#i am not british or american but a third more sinister thing

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

OMG R U BRI-ISH☕️ - 🌺

NO 😭😭😭😭 you are the third person to assume that 🌺 anon. should i delete my blog /j

[khantoelessar]

Hogan’s timeline prior to Stalag 13

The purpose of this meta is to make an attempt at trying to fit Robert Hogan’s timeline pre-Stalag 13 to match something close to that of the actual historical timeline of World War II. I’m not saying this is actual canon, more like suggesting a possibility to stimulate conversation about Hogan’s timeline before being shot down and also an interest in World War II itself.

There are going to be holes in my theory. I’m well aware of this. However, trying to fit Hogan’s Heroes canon timeline to actual historical timeline is like trying to piece it together with baling wire, duct tape and glue. But that is half the fun anyway.

So on we go.

Our first semi-confirmed date for the series is the pilot episode which tells us it is the winter of 1942.

We also have a semi-confirmed date from A Tiger Hunt in Paris that “Frank Dirken” escaped Stalag 13 December 1942. Now America entered the war when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour on 7 December, 1941. Roosevelt officially declared war on Germany on 11 December, 1941.

But actual hostilities did not commence right away. There was the problem of getting all those men and material across the Atlantic but also, and I mean no disrespect to the Americans when I point this out, but due to America’s neutrality and non-intervention policy a majority of those in uniform at that time had no combat experience.

What this means in terms of Robert Hogan’s past prior to Stalag 13 is that it greatly constricts the time Hogan would have had to fight if he had first arrived in Britain with the rest of the USAAF. The first of the US 8th Air Force didn’t arrive in Britain until 12 May, 1942. (1) The first joint RAF/USAAF bombing raid was in the Netherlands on 4 July, 1942 (2) and the first solo US bombing raid in Europe was on 17 August, 1942, over Rouen. (3)

This would leave at the very most seven months for Hogan to not only establish his reputation as a bomber commander but also get shot down and then get the Stalag 13 operation up and running. In “Happiness is a Warm Sergeant” Le Beau says:

Le Beau: “Maybe we can tame [Kreb]. If he likes strudel.”

Hogan: “Come on. It took us six months to get Schultz to look the other way.”

Le Beau couldn’t have gotten the ingredients to make the strudel that is Schultz’s main bribe prior to the operation being set up, not from a POW camp.

Then there was the raid on the submarine base in Breman mentioned in “Two Nazis for the Price of One.”

Hogan: “I supposed you’re talking about the bombing mission I flew against your secret submarine base in Breman.”

There were three raids on Breman between May and December of 1942. 3-4 June, 25 – 28 June and 19 November. However there were other raids prior to that. (4)

One more interesting detail that I want to add before putting forward my theory as to Hogan’s timeline is that the first of the B17 flying fortresses saw action in Britain when the RAF used them to bomb Wilhelmshaven on 18 July, 1941. (5)

So here’s my theory. Hogan was flying for Great Britain before the US entered the war. There have been fanfics written on this which I highly recommend. However there is one snag with them. Hogan could not have been enlisted in the US Army Airforce when he did so. Not only was the US officially neutral in the war until 7 December, 1941 but it was illegal for US citizens to fly for Great Britain under America’s neutrality laws. But many did so by sneaking across the border into Canada with false papers, claiming to be Canadian or of other nationalities and travelling to Britain to join the RAF. (6) I think it is worth taking a moment to honour the courage of those men and what they risked. In the beginning the United States did not take these transgressions lightly as this story posted on the Warfare History Network attests.

“As they boarded the train for Montreal, the two Americans tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. They were well aware that if they were caught they would be in trouble. At the very least, they would be sent back to the United States. There was also the possibility that they could be sent to prison, as well as fined more money than they had seen in their entire lives.

At the Canadian border, the train stopped and several sinister looking officials got on board. They wanted to know where the two were going and why.

“We’re on our way to Montreal to see a cousin who runs a fish hatchery,” was the reply. One of the unsmiling officials—probably an FBI agent—wanted to know if they were fliers. “Don’t be silly. Do we look like fliers?”

The officials were apparently satisfied by the reply. One of them opened the suitcases of the two travelers and rummaged through the top layer of clothing. He did not look any deeper. If he had, he would have found what he was looking for—flying helmets, goggles, and logbooks. Instead, he closed the lid and wished the young fellows a pleasant trip.

The two Americans, Eugene “Red” Tobin and Andy Mamedoff, were not smuggling contraband. They were going to Canada to enlist in the air force of a foreign country which, in the early weeks of 1940, was against the law. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept a pretty close check on all Americans going to Canada,” Red Tobin later said, “so we had to watch our step.”

You can read the rest of the article here. (7)

The men who chose to go to Canada risked not only fines and imprisonment but also loss of their citizenship. (8)

It wasn’t until 19 November, 1941 that Britain officially revealed that there were three squadrons of American pilots called the Eagle Squadrons. (9)

Another fact the prohibits Hogan being part of the USAAF prior to the American entry is that prior to the war America had start to build up its own armed forces. (10) It began on 15 June, 1940. By 7 December, 1941 they had over 2 million in all branches. (11) This means that the USAAF was in desperate need of competent and skilled pilots to not only lead attacks but also to train new ones in its Air Corp tactical school. (12)

Combine these and I think it highly unlikely that the USAAF would have turned a blind eye to one of its best and most brilliant tactical pilots and officers to go AWOL to fight for a foreign country, especially at a time when the isolationist movement was strong.

There is another route open to Hogan having fought for the RAF and even during the Battle of Britain that I would like to explore here as a possible . . . let’s say, alternative headcanon.

He could have taken the route mentioned earlier by those other Americans, crossing the border into Canada, getting training there and then going onto Britain. I can see Hogan doing something like this. In the face of the news of repeated atrocities being committed by the Nazis and his country refusing to get involved, I can see Hogan taking on a false identity and slipping across the border in order to join the fight.

But this is also the same reason I think that Hogan was not allowed to go AWOL from the US Army. It would have violated Roosevelt’s Neutrality Laws, even though he declared,

This would have crossed to far over that line, to have an American USAAF officer openly fighting with the British, especially after Hogan started gaining fame as a war ace and bomber commander. If he was so feared by the Nazis that Biedenbender was jumped from Colonel to General;

Biendenbender: “You see I am the reason you are now here as a prisoner of war.” Hogan: “Thanks.” Biendenbender: “When the bombing raids of the squadron you commanded started to become . . . oh slightly annoying to the Third Reich I was assigned to study your tactics, to get inside your head, I know everything about you . . . so I was able to predict precisely the planning of your last bombing raid on Hamburg in which you were shot down, and I, hah, I was shot up to a General.”

then his fame would definitely have spread to the Commonwealth and then to America.

This is why I put forward the possibility that Hogan never enlisted in the USAAF. Also, Wikipedia states “None of the Eagle Squadron pilots had previously served in the USAAF and did not have US pilot wings.” (14)

There is the option that Hogan never joined the Eagle squadrons directly but flew for the RAF separately. First of all, according to the Wikipedia site (13) none of the Eagle squadrons flew bombers, let alone B17s. Also, in the episode “Some of Their Planes are Missing” and “Funny Thing Happened on the Way to London” we are told that Hogan was attached to the RAF.

If we take this into account when we look at Hogan’s timeline, we get a lot more room for Hogan to have accomplished all that he did. If he snuck across the border into Canada under a false identity prior or during the Battle of Britain which was July through September 1940 (15) he would have over a year of experience, including making his bombing runs on Breman before being finally transferred over to the USAAF and the 504th bomb squadron once America entered the war. The same Wikipedia site quoted before also states that the ranks in the RAF were transferred after some negotiations to the nearest equivalent rank.

There is another detail from the series that supports Hogan’s story links to Britain and the RAF over that of the USAAF and that is the fact that he reports to London, not Washington. Almost all his links to the Allies are British. There are a few Americans, General Barton in “The General Swap”, General Tilman in “How to Cook a German Goose with Radar”, the captain of that submarine in “The Pizza Parlour” and we do see the alliance of the British and the Americans in “Easy Come, Easy Go”.

But other than that all of his contacts and command structure that he reports to are British. There is no mention of the OSS or of Washington. When Hogan is flown back to England for the briefing before D-Day in “D-Day at Stalag 13” the General (we are not given a name) is British, not American and the “old man” they refer to is Churchill, not Roosevelt.

General: “Even to tell you this much this much had to be cleared at the highest level of intelligence, the Old Man himself.”

Hogan could have been one of those Americans who crossed the border into Canada, got false papers there and traveled to Britain to joined the RAF. He didn’t join the Eagle Squadrons (although I can see him qualifying on the spitfires because they were one of the best planes out there) because he’d been transferred to Bomber Command. When America entered the war, he transferred to the USAAF with the equivalent rank of Colonel and put in charge of the 504th bomb group (even though in reality the 504th flew in the Pacific theatre and not the European one and was part of the 20th Air Force) because by then his reputation had long since proceeded him. He was part of the US mass bombing raid on Ploesti on 12 June, 1942 (16) but was shot down after that and was transferred to Stalag 13 just about the same time as Klink, who (I’m assuming was there to solve the massive escape problems) as we are told in “The Kommadant Dies at Dawn”

Hogan: “Are you kidding, before I arrived you had so many escapes they were going to put a revolving door at the front gate.”

Now like I said this headcanon is not water proof. There are some holes that I can’t fill.

Hogan does say that he was assigned to the Pentagon in “Klink vs the Gonculator”

As mentioned previously, I don’t think the Army would have let him go AWOL to fight for a foreign country if he was already an officer.

On the other hand I should point out that he was talking to Klink and was running one of his cons on him. It is also possible that he was assigned briefly to the Pentagon after Pearl Harbour but before he was shot down. His experience and connections in the RAF would have been invaluable. So maybe this possible headcanon of mine still holds water.

There are also other people who could have taken this path to the war and that is Kinch and every other black POW in Stalag 13.

The Tuskegee Airmen, the only black American squadron in World War II were first deployed overseas in North Africa on 24 April, 1943. (17) That’s too late for Kinch and the other black POWs to be shot down and sent to Stalag 13.

But while the American forces were segregated Canada and Great Britain weren’t quite so insistent on it. They couldn’t afford to be. This is not to say there wasn’t discrimination. Both Canada and Britain did have discriminatory practices (18) (19) that limited enrollment to all but the most general positions to those not of white European descent. But in practice a person of colour’s ability to not only enlist but to serve in a role beyond that of support personal depended very much on the recruitment officer as shown in this story.

“In 1939 the so-called colour bar that prevented black people from serving in the British forces was formally lifted, largely because the Second World War meant that the Army, Navy and Air Force needed to recruit as many men as possible.

The lifting of the bar didn’t necessarily mean it was easy for would-be West Indian recruits to get in however.

There were people who would try three or four times to get in, or pay their own passage to come to Britain from the Caribbean.

Another route in was via the Royal Canadian Air Force. Canada may have been freezing cold but it was considered to be a warm and tolerant place for prospective black servicemen.

Billy Strachan couldn’t get into the RAF, so he sold his trumpet and used the money to pay his own passage to travel through U-boat-infested seas to London. He arrived at Adastral House in Holborn and declared his desire to join the RAF. The corporal at the door told him to “piss off.”

Happily however, an officer walked past who turned out to be rather more welcoming. He asked Strachan where he was from, to which Strachan replied  “I’m from Kingston.”

“Lovely, I’m from Richmond” beamed the officer.

Strachan explained that he meant Kingston, Jamaica.

Shortly after that, he was training for aircrew.”

He went on to do a tour as a navigator in Bomber Command, then retrained as a pilot and flew with the 96th squadron.” (20)

See this link for the full story.

There were black fighter pilots in the RAF as shown in the links above. Not only that there were women of colour as well, such as Lilian Bader who joined the WAAF and Noor Inayat Khan who was one of the Special Operations Executive’s top agents in France. (21)

This is not to say that there wasn’t discrimination against people of colour in Canada and Britain. There certain were as the websites quoted here show.

But the racism was not as bad or as extreme as it was in the United States. People of colour could fill high ranking and highly visible prominent positions in the Second World War as shown in this article here. (22)

So this is a route that Kinch, Baker and the other black POWs could have taken to Stalag 13. Sneaking across the border, getting fake papers, training in Canada and then heading to Britain.

One of the holes in this possible theory is the issue of their uniforms. Unlike the American pilots who were white the black Americans pilots (if there were any) would not have been have been given equivalent rank in the USAAF or even been allowed to fly in the Eagle Squadrons once they were transferred to the USAAF. America was adamant on segregation, as shown here,  (23) something that caused extreme tension in Britain.

While there was racism in Britain towards people of colour the racial hatred demonstrated towards black servicemen by the American G.I.s came as a shock to the British population. (24)

Hogan could have protested segregation all he wanted, demanded Kinch be allowed to fly until he was blue in the face (assuming he and Kinch did know each other as implied in “Prince of the Phone Company” episode).

Kinch: “Hogan?” Hogan: “Robert. Hogan.” Kinch: “Ha Ha! Of course! I went to school with this man in America.”

The Americans would not allow an integrated air force. At best Kinch and the other black pilots would have been sent back to the States to join the Tuskegee airmen.

At this point there are two routes open for Kinch and the other black POWs to have been in Stalag 13 in time to help Hogan start his operation. One, they had been shot down prior to the arrival of the 8th Army USAAF in Britain by 12 May 1942.

The second option is that they remained with the RAF instead of transferring to the USAAF. As this article point out some of the Eagle Squadron members decided to remain with the RAF instead of transferring to the USAAF. (25)

So my theory for a possible route could work for Kinch as well as for Hogan. They could have both snuck into Canada as civilians, got official training and then joined the RAF. Hogan joined bomber command and gained his reputation as a war ace and tactician then joined the USAAF after America entered the war. Kinch was either shot down on a mission just before 12 May 1942 or remained with the RAF and was shot down later. Hogan flew several more missions until Bienderbender overwhelmed him. The Red Cross would have notified Britain about Kinch and the others and Britain in turn would have notified the US who in turn would have had the American Red Cross send the black POWs American uniforms.

This may have led to a reduction in rank for Kinch. The role of navigator (originally titled observer in the RAF) which he fills in “Hogan throws a birthday party”,

was usually filled by commissioned officer, see link (26), but could hold any rank from airman second class to Group Captain. The rank of flight sergeant in the RAF is the equivalent of a Master Sergeant in the USAAF. But if Kinch held a rank higher than that (which seems likely given the skill and high level of responsibility) then his being a sergeant in Stalag 13 would have meant a reduction in rank.

But as I said, this is just speculation on my part in an attempt to try and put the canon of Hogan’s Heroes into something that fits the actual historical timeline. I freely admit that there are holes in my theory.

Which is why I’m saying that this theory of mine is put forward as a possible alternative route that Hogan, Kinch and the other black POWs could have taken to get to Stalag 13 and leave them enough time for them to do all that they did and I hope it stimulates discussion and thought and (not to sound like I’m getting on a soap box here but I love research) a desire to research World War 2 for interest in the subject. Certainly that is what Hogan’s Heroes did for me.

Sources

1.      World War II Database: https://m.ww2db.com/event/today/05/12/1942

2.      History.net: https://www.historynet.com/first-usaac-raf-joint-combat-mission-july-4th-1942.htm

3.      World War II today: https://ww2today.com/17th-august-1942-the-usaaf-makes-its-first-raid-on-occupied-europe

4.      Bombing of Bremen in World War II: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Bremen_in_World_War_II

5.      World War II Database: https://ww2db.com/aircraft_spec.php?aircraft_model_id=4 \

6.      Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-British_personnel_in_the_RAF_during_the_Battle_of_Britain#United_States

7.      Warfare History Network: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/01/18/americans-in-the-royal-air-force/

8.      Royal Air Force Museum: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/americans-in-the-royal-air-force/eagle-squadrons/

9.      WWII: The Complete War Report. Directed by Various. Mill Creek Entertainment. 2017

10.  Not Even Past: https://notevenpast.org/inching-towards-war-military-preparedness-in-the-1930s/

11.  National World War II Museum: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers

12.  The US Army Airforces in World War 2: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Nov/05/2001329898/-1/-1/0/aaf_wwii-v1-2.pdf (pages 85 & 142)

13.  Teaching American History: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/radio-address-delivered-by-president-roosevelt-from-washington/

14.  Wikipedia: Eagle Squadrons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Squadrons

15.  Britannica.com: https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Britain-European-history-1940

16.  142nd wing : https://www.142fw.ang.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1211286/redhawk-reflections-on-the-first-american-mission-in-europe-1942/

17.  Tuskegee Airman: https://www.tuskegee.edu/Content/Uploads/Tuskegee/files/TUSKEGEE_AIRMEN_CHRONOLOGY12.2011.pdf (page 9)

18.  Historyhit.com: https://www.historyhit.com/was-the-raf-especially-receptive-to-black-servicemen-in-world-war-two/

19.  CBC.ca: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/black-canadians-second-world-war-1.5793974

20.  Historyhit.com: Was the RAF Especially Receptive to Black Servicemen in World War Two? | History Hit

21.  Second World War Experience Centre: https://war-experience.org/lives/noor-inayat-khan-soe/

22.  Royal Air Force Musuem: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/pilots-of-the-caribbean/across-the-commands/

23.  Royal Air Force Museum: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/pilots-of-the-caribbean/answering-the-call/the-second-world-war-1939-to-1945-segregation/  

24.  Theconversation.com: https://theconversation.com/black-troops-were-welcome-in-britain-but-jim-crow-wasnt-the-race-riot-of-one-night-in-june-1943-98120

25.  The National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/these-americans-flew-royal-air-force-during-world-war-ii-168713

26.  Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command_aircrew_of_World_War_II

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Kieran Culkin's Shirt Is Off

https://fashion-trendin.com/kieran-culkins-shirt-is-off/

Kieran Culkin's Shirt Is Off

When Kieran Culkin first started reading the script for “Succession,” he wondered whether it had been sent to the wrong person. The HBO powers that be originally thought he’d be a good fit for the character of Greg, a bumbling nitwit who gets high in his first scene and spends the rest of the first season failing to sidle his way up the ladder of a massive media and entertainment conglomerate owned by his great-uncle, Logan Roy.

Almost from Greg’s first line, Culkin knew he was wrong for the part. “He’s already a lot younger than I am, and just the voice ― I was, like, this is not me. I am not right for this.”

When I met Culkin at a small restaurant in the Noho neighborhood of Manhattan last Monday, it was just as clear to me as it was to him that he’s too old to play a character like Greg. But something in the Roy family’s dark saga held Culkin’s attention anyway. He said he kept reading the script, which follows the foibles of the billionaire Roy clan as its individual members vie for power within. A few pages later, Logan’s overconfident third son, Roman, appears, led into a meeting by a man hired explicitly to burn sage.

“Hey, hey, motherfuckers!” Roman proclaims to a room full of his father’s business associates.

“And I was, like, ‘Oh, who’s this fucking guy?’” Culkin said.

Culkin eventually got the part of Roman, an incompetent and lazy man-child who believes he wholly deserves the title of chief operating officer, even though he has little interest in doing any of the work that comes with it. Among the many nefarious faces that make up Logan’s Waystar Royco empire, Roman stands out as perhaps its most cynical ― a ratings-obsessed media executive motivated solely by profit. At one point, in his interpretation of corporate disruption, he takes off his shirt in a meeting, flexing and joyfully screaming “Blood!” at the thought of layoffs. During another, he gleefully tells his sister about a new viral video that is “evidence of precisely the kind of disgusting, liberal, metro butt-love that makes our viewership angry enough to buy pharmaceuticals.” To Roman, nothing could be better.

Culkin can’t say exactly what drew him to the morally depraved heir, described by his father as a “moron” and his brother as a “walking fucking lawsuit.” But it’s not hard to imagine some small part of Culkin was intrigued by the idea of playing such a sneering member of a media empire.

After all, Culkin’s distaste for the tabloid industry is beyond well-established. (“No matter what’s written there, it’s a total lie, even the person’s name, lie, lie, lie, lie, everything’s a lie,” he once told New York Magazine.)

But let’s not lump Culkin into that hyperpartisan Level 10 “FAKE NEWS” category of 2018 American paranoia. Mostly because when he told me “Now it’s a thing, ‘fake news,’” and I said, jokingly, “Fake news. You’re a believer,” he got nervous and pushed out a quick “no,” immediately realizing the millions of different ways such a quote could be aggregated, recirculated, quoted out of context and otherwise misinterpreted. You can almost see it now, can’t you? “Kieran Culkin Joins the Chorus: Media Is ‘Fake News.’”

Culkin’s distrust is of a more justifiable form, born out of a lifetime of his surname showing up in headline-grabbing tabloid fodder. From the moment his parents, Kit “The father from hell” Culkin and Patricia Brentrup, entered into an ugly, obsessively covered custody battle to when the National Enquirer proclaimed his eternally famous brother, Macaulay, had “6 Months to Live” in 2012 (he’s still alive), Culkin’s last name has served as a way to move and make paper ― the most intimate moments of his life repackaged as factually questionable entertainment content to sell ads against. 

Ron Galella via Getty Images

Macaulay and Kieran Culkin at the fifth annual American Comedy Awards back in 1991, just months after the release of the blockbuster hit “Home Alone.”

“There are things that are out there in the world as fact because it was written in print that are just completely false. My brother did not divorce his parents. They did not fight over his money,” he said. “But that’s out in the world as fact.

“I learned at a very young age to be, like, ‘Oh, I get it: It’s bullshit,’ shit that’s written in print.”

In person, Culkin ticks most of the boxes of adulthood: In his 30s. Takes his coffee black. Enjoys talking about his favorite East Village dives. Married five years. Nice watch. Clothes that fit. Hair slicked around his head just so. Like Roman, Culkin drops a “fuck” or “shit” every ninth word or so, as when he said to me, “Hold on, I’m going to eat the fuck out of these pickles. You say something for a minute, ’cause I’ve got a mouth full of shit.”

But no matter how many fucks he lets out ― and by my count, he let out around 25 over 40 minutes ― Culkin remains stuck with a membership to the official Former Child Actors club. Macaulay, or Mac, if you’re in the know, was always the main draw ― history’s most famous kid actor without a drink named after him. But Kieran was there too, in “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2.” He found himself on the stage of “Saturday Night Live” before the age of 10, and schmoozed with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” before his voice dropped.  

Which is probably why ― and here I’m guessing ― Culkin might have been a bit annoyed when HBO suggested he audition for Greg.

But after 10 episodes of watching Culkin-as-Roman take part in his family’s imperious game of human chess, it’s hard to imagine the actor playing anyone else. If Jeremy Strong ― who plays Kendall, Logan’s cocaine-addicted second son ― is the show’s tragic star, Culkin is its nervous energy. There’s something in the way he pushes out a phrase like “What a pathetic beta cuck,” or belittles doctors and waiters alike.

What sealed Culkin’s interest in his character came in the first episode during a family softball game, when Roman points to a kid on the sidelines, the son of the site’s groundskeeper. Everyone grows quiet as Roman whips out his checkbook and starts writing a check for $1 million. Hit a home run in their game, Roman tells the boy, and the money is his. For the child and his family, it’s a potentially life-changing moment. For Roman, the child is nothing but a momentary subhuman toy to mess with and cast aside. After the child is tagged out at home, Roman can’t control his laughter. “I’m sorry, I can’t give it to you,” he says as he tears up the check. It is a degrading, truly awful moment of television.

“Oh, I get it,” Culkin remembered thinking, “he’s a fuck face.”

When Culkin filmed the scene, he embodied evil, letting out a cackle so cruel it sets the show’s moral compass for the remaining season. Culkin himself is not sure where his ability to play somebody like that came from.

“Being able to connect to some degree, not in a positive way, with these characters is odd to me because I don’t know the multimillionaires, I don’t know the super-rich, yet I know assholes like that,” he said. “I can’t even quite specifically pick out who I know that is exactly like that, but it’s weird that you can still, for me, relate.”

“Succession” suffered from a slow start, only truly hitting its stride around Episode 6, when Kendall leads the board in a tense vote of no confidence against Logan, who’s recently suffered a stroke, unleashing a sequence of events within the Roy family that are both comical and horrifying.

Culkin owns up to that. “The first three episodes to me, it’s not like they’re unwatchable,” he said, “but it’s not quite the show yet.”

Which, according to him, is fine. Some shows don’t grab you on first watch, and one in particular in his opinion: “I probably shouldn’t even say this on record. The example I have is actually [the British comedy] ‘Peep Show,’” which was coincidentally also developed by “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong.

But the first season of “Succession” gained enough momentum before concluding Sunday evening for HBO to pick it up for another season ― making this the first time Culkin has ever been part of a television show that made it to Season 2, according to his IMDB page, a small victory in his more than two decades on-screen.

Culkin’s most acclaimed role came in 2002, when he earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in “Igby Goes Down.” But that time the victory led to a full-blown existential crisis.

United Artists via Getty Images

Claire Danes and Kieran Culkin talk at a coffee shop for a scene from “Igby Goes Down.” Culkin entered an existential crisis after the film and took a breaking from acting. 

“[I] found myself at the age of 20 with a career I never chose, [and I] freaked out,” Culkin said. “I think everybody around that age has some sort of crisis. Usually, it’s like a straight-up ‘Oh, I don’t know what I want to do.’ Mine is, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life, yet here I am doing it.’”

Culkin took a break before eventually returning to acting, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “I was just sort of doing it in the meantime,” he says now. He took parts in movies like “Lymelife” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” Did two episodes of “Fargo.” Performed multiple versions of a stage play he loved, Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth.” In 2014, he was still apprehensive. “I often think about getting out of this job, but I’m terrified that there’s nothing else,” he told The Daily Beast.

Since then, Culkin said, something clicked. He remembered coming home from work one day and thinking, “Oh, I think I’m actually enjoying this.”

“I think I know what I want to do now,” he said to himself. “I think I should do this.”

Now deep into his 30s, Culkin has established himself as a stronger and more serious actor than the “essentially retired” Macaulay ever did. And in Roman, Culkin has stumbled upon something as special as it is sinister. TV Guide described Roman as “the very definition of the hate-f―k,” but he’s probably more accurately categorized as sexual overcompensation personified. He tells his brother that his “face is drowning in pussy,” despite the fact that his various partners claim he rarely wants to have sex. He masturbates to his office view of New York City while a string of emails piles up behind him. (“It’s to gain some sort of control,” Culkin surmised.)

More interesting than his sex life, though, is Roman’s complex relationship with his manipulative and emotionally abusive father. While most people want to prove their competence to the people around them, “Roman, for the most part, doesn’t give a fuck about that,” Culkin said, adding, “If his girlfriend says, ‘No, but you did a great job,’ it’s like: ‘Fuck you. Don’t patronize me.’” What he wants, Culkin said, is his dad’s approval: “That’s the only person that can get him, the only person that can look at him and make him nervous.”

Logan does exactly that when Roman prepares to stand against the tycoon in the vote of no confidence. With his father staring down at him, Roman can only muster a meek “maybe” before he slouches into his chair like an admonished child and votes with his father. Thanks to Roman, Logan lives to fight another day atop his dynasty, while Kendall is forced, temporarily, to surrender.

Earlier, in Episode 2, Roman finds himself watching as the world repackages his family’s tragedy into viral content. He and his family are huddled together in a New York hospital, awaiting information about their famous father’s deteriorating health post-stroke, like characters in a Gothic novel, when Roman starts scrolling through Twitter. His sister, Shiv, asks what people are saying.

“Eh, rumors, you know,” Roman replies matter-of-factly. “Some of Twitter says he’s dead ― and also a good deal of rejoicing at our father’s potential demise.” He notices a short video of the “South Park” kids yelling, “Oh my God, we’ve killed Logan! We’re bastards!” and asks an employee to “find out who these fuckers are and report them or screen grab their shit.”

When Culkin’s own father was hospitalized after suffering a stroke in 2014, TMZ, The Daily Mail, Perez Hilton all repackaged the tragedy as well. The National Enquirer pounced, too, running a headline that read, “Macaulay Culkin Rejects Dying Dad: ‘Rot in Hell!’” But unlike Roman, Culkin wouldn’t have been sifting through Twitter. “That would never be something that I would do willingly,” he says of social media more generally. “Because already at a young age, there was a public perception of me.” 

Francis Apesteguy via Getty Images

Kit Culkin, Macaulay Culkin, Kieran Culkin and Patricia Bretnup pose for a photo one month after the release of “Home Alone.” The father is now estranged from his children. 

Like Roman, however, Culkin and his siblings have a less than ideal relationship with his father. By all accounts, they have been mostly if not entirely estranged from Kit ever since their mother won custody of the children in the 1990s. Patricia, the mother, claimed during the custody battle that Kit had been abusive, and Culkin’s brother Macaulay has continued to do so throughout his life.

“He was a bad man,” Macaulay Culkin told comedian Marc Maron earlier this year.

When I asked Kieran Culkin if he has spoken with his father recently, he answered with two no’s so quickly that I couldn’t bring myself to ask a follow-up question, only saying, for reasons still unbeknownst to me, “Fuck ’em.”

“Fuck ’em,” Culkin agreed. “I’ll go on record: Yeah, fuck ’em.”

After a lifetime of his last name being splattered across the front pages of tabloids, Culkin seemed ready to move on from the controversies that have dogged him since he was a child actor with moppy hair and oversized clothes. That’s not him anymore.

What we’re looking at instead is Kieran Culkin, age 35 ― no longer a Greg and fully embracing life as Roman.

[vintagegeekculture]

Oh wise vintagegeekculture, might I ask your opinion on Michael Moorcock's essay "Epic Pooh"?

I am American as all-get-out. Stranger Things is practically a documentary about my rural childhood;there were a million little sense memory triggers in that series for me. Sothere is probably a cultural context to that very very English essay thatdiscusses a very very English relationship to lulling sentimentality and class and the countryside that I willfully concede that I am simply not grasping. The English seem tothink entirely in terms of debating sentimental imagery: “Mother London” vs.the “Ploughman’s Lunch” and “Little Britain.” Althought it is a serious issue,listening to British debates on Brexit often felt like hearing to the “Darmokand Jalad at Tanagra” aliens from TNG having a loud argument about who’s Momloves them more.

But…from my perspectiveas an outsider and foreigner, I think the general point Moorcock makes iscorrect: Fantasy was created by men like Tolkien and Lord Dunsany who wereviolently hostile to the modern world and so their work very studiously avoidedtalking about the modern world except in opposition to it (for instance, theonly person to push industrialization and scouring the countryside is anasshole wizard; the only person who talks like T.S. Elliot’s Londoners is the despicableSméagol). Lord Dunsany was a great writer, but seems like a thin-bloodedaristocrat, like a Brit Ashley Wilkes from GoneWith the Wind, who even in the 1970s, wrotehis stories with a quill pen and wore an ascot tie to book readings.

Moorcock is right whenhe says that fantasy often avoids reflecting the world around us, and thatbeing overly sentimental about the past serves the interest of reactionaries(note that he did not call Tolkien and Dunsany and the rest reactionaries…atleast in a way that was visible in their work – he did say that about Adams andLewis though). The most important quote in that essay is “Ideally fiction should offer us escape and force us, at least, to askquestions; it should provide a release from anxiety but give us some insightinto the causes of anxiety.” I mean, fantasy as a genre was so detachedfrom “real world” issues that when someone like Tad Williams started to includesomething as fundamental as economics into his fantasy worlds starting in the1980s, people treated him like a total genius (Which Tad Williams IS,incidentally - these days, people only really know Tad Williams, if they knowhim at all, as the inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones).

One of the great themesof Moorcock’s work is the way that authoritarians use sentimental imagery ofthe past to manipulate people. If you read Epic Pooh, also read his other book,“The Dreamthief’s Daughter,” the opening third to half is set in Nazi Germany.It’s actually more helpful to understand the point of this essay to read “Dreamthief’sDaughter,” since, in the words of Francois Truffaut, “the only way to critiquea movie properly is to make another movie.” Dreamthief’s Daughter starts with a“Good German,” von Bek, who is horrified that his Germany was taken over byNazism, how they replace “self respect with a kind of strutting self-esteem.”At one point, our hero has to hide in the German countryside, and he mentionshow sinister the small storybook German towns he passes through seem, romanticized by fascists after Hitlercame to power, as they were pushed front and center as the “true Germany.”

Of all the books everwritten about the Nazis and arch-reactionaries, Moorcock gets it the most rightin “Dreamthief’s Daughter.” They were boring failsons, not supervillains.Rudolf Hess was described as the most irritating person to sit next to on thebus to a con and who believed magic and ghosts were real; von Bek said that “inmy many adventures, I showed true courage only once: in not throwing RudolfHess out of my car.” Von Bek’s comments on Hitler himself: “An evening withHitler was like an evening with an extremely boring maiden aunt.” He was alsothe first person I can think of to point out how reactionary fascists oftenhave really bad taste, too: drawing imagery from bad comic operas and Americanmovies about Rome. That last bit should be all too familiar to people whonotice how many American reactionaries love the hell out of the movie 300 (amovie I really like too, incidentally, but it’s okay to enjoy something if you understand it).

Also, “Dreamthief’sDaughter” had a great finale: imagine a flight of dragons coming out to fight theBattle of Britain.

The point, that fantasycan be infantilizing, is a good point, but Moorcock is the weirdestpossible person on the face of the earth to make it. Moorcock got famous bywriting about brooding angsty albinos who cry all the time for the benefit ofteenage heavy metal fans and dungeon masters in Reeboks. I love his stuff but that’s who he is,that’s the stuff that pays his mortgage, that’s his audience. His stuff is good but it reminds me ofthose White Wolf games in the 1990s that look silly and dated in retrospectbecause they trowel on the angst and transgression and put on airs (White Wolf,incidentally, was named after Moorcock’s greatest hero, Elric the White Wolf…andin the 1990s, White Wolf’s publishing arm dedicated itself to reprinting someof Moorcock’s less widely seen novels, a service for which I thank them verymuch). I am actually legitimately surprised that Moorcock never wrote a “sad sexy vampire” novel. God, can you imagine the kind of satire that the anarchic MAD magazine of the 50s would do of the Elric stuff? Elric screaming his soul is black at the breakfast table, while threatening to kill himself over a hangnail.

[miss-m-calling]

Yuletide 2020 letter

Requests:

The Marianne Trilogy - Sheri S. Tepper (Marianne Zahmani, Makr Avehl Zahmani)

Starred Up (Eric Love, Oliver Baumer)

킹덤 | Kingdom (Prince Lee Chang, Seo-bi)

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with. I hope my prompts spark your creativity, and feel free to reach out through the mods if you have any questions. There are spoilers for all of my requests! Likes and DNWs are on the bottom of the letter.

Without further ado…

Requests:

The Marianne Trilogy - Sheri S. Tepper

Marianne Zahmani, Makr Avehl Zahmani

What is this canon: Low fantasy trilogy of novels from the 1980s about Marianne, a student at an American university who comes from the tiny, fictional country of Alphenlicht, wedged in between Turkey and Iran, with a native religion that vaguely resembles Zoroastrianism, a long tradition of both light and dark magic, and civil conflict with echoes of the Cold War (one part of the country seceded with Soviet help). Marianne is financially dependent on her abusive older brother Harvey but trying to assert her independence. Enter Makr Avehl, Marianne’s cousin and de facto president of Alphenlicht, who’s both a mage and a charmer. And then Marianne gets targeted by dark magic and has to become self-assertive and figure out how to save herself, even as Makr Avehl also tries to save her (and sweep her off her feet), often with more complicated results than he intended. Every book introduces a different set of magical challenges, most of which transport Marianne to a different constructed/magical realm, with disturbing parallels to the cruelties of the real world and some interesting meta commentary on gender relations. The books are long out of print, but should be available in libraries and as used copies for purchase; the books’ individual titles are: Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore + Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods + Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse.

While I have a like/get-annoyed relationship with most of Tepper’s work I’ve read, I adore this trilogy unreservedly. I love the mixture of dark fantasy, sly humor, creepiness, complex magical systems, and surreal constructed/parallel/hidden worlds described in enough detail while remaining, for lack of a better word, magical… I adore Marianne, whose lives (it makes sense in context) have made her many things: the traumatized yet defiant survivor, the semi-skillful player of the game of life and magic, the lover and wife and mover-and-shaker in her own right. Her relationship with romantic, sometimes overbearing, arrogant, yet loving and lovable Makr Avehl is so rich and wonderful -- and funny! Among the other characters, I also enjoy Aghrehond, Therat, Makr Avehl’s sister, and all the creepy and/or hilarious denizens of the magical worlds into which Marianne is thrust -- they are all welcome to appear if you want to include them. I just love all the playing with and inverting and deconstruction of tropes and cliches, the aforementioned magical/constructed/parallel worlds of whimsy and creepiness that riff on ordinary aspects of the real world while also running on their own internal logic… This canon simply begs for more worldbuilding.

Canon-specific DNWs: Harvey or Madame Delubovoska appearing in the fic (you may mention them); the fic focusing on Marianne’s pregnancy or on her and Makr Avehl’s daughter if these themes have more of a presence in the fic than they did in the events of the third novel; anything over an M rating.

On the other hand, while I have a blanket DNW for incest, Marianne and Makr Avehl are cousins in canon, know it, and become a couple anyway -- this is fine by me. Other incest is still DNW (esp. Marianne/Harvey).

Prompts:

Makr Avehl and/or Marianne visit the Cave of Light and then try to solve a problem or complete a quest (however grand, mundane, or cracky) according to its message. Or something more about life in Alphenlicht in general.

Road trips (maybe with Aghrehond as driver) -- exploring Alphenlicht and/or magical realms.

Marianne says at the end of the last book that Therat may be surprised – I’d love to see what might surprise Therat, in addition to Marianne and Makr Avehl’s firstborn sharing her name. Or give me Makr Avehl having to work closely with Therat due to some magical/mystical/political issue, given that he’s always dropping unsubtle hints about her scary eyes.

Marianne and/or Makr Avehl end up visiting fields on the board-game from book 3 which the book didn’t describe – what kind of place do they encounter? What (probably dangerous, troubling, and/or creepy) adventures do they have?

Marianne promises to meet Queen Buttercup for a meal at Frab Junction’s Marveling Galosh before she escapes the board game in the third book. Magical promises are serious things, so what happens when Marianne has to make the date and Makr Avehl comes to save her and possibly gets in his own way more than he helps?

I love how canon gently sends up Makr Avehl’s image of himself as Marianne’s protector/lover/white knight in the first and third books’ magical worlds. Actually, Makr Avehl as the Freudian chimera in book 1 and as the hapless hero in book 3 are my favorite things about this canon, beside the general worldbuilding and Marianne’s character development. So I’d love to see more variations on that theme -- Makr Avehl as Marianne’s hero, both swoony and ridiculous, gentle yet lecherous, intense and funny with it -- either in the real world or in some new (and sinister) magical realm.

As a general note, I ship Marianne/Makr Avehl, but I would prefer any shippiness to remain at the books’ level, so nothing too explicit and nothing that completely overtakes the non-shippy plot or the worldbuilding, please. 

If your fic ends up focusing mostly on Marianne or Makr Avehl, with the other one having more of a supporting role, or having the protag think a lot about the other one but they only appear for a bit, that’s fine! The books are structured in a similar way, so that could totally work.

Starred Up

Oliver Baumer, Eric Love

What is this canon: Gritty British prison drama about Eric (Jack O’Connell), a violent young offender who gets “starred up” (sent to an adult prison before he is legally an adult) and quickly gets into conflict with several other prisoners as well as guards and staff. He also gets roped into participating in a therapy group run by Oliver (Rupert Friend), a well-meaning if sometimes out-of-his-depth “posh boy” who sees Eric as something more than just an incorrigible thug. Not helping matters is the entire prison system, as well as the fact that Eric’s own father is serving a life sentence in the same prison and has very narrow views on how Eric should be behaving – and talking about his feelings is not a part of it. The free-flowing conversations in the group therapy scenes are easily the film’s highlight, for me, as is the complicated dynamic between Eric and Oliver. The movie’s available on DVD and can be streamed on a bunch of different platforms.

Yes I do ship it, I do, I do!

Ahem. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what the movie did with the father-son relationship and its influence on both men’s character development – but I really wish they hadn’t got Oliver out of the action before the story’s climax (not like that!). The final denouement with Love father and Love son was great, as was the hint at the end that Eric learned something in anger-management group and has a support network that will help him a lot. But. I would have wanted to see more of the intriguing dynamic between Eric the intelligent, semi-feral, yet not-incorrigible, young thug and Oliver the educated, dedicated, kind yet aware of his own potential for violence (what was he on about with “I need to be here”?), slightly older counselor. They had me at Oliver’s “I want him” and Eric later telling his father that Oliver’s a better man than Love Sr. Also the not-flirting and the push-pull in the scene when Oliver picks up Eric from his cell -- yowza!

For this canon, any rating is very welcome, and my dubcon DNW does not apply! If you decide to go there, my preferred flavors of dubcon for this canon are: power differential makes it a bad idea but they do it anyway; “I know you want this”; “if the answer’s no/you’re only doing this for a dare or to prove a point, then why are you enjoying this so much [as am I]?”; no no yes a.k.a. starts as dubcon (or one of them thinks they’re dubconning the other), becomes enthusiastic consent. 

Also, if this is relevant or makes you nervous about writing for me, Eric would be 18-19, and Oliver is maybe 10-12 years older -- and I like it!!! (The actors were 22 and 31 when the movie was made, FWIW.)

Prompts:

-I would love to see Oliver return to holding his group in prison, so the two of them can interact more, either in the movie’s immediate aftermath or years down the line, as it’s implied that Eric will be serving a long sentence. Give me more scenes from anger management or the ribald, honest, free-flowing conversations in group, either with the other men present (I liked Hassan and Tyrone especially, among the group members) or a one-on-one session.

-An oblique or open-but-undramatic admission/declaration that they both know there’s something there, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Or, one or both of them knows exactly what to do with it, and the push-pull that would result from that.

-Dirty talk: used for arousal, as a defense mechanism, as a form of flirtation. Eric using slurs to assert dominance, and Oliver not letting him hide behind profanity, when he can use colorful language to express emotion and/or sexual interest. There could definitely be some verbal taunting/flirting about who wants/is eager to do what or is good at doing something. There may be some sniping comments about logistics and (lack of) condoms and barebacking and what men get up to in prison. There probably wouldn’t be deep discussions about sexual identity.

-An emergency in the prison requires a lock-down, so Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Things get porny and/or emotional.

-Eric is eventually released (you can handwave this so it happens soon after the movie or have it happen years later) and crashes with Oliver while he adjusts to the outside world. You guessed it: things get porny and/or emotional.

-How do they get to the point where both can cross that line from friends/whatever the hell they are and become, to lovers? (There’s Eric’s personal history and general discomfort with vulnerability, plus all the ways prison sex can be or make things complicated, and if it helps, I headcanon Oliver as either gay or bi and at least somewhat closeted, at work especially.) Who initiates and “directs traffic”? How does their always-contentious dynamic shift during and after sex? Is the sex an isolated (series of) occasion(s), or a progression/escalation over multiple encounters (how would I love especially an escalating series of encounters, let me count the ways)? Eric might seem like the logical initiator and/or dominant partner as well as using the possibility of sex to manipulate and exert control, but then Oliver might (or might not!) surprise him and is definitely the one more in touch with himself as well as aware of his custodial duty toward the men in the group.

-At some point in their intimate relationship (probably not right at the start, and probably not in prison, though if you can make it happen in prison, more power to you!), Oliver decides he’s going to take his sweet time and make Eric fall absolutely apart with pleasure, while using dirty talk to both arouse and empower Eric to own his desires – by that point, Eric is in a place where he can let that happen and enjoy it, even if he still talks tough.

-Or how about this: Eric gets out, relationship happens or is in the process of being negotiated, and while physical intimacy is a whooooole neeeeeew woooorld, you know what else would be cool? Phone sex. Yep. Or even, Eric gets himself one of those secret prison burner phones (preferably hidden somewhere that’s not someone’s arse), and... phone sex after lights-out and lock-down. Maybe nothing (much) has happened physically (yet), so phone sex can be a building block to that or one facet of that deepening intimacy.

킹덤 | Kingdom (TV 2019)

Prince Lee Chang, Seo-bi

What is this canon: In a nutshell: zombie invasion of Joseon-era Korea. Longer version: Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) is the emperor’s only child and heir apparent, but his mother was a concubine, and the emperor has a young, pregnant wife whose father is the emperor’s chancellor and the head of the hugely powerful and ambitious Haewon Cho clan. If the young queen gives birth to a son, Lee Chang may find himself expendable, so he attempts a palace coup to remove his father and the Cho clan from power. This goes belly-up when Lee Chang suspects something terrible is happening to his father (the old man hasn’t been seen in days, and a monster seems to be wandering the emperor’s quarters at night, dun dun dun!), while disturbing reports start arriving from the south of the country about a plague that turns people into flesh-eating monsters. Fleeing the capital, Lee Chang makes his way south and encounters several characters from social milieus with which he usually has little or no contact, including a brave, kind, no-nonsense female physician named Seo-bi (Bae Doona), who’s already experienced an early outbreak of the zombie plague first-hand. Adventures political, emotional, military, and zombie-slaying ensue. This is a Netflix-produced Korean-language show, two seasons of six hour-long episodes each.

I fell so hard for this show. So hard! The beautiful production values, the wonderful cast, how the characters develop, how the show slowly but surely unfolds one reveal after another and packs so much into two short seasons, all the period detail, the genuinely tense action scenes, the moments of humor and intense emotion, the intertwining of political intrigue and zomg! really scary zombies, how the zombie outbreak works on multiple levels both literal and metaphorical…

I love the brave, kind-hearted, but sheltered prince, whose whole life has been so privileged yet shadowed by the possibility of death if he loses his position as heir, learning what it means to actually rule and lead people, to protect them and be protected by them in turn. And I love Seo-bi the fearless, dedicated, selfless physician, who notices things and figures things out regardless of whether this annoys the people in power. I ship them, but I also love their platonic interactions, how instantly and fiercely loyal she is to him (not just because he’s the crown prince, but because she’s seen how brave and altruistic he can be) and how he immediately takes her advice and experience seriously despite her being a woman and a commoner in this super-hierarchical setting. So I’m good with either / or & for this pairing. In a / fic, I’d even be good with a totally sublimated, “they both must kinda know what’s going on between them but for reasons of both their personalities and their respective genders and social positions, nothing overt ever gets said or done” scenario. So don’t stress too much over which flavor of dynamic you write for them.

Also, I love most of the cast (not a huge fan of Chancellor Cho, but he is an effective antagonist), and would be delighted to see any of them in fic too. Especially the loyal and funny and badass Mu-yeong (he was loyal, despite the Haewon Cho clan’s blackmail, and if you want to diverge from canon so he lives, I would not mind that at all), the even more badass and wounded and snarky Yeong-sin (or whatever his real name is), Chang’s sparky, exiled uncle several times removed, and the terrifying and frankly unhinged young queen are my favorites. I even have a soft spot for that gentle but mostly-useless coward Cho Beom-pal, but really, they’re all great and I would love reading about them too, or just about the prince and the lady physician – whatever works!

Finally, before I get to prompts, I know a bit about the Joseon period, but we’re talking the bits and pieces I remember from a college class and what I’ve read on Wikipedia and picked up from this and other Korean movies and shows. I know a bit more about some of the cultural background, like the Confucian values, the social stratification and feudal system, the gender segregation among the aristocracy, the wars with Japan, but again – my knowledge is limited. So if you want to teach me stuff about Joseon, go for it! If you want to invent or handwave stuff, as long as it fits the canon’s mood and broad cultural parameters, go for it! And if you want to treat me to some worldbuilding, period detail of any kind, and/or costume porn, definitely go for it.

Canon-specific DNW: anything above M rating for sex (violence is fine, and you may write about blood and gore as well as zombies eating people, blanket DNWs for lotsa gore and cannibalism notwithstanding).

Prompts:

Zombie fighting anything! Learning to survive in a society that’s rapidly breaking down, having to transcend their habitual social roles and challenging each other. Maybe one of them teaches the other to hunt, or to make herbal medicines, or to fight with a sword, or heck, to cook or to clean dirty clothes. (FYI I wrote most of these prompts before I was quite done with S2, and the time-skip took me totally by surprise. So while my prompts ignore Chang renouncing the throne, I’d also be down for the untold adventures of the former prince and his traveling companions, as Chang learns how to be just regular folks and they pursue clues about the resurrection flower, or for your take on what happens in S3, in which case you may ignore my kidfic DNW and include Lee Chang’s little “brother” if the plot needs him. Use whatever works for you in my prompts in any way you want!)

Figuring out how the zombie infection continues to evolve and/or working together to find a cure beyond dunking the infected in water – whether that means to destroy large numbers of the undead, or to develop an antidote, or to cure and bring back those afflicted. One plot detail that really struck me: more experimenting with zombies, like Chancellor Cho started to do, might also hold the key to a cure?

Political intrigue anything! Having to fight zombies and/or factions at court with both friends and unexpected allies (not gonna lie, I would have loved to have seen the young queen unleashed on some zombies, even if that did not make her the prince and Seo-bi’s ally).

More road trip/survival/battle goodness – maybe Seo-bi offers Lee Chang some advice while they’re navigating their new situation, or she witnesses him developing his leadership muscles, and it brings them closer together than before. Or maybe a moment of humor, relaxation, or quiet affection on the road or in between zombie-slaying, especially if it catches them both a bit by surprise. Or one of them gets a non-zombifying injury (nothing too gruesome or life-threatening, please) and the other one has to care for them – extra points if Seo-bi is injured and the prince doesn’t know what to do so she has to talk him through her own treatment. Or nightmares/being triggered by something, like we saw both Chang and Seo-bi react at the sounds of zombies growling and people screaming in S2E5.

We have seen Seo-bi insist on staying loyal to the prince, and Lee Chang rely on her repeatedly to the exclusion of all his other people – give me a situation in which he has to make clear his own loyalty to her, as a part of both his becoming a better leader and as a step in advancing their relationship. Or, there comes a time when Seo-bi really pushes against the rules of what someone like she can and cannot say or do to/around a crown prince – we’ve seen Lee Chang refuse to stand on his dignity when in the normal course of events so many of his interactions with commoners would end in the commoners’ death, but I imagine even he has his limits, and that kind of clash can only drive this dynamic forward!

Canon divergence in which Seo-bi gets sent to the capital and assigned to be the personal physician to the petulant, frustrated prince we meet at the start of the show (handwave the gender segregation and impropriety). She knows her place, but she also does not suffer fools or male nonsense. Sparks fly, social conventions get tested, zombies may or may not happen, and a new mutual understanding is born.

Canon divergence from the scene in S2E2 when Seo-bi finagles her way to being allowed to see the prince and he instructs her to resurrect Ahn Hyeon – what if instead of that, they came up with another plan of escape? Or maybe Lee Chang sending Seo-bi to spy on the queen goes a different way than in canon? And really, anything that requires those two to pass secret messages while grabbing each other’s hands and staring intently into each other’s eyes is A+ with me!

One theme which emerges gradually, and I really loved, is people having to compromise their principles to survive and ensure the safety of those they feel loyal and/or obliged to: Ahn Hyeon agreeing to turn the sick villagers into zombies, dear Mu-yeong having been a spy but also protecting the prince all along, Seo-bi resurrecting Ahn Hyeon, Lee Chang instructing her to do it as well as his thousand-yard-stare after having to finish off what’s left of his father… I’d love to see more such compromises, how their consequences ripple out, and the emotional fallout.

In addition to zombies, other magical and/or supernatural events and creatures start to appear in Joseon. If you want to bring in something from Buddhist mythology or Korean folklore, please do, and any and all worldbuilding would be awesome. 

Post-canon something in which Lee Chang is king, possibly of only a part of the country (maybe a zombie-free enclave, or a part he won in a civil war against the Cho clan or a cadet branch of his family), and Seo-bi is there as his advisor, physician, and unofficial chancellor. Gimme policymaking to deal with the lingering zombie issue, assassination plots, servants/guards/ladies in waiting gossiping like it’s their real job, all the palace intrigue!

Kind of related to the previous: even as a “spare” prince, Lee Chang can’t marry a commoner. Would he ever think to offer Seo-bi to become his concubine? I don’t think she’d go for it, and he might realize it, but maybe I’m wrong! Or maybe being intensely platonic at each other is as good as it gets for them, and they’re kind of okay with that. Or they get married in secret and have to be very careful not to let slip anything by word on gesture in public, or not to let Seo-bi get pregnant. Or, y’know, one day or night on the road or in a fortified town, in between scavenging for supplies and fighting zombies, they decide to bone down just because their lives are weird enough now to forget about propriety and all that jazz for an hour.

I’d also be down for poly fic for this canon: Lee Chang/Seo-bi/Yeong-sin either during the period we see in the show (or a divergence therefrom) or during the seven-year time skip at the end of S2 (for this threesome, I want a full triangle, not a V-shaped triad, please). Or a sedoretu formed for either political or survival reasons between Lee Chang, Seo-bi, Yeong-sin, and Queen Consort Cho. Oh the drama, the class differences, the conflicting loyalties and (dis)trust, the intrigue, the barely hidden desires, all those strong personalities rubbing up against each other...

I realize that some of these prompts could work as well (better?) as a no-zombies AU, and that’s fine if you want to take it in that direction. :-)

Likes:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and missing-scene stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love stories about characters at work and play, group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples (new lovers/first times as well as long-term/established couples), UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too, etc.

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I especially love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an actual workplace/casefic/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). Or, if they can’t get along, show me why not and what’s preventing them from finding common ground.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), oh-god-why-did-it-have-to-be-you-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this, bickering yet loving couples, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping. A dynamic I cannot resist is shipping a couple who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop and criminal, spies from opposite sides, one betrayed the other or they betrayed each other), and while they love and want each other they’re also not willing to change sides or surrender/compromise their identity for the other’s benefit, and how they might (or not) make their relationship work anyway.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it-hammer-and-tongs, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. Quick and intense sex, slow and intense sex are both great; rough yet willing sex (when it fits the characters) is great; masturbation while thinking of the other half of the ship (or not wanting to think about them but oops there they are in the fantasy!) is great. First times are great, and so is established-relationship, we-know-each-other-so-well sex. When it fits the characters and their canon dynamic, you also can’t go wrong with we-both-wanted-this-for-forever-and-now-we-both-know-it-so-here-we-go-diving-in-headfirst. For het and/or slash, oral, vaginal, anal incl. pegging, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” or “clit” sexy.

Ship/smut DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting D/s, formalized BDSM, painful sex, hard kinks (holding someone down playfully, hair pulling and such like, the odd spank are a-OK) scat, watersports knife/gun/blood play incest deaging/infantilization, mommy/daddy kink under-16yos in sexual situations humiliation body distortion/horror (feeding/weight kink, come inflation, vore, etc.) unrequested ships/pairings soulmates and soul marks pregnancy and children (can be mentioned if canon, just don’t make the whole fic about them) wedding setting/theme secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job xeno, tentacles, bestiality noncon/dubcon

Other DNWs:

torture and abuse (this and noncon/dubcon can be mentioned, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it) descriptions of vomit, shit, and piss (”He pissed up against a tree” and the like is fine), toilet humor lots of gore/blood (mention it, yes; lovingly describe it, no), cannibalism, serious illness or injury character bashing genderswap/genderbent characters, characters as kids/young teens issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons death of requested characters hopeless, unrelenting gloom/angst/horror RL holiday setting/theme, RL religions as a major theme (invented fictional holidays and rituals are fine) reference to RL current events 1st and 2nd person POV unrequested crossovers or fusions AUs which have nothing to do with canon (e.g., mod AU for Kingdom)

[calloftheancestors]

( piece written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali- fellow at Stanford University and Somali first Generation American)

Outrage is the natural response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. Yet outrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand. An act of police brutality became the catalyst for a revolutionary mood. Protests spilled over into violence and looting. Stores were destroyed; policemen and civilians injured and killed. The truism “black lives matter” was joined by a senseless slogan: “Defund the police.”

Democratic politicians—and some Republicans—hastened to appease the protesters. The mayors of Los Angeles and New York pledged to cut their cities’ police budgets. The Minneapolis City Council said it intended to disband the police department. The speaker of the House and other congressional Democrats donned scarves made of Ghanaian Kente cloth and kneeled in the Capitol. Sen. Mitt Romney joined a march.

Corporate executives scrambled to identify their brands with the protests. By the middle of June, according to polls, American public opinion had been transformed from skepticism about the Black Lives Matter movement to widespread support. Politicians, journalists and other public figures who had denounced protests against the pandemic lockdown suddenly lost their concern about infection. One Johns Hopkins epidemiologist tweeted on June 2: “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

Although I am a black African—an immigrant who came to the U.S. freely—I am keenly aware of the hardships and miseries African-Americans have endured for centuries. Slavery, Reconstruction, segregation: I know the history. I know that there is still racial prejudice in America, and that it manifests itself in the aggressive way some police officers handle African-Americans. I know that by measures of wealth, health and education, African-Americans remain on average closer to the bottom of society than to the top. I know, too, that African-American communities have been disproportionately hurt by both Covid-19 and the economic disruption of lockdowns.

Yet when I hear it said that the U.S. is defined above all by racism, when I see books such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” top the bestseller list, when I read of educators and journalists being fired for daring to question the orthodoxies of Black Lives Matter—then I feel obliged to speak up.

“What the media also do not tell you,” I tweeted on June 9, “is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist.”

America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East. There I had firsthand experience of three things. First, bloody internecine wars between Africans—with all the combatants dark-skinned, and no white people present. Second, the anarchy that comes when there is no police, no law and order. Third, the severe racism (as well as sexism) of a society such as Saudi Arabia, where de facto slavery still exists.

I came to the U.S. in 2006, having lived in the Netherlands since 1992. Like most immigrants, I came with a confidence that in America I would be judged on my merits rather than on the basis of racial or sexual prejudice.

There’s a reason the U.S. remains, as it has long been, the destination of choice for would-be migrants. We know that there is almost no difference in the unemployment rate for foreign-born and native-born workers—unlike in the European Union.

We immigrants see the downsides of American society: the expensive yet inefficient health-care system, the shambolic public schools in poor communities, the poverty that no welfare program can alleviate. But we also see, as Charles Murray and J.D. Vance have shown, that these problems aren’t unique to black America. White America is also, in Mr. Murray’s phrase, “coming apart” socially. Broken marriages and alienated young men are problems in Appalachia as much as in the inner cities.

If America is a chronically racist society, then why are the “deaths of despair” studied by Anne Case and Angus Deaton so heavily concentrated among middle-aged white Americans? Did the Covid-19 pandemic make us forget the opioid epidemic, which has disproportionately afflicted the white population?

This country is only 244 years old, but it may be showing signs of age. Time was, Americans were renowned for their can-do, problem-solving attitude. Europeans, as Alexis de Tocqueville complained, were inclined to leave problems to central authorities in Paris or Berlin. Americans traditionally solved problems locally, sitting together in town halls and voluntary associations. Some of that spirit still exists, even if we now have to meet on Zoom. But the old question—“How can we figure this out?”—is threatened with replacement by “Why can’t the government figure this out for us?”

The problem is that there are people among us who don’t want to figure it out and who have an interest in avoiding workable solutions. They have an obvious political incentive not to solve social problems, because social problems are the basis of their power. That is why, whenever a scholar like Roland Fryer brings new data to the table—showing it’s simply not true that the police disproportionately shoot black people dead—the response is not to read the paper but to try to discredit its author.

I have no objection to the statement “black lives matter.” But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it. There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.

America’s elites have blundered into this mess. There were eight years of hedonistic hubris under Bill Clinton. Then came 9/11 and for eight years the U.S. suffered nemesis in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the financial crash. After that we had eight years of a liberal president, and the hubris returned. Sanctimonious politics coincided with deeply unequal economics.

Through all this, many Americans felt completely left out—of the technology boom, of the enterprise of globalization. I never thought I would agree with Michael Moore. But at an October 2016 event, he predicted that Donald Trump would win: “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest [middle finger] ever recorded in human history.” I still think that analysis was right. Mr. Trump wasn’t elected because of his eloquence. He was elected to convey that middle finger to those who had been smugly in charge for decades.

But you can’t give the middle finger to a pandemic, and 2020 has exposed the limitations of Mr. Trump as a president. Yet when you look at the alternative, you have to wonder where it would lead us. Back to the elite hubris of the 1990s and 2010s? I can’t help thinking that another shattering defeat might force sane center-left liberals into saying: That wasn’t a one-off; we’ve got a real problem.They’ll be in the same position as the British Labour Party after four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and two election defeats, when eventually the moderates had to throw the leftists out. One way or another, the Democratic Party has to find a way of throwing out the socialists who are destroying it.

The Republicans, too, have to change their ways. They have to reconnect with young people. They have to address the concerns of Hispanics. And they have to listen to African-Americans, who most certainly do not want to see the police in their neighborhoods replaced by woke community organizers.

We have barely four months to figure this out in the old American way. To figure out how to contain Covid-19, which we haven’t yet done, because—I dare to say it—old lives matter, too, and it is old people as well as minorities whom this disease disproportionately kills. To figure out how to reduce violence, because the police wouldn’t use guns so often if criminals didn’t carry them so often. Perhaps most pressing of all, to figure out how to hold an election in November that isn’t marred by procedural problems, allegations of abuse and postelection tumult.

Who knows? Maybe there’s even time for the candidates to debate the challenges we confront—not with outrage, but with the kind of critical thinking we Americans were once famous for, which takes self-criticism as the first step toward finding solutions.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

[delwray-blog]

THE COMING MURDER OF 200,000,000 AMERICANS

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH, WHAT NO PREACHER WILL WARN YOU ABOUT

THE COMING MURDER OF 200,000,000 AMERICANS

What is in store for America?

By Pastor Del Wray

Will America haft to endure the murder of two-hundred million of its inhabitants before it awakes from its apathetic rejection of Jesus Christ? Is it too late for it to recognize the real enemy is Jewish? The Jewish monopolizing money grabbing bankers! Why all the gold hoarding? Is an economic collapse in our future? What is in store for America? I pray, will be men like those of our founding Forefathers willing to bear all cost even their own blood if necessary to secure the liberties and freedoms this country has enjoyed for two-hundred years. Perhaps, another civil war is needed, not a war between the North and the South 1863 or even a race war between the blacks and the whites but a war between the Khazaria Communist Jews (non Semitic Jews) and the real Christian Church, Judaism and Christianity, a war over the philosophy of Karl Marx and that of the Lord Jesus Christ, Communism and Christianity, Slavery or freedom. Christian, it’s time to arm yourselves!

“Christianity is passing through a crisis the like of which it has never faced before. Whether or not it possesses sufficient moral and spiritual resistance to survive remains to be seen. 

The same forces which crucified Christ nineteen hundred years ago are today trying to crucify His Church.

Many Christian leaders have not yet realized it, but Christianity is in the grip of a life and death struggle at the present time” said Fundamentalist Baptist Pastor Dr. Gerald Winrod in the late 1930s. I quite naturally agree!

Christian’s get your heads out of the dunghills of Jewish controlled media and recognize the Church is at war with a Christ-hating Jewish establishment that is out to rid Christianity from the earth,

The Jewish Assault on Christianity

By Gerald B. Winrod, Editor of the Defender.

"And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. And they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy."—Acts 23:12-13. 

Preface The same forces which crucified Christ nineteen hundred years ago are today trying to crucify His Church.  Many Christian leaders have not yet realized it, but Christianity is in the grip of a life and death struggle at the present time.  International Jewish Communism, which has already undermined all nations, firmly expects to exterminate all Christians. What the Cause of Christ has endured in Russia the past eighteen years surpasses its suffering at the hands of bloody Nero.  One of the purposes of the present treatise is to show that this conspiracy is NOT of recent origin. —Gerald B. Winrod. 

The Jewish Assault on Christianity Christianity is passing through a crisis the like of which it has never faced before. Whether or not it possesses sufficient moral and spiritual resistance to survive remains to be seen.  Paul said the Christian's instruments of battle were not physical: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds."  The same thought is emphasized in the supernaturally inspired words to Zerubbabel: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."  The strength of the Church is in its ability to influence the hearts and lives of men by the demonstration and proclamation of divine truth. Questions like the following constantly haunt the writer: "Will the Church be able to demonstrate sufficient power to triumph over its foes in the present crisis? Or has it become so weakened by apostasy and pernicious teachings that it will have to be drenched in its own blood before it can be brought to its senses?"  Persecution has always had a purifying effect upon the Church. Like the individual saints of which it is composed, its "strength is made perfect in weakness."  Unless the Christian forces of the western nations come under a new baptism of old-time spiritual power, the Church will go down and Soviet Atheism will come up. The Russian Empire was destroyed by the Red hordes, eighteen years ago, because it did not possess sufficient spiritual vitality to resist the onslaught.  The Greek Orthodox Church, which governed the religious life and thought of Russia, was a cold, dead, pagan institution. It lacked life, emotion, and creative energy. Consequently, it yielded to the first attack of organized Atheism. Its gorgeous temples have been turned into museums, brothels, and centers of entertainment and vice. Its wealth has been confiscated. Its priests and other leaders have been put to death. Its members have been slaughtered by the millions. Church life is a memory of the past.  Now let us turn our attention toward Germany. Next, to the British, the German people are the most religious people in Europe. Protestantism was cradled there. Out of sixty-seven million population, sixty million Germans are today identified with some kind of a Christian Church.  For several years, the Moscow conspirators focused their attacks upon Germany. It looked for a time as if the Country was doomed. But by degrees, the Church began to assert its moral and spiritual strength. Finally, the deep, underlying principles of Christian truth manifested on the surface with the result, that by a single stroke, Communism was destroyed.  Dynamic evangelism is the only dependable antidote for Soviet Atheism.  In my book, Adam Weishaupt, a Human Devil, I have shown that the same underground organization which produced the French Revolution is responsible for the present wave of international Communism.  The latter part of the eighteenth century witnessed the destruction of France. The same sinister agencies were at work across the English Channel in Great Britain. It is a matter of historical record, admitted by the best historians, that the revival of John Wesley saved England from the fate of France.  If the Church of America continues to lose its spiritual moorings, it requires no prophet to determine what the future will bring forth.  An old philosopher once said, to know a thing well one must understand its first cause. It is unpleasant to realize that a certain element of apostate Jewry is behind the turmoil of this dark hour and the present Soviet persecution through which the Church of Jesus Christ is passing.  The Jews and the Prophets Even a casual reading of the Old and New Testaments will show that the Jews are disobedient and rebellious people. Nowhere in Scripture are Christians required to excuse and condone their evil deeds simply because of their nationality.  Jesus knew better than anyone else the unspeakable crimes of which these people are capable. It was to them that He addressed the following powerful polemic:  "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! And say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"  In this indictment, Jesus lays the charge of persecuting the prophets at the door of the Jewish people. It is by far the most severe, denunciatory and withering blast of language which fell from His lips during the entire thirty-three years that He was in the flesh.  The Jesus of this, the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, is not the quiet, reticent Jesus of modern literature and the fashionable pulpit. The Jesus, whose righteous indignation is here asserted, is a man of words and action, a man in the act of pronouncing eight woes upon the Jewish leaders and finally condemning them to the damnation of hell.  In the next breath, Jesus affirms His Godhead and says that He will soon send other messengers of God to them. He then predicts that they will treat His coming servants exactly like their fathers treated the prophets.  "Behold I send (or 'I am about to send') unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar."  True to the Lord's promise, after His departure He sent the first group of messengers forth on the day of Pentecost. Others followed later. The book of Acts records the persecutions and deaths they suffered at the hands of the very Jews who declared they would not have been guilty of the similar conduct of their fathers.  It is particularly significant to notice that Jesus blamed the Jews for the murder of Abel. But how could this have been in view of the fact Abel was a son of Adam and Eve, whereas the Jews date their origin from Abraham about nineteen hundred years before the birth of Christ?  By way of parenthesis, it should be remarked that the name Jew did not originate until a few hundred years after Abraham. It was first used in the book of second Kings as a reference to the patriarch Judah in distinction from the other ten tribes of Israel. Later the term became the appellation of the whole nation.  When Jesus accused them of killing Abel, He was seeing beyond their particular nationality. He was seeing beyond the garb of flesh which they were wearing.  He was looking deep into their souls. He was seeing the demonic poison which was stored up in their lifestream. He knew that the same satanic hatred for the program of God which took the life of Abel was to reach its climax in the murder of the Messiah and His apostles. Hence the judgment which He pronounced upon them: "How can ye escape the damnation of hell?"  To grasp the full meaning of the above reference to Abel, one needs to understand that from Eden to Bethlehem's manger there runs a perfect avenue of divine heredity. This path of the ages, carved straight through the human family, may be likened to the Gulf Stream which plows its way across the ocean. The conflict of the centuries is the fact that Satan tried repeatedly to break the royal line so the Redeemer of the world could not be born.  Early in Genesis, after the fall of man, it was announced that the "seed of the woman" would bruise the serpent's head. This is the first reference in Scripture to the virgin birth of Christ. Eve was given to understand that a male child, a descendant of hers, would break Satan's power in the world.  When Cain, the first child was born, it is evident that Eve thought he was the one who would destroy the serpent, then and there, because she said: "I have gotten a man from the Lord." This was a mistake for the reason that a study of Cain's life shows him to have been full of hereditary poison. He was guilty of six specific sins: he worshipped in self-will, was angry with God, refused to bring a sin-offering, lied to God, would not repent, and murdered his brother.  Abel, the second son, was in the blood-line between Eden and the manger. It was for this reason that Satan inspired the killing of Abel so the line would be broken. Seth was born later to repair the damage. After that, the two lines ran in parallel until the deluge—the Sethites and the Cainites.  Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and many others, were in the royal line from which the promised Redeemer was finally born.  Now, in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, we find Christ charging the Jews with the same sin which was laid against Cain—namely, that they had become the instruments of Satan for the destruction of the plan of human redemption. The poison of the serpent had been handed down until that hour; it was flowing in their veins; the blood of the righteous Abel was upon them; they were cooperating with Satan; they had permitted themselves to become a party to the same crime of which Cain was guilty; they were trying to destroy the Saviour of the world even as Cain tried to destroy the line from which the Redeemer was to be born.  When these facts are understood, this chapter becomes truly pathetic. There Jesus stands in the temple dedicated to the worship of the true God. He is confronted by a crowd of blind and impure hypocrites. Sinless anger burns on His face as His eyes melt into anguish and misery. From the hill on which the temple is situated, he looks down upon the city spread before and beneath Him. He cries out: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill—eat the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"  Then once more addressing the Jews, He cried: "Behold your house is left unto you desolate."  As Jesus walked down the steps that day, the people only saw a simple man leaving the temple, but the angels saw the God of Heaven forsaking it. As an example of how the Jews treated the prophets, Jesus cited the circumstance of Zacharias being slain between the temple and the altar. This takes us back to the twenty-fourth chapter of second Chronicles.  Baal worship had invaded Israel. Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, exalted herself to the throne of David. She caused all the male members of the royal family to be put to death except Joash, the six-year-old son of King Asaziah, who was hidden away secretly by the good priest Johoiada.  In this revolution which overtook his nation, Johoiada showed great tact and ability. He waited until public sentiment became ripe for a change, then on a certain day when a large crowd was assembled in the temple court, he displayed the child and drove Athaliah from the throne.  Soldiers had been previously concealed in the temple and were armed with weapons. At the proper moment, Johoiada released his private army from hiding and stationed warriors at the various places of entrance so no one could leave or enter the court.  The power of idol worship was thus broken, with a single stroke, in Israel. Athaliah with Mattan, her chief prophet of Baal, were put to death.  Johoiada died at the age of one hundred and thirty. As a signal honor, he was buried "in the city of David among the kings."  Zechariah was the son of Johoiada and succeeded his father as the leading priest of Israel.  Because Zechariah dared to rebuke the Jewish leaders for their apostasy, King Joash had him put to death. "And the spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. And they conspired against him and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada, his father, had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it."  In less than a year from the time that Zachariah was killed, the Syrian armies overran Jerusalem and massacred the people. Joash was later put to death.  On the eventful day, when Jesus stood before the Jews who thirsted for His blood, He reviewed this bit of Israelitish history by reminding them of their crimes against the prophets of old.  The Jews and the Christ… Speaking to the sect known as the Pharisees, Jesus said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh his own: for he is a liar and the father of it."  The Pharisees wielded a satanic influence over their nation. They represented a system of occultism mingled with Jewish doctrines and beliefs. They poured a constant stream of poison into the thinking of Jewry which twisted and perverted the minds of the rank and file of people.  Although the Sadducean high priests were the head of the Sanhedrin, the decisive influence upon public affairs was in the hands of the Pharisees.  The People's Bible Encyclopedia says: "They had the greatest influence upon the congregations, so that all acts of public worship, prayers, and sacrifices were performed according to their injunctions. Their sway over the masses was so absolute that they could obtain a hearing even when they said anything against the king or the high priest. Hence the Sadducees, in their official acts, adhered to the demands of the Pharisees, because otherwise, the multitude would not have tolerated them."  As a Jew avoided as far as possible all contact with a Gentile, lest he should thereby be defiled, so did the Pharisee avoid, as far as possible, contact with the non-Pharisee, because the latter was to him unclean even though a Jew. The egotism of the sect is at once evident.  There is no way of calculating the demoralizing influence that this group of men had upon the people who looked to them for leadership. In tracing the origin of this organization we find that it began back in the occult demonism of the Chaldean sooth-sayers.  General A. Netchvolodow says: "The Chaldean science acquired by many of the Jewish priests, during the captivity of Babylon, gave birth to the sect of the Pharisees whose name only appears in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the Jewish historians after the captivity (606 B.C.). The works of the celebrated scientist Munk leave no doubt on the point that the sect appeared during the period of the captivity.  "From then dates the Cabala or Tradition of the Pharisees… For a long time their precepts were only transmitted orally but later they formed the Talmud and received their final form in the book called the Sepher ha Zohar."  When the leaders of Israel contacted the occultism of the Chaldeans they brought a Satanic element into Jewry which was in a great measure responsible for all of the subsequent crimes of the nation. The Pharisees carried on constant subversive activities against the Gentile peoples around them. They were, in a sense, the Communists of their day. To them, a Gentile was no better than a dog.  Josephus, the great Jewish historian, explains: "For there was a certain sect of men that were Jews, who valued themselves highly upon the exact skill they had in the law of their fathers and made men believe they were highly favored by God. These are those that are called the sect of the Pharisees, who were in a capacity of greatly opposing kings. A cunning sect they were, and soon elevated to a pitch of open fighting and doing mischief. Accordingly, when all the people of the Jews gave assurance of their good-will to Caesar, and to the king's government, these very men did not swear, being above six thousand; and when the king imposed a fine upon them, Pheroras's wife paid their fine for them. In order to requite this kindness of hers, since they were believed to have the foreknowledge of things to come by Divine inspiration, they foretold how God had decreed that Herod's government should cease, and his posterity should be deprived of it; but that the kingdom should come to her and Pheroras, and to their children. These predictions were not concealed from Salome, but were told the king; as also how they had perverted some persons about the palace itself; so the king slew such of the Pharisees as were principally accused, and Bagoas the eunuch, and one Carus, who exceeded all men of that time in comeliness, and one that was his catamite."  Josephus also tells how the Pharisees were able to crowd their way into the lives of Gentile rulers to the point of gaining control of whole nations exactly as Jewish financiers and political leaders are doing today.  The following historical statement by Josephus, describing ancient Alexander, at the time when Alexandra was ruling, sounds like it might have been written about some modern country: "These are a certain sect of the Jews that appear more religious than others, and seem to interpret the laws more accurately. Now Alexandra hearkened to them to an extraordinary degree, as being herself a woman of great piety towards God. But these Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her favor by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs: they banished and reduced whom they pleased; they bound and loosed (men) at their pleasure: and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority, whilst the expenses and the difficulties of it belonged to Alexandra. She was a sagacious woman in the management of great affairs, and intent always upon gathering soldiers together; so that she increased the army the one half, and procured a great body of foreign troops, till her own nation became not only very powerful at home, but terrible also to foreign potentates, while she governed other people, and the Pharisees governed her."  Thus we see how, back there, powerful Jews were able to rule from behind the scenes, pull wires and produce Gentile strife the same as they are doing today through their "Gentile fronts" among the various nations. We must always remember that it is natural for the Jewish people to have only contempt for Gentiles. They are possessed of a natural aversion for Christianity. When they gain control of a country, as in Russia at the present time, they never fail to vent their ill-will upon Christians.  From the foregoing, we now understand that the Pharisees represented the secret, sinister organization which existed for the purpose of opposing God and overthrowing all law and order. Out of their evil, occult program, there eventually came two documents known as the Kabbalah and the Talmud.  The Kabbalah governs the spiritual life of the Jews, while the Talmud regulates things material.  Concerning the writings of the rabbis which were added to the Old Testament Scriptures by these leaders, Josephus says: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers."  It is believed by many that the Talmud and other writings of the Jewish leaders were directly responsible for the rejection of Christ. These "traditions" blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies which related to the coming of the Messiah. They produced the hatred which finally resulted in the assassination of the Son of God.  Hence the words of our Lord: "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" And again: "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."  A few quotations from the Talmud will give an insight into the mental processes of the rabbis of all ages and will show why these inhuman writings were objectionable to Jesus. Gentiles, realizing the sinister contents of these documents have sought at different times to destroy them. All copies were ordered burned by Philip IV, the Fair, King of France, in 1306, but the book survived the flames.  The Jewish conception of God was that of a tyrant whose wrath had to be constantly appeased by the most rigid observances. He was confined, they believed, to the four walls of their own bigoted nationalism. Their contempt for other peoples is shown by quotations from the Talmud:  "You (the Jews) are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts."  "On the house of the Goy (non-Jew), one looks as on the fold of cattle."  The following prayer from the Talmud is quoted to the present day: "We beg Thee, O Lord, indict Thy wrath on the nations not believing in Thee, and not calling on Thy name. Let down Thy wrath on them and inflict them with Thy wrath. Drive them away in Thy wrath and crush them to pieces. Take away, O Lord, all bone from them. In a moment indict all disbelievers. Destroy in a moment all foes of Thy nation. Draw out with the root, disperse and ruin unworthy nations. Destroy them! Destroy them immediately, at this very moment!"  "It is more wicked to protest the words of the rabbis than of Torah (law of Moses)."  "The decisions of the Talmud are words of the living God. Jehovah himself asks the opinion of earthly rabbis when there are difficult affairs in heaven."  "Jehovah himself in heaven studies the Talmud, standing: he has such respect for that book."  The Talmud teaches that the Jewish nation is the only nation selected by God, while all the remaining ones are contemptible and hateful. That all property of other nations belongs to the Jewish nation, which consequently is entitled to seize upon it without scruples. That an orthodox Jew is not bound to observe principles of morality towards people of other nations, and on the contrary, he even ought to act against morality, if it is profitable for himself or for the interest of Jews in general. Continuing quotations from the Talmud:  "A Jew may rob a Goy, he may cheat him over a bill, which should not be perceived by him, otherwise the name of God would become dishonored."  "It is permitted to kill a Jewish denunciator everywhere... it is permitted to kill him before he has denounced... though it is necessary to warn him and say, 'Do not denounce.' But should he say, 'I will denounce,' he must be killed, and he who accomplishes it first will have the greater merit."  "How to interpret the word 'robbery'. A Goy is forbidden to steal, rob, or take women slaves, etc., from a Goy or from a Jew, but he (a Jew) is not forbidden to do all this to a Goy."  It would be a mistake to pass lightly over the satanic influence which the Chaldean priests wielded upon the Jewish leaders while they were in Babylon. This association of Jews with pagan magicians perverted the teaching of the Old Testament into murky materialism and brought the people under the despotism of demonism.  In Scripture, the Chaldeans are classed with the magicians, astrologers, soothsayers, and sorcerers. Therefore, the inner circles of Jewish leaders in the days of Christ were nothing short of black magicians.  Is it reasonable to suppose that this hereditary poison which was handed down in the life-stream of Jewry, from the time of the Old Testament prophets, has ceased to exist?  The common-sense answer is No. We have with us today the same kind of human "vipers" that Christ had to contend with nineteen hundred years ago. They constituted the scheming, tricky group which stirred up the mobs that screeched for the destruction of the Son of God. They uttered the most vicious cry that over fell from human lips: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" "Then Pilate said unto them. Why, what evil hath he done?” And they cried out the more exceedingly, “Crucify him."  Had Christ shown hatred toward the Gentiles, started a revolution, organized an army, marched on Rome and promised to give the Jews earthly power, they would have accepted Him as their Messiah and King. But they rejected Him because He said: "My kingdom inset of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews."  It was a tragic night when our Lord went into the garden of Gethsemane for His final season of prayer before facing Calvary. Three times He prayed: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."  Prior to this time, certain Jewish leaders had approached one of the disciples with a financial offer if he would only lead the mob to the place where the Saviour had secluded Himself for the evening.  The Jews possess the rare ability for stirring up strife among the Gentiles. They know exactly how to create confusion and unrest. They are experts in arousing human passions by producing mob psychology. They are able to stampede crowds into croaking special phrases like frogs.  We see this today in the streets of the large cities of the world where throngs of unemployed men congregate, carrying banners, and repeating slogans. Little do these mobs know that behind their misery there are usually Jewish Capitalists who have deliberately planned the abnormal economic conditions which produced their suffering? Little do these mobs know that at the top of their Communist organizations there are powerful, but diseased, Jewish minds.  Judas told the conspirators that the One Whom he should kiss would be Jesus. So, the deceiver drew near, sneaking like a serpent through the undergrowth and shrubbery of the garden. Reaching the Master, he greeted Him with a familiar oriental salutation consisting of a gentle embrace and a kiss on the cheek.  In a few minutes, the Lord was entirely at the mercy of the savage pack of Jewish wolves. They were determined to do away with Him. This was the world's blackest night.  First, the innocent Victim was taken to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest. Then to the Sanhedrin, and finally to Pilate's Court. All three of these trials were illegal. Both Jewish and Roman laws were broken.  Meanwhile, Judas had collected the thirty pieces of silver due him for his part in the crime. He hurried quickly away from the mob, into the semi-darkness, down the path, and vanished from sight. At first, he was inclined to congratulate himself on having made some easy money. This was before his conscience began lashing him.  Is it too much to suppose that Judas soon discovered that he had blood on his lips?  Yes, his mouth was moist. He found his lips were bloody. Only a few minutes ago, he had kissed the cheek of the Son of God. And the sweat which bathed the Lord's face had been great drops of blood.  It was true that blood was oozing through the pores of the Lord's body at the time of the fatal kiss. Medical science declares that only one thing can produce a bloody sweat—namely, a broken heart.  In the sad hour of the garden prayers, Jesus loved the world so much, so deeply, that the physical organ in His breast could not stand the strain; it actually collapsed. His heart could not stand the outburst of emotion. It was literally, physically ruptured. And this sad experience fulfilled Psalms 69:20: "Reproach hath broken my heart." When the heart collapsed from the deep emotional impact, blood naturally dripped through the pores of His flesh.  Let sinners remember that this was the way Jesus Christ loved them just before He went to Calvary to suffer for the sins of the world.  Try to imagine the feelings of Judas when he discovered the blood of the Master on his lips, poor conscience-stricken creature!  Back to the Jewish leaders, he ran. "I have sinned", he cried "in that I have betrayed innocent blood."

  "What is that to us?" the Jews replied scornfully. "See thou to that."  Then the cringing betrayer literally threw the thirty pieces of silver on the floor of the temple and fled from the presence of the vicious priests. "I have betrayed innocent blood," he sobbed.  Judas was found dead a few hours later, having committed suicide.  Special notice should be taken of the word "innocent". The last thing the betrayer did before he died, was to declare that Jesus Christ was guilty of no wrong, that He had committed no sin, that He was living a clean, pure, innocent, sinless life.  Had Jesus been guilty of one sin, Judas would have known about it and would have used it to justify his heinous crime in that tragic hour. The immaculate life that the Master lived while in the flesh is an unanswerable argument for His Immaculate Conception and Godhead.  Yes, this innocent, sinless Man from heaven was subjected by Jews, to every conceivable indignity, and because of their demands was finally put to a horrible death on a disgraceful cross like a common criminal.  The Jews and the Church In the parlance of the street, the Jew is sometimes called a "Christ hater." The spirit of Judaism is one of direct antagonism to the principles of Christianity.  It is not difficult to understand why an apostate people, who have rejected their Messiah, should continue in spiritual darkness and despise everything that bears His name. No sooner had the tomb of Christ been sealed than the tormenters set out to destroy His followers. This assault has continued straight through the centuries until now it has come into fruition in the form of international Jewish Communism.  In the first twelve chapters of the book of Acts, five specific persecutions, sponsored by Jews against the infant Christian Church, are recorded. Failing to blot the new religious conception from the face of the earth by putting its Leader to death, they invented every conceivable scheme for torturing and murdering those who pledged allegiance to His plan for redeeming the world from the curse of sin.  The Jews regarded Christianity as being an illegitimate child of Judaism. Therefore, in their hatred, they believed it to be their solemn duty to stamp it out. After the divine visitation at Pentecost, so many thousands of Jews were converted that the leaders became alarmed.  One thing stood in their way—the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Had His body remained in the tomb, they would have found it easy to combat the new Faith which had suddenly sprung into existence. But with the resurrection being discussed on every side, they found themselves confronted with an insurmountable difficulty. When first faced with the fact of the empty tomb they did not hesitate to resort to deliberate falsehoods.  "And when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, say ye His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day."  The first few months of the Church's history witnessed five distinct persecutions. What the Cause of Christ has endured at the hands of Jews, through the centuries, far surpasses anything the Jewish people have suffered from Christians.  The attitude of the Jews toward the early Church reminds us that there would be no Christianity in the world today had Paul and others not taken the Gospel message to the Gentiles.  First persecution: Acts 4:1-22. A pitiful beggar, a man born a cripple, was placed near the gates of the Jerusalem temple every day to beg for alms. On a certain occasion, as Peter and John were about to enter, the poor, helpless creature stretched forth a dirty, bony arm and pleaded for a coin.  "Silver and gold have I none," said Peter, "but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."  Instantly the resurrection life of Christ smote the recipient of divine mercy and he jumped to his feet "walking, and leaping, and praising God." The man was more than forty years of age and had therefore been a familiar object on the streets of Jerusalem for years.  This miracle caused a great stir throughout the city. Large crowds of curious people gathered around the apostles and the healed beggar.  Peter was quick to take advantage of the opportunity and turned the occasion into a sermon. "Why marvel ye at this?" he asked, and then explained that a far more wonderful miracle had occurred a short time before in Jerusalem—namely the resurrection of Christ from the grave.  When the report of this healing reached the treacherous Jews, their minds got busier than ever. They began devising new plans for putting an end to everything that was being done in the name of Christ.  Their first thought was to deny that the miracle had been performed. Then they realized that this was useless because the man was so well known. At that moment he was rejoicing, praising God, testifying to his deliverance and telling everybody what had happened. "And we cannot deny it," mourned the Jews who would have lied to discredit the story if it would have advanced their selfish purposes.  The members of the Sanhedrin came together and the little band of Christians were forced to appear before them. A torrent of abuse was turned loose upon the trembling group until finally Peter, "filled with the Holy Ghost," became bold. A spokesman for the group, he made it clear that the Christians proposed to obey God rather than man.  Had it not been that the mobs were at that time favorable toward the apostles because of the miracle which had been performed, the Jewish leaders would have no doubt put the entire body of believers to death.  Second persecution: Acts 5:17-42. "Many signs and wonders" were wrought among the people by the apostles. All manner of diseases were healed. But the Jews could see no good in any of this relief of human suffering because it did not come through the narrow, selfish channels of their bigoted nationalism.  The leaders agreed to the use of physical weapons in their attempt to destroy spiritual power, the same as Communists are doing today in trying to exterminate Christianity by killing Christians.  Repeated acts of supernatural intervention preserved the early Church. Without divine assistance, it would have perished. These early miracles confirmed the words of the Founder that the gates of hell would not be able to prevail against the Church.  The Jews "laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth." Next morning when the Jewish senate convened and messengers were sent to bring the apostles for trial, it was discovered that unknown to the jailors, they had escaped and were at that very hour preaching in the area of the temple.  Jerusalem was in turmoil by this time. Had the officials dared, they would have killed the Christians without a legal trial. When the saints appeared before the tribunal they were told that they had been previously warned not to teach in the name of Jesus. "Ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us," said the high priest.  From this, it is evident that the apostles had been denouncing the Jews and charging them with the responsibility for Christ's death. Here we find the leaders complaining about His blood being upon them, forgetting apparently their previous utterance: "His blood be on us, and on our children."  It is to the credit of our spiritual ancestors that they were able to fill a whole city with the doctrines of Christianity in the face of such defiant opposition.  Peter finally dared to shout: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." Next, he called upon his persecutors to repent of their sins. We read that this "cut them to the heart." Who was this upstart that he should have the audacity to rebuke them!  When they were almost ready to demand the lives of the apostles, Gamaliel, a tolerant member of the Sanhedrin, lifted a warning voice. If the new cult was not of God, he declared that it would come to naught and fall by its own weight. "But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." At length, this line of common sense reasoning prevailed, and the passions of the leaders cooled a bit.  The result was, instead of killing the apostles they were given another warning and a severe flogging. This form of punishment was cruel, brutal, cowardly and unjust. But even though bitter and painful to the flesh, it caused rejoicing to the spirits of the faithful few. As the wounds healed they "rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name."  The only way the Jews had of striking at the Christ Whom they hated was to injure His followers; they availed themselves of this opportunity.  Boldly and properly disregarding their illegal judges, the Christians kept on preaching Christ and reminding the Jews of their crimes against the government of God.  Third persecution: Acts 754-60. The blood of martyrs began flowing in the same year that the Lord ascended into heaven. The Jews' first victim after Christ was a man named Stephen, whose primary crime was the belief in the deity of the Son of God. This was regarded as blasphemy.  The story of the murder of Stephen is one of the saddest in all the history of the Church. It is significant that a Hellenist, rather than an apostle, should have become the first Christian martyr.  Stephen was accused of three things: blaspheming God, setting aside the Old Testament, and belittling the Temple. Each of these charges was untrue. Even while lying witnesses were being introduced against him, the members of the Jewish counsel saw his countenance light up with a spiritual glow like "the face of an angel."  After listening to the charges, the priests asked their helpless victim: "Are these things so?" But instead of devoting himself to an answer of questions which everyone knew to be based upon falsehoods, Stephen entered into a discussion of Israelitish history and closed by rebuking his judges for their hypocrisy.  He declared that their devotion to God, the Law, and the Temple, was hypocritical. Here are his words: "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your father’s persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers."  Thus Stephen laid bare the full measure of their guilt. The blood of the Son of God was upon their heads; they had ignored the miracles which testified of His deity; they had rejected the Pentecostal program of the new Church; they had also spurned the wooing of the Holy Spirit. Before God, they stood condemned, and judgment was sure to overtake them! Taking no thought of his own safety, Stephen shot his words of truth, like barbed arrows, into the hard hearts of his merciless tormentors.  As he spoke, the Jewish leaders yelled and screamed to drown his words. They stopped their ears with their fingers to avoid hearing the truth about themselves. Like serpents, they hissed their poison at the courageous Christian. They rushed upon him with one accord.  In their madness they dragged him outside the city, removing their outer garments as they ran. With stones, they pelted the body of the first Christian martyr until his life ebbed away. This execution was illegal because the matter was not submitted to the Roman Governor.  Emulating the blessed Saviour, Stephen cried with a loud voice: "Lord lay not this sin at their charge." "And when he had said this, he fell asleep."  Fourth persecution: Acts 8:1-3. The first three persecutions were spontaneous and did not result from deliberate planning. There had been no coordination of effort. Events had transpired so rapidly that there had been no time to sit down and quietly work out a concerted plan of attack.  But the spilling of Stephen's blood seemed to whet the Jewish appetite for more Christian suffering. From that hour, nothing but a terrible pogrom could possibly satisfy them. The sight of blood, the appearance of the first deadly wound in the flesh of a believer, seemed to stir all their criminal instincts.  They came to the conclusion that an organized effort was imperative if the new Faith was to be put down. Up until that time, their attempts to suppress the truth had proved ineffective. In searching for a persecutor who would be both cunning and brutal they selected a brilliant young rabbi by the name of Saul from the city of Tarsus.  It will be recalled that this was the young man who had guarded the coats of those who stoned Stephen. Saul stood grinning at the contortions of the martyr squirming and writhing in death agonies, under the barrage of rocks which were heaped upon him.  Jesus told his followers to go everywhere proclaiming the glad tidings. This was done following the Pentecostal harvest feast which brought Jews to Jerusalem from all parts of the civilized world. Those who accepted the Gospel message, on that great occasion, returned to their various communities to kindle spiritual fires.  Unwittingly, in the fourth persecution, the Jews contributed to the success of this very plan of evangelizing because when Saul began scattering believers, driving them from their homes, forcing them into exile, "persecuting them from city to city," every such Christian became an evangelist.  Until this time, the activities of the Christians had been confined for the most part, to the city of Jerusalem and its immediate environs, although a skeleton of Church organization was set up reaching into other areas, resulting from the embers which blew in all directions after the experience Pentecost.  "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word."  The very name Saul became a terror to the early Christians because of the heartless methods which he used. He and his helpers were happiest when they could rush into a house and catch a little group of believers in the act of worshipping—they would kill and wound some, banish others, and torture still others in ways too numerous and terrible for words.  The irony of this organized attempt on the part of the Jews to blot the cause of Christ out of existence was the fact that their own ringleader got gloriously converted on the road to Damascus and became the greatest missionary and evangelist the world has ever known.  But, in later years, Paul never forgave himself, nor was he ever able to erase the memories of his early attacks upon the little Church, which he came to love so dearly and for which he finally sacrificed his life.  Fifth persecution: Acts 12:1-19. The next spasm of Jewish terror, mentioned in the early part of the book of Acts, was directed against Peter. This persecution is of particular importance because it introduces a new element in the Jewish plan of destroying Christianity. It reveals the scheme, which was continued for hundreds of years, influencing Gentile rulers to do their dirty work for them.  During the first few centuries of Church history, when the pagans slaughtered Christians by the tens of thousands, a careful study will show that time and again the pogroms were precipitated by powerful Jews who were able to maneuver things from behind the scenes. They simply used pagans to carry out their crimes against Christians in the same manner that the player moves chessmen on the board.  St. Justin said in the middle of the second century: "The Jews were behind all the persecutions of the Christians. They wandered through the country, everywhere hating and undermining the Christian faith."  Tertullian said about the same time: "The Jews formed the breeding ground of all anti-Christian action."  A plain example of Jews causing unbelieving Gentiles to destroy Christians is to be seen in this, the fifth persecution. We read that Herod the king has James put to death by the sword because of Jewish influences being brought to bear upon his throne. This ruler was the grandson of Herod the Great who murdered the babes of Bethlehem after the birth of Christ. James was one of the three, with Peter and John, who enjoyed the sweetest possible fellowship with the Lord.  No details are given in the Scriptures about the killing of James. And yet underneath the simple statement, a deep anguish and sympathy may be felt. Then the next verse shows that the wicked king had planned to make away with Peter in the same way. "And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. And when he apprehended him, he put him in prison... Peter, therefore, was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him."  The Jews desired a public execution of Peter. They wanted his death to be viewed by all because he was one of the principal leaders of the despised Christians. This would give them a chance to gloat over their ability to wrap Gentile monarchs around their fingers. It was quite an achievement, in their estimation, to get a Roman king such as Herod, to do their bidding.  But a strange thing happened during the night proceeding the day when Peter was to be put to death. Another miracle occurred.  Although execution awaited him, the faithful apostle who spent the night chained between two soldiers, slept as sound as a babe. Suddenly a shaft of light shot into the darkened cell like a bolt of lightning and an angel smote Peter on the side. He dressed quickly and followed the heavenly visitor to the outer court, through the gate, and down the street. Not until then did he realize that his deliverance was real and not merely a dream.  Making his way to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, Peter found that an all-night prayer meeting was being held in his behalf. He came into the presence of the saints rejoicing "that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the Jews."  The angel smote Peter and the result was life and liberty. A short time later the same angel smote Herod and the result was disease, death and worms devouring his flesh. And this king was not the last to be cursed for allowing himself to come under the domination of Jews.  So Herod having consented to an ignominious death for Peter, himself suffered one much more ignominious.  Judgment It is not a safe thing for non-Christians to persecute Christ's saints. God will not permanently excuse or condone such crimes. History is replete with judgments being visited fast and furiously upon individuals and nations who have made this mistake.  Torturing Christians is a dangerous pastime. "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him." "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." "And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily." "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."  The Jewish Bolsheviks who are today digging a pit for Christianity in Russia are creating a future hell of judgment for themselves, exactly like the Jews of the first century sealed their destruction by torturing the saints at the dawn of this age.  The same Romans, whom the vicious, designing and tricky Jews used as tools to destroy the Christian Church, later turned against them and added sorrow upon sorrow until the nation was at last drenched in its own blood.  Jesus said to the Jews: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."  This pathetic prophecy was literally fulfilled in the middle of the first century when Titus, the Roman Emperor, brought his iron legions against the city of Jerusalem for one of the most terrible slaughters the world has ever known.  Famine, disease, pestilence, and starvation on the inside of the city walls—and the Romans pushing fiercely against them from the outside, brought upon the Jews such a wave of judgment and suffering as the human race has never before or since witnessed.  A few pertinent snatches from the history of the Jews, written by Josephus, will be sufficient to illustrate this fact:  "But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives: and while they are after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating almost up out of their throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to the infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor...  "This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as guarded them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterward be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies...  "Titus then went round about the enemy with some chosen troops, and fell upon their flanks himself; so the Jews, who had been before assaulted in their faces, wheeled about to Titus, and continued the fight. The armies also were now mixed one among another, and the dust that was raised so far hindered them from seeing one another, and the noise that was made so far hindered them from hearing one another, that neither side could discern an enemy from a friend. However, the Jews did not flinch, though not so much from their real strength, as from their despair of deliverance. The Romans also would not yield, by reason of the regard they had to glory, and to their reputation in war, and because Caesar himself went into the danger before them; insomuch that I cannot but think the Romans would in the seclusion have now taken even the whole multitude of the Jews, so very angry were they at them, had these not prevented the upshot of the battle and retired into the city...  "Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the houses of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come. Nor was there any lamentations made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints, but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die looked upon those that were gone to rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves; for they break open those houses which were no other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they had; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords in their dead bodies; and, in order to prove what metal they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground; but for those that entreated them to lend them their right hand and their sword to dispatch them, they were too proud to grant their requests, and left them to be consumed by the famine...  "There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary. She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. It was now become impossible for her anyway to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, 'O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these Jewish rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a byword to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.' As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the Jewish soldiers came in presently and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them, 'This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also'? After which those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty, they left the rest of that meat to the mother.  "This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under; but there were many of them who were thereby induced to a more bitter hatred than ordinary against our nation. But for Caesar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said that he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of Concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine."  Josephus tells how this state of affairs continued for months until finally the Roman soldiers set fire to the gates and literally burned their way into the city. The siege of Titus continued until the sacred Temple was burned and razed to the ground. He continues:  "While the holy house was on fire, everything was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain; nor was there a commiseration of any age or any reverence of gravity, but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests were all slain in the same manner; so that this war went round all sorts of men and brought them to destruction, and as well those that made supplication for their lives, as those that defended themselves by fighting. The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the temple were very great, one would have thought the whole city had been on fire."  Again we are reminded of the Lord's reference to this terrible judgment which was predicted to come upon the Jews, "Your house is left unto you desolate."  The Jews and the Church (Continued) The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70 was a direct fulfillment of the prophecy made by Jesus in Matthew 24:2, "See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down."  Naturally, when Titus plowed down this gorgeous structure, Christians hailed the event as a confirmation of the Lord's ability to read the future. This aroused ever-increasing interest in prophetic subjects among the believers. The destruction of the Temple and the siege at Jerusalem resulted in the dispersion of the Jews. And wherever they went, they carried burning hatred in their hearts for the saints because they were constantly reminded that Christ had predicted their downfall.  Now, coming to the middle of the fourth century we find another example of Jewish influence over Gentile rulers, which is equally as remarkable as their control of King Herod.  For three hundred years, powerful Jews dispersed to all parts of the Roman Empire, kindled ill-will against the Christians, then came Emperor Constantine who reversed everything and made Christianity the official State religion of the nation. This was a rebuff to both the Jews and pagans who had used every conceivable scheme to destroy the Faith.  After the departure of Constantine from this life, his three sons ruled the Empire. Meanwhile, the Jews bided their time, waiting for the right opportunity to place a Gentile in power that they could control. Their chance came, following the death of Constantine's last son, when Julian ascended to the throne.  Contempt for Christianity filtered through Julian's mind and he resolved, as soon as an occasion might arise, to deal it a final, crushing blow. He swore that when the time was ripe he would throw off the religious cloak of Constantine.  It remained for the Jews to produce a situation in which they could assist Julian inventing his spleen against the believers who were then growing strong both in numbers and spiritual strength, due to more than a half century of religious freedom. Happily, for the Church, this Emperor reigned only two years, but those two years embodied a period of unspeakable agony.  Julian gave the Christians the name "Galileans" which, in his day, was a word that carried a slur with it. As if actuated by the spirit of anti-Christ he adopted the curious means of attempting to nullify the Bible prophecies. His contact with the Jews was no doubt responsible for this novel idea. Early training had taught him how to gain favor with Jewish leaders by insulting and tormenting the followers of Christ.  Neither Jews nor Christians had forgotten that the destruction of the Temple was a fulfillment of predictions made by the Lord. It was therefore decided that, as a slap at the Christians, Julian should rebuild the edifice in Jerusalem and turn it over to the Jews.  From all quarters of the Empire, Jews came to assist in erecting the building and to offer their wealth. Julian personally made the preliminary arrangements and sent one of his chief officers to superintend the work. The Jews who were directing affairs from within the shadows, shaping the official policies of the Empire, saw in this a deadly rebuff which promised to ultimately threaten the very existence of the Christian religion in the world.  Stirring scenes were enacted. Women brought their ornaments and jewels by the cartloads. So much precious metal was received that tools were even cast and forged of it. It looked to Jews and pagans as if the prophecies of the Bible relating to Palestine were going to be set aside.  But God intervened at the last minute and when the Temple was partway built a violent earthquake and severe electrical storm took place which demolished the whole undertaking. Fear came upon the Jews and the workers so that all activities were suspended. Not only Christian writers but pagans as well, record this strange happening.  Julian was mortally wounded on the field of battle with the Persians a few months later. He became known in history as "the Apostate." It has been related that just prior to his death, he cried: "Thou hast conquered, after all, O Galilean."  Church leaders, through the age, have been alert to Satan's use of the Jewish people in thwarting the program of Christ in the world. Some Christians have been more outspoken than others, on the subject, but every generation has produced its watchmen who have known the truth and have dared to proclaim it. Among the more bold spokesmen on this question was Martin Luther who prepared a treatise entitled, The Jews and Their Lies. In it we read the following statements which are characteristic of the entire discussion:  "How the Jews love the Book of Esther, which is so suitable to their bloodthirsty, revengeful, murderous appetite and hopes! The sun has never shone on such a bloodthirsty and revengeful people, who fancy themselves to be the chosen people so that they can murder and strangle the heathen.  "No folk under the sun is more greedy than they are than they have been and always will be, as one can see from their accursed usury. They console themselves that when their Messiah comes, he will collect all the gold and silver in the world and divide it amongst them.  "The Princes and authorities sit and snore with open mouths and let the Jews take, steal and rob what they want out of their open purses and chests; i.e.—they let themselves and their subjects be skinned and sucked dry by the Jews' usury, and make themselves, with their own money, beggars in their own State... The Jews have got our money and property, and are therefore our masters in our own land.  "It all agrees with the judgment of Christ that they are poisonous, bitter, vindictive, and malicious serpents, assassins, and children of the devils who kill and inflict injuries by stealth because they cannot do so openly.  "I will give my true council.

1) Set their Synagogues and schools on fire, and heap over the earth that which will not burn, so that none may see a stone or cinder of them evermore...

2) Break down their houses likewise, for they practice therein the same thing that they practice in their schools...

3) Take from them all their prayer-books and Talmudic writings where such idolatry, lies, curses, and blasphemies are taught.

4) Forbid their Rabbis to teach henceforth on pain of death...

5) Abolish absolutely the right of way for the Jews, for they have nothing to do in the country...

6) Forbid them usury...

7) Give flail, ax, mattock, spade, distaff, and spindle into the hands of the young Jew and Jewesses, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their noses..." 

"But if we fear that they may do us harm in body, wife, child, servant, beast, etc., etc., let us reckon up with them what they have taken from us by usury, and so share it amicably, but drive them forever into the fields.  "Anyone might think I am saying too much. I am not saying too much, but rather far too little... If we do not want to partake in the Jews' blasphemies we must be separated and they must be driven out of the land. That is the best advice that secures both sides in such a case."  The Jews and Communism No informed person who is truthful denies the Jewish character of Communism. The writer recently published in one of his magazines, the names and nationalities of every leader in the Moscow dictatorship as it was set up eighteen years ago. It was discovered that out of the 545 members of the bureaucracy, 454 were Jews and there were only 23 Russians in the group.  In other words, the Russian people are governed by a gang of anti-Christian foreigners, many of whom are said to be unable to speak the language of the people they govern. Some of the principal officials of the Red government are reported to have come from the East Side of New York.  It has been said on the floor of the United States Congress, and the charge has not been denied, that a certain Jewish banking concern in Wall Street sponsored Trotsky's mass meetings of rebellion in New York some years ago, sent him across the ocean secretly, and deposited millions of dollars in a Swedish bank to the credit of the destroyers, with which the Russian revolution was financed.  In her remarkable book Waters Flowing Eastward, Mrs. L. Fry states that back in 1893 a Jewish secret order here in America appointed Jacob Schiff, a Wall Street Jew, chairman of its committee on Russian revolutionary activities. If this is true, it simply means that Mr. Schiff sat at his desk in New York and directed the destruction of the Czar's government thousands of miles away.  It is impossible to separate Jewish Communism from Jewish Capitalism. Laboring men who think they can free themselves from the Money Power by embracing Communism are being betrayed by soap-box oratory.  The Moscow leaders are the world's wealthiest Capitalists. They own one-sixth of the earth's surface. They control one hundred and sixty million Gentile slaves. The Russian people are not allowed to vote, own property, exercise free speech, enjoy the freedom of the press, or worship God. The masses are kept in their weakened, helpless condition by the most powerful system of secret police ever invented in the history of the world.  The attitude of Communism toward Christianity was explained by Lunatcharski, one of the leading Jewish members of the Moscow dictatorship:  "Why should we believe in God? We hate Christianity and Christians. Even the best of them must be regarded as our worst enemies. They preach love of one's neighbor, and pity, which is contrary to our principles. Christian love is a hindrance to the revolution. Down with love of one's neighbor; what we want is hatred. We must know how to hate, for only at this price can we conquer the universe. We have done with the kings of the earth; let us now deal with the kings of the skies. The anti-religious campaign must not be restricted to Soviet Russia: it should be carried on throughout the entire world. The fight should also be developed in the Moslem and Catholic countries, with the same ends in view and by the same means."  There is no way of knowing how many millions of Russian Christians have been slain during the last eighteen years because of their faith in Jesus Christ.  The magazine, New Outlook, recently carried an article entitled, "Men of Russia." It was the author's purpose to make a critical examination of the ringleaders of international Communism. He says: "Some of the businessmen are Russians, but most of them are of other blood, and practically all of them have prison records... In considering the men of Russia, it should be remembered that it isn't often that ex-prisoners get a crack at the society which punished them, but they did in Russia."  The writer in New Outlook then proceeds to discuss some of Moscow's principal Jewish fiends:  "Joseph Stalin is a minor official of the Soviet Government. He is but one of the three hundred or so members of the Central Executive Committee, and yet, nevertheless, he is the first man of Russia today. Although serving as secretary of the All-Russian Communist Party, Stalin is not a Russian. His every feature is commensurate with 'Stalin', the Russian word for steel." Parenthetically it should be remarked that Stalin is merely the customary "Gentile Front" for the Moscow Jewish leaders. His Gentile wife died a "mysterious" death recently and he immediately married a Jewess.  The article continues:  "Lazarus M. Kaganovitch is a member of the Politbureau or arbitrary 'Brain Trust', and chief organizer of the Second Five Year Plan. This Polish Jew is Stalin's Number One Boy, and his logical successor as dictator.  "Maxim Maximovich Litvinov is Commissar of Foreign Affairs. He is the super-traveling salesman of Bolshevism. This shrewd Polish Jew has fought diplomatic battles in every political arena where the gate receipts warranted his appearance. He returns from these victories from time to time to his spacious Moscow office to check up one more Red diplomatic triumph by sticking a new red glass tack in the huge map which covers the wall behind his desk.  "Klementy Voroshilov (another Jew) is Commissar of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. He is the dashing yet modest cavalry officer who is charged with preparing the Russian forces for an anticipated war.  "Mikhail Kalinin, (an Armenian Jew) is President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Like all big leaders, he served his term in prison, taking an important part in the revolution of 1905 as a member of the Council of Workers' Deputies.  "Karl Radek, (another Jew) is Contributing Editor of Izvestia, an official government newspaper. Radek has frequently been suppressed by radical organizations for being too radical.  "Michael Borodin, Editor of the English-language Moscow Daily News. This Czechoslovakian Jew was educated at Valparaiso University in Indiana; and spent many years agitating for the International Communist Party, in Spain, in Mexico, in America, the British Isles, and China.  "'Just’ Podolsky, master of the Foreign Office Press Censorship Bureau, He may have a first name, but it is doubtful that anyone in Russia, including his wife, knows it. He is a soft-spoken Jew in eight languages, not counting American slang, of which he has a thorough knowledge. Padolsky is a hundred percent Communist.  "Jerry Lifschitz, Ex-Vice-Yankee Consul, ex-Second-in-Command of Moscow Amtorg. This Polish Jew had an American jail and prison record for I.W.W. activities; and an added palm for being twice tarred and feathered by irate Midwest American farmers.  "Comrade Smirdovitch, (another Jew) is the 'Red Pope'. Smirdovitch, an atheist, is the official restrainer and regulator of religion in the U.S.S.R. He is a member of the important Central Executive Committee. As the official Anti-Christ of the Soviet Republics, he decides how far remaining priests of the church may go toward preaching the Word of God. Kindly, cultured, educated, tolerant in manner, Smirdovitch says religion will die out when divorced from superstitious ritual, pomp, and fear. His job is to help kill it."  Toward the close of the article, this writer in the New Outlook says: "But the men who control Russia are not Russians. Members of the Jewish race from all over the world predominate. Every member of the foreign office press censor bureau is a Jew. Little men of Russia who help in responsible positions, heads of offices, trusts, are mostly Jews."  Let Christians remember that the international Jewish Communists and Capitalists expect to eventually destroy all Gentile governments, rule the world, and establish throughout the earth the kind of conditions they have introduced in Soviet Russia. They expect to murder all Christian believers and blot Christianity out of existence. The struggle is between the philosophy of the Jew Karl Marx and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The manner in which the Moscow Jews have proceeded with their program of destruction is recorded in a quotation taken from the London Times dated November 14, 1919. The quotation is a letter written by a British army officer, who was stationed at the time in southern Russia, to his wife in England. It reads:  "The Bolshevists are devils... I hope to send you copies of 64 official photos taken by British officers at Odessa when the town was taken by the Bolshevists ... I suggest you... make them widely known. Their horror may make people realize... The victim gets crucified with nails through his elbows. The hands are treated with a solution which shrivels the skin. The skin is cut out with a razor, round the wrist, and peeled off, till it hangs by the fingernails—a human glove. The victim gets terrified and insane... Other photos are of women. Women with their breasts cut off to the bone... Passes issued to Bolshevists by commissaries ... authorize holders to arrest any girl they fancy for use of the soldiery. Sixty-two girls of all classes were arrested like this and thrown to the Bolshevist troops. Those who struggled were killed... The rest when used... were mutilated and thrown dead or dying into the river... Slaughter-houses were choked with corpses... Hundreds of suspects, men, women, and children, were herded in these, doors and windows manned and the struggling mass fired into until most of them were dead or dying. The doors were then locked and they were left... veritable plague spots... causing widespread epidemics... The Bible, to them is a ‘counter-revolutionary' book to be stamped out... churches are used for anything from movie shows to 'slaughterhouses.'"  Let no Christian be duped into believing that we are supposed to sit supinely by and permit the Reds to create a reign of terror in America simply because this menace happens to be a "Jewocracy." True, there is a stratum of Jewry that is indeed "Chosen" and has been a blessing to humanity through the centuries, but there is another stratum that is a "curse in all places" as Jeremiah said they would be. Speaking through the lips of the prophet in Ezekiel 38:3, God said: "I am against thee, O Gog"—and this is a clear reference to Communism with its seat of government in "Meshech" (Moscow).  It is possible that this invisible empire has existed as a self-propagating body ever since the Jewish leaders contacted the Chaldeans while in Babylonia. Persons holding to this view agree that the organization has almost completed its course, that the time for the consummation of the plot is near at hand, that the last great attack is now being launched for the purpose of setting up an international system of the Jewish government. The existence of this secret sinister organization in New Testament times is implied in 1 John 4:3, "And this is that spirit of antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world."  The entire cabal is so large and far-reaching, its motives so hellish, its plan of attack so contrary to Christian thinking, that it simply staggers the mind when it is first exposed to view. But the results of its devastating influence may be seen both in history and among the nations today. It breathes the spirit of the last great Beast-Emperor described in the thirteenth chapter of Revelation. It discloses the perverted Messianic theories of an apostate people.  This anti-Christ force has apparently manifested itself from its underground sources in different ways at different periods of history, but never with the boldness and permanency that it has since it came to the surface eighteen years ago.  There have always been two kinds of Jews. One racial division represents all that is highest and best in Jewry and regards the Jews primarily as being a system of religion. The other has little inclination toward religion but regards Jewry as a political State, the purpose of which is to conduct world conquest until the nations are brought under one head with themselves in control and all the Gentiles changed into serfs.  When the Romans turned against the designing and wicked political leaders of Israel, the Pharisees and Sadducees were driven under cover. With the dispersion that followed, their taint was taken to the ends of the earth and has grown up in every nation. No doubt Jesus had this in mind when he warned to: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." In all parts of the world, it appears that this poison "leaven" is "leavening" the whole lump of the nations. What used to be the Russian Empire is now completely "leavened."  These are the subversive forces that have moved through the centuries, changing their form from time to time as governments have been made to heave, totter, cave in, and fall, but always with the same object in view, a final culmination when all nations will be leveled and a super-Jewish State set up, presided over by one man, their apostate Messiah. This is the genius behind Socialism and Communism.  I have tried to treat thoroughly the matter of this age-old invisible empire, in my two books, Adam Weishaupt, a Human Devil, and The Truth about the Protocols.  In the last analysis there are only two remedies for Jewish Communism:

1) The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and

2) Full stomachs. The Red Menace thrives only where there is spiritual inertia and physical hunger.

Stalin and the 1917 Bolsheviks preferred famines, genocides, and wars, so what's in store for today's Americans? You are now entering a period of soon economic collapse, and eventually a revolution, and it's always a good idea to know who the opposition is.

What Does It All Mean?

They destroyed Russia, Germany, Eastern Europe, Iraq, and soon Iran. When the time is right they will do the same thing to America.

Anonymous,

Stop crying anti-Semitic, no one’s stupid enough to buy it anymore. Ninety 90% of modern Jews are Khazaria proselytes, not Semites and in Israel, they treat everyone, even Sephardic Jews abominably and are a huge problem historically to every country stupid enough to shelter them. Between the Khazaria Banksters and the Freemasons, they brainwashed into believing themselves elite so to betray their own under the guise of wisdom and who they have used to invade every seat of power on the face of the globe, divide not just communities but entire states. You'll say I'm a neo-Nazi now right? Nuh, I'm Jewish and know its true, this is factional and quite true.

An epidemic of Giant Proportions

Friends and countrymen, Jew-denial is an epidemic sweeping the world, especially the American portion of it. Our churches are cranking out little Judaized clones right off the conveyor Bible belt, ready to parrot the words of Cyrus Scofield and John Hagee. Our governments are rife with Judeophilic politicians scared to speak out about the Jewish hijacking of our foreign policy. They attack those like Jim Moran, even projecting Protocols of Zion conspiracies onto his temperate and reasonable critiques of AIPAC and the Israel-First-Last-And-Always Lobby. The Jew-denial movement is running wild in the United States! It is ignoring the real issues, which are Jewish dual loyalty or Israel-only loyalty, the Jewish machinations manipulating our currency and economy and the debauching of our culture and the shattering of our borders by galvanized Jews drunk and delirious with political power and ruinous regency.

We Must Deliver the Truth on this deception, Jewish Denial

We can only curb or put a halt to the Jew-denial movement by spreading data far and wide on the web and to anyone who will listen to the straight truth on Jew supremacism and traitorous Jew antics. The Jew-denial campaign has done quite a bang-up job deceiving and misdirecting the energies of ordinary individuals (acolytes of Jew-denier) away from their true enemy and their greatest threat, Jewish extremism and onto bogeymen like supposed white supremacists and radical Islamists. Because of the popular front and font of lies and anti-white disempowerment, most people are unaware or too apathetic to even notice the Big Jewry Hidden Hand pouring our liberties and our freedoms straight down the Talmudic drain.

[kirstymcneill]

Scotland and our movement moment

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Adam Smith Festival of Ideas, first published on Global Dashboard on the 19th of March 2017. 

This weekend was the inaugural Adam Smith Festival of Ideas in Kirkcaldy and I was asked to speak about how Scotland could change the world in the years ahead. This is what I said.

Our world needs movements – and movements need Scots

I want to tell you a story about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we could go. A story about the Scotland we could become – if we first understand who we are.

I came of age politically after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the highpoint of a global order based on shared rules and human rights. From the Arms Trade Treaty to the responsibility to protect doctrine to the cancellation of third world debt, I got kind of used to the uninterrupted march of global justice.

And then the darkness descended.

Just take the last three years.

2015 was the year of the refugee, with global refugee figures reaching their highest point since World War Two.

2016 was the year of populism, with surging support for nativist political forces across the Western world.

2017 is set to be the year of famine, with more than 20 million people at risk of starvation across Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia in the worst crisis of its sort in more than three decades.

Something has gone very very wrong and I’m here today to ask you to join me in helping to put it right. My argument today is three fold.

Firstly, that this particular moment in history is a ‘movement moment’ – it demands of us a willingness to join movements in unprecedented numbers, because the problems cannot be fixed by politicians, public policy or public institutions alone.

Secondly, my argument is that Scots in particular have special responsibilities here, because we believe in cooperation not only in our communities and in our country, but across the world. And thirdly that Scots not only have a duty to be involved in global justice movements, but actually have a very distinctive contribution to make, by virtue of the quirks of our historical experience.

A movement moment

Let me begin by saying a bit more about where we are, and why I think this is a movement moment.

By day I work at Save the Children and each day I try to remind myself of the good we have done together. Since 1990, we have halved the number of children dying before their fifth birthday. Anybody who has ever suffered any form of bereavement knows that each loss is shattering, leaving a hole in a family that can never be filled. That we have halved the number of families experiencing the depths of that sorrow is a good reason to get up in the morning. And if you’ve ever given to an international charity like Save the Children, or happily pay your taxes and support that money being spent on aid, then these are your achievements and you can be very very proud.

But at the same time I cannot say, hand on heart, that I am optimistic about the way the world is moving. I despair every time we release a new report charting the catastrophic failure to protect the children of Syria. Last week we published a report in which a child said “when friends die my chest hurts and I can’t breathe so I sit alone because I don’t want to scream at anyone”. These are words that no child anywhere should say.

In the report before that parents in a besieged area of Syria told us what it was like to raise children in a town where all the doctors had fled or been killed. They had resorted to taking their little ones to the vet when they got sick.

All across the world, from Paris to Mosul, ordinary families are terrorised by extremists and a medieval barbarism is encouraging people to target and torture those who disagree.

Meanwhile here at home the mood has soured and something ugly and sinister is on the march. Jewish friends receive abuse from the swamps of history, Muslim friends report a surge in the most vulgar and blatant Islamophobia, while my friend Jo Cox was murdered doing her job.

Behind all these trends is the same basic story: frightened and frightening people are obsessing about what divides us. We have lost the art of seeing each person as precious and unique, as an irreplaceable and perfect version of themselves, without whom our world would be irrevocably impoverished.

None of these are problems which politicians, however honourable or gifted, can be expected to solve on their own. If we want a different kind of Scotland, Britain or world, we’re going to have to get involved.

For me movement thinking is exactly what we need now because we live in what I call a 3D world – a world characterised by distrust, division and disruption.

Distrust, of both the motivations and the competence of institutions. Division, between people of different backgrounds and opinions. And disruption, of old ways of thinking, doing and being. Those 3Ds all add up to people feeling overwhelmed and alone, and movements hold out the prospects of an answer.

A movement can be the answer to distrust – because movements are strengthened by their perceived authenticity. And it can be the answer to division, because by definition movements involve more than one person (there’s never been a movement of one). And it can be the answer to disruption, because movements are defined by being for change, but giving us the sense that we’re more in control of which change we choose.

This word movement gets bandied around a lot at the moment, so I want to be really clear about what I mean by it. To me a movement is not the same thing as an organisation. To me a movement is a tribe – a really, really big tribe, but a tribe nonetheless – which coalesces around a shared view of how the world could be and which commits not simply to taking one action but instead to a lifetime of service to an ideal.

My friend Alex Evans has just published a book in which he quotes an American organiser as saying ‘what makes a movement is simply enough people feeling part of it – sensing a shared culture, and forcing those watching to take note and take sides’.

That seems about right to me, because movements do force us to take sides, and decide where we stand on the big moral questions of the day. This isn’t a new thing – we’ve had movements for the abolition of slavery and for women’s suffrage and for civil rights. But just because we’re sympathetic to the most famous movements, we shouldn’t assume that movements are always the good guys. There’s a global far right movement too. And a global jihadi one.

So there’s nothing new about movement thinking, and nothing inherently honourable about it either. But my argument today is that there is nonetheless something about it which makes it uniquely well suited to the demands of the hour.

Scots as movement-builders

So why am I talking about this here in Scotland, and suggesting that Scots have a special obligation to fight hatreds which seem so much bigger than us, so big in fact that they could overwhelm the world? My answer is a simple one: Scots have a calling now, because we know better than anybody that none of us have to be put in boxes not of our choosing.

For three centuries we have been simultaneously Scottish and British and there are plenty of people who want to campaign for us to be Scottish and European. The fluidity of our identity is why we can talk of people being Scottish by birth, choice or aspiration – because we have long accepted that there’s nothing binary or closed about being a Scot.

And so my second argument today is that there is such a thing as Scottishness and that it leaves us well placed to be the movement builders that this movement moment demands of us.

The nature of Scottishness has obviously been a source of some controversy, so let me share a little about where I’m coming from.

Given the mesmerising range of choice – the grandeur of our Munros, the mysteries and histories of our lochs and the breathtaking beauty of our islands and our glens, it might surprise a visitor to Scotland to know that two of my favourite sights here are stones. They are both small, both plain and both can be seen within an hour of where we are now.

The first is the one bearing a circular inscription on the floor of the National Museum in Edinburgh, the one which says ‘Scotland to the world to Scotland’. The motto is chiseled in a circle so that, depending on how you look at it, it either says ‘Scotland to the world’ or ‘the world to Scotland’.

The second is embedded in the wall of St Giles’ Cathedral and says simply ‘Thank God for James Young Simpson’s discovery of chloroform anaesthesia in 1847’.

It seems to me that it is in these two small slabs – even more than in our poetry, plays, novels, songs or political speeches – you find the essence of the Scottish national character.

In the National Museum stone, you learn of our sense of Scotland the Good Samaritan, unwilling to pass by on the other side. There is much to be proud of here, from the disproportionate numbers of Scottish volunteers in the International Brigades to the phenomenal demonstration of people power on the eve of the 2005 Make Poverty History summit in Gleneagles. Whatever our views on the constitutional question, we can be proud that both nationalists and unionists, Yes and No supporters are united in their support for Scotland fulfilling our obligations to those beyond our borders who need our help.

In the St Giles’ Cathedral stone, you see a very Scottish combination of intense pride in our temporal talents, combined with a beautifully understated trust in providence, and a reminder not to get too cocky – it’s all very well being the most inventive people on the face of the earth, but don’t go thinking you did it on your own. The reason I love this stone so much is because it really encapsulates what I feel about my obligations as a campaigner – life isn’t about being ‘nice’, about having good intentions but not a real strategy for change. On the contrary – life is really about each of us straining to fulfil our potential so that the talents of each of us are used for the benefit of all of us. Our time on earth is supposed to be a succession of periods of hard thinking followed by periods of hard work.

We don’t have a Scots word or phrase that describes precisely this mix of social duty and determination to apply rigorous thinking to big problems, and the best I’ve come up with is ‘strategic service’.

I should say at this point that I don’t consider these national traits of ours an unalloyed good. The same overwhelming sense of obligation which can lead us to great acts of courage and self-sacrifice can tip all too readily in to an oppressive puritanism and self-righteousness. So I’m not suggesting here that Scots are superior to other peoples, just that we’re not entirely in the wrong when we ask ‘wha’s like us? Damn few’.

Movement thinking

So my second argument today is that to be a Scot is to have a particular take on the world, bound up in our sense of connectedness to other peoples and also in our obligation to give the best service it is in our power to give. It is for historians and anthropologists to tell us how we came to be this way, and for the philosophers to tell us if the downsides I have just described are a price worth paying for our gifts, but for our purposes today I hope we can take it as a starting point that there is something real about Scottishness, and our cultural distinctiveness is to be found somewhere in this area.

My third and final argument is that – if I am right, and our world needs movements and, if I am right that Scottishness is characterised both by its richness as a porous identity and by its internationalism and sense of strategic service, then Scots have a particular contribution to make to building movements in the years ahead.

Let me just say a little about what that would look like.

Firstly, great movements don’t buy great man theories of history. That doesn’t mean movements are leaderless – it means they are leaderful. Just think about Black Lives Matter, or the women’s marches on the inauguration weekend, or the refugees welcome movement. I don’t know who is in charge of any of these things, because nobody is in charge of these things. They are full of leaders, people who identify themselves through action.

And that brings me to my second point about movements. Movements are only as good as the activism they inspire and that should be our aim – providing inspiration, not giving orders. Brilliant movement builders rally people around a vision and then let people decide how they are going to contribute, creating the space for a whole range of creative tactics to emerge.

If we take a look at just the refugees welcome idea for a minute, it is clear that no one person could have come up with the range of activities people have done. Let me be clear here – I’m incredibly proud of Scotland’s response to the refugee crisis, just as I want to celebrate the contribution of communities across the UK. But I’m not naive – my point is not to suggest that everybody is welcoming or that Scots are inherently more progressive on these questions than folk down South.

But I do want to look at how people in Scotland were able to link up with a wider movement in a way that should make us all proud.

To take just two examples. How brilliant that ordinary folk from Glasgow set up Refuweegee, a charity which offers new arrivals to the city not just essentials like toiletries and nappies, but ‘letters fae the locals’ introducing what we love about our city and explaining treats like In Bru and Tunnocks Tea Cakes.

Or when Syrian families were first resettled in Bute, how amazing that locals went to speak to the church about giving a space for Friday prayers and to the local co-op about making sure they had halal meat for sale.

All of these things were just people finding different ways to contribute, the same way a QC in London decided to set up the billable hour campaign where he encouraged all his pals from chambers, and then all the solicitors they worked with, to each give what they would bill in an hour to Save the Children’s child refugee appeal. All at the same time as Belle and Sebastian decided to put on a gig for us, and Caitlin Moran organised a single, and a member of the public set up a petition which ended up forcing David Cameron to agree to take 20 thousand Syrian refugees, while another ordinary woman invited a few of her friends on Facebook to a protest and ended up leading a march of 10 thousand people through London.

There wasn’t a mastermind behind all of these things – but there was a movement, and the movement is delivering real change, right now.

And here’s the final point I want to leave you with, and it brings us full circle as to why we’re talking about this in Scotland. Being a movement builder means connecting with people on the very deepest level of their values and their identity. Something can have mass participation and still not be a movement – after all nobody says they are part of the movement for iphones, or converse shoes or AirBnB. These communities are all massive, but they are just organised around things we use, they don’t represent who we are.

Likewise even if we feel a very strong attachment to one political party or one charity, our loyalty to the movement of which it is part tends to run even deeper. Nobody has a twitter bio saying ‘supporter of the Fawcett Society’ – we say feminist. We don’t say ‘Hope not Hate donor’ – we say anti-fascist. And we don’t say ‘Amnesty member’, we say human rights defender.

And that, of course, is the same idea we started with. My experience of being Scottish – in part I am sure because it’s been an experience of being Scottish and British, not Scottish or British – has made me feel incredibly comfortable with the idea that I’m part of more than one community of action, of mutual obligation, and of identity.

Movement thinking is a new buzz phrase around the world, but it’s actually something Scots do instinctively, because whether we like it or not, duality is part of who we are. There will be plenty of people here – and there are certainly plenty of people among my own nearest and dearest – who want another referendum, and will use it as a chance to vote for independence.

It isn’t my place to pass judgement on that one way or another today. But I hope it is my place to ask you to weigh very carefully whether the rich, multi-layered nature of Scottish identity is something you value and, if it is, whether you’re prepared to put that special perspective to good use in this movement moment.

Over the course of this weekend and in the months and years to come the status of Scotland in the Union will no doubt continue to dominate. But if that is all we talk about I fear we are missing the chance to make our mark on questions of truly global and historical significance.

Scotland’s national question is a complex one, but my argument today is simple: our broken world needs movements, movements need Jock Tamson’s Bairns and they need us now.

[miss-m-calling]

Yuletide 2017 letter

Dear writer,

Thank you for writing for me! I hope my prompts inspire you, I am very eager to read whatever you write.

Fair warning: my prompts can get pretty verbose, and there are spoilers.

My AO3 page

The Marianne Trilogy - Sheri S. Tepper

Characters: any (Marianne Zahmani, Makr Avehl Zahmani, Aghrehond, Therat)

What is this canon: Low fantasy, feminist trilogy about Marianne, a student at an American university who comes from the tiny, fictional country of Alphenlicht, wedged in between Turkey and Iran, with a native religion that vaguely resembles Zoroastrianism, a long tradition of both light and dark magic, and civil conflict with echoes of the Cold War (one part of the country seceded with Soviet help). Marianne is financially dependent on her abusive older brother Harvey, but trying to assert her independence. Then she meets Makr Avehl, a cousin and de facto president of Alphenlicht, who’s both a mage and a charmer. And then Marianne gets targeted by dark magic and has to become self-assertive and figure out how to save herself, even as Makr Avehl also tries to save her (and sweep her off her feet), often with more complicated results than he intended. Every book introduces a different set of magical challenges, most of which transport Marianne to a different constructed/magical realm, with disturbing parallels to the cruelties of the real world and some interesting meta commentary on gender relations. Also in the mix are Aghrehond, Makr Avehl’s loyal retainer, chauffeur, and all-around kind soul, and Therat, an intense young mage in training.

While I have a like-get-annoyed relationship with most of Tepper’s work I’ve read, I adore this trilogy unreservedly. I love the mixture of dark fantasy, sly humor, creepiness, complex magical systems and surreal constructed/parallel/hidden worlds described in just enough detail while remaining, for lack of a better word, magical, the intersection of old and new and invented worlds... I adore Marianne, whose lives (it makes sense in context) have made her many things: the traumatized yet defiant survivor, the semi-skillful player of the game of life and magic, the lover and wife and mover-and-shaker in her own right. Her relationship with the other characters - romantic, sometimes overbearing, arrogant, yet loving and lovable Makr Avehl; intense and dedicated Therat; loyal, warm, kind, humorous Aghrehond - are so rich and wonderful. I love all the playing with and inverting and deconstruction of tropes and cliches, the aforementioned magical/constructed/parallel worlds of whimsy and creepiness that riff on ordinary aspects of the real world while also running on their own internal logic…

Some prompts:

Any/all of these characters visit the Cave of Light and then try to solve a problem or complete a quest (however grand, mundane or cracky) according to its message.

Road trips with Aghrehond - exploring Alphenlicht and/or magical realms.

Marianne said at the end of the last book that Therat may be surprised – I’d love to see what might surprise Therat, in addition to Marianne and Makr Avehl’s firstborn sharing her name. Or give me Makr Avehl having to work closely with Therat due to some magical/mystical/political issue, given that he’s always dropping unsubtle hints about her scary eyes. Or Aghrehond being deferential yet unintimidated by Therat - and maybe even making Therat laugh.

Any/all of these characters end up visiting fields on the board-game from book 3 which the book didn’t describe – what kind of a place do they encounter? What (probably dangerous, troubling, and/or creepy) adventures do they have?

Marianne promised to meet Queen Buttercup for a meal at Frab Junction’s Marveling Galosh – magical promises are serious things, so what happens when Marianne has to make the date and the others come to save her and possibly get in each other’s way more than they help?

I loved how canon gently sent up Makr Avehl’s image of himself as Marianne’s protector/lover/white knight in the first and third books’ magical worlds. Actually, Makr Avehl as the Freudian chimera in book 1 and as the hapless hero in book 3 are my favorite things about this canon, beside the general worldbuilding and Marianne’s character development. So I’d love to see more variations on that theme - Makr Avehl as Marianne’s hero, both swoony and ridiculous, gentle yet lecherous, intense and funny with it - either in the real world or in some new (and sinister) magical realm (you can tell that I would love worldbuilding for this canon).

As a general note, I do ship Marianne/Makr Avehl, but I would prefer any shippiness to remain at the books’ level, so nothing too explicit and nothing that overwhelms the non-shippy plot, please. I’m more into this canon for the worldbuilding and the inventive magic, and I like how the books mix the shippiness with adventure, magical horror, and often-meta humor. Oh, and I would prefer not to have Harvey Zahmani or Madame Delubovoska appear in the story - they can be mentioned, just no walk-on parts for them please. Walk-on parts for Marianne’s parents or aunt, or for Makr Avehl’s sister are fine.

Starred Up

Characters: Oliver Baumer, Eric Love

What is this canon: British prison movie, very pared back and austere and yet super emotional in how the relationships between the main characters play out. Eric Love (played by Jack O’Connell) is a 19yo who gets “starred up” (i.e. transferred from a young offenders’ institution to an adult prison before he’s 21) for being too violent for juvvie. On his first day, he’s involved in a violent incident and crosses the path of Oliver Baumer (played by Rupert Friend), a volunteer counselor who runs an anger-management group for the prisoners and decides Eric would benefit from being in his group. Also in the mix is Eric’s father Neville (played by Ben Mendelsohn), a lifer who pushes Eric toward a harder mode of masculinity. The father-son relationship is the movie’s main emotional axis, but so is the relationship between Eric and Oliver (and Eric’s growing friendships with some of the other men in the group).

Yes I do ship it, I do, I do!

Ahem. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what the movie did with the father-son relationship and its influence on both men’s character development -- but I really wish they hadn’t got Oliver out of the action before the story’s climax (not like that!). The final denouement with Love father and Love son was great, as was the hint at the end that Eric learned something in anger-management group and has a support network that will help him a lot, but I would have wanted to see more of the intriguing dynamic between Eric and Oliver - the intelligent, semi-feral, yet not-incorrigible, young thug and the educated, dedicated, kind yet aware of his own potential for violence, slightly older counselor.

The confrontational and oddly flirtatious way Eric quickly gets a rise out of Oliver when Oliver comes to pick him up from his cell, the way Oliver immediately jumps to Eric’s defense when they meet under such adverse circumstances and keeps sticking up for Eric again and again, how Eric barely puts on a front before he lets Oliver and the group influence him, Oliver’s far-too-involved “I want him” and Eric telling his father that Oliver’s a better man than Neville – it all made me want more. I would love to see Oliver return to holding his group in prison, so the two of them can interact more, either in the movie’s immediate aftermath or years down the line (it was hinted that Eric will be serving a very long sentence - more than thirteen years, and probably for killing his mom’s asshole boyfriend, if I understood Neville’s oblique reference right).

Some prompts – if you’d prefer to keep it smut-free and relatively sublimated, I’d love more scenes from anger management or the free-flowing conversations in group, either with the other men present (because I loved their group dynamics, their training in anger management techniques, and their ribald, un-PC, yet constructive talk) or in a one-on-one session between Oliver and Eric, as they deal with their personal histories and experiences (we know quite a bit about Eric’s crappy life, but why does Oliver, by his own admission, NEED to be there, volunteering in a prison? Did/do his own violent impulses spill over despite his acute awareness of them?) If you could work in an oblique or open-but-undramatic admission/declaration that they both know there’s something there but they probably don’t want to name it, get into the details, and it’s too frustrating given their circumstances, but they both know and accept it’s there - well, I would love that.

If you want to write smut, the logistics may be tricky, but I suspect an emergency in the prison might require a lock-down, so Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Or Eric is eventually released and crashes with Oliver while he adjusts (with difficulty) to the outside world, and there’s awkwardness, probably some male chest-thumping, and eventually fucking with the realization that they’ll never be complete equals in terms of the power dynamic between them (in the sense that Oliver is more educated and of a better social status BUT Eric would win in a fight, so it’s a constant push-pull rather than one of them always having the upper hand).

If it happens in prison, it could be a few months after the movie, or it could be after Eric has had some time to become a fully mature adult – and has spent enough time in prison to accept the truth of his father’s taunt about the appeal of a tight, hairy asshole. (On a side note, while Neville had no idea whether his son was a virgin or not, this would definitely be either Eric’s first time or his first time in a really long time. And I do headcanon Oliver as either gay or bi, his comment about sex with women more to save face in front of the group than anything else, but you can “play” their sexual histories any way you like, if they’re even relevant to what you want to write.) Eric might seem like the logical initiator and/or dominant partner, but then Oliver might (or might not!) surprise him and is definitely the one more in touch with himself. Is it ha-ha-we’re-locked-in/stuck-together-as-housemates, I-dare-you-to-pass-the-time-and/or-help-my-emotional-stability-with-a-fuck – or is it hell-shit-fuck-something-has-been-percolating-between-us-and-now-we’re-locked-in-together, possibly with a side of cry-me-a-river-you-want-to-know-how-long-it’s-been-for-me-well-I’m-not-telling?

In any scenario, I think there could definitely be some verbal taunting/flirting about who wants/is eager to do what or is good at doing something. There may be some sniping comments about logistics and (lack of) condoms and barebacking and what men get up to in prison. There probably wouldn’t be deep discussions about sexual identity - if anything, one of them might try to taunt or tease the other in order to keep defenses up, only to get a “yeah, that’s true actually, what are you going to do about it” kind of disarming answer. The sex could be pretty rough or go-for-it-no-frills, yet enthusiastic and eager and unexpectedly tender (even if either or both don’t want to admit it), in that way the canon has of jerking the characters from violent confrontation to something deeper and gentler without warning. (Again, a non-binding headcanon of mine: I do have this idea that, at some point, probably not their first time but when they’re used to each other and have a chance to take their time and have real privacy, Oliver would ignore Eric’s come-on-already and go super slow, to make Eric fall apart with pleasure *and* have an actual emotional reaction to sexual intimacy, which he wouldn’t be able to brush off as just of the moment.) There could be a progression/escalation of sexual contact over a series of encounters, possibly starting with just words or masturbation (of oneself or the other or mutual) or some other form of arousal, to blowjobs and who already knows how to give them and who expects them as a given and who learns how to give them, and ending in full-on screwing.

The Village (TV)

Characters: Clem Allingham, Stephen Bairstow

What is this canon: BBC show that ran for two six-episode seasons in 2013-2014 (never officially cancelled but unlikely to continue, it ends with some resolution as well as plenty of loose ends for fic continuation). The titular Derbyshire village serves as a cross-section of British rural society in the early twentieth century - S1 covers World War I, while S2 goes through the early 1920s. There’s an ensemble cast, lots of political, social, and private drama (think Downtown but actually semi-realistic), and we spend equal amounts of time with a hardscrabble farming family, the Allingham clan who own the local ‘big house’ and have demons of their own, and various assorted villagers (the Methodist preacher and his idealistic daughter, the socialist schoolteacher, the social-climber shopkeeper and his snooty wife, etc.). The two characters I nominated and requested are the Allingham family matriarch (played by Juliet Stevenson) and the brash Yorkshireman (played by Joe Armstrong) who arrives at the village as a police detective then gradually makes himself indispensable to the Allinghams.

My surprise ship from a show I didn’t expect to have any ships for! For real, the show can get pretty dreary and awful things happen to everyone (much like in life), but these two had such a great dynamic, and I thought the actors had wonderful chemistry, and I also like older woman/younger man ships as well as ships with a class difference (not so that one holds all the power over the other, more so that there’s always tension springing from differences of upbringing and life expectations). I just love how they only manage to be themselves with each other (their frank talk in the chapel on the day of Edmund’s wedding), I love the class tension and spikiness (they go from Bairstow grabbing Lady A’s wrist while she sputters in outrage in one of their first encounters to her playfully threatening to send him back to Yorkshire if he continues to swear in her presence and bopping him on the nose for good measure toward the end of S2!), and common-cause camaraderie of their relationship.

They’re both such rich characters, and together they’re a kind of quiet fireworks. Lady Allingham tries to keep up appearances and good cheer and be the perfect Edwardian hostess, but she has a sense of humor and is a lot savvier than you'd expect. People dismiss her as old-fashioned and out of touch, she can be a drama queen, but she's no fool, although she lets some unfortunate things happen in her family. And Bairstow is really kind of a dick (his treatment of Agnes the factory girl made me want to slap him), but he too is funny, extremely competent, not above manipulating and blackmailing just about anyone, plays up his working-class Northern origins while claiming that the war erased class distinctions until he gets a painful reminder that it didn't. He's dismissive of most people, but shows his softer side with several village women coping with their sons' war trauma - and with Lady A. I’d even say he always plays straight with her, rather than manipulating her (for example, their conversation in the library about needing to get Edmund hitched), because while they snipe at each other all the time, they also appreciate what each brings to the table, and by the end of S2 they've become allies or co-conspirators. And Lady A in turn allows her mischievous side to come through when dealing with Bairstow, like in the “impotentia coeundi” scene - she takes all of half a second to start volleying double entendres at the clueless Hankins while Bairstow grins on the sidelines.

In terms of prompts, I would love to see some recognition on both their parts that, despite all their differences, they’re a natural match.

Maybe Lady A tries to express her gratitude for Bairstow organizing the return of her grandson and that opens the way for them to get closer. Bairstow, who doesn’t like talking about himself if he can get others spilling secrets, could reveal more of his background to Lady A - the few clues canon provides are tantalizing. Lady A could reveal more about her marriage and how she has retained a girlish love of Jane Austen-esque romance through it. Maybe you can bring the story forward, into the late 1920s/early 1930s, to show how their relationship evolves and deepens when the Allinghams and Britain encounter a new dark period. Their relationship could remain as unspoken/sublimated or as out in the open as you want to make it.

Or heck, I would love something as outrageous as Lady A, who made it clear after her husband’s suicide that she has limited patience for hypocrisy and social expectations, deciding to throw caution to the wind and elope or embark on a torrid affair with Bairstow, and all the scandal and family drama that would cause (seeing George, Edmund, Harriet, and Caro’s reactions or the commentary from the villagers would be welcome but not obligatory). Bairstow holds an ambiguous social position, sort of between a servant, an employee, and a poor family member/hanger-on, but he is definitely not a socially acceptable partner for a widowed, aristocratic matron. And that’s what I love about the idea!

If you decided on smut or something smut-adjacent, I could see a lot of push-pull, some gentle (or not so gentle, though they’d know at once if they went too far) mockery and giggles, neither wanting to show vulnerability but doing it anyway, some negotiation - in the sense of working up and psyching themselves up to the main event - between the guy with the bum leg who’s used to using his lovers rather than treating them as equals and the woman from a buttoned-up era whose only experience of sex may well have been with her unstable husband. Or just show me these two giving each other support and continuing to enjoy flirting/sniping/confiding in each other/putting each other in their respective places, as they do.

LIKES:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and “missing scene from canon” stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love irony, snark, 5+1 stories, bittersweet endings, hopeful endings, happy endings, unhappy-but-stoic (in terms of where the characters end up) endings, ambiguous or and-the-adventure-continues endings, canon-fitting humor, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who learn to get over themselves, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved in a believable and IC way, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an office/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). For friendship and family dynamics, I love to see how the many layers long relationships of this kind can play out: the recrimination, the regrets, the humor, the love.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), bickering yet loving couples, faithfulness, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). Oral, vaginal, anal, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good, go as veiled or as explicit as you like. I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, people having to overcome their own inhibitions or insecurity by just bulling through to where they can let themselves enjoy it, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it, I-hate-that-I-want-you-oooh-don’t-stop, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. Also situations in which people have been acting competitive or fine-fine-shut-up-already and then jump into the sex with great enthusiasm even if still snarking. Also situations in which people who’ve wanted each other for a long time but couldn’t admit or act on it for reasons - and maybe weren’t sure or wouldn’t let themselves believe the desire was mutual - finally get a chance to do it, and it’s intense and emotional.

DNWs:

Hard kinks, MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, incest, genderswap and genderbent characters, non-con, dub-con, torture and abuse, dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore and come are fine, but no loving detail please), vore, toilet humor, character bashing, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (unless it’s canon), pregnancy and children as the lynchpin of the story, characters agonizing over/analyzing/dwelling on their or others’ sexuality as if it’s the sum total of their existence, secondary characters acting like shipping the main pair is their be all and end all, teeth-rotting fluff and schmoop, issuefic, fic written in the first or second person, holiday setting or theme, fics which revolve around weddings and birthdays, AUs which have nothing to do with canon (cop characters working in a coffee shop, high-school janitor characters in space, etc.)