#from the journal of leopold

[bakumatsu-assassin]

Journal Entry: August 7, 1863

The tides of change sweep over Japan with an unrelenting force, and I, like a leaf caught in a tempestuous current, am carried along. The events of recent weeks have only reinforced the fragility of the present moment, a reminder that history is in the making, and I am but a witness to its unfolding.

The Choshu domain, emboldened by their victory in the Shimonoseki Strait, continues to stand defiant against the shogunate's authority. Their actions have sent ripples of unrest across the nation, and the chorus of discontent grows louder by the day. The clamor for "Sonnō jōi" resounds from street corners to palace halls, a fervent call for unity and change.

As an emissary of the Brotherhood, I find myself on a path intertwined with the course of this struggle. Okamoto and I engage in heated debates, our conversations charged with the weight of opposing perspectives. He questions the very tenets of the Creed, finding fault in our methods and doubting the integrity of our cause.

In the heart of Kyoto, a city that holds the echoes of tradition and the whispers of revolution, I meet with Okamoto once again. The sun hangs low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the ancient streets. As we walk, the scent of incense and the distant hum of voices weave a tapestry of intrigue.

Our conversation takes us to the heart of our doubts and convictions. Okamoto's voice carries a mixture of frustration and anger, his words a reflection of the turmoil that has gripped his soul. He speaks of the Creed's role in manipulation, its potential to be used as a tool for control. The story of Al Mualim serves as a haunting reminder of the thin line between righteousness and corruption.

The Creed, like any ideology, is not without its flaws, its vulnerabilities. It is a mirror that reflects both the noble and the sinister aspects of human nature. As Assassins, our duty is to wield its principles with wisdom and discernment, to guard against the very darkness we seek to dispel.

As the moon rises over Kyoto, our conversation wanes, but the echoes of our words linger in the night air. The city's lanterns cast a warm glow upon the cobbled streets, illuminating the path ahead.

[alwaysbewoke]

Ota Benga was born around 1883, in what is now the Republic of Congo. Theirs was a hunter-gatherer society. When he became a man, his teeth were chipped into sharp points, part of his tribal customs. His world came crashing down when King Leopold II of Belgium (The butcher of Congo) established a colony in the Congo to exploit its valuable resources. The demand for rubber was increasing around the world and Leopold wanted to corner the market. He subdued the native population to force them into laboring on the rubber plantations. In Belgium Congo, women were held hostage until their men returned with enough rubber for the colonizer King Leopold. Some had their hands chopped off for not meeting rubber quotas. Ota was out on a hunting expedition when his village was attacked by the slavers. Whether they were Force Publique or an African group working to collect people to sell to them varies from story to story. He was taken captive. On the other side of the globe, a man named Samuel Verner was preparing exhibits for the 1904 World's Fair. The fair's organizers wanted to do an exhibit showing the progress of mankind “from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment, from savagery to civic organisation" He was given a hefty budget to collect living "specimens" of people from Africa to represent the "savage depths" from which mankind had sprung. The experience of young African men at the 'fair' aka Human Zoo, was not a pleasant one. Billed as cannibals, they shook spears at the crowd and grimaced with their filed teeth, modeling their "war dances" Verner sent Ota to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1906, Verner found a new home for Ota: The Bronx Zoo. Ota was put as an "exhibit" A plaque was erected, describing him in the same way an animal would be described and put into a cage in the monkey house. The Minneapolis Journal declared Ota to be the "missing link" between chimps and humans. On March 19, 1916, he stole a revolver gun and shot himself through the heart.

x

[crepesuzette2023]

Your top 5 favorite Mclennon quotes?

Hi Anon, thank you for asking! The following aren't quotes I'd construct into any kind of 'proof' (whether I'm into this or not is another set of footnotes, which I'll spare you), but quotes that illustrate that John and Paul's relationship was fascinating and intense, and puzzling to themselves and others (incl. yours truly). 1.) “Meeting Paul was just like two people meeting. Not falling in love or anything. Just us. It went on. It worked.” — John Lennon - The Beatles by Hunter Davies

2.) “Lennon had attitude, and, taking his lead from Lennon, McCartney could be similar. At times, they reminded me of those well-to-do Chicago lads Leopold and Loeb, who killed someone because they felt superior to him. Lennon and McCartney were ‘superior human beings’.” — Bob Wooler in Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In

3.) “John and Paul paired off - only to find themselves stuck together for life. For John, Paul was the boy who came to stay; for Paul, John was the song he couldn’t make better” — Rob Sheffield, Dreaming The Beatles

4.) TELL ME WHO HE IS. Early song by Paul McCartney, included in The Lyrics (2021). Written in the late 50’s/early 60’s, according to the caption. (photo of journal page)

Tell me who he is Tell me that you’re mine not his He says he loves you more than I do Tell me who he is

Tell him where to go Tell him that I love you so He couldn’t love you more than I do Tell me who he is

5.) John Lennon's word association list from 1976 New York: great Elvis: fat Ringo: friend Yoko: love Howard Cosell: hum George: lost Bootlegs: good Elton: nice Paul: extraordinary Bowie: thin MBE: shit John: great

BONUS TRACK: “I had signs that the group was gonna break up, because… I mean, I think really what it was, really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away."— Paul McCartney (1985), link to interview here

PLAY IT BACKWARDS: "LONDON (AP) — John Lennon wrote vitriolic comments about fellow-Beatle Paul McCartney in a picture biography of the famed pop group, providing new evidence of the tensions between them, the Observer newspaper said Sunday. [...]

"Lennon marked almost every one of the 76 pages with corrections and comments, including one that the Observer took as an indication the group already was experimenting with drugs in the 1960s. [...]

"In an entry noting McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, Lennon crossed out “wedding” and wrote “funeral”, the Observer said. [...]

"But in a final tender moment, the Observer said, Lennon wrote under a photo of himself with McCartney: “The minutes are crumbling away.” (full article.)

[writingoneout]

Untilted Katamari Reflections

Preamble:

Content considerations for the following include:

Parental abuse

Bigotry

Worldly anxiety

You're welcome back another day if that's too much right now.

I.

It’s fall of 2015.

You and your virgin college friends drink shitty cocktails called the “Slutty Will Rodgers.” They’re just Pepsi rawdogged with indeterminate amounts of grenadine and Captain Morgan. When you bought the mixers a Wal-Mart stocker yodeled “OOOOoOoooOH, maKIN sOMe DRINKS?!?!” and you knew it was time to leave.

We Love Katamari is on the Telly. It’s a sweet, trippy game you first bought to cope with high school. On Dark Fridays at 1am, when your inbox was barren and your balls were full, you’d drive to the empty gym downtown and sprint six miles. Then you’d come home and replay the firefly level until you fell asleep with your pug.

Your college friends are bad at the game, so they pass the controller. You’re playing the underwater stage. A spaceman falls in the pond of people gunk and stacked crabs. It’s going really well if you’re honest. You point to the screen and say “this’ll be Florida if Trump wins.” See Fig. 1.

Figure 1: Rick Desantis has big plans for Disney.

Your friends don’t reply because they soon won’t be virgins and their tongues battle each other’s. It’s a different game they play, one with fuzzier rules, but greater industry respect. You wish the campus gym was open 24/7.

. . .

Your skills as the prince are not inherent. You first meet him in 2005, when your dyspraxic hands can barely tie a shoe. Your parents catch you lose shit for the Toonami review of Me and My Katamari. They buy it for Christmas, hoping to steady your nerves while your father’s in therapy.

Dr. Flam is a Neo-Freudian hitched to your mom’s guy, Dr. Flim. She’s deep in your dad’s dream journal and makes him watch movies like Cool Hand Luke to really reign in his ego. He gets the DVDs from the Netflix site, then through the mail. As a family you watch your dad’s therapy films and reruns of Inyuasha.

In the waiting room you barely navigate the sticky ball through Namco Bandai’s Satoshi Kon parade. See Fig. 2. You’ve only seen adults express anger verbally, so when you mess up you grunt a lot and let out those Leopold Butters Stotch swears like “crap,” “shoot,” and “gosh darn.” You’re not particularly self-aware, so you probably just say “god fucking damn it” a few times and don’t remember. Years later you realize there was probably a secretary behind the glass watching you do all this.

Figure 2: Bwahbwahwabhbawahbwaaaaah.

Sometimes there’s a girl in the room with you, just around your age. She’s stuck while Dr. Flim teaches her mom about what dream snakes mean for her fear of male puberty. That's what he did for your mom, anyway.

You think the waiting-room stranger is cute, but you won’t admit you like girls yet, especially not to yourself. To cope with the cognitive dissonance, you do your weird shit louder while refusing to make eye contact with her. If you get real stressed you crank up the main menu track and yell “ahhhhh that’s so relaxing” while the “nah nah nah nahs” play through your headphones.

At one point the girl stands against a wall and stares at you with her arms crossed. You bet she thinks you’re cool, but she’s probably just annoyed and hopes you’ll notice, or maybe just ask if she’s OK. It’s probably good you don’t talk with her. You might ask something stupid, like if she's seen the roach corpse in the stairwell. It’s been there for a year straight, isn’t that crazy?

For better and worse, you power through your little game alone. Every time you lose the King of All Cosmos beats, shoots, and belittles you. See Fig. 3. It reminds you of when your own dad shattered your Harry Potter wand over the kitchen counter because you dropped a mini pizza.

Figure 3: The King of All Cosmos offers little constructive advice, all things considered.

You fail quite frequently. Eventually you drop the game because it’s getting stressful and you have the power to relieve yourself of the situation—not the Freudian lobby, just your fake dad.

II.

It’s 2012. PlayStation Network uploads The Prince’s primeval outing: Katamari Damacy. Within, Padre Cosmotic flaps his gums over too much hooch then slams his dump truck ass through the better part of our solar system. He dislodges every recognized constellation and even the moon itself.

Cosmos sends Prince to Earth—the last brick left in the shitstorm—to make slop of our planet and bodies. With the slop space itself will be made anew. The Good Son does as he's told, and every living entity experiences euphoric ego death within the bulbous heaven of the Katamari.

As a Real Gamer Teen you lose a lot less in this one. You really go in and fix Fake Dad’s mistakes, no problem at all. This is why a year ago you hailed “gaming journalism” as your calling. You write clean and play tight; should keep the lights on. It’s the most concrete idea you’ve had since 7th grade when you outlined a YA novel called Tooth Pocket. Even you didn’t think Scholastic would buy that one, though. It was just too hot for the book fair.

One day you’re cranking through FFVI and your real dad swings by, mad you're young. He grills your ass and says “I bet you can’t even tell me the biggest thing happening right now.” It’s some real “What’s a gallon of milk cost?” shit, he could mean anything.

 Surprisingly, you can’t think of a good answer. You and your friends are actually pretty informed because John Stewart is still at the desk and y’all chime in every day. See Fig. 4. You also spend hours each week tearing through MSN slideshows in your Graphic Design class because the Photoshop takes five minutes. You’ve seen a staggering amount of the Syrian civil war.

Figure 4: Sometimes in Snapchat you draw glasses on your cat to make him look like Mitch McConnel. You wouldn't do that without this guy.

Still, you’re a little stumped. It’s the middle of a phenomenon native to moralist presidencies known as "a slow news week.” You actually ran out of war shit the other day and clicked through some slides about Pakistani wrestlers. The seniors who offered you Jack Daniels in the Whataburger lot saw it and laughed. They thought you were peeping dong in class. You really weren’t, but they didn’t believe you. They graduate certain you were bricked up in the Dell Lab over big guys in spandex.

“I don’t know,” you tell your dad.

He throws his hands behind his head, hard, like an orangutan chucking logs at a poacher.

“It’s the fucking carbon tax,” he yells. This comes as a surprise, you think, because that shit is last month’s news. It really didn’t go anywhere.

“Do you not pay attention because you don’t give a shit, or are you just a nihilist and think you can’t do anything?” You can tell in his eyes he thinks there’s a real answer. “Seriously, which is it?

You don’t remember what you said. You probably just stammered until he walked off.

A month later he picks you up from marching band. Your phone is dead, so he had to wait twenty minutes longer than anticipated while you found his car. He punches the rearview mirror until the windshield cracks then screams of how your birth kept him from New England.

III.

It’s 2016. A rockin’ MILF in the Psych department gets you really into Hamilton. See Fig. 5. Every day you wake up on the grind and blast “You Aaron Burr, sir?” through your shitty 7-11 cans. While cramming foreign language Quizlets and McGraw Hill Online you do this thing called “Hafilton.” It’s where rock up to “Nonstop” and quit listening just before Hamilton decides what he will stop is being a good husband.

Figure 5: Like Kojima, you know "MILF" is a mindset, not a factual inquiry.

It’s 2018. Your grades are notably better and you’ve snuck into the honors program. Like Hamilton himself, you really flourished at 19 and thought about running for office. You immediately abandoned this idea after remembering your allergy to recordings of your image or voice.

You cohabit with the Psych MILF, and she offers some advice: she’s really had her boots on the ground with this whole “clinical psych thing” and honestly, respectfully, she loves you, but dear God it might not be your scene. It’s taken a real toll on her and the friends, and she can’t imagine you going through that shit.

At 1am in your living room you boot up DOOM (2016) and listen through some Hamilton. Angelica is thirsty on main when you remember that you, yourself, could be a lawyer. You don’t have to run for Congress to fight the establishment. There’s just the common law, and it’s right there. You can just get your grubby little hands in that shit and work your magic.

. . .

It’s the last semester of undergrad. Your Western Thought professor says Hamilton wasn’t really a huge deal and really James Madison shat out the big parts of our faction-proof empire. Yes, there was, in fact, a civil war, but the caplock rifle worked it out. After the Federalist papers he has you read the Bill of Rights but no Supreme Court cases. There’s a lot of talk on negative liberties.

Just before finals, the learned doctor says your generation only has two things to worry about: the climate and the poverty. Yeah they’re big, he says, but they’re just two things. You’re crafty kids, smart as the framers, even.

. . .

The state decides law school is your jam and lets you come inside.

There’s the negative liberties but you actually read Supreme Court opinions when the big boys aren’t shaking fists for Valley Forge. They have you listen to Hamilton for context. You feel dirty. An LRW professor puts on the “I’m Just a Bill” video and your sectionmate with Ivy degrees gets really, really mad.

. . .

The Federalist Society has a comfy presence at your law school. Along with Big Oil they sling out free pizza to every Little Scalia with a rumbly tum tum.

On your way to class you hear what the pizza boys feel. They hate Europeans, those social democrats with the rotten armories and clumpy cash. The Euros, they think, give too much wiggle room for the mentally ill, and by that they mean they mean gay people and probably just women overall.

There are more than two things to fix, you think.

. . .

The pandemic hits. You and some pals start a Google Doc to stay afloat. It barely works. In the Zoom review for the property final your professor catches multiple people crying. "You don't have to be here," he tells them, “there are other jobs.”

. . .

A year passes. You’re in a niche public interest class you do all right with. The professor looks you and thirty-five others dead in the eye and says how sorry he is that law school is traumatic. You shed a single tear in your little window. You're pretty in the shit and haven’t worn pants to class in months.

Then public interest prof takes a big, big drag from his long, fat spliff. He spins his desk chair and baseball cap at the same time, never letting go of the joint.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s not your fault, really, but the world is fucked. It’s time to fix what your parents did.”

The next week he gives a practice exam where the best solution is to sell an old lady’s house to Nestlé.

IV.

It’s 2022. After throwing your whole gooch at it, you fail the bar exam.

You fall back hard into exercise. When you’re not slamming Barbri you’re at the gym binging curls and cranking the Chainsaw Man soundtrack. One night on the way to squats you finally hear “Black Parade.” Just like you, Mr. Gerry Wayland is stuck between global disrepair and the desire to write Funny Little Books.

You just started an FLB yourself, actually. It’s spin on a Story Break episode you love. In your version there’s a fucked up civil war horse that moves like a spider and is covered in bugs. Rich people kill the planet then the horse gets lost in space. It’s compelling, you promise. There’s body horror and pirates dressed like Gorton’s Fisherman. See Fig. 6 It’s about the horrors of the contemporary world state. It’ll be fun.

Figure 6: An untapped horror icon. Imagine blood contrasting that yellow.

Big problem, though: you remember rich people love hiking. There’s no grass on Mars, not that good shit anyway. Would they really fuck all of it?

You edit. In the last few years, the real breathless ones, the oligarchs cash their tab. A cartel, they think, could really muscle those stragglers, the tragically common. There’s one city left with both breathable air and refugees. They level it. The few survivors are spread amongst the stars, so their loves and languages may die.

. . .

It’s the middle of Bar Prep Round 2. You and the patient MILF see Hadestown in the Big City.

There’s a juke joint on stage flanked by devil trombones. A sad little guy slinks in from the janitor’s closet. His name is Orpheus and, just like you, he’s a sad, short writer who likes a lady so much it comes out weird. He has a vision, he says, for a little ditty. It’s compelling, he promises, and shit’s gonna change. His love is functional and realized, worth the investment of a hardened woman displaced by capital’s torture. She believes him.

You cry because you know where this goes.

It’s just a single tear.

Don’t worry.

Nobody sees.

. . .

There’s this game you like, by some corporate anarchists who hate themselves. They’re Scandinavian, from the spot in Tallin where you stopped for a cruise. Every gift shop there had swastikas and gas masks leftover from the bloody years.

In the game is a liberal yacht MILF. She thinks you’re stupid but someone’s helping with your gun, so you’ve got that on her. And yet, she pins you, re your whole writing thing. See Fig. 7.

Figure 7: She sucked, but it still hurt when she left.

Your favorite Supreme Court podcast says the ocean’s last hope is other countries. But those countries’ people cry to the Disco game, and their ministers also bought The End of History. You meet them on the subreddit. You're all geeked out, waiting for the tide.

. . .

It’s the era of desert cradles. God thinks you’re disgusting, so he sends his better kids with a memo: the flood was too much work on his end, it’s time for something different.

“Just keep walking,” he says.

Your skin bares his figure. So do the corpses. You little birds among billions, gassed out and screaming, move to clean.

V.

It’s 2023.

We Love Katamari is up on the PlayStation store. You sit with the cats and mow down some crabs. You don’t need it so much these days, but it’s nice.

There’s a Bar card in your wallet, just below your gym tag. There are two interviews in your Google Calendar. Good stuff might happen, hopefully soon. You crawl into bed and wrap an arm around your wife’s rib cage.

Everything matters and nothing is safe.

You are loved enough to sleep.

[romanovsmurdermystery]

On the photograph: on the left Nicolas II (Nikolai Alexandrovich) and on the right German Prince Leopold, location Ai-Todor Palace in Crimea.

The image is a page from an archival issue N12 of the weekly journal Ogonek, 1925. The article was written by Y. Sobolev. The article describes the events surrounding the abdication of Nicolas II and then him being under home arrest in Alexandrovsky Palace, his move to Tobolsk and then to Ekaterinburg. The last two events are just mentioned without any details. There is also one line saying that on 16 July the execution sentence was carried out. At the end of the article it is mentioned that self-announcement of Grand Duke Kirill the Emperor of Russia and ''appointment' of Nikolai Nikolaevich the guardian of the Russian throne cannot be taken seriously.

It appears that one page of the article is missing.

It is not quite clear why this particular article was published in 1925 and what it aimed at.

On the images: pages of the article on Nicolas II by Y. Sobolev. (Ogonek weekly journal, issue N12, 1925)

[ginandoldlace]

Photograph showing Queen Victoria driving in an open-top landau carriage with her daughter, Princess Beatrice, and granddaughter, Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. The photo was taken in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, on 27th July 1897 as part of her jubilee celebrations.

Queen Victoria wrote of the day in her journal:

“Very fine morning, still very windy. - After breakfast was photographed in the dress & bonnet I wore on June 22d. Then I sat in the tent. — Tea out with Beatrice, Thora & little Leopold, after which drove across the Ferry to West Cowes, with the 4 ladies following in a 2’ carriage, the Gentlemen having gone on before as yesterday. The town was beautifully decorated with flags & flowers. & quantities of flags hung across the streets. On the Parade which has been widened a stand had been erected, where all the leading people of the town were assembled. There was a Guard of Honour of the Isle of Wiaht Volunteers, & men of the Fire Briaade were posted round the stand. I had an escort of the Hants Carabineers. A choir of 200 from different churches & dissenting Chapels sang the special Hymn, but were placed too far off to be well heard. An address from the Town Council was then presented & I said a few words of thanks for the hearty reception that had been given me, - spoke with affection of my Island Home. Drove as far as Egypt point & then back again through the town. A number of old people were drawn up in the churchyard, & a great many people were out. On the Esplanade the Pipers were stationed & played again. - Louisa A., Bertha L., Sir Norwell Salmon, Sir E. Commerell, Sir F. Edwards, Capt: Acland, & Fritz Ponsonby dined. -“

Swipe to see the full image, which possibly shows the choir the Queen described.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by step. The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, as well as students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have similarly reconstructed the paths of the London amblers in “Mrs. Dalloway.”

Such maps clarify how much these novels depend on a curious link between mind and feet. Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town. As Mrs. Dalloway walks, she does not merely perceive the city around her. Rather, she dips in and out of her past, remolding London into a highly textured mental landscape, “making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh.”

Since at least the time of peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking, and writing. (In fact, Adam Gopnik wrote about walking in The New Yorker just two weeks ago.) “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” Henry David Thoreau penned in his journal. “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Thomas DeQuincey has calculated that William Wordsworth—whose poetry is filled with tramps up mountains, through forests, and along public roads—walked as many as a hundred and eighty thousand miles in his lifetime, which comes to an average of six and a half miles a day starting from age five.

What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER :: The Men Walking Every Block in New York City

Because we don’t have to devote much conscious effort to the act of walking, our attention is free to wander—to overlay the world before us with a parade of images from the mind’s theatre. This is precisely the kind of mental state that studies have linked to innovative ideas and strokes of insight. Earlier this year, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford published what is likely the first set of studies that directly measure the way walking changes creativity in the moment. They got the idea for the studies while on a walk. “My doctoral advisor had the habit of going for walks with his students to brainstorm,” Oppezzo says of Schwartz. “One day we got kind of meta.”

In a series of four experiments, Oppezzo and Schwartz asked a hundred and seventy-six college students to complete different tests of creative thinking while either sitting, walking on a treadmill, or sauntering through Stanford’s campus. In one test, for example, volunteers had to come up with atypical uses for everyday objects, such as a button or a tire. On average, the students thought of between four and six more novel uses for the objects while they were walking than when they were seated. Another experiment required volunteers to contemplate a metaphor, such as “a budding cocoon,” and generate a unique but equivalent metaphor, such as “an egg hatching.” Ninety-five per cent of students who went for a walk were able to do so, compared to only fifty per cent of those who never stood up. But walking actually worsened people’s performance on a different type of test, in which students had to find the one word that united a set of three, like “cheese” for “cottage, cream, and cake.” Oppezzo speculates that, by setting the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought, walking is counterproductive to such laser-focussed thinking: “If you’re looking for a single correct answer to a question, you probably don’t want all of these different ideas bubbling up.”

Where we walk matters as well. In a study led by Marc Berman of the University of South Carolina, students who ambled through an arboretum improved their performance on a memory test more than students who walked along city streets. A small but growing collection of studies suggests that spending time in green spaces—gardens, parks, forests—can rejuvenate the mental resources that man-made environments deplete. Psychologists have learned that attention is a limited resource that continually drains throughout the day. A crowded intersection—rife with pedestrians, cars, and billboards—bats our attention around. In contrast, walking past a pond in a park allows our mind to drift casually from one sensory experience to another, from wrinkling water to rustling reeds.

Still, urban and pastoral walks likely offer unique advantages for the mind. A walk through a city provides more immediate stimulation—a greater variety of sensations for the mind to play with. But, if we are already at the brink of overstimulation, we can turn to nature instead. Woolf relished the creative energy of London’s streets, describing it in her diary as “being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre & swim of things.” But she also depended on her walks through England’s South Downs to “have space to spread my mind out in.” And, in her youth, she often travelled to Cornwall for the summer, where she loved to “spend my afternoons in solitary trampling” through the countryside.

Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts. Ultimately, maps like the one that Nabokov drew are recursive: they are maps of maps.

Why Walking Helps Us Think

By Ferris Jabr

[sweetcherubsblog]

Heyy , welcome to my sugary sweet blog!

My second account: @darlingangelsblog

Kpop account: @darlingminasblog

𝓗𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓼 𝓪 𝓫𝓲𝓽 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓶𝓮 !

୨୧ just call me cherub! (privacy reasons)

୨୧ 　I come from the uk

୨୧ sexuality: I don't have a label !

୨୧ she/her pronouns, please !

୨୧ intj

𝓔𝔁𝓽𝓻𝓪

୨୧ I love the colour pink!

୨୧ I am a forever sweet treat girly! (Chocolate cake is my fav )

୨୧ I listen to any type of music ! Give recommendations ♡

୨୧ reading , writing, and journaling are my personal fav hobbies !

୨୧ books ( call me by your name , pride and prejudice, a lovers discourse, the twilight saga, a monster calls )

୨୧ films (Pride and Prejudice 2005 , Little Women , Call Me by Your Name, Twilight Saga, kate and leopold, chronicals of narnia)

[best-habsburg-monarch]

Maximilian , Emperor of Mexico, reign: 1864-1867

- Possibly the better brother

Carlos I (V) , reign: 1519-1556

-has a chocolate named after him - His two iconic bastards are also in this bracket.

Propaganda under the cut because there was a lot for both of them

Propaganda for Maximilian:

From: anon

-He traveled to Brazil

From: other anon

- He loved plants

- He was a sassy man

- He had good taste

- He learned Nahuatl

- He’s cute (I mean look at him)

- He said “gay rights”

- He banned child labour in Mexico

- He gave many rights back to indigenous people

- Bro was wronged by France (haven’t we all?)

- He’s baby

- Got executed, come on, give him this guys 🥺

From: other other anon

- He loved to design gardens and collect insects which makes me think he would've loved playing animal crossing

From @kaiserin-erzsebet:

An outspoken liberal in a period where the monarchy was still quite conservative.

Vice-Admiral of the Navy who initiated scientific projects and exploration.

Aesthetic girlie. Collected flowers, painted, wrote poetry, and kept a journal. He would have loved Tumblr.

(Probably) gay or bisexual.

Allegedly slapped Franz Joseph for refusing to allow Lombardy to have an elective body.

Sisi's favorite brother-in-law (and not in a romantic way, fuck you Netflix)

Refused to take the Mexican crown until a plebiscite had been held because he wanted to be invited by the Mexican people.

Gave up all of his Austrian titles to go to Mexico because he believed he had made a promise to them.

Understood why his execution was for the good of the Mexican republic.

Also, his wife was amazing and capable and the amount of pure misogyny that certain historians and biographers have thrown at her is ridiculous. I know this isn't a Carlota poll, but she'd want Max to win.

Netflix did him unbelievably dirty. Please give him this.

For Carlos V:

from @master-of-the-opera-house:

- Universal empire babey! Sure he lucked into it, but very much successfully kept it afloat in his time on the throne, more than less anyway.

- Born on a toilet at a party at 3am

- Mommy issues

- Daddy issues

- Shagged his step-grandma when he was 19. Love wins!

- Look at the size of that chin! A peasant had to tell him to close his mouth bc he couldn't keep his jaws shut by default

- If Leopold was the ugliest in the Austrian branch he's probably the ugliest or at least second in the Spanish branch

- Approved of a cocks-out nude statue of himself walked so nsfw fanart commissions could run

- The ✨ confidence ✨ he had to do that uwu

- God complex

- Accidentally shot a peasant dead with a crossbow once as a teen oopsie

- Burnt out and got depressed at the end of his life the least he could win is a poll

- Split the inheritance into the Spanish and Austrian branch so without him we literally wouldn't even be voting today

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 36, 2023

Optimization of energy and time predicts dynamic speeds for human walking. Carlisle, R. E., & Kuo, A. D. (2023). eLife, 12, e81939.

Learning critically drives parkinsonian motor deficits through imbalanced striatal pathway recruitment. Cheung, T. H. C., Ding, Y., Zhuang, X., & Kang, U. J. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(12), e2213093120.

A circuit mechanism linking past and future learning through shifts in perception. Crossley, M., Benjamin, P. R., Kemenes, G., Staras, K., & Kemenes, I. (2023). Science Advances, 9(12).

Critically synchronized brain waves form an effective, robust and flexible basis for human memory and learning. Galinsky, V. L., & Frank, L. R. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 4343.

Rapid learning of predictive maps with STDP and theta phase precession. George, T. M., de Cothi, W., Stachenfeld, K. L., & Barry, C. (2023). eLife, 12, e80663.

Asymmetric retinal direction tuning predicts optokinetic eye movements across stimulus conditions. Harris, S. C., & Dunn, F. A. (2023). eLife, 12, e81780.

Learning vs. minding: How subjective costs can mask motor learning. Healy, C. M., Berniker, M., & Ahmed, A. A. (2023). PLOS ONE, 18(3), e0282693.

Comparing retinotopic maps of children and adults reveals a late-stage change in how V1 samples the visual field. Himmelberg, M. M., Tünçok, E., Gomez, J., Grill-Spector, K., Carrasco, M., & Winawer, J. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 1561.

Modulation of potassium conductances optimizes fidelity of auditory information. Kaczmarek, L. K. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(12), e2216440120.

Progressive neuronal plasticity in primate visual cortex during stimulus familiarization. Koyano, K. W., Esch, E. M., Hong, J. J., Waidmann, E. N., Wu, H., & Leopold, D. A. (2023). Science Advances, 9(12).

Sensory and Choice Responses in MT Distinct from Motion Encoding. Levi, A. J., Zhao, Y., Park, I. M., & Huk, A. C. (2023). Journal of Neuroscience, 43(12), 2090–2103.

Complexity of cortical wave patterns of the wake mouse cortex. Liang, Y., Liang, J., Song, C., Liu, M., Knöpfel, T., Gong, P., & Zhou, C. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 1434.

Enhanced Reactivation of Remapping Place Cells during Aversive Learning. Ormond, J., Serka, S. A., & Johansen, J. P. (2023). Journal of Neuroscience, 43(12), 2153–2167.

Human generalization of internal representations through prototype learning with goal-directed attention. Pettine, W. W., Raman, D. V., Redish, A. D., & Murray, J. D. (2023). Nature Human Behaviour, 7(3), 442–463.

On the role of inhibition in suppression-induced forgetting. van Schie, K., Fawcett, J. M., & Anderson, M. C. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 4242.

Interaction of dynamic error signals in saccade adaptation. Wagner, I., & Schütz, A. C. (2023). Journal of Neurophysiology, 129(3), 717–732.

Honey bees infer source location from the dances of returning foragers. Wang, Z., Chen, X., Becker, F., Greggers, U., Walter, S., Werner, M., … Menzel, R. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(12), e2213068120.

Resolving the associative learning paradox by category learning in pigeons. Wasserman, E. A., Kain, A. G., & O’Donoghue, E. M. (2023). Current Biology, 33(6), 1112-1116.e2.

Development of a measure of kindness. Youngs, D. E., Yaneva, M. A., & Canter, D. V. (2023). Current Psychology, 42(7), 5428–5440.

Recurrent network interactions explain tectal response variability and experience-dependent behavior. Zylbertal, A., & Bianco, I. H. (2023). eLife, 12, e78381.

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

For the ask game, 🧡💚🤍 for Fuegoleon and Leopold 🥰

YAY! I get to start with Vermillions! ^^

Fuegoleon

💚-- General

He wears exclusively lavender scented hair oil, but to the particular scent he stumbled on by accident. The hair oil bottle caps had been accidentally switched at the store, and the morning he opened the bottle to use it, he did notice the scent, but was already running late, which is why he opted to use it regardless. And the scent wasn't unpleasant by any means either. So, by the time the day was done, he had concluded it to be a good scent, which is why he used the entire bottle, and based on it the store made a signature one for him, adding a little bit of richness to a custom made solution.

🧡-- Childhood/Backstory

Though Fuegoleon was a diligent student, up to the point where Theresa needed to keep him from exhausting himself, because she knew that it'd take time for him to grow, it got to Fue at times. Which is why he used to write a journal, in which there were also (though a bit clumsy) poems about his own emotions.

If he was asked about it, he'd quite simply say that it was for the sake of practicing his penmanship, with which it did help, but the real reason for him to keep it and write it, the diary and the poems, was to handle his own emotions. And it allowed him to identify and process his emotions very constructively, as well as better take an analytic approach to all situations.

🤍-- Fluff

He has all the birthdays and other important dates for his near and dear written in his calendar well in advance, as well as reminders a few weeks before so that he wouldn't miss the dates when they arrive. Partly it's about wanting to be prepared and have enough time to think about a thoughtful gift, but even if he wouldn't think about a gift to give, he wants to be sure to at least remember the date and be able to congratulate the person in question.

Leopold

💚-- General

There was a time when Leo did consider another job than a MK for himself. But this was kept to himself, because he felt that it was an expectation of the family (and public) for him to be a knight, much like all of his family.

He did want to have a job where he'd get to help people though, and he quite quickly realized that politics, as in purely just politics, weren't for him, so he relinquished that idea. And he realized that thought to be just his insecurity talking, since he was still quite unsure of his own abilities. But still, if he could work with knights, train them and be more on the field, rather than stuck in an office for the job he'll be doing, he'd be more happy than being an "pencil pusher". He'd not made for the indoors.

🧡-- Childhood/Backstory

The first Leo heard about the canyon where Mereo wanted to chuck him as a toddler, he snuck out during the night. He was 13 at the time, and had heard about it by chance, but he thought that Anieu and Aneue must've climbed out of it by themselves, so he should too. So, he descended down there through the safest route and climbed back up all by himself. It was the first time he felt really, genuinely, all around accomplished.

🤍-- Fluff

He is very well versed with "language of the flowers", so he's able to order bouquets and flowers for the birthdays and other celebration days for his family members if need be, or a potential spouse later on, that are extremely fitting. Most might be able to think of only romantic meanings for flowers, but Leo knows all platonic meanings too.

[bakumatsu-assassin]

Journal Entry: June 19, 1863

The days have turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, each passing moment carrying with it the weight of uncertainty and upheaval. The situation in Japan remains precarious, with tensions between the Bakufu and the allied domains of Satsuma and Chōshū reaching a fever pitch.

Okamoto's doubts have not abated, and I find myself drawn to his side once more. We often engage in lengthy conversations, discussing the Creed's tenets and the challenges we face as Assassins in this turbulent era. His outspoken nature and brashness have not waned, and I respect his unwavering commitment to seeking the truth, even when it leads him down a path of doubt.

Our encounters are fleeting, for the demands of our mission keep us apart for extended periods. The need to support the Tokugawa Shogunate against the encroaching foreign powers remains our primary objective, but the intricacies of politics and alliances weave a complex tapestry that requires vigilance and precision.

As I walk through the streets of Edo, I cannot help but notice the undercurrent of discontent that courses through the people. The influence of foreign powers and the rapid changes they bring threaten the traditional way of life, and the consequences are felt by both the common folk and the ruling elite.

Within the Brotherhood, tensions run high as well. Differences in opinion on how best to navigate this ever-changing landscape give rise to heated debates, testing the very fabric of our unity.

[asharkapologist]

Elisa Melody Diary Entry #1: I Hate That Family

A/N: So I really love Elisa Melody, and I randomly got the idea to write a journal entry from her POV where she complains about the Rochesters/ranks them from her favorite to least favorite, because I thought that would be fun. I hope you enjoy!

Also thank you @chelleinyy for helping me with this 🙏

Unless I wish to “disappear” or “suffer a sudden episode of madness,” I must not let this diary be seen by anyone but myself.

It cannot be said that I am not appreciative of my employment as a party planner. My clients can be, more often than not, rude, self-centered, scoundrels, or any mixture, but party planning pays exceptionally well, as the wealthy of Concordia have remarkable amounts of money to throw around. Additionally, I consider myself a creative person. Painting would hardly provide a sustainable career, however, so by billing myself as a party planner, I am able to allow myself to succeed in a job allowing for creativity.

That being said, I believe that I am QUITE entitled to complain about certain clients. I have been holding my tongue in matters concerning my true opinions on the following people, even though I rarely show as much caution with others who hire me. Of course, I do not go around openly slandering the wealthy as that would be career suicide, but the vast majority of my clients do not have my life in their hands like the Rochesters.

The wealthiest family in Concordia.

They practically control this city in every way that matters: economically, politically, and everything in between. And it is an open secret that anyone who challenges or condemns their power either disappears, mysteriously dies or commits suicide, or is admitted into Grim Chapel’s insane asylum. I do not care what they do with their rivals. One should be intelligent enough to avoid challenging the people who very obviously control this city.

But they are some very challenging clients. Even if they pay handsomely. And as I rarely desire to openly rant or vocalize my opinions on them to anyone, especially as I have few friends or people I can trust to not reveal my opinions to others, I figured that it is only safe to confine my thoughts to this diary. And as silly as it may be, I wish to rank the Rochesters from least to most aggravating to deal with. Because I have been concealing these feelings regarding that family for years. And perhaps this will be therapeutic…

I have worked with all nine official living members of the Rochester family. (I say official because surely Horatio and perhaps Larry and Malcolm have multitudes of illegitimate children. And there are rumors about the fate that befall Horatio Rochester’s former wife. Some say she is dead. Some say she retreated to the seaside on the other side of the country. I am not especially concerned--she is not relevant to me, as she has never contacted me to ask me to organize a party.) The members of the family are:

Leopold

Rockley

Larry

Horatio

*Clarissa

Malcolm

Bernadine

Veronica

Archie

The most pleasant Rochester to deal with, and therefore the lowest on this list at number 9 is Clarissa Rochester. I have put an asterisk next to her name, as of some weeks prior to me writing this, she was poisoned at a luncheon. A shame, for she was the most tolerable member of the family. She has benefitted from mysterious fates befalling the Rochesters’ economic rivals and critics, but this is not about her morality. With me she is pleasant and courteous, although I have seen her lose her temper at incompetent servants (one of whom murdered her), but I am not incompetent, and therefore, she has no reason to shout at and humiliate me. She gives me a list of things she wants at her party and rarely gets in my way. I appreciate not being micromanaged. (This will be relevant later.)

Malcolm is next. Of course, I am aware that his political rivals have a mysterious habit of suffering sudden fates that conveniently eliminate them from any election where they would be challenging Malcolm. I am no idiot. But again, this is not a ranking of their morality, simply how pleasant they are to deal with. And when interacting with me, Senator Rochester is perfectly affable and courteous. I have seen him lose his temper at assistants or servants before, but unlike them, I am perfectly capable at my job and therefore have never been yelled at. He compliments my work, even though he rarely deals with me directly, as he leaves most of the party or banquet planning to me, his assistants, or his wife. However, when I do interact with him, he is professional and friendly, and does not get in my way. Which is truly what I appreciate from those who hire me.

Senator Rochester’s sister, Bernadine, is next. Unlike her brother, she is a rather openly haughty woman, making her more of a headache to interact with. While she may not have any moral failings or benefit from anyone’s misfortunes when someone makes a mistake of crossing a member of the family (which is to surely be my fate if this is discovered), she has not taken after her brother in terms of manners presented to the public. However, like her brother, she does not get in my way when I work for her. She gives me the essential information I need for my job and leaves me to work. She does not think she can do my job better than me.

Leopold Rochester is next. I know that the people of Concordia love him. I know that many would decry him being as high as he is. But he is an annoying nitwit. For the man is too helpful. Whenever he hires me, he is constantly checking in with me, constantly asking me if there is anything I need assistance with. He thinks he is being sweet and helpful. He is not. It is a massive annoyance to be interrupted by this rich man who has likely never done the hard work of organizing anything in his life, attempt to help me, ask me to tell him what to do to be helpful, and compliment me. Yes, I know that I am skilled at my work. But when I am working, I do not wish to be bothered. I often end up snapping at him that the most helpful thing he can do is get out of my hair. He will then often apologize and I brush it off, doing anything I can to get him out of my presence. I fear that someone will start a rumor that I am cruel to the “Father of Concordian Innovation” rather than his retribution, because he is nothing but kind to everyone he hires. He may be unintentionally annoying, but he still gets in my way when I am working. He can say this, though: he pays better than anyone else in the family.

Now on this list is where I begin to actively dislike members of this family. Next is Rockley, one of the most oblivious people I have ever met. I have worked with him the least out of the members of the Rochesters (he only hired me once, if you can call it that). And he is…an unique man to work with. He would probably be higher up on this list if I had the displeasure of working with him more than once, for the one time he hired me was…utterly pointless. He proposed bizarre ideas to me, such as having strings of candy on an outdoor plaza of his chocolate factory (that would attract birds who would defecate on everyone), suggesting part of the party be a compulsory tour of his remarkably unsafe chocolate factory, sprinkling some of his then-newest types of candy randomly throughout the refreshments--candy that he somehow created that would cause anything a guest ate for the next thirty minutes to taste remarkably bitter. I told him that his ideas were not good, or at least needed to be heavily altered, but did he listen to me? Not at all. He went ahead with all of his ideas, and ignored mine. I was paid, but as I predicted, his party was a mess, and several people left angry. He did not seem to mind. I do not know why anyone would hire me, knowing of my skills, and then ignore me. At least Horatio does not ignore my ideas. Rockley is an idiot entirely lost in his own world, and I am glad to not have my talents wasted on him any longer. If he continues his current business practices, he may find himself being sued for causing someone’s death, as his factory is, in my opinion, quite a death trap.

Horatio Rochester is next. The patriarch of the family, and one of my best-paying clients. And also the toughest, for nothing I do seems to be enough for him. I know I am good at what I do, otherwise I would never have employment. Horatio knows this, as he continuously pays me to organize his multiple parties. However, I can never escape snide comments and attempts to micromanage from him. He criticizes everything I do, always finding fault with whatever he can. (Does he have nothing better to do at his functions? Does no one want to speak with him? If so, I cannot blame him, for his breath smells terrible, likely from his many cigars he smokes). I do not dare talk back to him, one of the most powerful men in Concordia and someone who I have seen shout out and strike servants, and so I grit my teeth, apologize, and try to fix whatever flaw he has found. He would be unbearable if not for how well he pays. When he hires me, I know I will have an unpleasant time as he thinks he can do my job better than I can with as much fault as he finds, apparently…but I also know I will end up with a large amount of money.

Veronica Rochester does not like me. She has never actually hired me, rather, she has occasionally been foisted onto me by Malcolm when he has given us an assignment of organizing a banquet or something similar. After Rockley, I have interacted with her the least. Like Horatio, she has a habit of criticizing my work, but unlike Horatio, I am often working right alongside her, meaning both of us grow more and more annoyed as we work, but we are forced to communicate through our gritted teeth. I have never seen her smile, and I rarely smile around her, for she thinks she can do my job better than me and argues with me over the pettiest of things. She also has had the audacity to accuse me of being a social climber, simply because I have worked for everyone in her family and many other wealthy people in Concordia. How dare she? I am good at my job. One of the best party planners in Concordia. I have my own business cards. I never have to worry about money. I have been insulted by multiple clients, but they always seem quite ready to hire me, including her family. Of course I am spending much of my time with the wealthy in Concordia, because they can recognize good talent when they see it, unlike her. She is polite enough in public, but with those she considers beneath her, which evidently includes me, she is a miserable person to deal with, and even if he treats me well, my opinion of Malcolm is soured because he makes me work with his miserable wife.

I have been tempted to punch Larry Rochester multiple times. The man is an utter pain to deal with. His party ideas are almost as ridiculous as his brother Rockley’s, and he seems to actively enjoy making the jobs of me and everyone else difficult, especially when he becomes intoxicated and loud (which is often). When he is drunk, he tends to find it amusing to trash decorations, he once started a food fight, and he enjoys humiliating party planners and servants, regardless of how well jobs were done. I distinctly remember a time when I was helping separate two guests from a verbal altercation when he suddenly loudly insulted me in front of everyone at the event, causing many people to erupt into laughter. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, and I had to suppress the urge to punch the smile off of his face. However, I managed to keep my anger in check for two reasons: one, there was an entire crowd watching and such an act of violence would spoil future clients’ opinions of me, and two, considering Larry was recently arrested for strangling a woman and cutting her heart out, I believe I was correct in assuming that he was not someone to be trifled with, who absolutely felt entitled to sink to violent lows and ruin my reputation, if not attack me. It is a blessing he is in prison, and while that is some money gone, he also paid the worst out of everyone in the family.

I HAVE punched Archie Rochester. I must confess, HE is the reason why I began this list, because of something that happened at a recent party, coincidentally the final party Larry attended before being arrested. But Archie has vexed me before this incident. He almost entirely ruined my reputation several months ago when it was discovered that he was Mr Alastor, a mysterious, anonymous gentleman that, for several years, had thrown parties, some of which he had hired me to plan. He could be rude over letters or telegram, but nothing I was unused to. However, this year, Archie as Alastor decided to do something different, as he threw these parties while inviting guests with grudges to said parties, correctly predicting that some of them would kill each other. He did this all in a bizarre attempt to woo Giulietta Capecchi, the daughter of the now-deceased leader of the Italian mob in Concordia. This would have been insignificant to me had he not hired me to plan a party where a murder then occurred. My party! A murder happening! I am fortunate that the victim was not well-liked, otherwise my reputation may have been ruined if a popular woman was murdered under my watch. I almost got in trouble with law enforcement as well, because they were attempting to deduce Alastor’s identity, and since I was in correspondence with him (without knowing who he was), they treated me with suspicion. As if I had more idea than anyone else who he was! As if that was not bad enough, I was also a suspect in the murder that occurred! As if I would poison someone at my own luncheon and ruin my own life and reputation! I quickly gave the police every letter I had received from Alastor as well as all the money he had paid me, and luckily, that satisfied the police. But my reputation could have taken a substantial hit if things had gone differently!

This alone would have been enough to place Archie at number one, but mere days ago, I had another negative interaction with him. He was at a party I had planned, and through ridiculous scenarios involving wine being splashed in my face, him happening to get splashed as well because he was standing near me, us arguing on the way to the washroom to clean ourselves, us returning to the ballroom together, and Archie’s father, Malcolm, giving us an order to do so, we ended up dancing together. Me. Waltzing with the person who almost ruined my reputation and got me in trouble with the law. We argued throughout the entire thing and quite soon we were not waltzing but more of…throwing each other about, spinning, and doing non-decidedly waltz until the song ended and my arms were around him as he dipped me and I was mere feet of the ground, and mere centimeters from him.

It was mortifying. I immediately stood up, and he was embarrassed too, and we exchanged more insults before we both stormed off. After the party ended and I was helping to clean up, I found him, surrounded by empty glasses of sangria in the garden, which started yet another argument, with him calling my party awful. As if it was my fault the now-late thanks to Larry Rochester Deputy Mayor threw wine at me and Archie. He insulted my work, and I was furious at him for being forced to dance with me and embarrassing me in front of everyone by loudly arguing with me and ending with him dipping me that I rather threw caution to the wind and opted to throw a leftover slice of cake at him.

However, because Archie has a headache-inducing habit of always getting me in trouble with the law, he dodged the cake and it hit a nearby police officer (investigating the deputy mayor’s death). The man shouted at me for “assaulting an officer of the peace with cake” as I profusely apologized and explained I was aiming for Archie, who of course, took the opportunity to insult the cake and the party once more. He even called me incompetent, and that was the last straw.

So I punched him in the face. My father once decided to teach me how to throw a good punch and I am glad for that lesson now, because even if it was perhaps foolish to assault a member of the Rochester family, especially one who organized parties with the intent of certain people dying, it felt excellent, some well-deserved payback. Everyone--Archie and the two police officers and even to a certain degree myself--was shocked, and Archie and I were about to start arguing again, and I was about to hit him once more, when the police officers got between us and ordered us to calm down, which led to Archie declaring he was going to seek medical attention (please, I bruised his face, not knocked out his teeth, he’ll be fine) and stomping off.

It was only later that I realized that I could very much get into legal trouble for punching Archie. It would be a cruel act of fate that I did, what with me almost getting in trouble with the law earlier this year thanks to him, to be actually getting in trouble. But about an hour later, I happened to overhear a conversation between him and his mother where she asked him what had happened to his face. I was nearby, folding up a banner I had just taken down, and Archie glanced in my direction for a fraction of a second before muttering that he was fine, that he had gotten too intoxicated and sustained a fall. Once his mother had turned her attention elsewhere he made a rude hand gesture to me and walked elsewhere.

I have convinced myself that I will not get into legal trouble. Knowing him, he is probably too embarrassed to admit to anyone that he was caught off guard and punched by a woman. But still, even if he never presses charges against me, he has secured his spot as the most annoying Rochester to work with, considering he almost got me in legal trouble twice, and that dance. I hated that dance. I don't know what I was thinking, egging him on and becoming so invested in that dance. Curse his father for ordering us to dance together rather than letting Archie stand alone during a waltz and letting me continue my job.

There is one final thing, though. This morning, in my mail, I discovered something bizarre. It was an anonymous note (although I very much recognize the handwriting), with a very strange letter.

I do not take back anything I said during that party. That cake was still awful, and I have some suggestions for how you could improve your party in general.

But I have yet to meet anyone who can keep up with me in arguments and other such back-and-forths. Considering how intelligent I am ( I obtained a law degree in less than a year in Switzerland and graduated top of my class) it is rare to meet anyone who is able to do so. I must begrudgingly admit I am impressed.

Well played.

[elysiium]

& 𝐑𝐄.  AURORA DE' MEDICI & LEOPOLD WAYNE / @violentdesires

THE NEPHILIM FLIPS THROUGH the book in front of her , a battered journal from some warlock recording his life and findings of curses and the like . having arrived early to his penthouse , it was the first thing aurora found at the table to preoccupy herself as she waited for leopold to arrive . things had been busy for the both of them — the warlock welcoming a new baby girl into his and auraline's world and her dealing with everything that happened with violet and julian . getting back to work with leo was a distraction she desperately needed . more than she realized . she didn't have to wait long , the nephilim looking up as he enters the room . ❛ hi . ❜

[shouts-into-the-void]

Just finished These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall and I was pleasantly surprised. The ending left a bit to be desired and I found the main character a bit melodramatic at times, but Marshall really nailed the horror elements and the plot twist hit me like a truck. The main themes are eat the rich, fuck the patriarchy, and the all-consuming power of love, which it deals with pretty well even if it becomes a little heavy handed towards the latter half of the book. If you're not a fan of body horror, I might sit this one out though.

*Spoilers/Plot*

The story surrounds Helen Vaughn as she, her mother Rachel Vaughn, and her mother's boyfriend Simon reconnect with Rachel's estranged family for her father, Leopold's, funeral. We're told that he died of heart problems, which was unusual as "The Masters of Harrow" (the significance of which I will explain in a minute) tend to live a long time.

So they go through the funeral proceedings, the family is rich and snobby with the few exceptions of Helen's uncle Caleb and cousins Desmond and Celia, aaaaand then Helen sees some foxglove in Leopold's corpse's ribcage and hears him telling her to "Find the center of the spiral" because, oh yeah, the house is modeled after a labyrinth, and she understandably freaks out.

After the funeral, Caleb, Leopold's widow Iris, and his brother Eli, pull Rachel and Helen aside to inform them that Grandpa Mansplain Manipulate Manslaughter has left all of Harrowstone Hall and $40 million to Helen if she stays on the grounds for one year and if she says no then everyone else in the family except Iris also loses their inheritance. Apparently the will was mysteriously changed shortly before his death and everyone agrees this was to punish Rachel for abandoning the family, as she is pretty much terrified by Harrow for reasons she can't remember.

She initially refuses, but the car breaks down at the end of the driveway and while waiting for Rachel and Simon to go back and fetch help, Helen wanders into the woods in pursuit of a little girl with an obscured face who randomly appears asking her for help. The girl leads her to a cemetery, where Helen meets The Harrow Witch, who just so happens to be a really cute girl named Bryony who absolutely hates her and her family, but is the only person to tell her the truth about anything. Helen is obviously in love immediately, and goes back to the house. Far what are actually really unclear reasons, Helen decides to stay after all.

She begins to try and find answers as to what happened during Nicholas' experiments, who killed Leopold and Caleb's daughter Jessamine (both whom The Other takes the form of in order to speak, called Figments), why local girls with the family eyes are going missing, and how to survvie the year as Helen becomes increasingly more sick. While Helen and the Vaughns believe The Other is a monster that needs to be contained, Bryony believes it's simply misunderstood and wants to free it.

Helen slowly gleans that Harrow is actually a cage built for a creature called "The Other" that seems to be a god from another world that founder of Harrow Nicholas Vaughn, his wife Annelise, and friend Dr. Raymond accidentally set loose in our world after their experiments trying to make the human mind able to comprehend The Other (in which they lobotomize Dr. Raymond's ward Mary Beaumont and open her up to it, causing her to go insane) accidentally binds it to a child which Nicholas claims appeared when she saw The Other, but is suggested to actually be his due to some...interesting journal entries.

Throughout the book, Helen develops a romantic relationship with Bryony and becomes close with Desmond and Celia, the only Vaughns outside Rachel who don't suck, likely because they also have no idea what's going on.

Eventually, after months of sleepwalking, being attacked by The Other's monstrous creations, Celia's father dying, Helen slowly dying and nearly contorting into one of the monsters, and everyone being shady af; Helen, Bryony, Desmond, and Celia translate the last of Nicholas' diary and discover he killed the child bound to The Other and dismembered her in order to keep it confused/use its powers for himself, and the family is a pretty much a murderous cult that repeatedly binds The Other to an illegitimate Vaughn child and repeats the process every time it starts to heal. The four decide to dig up the girls' bones and put them back together so they can talk to The Other, but Desmond and Celia leave because Desmond knows information the reader doesn't.

So they go into the murder chamber and arrange the bones and ask it what's up.

Helen is The Other.

Um. What.

In a twist of events that hit me over the head with a hammer, it turns out that Helen is actually a piece of The Other that it split off itself so that at least some of it could be free, and then changed Rachel's memories so that she'd believe Helen was her daughter and escape with her. We did see throughout the story that a lot of Helen's personality was similar to The Other, in that she could see inside of people (ie. The foxglove in Leopold's chest because he was poisoned with Foxglove) and has an unavoidable need to create things (using animal bones). Also Simon is one of The Other's creations. Helen then erased her own memories so she could live a normal life, although people were afraid of her because they could tell she wasn't normal and was altering their minds.In another twist, Bryony knows this already because she can't be fooled by The Other and so does Desmond because Helen told him while she was sick and then forgot.

And so does Caleb! And everyone else...in the family...and Celia just told them that Helen remembers to try and help...

They kill Helen.

She doesn't stay dead, and they just keep killing her every time she tries to escape. Eventually they trap her in an endless loop in which she wanders the halls in a trance because it's "more humane" and the rest of the year passes as they prepare to sacrifice her and make Caleb Master of Harrow. Caleb has also told everyone that Helen killed Jessamine, even though it turns out to be him after they tried to kill Celia and it failed because Eli and Victoria whisked her off to London.

Desmond, Celia, and Bryony try to devise a way to break the loop, but Rachel ends up doing it by accident when she demands Helen to tell her why she made her think she loved her, slaps her in the face when she calls her mom, and then starts crying in the hallway. Helen runs away, pursued by Caleb, when Eli shoves her in the library and clears her way to the door. She sees Rachel again and stops, Caleb catches up and shoots her but Rachel jumps in the way and nearly dies, so Helen just reshapes reality so the bullet doesn't exist. They will still proceed to try and shoot her, btw.

Helen flees, finds Bryony, and hides in a derelict cabin. Eli finds them and reveals that the last child to be murdered was Leopold's, and Eli had formed a bond with her after seeing how his brother used and abandoned her mother. In revenge, Leopold had made him be the one to dismember her, but Eli had instead given her a proper burial which allowed The Other to heal enough to form Helen. Eli has been on Helen's side the entire time, because two years ago she got sick and remembered again, and the two made a plan that involved Eli poisoning his brother, changing the will, and also cutting off Helen's hand at one point.

To conclude the plan, Helen turns herself in and goes through with the ceremony, before refusing the poison Caleb gives her and proclaiming herself Mistress of Harrow with Caleb as her sacrifice, as she had previously carried out the necessary components for the ritual and Desmond, Celia, and Bryony all recognise her as the rightful heir. Caleb gets stabby, so Helen fully sheds her flesh-suit and kills him and Iris, sparing Victoria. Eli makes the decision to remain in the chamber while The Other demolishes Harrow and the others flee, and so she turns herself into his niece and alters his mind so he believes he's spending one last day at the park with her while he dies.

Fully The Other now, they remain at the ruins of Harrow and creates, up until Bryony returns (presumably a few years later as she mentions her father wouldn't let her live on the grounds) and refuses to leave until they decide who to be, promising to love them no matter what they decide and revealing the others haven't returned because they believe Helen is dead. The Other decides to be Helen again, and live together with Bryony in a cottage on the grounds, promising to one day leave and see the world.

...

So that was a very long synopsis, but I like explaining things so this is what you get. There were a lot of little details I left out, so definitely give it a read yourself.

[mushlandsandbeyond]

Today's Sundar Portrait features Leopold Drummond!

Leopold Drummond hails from Rooteletor, a faraway city that emphasizes on technology and innovation. While he was studying on archaeology, he visited the Mushlands to study the giants' bones there. He fell in love with the Mushlands soon and moved out as soon as he graduated.

He's most famous for his series on the Mushlands, as it was a relatively unknown area before his arrival. His latest book, "The Mushlands and Beyond", detail the relationship the country has with its surrounding countries such as the Damgo Archipelago and Astoria while supplementing it with his own journal entries as he was visiting.

sorry this one took so long, i got busy with school and work now </3

next week's portrait will feature:

Sea Lanternz!