#god. this is genius. i should get a nobel for this.

[yua-nism]

I saw your tags and I’m now very intrigued like what do you mean yuhan has the SHORTEST TRAGIC BACKSTORY?!?! JUST WHAT IS GOING ON?? like granted I should have known a game about devil cat butlers would have some angst and tragic backstories but god damn 😭😭

there was a miscalculation on my part and yuuhan's is in fact, not the one with the shortest backstory! however that's only because the others have yet to have their backstories be revealed. sorry for the late answer btw, exams have made me pretty tired.

ok so ill briefly explain a bit. this ties in to the requirement to become a devil butler that is, having felt so much despair that one feels like dying. normal people will be swallowed up by the devils they contract with. the despair essentially acts like chains for the devil. so to talk about their pasts in the Briefest Way Possible (lie):

miyaji has beef with lucas on the surface but really it's because he still can't get over the fact that lucas decided to save him from the verge of death instead of someone else he thought was more capable than him while lucas simply chose to save miyaji because he had higher chances of living.

lucas was basically a child prodigy/genius. since young, he's always loved reading books, and even read thick books that even adults struggled to understand. even though he was lonely and had no one to talk to, he still endured it, skipped grades, and became a doctor at the age of 10+. at first he was looked down on for being young, but an older doctor stood up for him. eventually he became the leader of the doctors, but due to his lack of social skills, he struggled to communicate well, which resulted in the doctors hating him. in the end, all the doctors except lucas quit their job. and the group collapsed. (tbf id quit too... imagine being said you didn't work as hard as him and don't have as much brainpower compared to him as well)

ammon has only had his mom since birth and lived with her, selling flowers for a living. ammon would always make sure the flowers would be sold out at the end of the day for his sickly mother, but if he doesn't manage to sell all of them it's heavily implied his mom whips him like he does to himself even now. they were like super poor but ammon still loved his mom because he only had her

berrien has like this super mysterious past but rn it's starting to unravel in chapter 4. he's an orphan and got adopted into a church backed by the grovanas or whatever nobel family to nurture warriors who could fight angels, but surprisingly the church is actually full of love and was ran by someone who fighted angels named Goetia. berrien also met his soon-to-be older brother figure named Beren/Belen. btw all of the kids go by the last name Cliane because goetia wants everyone to become true family.

when berrien was 26 (Beren 29), goetia died from a chronic disease and Beren had to take on goetia's responsibilities. berrien became the one running the church, however shit happened, Beren got demonized, and berrien used his powers to keep Beren alive after forming a contract with his current devil. he's still residing in berrien's basement as of current, but in a coma. berrien still thinks he himself has no rights to be a butler and really does not believe that he's the one keeping the damn thing running

also the church got destroyed like 2400 years ago and yes berrien is 2000+ years old

haures was born into some wack ass family, his dad ran away with some other woman and his mom projected her rage and stuff like that onto haures, and his newborn younger sister Tricia. haures is 10 years older than Tricia. when he was that age, he ran away from home with Tricia (literal baby) because he no longer trusted his mom to take good care of them. after that, when haures was 18, he trained hard to become a soldier under the grovanas nobles so he could afford to let Tricia get treatment for her worsening vision. one heartbreaking scene was when haures showed off his red uniform to Tricia and she said the blue uniform looked good on him... but 5 years later, haures managed to get Tricia's eyes healed!!! surely nothing bad could happen!!!!

sike. haures caught one of the grovanas nobles illegally trafficking humans with some dealer, and arrested him. however that led to the seller getting revenge, and he decided to capture tricia. he stabbed her and threw her into the woods. when haures found her, she only managed to call out to haures before she died after a few breaths. haures was really really really devastated. he sought revenge on the noble, and while the noble didn't die, he was jailed 5 years for harming the noble (not death sentence because he was determined mentally unstable after losing Tricia.). after he got out of jail, he found the noble again and wanted to kill him, but he was reminded of how Tricia admired him for protecting the people and helping those in need, which stopped him. after that, he became a devil butler because of his proficient fighting skills.

lamli was forced to work at a circus by his mom at the age of 10, while starting up with simple duties, he decided to train to become a circus troupe performer so he'd earn more money for his complaining mother. its heavily implied he's abandoned by her and becomes a devil butler because of his nimble body. btw his mom said she never wanted to have lamli right in front of him. jesus.

fennesz was born into a wealthy happy family, and had an older sister. however his war general father lost a war against nobles, and the economy went into shambles. his mom remarried but even though their stepdad was nice, fennesz and his sister ended up strays on the street due to some reasons i forgot of. fennesz would get bullied by kids on the street because of his father's loss in the war, but his sister would always protect him, and they relied on each other for survival. she's very smart, as shown in the story. she also loves history, as she said, it can help people learn from the past. its heavily implied she is dead.

ok flure! flure grew up with his older sister and mother who both did ballet (can one of you have an actual dad for once?), and he also followed in their footsteps. however when he was a child he was bullied for liking stereotypical girly things, like playing with his sister's dolls, doing ballet and having long hair. even though he was laughed at for doing it, he still underwent strict training guided bg his sister and mother. he never found the courage to tell his sister or mom even though his sister could tell something was wrong (heard him crying at night). he still thinks he should be more courageous to this day and thinks he's pathetic. we don't know what happened to his family but they probably died.

i wanted to talk about boschi but i realized idk much about him apart from the fact that he only had his grandmother (who's actually a great caretaker for once!) and he was bullied for being a bookworm/nerd at school and had no friends. though he did actually beat those bullies up later for mocking his grandma when she wanted to take him back home. she didn't want boschi to fight but she said herself she was actually rooting for him when he was fighting LMAOOO love her for that

lono. ok so lono was really poor and had no parents, and he acted as the older brother for the younger kids living on the streets with him. he'd work as someone who'd clean up rubble from battling angels, which was a job that had unstable income since no one knows when angels are gonna appear. they were family basically. lono would rather starve than let his siblings eat less, and his love of cooking originated here because he loved seeing them happy from his cooking. we don't know what happened to them, but they're probably dead

nac was born into a rich family, and has a father, not sure if he has a mother, never mentioned at least. apparently the stein family was great at sales or trading or smth??? they're just some very rich and well-known name. however on his 12th birthday, his butler led him to the forest near the stein mansion, and revealed himself to be someone the stein family harmed. just as he was about to kill lil nac in shock, nac retaliated in defense. and when he realized, he already stabbed the man at his vital point. his dad appears out of nowhere and reveals that he knew this all along, and that the stein family is actually a long line of assassins with sales as their front personas. nac was trained to kill since then, and thought he'd never feel positive emotions again before he became a devil butler. he also has scars all around his body, probably from the assassin work he did.

lato and his non-blood related brother, Aleks I think? were kidnapped by people who wanted to train people to become angel fighters. however unlike berrien, this time it's just pure cruelness and literal torture. they were 8 when this experiment started. not only that, all the children were sold by their caretakers to this place, including lato and aleks' "mother", the head of their orphanage, who they deeply loved and believed in. when lato finally found a way to escape, almost half the children were dead.

and when he told the others, they told lato that they already gave up on escaping, including aleks. from, i suppose, all the suppressed anger and trauma, he burned the experiment facility down, leaving the other kids to die because he hallucinated that they wanted them to be burned so they could be free. after that, lato returned to the orphanage even though he knew the "mother" sold him in the first place. guess what the mother did! that's right she ran back into the orphanage when she saw him, locked the fucking door and told him to get the fuck away from her. and lato burned the orphanage down.

now onto the new butler trio!

teddy is the one with the most details in his backstory so far. when he was young, he Had a twin brother, and teddy was a far cry from who he is now. he was negative and gloomy compared to his brother, who was positive and talented, and people always favored teddy's brother more. but one day, his brother died protecting him from an angel, but since they were so alike people didn't know whether the one that died was teddy or his brother. and after grieving his brother, teddy decided to become him, and used his brother's name to live on as him so people wouldn't be sad, because "teddy" was the one that died. and that led to teddy forming his personality today. teddy is his actual name though, he started using it after he became a knight. he became a knight because he wanted to protect people from angels.

but during an attack by an intelligent angel, namely seraphim, one of the angels that appeared at the end of chapter 1 and also the major antagonist of the story, teddy's entire unit got killed. at the start of chapter 2.5, he recuperated in a hospital, however he kept terrible nightmares (reliving the massacre, and hearing the voices of his comrades asking him why he abandoned them and why he got to survive) and so didn't sleep at all. he eventually snuck out of the hospital to visit their graves, and then started wondering what the point of him still being alive is. he almost threw himself off a cliff before haures and aruji reached him.

hanamaru. ten years before the story, hanamaru was fleeing from something- he walked all the way from the east to the central, and collapsed in a forest. a nun found him and took him back to a church that doubled as an orphanage. however the nun soon fell ill and died, so hanamaru began taking care of the kids in the church after he was saved by her.

but 5 years later, the church was attacked by angels. he was away from the church when the attack happened, and when he came back, all he saw were angels flying away from the ruined church. only 4 kids survived. hanamaru had a breakdown, and kept kneeling and pressing his head against the ground, saying things like "i couldn't protect them", "i swear ill keep them safe next time", implying this is not the first time something like this has happened. he swore vengeance against the angels that day, that he would never forgive them, and himself. so berrien suspects that the 4 kids that survived were the people that kept hanamaru around. who knows what could've happened if they passed as well...

lastly (finally), yuuhan. at the age of 9, he trained to become a soldier of the sardeis family so he could protect his hometown, and made it after 3 years. he quickly rose up in the ranks, being a prodigy. in the main story, he started doubting his loyalty to the family after they attempted an assassination on the devil butlers. and he betrayed the sardeis family and fell into their trap when investigating forbidden records. he got thrown into jail by the head, and the head decided for his punishment, yuuhan's whole village and everyone he knew there will be burned and killed. he could only despair in jail. in the story, after his prison guard left after serving him food, yuuhan started crying. he called out to his father, his mother, everyone from his hometown, apologizing again and again, believing that it's his fault that they died.

after that, the head, fubuki, paid him a visit. fubuki beat yuuhan up, pushed him to the verge of death, but not grave enough injuries to die. yuuhan asked fubuki to kill him, but fubuki refused. he even says he'll force feed yuuhan till the day of his death execution if necessary. however, yuuhan was rescued by the butlers during his execution. (it took place in a forest with tigers. basically the death penalty is getting eaten by tigers) he became a devil butler after that.

holy shit. also im not typing Bastien's since you can read his backstory from the tls available here.

[ryuichirou]

Replies

About Rollo, friendships and other stuff.

Anonymous asked:

Oh my god your Rollo art gives me life! I gotta ask - who do you ship him with? As a Rollo fan I like to pair him with Deuce, Jack, Neige and Idia, even though I’m probably the only person on earth who likes any of those pairings. Do you have any Rollo rarepairs? Do you have any thoughts on which boys might be interested in Rollo?

Rollo deserves all the love, Anon! Whenever I think about him, I start lamenting about wanting more of him. Too bad he was with us just for one event... I would love to see him interact with the other group of boys :( I think Lilia and the tweels would enjoy him the most: Lilia would think he is obnoxiously righteous but also very fun to tease, the tweels would get a similar feeling to what they feel from Riddle. Floyd could be such a menace with Rollo, and Jade isn’t any better.

Anyways, to answer your question! We don’t like any popular ships for Rollo, but we love him with fukukaicho/vice-president of NBC (the boy is a huge simp lol); and out of the main cast the only ship that kind of “sparked” with us was Azul/Rollo. Rook/Rollo also would’ve been interesting!

Oh, and of course the gargoyles. Gargoyles/Rollo is the best ship.

Anonymous asked:

I think we share the same type of fandom brainrot since looking back at your older works I see you were also a Prussia fan and turned into an Idia fan. 10/10 good taste in men

Yesss, high five Anon! Gotta love this “kind of depressed/lonely genius with unstable ego but also a doting older brother who calls himself niichan and spends too much time on the internet” type! These two have more in common than I thought...

Anonymous asked:

Favourite TWST friendship?

Oof it’s hard to say, Anon! I feel like I answered a similar question before, but I really don’t remember what I said.

I love the friendship aspect of a lot of characters that we ship romantically (like Idia and Azul, for example).

But excluding those, I’d say Deuce and Epel are cute, Vil and Idia (even though neither of them would probably call it friendship) and the Octa-trio and Ortho (it’s basically just bad influence on this already bad kid lol)

It’s a bit weird to call whatever the Octa-trio have a friendship, but I love their dynamic a lot, so it would be unfair not to mention them. I would watch an entire sitcom of just these three and their antics.

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

Okay, I'm a huge sucker for the NRC/others poly/origy plots! Like First Years have one, Second Years, Third Years, you get the idea. My question is is how likely do you think this could happen? What are your headcanons of the year groups (lets add Nobel Bell and Royal Sword for more people even if it's small) having some fun? How pleasing would it be for those involved?

It’s a bit difficult to say because while we are multishippers and sometimes multiple ships coexist in a single story, we don’t necessarily have any poly ships, like nothing necessarily feels like an “organised” poly throuple. So I might not be the best person to answer this kind of question, ironically! But still:

The first years: not really likely, but Ace and Jack should do Deuce together (very not likely to happen due to both of them being stubborn and greedy). Also Epel and some of his senpais from Magift (not Leona though), because he is that eager to prove himself.

The second years: Jamil might find himself surrounded by mermen... in theory, they might invite Kalim as well, but they’re more likely to tease(scare) Jamil by saying that they are going to do that. Silver might find himself as a center of an orgy at some point too, but with a bunch of mob/faceless characters.

The third years: nothing really comes to mind, but there are people who want to involve Trey in their relationship or just for an orgy; Trey dodges it successfully so far.

RSA: nah, they’re too good for that :) Cuties. Too fucking good, not a single dirty bone in their body. Well, to be fair though, they have Che’nya, and he kickstart an orgy somehow. Everyone (especially those who participated and loved it) would be shocked afterwards.

NBC: orgies are a thing. Rollo doesn’t know about it. He will become a center of one soon...

[yukinojou]

1989: thought dump

I've heard about 1989 the musical, but it's playing in theatres far from Warsaw and I've been frankly busy this past year with funerals and health crises. Now I've finally seen a live proshot (whee, guess who recorded it too) and this is nowhere near a review, these are absolutely random thoughts:

first impression: this is so very Hamilton

second impression: damn, this is in dialogue with Hamilton at the same time it's in dialogue with Mickiewicz, five gallons of national mythos and three layers of recent history and hello LMM you could have done so much more with women

(third part of this thought was seeing Aleksander Kwaśniewski's entrance and losing my shit laughing because of COURSE he nicks his entrance from a shiny American musical because that's exactly his style)

more musical should have spooky a capella folk songs

This is stuff from my childhood and just before; I was watching with my mother and she says all the period details were spot on, especially the song about how everyone has the same stuff in their home because it's all there is in the shops.

(my family had some different stuff, but I had the advantage of three grandparents allowed to travel including one actually allowed to go west and the fourth one was a doctor who got art from her patients)

so so much dialogue with our recent history too and the Women's Strike and the sheer tangible anger of women who won't be putting up with this shit anymore

I'm sure I'm missing like half the hiphop references but this is so much a crew musical, no clear leads but each person getting their due, and the lyrics are fantastic and rich and I need to watch three more times and someone needs to put them up on whatever the Polish equivalent of Genius is just so I can read all the annotations

honestly the hiphop thing works because it's Polish hiphop with its poetry and wild swings and melancholy and anger, and because the events of 1980 to 1989 created the deprivation and shock that gave birth to Polish hiphop

it especially works in the Nobel prize scene where it's so very meta on the way men put words in women's mouths

the actors are just *chef's kiss* and the proshot really picked up on all the emoting, the Teatr TV crew really know their stuff

gods, the whole thing with the black market meat that thaws and leaves bloodstains on the hands of the woman who is dying and the shirt of the man left behind, and I remember that from childhood, the way black market butchered meat would just bleed everywhere

In conclusion, I suspect I feel the way Black theatre kids felt watching Hamilton for the first time, and I need this one on DVD.

[ramrodd]

What parallels can be drawn between President Trump and President Reagan's reactions to surviving assassination attempts?

COMMENTARY:

Reagan’s assassination apparently accelerated his Alzheimer’s, although no one noticed because he was a long term gin drinker (Martinis became all the rage in DC when the Reagan people took over the culture).

Reagan was far more physically courageous and morally serene than Trump. Regan had been a life guard and was involved in over one hundred rescues, That experience steadies the soul.

Trump looked like he was going to cry and wanted to shout “My daddy will come and beat you up!”.

He will probably start bragging that he deserves a Purple Heart.

Reagan was betrayed by the Hollywood John Birch Society who failed to implement his New Federalism legacy project, which would have completed Stage 2 of Eisenhower’s 1956 Presidential Platform and launched the final paradigm shift from the Manhattan Project to 2001:A Space Odyssey, And Donald T. Regan betrayed Reagan and his promise to Gorbachev that Russia would become organic to Eisenhower-von Braun Star Wars economics of Stage 3 of the mobilization for WWIII.

Reagan should have won a Nobel Prize in Economics and/or Political Science for the New Federalism and received a share of Gorbachev’s Nobel Peace Prized. And the people that caused that to happen are contributors to Project 2025,

Project 2025 is why Trump is able to run for President,

Trump’s assassination falls into the category of what goes around, comes around, If you believe in the Pro-Choice version of Jesus, and are a woke Biden voter, entertain the possibility that We, the People, have been given two signs from God regarding the displeasure Elohim the One finds in all things Project 2025,

Biden is within a cunt hair of completing Reagan’s New Federalism. This is where the genius of the GW Bush and Obama’s collaboration in the response to the 2008 Mortgage Crises that was caused by the economics of Project 2025, The process they set in motion was designed to complete the new Federalism,, which would complete Stage 2 of Eisenhower’s 1965 Presidential Platform, which establishes the social, material and legislative infrastructure to grow the Star Wars economics of Starship America and the Green New Deal.

What goes around comes around, That’s the meaning of the two signs from God., which bracket Trump’s guilty verdicts. The fact that the political equivalent of Jefferson Davis is running against Lincoln in 1864. How the Project 2025 can complain that Trump’s constitutional rights have in any way been compromised is like clapping for Tink, intellectually, It’s insulting in a serious matter, As an Eisenhower Republican, the idea of the agents of Project 2025 blaming the left wing for this is probably actionable slander, Back in the day, such a person claiming such a thing could be called out to the field of Honor, his choice of weapons, If it was my choice, I would chose daggers: I want to get in close and smell you die.

But I doubt Reagan would ever consider that.

[picsofsannyas]

OSHO, IN THE PAST ALL FAMOUS ARTISTS HAVE BEEN WELL-KNOWN FOR THEIR BOHEMIAN SIDE OF LIFE. OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?

Santosh Sneh, the bohemian life is the only life worth living! All other kinds of lives are only lukewarm; they are more ways of committing slow suicide than ways of living life passionately and intensely. In the past it was inevitable that the artist had to live in rebellion, because creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.

Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: respectability you will get, honours you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.

A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honoured because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well-trodden path.

The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy. But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honours people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way.

It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself. Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live. In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way.... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.

But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs -- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society. For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways. The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you.

The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody? Seems to be the supreme-most detective!

Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

You ask me, Sneh:

OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?

"Discipline" is a beautiful word, but it has been misused as all other beautiful words have been misused in the past. The word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word "disciple"; the root meaning of the word is "a process of learning." One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline.

The knowledgeable person is never ready to learn, because he already thinks he knows; he is very centered in his so-called knowledge. His knowledge is nothing but a nourishment for his ego. He cannot be a disciple, he cannot be in true discipline.

Socrates says: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." That is the beginning of discipline. When you don't know anything, of course, a great longing to inquire, explore, investigate arises. And the moment you start learning, another factor follows inevitably: whatsoever you have learned has to be dropped continuously, otherwise it will become knowledge and knowledge will prevent further learning.

The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous. I agree with Dionysius when he calls ignorance luminous. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in existence to be in a state of luminous not-knowing. When you are in that state of not-knowing you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore. The Hindus cannot do it -- they are already knowledgeable. The Mohammedans cannot do it, the Christians cannot do it. My Sannyassins CAN do it, for the simple reason that I am not imparting knowledge; on the contrary, I am destroying your knowledge.

Hence it happens every day.... Every day I receive many letters, many questions. One friend has come from the West. He says, for three, four years he has been reading my books and he was so excited, he was in such great love with me, that he wanted to come somehow as quickly as possible. Now he has been able to manage to come, but here he feels frustrated. For four years he was in deep love with me, and now he says, "I cannot say the same because you are so shocking to me. You irritate me, you annoy me; you go on hammering on my cherished ideas."

It is easy to read a book because the book is in your hands. I am not in your hands! You can interpret the book according to your ideas, you cannot interpret me according to your ideas -- I will make so much trouble for you! He was not in love with me, he was in love with his own ideas, and because he was finding support from my books he lived in an illusion.

But with me illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you -- that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you.

Discipline has been misinterpreted. People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall.

The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

So remember, my meaning of discipline is not that of any Ten Commandments; I am not giving you any discipline; I am simply giving you an insight how to remain learning and never become knowledgeable. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be YOURS -- and there is a great difference. When somebody else gives you the discipline it can never fit you; it will be like wearing somebody else's clothes. Either they will be too loose or too tight, and you will always feel a little bit silly in them.

Mohammed has given a discipline to the Mohammedans; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. Buddha has given a discipline to millions of Buddhists; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. A discipline is an individual phenomenon; whenever you borrow it you start living according to set principles, dead principles. And life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is a flux.

Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice. In fact, I myself would like to say you cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-moving! One has to be alert to, watchful of, each situation and its nuances, and one has to respond to the situation according to the moment, not according to any readymade answers given by others.

Do you see the stupidity of humanity? Five thousand years ago, Manu gave a discipline to the Hindus and they are still following it. Three thousand years ago Moses gave a discipline to the Jews and they are still following it. Five thousand years ago Adinatha gave his discipline to the Jainas and they are still following it. The whole world is being driven crazy by these disciplines! They are out of date, they should have been buried long ago. You are carrying corpses and those corpses are stinking. And when you live surrounded by corpses, what kind of life can you have?

I teach you the moment and the freedom of the moment and the responsibility of the moment. One thing may be right this moment and may become wrong the next moment. Don't try to be consistent, otherwise you will be dead. Only dead people are consistent. Try to be alive, with all its inconsistencies, and live each moment without any reference to the past, without any reference to the future either. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total. And that totality has beauty and that totality is creativity. Then whatsoever you do will have a beauty of its own.

The Goose is out. Osho. Ch. #9 Rejoice to abandon! 9 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall

[andoqin]

Mouse Ep 1

What is it with kdramas and needing to have plot elements in episode one that are fucking ludicrous.

So the structure of this episode is all over the place, we kind of jump backwards and forwards with no rhyme or reason and while it’s still manageable in terms of watchability it does feel herky jerky and makes the plot a bit hard to follow. 

I don’t know much about how South Korea does (or used to do) decisions on approving laws, especially laws that infringe on human rights, but the basic premise of the show seems to be that most psychopaths share the same gene which turns them into psychopaths (research on that is inconclusive as of yet, yes there is a genetic component but as to how far it influences us, there is nothing certain yet). Like, one of the main characters in the first ep is a scientist (up for a Nobel!) who figured this stuff out and has a test that gives you a 99% accuracy as to whether your child is going to be the next Ed Kemper/Charles Manson/Ted Bundy. 

I mean ... yeah... okay. So anyway he gets called to SK because of a string of serial murders and presents his findings to a small committee? of eight parliament members (I’m presuming), spouts his 99% accuracy test findings, but the 1% left over means that they might be a genius instead bc he also can’t tell the difference between psychopath and genius (which strikes me as a hilarious contradiction) and the committee votes on whether to force abortions on pregnant women where fetal dna testing points to the fetus having this kind of gene. The drama even points out that South Korea has banned abortions normally! So we’re right in eugenics-landia from the get go. 

The committee deciding as to whether they SHOULD ADOPT THIS LAW!!!! is split 4-4 (hilariously accurate to me though is the fact that there’s like 10 men in the room and one woman, that tracks) and the tie breaking voter votes against it, because his wife just got pregnant (as he reveals in a later scene) and then he gets told "you stole your baby's right to live in a world without crime or wars" by another woman. 

Anyway that’s not even the most ludicrous portion of this episode. 

That happens when a 5 (6 at most) year old child witnesses his family’s murder, which his slightly older brother barely survives, gets taken to a hospital, SEES THE MURDERER ON A POSTER IN THE HOSPITAL, NABS A SCALPEL, STOWS INTO THE POLICECAR ON THE WAY TO THE SUSPECTS HOUSE (they gotta go there bc one of the officers’ daughters was taken), AND TRIES TO STAB THE MURDERER!!! I repeat, this is a 5 year old child who just had pretty much the most traumatic experience that could happen to anyone. Good god, no wonder the serial killer got away with it so long the police are fucking inept. And then they FIND THE KIDS’ MOTHER’S HEAD IN A SNOWMAN (which is only revealed because of the stabbing attempt). I... what?????????

And then the police is forced to let him go bc... the court doesnt believe the witness (the kid i guess) and apparently they believe the hilarious excuse that the murderer says “oh idk how those snowmen got there, i didn’t build them”. Only for the (heavily pregnant DUN DUN DUUUN) wife of the murderer to go “here’s a fucking polaroid of you building the snowmen you asshole”. 

OH AND!!! our nobel nominated doctor is/used to be besties with serial killer, so when he tests the wife and the test comes back positive, she is distraught and wants to abort immediately, but she’s in her last trimester, so it’s a no go. 

And then to set up the plot we have another woman whose fetus tested positively but she doesn’t want to abort, bc her child is what she has left of her late husband and he could never hurt a fly (nvm the fact that it’s much more likely that she is the carrier of this gene, but that’s not science the drama is interested in). 

We then see a kid 5 and 10 years later clearly with APD issues (but also suffering from abuse at home?) and he’s killing animals, tries to murder his brother for tattling on him and gets strangled by a woman yelling “i never should have given birth to you” (but we dont see which woman it is). 

Why do dramas do this? Do better. 

[missdrarrydawn]

How embarrassing, comparing a crusty old anti-semite that's been dead for 140 years to an ACTIVE, world-renown terf that openly uses her popular IP to spread her hateful, harmful opinions and fund the oppression of marginalised people that are actually alive (and not dead for over a hundred years.) Like. You get how absurd that is, right? Please I need you to understand the utter cognitive dissonance one needs to compare a current person actively causing harm in real time to one that's been dead and therefore unable to paypal funds to hate groups for over A HUNDRED YEARS PLEASE WHIP OUT A CALENDAR AND CALCULATOR. It's like saying "Oh, we didn't have antobiotics 100 years ago so I guess I'll just go ahead and die of this completely preventable bacterial infection." Good lord I've seen some stupid takes from HP fans but yours takes the cake just pirate the shitty movies and be a terrible person that cares more about fiction than real, alive people in private

When Wagner was alive and perpetuating anti-semitism there were likely people like you saying the same thing to people who liked his music. When Tolkien was alive there were likely people like you saying the same things to LOTR fans. When Gertrude Stein was alive there were likely people like you saying the same things to fans of her books. All of the above examples are of famous world renowned artists who perpetuated anti-semitism, racism, fascism and whose art had fans both when they were alive and after their death. All of those people impacted and hurt marginalized groups during their lifetime with their actions and opinions (Wagner writing a piece about how Jewish people are ruining classical music, the racist tones in Tolkien's work, Stein declaring Hitler should win a Nobel Peace prize) and their deaths don't absolve them of that harm they caused. I'd also like to point out that the fact that the marginalized people who they hurt have died now doesn't make them less important or less significant in today's times either.

The people I listed as examples did the exact same things in their lifetime as Rowling is doing in her lifetime. Just because they're dead now doesn't magically make it irrelevant. Are Hitler's crimes irrelevant because he's dead? Are the North American indigenous people irrelevant because a lot of them are dead now? No, obviously not, genius.

One hundred and forty years from now, when Rowling is dead, will the harm she caused to trans communities be irrelevant just because she died and time has passed?

Just because someone can't cause harm to marginalized groups in this very moment (because of death) doesn't mean that the harm they caused marginalized group when they were alive is now magically erased, unimportant, and cannot be used as an example and an analogy for situations that are happening in this very moment.

I can't believe I have to explain that the past is the best teacher to someone in the 21st century, oh my God, anon.

Anyways, like I said, you can separate the art from the artist, but in this case you don't even need to do that, this is a matter of separating the fans from the artist. There is already many degrees of separation between a fan and an artist by default anyways, and the HP fandom has only disconnected, distanced and separated themselves even further from Rowling than we already were before.

Someone being a terrible, bigoted person does not inhibit them from creating meaningful art on some level and someone else enjoying and finding their own meaning in that art does not make them a terrible, bigoted person by default. That's what art is meant for: interpretation. Rowling's original intentions with the HP books don't matter when the HP community doesn't validate them or perpetuate them. You can intend something for your work all you like but if other people don't interpret your work as such, then your original intentions are all but completely irrelevant to the work in question and become obsolete. In this case that can only be a good thing though, because the intention was bigotry.

The HP fandom doesn't perpetuate terf ideology (have you even bothered to see how much trans positive fanart and fanfic exists in fandom? or the fandom events organized specifically for the purpose of uplifting the trans members of the community, like @hptransfest for example?) nor does it perpetuate racism (85% of all visual/written depictions of HP characters depict them as brown, black or desi, or just simply non-white in pretty much every way it matters).

When it comes to any fandom, there is one thing you have to remember, the author is dead. It doesn't matter what they want to be canon or nor, it doesn't matter which people or groups of people they want to love their books, it doesn't matter if they feel like their books are being loved the "wrong way", it doesn't even matter if they're alive or dead, because in fandom, the author is dead either way and completely irrelevant to the internal workings of the community.

Same goes for Rowling, she is dead to the HP fandom (which has, by the way, been a queer positive space way before she put her own bigotry on display, since the fandom has existed since the 90s pretty much), and the HP fandom does not perpetuate her views or harm.

Rowling doesn't get money from royalty sales of merch, even if some people do still buy it, which a large majority of the HP fandom doesn't do out of principle alone, she doesn't get verbal support from us nor monetary one, she isn't respected and HP has been reclaimed by the very same people she is trying to hurt.

I've repeated it a hundred times, but Chuck Tingle is possibly the greatest example of a hurt HP fan who found a way to reclaim the thing used to try to hurt them and turn it into something beneficial to themself (I'm unsure of the pronouns Chuck uses and I want to be respectful so I'm defaulting to 'they/them'.)

For a more recent example too, Anne Rice died not a few days ago. Her work has a lot of fans who create fanfiction and fanart, however Anne Rice herself wasn't exactly the nicest, she prosecuted her own fans with legal action and took a stand against fanfiction. She was openly hostile to her fandom and punished people for loving her books. By your own logic, those same fans of her books are anti-fandom too and anti-themselves because of her personal stances, which is an incredibly nonsensical thing to say.

For another analogy, children are created by their parents. So by your own logic, a child whose father is a murderer should be hated, avoided and everyone who became their friend should be shamed and driven away from them and told theyre bad, because the person that created the kid is a horrible person, therefore the kid is horrible too and can never have any meaningful message/is incapable of offering any sort of positivity/comfort etc.

See how that just doesn't fly?

You can love HP and hate J.K.Rowling, those two things are not a contradiction, especially considering the degree to which the HP fandom has divorced their existence from her at this point, just as you can love a person but hate their abusive parent.

She doesn't own HP just because she created it, because you can't own art. The moment those books were published was the moment they stopped being just hers and hers alone and started belonging to everyone who read them, enjoyed them, derived some sort of meaning out of them for their life or found any sort of comfort in them and the moment Rowling showed her true colors was the moment she became the antithesis of everything she claimed to stand for and lost all privilege, respect and support from the people that used to show her all those things.

If you can't see that anon, I pity your ignorance.

Your antibiotic analogy is complete shit btw, because unlike enjoying a piece of art which is a choice one makes for entertainment purposes, antibiotics are often life saving medications one must have in order to survive, so those two are absolutely not the same thing at all, nor are they similar by any margin of comparison.

[justasparkwritings]

Codename Cupid: Chapter 21

Previous: Codename Black Panther 

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x OFC

Genre: Secret AgentAU, Government AgentAU, Smut Lite

Rating: PG17

Word Count: 2.9K

Warnings: Swearing, Grinding, Making Out 

Summary: Lee Euna receives a startling message and goes to the one person she assumes will have the answers, or at least, an explanation. 

(uhhh didn’t know it was going to be this long)

The Final Notice

Present Day

           The note said they’d be meeting me face to face, but months have passed, and I am sitting here, waiting. Waiting for a sign, for another note, for someone to be sitting in my living room when I return home, for a dead rabbit to appear in my pasta pot, Jungkook to be taken for ransom, literally anything. And yet, nothing has happened. No note or call.

           I’ve increased surveillance on Taehyung, the only one who seems to connect some of these men, and by a stroke of pure genius, put a tracker on his car and Namjoon’s, as well as a few bugs in their apartment. There’s only so many times you can send flowers with a vague card, and a listening device embedded within the glass. Who gets rid of vases? Hopefully not these men.

           I’ve learned few things in my listening, namely that I am correct. The men are connected. Taehyung and Jimin are best friends and spend an innumerable number of hours together. They also spend time with Namjoon, who I think, if I’m correct, knows Hoseok. Hobi is a nickname for Hoseok, right? And if not, I’m fucked. They’ve added a new person to their discussion, someone they call Black Panther, who sounds like a right pain in the ass. All they do is bitch about how they’re constantly on call to deal with Black Panther’s mess, that Black Panther is getting in their way and in turn, ruining all plans. They speak in some code I don’t know, and I don’t know how to crack it. What I’m more startled by, is the fact that they continue to call this mystery person black panther, who calls a friend Black Panther? That’s like, cultural appropriation lite?

           It’s not, I’m kidding. It’s totally not.

           When I put it all the information together, Black Panther out of the equation because I have no idea who it is, it doesn’t amount to much. Names and addresses, a few yelp reviews, and nothing more. My gut is telling me there’s something here, something more than what Euna believes. Hoseok showing up in Genevieve’s photos, the trio going out to dinner, the mysterious note with the water mark, it has to add up to something. That and they keep mentioning the 7 of them, when the 7 of them are together, they’ll make sense of it, when the 7 of them are all clued in, they can handle Black Panther. Is Black Panther not their seventh member?

           The door to my office slams open, and a disgruntled Euna stomps in, lily white, tears cascading through her foundation.

           “Euna, what a sur-

           “Did you know about this?” She demands, shoving a picture in my face.

           “What?”

           “They know each other!” She yells.

           The photo, a polaroid, of Min Yoongi, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung and Kim Namjoon. I’ve never seen them all together, Euna was right, they are despicably pretty.

           “How in your world did you not figure out that they know each other?”

          “I-

          “They look pretty fucking chummy to me!”

           “Euna, please, sit, let’s chat,” I stand to get her a water, which she yanks out of my hand and tosses down her throat.

           “Have you been withholding information?” Her voice has simmered, the bubbles of discontent slowly rising to the surface but never popping.

           All I can do is sigh and shrug my shoulders. Lying is not going to work, she’s paying me enough to give her one of my unused eggs, the least I can do is be honest with her.  

           “That’s unfair, I could demand money back for your deception,” Euna says.

           “I have withheld information on the basis that I need more time to connect the dots,” I start. “This is season 1 of The Wire and I’m fucking McNulty asking for more time to put the wire up. These men, Euna,” I exhale again, “It’s not linear, I can’t just plot them and see the whole picture. It’s much more complicated than that.”

           “Explain,”

           “All of it?”

           “Yes, all of it, you think I want to fucking understand parts of it?” Valid question.

           “Fine. It starts sometime when Kim Namjoon was sixteen, I’m not sure what that something is, but that’s the beginning of it. He was a prodigy, renowned in mathematics and rhetoric, short listed for a Nobel Prize by fifteen. After Namjoon, it moves to you and Seokjin, which leads to you and Yoongi, Jun-Seo and Jimin. Finally, it all ends up at Taehyung and whatever happened there,” I glance at her, hoping she’ll tell me if the supposed abortion was from him or someone else. “Somehow Jung Hoseok winds up at Lee Enterprise’s Masquerade, and Kim Namjoon comes back into the picture as a friend of Jimin and Taehyung’s.”

           “Jung Hoseok has taken Kwan on a few dates,”

           “Are they still seeing each other?”

           “No. That’s all you’ve got?”

           “I’ve got more, but I’m not sure it’s going to help you understand this anymore than you already do.” I don’t move to open any files on my computer or pull up any surveillance, Euna doesn’t need that, that information won’t help her in any way understand what these men have in common.

           “Does this make sense to you?” She asks.

           “It’s all,” I sigh, “fits and starts.”

           “Why am I paying you?”

           “Euna, you have given me an already impossible job, and then added more impossible tasks on top of that. I have found all of these men, I have addresses, I have occupations and locations of current employment for five out of seven. I’ve done a fucking good job on something that should truly be solved by a governing body, not a P.I. who bought thirty dollar’s worth of Indian food and ate it over five days because I couldn’t afford to buy more. I’ve used all my resources, called in favors, spied, tiptoed on the brink of impropriety in order to get you results. I’ve done a damn good job.”

           Glowering, her voice is impenetrable, “Then why can’t you find Min Yoongi?”

           “That man has erased himself from the internet, completely, from every website, every search, he’s just gone.” Exasperatedly, I throw my hands in the air as my voice rises. How many times can I explain this to her?

           “He’s alive though,” She counters.

           “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I can pinpoint him,” I grit my teeth and stand, pacing slowly around my office, her voice trailing behind me as I move.

           “He’s really,” She pauses, “Out of any of them, Y/N, he’s the one.”

           I run my hand through my hair before pulling at the strands and aggressively knotting it in a ponytail, the anger feeding into the heat of my body and I shed my sweatshirt. A sweatshirt, with a line drawing of a uterus, that my mother refused to buy me for my birthday so I spent $90 on it myself. I know Euna hates it, but it’s my office and I didn’t know she’d be popping in today in her Dior terrycloth jumpsuit. If I did, I would’ve at least put on a J.Crew sweatshirt and leggings that don’t have wax on them from making crayon art with the kids I used to nanny.  

           “I know, Euna. I know he’s important, I know he’s the one that got away, I know he’s the white whale of this whole investigation. But Euna, he-

           In the middle of my breath, the door opens again creating a space for Jungkook to saunter in. He’s parted his hair, a little off center, and hasn’t put in any product leaving the tendrils to fall softly framing his face. His locks are still long adjacent, and his left hand is using his sweater paw to hold a scalding beverage. His eyebrows are sloped, a genuine look of concern reflecting into my irises. The relief I feel cascading over me, of familiarity, of home, nearly bulldozes me into him.

           “Cricket, I brought you some,” His voice trails as he takes in my client. “Coffee.”

           “Oh thank god,” I whisper. Taking the cup from him, my eyes apologetic as I fall gracelessly into his open arms. The scent of his shampoo and cologne swirl in my nose, relaxing my senses. Nothing smells as sexy as Jungkook. No one looks as sexy as Jungkook does, no matter what he’s wearing, no matter the time of day or night. NSYNC put it best when they sang “god must’ve spent a little more time on you”, because whoever arranged the chromosomes and bone structure within Jungkook truly made a masterpiece. As the kids would say, he’s a whole ass meal. Jungkook keeps a hand splayed on my back while he turns back to Euna. He scans her up and down, no doubt assessing the level of danger she’s presenting.

           “Who are you?” Euna snaps.

           “This is my boyfriend, he was just dropping off some coffee,” I answer. The arm around his waist squeezes a little tighter, my head still resting against his chest.

           “Do I know you?” She wonders.

           “Me?” Jungkook asks.

           “Yes, you, who else?”

           He looks from me to her and back again, “Uh.” He shakes his head.

           “You look so familiar,” She eyes him cautiously, “You’re Korean?”

           “Uh, yeah,” His affirmation causes a twinkle in her eye, a recognition that if she wanted, she could use the powers at her fingertips to find his life story, overturn any

           “Hmm,” She scans him again. “Are you leaving?”

           “Oh, yeah sorry to interrupt,” Jungkook quickly glances at me, mouth moving to form SORRY as he scurries out the door. I hate when he leaves.

           “Don’t fall in love with Korean men, they’ll ruin your life,” Euna sits back down, tossing back some of her water before looking back at the photo.

           “Was something else left? A note maybe?” I hope this will move her back to the topic at hand, the photo in question and whomever left it, not my relationship.

           “Yes, there was,” She reaches into her purse and oh how I wish she had gloves on. The note reads like the last one I received, rhyming and all.

           “You’re looking too hard / We’ve been in plain sight / Stop looking for us / Or we’ll turn out your light,” I read. “Wow, premeditated violence.”

           “What the fuck does that mean?” Euna’s gone back to panic, eyes wild and cheeks red.

           “It means they’ve been in front of us this whole time, as in, we’ve overlooked them,” I clarify.

           “How could you have overlooked them?”

           “I’m not the only one, Euna, you have maybe overlooked them too. Maybe it’s a larger commentary on your persona in a relationship.”

           “My persona in a relationship? What would you know of that?”

           “I know what you’ve told me, and I know what I’ve seen through our interactions. No one is perfect,” I’m trying to soften this, but she’s truly living up to Dae-Seong in her blind rage.

           “Don’t try and compare your relationship to the heartache I have endured!”

           “Euna, I’m not,” The exasperation cannot be more pronounced as I roll my eyes and sigh heavily.

           “Your boyfriend, does what? How do you know he isn’t involved with these bastards?”

           “I don’t,” My honesty cuts her off, eyes widening slightly at my levelheaded response. Her pause gives me worry, what is she thinking?

           “Well, what do we do with these?” She shifts in the tension I’m brewing, I’m unsure what the solution is.

           “I can spend the afternoon trying to trace it, I can fingerprint the note and see what comes up, if anything,” I offer.

           “Will something?” A glimmer of hope, the worst emotion to ever contain or blossom in the human mind.

           “Probably not, whoever these men are, they are far too good to be caught doing whatever it is they’re doing.”

           “We need them all, all six,” Euna demands.

           “What do you want from them?” The thousandth time it leaves my lips, it’s complete insanity. This will never change.

           “What every woman wants,” She broods.

           “Euna, I don’t know what that is,” I’m sinking lower into my chair with every syllable.

           “Those who ask don’t get to know,” Abruptly she’s standing and leaving, belongings gathered in one hand, feet stomping heavily into the aged hardwood.

           Ah, another hint at her upbringing.

           I’m moving slowly through my apartment, Jungkook already sitting on the couch looking deeply cozy in his favorite grey sweats and a sweatshirt with a famous swoosh emblezaned across his chest. Dinner, pizza, is on its way, and a very large glass of prosecco sits waiting for me. I in turn am tossing off my bra, a sight Jungkook is audibly upset by, and coming to sit on the couch, in his embrace.

           “I couldn’t leave, she was mad, I was worried about you,” He tells me, his lips pressing to my forehead repeatedly. “I didn’t know if she was going to hurt you.”

           “About me? Bunny I’m okay, she doesn’t scare me, at least not physically,” I reply, my lips pressing against his neck in recognition of his vulnerability.

           “I didn’t know if she was going to hurt you,”

           “Bunny,” I sit up, turning my head to his.

           “Cricket,” His eyes move from mine to my lip, his thumb coming to swipe over the bitten cherry of my lower lip.

           “I love you, thank you for worrying about me,” I tell him, leaning in to kiss him, his soft, well moisturized lips making up for the bruised state of mine.

           “I love you too,” He hesitates, his lips starting to say something but stopping.

           “Jungkook?”

           “I also found, this,” He pulls out a note, the watermark distinguishable against the light.

           In black ink, a date and time is printed, and underneath:

Roses are red / Violets are blue / It’s time for us to meet / We’re ready, are you?

           “What does this mean?” Jungkook asks.

           “It means that, that I’m meeting with someone who may or may not want something from me, or maybe will hurt me. So just, be prepared.”

           “What’s the one promise you made me make when we first started dating?” He pulls me back into his embrace, but I catch the sadness in his eyes.

           “Aren’t we still in that honeymoon phase?” I want to lighten the mood and not focus on the way my heart is hurting. I never thought I would be the one concerned about not coming home, having Jungkook panicking over my safety.

          I don’t like it, like at all.

           “Absolutely, I think we’ll always be in that phase, but Y/N, please answer the question,” His arms tighten around my waist, another kiss to my temple, replaced by his soft cheek.

           “If you’re not coming home, tell me. If something is going to jeopardize you coming back to me, you have to let me know,” I quote myself.

           “So, if you are going to jeopardize your safety, Y/N, Cricket, my beloved, you gotta tell me. Let me follow you or drop a pin, or use Find My Friends so I can check up on you,” Jungkook rattles off all the apps with ease, a feat I find slightly concerning.

           “I don’t want you to –

           “No, no arguing.” His voice is curt, his words definite.

           “Okay,”

           “I love you, Cricks, and I don’t ever want to imagine anything happening to you.”

           “I know Bunny,” If I could burrow into him, I would. His embrace is my safe place, my weighted blanket after a panic attack, fuck during a panic attack.

          I have to come home to him. Whatever this note entails, it doesn’t matter. Torture me, harm me, beat me up, put me in the hospital, it doesn’t matter so long as when I wake up, or am lucky enough to walk away, I can come through that fucking front door to Jungkook.

           “You didn’t say it back,” He teases.

Rolling my eyes dramatically, squirming intentionally in his grasp so that I can lock eyes again, I sigh. “I love you too.”

           “Don’t act like that when you’d do the same to me!” He begins tickling me, and I feel beyond grateful for his duality.

           “Stop it! Stop it! You’re right, okay!”

           Giggling, his “I know,” is coupled with a kiss. He moves swiftly through my laughter to take my bottom lip between his teeth, tongue swiping over the indentations of his teeth before meeting mine. His hands, under my top and massaging my overheating flesh, pull me closer to him. I tug his locks as a moan escapes my lips, swallowed by his own groan as I reach my hand to palm him over his pants.

           “Cricket,” He groans.

           “Bunny,” I reply.

           He pulls away, pushing my torso down onto him, where my hips happily grind against him.

           “Lock and key?” He whispers, eyes refusing to close as he attempts to restrain himself from giving into the feeling of my heated core over his.

           “God we’re that couple now?” I stop my ministrations, staring at his features. How did I get so lucky?

           “Haven’t we always been?” He cocks an eyebrow, and I’m surprised he hasn’t mustered a ‘what’ to accompany the gesture.

           “I guess,” I roll my eyes, which he greets with a thrust of his hips.

           “Lock and key,” He repeats, hand behind my head, holding my gaze to his.

           “You and me,” I answer, the smile on my lips finding his again.

Next: Cricket & OT7

[thusatlas]

Ask for what you want, not what you think you should have

I have a theory. Well, I have many, but this particular theory is a doozy. The theory is… (wait for it) …

Everything is connected. I know, I am a genius. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I’ll collect my Nobel Award whilst I pick a up cucumber canapé on my way out.

But seriously, as obvious as it is, the more I reflected inward on my stream of conscious and started asking why, the more I have begun to connect the dots. I have become more aware that my actions, feelings and emotions that can be explained through cause and effect.

Here I want you all to take one mental step to the left to avoid falling down the free will and determinism rabbit hole before you. That is not today's topic. It might be next weeks, but not today. So just shimmy on over to this mental path that I’m laying for you here. On this path, we are accepting that we as individuals are moral agents, accountable for our actions and behaviours. Therefore, you have free will in a world that has been pre-determined by other free moral agents. Or if that’s too deep for you, just move right on past this philosophical premise and carry on enjoying the allegory I’m about to weave for you.

This all began some time ago, way back in high school, when I had to write my CV for the first time. I know that feeling of discomfort one feels when you fill out a job form, write a personal statement or cover letter is not individual to myself. This is a widespread phenomenon and yet the only way that you can progress professionally or academically is to sell yourself. Hence there is an entire profession in which you can be paid for writing somebody else’s CV. Furthermore, hence the reason why the widely understood, highly inaccurate statistic accepted as truth is that all CEO’s and higher business people are psychopaths; one of the defining features of psychopathy being arrogance and narcissism (that part is true but again, not the point of today’s topic…moving on).  We, the neuro-typical, non-psychopathic, really struggle to write about our best selves when it comes to applications of any kind. We do it because we have to, not because we want to.

Now think about it. I write and talk about many things throughout my days, from objective truths to subjective feelings. I process categorical facts and infer meaning that is hidden within the subtext. I imagine stories, characters, worlds, conversations and ensuing emotions. All without effort.

And yet.

I cannot write about myself. I cannot write about my good qualities with ease, without that feeling of discomfort. I cannot do it as easily as I am writing this now.

Sound familiar? If it doesn’t, then firstly what’s your secret? If that does resonate with you, keep following me down the yellow brick road of this allegory. I’m going to turn it into something less deep, far easier to swallow and then bring it back to filling in application forms.

It’s going to be cool.

Hopefully…

The list of top 10 most loved/dreaded questions. Somewhere on this list is: what do you want for Christmas/your birthday because I find answering it be an egoistic minefield to navigate. Apparently, it’s considered impolite to ask for all one’s problems to be solved or a million pounds or a new car/house/holiday. What I used to say, was what I actually wanted in an exaggerated way that would generally garner a chuckle. Both myself and the other participant in the conversation knew that I was being 100 per cent serious and if the person asking was happy to buy me my dream house then I would shamelessly have accepted (whilst also repeatedly enquiring if they were sure because I couldn’t possibly, hoping beyond hope that they would not come to their senses). However, this rarely (never) happened. Thus, the usual rapport was:

Person A - “What do you want for your birthday?”

Person B - “I would love a 50-foot yacht and a butler named Steve to attend my every whim”

A and B participate in the prescribed requisite chuckle.

Person B – “But seriously, I haven’t really thought about it.”

Person A – “let me know if you think of anything”

Person B – “Of course, though you don’t have to get me anything”

Person A – “nonsense, it’s your birthday”

End scene. I will pick up the Oscar for lead performance whilst I sample these delectable mini-hamburgers. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I had this conversation for years until I questioned what’s the point of it if nobody gets anything out of it. Having been both Person A and B, it’s uncomfortable for both parties because Person B doesn’t want to be perceived as selfish while Person A is asking to avoid the stress of having to guess what Person B wants. Now, while I love a good humble moment, this is not the time to be humble. Similar to job interviews, CV writing or personal statements. Why is it that we are not comfortable with celebrating our wants, our needs even when we are being directly asked to sell ourselves or literally tell someone what we want.

So I had a revelation a couple of years ago. I am aware that this is not going to be groundbreaking for other people but stay with me here. As of now, my life in regards to birthdays and Christmas’ consists of throwing the humble pie out of the window. My birthday is fast approaching and my family have begun to ask what I want.

AND HERE IS THE POINT OF THE ALLEGORY!

Bedsocks.

(Groundbreaking isn’t it.)

But seriously, my feet get cold because my house is old and the end of the bed is right by a window. You see the issue. Might as well sleep with my tootsies exposed to the winter’s chill.

However, (plot twist) I also want the new Jean Paul Gaultier Classique perfume which retails from £44 - £88 depending on the outlet.

I’m going to pause here because this is a Q.E.D moment. While the point of this post is not about asking the internet to get me what I want for my birthday, I feel the need to point out that I would, of course, be happy with just a card or a hug or a text for my birthday. I am merely using this as an example for the said allegory which has not yet been fully actualised. I am not some entitled princess who’s going to throw a tantrum reminiscent of Dudley Dursley if I don’t get what I want.

(If you’re not getting that reference then shame on you).

Now that I am 80 per cent sure that you don’t think I’m Veruca Salt (you better get that one), I shall continue with my point. I chose to embrace and show that yes, I want bedsocks and yes I also want magnificent perfume. Two drastically different items for the same person but these are items that I objectively want. I was asked so I answered. I am a bougie queen with cold feet.

What was interesting was the reaction of person A. There was an acceptance of my bedsock suggestion, though they did amend with, “Is that all? It’s not much”. The response to the Jean Paul Gaultier suggestion was “you don’t want much do you?” said with a scoff. We shall gloss over the mixed signals and possible shadiness and explore the duality of these responses to the embracing of my wants.

If you ever need to ground yourself or remind yourself that you are a product of all that came before you and all that will come after you, look to the Ancient Greeks. For a society that existed over 4000 years ago, we are still practising and preaching the philosophies of Thales, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. You can find watermarks of the Greek thinkers hidden in the folds of much of modern societies ideologies, legalities, politics and psychology.

Does that mean they were ahead of their time or with all that society has evolved over that time, the human condition remains the same, regardless of how wise and savvy we think we have evolved to be?

Now it was widely accepted amongst theologians, philosophers, sociologists and psychologists that if you wish to look at the skeletal structure of a society in a snapshot, then look to their religious beliefs.

I’m going to need you to take a mental step to the right to avoid falling down the ‘is God real’ rabbit hole. We are not here to discuss the objective existence of the divine. So, I’m going to need you to hope back on our yellow brick road where we are accepting the truth that all pantheons have objectively exist in the narrative of human history within their respective societies.

To the point, the Ancient Greeks believed in a pantheon full of diverse Gods (big G, we don’t theologically discriminate here). When I first thought of the Greek pantheon, my thoughts immediately go to Zeus and his ilk. However, I’ve been on the Google and am now more informed than I was 5 minutes ago (look at me and my fact-checking… if only Fox News were the same).Anyway, briefly for your understanding, the Greek pantheon is split into 8 parts.

Parts one through to four covers the Gods who are the essential ingredients for the fabric of reality. So, Gaia who is the Earth, Pontos the Sea, and Ouranos the Dome of Heaven. The Daimones (spirits) and Nymphai who nurture the life of the four elements and so on. The Daimones that affect the body and mind: Eros the spirit of love (not to be confused with lust or attraction), Phobos the spirit of fear, Thanatos the spirit of Death. The Gods who control the forces of nature and who interacted and taught mankind. Helios the sun and Anemoi the wind; the agricultural earth Gods Ploutos, not to be confused with the pastoral Gods Pan, nor the city Gods Hestia. The Titan Gods Themis, Kronos, Prometheseus etc, are not to be confused with the defied mortals who are considered to be part of this section of the pantheon: Herakles, Asklepios etc. Nor should they be confused with the Olympian Gods Hebe and Mousai. This condensed list is actually very long.

Now we have the fifth part that everyone knows. The 12 Olympians who preside and govern over the aforementioned and the ones who have yet to be mentioned. They are Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Athene, Aphrodite, Hephaistos, Hermes, Dionysos and Hestia. Part six through to eight covers the constellations and the horoscopes, the monsters and the semi-divine love children of the Olympians who defeated them

That is a majorly condensed list however its extensiveness is the point I am trying to make here so I appreciate you if you have stuck with me thus far. If you wish for a full list of the Greek Pantheon here are links to further your own reading: (1, 2, 3).

So, the Greeks had this diverse belief system. These beings who governed their every action. Literally everything, physical and metaphysical alike.

Now tell me what they missed.

Tell me what’s missing from this very extensive list.

Evil.

Ah, but there is Hades the God of the underworld you say! There are monsters!

Hades was made evil by Disney I’m sorry to say (though he was fabulous).

Hades in the Greek pantheon is the God of the dead and Zeus fucked up and much as he did. Odysseus is a soap opera, I swear. Anyway, the monsters?  They’re as neutral as death. They are creatures doing exactly what is within their nature to do. Thus the underlying ethos of the pantheon. Every one of those deities commits actions that can be perceived to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ by the humans they lived alongside. The Greeks did not revere them to be absolute good, nor absolute evil. What they did, was perceive them to portray unavoidable facets of our day-to-day lives that should be celebrated, acknowledged and respected. For example, take Dionysus, the God of wine, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy. Basically, this bitch was the life of the party. As such, large banquets and hedonistic orgies were often held in his name, celebrating pleasure, life and the loss of control within the madness of relinquishing stress.

But we aren’t the Ancient Greeks are we (though I know I look fetching in a toga if I do say so myself).

Western civilisation, take the United Kingdom, for example, founded its legal system upon the 10 commandments of the monotheist pantheon of Christianity. Furthermore, The Act of Supremacy in 1534 appointed King Henry VIII the first Supreme Governor of the Church of England. A largely ceremonial title that has been passed on to reigning monarchs ever since. Within the United Kingdom, Church and State have been very much intertwined since the days of the court governance. As such, themes of Christian teachings and concepts became entwined within our culture, and over the years have become so embedded that accepted behaviour and social nuances are not intrinsically associated with its religious teaching. The obvious examples to point out are the recent milestone law amendments to same-sex marriages and abortion. Going deeper into social norms: the concepts of purity and promiscuity, humbleness and arrogance, greed, sin and punishment. I have been brought up in a time where I have heard the rhetoric about my own body change from ‘do not sleep around, don’t be easy’ to ‘it’s your body, equality, if men can do it, you can to’. Aside from my own personal views on this topic, this social rhetoric is a symptom of the culture in which we live. They also echo some (not all) Christian teachings. Triandis and Triandis (1988-2004) have produced many works on the development of culture, the bare bones of the explanation being that culture of a society is a product of history, language and stories. Prior to written print, all information was passed on from generation to generation through stories. These stories contained information about countries' histories, experiences, and beliefs. The languages and gestures telling the stories are a creole of invading forces and immigrating travellers. These are the bare ingredients for culture. All that is left to perfect this recipe is time. Leave to mature of a few centuries and you’ve got a fine wine and a handful of convoluted social norms. Hence, the aforementioned rhetoric and the continued acceptance within British culture that the Monarch is the head of the Church.

The Ancient Greeks didn’t have time. Their teachings and stories are still hailed today, but their civilisation did not survive long enough for their culture to become a social norm.

Now, the reason why we’ve gone through this is to point out that the Christian pantheon is heavily reliant upon the idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  Absolute good. Absolute evil. I could do an entire blog on the different theological branches of Christianity and how they have affected Western culture. In this instance, we shall focus on the concept of sin. Though it is obvious, it must be pointed out:

Sin is bad.

Bad is punished.

Ergo -  Must avoid sin.

What is sin? Well, sinning is many things if we go by the Bible and the wholesome Leviticus, but here we are focusing on the widely known and accepted concept of the Seven deadly sins. Though these little devils didn’t specifically make a named appearance in the Bible, their themes were present throughout. Thereafter they were popularised and named via Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Purgatory.

Hopefully, you’re beginning to see all the threads of this post coming together now.

The Seven deadly sins are as such:

Greed

Envy

Lust

Gluttony

Wrath

Sloth

Pride

It is accepted within Western culture that behaviour must avoid ‘evil’ to avoid punishment. Ergo, we must avoid behaving in any way that can be associated with the aforementioned fiendish sins.

And so. The point.

I want bougie perfume and bedsocks for my birthday. Bedsocks is an acceptable humble and utilitarian item. It is not frivolous.

Bougie perfume? It is frivolous. It is a luxury. It is Greed. The fact that I boldly stated as such? Maybe a hint of Pride in my request? Either way, it is a social norm to at least raise an eyebrow at somebody stating frankly that they want an expensive item for their birthday.

To stress this point: if I had asked for driving lessons which are double the price of the perfume, no comment would have been made because of its utility. And so I bring you right back to the beginning. I am applying for jobs and finding the whole process unbearably uncomfortable because I am wondering if me toting all my achievements in one go and really selling myself will come across as arrogant (pride).

I should be humble, shouldn’t I? Humble me in the face of power…Isn’t that the social norm here? Which leads me to my final conclusion. Here are two different worldviews and neither are false and neither are true. If everything is connected (and that is what we call a callback) and if I were an Ancient Greek, how would I apply for jobs? How would I tote my credentials when there is no punishment for being proud of my accomplishments? When there is no concept of sin within the narrative of my worldview and just differing aspects of my nature, surely applying for jobs, asking for presents, networking etc, etc, etc, would be a far less painful experience?

[isslibrary]

New additions to the Indian Springs School Library May thru August 2020

Bibliography

Sorted by Call Number / Author.

152.4 O

Owens, Lama Rod, 1979- author. Love and rage : the path of liberation through anger. "Reconsidering the power of anger as a positive and necessary tool for achieving spiritual liberation and social change"--.

200.973 M

Manseau, Peter. One nation, under gods : a new American history. First edition.

304.8 K

Keneally, Thomas. The great shame : and the triumph of the Irish in the English-speaking world. 1st ed. New York : Nan A. Talese, 1999.

305.5 V

Vance, J. D., author. Hillbilly elegy : a memoir of a family and culture in crisis. First Harper paperback edition. "Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country." -- Publisher's description.

305.8 D

DiAngelo, Robin J., author. White fragility : why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism.

305.800973 D

Dyson, Michael Eric, author. Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America. First edition. I. Call to worship -- II. Hymns of praise -- III. Invocation -- IV. Scripture reading -- V. Sermon -- Repenting of whiteness -- Inventing whiteness -- The five stages of white grief -- The plague of white innocence -- Being Black in America -- Nigger -- Our own worst enemy? -- Coptopia -- VI. Benediction -- VII. Offering plate -- VIII. Prelude to service -- IX. Closing prayer. "In the wake of yet another set of police killings of black men, Michael Eric Dyson wrote a tell-it-straight, no holds barred piece for the NYT on Sunday July 7: Death in Black and White (It was updated within a day to acknowledge the killing of police officers in Dallas). The response has been overwhelming. Beyoncé and Isabel Wilkerson tweeted it, JJ Abrams, among many other prominent people, wrote him a long fan letter. The NYT closed the comments section after 2,500 responses, and Dyson has been on NPR, BBC, and CNN non-stop since then. Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause: Nothing. Dyson believes he was wrong. In Tears We Cannot Stop, he responds to that question. If we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed or discounted. As Dyson writes: At birth you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead...The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know...You think we have been handed everything because we fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it--all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace--should be yours first and foremost, and if there's anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully"--Provided by publisher.

305.800973 G

Begin again : James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own. New York, NY : Crown; an imprint of Random House, 2020.

305.800973 O

Oluo, Ijeoma, author. So you want to talk about race. First trade paperback edition.

320.9 B

Bass, Jack. The transformation of southern politics : social change and political consequence since 1945. New York : Basic Books, c1976.

323.1196 L

Lowery, Lynda Blackmon, 1950- author. Turning 15 on the road to freedom : my story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March. Growing up strong and determined -- In the movement -- Jailbirds -- In the sweatbox -- Bloody Sunday -- Headed for Montgomery -- Turning 15 -- Weary and wet -- Montgomery at last -- Why voting rights? -- Discussion guide. As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.

364.973 U.S.

U.S. national debate topic, 2020-2021.

420 M

McCrum, Robert. The story of English. 1st American ed. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1986.

488.2421 A

Balme, M. G., author. Athenaze : an introduction to ancient Greek. Revised Third edition. Book I -- Book II.

510 C

Clegg, Brian. Are numbers real? : the uncanny relationship of mathematics and the physical world.

530.092 F

F©œlsing, Albrecht, 1940-. Albert Einstein : a biography. New York : Viking Penguin: a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc, 1997. Family -- School -- A "child prodigy" -- "Vagabond and loner" : student days in Zurich -- Looking for a job -- Expert III class -- "Herr Doktor Einstein" and the reality of atoms -- The "very revolutionary" light quanta -- Relative movement : "my life for seven years" -- The theory of relativity : "a modification of the theory of space and time" -- Acceptance, opposition, tributes -- Expert II class -- From "bad joke" to "Herr Professor" -- Professor in Zurich -- Full professor in Prague, but not for long -- Toward the general theory of relativity -- From Zurich to Berlin -- "In a madhouse" : a pacifist in Prussia -- "The greatest satisfaction of my life" : the completion of the general theory of relativity -- Wartime in Berlin -- Postwar chaos and revolution -- Confirmation and the deflection of light : "the suddenly famous Dr. Einstein" -- Relativity under the spotlight -- "Traveler in relativity" -- Jewry, Zionism, and a trip to America -- More hustle, long journeys, a lot of politics, and a little physics -- Einstein receives the Nobel Prize and in consequence becomes a Prussian -- "The marble smile of implacable nature" : the search for the unified field theory -- The problems of quantum theory -- Critique of quantum mechanics -- Politics, patents, sickness, and a "wonderful egg" -- Public and private affairs -- Farewell to Berlin -- Exile in liberation -- Princeton -- Physical reality and a paradox, relativity and unified theory -- War, a letter, and the bomb -- Between bomb and equations -- "An old debt. Albert Einstein's achievements are not just milestones in the history of science; decades ago they became an integral part of the twentieth-century world in which we live. Like no other modern physicist he altered and expanded our understanding of nature. Like few other scholars, he stood fully in the public eye. In a world changing with dramatic rapidity, he embodied the role of the scientist by personal example. Albrecht Folsing, relying on previously unknown sources. And letters, brings Einstein's "genius" into focus. Whereas former biographies, written in the tradition of the history of science, seem to describe a heroic Einstein who fell to earth from heaven, Folsing attempts to reconstruct Einstein's thought in the context of the state of research at the turn of the century. Thus, perhaps for the first time, Einstein's surroundings come to light.

530.092 G

Gleick, James. Isaac Newton. 1st ed. New York : Pantheon Books, c2003.

539.7 B

Lise Meitner : Discoverer of Nuclear Fission. Greensboro, NC : Morgan Reynolds, Inc, 2000. A biography of the Austrian scientist whose discoveries in nuclear physics played a major part in developing atomic energy.

598.07 T

Watching birds : reflections on the wing. United States : Ragged Mountain Press, 2000.

811 D

Dabydeen, David. Turner : new and selected poems. 2010. Leeds : Peepal Tree Press, Ltd, 12010.

811.54 J

Jones, Ashley M., 1990- author. Dark // thing. Slurret -- //Side A: 3rd grade birthday party -- //Side B: roebuck is the ghetto -- Harriette Winslow and Aunt Rachel clean -- Collard greens on prime time television -- My grandfather returns as oil -- Elegy for Willie Lee "Murr"Lipscomb -- Proof at the Red Sea -- Sunken place sestina -- Hair -- Antiquing -- The book of Tubman -- Harriet Tubman crosses the Mason Dixon for the first time -- Avian Abecedarian -- Harriet Tubman, beauty queen or ain't I a woman? -- Broken sonnet in which Harriet is the gun -- Recitation -- What flew out of Aunt Hester's scream -- Election year 2016: the motto -- Uncle Remus syrup commemorative lynching postcard #25 -- To the black man popping a wheelie on -- Interstate 59 North on 4th of July weekend -- Red dirt suite -- Love/luv/ -- Summerstina -- Ode to Dwayne Waye, or, I want to be Whitley -- Gilbert when I grow up -- I am not selected for jury duty the week bill -- Cosby's jury selection is underway -- A small, disturbing fact -- Water -- Today, I saw a black man open his arms to the wind -- Xylography -- I see a smear of animal on the road and mistake it for philando castile -- There is a beel at morehouse college -- Dark water -- Who will survive in America? or 2017: a horror film -- In-flight entertainment -- Imitation of life -- Broken sonnet for the decorative cotton for sale at Whole Foods -- Racists in space -- When you tell me I'd be prettier with straight hair -- (Black) hair -- Kindergarten villandelle -- Song of my muhammad -- Ode to Al Jolson -- Hoghead cheese haiku -- Aunties -- Thing of a marvelous thing / It's the same as having wings. A multi-faceted work that explores the darkness/otherness by which the world sees Black people. Ashley M. Jones stares directly into the face of the racism that allows people to be seen as dark things, as objects that can be killed/enslaved/oppressed/devalued. This work, full as it is of slashes of all kinds, ultimately separates darkness from thingness, affirming and celebrating humanity.

814.6 G

Gay, Roxane, author. Bad feminist : essays. First edition. A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue." In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

822.3 T

the tragical history of Doctor Faustus : The Elizabethan Play. Annotated & Edited by John D. Harris, 2018. Wabasha, MN : Hungry Point Press, 2018.

822.33 Shakespeare

Major literary characters : Hamlet. New York : Chelsea House Publishers, c. 1990.

822.8 W

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. An ideal husband. Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2000.

823.914

Vincenzi, Penny, author. Windfall. 1st U.S. ed. Sensible Cassia Fallon has been married to her doctor husband for seven years when her godmother leaves her a huge fortune. For the first time in her life, she is able to do exactly as she likes, and she starts to question her marriage, her past, her present, and her future. But where did her inheritance really come from and why? Too soon the windfall has become a corrupting force, one that Cassia cannot resist.

843.8 F

Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880. Three tales. Oxford ; : Oxford University Press, 2009. A simple heart -- The legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller -- Herodias.

909 S

Sachs, Jeffrey, author. The ages of globalization : geography, technology, and institutions. "Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale, and this history deeply informs the present. In this book, Jeffrey D. Sachs, renowned economist and expert on sustainable development, turns to world history to shed light on how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. Sachs takes readers through a series of six distinct waves of technological and ideological change, starting with the very beginnings of our species and ending with reflections on present-day globalization. Along the way, he considers how the interplay of geography, technology, and institutions influenced the Neolithic revolution; the spread of land-based empires; the opening of sea routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas; and the industrial age. The dynamics of these past waves, Sachs contends, give us new perspective on the ongoing processes taking place in our own time-and how we should work to guide the change we need. In light of this new understanding of globalization, Sachs emphasizes the need for new methods of international governance and cooperation to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectives aligned with sustainable development. The Ages of Globalization is a vital book for all readers aiming to make sense of our rapidly changing world"--.

937.002 B

Bing, Stanley. Rome, inc. : the rise and fall of the first multinational corporation. 1st. ed. New York : Norton, c2006.

937.63 L

Laurence, Ray, 1963-. Ancient Rome as it was : exploring the city of Rome in AD 300.

940.3 B

Brooks, Max. The Harlem Hellfighters. First edition. "From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters. The Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment--the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, bestselling author Max Brooks tells the thrilling story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful--and least celebrated--regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver an action-packed and powerful story of courage, honor, and heart"--. "This is a graphic novel about the first African-American regiment to fight in World War One"--.

940.53 B

Browning, Christopher R., author. Ordinary men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland. Revised edition. One morning in Józefów -- The order police -- The order police and the Final solution : Russia 1941 -- The order police and the Final solution : deportation -- Reserve Police Battalion 101 -- Arrival in Poland -- Initiation to mass muder : the Józefów massacre -- Reflections on a massacre -- Łomazy : the descent of Second Company -- The August deportations to Treblinka -- Late-September shootings -- The deportations resume -- The strange health of Captain Hoffmann -- The "Jew hunt" -- The last massacres : "Harvest festival" -- Aftermath -- Germans, Poles, and Jews -- Ordinary men. In the early hours of July 13, 1942, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, a unit of the German Order Police, entered the Polish Village of Jozefow. They had arrived in Poland less than three weeks before, most of them recently drafted family men too old for combat service--workers, artisans, salesmen, and clerks. By nightfall, they had rounded up Jozefow's 1,800 Jews, selected several hundred men as "work Jews," and shot the rest--that is, some 1,500 women, children, and old people. Most of these overage, rear-echelon reserve policemen had grown to maturity in the port city of Hamburg in pre-Hitler Germany and were neither committed Nazis nor racial fanatics. Nevertheless, in the sixteen months from the Jozefow massacre to the brutal Erntefest ("harvest festival") slaughter of November 1943, these average men participated in the direct shooting deaths of at least 38,000 Jews and the deportation to Treblinka's gas chambers of 45,000 more--a total body count of 83,000 for a unit of less than 500 men. Drawing on postwar interrogations of 210 former members of the battalion, Christopher Browning lets them speak for themselves about their contribution to the Final Solution--what they did, what they thought, how they rationalized their behavior (one man would shoot only infants and children, to "release" them from their misery). In a sobering conclusion, Browning suggests that these good Germans were acting less out of deference to authority or fear of punishment than from motives as insidious as they are common: careerism and peer pressure. With its unflinching reconstruction of the battalion's murderous record and its painstaking attention to the social background and actions of individual men, this unique account offers some of the most powerful and disturbing evidence to date of the ordinary human capacity for extraordinary inhumanity.

940.54 S

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands : Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York : Basic Books, c2010. Hitler and Stalin -- The Soviet famines -- Class terror -- National terror -- Molotov-Ribbentrop Europe -- The economics of apocalypse -- Final solution -- Holocaust and revenge -- The Nazi death factories -- Resistance and incineration -- Ethnic cleansings -- Stalinist antisemitism -- Humanity.

951.03 S

The search for modern China : a documentary collection. Third edition.

973 M

Meacham, Jon, author. The soul of America : the battle for our better angels. First edition. Introduction : To hope rather than to fear -- The confidence of the whole people : visions of the Presidency, the ideas of progress and prosperity, and "We, the people" -- The long shadow of Appomattox : the Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction -- With soul of flame and temper of steel : "the melting pot," TR and his "bully pulpit," and the Progressive promise -- A new and good thing in the world : the triumph of women's suffrage, the Red Scare, and a new Klan -- The crisis of the old order : the Great Depression, Huey Long, the New Deal, and America First -- Have you no sense of decency? : "making everyone middle class," the GI Bill, McCarthyism, and modern media -- What the hell is the presidency for? : "segregation forever," King's crusade, and LBJ in the crucible -- Conclusion : The first duty of an American citizen. "We have been here before. In this timely and revealing book, ... author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. With clarity and purpose, Meacham explores contentious periods and how presidents and citizens came together to defeat the forces of anger, intolerance, and extremism. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature' have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life has been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear--a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always--or even often--been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, "The good news is that we have come through such darkness before"--as, time and again, Lincoln's better angels have found a way to prevail."--Dust jacket.

976.1 S

Smith, Petric J., 1940-. Long time coming : an insider's story of the Birmingham church bombing that rocked the world. 1st ed. Birmingham, Ala. : Crane Hill, 1994.

F Bir

Birch, Anna, author. I kissed Alice. First. "Fan Girl meets Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda in this #ownvoices LGBTQ romance about two rivals who fall in love online"--.

F Bra

Bradbury, Ray, 1920-2012, author. Fahrenheit 451. Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition, 60th anniversary edition. Introduction / by Neil Gaiman -- Fahrenheit 451. The hearth and the salamander ; The sieve and the sand ; Burning bright. History, context, and criticism / edited by Jonathan R. Eller. pt. 1. The story of Fahrenheit 451. The story of Fahrenheit 451 / by Jonathan R. Eller ; From The day after tomorrow: why science fiction? (1953) / by Ray Bradbury ; Listening library audio introduction (1976) / by Ray Bradbury ; Investing dimes: Fahrenheit 451 (1982, 1989) / by Ray Bradbury ; Coda (1979) / by Ray Bradbury -- pt. 2. Other voices. The novel. From a letter to Stanley Kauffmann / by Nelson Algren ; Books of the times / by Orville Prescott ; From New wine, old bottles / by Gilbert Highet ; New novels / by Idris Parry ; New fiction / by Sir John Betjeman ; 1984 and all that / by Adrian Mitchell ; From New maps of hell / by Sir Kingsley Amis ; Introduction to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 / by Harold Bloom ; Fahrenheit 451 / by Margaret Atwood ; The motion picture. Shades of Orwell / by Arthur Knight ; From The journal of Fahrenheit 451 / by Fran©ʹois Truffaut. In a future totalitarian state where books are banned and destroyed by the government, Guy Montag, a fireman in charge of burning books, meets a revolutionary schoolteacher who dares to read and a girl who tells him of a past when people did not live in fear ... This sixtieth-anniversary edition commemorates Ray Bradbury's masterpiece with a new introduction by Neil Gaiman ; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Nelson Algren, Harold Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others; rare manuscript pages and sketches from Ray Bradbury's personal archive; and much more ... --- From back cover.

F DeL

White noise. 2009; with an introduction by Richard Powers. New York, NY : Penguin Books, 2009.

F Gri

Grisham, John, author. Camino Island. First edition. Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable's circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. But eventually Mercer learns far too much.--Adapted from book jacket.

F Hem

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961, author. The sun also rises. The Hemingway library edition. The novel -- Appendix I: Pamplona, July 1923 -- Appendix II: Early drafts -- Appendix III: The discarded first chapters -- Appendix IV: List of possible titles. A profile of the Lost Generation captures life among the expatriates on Paris' Left Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and spiritual dissolution of a generation.

F Hur

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes were watching god. 1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed. New York : Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Foreword / Edwidge Danticat -- Their eyes were watching God -- Afterword / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- Selected bibliography -- Chronology. A novel about black Americans in Florida that centers on the life of Janie and her three marriages.

F Kid

Kidd, Sue Monk. The invention of wings. The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid, and follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), the author allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined. -- Provided by publisher. "Hetty 'Handful' Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. The novel is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women's rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, the author goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This novel looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. -- Publisher's description.

F Nab

Vladimir Nabokov. Glory. United States : McGraw-Hill International, Inc, 1971.

F Orw

Orwell, George, 1903-1950. 1984. Signet Classics. New York, NY : Berkley: an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC, c. 1977. "Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism."--ARBookFind.

F Sal

Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010. Nine stories. 1st Back Bay pbk. ed. Boston : Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, 2001, c1991. A perfect day for bananafish -- Uncle wiggily in Connecticut -- Just before the war with the Eskimos -- The laughing man -- Down at the dinghy -- For Esme--with love and squalor -- Pretty mouth and green my eyes -- De Daumier-Smith's blue period -- Teddy. Salinger's classic collection of short stories is now available in trade paperback.

F Tho

Thomas, Angie, author. The hate u give. First edition. "Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life"--.

F Tho

Thomas, Angie, author. On the come up. First edition. Sixteen-year-old Bri hopes to become a great rapper, and after her first song goes viral for all the wrong reasons, must decide whether to sell out or face eviction with her widowed mother.

F Tol

The Hobbit : or There and Back Again. First U.S. edition; Illus. by Jemima Catlin, 2013. New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.

F Ver

Around the world in 80 days. Classics. Trans. by Geo. M. Towle. Lexington, KY, : October 29. 2019.

F Ver

Around the world in 80 days. Illustrated First Edition. Translated by Geo. M. Towle. Orinda, CA : SeaWolf Press, 2018.

F. Gri

Belfry Holdings, Inc. (Charlottesville, Virginia), author. Camino winds : a novel. Hardcover. "#1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham returns to Camino Island in this irresistible page-turner that's as refreshing as an island breeze. In Camino Winds, mystery and intrigue once again catch up with novelist Mercer Mann, proving that the suspense never rests-even in paradise"--.

SC A

Alomar, Osama, 1968- author, translator. The teeth of the comb & other stories.

SC Mac

Machado, Carmen Maria, author. Her body and other parties : stories. Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. "In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella 'Especially Heinous,' Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction." -- Publisher's description.

[momentofmemory]

fictober - day twenty-four

Prompt #24: “Patience... is not something I’m known for.”

Fandom: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Warning: Vague references to depression/death

Characters: Peter B. Parker, Gwen Stacy, Spider Noir, Spider-Ham, Peni Parker, May Parker, Miles Morales

Words: 1720

Author’s Note: set between the attack on may’s house and the spidey crew’s arrival at miles’s dorm. there’s a good concept in here that got lost somewhere along the way, but the first half at least is pretty entertaining, and it ends hopefully, so that’s enough for tonight.

>>Someone’s Gotta Take This

Peter’s in the midst of an absolutely devastating take down of Doc Ock when she freezes mid punch.

“Cat got your tongue?” He takes the opportunity to slip his trapped appendages (all four of them) out of her grasp, and backflips into a perfect three-point landing.

Okay, semi-perfect. It might classify as a three and a half point landing; his elbow was just a lot closer to the ground than he expected. Doc does the whole ‘look at how tall my mechanical arms can make me’ thing, and he rolls his eyes.

“Actually, you’re an octopus, so come to think of it probably not a cat.” He stands up and widens his stance, ready for round two. “What kind of predators do you guys have? Fish? Other fish? …Sushi restaurants?”

He expects a claw to the face for his troubles, but instead Liv taps her finger to her chin. “You’re a lot like him, despite…” she gestures down the length of his body. “…Everything else. How fascinating.”

Which, one, creepy; and two, rude.

Then she shrugs and starts climbing away. “If you start completely falling apart molecularly, do let me know. I’m sure it’d do wonders for my chance at a Nobel this year.”

“Yeah, that’s a no—”

“Peter!”

It’s Peni, and she sounds like it’s important.

Peter looks at the receding figure of Doc Ock and sighs. “I hope you know I’m going to go home and have just, the biggest plate of calamari Tomo’s has to offer when this is over!”

The Doc doesn’t respond, maybe doesn’t even hear his shout, but it makes him feel better anyway. He leaps down from the rooftop and swings as fast as a suburban neighborhood allows in the direction of Peni’s voice.

He lands in the wreck that was Aunt May’s front lawn and sees the whole gang, minus this earth’s rogues’ gallery.

“What’s with the long faces, guys?” he asks, unease settling in his gut. He suddenly notices Miles isn’t around, and his expression hardens. “Tell me they didn’t get the goober.”

Four heads shake in unison, but it doesn’t feel reassuring in the slightest.

“They got Miles’s uncle.”

It’s Porker that answers his question, but he feels the weight of the statement in each of their faces. His eyes flick to Aunt May, sees her alive and whole in this universe instead of rotting six feet down in a grave, like in his.

God, I’m so sorry Miles.

“Let’s go back inside,” Aunt May says, and it’s Aunt May, so no one questions it.

They trudge into the house—Peter’s the only one that bothers with the door, because he’s civilized—but the rest of the spider crew just wander in through the eight foot hole in the wall. There’s wreckage everywhere from the fight: overturned furniture, pillows ripped inside out, pieces of May’s kitchen tiles with the yellow-painted sunflowers lying shattered on the ground.

This can’t go on.

“Peni, can you trace the goober?”

She looks up, one hand still rubbing slow circles on SP//dr’s head. “I mean sure, but what about Miles?”

“Where ever the goober is, that’s where he’ll be, too.” Peter yanks his mask off. “But honestly, we need the goober right now more than we need him.”

“Peter—”

“No, Gwendolyn,” Noir says. “As much as I hate to admit it, this scruffy Spider-Man has a point.”

“What did you call me?”

“Clearly the kid isn’t ready for this level of threat yet.” Noir squints at the Rubik’s cube in his hand. “We can’t risk letting Kingpin get away. Some sacrifices always have to be made.”

“Hopefully just the one this time, but agreed,” Peter says. “Now, Peni, if you can just find that goober we can grab it and sneak into the collider tonight—”

“Whoa, hey, have we forgotten the whole ‘someone has to turn it off’ part?”

Everyone turns to look at Gwen.

“Because if Miles isn’t doing it, that’s a death sentence.”

Peter winces. Time to move this along.

“It’s all good, I’ll be the one taking care of the collider,” he says. “We just need a plan to get there.”

Noir flips a row around on the cube, still baffled by the colours. “Now wait, if we’re talking Chicago overcoats here, the lady might not be wrong about putting this to a vote.”

“At the risk of losing my snout, what the Sam heck’s a Chicago—”

“Guys,” Peter interrupts, valiantly not pulling out his hair. He thought he’d be used to this kind of thing by this point in his career, but no. “It has to be me, and that’s fine, really.”

“Why?” Peni looks up at him and the innocence there reminds him of Miles.

God, kids are so small.

He clears his throat. “Y’know, just, so many reasons. For one, I’m the oldest, so—”

“Incredible. You don’t look a day over seventy.”

“I don’t think I have an age?”

Peter drags his hand across his face, refusing to acknowledge either Noir or Spider-Ham.

“Okay, I’m older than half of you,” he says. “But this still isn’t up for debate.”

“Why not? You’re not the only hero here.” Gwen crosses her arms over her chest, and it doesn’t take a genius to see the forced nonchalance in her stance. “I just think we should slow down before you go all martyr on us.”

“Yeah, see, patience is not something I’m known for and I’m thinking—”

“You’re thinking the same way my Peter did!” Gwen bursts out, then her fists clench like she hadn’t meant to say that.

“Gwen—” Peter hesitates. “Look, I don’t know what happened to your Peter, but I’m not him. This is about you guys. You and Miles and Peni—you’ve got your whole lives ahead of you, and Noir’s got colours to discover, and Porker—”

Spider-Ham looks up at him expectantly.

“—Porker’s got laws of physics to break,” Peter finishes.

There’s not a single face in the room that looks convinced, but fortunately for Peter, at that moment everyone’s atoms choose to go nuts.

Thirty seconds later, Peter finds himself sprawled out on the floor along with the rest of the crew, nerves still twitching.

“I vote we agree to the orange spider’s plan,” Noir says.

“That’s red,” Spider-Ham says, his voice muffled from where his snout is pressed face-down into the floor, “but I second the motion.”

Peter rolls over and looks at Peni, and she rubs her arm and looks down.

She nods.

Gwen doesn’t even bother voting. “Guess I’m overruled.”

She stalks out, and Peni heads down to the lab to trace the goober. Porker drags Noir into the kitchen to discuss colour theory, and that just leaves Peter. He flops his head back down on the floor and stares at the broken patches in the ceiling.

He’s so, so tired.

“Peter.”

He freezes mid thought, because there’s been so many nights he would’ve done anything to hear that voice, yet every time he hears it now it feels like a stab from Scorpion’s tail.

“…Aunt May?”

She leans over him and offers a hand, and slowly, he’s pulled to his feet.

“I know you’re tired.”

He flinches, and he knows she sees it.

“My Peter was too, you know.”

He thinks of the Peter he’d seen in the memorials, all perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect life. It doesn’t seem possible, but there’s a talking pig and a literal black and white detective arguing over china in the kitchen, so he knows better than to doubt it.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You told everyone else what they have ahead of them. What do you have?”

“…This,” Peter says, and it isn’t a lie. “I have this, because I can do this. Really.”

Aunt May’s lips pull into a thin line. “Promise me one more thing, then: when the time comes, you let my boy have his chance.”

“Miles?” Peter blinks. “I mean, yeah, of course I’ll let him try before we go with it. I’m not completely crazy.”

“Good.” Aunt May seems strangely satisfied. “Tell MJ I love her when you see her for me.”

“…Sure.” He’s pretty sure she can tell her on her own time a lot easier, but he doesn’t question it.

He has a job to do.

Peter’s a man of his word, so he gives Miles a chance to use his powers on command. He can’t, but he won’t hold it against the kid—he has better things to do in the time he has left. Then he sees MJ, this world’s MJ, and he tries to do as Aunt May asks but he gets a little overwhelmed, because MJ.

He doesn’t think much else about May’s words until Miles shows up again, and God, Miles is amazing. Doesn’t mean he’s going to risk the whole earth on a newbie, though, so he tells Miles he’s got this.

Miles sweeps his legs right out from under him, and as Peter hovers over the portal and his own chance, he realizes the boy May was referring to wasn’t Miles at all.

It was himself.

“You gotta go, man,” Miles says, and Peter thinks he taught this kid way too well.

He backflips into the stream and lands on his bed in a three point landing that’s all legs and elbows. The pizza slice on the ceiling doesn’t judge him, so it’s all right.

He takes three weeks and a lot of introspection—as well as a couple calls from Miles and Gwen, because apparently Gwen’s figured out a way to communicate even though the collider’s gone—and then he shows up on MJ’s doorstep. He’s brought her flowers in an expensive, pressed suit, he’s prepared a litany of apologies, and he’s ready to announce his realization that he has paternal feelings after all.

MJ opens the door, and she’s wearing fleece pajamas and fuzzy slippers and her hair is up in curlers, and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, even more beautiful than the MJ he saw at the gala on the other earth.

This is his MJ.

“Hi,” he stammers, monologues vanishing in an instant.

MJ stares at him, apparently just as shocked as he is, and come on you idiot just say something—

He swallows, and holds out the flowers.

“Aunt May said to tell you she loves you.”

[thefudge]

Harry Potter question, do you or did you ever ship Hermione x Tom. Hermione x Snape. Hermione x Lucius. ? (I'm a Hermione fan lol)

aaaah this is a tough one, but super interesting (and i like her too!)

so here we go 

(after the cut cuz this got looooong)

in short, i dabbled in all of them to various degrees 

hermione/tom - in theory, i should like this pairing a lot, but i have a lot of issues with the way they are written together; aka they’re either portrayed as incredibly beautiful genius sex gods, or hermione is weak and constantly thwarted by tom’s sexy moves. there is some good fic out there that explores what it would actually be like if these two had to butt heads, but it’s hard for me to find this dynamic written the way i feel it, which is very solipsistic of me i know lol. it’s also a tough ship to get right, imo. because tom/voldemort has no reason to be that impressed with hermione. yes, she is brilliant and cunning, but i think tom is faaar more fascinated by emotions than intellect, ironically. he has a slew of talented wizards and witches around him, but he doesn’t care a fig about them. meanwhile, he’s constantly cursing harry’s resilience and humanity because he craves it. he’s more drawn to folks who thrive on unconditional love. it’s reaaaally hilarious when u think about it. but i don’t hate it? i just think it’s a tough ship to get right. i was into it in high school, but i shipped tom/ginny more because ginny has no business impressing him ahahahah

hermione/snape - once upon a long-ass time i was definitely taken with this ship because it used to be the It Ship in the olden days. if you were around circa 2003-2004 on livejournal and ffnet and schnoogle? HOO MAN, this was where you found the BEST angst and smut, hands down. i think we all had a snamione phase, it’s like part of growing up. the older i got, tho, i just…got bored with it, which is super sad! i think maybe it’s the fact that you can’t take this pairing into many directions. it’s mostly about hermione “healing” snape and giving him a second chance to repair the damage with lily. oh, and snape also empowers her intellectually. mmmkay. that’s nice. yawn. i mean! it’s great! but….yawn? listen, hermione is brilliant, but can we quit it with making everything about her intellect? 90% of snamione fics are about him helping her win the nobel prize or some shit like that, i swear to god, you got fics with titles like “Euclidean geometry and the arithmancy algorithm” or whatever, and it’s mostly these two nerding out and saving the world with their massive intellect. and that’s rly cool! i’m so glad there’s a space for that!  but….can we…take a break from all that studying? my 15 yo self felt like i should be doing homework when i read about how hermione was breaking her back trying to prove to snape how goddamn proficient she was, sweating and toiling over her cauldron. it’s almost like saying “if you don’t exhaust yourself intellectually, you’re not worthy of snape”. and that was a real bummer. also, in a lot of those fics hermione and snape were super shitty to the poor idiots who did not understand their super complicated invented algebra. a lot of needless ron bashing too. ANYWAY. this ship will always have a place in my heart but it’s too stagnant for me and doesn’t take me anywhere new. (i do remember a great old fic where hermione developed an eating disorder because she was exhausting herself intellectually, trying to be absolutely perfect, and snape actually helped her return to her goddamn senses and made her take a break, lol that was one of my faves tbh)

hermione/lucius - ha okay, ironically the ship i like the most in this line-up. back in the day, fanfic for this pairing was kiiiind of cringey since it involved a super angsty lucius who had to torture a slave!hermione and get her to accept voldemort as her lord and saviour… eh. it was messy and little of it was actually nuanced and good, sorry folks. but!! this ship has matured together with its dedicated writers and it has weirdly become one of the more nuanced hermione pairings out there. i think once the dust settled on this series, big ships like dramione and snamione dried up a little bit, while the smaller ones flourished. so i’ve seen rly cool takes on lucius malfoy post-series as an older guy who fucked up his life and his family and has to reckon with that, especially since he was never committed to the cause like bella, but his pride would never let him ask help from the order. lumione (?) is also a slightly more relaxed ship cuz u dont have lucius making her work on quadratic equations for fuck’s sake (lookin at u, severus) and he also wouldnt overwhelm her with his sexy evil plans (lookin at u, tom). like he wouldn’t expect sooo fucking much of her, you know?  though ofc there would be sniping and antagonism and blood prejudice etc so there’s a lot to unpack. but fanon-wise? yeah, this ship wins lol 

in general, the more i look back, the more i think that all of these ships just put too much fucking pressure on hermione to be this be-all and end-all of the harry potter universe, especially in terms of brains. as someone who was constantly insecure about intellectual prowess growing up, to have to read hundreds of fanfics where she was constantly humiliated and put to the test by these “brilliant” men felt really disheartening to me. i enjoyed some of it, but a lot of hermione fics left me exhausted. hermione had to do so much emotional and intellectual labor just to be allowed to touch a mediocre dick? SPARE ME lol. 

and i realized a lot of the girls/women writing those stories were “hermione’s” too, or obviously identified as such (me included). and they must have believed that they too could only be worthy of a dude’s attention if they became the next marie curie. it’s like “if i work hard enough, i’ll be the equal of the pretty, bubbly girl”. cuz this is the really whack, misogynist, self-defeatist narrative a lot of us were raised on. and it showed in the goddamn hermione fics where she can only squeeze a tiny bit of pleasure if she works herself to the bone.

fuck that. 

so yeah, this kind of makes me ambivalent about many of these big ol’ ships and whether, if we want them to move forward, we should change our optic about what hermione represents to a lot of us 

lol sorry this got away from me  

[shriekbackmusic]

Virtual Sleevenotes, Credits and Lyrics for ‘Barry Andrews: Lost Pop Songs 78-80’

TRACK LIST 1 Rossmore Road 2 Win a Night Out (with a well-known paranoiac) 3 Freak 4 Me and My Mate Can Sing 5 Mousetrap 6 Bring On The Alligators 7 Sargasso Bar 8 Feeding Time 9 Muscle & Movement 10 Opposite Way in the Rush Hour 11 Taking Over ICI 12 Vampyr Skinhead 13 Big Soft Safe Family

MUSICIANS 1-3 clarinet: Frank Abrams, trombone: Ian Bateman, guitar: Rob Hendry, Robert Fripp, Bruce Mcrae, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick, backing vocals: Bruce Mcrae, Patti Palladin, Clara Harris, Steve New, Marion Fudger. Recorded at Rockstar Studios, Fitzrovia, Mixed at Regent’s Park Studios, St Johns Wood. 4-7 guitars and bass: Dave Marx, drums: Rob Wilford, engineer: Hugh Padgham, Producer: Martin Rushent. Recorded at Townhouse Studio 2, Goldhawk Road. 8-10 guitar: Jon Ellis, bass: Dave Marx, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: John Strudwick, recorded at Pathway Studios, Islington 11-13 bass: Marion Fudger, guitar: Rob Hendry, drums: Richard Wernham, engineer: Eric Radcliffe, recorded at Blackwing Studios, Borough.

The songs on this album have been lying about for a looong time, as you see.  The reasons for this are twofold: 1- it’s juvenelia, really - undeveloped, derivative. Trying stuff on for size.  An artist not in complete control of his medium, if you like. So I was not in a hurry to expose it, I guess, for its flaws are obvious. 2 it’s precious, unrepeatable, unvarnished. Truly an account of Process as someone’s aesthetic develops. It’s fascinating to me, of course (‘each man loves the smell of his own farts’) and, I have to assume, as an article of faith, that it may be to others. So, as a one-time-for-all-time thing, I was hesitant to release it. Anyway, here they…are, these songs which are inextricably bound both to a critical time in my life and the interstitial flavour of the historical moment: the end of the 70’s in good old (post-war, now post-60’s) UK. The dingy, dark, money-strapped days of Callaghan and Heath on the cusp of the New (fake) Gold Thatcherite Dawn.

London still grubby, edgy and un-Developed in a lot of places (squats still available - for instance) and Punk, which had roared for a couple of years - having redefined pop culture, via getting Pissed and Destroying - was about to stagger off into the wings, fresh out of ideas.

the Roxy Club, Covent Garden in 77 (it’s a shop selling Speedos now. Out with the Bin Bags in with the New Shiny Pants!)

The Clash and Pistols albums of 77 had permeated, by 79, everywhere they were likely to go (surprisingly far) but their offspring - the ninety-to-the-dozen, political, permanently furious form of *Punk was on the wane. ‘New Wave’ as a catch-all term for anything that was neither hardcore (with a little ‘h’) Punk nor Old School Rock was becoming the mot du jour. Another strange little sub-genre was Power Pop (which my old firm XTC could be described as, although to be fair, we were doing it well before the term was coined). Blondie, The Rich Kids, the Rezillos: all were attempts to make ideologically (yes!) acceptable the idea of melody and upbeat themes in a landscape where (Iove this term) *Ramalamadolequeue was rapidly wearing out its welcome.

(the Rich Kids - ft. Steve New, the baby deer. They’re not signing on are they? They’re Rich.)

Personally, these tunes cover, as historians say, ‘the long 78-80’. Roughly from the end of my time with XTC to the beginning of Restaurant for Dogs which was (sort-of) the R&D for Shriekback, although definitely with its own sovereignty and aesthetic.

Rossmore Road                                                                                               source: 1/4″ tape                                                                                              This came to light in a box of old tapes (Lordy I wish I had more tapes). It’s the first mix John Strudwick and I did for the single but I wasn’t happy and, rather sportingly, Virgin let us remix it. This version, though, not only has the ‘son trouveé - ‘asking for directions’ elements at the beginning and end (hilariously furious posh guy who - you can hear - I have managed to wind up even in the few seconds it takes to ask where Rossmore Road was. How? I really was an annoying, chippy bastard in those days - you can see why I felt paranoid (see below).

I was playing with Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen at the time and Robert kindly offered to come down and bestow his guitar benediction upon my humble pop tune (skills which were to be deployed, rather more usefully, on Bowie’s ‘Scary Monsters’ later that year - which Robert had taken a break from rehearsals with us to do (‘I have redefined the parameters of modern guitar playing’, he self-deprecatingly declared, on his return).

We got off to a bad start and never got beyond it: we plugged Fripp in and played the tune - John the engineer had assumed, totally reasonably, that this was a ‘get familiar’ go-through before we started recording.

As producer I should have been clearer - very much so, as it turned out because Fripp threw a total hissy fit when told we hadn’t recorded his 1st take. He gave us a rant about Heroes etc - how all his most genius work had been 1st or second takes. I apologised. He made a somewhat passive/aggressive show of graciousness in spite of this clear affront and the atmosphere was kinda tense after that. Someone else who hated me. Just great.

And anyway, what we would have got (and, on the 2nd take, did get) was - Fripp fans forgive me - 70’s prog-hero solo guitar noodling (very good guitar noodling, but still) - which loftily ignored the song’s structure so entirely that you had to choose between either just showcasing Robert or actually crafting the song. On the remix we ended up using one note (at the top). I honestly couldn’t find anything else that properly fitted. On the present mix, however, if you listen carefully, you can hear Fripp doing his flash, busy thing - it’s mixed as loud as I dared but you can hear it doesn’t really work and, if it hadn’t been him playing it, it wouldn’t have been there.

An inappropriate and inelegant use of resources, as he might have said. Interesting to hear though, perhaps, in a vestigial tail/snake legs sort of a way.

conceptual stuff about RRd. 

ROSSMORE ROAD (NW1) The 159 runs along it Round the corner from Baker Street There's a dolls house shop on the corner Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road Rossmore Road

Turn left at the DHSS in Lisson Grove You find yourself in Rossmore Road And there's a number of public buildings And a safety barrier down the middle of the road

In Rossmore Road In Rossmore Road In Rossmore Road

White and yellow lines and street signs And public phones and traffic cones And belisia beacons on the central reservation All humming now, all humming now, all humming now

To the north The Grand Canal Round the corner Regent's Park Next stop on the tube Marylebone Road And you can see Balcombe Street from Rossmore Road

The 159 runs along it Round the corner from Baker Street There's a dolls house shop on the corner Of Lisson Grove and

Rossmore Road Rossmore Road Rossmore Road Rossmore Road

In Rossmore Road White and yellow lines and street signs North of the river South of the circular Under the road Above the railway

All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now, all humming now, all humming now All humming now...

Win a Night Out (with a well-known paranoiac)                                           sound source: 1/4″ tape

Very pleased with this, I am still. Sui generis as they come. Blur before Blur said somebody. OK I’ll take it. I was (I think) actually thinking about Patti Smith’s Piss Factory - and Land and Wave, those half-poem, half-song tunes of hers. This, though, suffused with the provincial UK, late 70’s consciousness you get when you perhaps smoke too much grim hash and take too much speed. Interesting sexual punishment element to it also. Because it’s two dates: one rustic and one urban, then an extreme post coital reverse followed by a horrific denouement (Nazi Vivisection! The worst kind) which shows that, as they say: ’just cos you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’.

This is, obviously, autobiographical (apart from the vivisection). This arsy, scruffy little bloke, oppressed by the forces of reaction and class, who seems to attract humiliation and brutality wherever he goes, even though his intentions are just to have fun and get laid.  It’s a little poem about fear and self doubt which, around ’79 there seemed to be lots of. So I made a record. More expensive than a therapist but it has a trombone player..

WIN A NIGHT OUT (WITH A WELL-KNOWN PARANOIAC)

We could rendezvous in a country pub I know in the heart of rural England where the landlord sports moustaches just like Jimmy Edwards and the crisps and pickled onions on the bar are numberless as the stars at night We're just about to order scampi in an Elizabethan basket when two neckless men in blazers and cravats approach our table and say - "sorry - this bar is exclusively for the use of Nobel prize winners, latter day saints, people who have seen God and selected relatives of our dear Queen, and furthermore, you worm, there is mud upon your plimsolls". I reply that I am a member of most elitist cliques you care to name and the blood which courses (at an ever increasing speed as it happens) through my veins belonged once to the Cuban royal family, but, they don't listen and they just pour my drink down the sink and say "this is not what we mean. In this life, one is either U or non-U and if I were you I'd make myself bloody scarce.” I even try to show them my credit cards but unmoved they say "OK sonny, it's time you were taught a lesson and there's only one thing that your sort understand"

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

At an Iberian eatery in the west end, we could gaze at each other across saucers of yoghurt and bits of crusty foreign bread - and then - I could order a carraffe of Asti - we could have so much fun. We could discuss things like communism and chart positions with the lack of inhibitions that separate the truly liberated from the herd - but - I should mention that I talk quite loud as a casualty of inexpensive foreign wine and neither am I unaware of the restive noises from the party sitting close by. But as I'm in the middle of my funny story about the Arab and the underwater toilet, I can't stop now 'cause I'm in too deep, as I'm coming to the part where I say (in my best joke telling voice), "so the Arab says to the attendant, right...

‘Of course as we know five thousand pounds of pressure can suck out almost anything,’ and it all goes quiet and a little girl is saying: "Daddy, what a horrible man" and Daddy replies, "don't worry darling 'cause I've just made a phone call to your crypto-fascist Uncle Roger and he'll be here quite soon, and make quite sure he doesn't upset any little girls... little girls any more"

Win a night out with a famous paranoiac Win a night out with a well known paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Lying in your crumpled bed on Sunday morning, you said your Mum and Dad had gone away to a conference in Bath and I believed you like a fool. Now you get up, go to the window and you turn a pot plant round. I study your naked bottom with a twinge of lust but I'm not twigging that something's going down. There is a sound of the heavy boots upon the stairs and the door crashes open and in comes your Dad with some faithful retainers and some ex-Army mates from the Conservative Club. And I figure they must have been waiting all night because your Dad is clutching two reels of infra-red film and he's looking dangerously pale as he shows me the microphone under the bed, and I'm just about getting the message: all is not too groovy

As you stand there in your dressing gown laughing at me, then in comes your Mum in her nylon house coat with her hair hanging loose like a suburban Harpy and she advances towards me with an army surplus bush knife, clearly bent on wreaking havoc down below the navel and she's just about to get stuck in when I wake up... and yeah, it was all a dream

I'm really in a hospital bed. There is a smell of formaldehyde in the air, and a couple of doctors with swastikas on their arm are doing something to the brain of a sheep and in the corner is a huge zinc bath containing some sort of reptile and the nurse is saying "be a brave boy and drink it all up". And I realise I can't feel me legs and the shape in the bed isn't my shape at all and I wanna cry out but I can only bleat

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid Win a night out with a well known paranoiac Win a night out with a famous paranoid

FREAK source: cassette So Funk was the thing - but let’s take it and fuck it up with our English voices and anti-slick playing. Let’s actually take the funk/fun out of it. Disco hatred was the tip, kinda. I recall saying in an interview that it was like scratching up a big lairy american limousine with the nasty, rusty keys of your squat (there’s also an unreleased Restaurant for Dogs version we recorded for Warners with Nick Launay which takes this approach to its theoretical limit: it’s pretty hard to listen to). We are, in fact, so alienated from the subject matter that I sing ‘just come on down to the fifth floor’ instead of ’54’ - the iconic New York club, me not having heard of it (though - quirky historical note - Shriekback did actually play there in the place’s last week - on the Sacred City tour).

Dave’s ‘confused Dutch person’ on the end is a nice random element. Like he’s wandered in off another session. 

4 Songs from Town & Country EP (Virgin 79) Me and My Mate, Mousetrap, Bring on the Alligators, Sargasso Bar sound source: vinyl Ah T&C - I sort-of despise thee. No-one was taking care of my career development - especially not me - after XTC so I got stuck in a posh recording studio with the Strangler’s producer way before I should have been. This you can hear from the ‘apprentice piece’ nature of this EP.  All influences fully on show and sellotaped together. A ‘band’ which, you can tell, has only so much in common and which was kinda thrown together.  An adolescent ferocity in the delivery not masking very well a slew of insecurities. ‘Calm Down’ I want to tell this snarling young herbert, ‘nobody thinks you’re cool anyway. It’s fine: do an album about a fish, why dontcha?’ As it is, we get a variety pack of New Wave/Post Punk styles and lyrical tropes: Me & My Mate (the Clash obvs: stage democracy, anti-rockist groupy exploitation, DIY fanzine-esque self-expression for the working classes, Patti Smith reference). Mousetrap A classically-trained-but-recently-listened-to-Elvis Costello/Joe Jackson Bitter Relationship song. I like the spoken word bit that deconstructs a Well Made Play in 4 lines though (for those who don’t know, The Mousetrap is the longest running show in the West End - since ‘52!). The ‘Darlings’ repeated hookline was a reference to my lovely Aunty Rene who worked many years in the box office of various West End theatres (the Adelphi and the Prince of Wales I think - and since you ask) and had adopted a fabulously camp way of speaking through long exposure to gay theatrical men. Her poodle Chico was ‘my little Treasure Island’ and everyone else was ‘Darling’.

Aunty Rene (2nd left) with her theatrical crew and actress Anna Neagle at the Coalhole on the Strand 1968)

MOUSETRAP Been playing Shaftesbury Avenue For a thousand years or maybe two - darlings Done plenty bum gigs in my time But everything's alright now

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

We fall in love most every night We're quite ridiculously tight - darlings And yeah I feel some kind of freak Getting killed six times a week

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

It's nearly half past three Gotta do a matinee I don't understand this game Why everything's the same

But as the show go on and on And on and on And on and on and on and on and on And on

I know the punters mustn't see How mundane it seems to me - darlings But sometimes I wish I could screw Someone else in Shaftsbury Avenue

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

Curtain up - exposition Development of character Plot - unravelling slow Sustaining interest, gathering momentum

Till they unmask the killer Then a twist right at the end And it's all over till tomorrow night

In the mousetrap In the mousetrap

Sargasso Bar definitely the best of this bunch. Although the Small Town Observational style is a little irritating  (alright, Bazzer, you’re a Poet of the Everyday and you are so very alienated) it is here for the first time that a certain mock heroic, magical-realist aspect started to appear in my writing.  ‘they raise their glasses in 2/4 time and they study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door’. XTC did a version of this which failed to get onto GO2.  Not too much different I think but I recall Andy Partridge’s objection to the line: ‘we’re surrounded by the Eels of Death’. He felt it was the sort of hippy, trippy kinda image which XTC Stood Against. I felt it was - well - mock heroic and magical realist. This conversation went nowhere, obviously, but it was instrumental in making my decision to leave the band. These people just didn’t get my shit…

SARGASSO BAR Couple in the corner Now she's crying on his shoulder Well they're a couple of Modern Lovers Sort of Kevin and Isolde She's embarrassed by his footwear He's embarrassed by her hair But he doesn't really care He says it's murder staying emotionally aware He's another Lost Soul But he's only come here to die And get high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

Big John in the wooly Football training in the evening Well he got married married married Now he only thinks of leaving And he's surrounded by the blubber Watch the terylene stretching As he makes a point about his car When you're on miles to the gallon You know where you are And he's here every night, he's such a regular guy He gets high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

We came in from the rain Now we're surrounded by the Eels of Death Everyone nervous and everybody couldn't care less We raise our glasses in 2/4 time We study the latecomers as they slither in beneath the door About this time of the night There's more and more and more and more Well, give them ten minutes then they all go home to die Cos they're so high

In the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar, the sargasso bar

Bring on the Alligators yeah, dunno about this one really. Clearly I’m really working the magic realist tip again but to what end? It’s clearly meant to be funny, what with the Polish ‘1234’ in the middle and the ‘cocktail bar’ quiet section at the end and all but it’s all trying a bit hard for my liking. The awfully Lahndun working class accent I have on all these tunes is also a bit abrasive. My estuarine whine is of course part of me but it is underlining, unecessarily and stridently I feel, the ‘prolier than thou’ ethic which I had bought into wholesale during Punk. Let it go, dude…

2 LOTS OF DEMOS source: cassette Well, now we were getting somewhere.. Listening back now, 40-odd years on it really does seem to me that the year (ish) between the EP and this first set of demos represented a huge leap in my - er - self development. The life in XTC - still living with Ma & Pa or on the road within the Mothership of the band - record company, management, everything being done for you (at the expense, as it turned out, of knowing what was actually going on..hem hem). It’s cosiness and material sufficiency came at a price I could no longer put up with. Time to go, clearly.

I remember leaving the last outpost of that world - the nice flat above the Townhouse, paid for by Virgin while we were recording the EP but now, since recording had just finished, off limits. So…I could go back to Swindon - or step out into the scary metropolis, where all the safety nets have been packed away, and see what can be made to happen. Me and a girlfriend (who had signed up when I was a (sort-of) pop star - she was in for a taste of the real musician’s girlfriend’s lot now alright) went over to my old schoolmate’s flat in the East End (he was at college in London) - it was pouring down of rain as we walked across Tower Bridge. No money for a cab - the XTC wages had long been cut off. 

Youth seeks a Rite of Passage, does it not? This seemed to be mine. I felt noble and scared and reckless and Hungry for Experience. So, these tunes were written after a year of London, of squatting, signing on, meeting loads of new people, getting sick, getting well, hanging round the ink well - no, actually, after a particularly avid speed binge and a dreadful mini-tour with the T&C band I developed serious chickenpox (more virulent in adulthood, it turns out). I was the Elephant Man for a while. The body was having its unignorable say about all this new input.  But the tunes were definitely better. More individual. Not trying so hard and, sometimes, there was a Showing Forth of something really quite juicy and new (and I don’t just mean the pustules, har har).

Feeding Time                                                                                                         I submitted this to Shriekback’s publisher when he asked if we had anything that might do for the Eurovision Contest. He never quite looked at me the same way again, I thought (nil points pour moi).

I had been working at London Zoo (west gate and Reptile House: taking money on the door) that year and eating in various Camden/Kilburn greasy spoons. These two experiences were to produce this little gem. A Meditation on Eating. I think it needed doing. 

Points of interest: Dave Marx’s great bassline which is really the hook and the armature. Jon Ellis’s glistening ‘egg’ chord. The ‘Taking Your Order’ on the fade (Prawn Cocktail! The 70′s are strong in this one...) I had earlier recorded this with some ‘opera’ singers (from the BBC West of England Chorus - including Mrs Evenett (contralto) my old French teacher) singing the ‘Feeding Time’s’ in fine bel canto stylee. Which I may release at some point.

FEEDING TIME Putting things into my body at Feeding Time White wine and little damaged bodies from the bottom of the sea inside me still feel hungry when I reach the end and I won’t  feel good when it’s Feeding Time again. I watch him from the corner at Feeding Time sometimes he is hideous to watch as he shovels his chops inside him and his belly is beginning to distend and I know he’ll feel great when it’s Feeding Time again

but in the meantime Eat - don’t stop Eat - don’t stop Eat - don’t stop

Biting Viscera and gristle at Feeding Time listen to the lobsters whistle crack their legs open suck out what you find inside The spaghetti as it glistens at Feeding Time like spirogyra on your wet lips munching masticated chips in your mouth with lots of wine Eggs! Eggs! Soft and warm romantically slipping down inside and I wish it could always be Feeding Time and I wish it could always be Feeding Time (let’s see what’s on menu.. I’ll get an onion bhaji.. …prawn cocktail …three more pappadums…)

Opposite Way In The Rush Hour You know, it’s a bit cheesy and self serving but I still dig this. Our hero is heading off to some gig (some horrible, low paid, nightclub-type gig - let’s say in Edgbaston. Or Stoke). He’s hitching his way up there to meet the band at the soundcheck and it’s just getting dark. He looks at all the Regular Folk coming home from work: old geezers on pushbikes, factory workers - UK manufacturing has still a few years in it at this point - young girls (that might have been mating/marriage material in his former life) wait at bus stops and the cosy tea (the evening meal not the drink - important class-related point) on the tables, visible through the shortly to be curtained windows and our man gets all Springsteeny-sentimental about his self-ordained High and Lonely Destiny. Noble chords, I think, and very clever drumming by Rich Wernham (he was bloody good, I must say - as Nick Lowe said - ‘you can get away with murder if you’ve got a good drummer’). The absence of traditional last chorus repeats, instead dissolving into a babble of voices was indicative of some creative, envelope-pushing Thort, I would say. The boy’s finding his feet..

OPPOSITE WAY IN THE RUSH HOUR Going the opposite way in the rush hour watching the cars going past in the night. Factory gates let out the day shift - they escape on their bikes. Daughters go home on the bus, see you’re not one of us. The sensation is sweet and it’s sour. Going the opposite way, opposite way, in the rush hour.

Closer to being a part of the big system: so near and far from all that you seek. Closer to where the big heart beats you into submission then rocks you to sleep. Curtains still open The news on the telly they’re making their tea and I want all they’ve got but somehow.. keep on going this way: opposite way in the rush hour.

Street lamps come on now, those front rooms look so warm now. Old men with empty lunch bags pedal homewards and the girls wait at bus stops as the weekend unfolds. Once it would have felt so right heading into the hot sticky heat of the night

…it’s not a question of honour or a question at all Just the way that we choose to live now Going our opposite way… opposite way… opposite way…

Muscle and Movement Painfully sincere (and unintentionally camp) credo from the Squat years. Fucking grim, mate. It was cold, self-flagellating and unecessarily unpleasant. Here is the mantra behind that lifestyle experiment ‘pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth.’ Jeez, give this guy a cuddle...

MUSCLE & MOVEMENT Fed up of sitting around with my legs crossed Pretending and smiling and saying ‘yeah, cheers then’ avoiding the whites of their eyes. (and another thing) And another thing- don’t try and tell me you’re gonna get something together when everything’s going your way then the limit’s the sky. You can’t always hide on the side watching people who do things bigger than you. You can’t have a permanent stop to the things that displease you or give you unease. ‘Cos all that matters is Muscle and Movement flesh out all your fantasies with Muscle and Movement (ain’t no such thing as security, just Muscle and Movement Muscle and Movement

as you relax at the end of the day there’s another tomorrow staring at you as it stands at the top of the stairs time is a swine it just keeps coming at you battering you to the floor as you try and stand up yelling you’ve had enough save it for somebody free - don’t talk to me I got no symapthy pour out some more of that wine everything’ll be fine just stay drunk all the time but remember that Muscle and Movement is all that makes you what you are Muscle and Movement standing still don’t get you too far it’s Muscle and Movement Muscle and Movement

it’s hard but it’s true that there’s nothing to cling to nothing to belong to and nowhere is more important than where you are now and there is no rest for the wicked, no rest for the wicked or peace for the innocent or the don’t knows (this lines indecipherable) cos there ain’t nobody got the things they need (same) cos the things that you lack are what you never get back cs the only secret weapon is Muscle and Movement

Muscle and Movement nothing happens by itself Muscle and Movement pain is knowledge and knowledge is wealth

Vampyr Skinhead & Taking Over ICI Well, it’s here that I claim total responsibility for the Two-Tone/Ska Revival that was to occur later that year. No, honest - no-one else was doing this stuff at the time (or they were but no-one had heard of them yet). These two tunes were, moreover, direct descendants of my song ‘Super Tuff’ from the XTC album (btw, that title came from the strapline of a Bruce Lee movie ‘Bruce Lee - Super Tough - but also Tender,’ so I was also anticipating Tarantino and all that kitsch martial arts movie stuff from the 90’s - could I be any more prescient?) Actually, exciting self delusion aside, I claim only to have had my finger on an historical pulse which had been throbbing away since the 70’s and which obviously many others had also been party to. As I say somewhere else ‘it’s ok to have a great idea but you have to get off your chuff if you’re going to start a cultural movement’. I wasn’t dedicated enough, clearly, but I was quietly and briefly, a canary in that particular coalmine.

The idea of reggae as this parallel exotic, possibly dangerous sub-track to Pop/Rock had been around for quite a while and kept bubbling up out of the Zeitgeisty swamp to varying amounts of mainstream attention. Bob Marley (pretty much just him) had Broken Through to become the reggae artist that unitiated white people liked and played at parties to show Cool. U Roy, Big Youth, Scratch et al remained the province of hip white people (as we liked to think of ourselves). But, under the audacious banner of ‘Fuck Art, Let’s Dance’ the Ska revival, the Two Tone label, Madness etc were to mine the accelerated beats, fruity grooves and edgy vibes of Jamaica (along the lines of Desmond Dekker and Toots and the Maytals) to international chart success. Of which more in a minute..

Since Punk there had been this strange symbiosis (which is easy to forget, it’s so non-intuitive) of reggae with Punk which had continued, unabated since the days of the Roxy Club.  This, eventually, had permeated the wider scene.  So, when XTC would play, in 78, gigs in Birmingham or Leeds, the disco would always be alternating, say, the Drones, Chelsea or the Pistols with Althia and Donna, Steel Pulse or Culture. It was a tacit admission, I would say, that the Punk formula was a limited one and, while its brutal austerity had been bracing (and a welcome antididote to Old Fart music), people still needed melody and sensuality and Actual Dancing.

But, there had been, in my late schooldays (early to late 70’s) an earlier, more schismatic appearance of Reggae (in its proto form of Ska) which I had observed firsthand in my Comprehensive provincial schooldays with all its codes and brutalities (kinda charming and nostalgic now; fairly scary and intense at the time). There was a  2 tribes battle going on at my school and in the UK generally: the Skinheads and the Greboes/Hairies (vestigial, usually non-ideological Hippies, really, sometimes with a component of Biker). It was a pretty one-sided battle: the Skins were an embodiment of working class, unsmiling rage and violence (’Aggro’ and ‘Bovver’ were their coinages (graffitti in my town read: ‘S.T.A.B (= Swindon Town Aggro Boys) Kick to Kill’). It was a culture of fighting and machismo which picked on pretty much anyone (it became a white racist movement eventually of course: ‘Paki Bashing’ being one defining activity but, as is documented in ‘This Is England’ TV series, the Skins didn’t start out that way: look at all that ska and blubeat. Also, in Swindon in the 70’s there wasn’t much opportunity to get the ol’ racism going - there wasn’t a single black or Asian kid in my year at school; only one or two in the entire school - so the Hairies/Greebs would have to do as a Victim Class, I guess. 

The mostly docile, pacifist, great-coat/tie-die-wearing, patchouli-smelling, Topographic Oceans-carrying quasi-hippy was always good for a bit of a kicking (though I suspect, the lack of physical challenge made them a bit uninspiring - football hooliganism probably gave the Skins more of a work-out).  At any rate, the hirsute, messy look and, (NB!) the usually university-bound, middle class nature of the Hairies was a walking provocation to the neatly groomed, fashion-conscious, mostly working class (went to work instead of Sixth Form: fuck school and Uni, let’s make some short-term money - therefore doomed for life to the factory or site) Skinheads.

This schism was enacted in the music, as it often is: the long-winded, effete,  sexually inert tropes of Prog, the self-indulgent, solo-wanking, adolescent-boy mirror-gazing of hard rock versus the clipped, disciplined, concise sexy beats of Ska and pop reggae (showcased particularly in the ‘Tighten Up’ series of compilations). It really was chalk and cheese.

There was, btw, a whole genre of dirty ska songs, epitomised by Prince Buster’s Big Five single (‘funky spunky man in Big Five, screaming steaming night in Big Five…there will be water all over the bed…water all over her head..’ (!) 

One night after a Manfred Mann’s Earthband show at Swindon College (deep Hairy territory, obviously) when the crowd were reluctant to go home, the promoter stuck a Ska tune on the PA which cleared the room like tear gas. Hard to imagine now. Like I say, Tribal. So, when I started writing songs (Pop Songs! For Bands!) I felt I had struck a fruitful vein in observing the horrified yet strangely fascinated viewpoint of the oppressed Other (Hairy/Greeb/insert Ethnic Group) as he is subdued and brutalised by his natural predator, the Skinhead. 

Form following subject matter, this would, of course, be couched in a mutated form of reggae which, though, as a fledgling Hairy (with already insufficient hair, aIas!) I was forbidden to like - I must say it did exert a fascination. It was so alien. Alien is interesting. Thus, in Vampyr Skinhead we have, again, a randomly predatory hardnut - this time he’s going door to door terrorising people (‘no compunction as he hammers down your door - or elects to clamber in the window - he is swift and he is sure..’). The image really did come to me in a dream: this ferocious little fucker doing his rounds of the estate, like a Clockwork Orange version of the Man from the Pru. Definitely a Viz magazine character there, I reckon... The sound of a Ska beat still had, for me, the menace it did when the Skins at school danced their clipped, butch, slightly-ridiculous-but-I-fucking-dare-you-to-laugh, scary little dance to it.

Non Cultural Studies note: the riff is played on a WASP synth - I guess the 1st affordable synthesiser. Fairly horrible but it had one good sound so hey... No actual keyboard - a flat plate which was murder to play and ‘explains’ the really obvious cock-up on the intro which we didn’t have time to repair. It wasn’t mine btw (the WASP not the cock up).

VAMPYR SKINHEAD Vampyr Skinhead knock at your door Don’t sell brushes or Brittanica no more He no check for pushing leaflets through the door or collecting money for the football he lives outside the law. He’s just out on the street with his boots on his feet and I would give a lot to know what he’s got Vampyr Skinhead.. Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead strikes again Vampyr Skinhead feel no pain gonna do it again and again and again

Vampyr Skinhead come down your way and he’s not from anywhere silly in the USA. Not religion that he’s peddling door to door he’s not looking for the meter (he wouldn’t know what it’s for). He’s just out on the street with his boots on his feet and your little sister’s crying but he’s not. Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead Vampyr Skinhead

Somebody’s gonna get uptight, gonna get hot and they’re gonna make mincemeat of him someday... Somebody like Peter Cushing gonna wreck the curtains while he’s sleeping then they’ll be nothing left but a pair of Marten’s and a pile of dust…

Vampyr Skinhead come down your street he’s a monster and he’s got sharp litle teeth. No compunction as he hammers down your door Or elects to clamber in the window - he is swift and he is sure. Out and I would give a lot to know what he’s got Vampyr Skinhead…. Vampyr Skinhead…. Vampyr Skinhead……

V.S.’s Nemesis...

Taking Over ICI was an attempt at a pure pop reggae tune - with a socialist/punky spin. Lovely playing by Rob (gtr) and Marion Fudger (ex wife of Dave Fudger, charming chap who used to write for Sounds and now worked for Virgin Publishing - he got me the gig with Iggy Pop). Rich Wernham (also of the Motors). Cracking organ solo dontcha think? I had chops in those days - before Quantise fucked me up.

TAKING OVER ICI Alone I just didn’t dare make my move to trash organised laissez-faire but since you nibbled my ear Cadbury-Schweppes and Lever Brothers quiver in fear. All the multiples are whining. All the big nobs are resigning. Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI Taking over ICI Alone I couldn’t handle myself let alone the redistribution of wealth. But, since I found out you care, I could trash the System single-handed I swear. Can’t handle all their wheeler-dealing - prefer to hear rich people squealing… Since I found out you loved me, I’m taking over ICI Taking over ICI… Taking over ICI..

Big Soft Safe Family Rather as ‘Paranoiac’ was: a one-off, never to be repeated thing. Deeply and nakedly autobiographical. Musically quite original, I venture. Shmershy chords the like of which I hadn’t used before and a confidently slow groove. Vignettes of my respectable working class, late 60′s, Mike Leigh previous life suffused with the cheap cynicism of a young sprat who didn’t realise how lucky he was. They’re all gone now.. and - spoiler - I actually never had an aunt from Torquay (but she rhymed).

BIG SOFT SAFE FAMILY The relatives are all on their fifth cup of tea. Their rapid eye movements are something to see - all lying to each other and smiling alternately. Your mum and your dad and your aunt from Torquay they are none of the same as they once used to be but they’re all of them, gloriously in the Big Soft Safe Family

We all of us have a particular smell I know their’s and they know mine habitually well. They worry about me and I worry about them I’m surprised you can’t tell. We use the same toilet and eat the same food and we savage each other when we’re not feeling so good but blood is thicker than water and ultimately we’re a Big Soft Safe Family

We’re slowly aquiring the things  that we need they’re very pleased with our progress indeed. They were saying we looked very happy and of course we agreed. Respect due to father and love due to mum and the daughter is lovely and so is the son. Illusions die obstinately in the Big Soft Safe Family

[realmzenith]

benke !!!!!!

u truly want me dead but ily so- BUT OK BENKE my meme child

What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?.2 seconds i hate him. if he HAD to sit still and he was feeling slightly more chill than usual he could prbly go five minutes. tops. he’s just rlly antsy. he needs to be doing smth w his hands

How easy is it for your character to laugh?EH not super easily but defo more easily than a lot of my other ocs from one to ten one being laughs extremely easily he’s prbly a 4. the key is to find him memes esp political nihilistic memes or fall in front of him bc he’s terrible

How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)he doesn’t sleep. e v e r. who do u think he is?? nah jk on a more serious note, he actually doesn’t sleep very easily so usually he just listens to music until he dozes off

How easy is it to earn their trust?gosh that’s. difficult to say. p hard actually?? surprisingly hard for how much of a meme he acts like and how relatively extroverted he is. from one to ten w one meaning it’s very easy to gain his trust i’d say 7

How easy is it to earn their mistrust?he doesn’t rlly attach himself to ppl easily so it’s p easy to get him to not trust u. like he’ll be chill w u but he wont trust u all that much it’s a weird dynamic w him. w one being v easy to get him to distrust and ten very hard, he’s a 5. p much in the middle not rlly too much to one side or another

Do they consider laws flexible, or immovable?rules are great until they impede him from getting what he’s aimin for :) on a more serious note, he doesn’t rlly give a damn abt most laws like he doesn’t want to go to jail but at the same time if he’s not going to get caught he’s going to do it bc hey wtf yolo

What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?LOL NOSTALGia thats a joke he dislikes sappy things n nostalgia falls into that category but he will on v v rare occasions reminisce. certain musical pieces have that effect on him esp the classical ones as he’s grown up w music (being a practical prodigy on the piano and all). he guesses that sometimes it is kind of nice to remember. just once in a while tho. in a while being the key phrase here

What were they told to stop/start doing most often as a child?I MEAN he’s sixteen he’s still technically a child but basically the most common thing he hears is stop slacking and work harder. being an asian kid getting As is? absolutely crucial he’ll be smacked upside the head by his parents if he doesn’t so they always tell him to stop slacking tf off n actually study for once (tbh it’s fine he’s a genius practically he gets As easier than u can say banana split)

Do they swear? Do they remember their first swear word?absolutely and he doesn’t rlly remember but he thinks it was “shit”

What lie do they most frequently remember telling? Does it haunt them?once he set out twenty peeps just behind the wheels of his mom’s car and when she backed out the entire wheels got covered in peeps and when she came home saying there was all this weird gooey stuff on her wheels and looked pointedly at him. he just blurted out that it was god exacting judgement on her for her sins. it didn’t end well. he ended up washing the entire car by himself. it still haunts him to this day

How do they cope with confusion (seek clarification, pretend they understand, etc)?he’ll literally just say “what the fuck” and laugh

How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?whine about it until someone scratches it for him dependent on how comfy he is around the ppl he’s with. if he’s not comfy around the ppl he’s w he’ll just sulk internally or scurry off to the bathroom and like, rub his back (presumptively that’s where he can’t reach) against the edge of the stall until the itch is gone bc he’s high

What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?he thinks he looks best in all colors also he doesn’t rlly care abt fashion. he looks best in HM like purple or royal blue?? 

What animal do they fear most?he has this weird fear of armadillos and no one knows why it has smth to do w an incident at the zoo when he was six

How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?he honestly doesn’t say everything that comes to mind even tho it SOUNDS like he does but he also. basically says everything that comes to mind. it’s odd bc he ends up being rlly engaging in conversation anyways. however he isnt immune to being at a loss for words and when he’s under pressure he will stumble a lil thru what he’s saying. but most of the time what u hear is what he’s thinkin

What makes their stomach turn?ok he’s not SUPER big abt justice or anything like that but if someone’s being torn down he’ll get rlly uncomfy unless he’s the one who initiated it bc he’s like hey hey haha guys dont say that abt them. also he dislikes roly polys w a passion bc they remind him of armadillos :)

Are they easily embarrassed?on one hand he has no shame on the other he does get p flustered if ppl flirt w him and it hits a spot (in a good way)? like he does get embarrassed moderately easily but it takes him a few seconds to realize he should be embarrassed if u get me

What embarrasses them?flirting, if u get a well aimed compliment in that he didn’t expect. also realizing he’s made a fool of himself bc that oftentimes happens but he also rarely realizes it so if he REALIZES he’s made a fool of himself he will get flustered

What is their favorite number?420 duh

If they were asked to explain the difference between romantic and platonic or familial love, how would they do so?he’d be like wtf why r u asking me this but if someone he does trust and is close to asked him he’d try his best to give a serious answer after a bout of awkward laughing to make sure they were serious. prbly like “familial love and platonic love are the same thing basically right? i guess platonic love is how u love ur friends so yk brofists and shit and then romantic love is more? special? idk it’s fucking great tho *fingers guns at sev*”

Why do they get up in the morning? his mom makes him get up for school otherwise what is leaving his bed when he can just pull his comp onto his lap while STAYING in his bed and game from there

How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)? oh he’s very possessive. he’ll defo keep whatever he’s worried abt losing close by to start and if it’s a person- friend or s/o- he’s going to be touching them a lot more. a hand on the back, a hug at the side, running his hands through their hair casually. anything to assert that no back off ur not taking them from me. but if it continues, which it v well may, knowing him, he’s going to start getting snarky n verbally fighting the other person. basically Messy pls reassure him if u are the object of his affections and he’s getting side-eye emoji abt someone 

How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)? he defo becomes resentful a bit. like he doesn’t get envious over most things- it’s mostly fear of losing the thing once he has it- but when it does he will get resentful and hole up a bit and generally just seem a little ticked

Is sex something that they’re comfortable speaking about? To whom?yeah he’s comfy talking abt sex. prbly a little too comfy. so basically anyone willing to engage him in the conversation topic will likely hear abt it but he’s calmed down ever since he got involved w sev

What are their thoughts on marriage?marriage is good? but far off and amorphous in his mind. for the most part he’s like there’s nothing wrong w it but it crosses his mind EXTREMELY infrequently   

What is their preferred mode of transportation? preferably in the back of a private plane, squirrel suit gliding or on a giant eagle, none of which he’s ever experienced in his life. but out of the things he has he is fond of sailing when it’s calm out bc he does get seasick a tiny bit. he likes fast cars too

What causes them to feel dread? his mother :) she may be small but she is Frightening

Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth? he doesnt rlly give a damn so lie most of the time but at the same time if he cares abt the thing and he’s asking u abt it pls do urself a favor and tell him the truth. it’s what he prefers and it’s rare anyways that he actually asks after smth

Do they usually live up to their own ideals? nope. he wants to win a nobel prize, publish a meme compilation book, become a world class pianist, go to pluto- u get the idea. ya boi has many high hopes for himself which he’s not rlly meeting atm. he’s a little all over the place, so despite his many talents he isn’t quite living up to the ideal version of himself he’s seeking after and prbly never will it’ll be very hard to get him to admit this not bc he’s an edgelord or smth but it’s hard to get him to talk abt deeper things but he does sincerely want to be a good moral person which dependent on the day and his level of seriousness he may or may not be living up to in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of others. what can i say he’s kind of a hoe

Who do they most regret meeting? life…. when life’s hand touched upon his little heart and gave him the gift of herself he immediately was filled w Ragret- on a more serious note it’s prbly the armadillo from the zoo

Who are they the most glad to have met? sev? he also adores his piano teacher but good luck getting him to admit that w heartfelt sincerity 

Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke? it’s honestly whatever’s the most recent thing he observed, heard or experienced when it comes to stories. he has no shortage of words to say and his fav sort of memes and jokes are politically nihilistic ones. so those are? in a way his go to?

Could they be considered lazy? yes. he only applies himself if he’s interested and for most of school he has no qualms abt being a lil sus and casually “accidentally” getting the answers to things so yeah that’s. that could be considered lazy. however, when he does care abt smth he will absolutely dedicate himself to it. he practices piano consistently and diligently day in and day out so it honestly depends on if he cares or not

How hard is it for them to shake a sense of guilt? v difficult. he rarely becomes guilty for longer than .4 seconds but when it does he’s srsly going to internalize that bc if he’s feeling guilty he prbly f-ed up real bad. he also won’t rlly talk abt it to anyone so it’s even more likely it’ll just get internalized 

How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive? that’s extremely dependent on who it is and what it is. if it’s sev he’ll b v supportive but sev is a VERY big exception in most cases also sev rarely gets visibly excited abt things so it’s usually a cause for celebration when he does. if josie (his bff) is excited abt smth? if he can relate he’ll be excited for her but if he can’t he’ll TRY his best but there will be some teasing involved bc that’s how he diffuses confusion. their other bff will get the same treatment but w slightly more effort bc she’s more sensitive but gosh if it’s someone he doesn’t know rlly well he’ll be rlly confused he’ll be like good for u ha?? or someone he knows casually. they’ll get teased so he tries but he also sucks at life. for such a great analyst he’s terrible at being socially delicate

Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap? tbh prbly actively seek it. he defo pursued sev before they got together

Do they have a system for remembering names, long lists of numbers, things that need to go in a certain order (like anagrams, putting things to melodies, etc)? he doesn’t rlly give a damn abt ppl’s names but if it’s say a piano piece it’s honestly just cold, hard repetition 

What memory do they revisit the most often? he doesn’t reminisce often hes a p go go go type of guy but if he does it’s prbly abt sev. neither of them voice it often but they’re both rlly grateful for the other

How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people? see, he’s kind of oblivious he doesn’t rlly think abt these things but when something annoys him? oh it annoys him and he’s going to make no effort to hide it or ignore it. so he’s honestly rlly bad at ignoring other ppl’s flaws. he’s a bit of a b like that 

How sensitive are they to their own flaws?very

How do they feel about children? no particular opinion! he’s the younger sib by quite a bit so he’s always been kind of the baby. he thinks kids are fine and he’s actually p good w them but he’d prefer to not babysit or anything like that. there are better more enjoyable things he could be doing w his time. as for having kids he almost never thinks abt that so he’s got no opinion there either. what happens happens after all

How badly do they want to reach their end goal? he doesn’t particularly have One End Goal but he has many aspirations and if he cares abt smth he will do everything in his power to reach it at least within reason. so p badly relatively speaking? 

If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? he’s bi so if someone asked him to explain it he’d be like “it means idc what someone’s gender is when it comes to whether i want to fuck or not ;)” yes i hate him too

QUESTIONS FOR CREATORS

A) Why are you excited about this character?MEME KING but also i’m excited to try and work out the balance between apathy, drive and subtle but very much present care for the ppl around himB) What inspired you to create them?i need a best friend for the main chara of the story benke is a part of! additionally, he shares a lot of character traits w an irl friend of mine so it’s a bit of a nod to themC) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?nope! benke was created for the purpose of filling a role tho honestly he’s spun a wild story for himself somehow looking @ u sevD) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?i must admit benke does NOT have a set appearance as of the present. he’s afab nb and does nothing to present as more masculine than he naturally appears. he’s indian, 5′4″ and he’s got short hair w highlights but beyond that i’m still working out his appearance E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?yes on a surface level to both. we’d meme together but at a deeper level we wouldn’t make good close friends. benke’s brand of caring for ppl is nearly opposite to mine and bc we’re already both unconventional in how we show we care abt someone we’d prbly both end up feeling neglected. there’d be a lot of miscommunication and honestly, ya boi would get on my nerves n i’d prbly get on hisF) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?TIRED he TIRES me but also a bit of pride bc he’s growinG) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?where do i begin. prbly how he’s unintentionally self centered. benke is far from uncaring abt his friends he will do crazy stupid brave things for them if it ever came to that but it’s hard for him to see why some of the things he says hurt other ppl’s feelings esp if they’re diff from him. he’ll be like ?? why u offended i didn’t say anything mean. he’s also RLLY bad at handling serious emotions even when they sometimes do need to be dealth wH) What trait do you admire most?HM prbly his knack for being a great conversationalist. ppl like him even if he isn’t the most popular bc he’s funny and p chill. he doesn’t have too much drama so it’s like hey there’s the meme guy even tho he’s kinda weird and tbh goals. being a good conversationalist can get u places and ease up SO many social situationsI) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?PRBLY but also i think he’d do rlly well in a sci fi universe eyes emojiJ) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?nah not rlly?? not yet at least ! 

[picsofsannyas]

OSHO, IN THE PAST ALL FAMOUS ARTISTS HAVE BEEN WELL-KNOWN FOR THEIR BOHEMIAN SIDE OF LIFE. OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?

Santosh Sneh, the bohemian life is the only life worth living! All other kinds of lives are only lukewarm; they are more ways of committing slow suicide than ways of living life passionately and intensely. In the past it was inevitable that the artist had to live in rebellion, because creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.

Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: respectability you will get, honors you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.

A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, tha

The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy. But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way.

It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.

My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself. Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live. In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What you see as humanity is only a very hocus-pocus phenomenon. Unless we give individual freedom to each person, absolute freedom to each person to be himself, to exist in his own way.... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody. But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs -- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society. For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways. The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you. The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody? Seems to be the supreme-most detective! Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.

You ask me, Sneh:

OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?

"Discipline" is a beautiful word, but it has been misused as all other beautiful words have been misused in the past. The word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word "disciple"; the root meaning of the word is "a process of learning." One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline.

The knowledgeable person is never ready to learn, because he already thinks he knows; he is very centered in his so-called knowledge. His knowledge is nothing but a nourishment for his ego. He cannot be a disciple, he cannot be in true discipline.

Socrates says: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." That is the beginning of discipline. When you don't know anything, of course, a great longing to inquire, explore, investigate arises. And the moment you start learning, another factor follows inevitably: whatsoever you have learned has to be dropped continuously, otherwise it will become knowledge and knowledge will prevent further learning.

The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous. I agree with Dionysius when he calls ignorance luminous. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in existence to be in a state of luminous not-knowing. When you are in that state of not-knowing you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore. The Hindus cannot do it -- they are already knowledgeable. The Mohammedans cannot do it, the Christians cannot do it. My sannyasins CAN do it.

Hence it happens every day.... Every day I receive many letters, many questions. One friend has come from the West. He says, for three, four years he has been reading my books and he was so excited, he was in such great love with me, that he wanted to come somehow as quickly as possible. Now he has been able to manage to come, but here he feels frustrated. For four years he was in deep love with me, and now he says, "I cannot say the same because you are so shocking to me. You irritate me, you annoy me; you go on hammering on my cherished ideas."

It is easy to read a book because the book is in your hands. I am not in your hands! You can interpret the book according to your ideas, you cannot interpret me according to your ideas -- I will make so much trouble for you! He was not in love with me, he was in love with his own ideas, and because he was finding support from my books he lived in an illusion.

But with me illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you -- that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you.

Discipline has been misinterpreted. People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall.

The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.

So remember, my meaning of discipline is not that of any Ten Commandments; I am not giving you any discipline; I am simply giving you an insight how to remain learning and never become knowledgeable. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be YOURS -- and there is a great difference. When somebody else gives you the discipline it can never fit you; it will be like wearing somebody else's clothes. Either they will be too loose or too tight, and you will always feel a little bit silly in them.

Mohammed has given a discipline to the Mohammedans; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. Buddha has given a discipline to millions of Buddhists; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. A discipline is an individual phenomenon; whenever you borrow it you start living according to set principles, dead principles. And life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is a flux.

Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice. In fact, I myself would like to say you cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-moving! One has to be alert to, watchful of, each situation and its nuances, and one has to respond to the situation according to the moment, not according to any readymade answers given by others.

Do you see the stupidity of humanity? Five thousand years ago, Manu gave a discipline to the Hindus and they are still following it. Three thousand years ago Moses gave a discipline to the Jews and they are still following it. Five thousand years ago Adinatha gave his discipline to the Jainas and they are still following it. The whole world is being driven crazy by these disciplines! They are out of date, they should have been buried long long ago. You are carrying corpses and those corpses are stinking. And when you live surrounded by corpses, what kind of life can you have?

I teach you the moment and the freedom of the moment and the responsibility of the moment. One thing may be right this moment and may become wrong the next moment. Don't try to be consistent, otherwise you will be dead. Only dead people are consistent. Try to be alive, with all its inconsistencies, and live each moment without any reference to the past, without any reference to the future either. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total. And that totality has beauty and that totality is creativity. Then whatsoever you do will have a beauty of its own.

Osho.

The Goose is Out Chapter #9 Chapter title: Rejoice to abandon!

[powells]

Powell's Q&A: Ed Asner, Author of 'The Grouchy Historian'

Describe your latest book.

My book, The Grouchy Historian, is my attempt to rescue the U.S. Constitution from right-wing hypocrites and nutjobs.  I got tired of the Right acting not only like it owns the Constitution, but wrote the damn thing as well.  So — pissed off at ring-wing lies (by the way, my original title was The Pissed-Off Historian, but Simon & Schuster thought better of it), misrepresentations, and outright horseshit, I decided to strike back.  After all, if the Right could be wrong about climate change, health care, and the corporate tax rate, it was probably wrong about the Constitution.

So I did my homework.  I read the Constitution and the Amendments; perused The Federalist Papers and the notes Madison took during the Constitutional Convention; surveyed the lives of the Founders and Framers; looked over the Supreme Court opinions of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; and even dipped into Ted Cruz’s autobiography, A Time for Truth, a faith-based romance novel in which the hero falls in love with himself at an early age.

Here is a preview of what I came up with: The Framers wrote the Constitution in order to form a strong central government, giving sweeping powers to Congress (not the states), balanced by an equally strong Executive Branch. Nothing in the Constitution suggests, let alone enforces, the concepts of limited government, limited taxes, or limited regulations. The Framers were not divinely inspired. They were lawyers.  Do you really know any divinely inspired lawyers?  The only lawyer ever to be divinely inspired was Saul of Tarsus. The Framers were as diverse a group as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Framers did not hate taxation.  They needed taxes, desperately.   They had a war to pay off. Strict constructionists are people who select portions of the Constitution to justify already held beliefs. Under the Constitution, women had the same rights as Native Americans. The Constitution is as good as the people who swear to protect it. For the rest of it, you’re going to have to buy the book. I know what you’re thinking: Why me of all people?  Why am I writing a book about the Constitution?  Well, why not me?  After all, I have played some of the smartest people ever seen on television.

What was your favorite book as a child?

I know I should say Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer or E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.  But the truth is my favorite book as a child was a book of collected riddles by an unremembered author.  Some of the riddles that I can recall are:  

What is the smallest room in the world?  A mushroom.

Why do firemen wear red suspenders?  To keep their pants up.

What is white and black and red all over?  A newspaper (red = read).

Why did the idiot tiptoe past the medicine chest?  He didn’t want to wake up the sleeping pills.

Not politically correct, of course, but very funny to a six-year-old boy.

When did you know you were a writer?

When Simon & Schuster sent me an advanced copy of The Grouchy Historian — with my picture on the cover.

What does your workspace look like?

I work at a desk in my office, which is on the first floor of my house. The office has doors that don’t lock, so at any time anyone can barge in and interrupt my writing for no good reason.  Thank God.

What do you care about more than most people around you?

I believe the people around me care for the same things I do:  racial and religious tolerance, civilized discourse, a government of and for the people, gender and economic equality, and a new president as soon as possible.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be around me.

Share an interesting experience you've had with one of your readers.

One of my first readers was a Constitutional scholar, law professor, and distinguished historian.  He agreed to give me notes on an early draft of The Grouchy Historian.  A year later and I still haven’t heard from him.  I only hope it was something I said.

Tell us something you're embarrassed to admit.

I’m in love with Marie Osmond.

Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.

Read Philip Roth.  And if you have, read him again.  Of his more than 20 novels, I recommend The Plot Against America, which is Roth’s vision of an America with Charles Lindbergh — air hero and fascist — as president.  Set in the 1940s, it’s as relevant as it is scary. I also recommend American Pastoral, which is Philip Roth at his best — funny yet painful, powerful and brilliant.  Why Roth has not won the Nobel Prize for Literature I have no idea.

Besides your personal library, do you have any beloved collections?

No “beloved” collections.  Just books.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

Yes.  Many years ago, I went to Prague and visited Kafka’s grave.  He’s buried there in the Jewish cemetery beside his mother and father.  Kafka died in 1924 at the age of 40.  A short life.  Still, when you think that in less than two decades his sister would perish in a Nazi concentration camp — well, maybe he was “lucky” to have died so young.  I placed three stones on his grave and recited the Jewish prayer for the dead — at least the parts I could remember.  Afterwards, I found a bookstore that sold The Metamorphosis in English.  It’s one of my favorite stories — about a young man who turns into a cockroach and becomes a burden to his family.  And what young man cannot identify with that?

What scares you the most as a writer?

There are two things that scare me the most as a writer:  a blank page and the royalty statement from my publisher.

If someone were to write your biography, what would be the title and subtitle?

Ed Asner: Not Just a Character Actor, but a Character

Offer a favorite passage from another writer.

One of my favorite passages is from Mark Twain’s essay, “Fables of Man,” in which he questions how a loving, benevolent God could have made the common housefly:

When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and painstaking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and foreordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.

Share a sentence of your own that you're particularly proud of.

From The Grouchy Historian:  “Justice Antonin Scalia had to be the one percent’s favorite judge since Pontius Pilate.”

Describe a recurring nightmare.

My recurring nightmare is as follows:  I am playing King Lear.  As I make my entrance into a packed New York theater, I suddenly forget my lines.  I can’t even remember “Attend the Lords of France and Burgundy.”  The rest of the play continues while, from me, not a word is spoken.   Then, if that isn’t bad enough, before I know it I'm walking around onstage in my boxers and T-shirt. Fortunately, I wake up right before I have to go to the bathroom.

Do you have any grammatical pet peeves?

I have a problem with most grammar police.  Especially those who tell me I can’t begin a sentence with “and.”  Maybe they forget:  “And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.”  Or those who are afraid of repeating the same word in the same sentence or paragraph.  You know, like in “To be or not to be.”  And those who warn against ending a sentence with a preposition — which is a bad rule that no one should stick to.

Do you have any phobias?

I have three major phobias:  A fear of clowns, spiders, and unhinged Presidents of the United States.

Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.

Sorry, but all my pleasures are guilt-free.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

The best advice I ever got came from my father, who said: “Stay positive — it’ll probably get worse”; “Carry your own bags”; “Never take money from a stranger”; and “Never order breaded veal cutlet in a restaurant.”

Now that you’re 86 years old, what’s the best thing about old age?

Not giving a shit.  

My Top Five Books of All Time List:

The Bible, especially all those parts with the sex and violence.

Inferno by Dante. Hell hath no fury like a writer scorned.

Collected plays and poetry by William Shakespeare. Whoever really wrote them, he or she is a special genius “for all time.”

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the book where, as Hemingway said, American literature begins.

Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Armstrong. There's something about this book that I can never get enough of.