbed the cane in mid air. "If you're coming at me because I am not Ravka's savior to fix the problem. Tough. He doesn't want me risking my life for the problem and if you keep this up I think my grandmother may have something to say." I said 

Despite it pissing her off I didn't care and I knew that Aleks and I had been in talks about the future. We were debating if we wanted kids of our won but I'd never tell her that. I was going to do everything in my power to keep her from messing this up for us. Once I got away I went to speak with the Fabrikators about the details of the wedding things..like my dress. They then told me about this piece that would go under my dress on my leg called a garter normally done in grisha colors but mine were secret so they didn't know how to do it. 

What do I do? It's classified.. I thought 

I heard someone walk in and Aleksander just seemed to show up at the right time as he handed them a paper. "Read this, then destroy it for that part. She's to be protected at all costs." Aleksander said as he put a hand on my head and I blushed a bit knowing he could just affect me in ways and I'd become used to this after five years of it. "General, what about her fete attire?" One of them asked as Aleksander thought about it "Her fete attire in my color only. We must keep my fiancé away from this mess even though she's partially involved as my 2nd in command." Aleks answered them. 

This must be doing with the Apparat..I crossed paths with him once but since I am just in Aleks's color he paid no mind to me. Not only that people would think I'm a saint.. I thought

TagList: @lifeisingrey​,  @houseoftoomanyfandoms​, @mizelophsun11​, @budugu​ ,   @wheresthesunshinesblog  

[wearebackbagels]

more modern au seekings/cooper for you!

the village holds an annual fair/fete including all the usual things (a coconut shy, a water gun game, a hammer strength game etc).

one of the best inclusions (as thought up by the school teachers) is a kissing booth!

johnny gets nominated to be the one to sit in it all afternoon.... he's delighted when reg keeps coming back to give him little kisses and eventually plucks up the courage to give reg his number after the 5th visit to the booth

That would be something! What would the other get up to? what would they do at the fair do you think? Im asking this as I dont have an idea. Btw i think we have to be better at tagging our stuff, many of our convos doesn't even have the ship-tags.

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

"Dave Bartram of Leicester's Showaddywaddy group, received a fantastic welcome when he opened and appeared at South Wigston High School parents'-teachers association summer fete.

Headmaster Mr. Eric Bothamley said 'He was immensely popular, particularly among the children, and entered fully into the spirit of the fete. He must have signed hundreds of autographs.'” (Oadby & Wigston News, June 12th 1981)

[source]

 “South Wigston High School parents'-teachers association summer fete.

Melanie Danvers has her arm autographed.” (Oadby & Wigston News, June 12th 1981)

[source]

[copper-russell]

Copper never thought he would be a hero. Some people use the terms “demigod” and “hero” interchangeably, like they're synonyms. And when he first arrived at camp just shy of his eleventh birthday, he could understand why. Watching the older kids battle one another in the arena, or fire arrows with deadly accuracy, or forge weapons over open flames? That was what heroes looked like, he thought.

He didn't arrive at camp alone. Only a few months before, after his mother moved them into yet another new neighbourhood, Copper had made a new friend. Theo seemed to be just like him, and not just because he was always getting into trouble like him -- he saw the same things that Copper saw. He believed Copper when he said that the boar that had trampled his last school's summer fete was giant, not just an escaped pig. But Theo could do one better: he was a satyr. And he was there to take Copper somewhere safe, away from the teachers with snake eyes and the playground bullies that seemed far too tall and blood thirsty to be regular kids.

When the laestrygonians attacked, Theo fought back, and got Copper safely to camp. Once he was claimed, he set Copper up with his new siblings, but Copper wouldn't forget his old friend, the one who had helped lead him to safety. In the final battle to protect camp and Olympus, Copper would've been quite happy to fight alongside Theo. Except for the fact that Theo wasn't there -- he had turned. Gone to Kronos' side, no doubt selling secrets for months, maybe even years, back to when Copper had gone on his first quest away from camp.

The betrayal was too much, but in war, there was no time to face it. He had a decision to make. Copper headed to Olympus with four other heroes, and with a gift from his father, a quiver that could produce flaming arrows, sonic arrows, even a few that created a flashbang upon impact, he helped the demigods take Kronos down.

And then life seemed to simply... carry on. What became of Theo? Copper never found out. Died in action, he supposed, though he hasn't stopped looking for him. A few years of college and a few more years now, working as a nurse in an elementary school for kids with additional needs, always keeping an eye out for his old friend, wondering if he'll ever see him again, or if he's relegated now to the pits of Tartarus.

He returns to camp determined to get stuck in -- a good game of capture the flag, a bit of helping out at the arts and crafts tent, and a catch up with those who are still here.

[oliverbraid]

CHARITY

Royston de Deniers’ red tie hangs loosely under his white collar. Untied, the two lengths overlap across his chest, making the shape of an overemphasised awareness ribbon. The thicker end of the fabric showcases the gold outlined logo of an octagon, circled with the name of Jellyby High. In this livery of a diagonal crusader, he brushes by the long, green, polyacrylic curtains carrying his ammo backstage. He edges through a tight corridor made of MDF sheets, one drilled for Pluck-a-Duck, one complete with drainpipe for Splat-the-Rat. These wait in the wings for this afternoon’s planned fete. The disturbance of the curtains knocks out their breaths of embedded dust, hair and DNA. These motes puff into the assembly hall from which the curtains conceal Roy. The particles, donated from both pupils and teachers, swirl up into the thick shafts of window light. They circle around like scrunched up raffle tickets, moved by the centrifugal force of a tombola. All these fragments of humanity consolidate into the bouquet of the hall; hormone-soaked gym socks, deep tomato from cauldrons of beans, and the grease of amateur dramatics face paint. Roy arranges his artillery on the floor and squints, through the polka dot bandana he wears across one eye, at the twelve black journals. Internally he practises the opening lines of the surprise public offering he will make for his peers.

He had paid a pound during registration, along with his fellow pupils, to dress how he pleased for today only. His form tutor, Miss Radclyffe-Hall, had collected each of their coins in an envelope. There they glittered, just like the little single stud in her ear. Her own outfit remained unwaveringly like her regular appearance, the usual polo shirt and shorts. Under the fabric the flesh of her calves bulged out.

*

A Written Ambition I have a dream that one day I will write a story, or a book of some kind. Writing and books have carried my through difficult times and I want to pay back that service in my own way. I haven't trained for this and I know I need practice. For now I am trying my best to practice this and I plan to update my writing in small chunks here. It isn't edited and it's mostly explorative at this stage.

[socaprince]

SOCA THERAPY - APRIL 21, 2024

Soca Therapy Playlist

Sunday April 21st 2024

Making You Wine from 6-9pm on Flow 98.7fm Toronto

Wrong Bam Bam (Dr. Jay Plate) - Destra

Hot Gyal Anthem - GBM Nutron x Jus Jay

Arch - Rhea Layne x Jus Jay

Holiday (DM Edit Clean) - Problem Child x Jus Jay

Carnival - Adam O 

Life After Fete - Kerwin Du Bois

Everytime - Nadia Batson

In The Center - GBM Nutron x Farmer Nappy

Search Party - Preedy

One Ah Dem - Shal Marshall

Roxanne - Problem Child

Too Sweet - Keith Currency

Closer (Dr. Jay Plate) - Imani Ray

Rock Yuh Body - Denise Belfon & Ghetto Flex

Ice Cream - Coalishun

Carnival Darling - Treason

Look Meh In Meh Eye - Gailann & Rocky

Miss Good Reputation - Xtatik

Jamming Practice - Krosfyah

Gossiping - Shadow

Colors - Chinese Laundry

Down Dey (DJ Kevin 'Hornin' Edit) - GBM Nutron

Cook It - Patrice Roberts

Night & Day - Th3rd x JMTB

Drink And Party - Viking Ding Dong

I Am A Guyanese - Adrian Dutchin

Bamboo Fiah - Trevon Vibez

Body Talk - Big Red

Cyah Dun - Lil Red

Purrrfect - Timeka Marshall

Wine Of Di Century - Destra

Jamish Feeling - Motto

Soca Therapy - Patrice Roberts

Top 7 Countdown - Powered By The Soca Source

Top Songs Streamed In March on Apple Music For The Continent Of South America

7. It's The Weekend - Skinng Fabulous

6. Split In De Middle - Freezy

5. Thief Piece - Problem Child

4. Temperature - Machel Montano

3. Rum Talk - Ravi B x Jo'e

2. Feteland - Kerwin Du Bois x Kes

1. DNA - Mical Teja

Break Down - Innocent Crew

Tankalanka - Sackie

Run Away - Jamesy P

Chemistry - RAE x Skorch Bun It x AdvoKit Productions

Hard Rock - Skorch Bun It x AdvoKit Productions

Cool Down - Olatunji x Skorch Bun It x AdvoKit Productions

Nutella - V'ghn x Skorch Bun It x AdvoKit Productions

Keep My Cool - Kes

Easy - Destra

Flood - Ataklan

Soucoyant - GBM Nutron x DJ Private Ryan x David Rudder x Paul Keens Douglas

Trini Lingo - Bunji Garlin

Golden Ray - Crystal Tais x Don Iko

Magical - Lyrikal x Don Iko

Counting My Blessings - Nadia Batson x Don Iko

Sometime - Leadpipe x Jus Jay

When Last - GBM Nutron x Jus Jay

Mind Off (Clean) - Lil Rick x Jus-Jay

Brain Freeze - Leadpipe x Jus-Jay

BYE x2 - Saddis x Jus-Jay

Cyah Hear Yuh - Patrice Roberts

A Little Jam - Problem Child

Wet Me Down - Sedale

PAN MOMENTS

Boss Lady (Steelpan Cover) - Michael the Pannist

TANTY TUNE

(1976) Tourist Leggo - Short Shirt 

The Teacher (Antiguan Style) - Ricardo Drue

Cyah Contain - Tian Winter x DJ Quest

Friday Freeup (Freestyle) - Ezra Ft. Teamfoxx

Martinique (Nom Freestyle) - French Man Ft. Motto 

Whistle While You Work - Triple Kay

Energy - DJ Cheem x Tallpree

Jump Up - Bunji Garlin

Same Thing - Problem Child x Shal Marshall

Do What You Want - Skinny Fabulous x Asa Bantan x Mr Killa

First Experience - KMC

Is Carnival - Destra Garcia x Machel Montano

Carnival Survivors - Machel Montano x Wyclef Jean

Dead Or Alive - Shurwayne Winchester

Get On - Fay Ann

Tay Lay Lay - Xtatik

Carnival Come Back Again - Iwer George

Nasty Up - Problem Child

Rukshun - Lyrikal

Carnival Contract (Mr. Vik Band Edit) - Bunji Garlin

Beatin Road - Preedy x Smiddy Smith

Born To Fly - Nailah Blackman x Pumpa

Devotion - Destra

NORTHERN PRESCRIPTION

Toronto - Miguel Maestre

One Of A Kind - Voice x Machel Montano

Mind My Business - Patrice Roberts x Travis World x Dan Evens

Follow Dr. Jay @socaprince​ and @socatherapy

“Like” Dr. Jay on http://facebook.com/DrJayOnline

[glapplebloom]

The Launching of a New Ship

There’s a dance coming up inspired by the Fetlock Fete. While it is called the Amity Ball, a lot of the traditions are there. Such traditions include a contest for Best Pony Pal, which Yona wonders how she could be one if she’s not a pony. But Sandbar says it doesn’t matter as all that does is them going together. So yes, Sandbar is asking Yona to go with him to the dance. He is crushing on her so far and I’ve noticed more of their connections prior to this season.

But Yona finds out she has to wear a dress so she fears she wouldn’t be a Pony Pal, so she asks Rarity to help her become one. While you may question why she’s helping Yona when the lesson is “you should be yourself”, I think Rarity is doing this because she doesn’t understand why Yona wants to learn. She’s thinking it's wanting to do the traditions as best as she can, and not realizing it's because it's for a boy.

Like if Rarity knew this was because she wanted to do this for a date, it would be a completely different episode. But as is, Rarity is great as always with a really nice song. Yona also sings nicely compared to the first song of the season. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy help with the Dancing as Pinkie Pie and Applejack helps with the Lucky Pot. And after a good chunk of the episode, Yona gets it.

At the ball, the other non-ponies are being wall flowers while Sandbar tries to convince them to participate. But then they tell him about how Yona was working with the teachers for this dance. And yes, they know why. Sandbar doesn’t and is surprised to see Yona talk normal and all fancy dressed up. It seems to be working, but despite all the practicing, she never did in a dress and wig. So it trips her up and wrecks the dance. Yona takes it well.

At the Treehouse of Harmony, Yona is alone moping about how she screwed everything up when Sandbar comes in to cheer her up. And it works as we see the shipping sailing through the Ocean of doubt with ease. Back at the dance, everyone was worried about Yona because they thought they were teaching her how to have fun in the dance and not changing her. And because of the work Yona and Sandbar did for each other, they win the Award which is now called the Amity Ball Award for Friendship.

It ends with Yona teaching everyone at the dance the Yakyakistan Stomp. It's like a Mosh Pit without smashing each other. Overall, it is a great episode and one of my favorites of this season. While I was sad my Yona/Ocellus ship sunk, Yona/Sandbar was just so cute I couldn’t not like it. So this may be another case of “I’m going to reblog/reupload a comic because I couldn’t beat it”. Only I don’t think many people here have seen it.

Click here for the original review and how it fits in GLAB canon.