#i think there was a german spy series i really liked but i cannot remember the title of it at all agh | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

harlanshake22-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Shatter me

Summary

As Shatter Me begins, Juliette Ferrars is a teenaged girl locked in a cell at an asylum for a crime she accidentally committed years ago. She’s starting to lose her mind from the isolation, but one day, the guards tell her she is getting a cellmate. She is worried when she finds out that the cellmate is a young man named Adam. She knows she remembers him from somewhere when they meet, but she cannot figure out from where. At first, she is scared of him, and Adam behaves aggressively, taking over the one bed and blanket in the cell and leaving her to fend for herself. However, their attitudes towards each other soften after he burns his hand on a hot plate and she patches him up. She then starts teaching him how to survive in the facility. She shows him how to get a quick shower, and he returns her bed and blanket when he sees she is cold. She remains haunted by her odd memories of him, but does not ask him about it.

One day, the soldiers come into the cell to take Juliette away. It is revealed that Adam is a soldier and a spy, working for the Reestablishment, the totalitarian government regime. She is taken to Sector 45, where she meets its leader, Warner. He wants her to use her deadly touch to destroy the rebels in exchange for a life of ease and riches. While she is horrified by the idea, Warner wants her to see what her life could be like in the compound and assigns Adam as her bodyguard.

In the compound, Juliette finds herself with every comfort, but rebuffs Adam’s attempts to get her to cooperate with Warner. She later finds out that Adam was beaten by Warner for her refusal, and decides to play along for now, dressing up and looking for a way out. She finds the notebook she had in her cell and learns that Adam is really trying to help her. He is moved into her new apartment, and she learns that Adam can touch her without being hurt. The two of them become closer, eventually starting a romantic relationship. Warner continues to press Juliette to join his side. She is horrified by his brutal actions, such as his sacrifice of one of his own men to her poison touch. Warner continues to put Juliette through sadistic tests of her power, and she and Adam begin putting together a plan to escape. They make their run for it during a drill, but during their escape, it is revealed that Warner is immune to Juliette’s touch as well. They escape and find a tank Adam hid; they flee to his home. There, Juliette is introduced to Adam’s younger brother. Soon a soldier named Kenji seeks refuge in their home after being tortured by Warner for information. He tells them to flee. Soon soldiers arrive at the home seeking the fugitives. Juliette, Adam, James, and the injured Kenji flee, but they are caught, and Adam is shot.

Juliette is dragged off, and Warner proceeds to hit on her, expressing his excitement over being able to touch her. She steals his gun while he is distracted and shoots him. She flees and finds a badly injured, tortured Adam. They steal a car, rescue James and Kenji, and flee to a safe haven that Kenji knows. At the facility, the injured are treated and Juliette is sedated after becoming frantic. She wakes up to a man trying to ask her questions, but will not answer anything until she sees her friends. Kenji assures her that they are safe. Soon, she is taken by her guard, Winston, to meet Castle, the rebel leader. Castle informs her that this location is called Omega Point, a safe haven for people who have special abilities. She is one of fifty-six gifted people. Castle is another, having telekinesis. He is organizing a rebellion against The Reestablishment. She learns that Kenji can become invisible, and Winston can stretch his body. Adam is healed, and Juliette is given a suit that allows her to touch others. Armed with the suit and a new confidence in herself, Juliette is ready to join the resistance.

Qoutes

“My life is four walls of missed opportunities poured in concrete molds.” (Page 1)

-From the begging of the story Juliette Ferrars is a teenage girl locked in a cell at an asylum for a crime she accidentally committed years ago. She said that she is in the four walls and no one can hear her.

“Adam stares at me so long I begin to blush. He tips my chin up so I meet his eyes. Blue blue blue boring into me. His voice is deep, steady. "I don't think I've ever heard you laugh." (Page 1)

-In the story Adam look at her and she feels like she nervous she can’t understand her feeling that way and she always think that Adam would kill her. She never trusts Adam.

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” (Page 1)

-In the story she wanted dream like she can see outside and try to touch human with their hands.

“Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.” (Page 2)

-She said that her room is heavy with the scent of wet stone, upturned soil; the air is dank and earthy. She takes a deep breath and tiptoe to the window only to press her nose against the cool surface. Feel my breath fog up the glass. Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind.

“You can't touch me," I whisper. I'm lying, is what I don't tell him. He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him. Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.” (Page 2)

-She wants Adam to touch her but she can’t tell this to Adam because she scared to Adam that time when they both in the darkness place to take a shower but she thinks that Adam could kill her in that place.

“I've been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me.” (Page 3)

-When Adam and Juliette is in the darkness place to take a shower, she taught that Adam will kill her but she is wrong Adam feel her safe and she said that quote line because no one can bring her to that place, no one can hear her. And because of her cellmates she realizes that there is man can hear her now.

“Hope is hugging me, holding me in its arms, wiping away my tears and telling me that today and tomorrow and two days from now I will be just fine and I'm so delirious I actually dare to believe it.”(Page 4)

-She is hoping that everyone can understand her that can hug her and comfort her because no one can see her even her family or parents.

“Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before. It's like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees how its absence changes people. How different we are in the dark.” (Page 6)

Vocabulary

• Dank

Adjective

Origin: Middle English Danke.

First use: 1573

: Wet and cold in way that is unpleasant.

“The air is dank” Chapter II

• Pitter-patter

Noun

Origin: Reduplication of 4patter.

First use: 15th century

: A quick series of light sound.

“Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter” Chapter II

• Cloak

Noun

Origin: middle English cloke, from Anglo-French cloque bell, cloak, from Medieval Latin clocca bell; from its shape

First use: 13th Century

: A piece of clothing that is use as a coat, that has no sleeves, and that worn over that shoulders and attached at the neck.

“My eyes to begin to adjust in the artificial cloak night” Chapter III

• Clench

Verb

Origin: Middle English, from old English- clencan; akin to old English clingan to cling.

First use: 13th century

: To set (something) in a tightly close position.

“The clenches and unclenches his jaw. “Chapter IV

• Gnawing

Verb

Origin: Middle English gnawen, from old English gnagan; akin to Old High German gnagaw to gnaw.

First use: Before 12th century

“There’s an ache in pit of stomach that’s gnawing on my herres.” Chapter 11

• Resentful

Adjective

First use: 1656

: having or showing a feeling of anger or displeasure about someone or something unfair.

“Resentful eyes” Chapter 12

• Buckle

Verb

First use: 14th century

: To fasten (something, such as a belt) with a buckle.

“My bones begin to buckle.” Chapter 13

• Flatter

Verb

Origin: Middle English flateren, from anglo-french flater to lap, flatter, of Germanic origin; akin to Old high German flaz flat.

First use: 13th century

: To praise (someone) in way that is not sincere.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Chapter 15

• Etch

Verb

Origin: Dutch etsen, from German atzen to etch, corrode, from Old High German azzen to feed; akin to Old High German ezzen to eat- more eat.

First use: 1634

: To produce a patter, design, etc., by using a powerful liquid (cold and acid) to cut the surface of metal or glass.

“Fletcher’s face is etched in permanent humour as he crumble the ground. Chapter 16

#education #educator #literary #storytime

11 notes · View notes

adragonstale · 7 years ago

Text

Aaand another round, this time I don’t tag and I don’t have new questions, I just anwer :D

from @antarctic-echoes

1. what’s your favorite hobby? - This would be Fursuit building. If I had a dog big enough it would be Dryland mushing again. But I’ll pick that up again in the future.

2. What’s the movie you hate more than anything? - Oh I don’t have one. If I don’t like a movie I just stop watching it, but if I have to choose something it would be the Twilight Saga. Just shitty stories, shitty actors, shitty vampires, shitty everything. And because it was a Twilight FF before also 50 shades of shit. Abusive behavior like that is never romantic and certainly it isn’t BDSM

3. which would you rather be: Ninja or British Spy? And why? - Spy, cooler outfits and cars and certainly better payment :D

4. What’s your favorite book of all time? - Uff hard one, I would say Dracula. THe first book I can remember reading. And yes, I was a weird kid. I read it in elementary school. I didn’t understand a lot of it back then, but I loved vampires. Of course I read it again a few years later.

5. If you could go anywhere, whether it be a real or fictional location, where would you go? - A real and a fictional one, I would visit LA in the Lucifer Universe together with @antarctic-echoes so we could visit LUX and meet Lucifer himself...and NO hiding under tables.

6. Which would you rather fight? An angry horse-sized duck or a hundred angry duck-sized horses? - tough one, I go with the horse duck, because I have my roommate to help me. BECAUSE DUCK!

7. If you could have any dinosaur as a pet, which one would you have? - Velociraptor, BUT the Jurassic Park ones :D Yeah I know not realistic but way cooler

8. What is your favorite animated movie?- How to train your dragon

9. What is your favorite dessert? - Tiramisu

10. what is your movie score? - I have no Idea, you tell me :D

11. If you could go to dinner with any fictional character, who would you choose and why? - Lucifer, because he is charming, he is a cinnamon roll and he certainly needs more friends, so I would befriend him over dinner

@skaoi-on-ao3

1. Innie or outie? - Innie

2. What’s the last song you listened to? - NIckelback Must be nice

3. Hoarder or minimalist? - Definitely a hoarder

4. Got ink? - Not yet, but planned in the near future. But I have Body moddings

5. Have you traveled outside of your home country? - Yep, I was in Spain, Croatia, Poland, UK, France, Italy. Mostly when I was a spawn, but I travel a lot inside Germany for my Conventions.

6. You can see any three bands (alive or dead) - who do you see? - None, I’m not a big fan of Live concerts. Too many people, too many drunken idiots, too loud (yes!) too smelly, too everything. And I’ve already seen my favorite Bands. When I want to listen to music I can stay at home. And there I can skip shitty songs

7. You invited five people to dinner (alive or dead) - who are they? - Tom Ellis (he has to cook by the way, I can cook but his food looks delicious), Lucifer, Alucard (Hellsing), The 10th Doctor, Tony Stark

8. What’s your favorite genre to read (mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.)? - Fantasy

9. What movie can you watch any time, regardless of how many times you’ve seen it? - I really don’t rewatch movies often. But I love Dogma. I’m more a TV show addict, so this would be Lucifer. Seen some episodes around 30 times and it’s never boring.

10. Can you cook? - Yes, and I love it

11. You’re a superhero! What can you do? - I can Fly, give me big, beautiful WIngs, preferable Lucifer’s Angel wings, or cool Dragon wings.

@sanoiro just because you are awesome

1) Ever had an imaginary friend and what was his/her/their name? - I had, but they were mostly fictional characters I loved from TV shows, like Goliath from Gargoyles.

2) Your favourite comic book as a child. - I had Lobo...yes. I was a spawn and I got to read Lobo. I was always weird

3) Your most absurd guilty pleasure snack? - Isit absurd when I say Nutella toast with banana slices?

4) You first childhood memory. - Myself after an operation, my shirt was stuck to the wound because I bled through the bandage. It was nothing serious.

5) The dream you managed to make true - Starting my body modification journey

6) And the one that you still have not achieved… - Earn enough money to not to worry over everything every month and without feeling guilty when I save long times for something just for me.

7) Which was the first tv series you fell in love with (bonus if you share the opening titles!) - Gargoyles

8) What were you thinking during your last commute home? - Wheeeeeeee..well I just came from my appointment

9) The one object you cannot part with. - Two of my old childhood plushis. A bat my Grandfather gifted to me 25 years ago, it’s in my kitchen. And an old plush cat in my closet.

10) Favourite tea flavour. - Earl grey

11) That one thing you were always afraid to share with the world. If you want to just let me know… - I’m a pretty open book with everything, but one thing I kept for myself very long is, that I have a weak spot for fat dogs.

Last but not Least @lux-i-fer because I love your questions:

1. What is the last thing you took a picture of? - Plushifer and the Christmas calendars.

2. Do you have your holiday decorations up yet (and if so what are they)? - We have the christmas calendars, and some Tinsel Girlands. Since it’s the first time for both of us to buy our own decorations, we need to do this. I’m looking forwars to my own christmas tree.

3. Storms or clear days? - Storms

4. What kind of jewelry do you usually wear? - On my right hand I wear a silver ring on my thumb and a black ring (or my Lucifer ring on special occasions) on my middle finger. I wear my dragon necklace permanently and a wolf head necklace, that will be switched with Amenadiel’s necklace when I bought it. Also all my earrings and piercings (all black)

5. LEAST favorite time period? - Uff that’s a tough one, I can’t answer because every time periode has good and bad things.

6. Guilty pleasure song? - Leb deinen Traum 2.0 This is absolutely NOT my genre of music, normally I despise anything rap related. But this song got me through a very difficult time in my life. So I love it, and I hear it every time I feel down (and it’s based on the first german Digimon opening so yeah)

7. Do you prefer strings or brass? - strings

8. Were you a good kid or a bad kid in school? - both. I was bad in one school, changed it, my grades got really good without changing anything on my own.

9. What is your morning routine? - Cuddling the dogs in bed, getting up and into the bathroom, turning on my PC, breakfast while I’m reading new chapters of my stories, walking the dogs

10. Favorite article of clothing? - In general? Tight fitting waistcoats on tall and slender men. What I own? My Pusheen sweatpants...yes I (34, male) own and wear Pusheen sweatpants. THat fat cat is adorable

11. Are you superstitious? - A little

#personal

4 notes · View notes

chooseandact · 8 years ago

Link

(These replies are making a monstrosity themselves.) Tagging @insectoid5, @frozenartscapes, @ultranos, @kalikoke, @hathor-frozen, @myfanfictiongarden, @mighty-meerkat, et al.

EDIT: (And again, I spawn another monstrosity. *sigh*)

@frozenartscapes reblogged your post and added: Don’t forget, I also brought in Yama and his cronies from Big Hero 6 (source). So there’s also the possibility of dragging gang activity into this as well.

(Also I now officially headcanon that all the recruiters for the Org are named Joe. Not as fake names, but real names. It gets confusing really quickly. It also doesn’t help because of Family Guy, but I also picture all of them voiced by Patrick Warburton.)

Don’t worry, @frozenartscapes, I didn’t forget Yama. I mentioned them in “DA!prompt #3” with the same source. You should’ve got a notification, but I mis-typed everyone’s “@”, so it didn’t send. :( Also, I really like the idea the male recruiters all sound like Kronk (That’s who I asssociate Patrick with; I never watched Family Guy.) More stuff below.

@myfanfictiongarden reblogged your post and added: […] Anyway, I see @chooseandact that you wrote quite a few characters down. While it would be fun to see all the HoND crew interact with Judge Frollo and our Frozen gang, add some BH6 and spy Rapunzel…. I´m for keeping things small. You can only devote so much time to one character, but with more then 8? Each of them has their own storyline etc. etc. it could be too much.

What I am with is a good funny spy-fic, with DA!Verse Elsa on a mission, Kristof, Tadahi and Anna along making things crazyer [sic], D standing somewhere, and the all evil trio Weaselton-Hans-Frollo (Frollo is such a bad guy even Hans can learn more from him-wait, is Frollo still a judge in DA!Verse? I hope so)

I hope, I could help and we could bring this baby to live :)

From one DA!rookie to another: Welcome to the club! I know I listed many characters, but that doesn’t mean we have to use everyone. They’re just some of the many people available to use in the background. Like I said, I thought adding HoND and the others strained disbelief. However, I think we can benefit by keeping just Judge Frollo and Phoebus, even if they make brief appearances:

With Frollo, we get a sense of some of the legal system’s failures (If any of us knows some basic legal stuff, it could help, but no need to go overboard [says the one who scoured the DA!depths for sources!]. If not, we can use Wikipedia or TV courts, e.g. any CSI, any Law & Order, etc.). Elsa has noticed most of the goons she sees are almost always the same people from Yama’s gang, even after honest cops have picked them up. She has suspicions but cannot act on them because of Org work.

With Phoebus, we get laughs as Sgt. Wesel tries to explain his theories to his superior, only for Phoebus to brush him off as (1) the force’s resident paranoiac, and (2) a Living Legend in the bad sense – from Phoebus’ POV, Wesel has been out of touch with reality for a while (we readers know he’s more right than he could ever imagine), but he can’t be dismissed from the force because he did Great Things in his past (and won’t let you forget it, to everyone’s ire) and has employment seniority, so he’s protected even more the local cop union. And we get a trio of good cops (Kristoff, Tadashi, and Phoebus) who sometimes simply meet just to talk, which counters your Evil Trio of Hans, Wesel and Frollo.

@mighty-meerkat reblogged your post and added: […] It’s been so long since I wrote any Mariselsa, but I kind of want Marisol at the party as well in some capacity. Maybe she’s on a separate search-and-destroy-information mission for a different handler, which immediately puts a massive spanner in Elsa’s works, because Marisol is…not very good at damage control. If she’s trying to set the place on fire, Elsa’s attempts at discretion are literally going to go up in smoke.

I like that idea! Here’s some more fic welding then: Hans is both terrified and furious at Elsa’s threat, as linked previously. He attends the gang boss’ party, as do Our Heroes, Marisol, Rapunzel (on loan from the German Org as a Field Test), Wesel, and Frollo (and Wesel’s two thugs, but as background only). Marisol has her own mission, which indeed counters Elsa’s goal and sets the building ablaze. Everyone escapes: Marisol goes her way, Elsa tracks the female target I mentioned in DA!prompt #3 (she can be the high-profile target or someone else in the hierarchy), and the rest of Our Heroes return to the Arendelle’s and await Elsa’s return. Everything unfolds as explained in DA!prompt #3, which ends in a fight that wounds Elsa, kicking off the beginning of @frozenartscapes’ fic Call for Help.

@insectoid5 reblogged your post and added: I commend you for thinking this through so thoroughly! That’s the sort of thing I don’t have the energy to do, usually […]

I love your idea of adding spy!Rapunzel, and we may as well add Cassandra (from Tangled: The Series), because I can totally see her fitting in at the Org. I can totally see Elsa being a spy, given her usual stealthy missions. Which will last up to the point where she falls out of a tree and spooks the person she’s watching. 😅

Maybe the Org has some kind of vocational cover story for banks and tax people. Like, I dunno… life insurance. 😂 (I volunteer @frozenartscapes to come up with a better one.)

[…] Also: every recruiter is named Joe: perfect! (Though how their superiors will know if all the Joes are doing a good job, if they don’t have some way of telling them apart, e.g., “tall Joe”, “short Joe”…). If a small, obscure Frozen ship can have an archivist/historian, I don’t see why this AU shouldn’t have one. You’re nominated! 😄

Why thank you! And it all started from a dress pic… In the words of Gord Bamford: “It ain’t your eyes, your lips, your nose, your hips / That got me in this mess / Blame it on that red dress” (If you didn’t notice, I think Anna’s dress/fan should keep the style but be fire-engine red bc red hair & all)

re: “Joes”: I was inspired by a scene in the Transformers 3 novel, where 3 secret agents appear. They dress the same and are not related despite all 3 being referred to only as “Johnson”, yet you still can tell who’s talking. The Org’s “Joes” are similar: they don’t need identifiers, even though “their appearance [has] been carefully conceived to leave no lasting impression on anyone who might see them.” (TF book) When someone calls for “Joe”, somehow they just know which one is needed. No one knows how or why. Elsa is unnerved and D is disturbed, even though he hired them. Anna tries to make the obligatory “take your average Joe” joke, but Elsa stops her preemptively, saying an unknown Org person did that the day after Elsa joined. Org rumor has it they were never seen again. The next day, all the Joes arrived 10 min. late with flecks of mud on their Men in Black-style suit pants’ cuffs, and Every. Single. File. with the person’s name (the digital/physical ones backed-up in triplicate, database, weapons logs, bank info, etc.) had the name wiped. Not black censor bar. Wiped. Eventually, they faded from collective memory and exist only as a rumor from senior Agents to rookies.

On the topic of the missing Org person, I found two more Org members: an unnamed duo who reviewed Elsa’s test scores and assigned her to “wetwork specialist” (from the same source as Chamomile Tea “Joe”)

Thank you for the nomination as DA!historian, and I accept the position! I’ll do what I can, when I can, but I cannot promise I will remember everything. As you can see above, I’m trying to make a coherent timeline of events for a chrono DA!blog master post. Still needs (lots of) work & is FAR from finished.

One last thought: would you all be willing to do this fic as a multi-author collab? One person writes one segment, and the next part is handed off to another, all while keeping the basic plot points as outlined above and elsewhere. I’m afraid I can’t do much beyond outlines atm bc Life™ & extreme unfamiliarity with writing fics/dialogue/scene-setting/etc (I know, get experience by writing whenever, no one is perfect the first time, etc.). Thoughts?

#Domestic Assassin AU

9 notes · View notes

sjasser666 · 8 years ago

Text

The Spy: A Subjective Book Review

Just to be clear, I suggest you have a good cup of coffee -or favorite soothing beverage- to go with this piece because it will be a long one. Alright, so one of my favorite authors, Paulo Coelho released a book this year titled The Spy. This book was particularly different than his usual norm since it grasped the biography of a figure rather than the usual fantasy-based wisdom stories of his.

The book revolves around the real-life eventful story of Mata Hari an exotic dancer/courtesan who happened to witness and be part of the verge of WWI, her past, her lies, and the truth behind her execution. The entire story in short was that Mata Hari, wasn’t always really Mata Hari. She was once a Dutch young school girl who went by the name Margareta and lived peacefully in the wealth of her family in Holland. Her whole life started to escalate however, when she lost her mother at a young age and attended a private school -the only place where she had a chance to learn- and was constantly sexually abused by the school principle. She was the most beautiful girl in class, and so being threatened that if she ever says a word she will be permanently expelled and grow to be an ignorant and an illiterate. She tolerated it all, until around the age of 19 when she met a Dutch officer, Rudolf Macleod, who was stationed in Indonesia and was searching for a bride to live with him abroad. Margareta took this chance as a way to salvation and I quote “There was my salvation! Officer, Indonesia, strange seas, and exotic worlds. What more could a young woman want from life?” Little did she knew that she was step closer to a miserable life-changing phase of her life. She lived in Indonesia for quite some time and got to know the local customs and culture. It was obviously a tradition for all the wives of the officers to know each other, be jealous of each other, and meet in special ceremonies. Margareta was miserable in her life in Indonesia, and was constantly abused by her husband. She lived in some kind of luxury but was in her own living hell. She gave birth to a daughter and a son, her son was killed, no friends, no companions, and a constant drunk, abusive, and cheating husband to deal with every night. Until one day, there was a local ceremony where all the officers accompanied by their wives had to attend. Margareta attended with her drunk husband searching for some kind of alternative company for the evening. She met another officer who was also accompanied by his obvious miserable wife. She conversed with him through the night but couldn’t help notice the look of despair on his wife’s face. Suddenly his wife stopped the entire dance event and declared loudly and I quote “I fought for our love with all my might, but today it’s run out. The stone that weighed on my heart is now a rock that will no longer let it beat. And my heart, with its last breath, told me there are other worlds beyond this one, worlds where I don’t have to always beg for the company of a man to fill these empty days and nights.” and by that the officer’s wife shot herself to death and bled at Margareta’s feet. There it was really, the turning point, the life-changing epiphany that hit Margareta so hard she packed all her belongings and her daughter to get on the first ship back to Holland with or without her husband where she said and I quote “I had been baptized with the blood of Andreas’s wife and through that rite, I was freed forever, though neither of us knew how far this freedom would reach.” After not so long, Margareta, haunted by the thought that her misery could take her where Andreas’s wife went, she abandoned her family in Holland and moved with nothing but one suitcase to Paris, the city where dreams came true, and decided to try all her efforts to build a life of immortal fame and reputation or so she thought. With a few lies, a few made up stories about her exotic life in Indonesian’s culture and a new fake identity, Mata Hari was an established renowned exotic dancer from “the far east indies” that brought a contemporary -completely made up - culture of dance and seduction that drew a thin line between the usual cheap cabaret style and authentic erotism. She was so desperate for freedom that she created a whole other fake life for herself driven by despair. A few steps up the ladder of fame, she was a star at the peak who didn’t go far enough in her age until she experienced the usual “fall from grace” every famous figure faces eventually. Again she was possessed by the fear of desperation and failure to be who she created her self to be, she was willing to use all the powerful and resourceful “man-friends” she gained so far in her career to help her escalate back to the top. Little did she knew that greediness was like fire, a little is good to keep you warm and well-driven but too much of it will burn you to ashes. With lots of events taking place at the beginning of WWI, In my opinion, Mata Hari’s greediness, lies, and ultimately vanity along with other contributing external factors led her to fall a trap of a conspiracy planned by notorious, dominant and avaricious authorities seeking vengeance from all foreigners. She was convicted for espionage for the german intelligence as well as for being a double spy against the french. Soon after the conviction, her lawyer Mr.Clunet; failed to win her case and to gain pardon from the president and therefore was executed by a firing squad somewhere close from Saint-Lazare’s prison, Paris. The government never revealed were her body was buried. According to habits from that time her head was cut off and handed to government representatives. It was kept in the Anatomy Museum on Rue des Saints-Pères, Paris, but after an unknown period of time her head disappeared probably stolen from the institution. It’s important to note that Mata Hari’s life events were extracted from the series of letters exchanged between her and her lawyer Mr.Clunet during her period of imprisonment. The following are a few quotes from the book of which I found to be self-reflective and debatetul at times.

When Margareta was still young and innocent and before her mother died she asked for her to come for a little chat, her mother handed her a packet of seeds that rendered Margareta confused and said “They’re tulip seeds, the symbol of our country. But more than that, they represent a truth you must learn. These seeds will always be tulips, even if at the moment you cannot tell them apart from other flowers. They will never turn into roses or sunflowers, no matter how much they might desire to. And if they try to deny their own existence, they will live life bitter and die. Flowers teach us that nothing is permanent: not their beauty, not even the fact that they will inevitably wilt, because they will still give new seeds. Remember this when you feel joy, pain, or sadness. Everything passes, grows old, dies, and is reborn.”

I loved the way Mata had her own way in observing the behavior of humans whether it was based on their nationalities or gender, these are a couple of funny quotes “Men, however, always feel the need to explain something”, and another one when she first arrived to Paris “Apparently foreigners were not welcome, and Parisians thought they were superior to all other people of the earth.”

No matter how far she went, that never changed the fact that she was a mother that has abandoned her only daughter back in Holland and was haunted by the guilt of that occasionally in different phases of her life of fame, she wrote in melancholy between the walls of her cell “The lines of these newspaper clippings seem like pieces of a broken teacup, telling the story of a life I no longer remember. As soon as I get out of here, I will have the clippings bound in leather, each page with a gold frame. They shall be my bequest to my daughter, as all my money was confiscated. When we are reunited, I will tell her about my life and when she asks me about Margareta MacLeod I will reply that I do not know who that woman is. All my life I’ve thought and acted like Mata Hari, the woman who has been and always will be the fascination of men and the envy of women. Ever since I’ve left Holland, I’ve lost all sense of distance and danger. I arrived in Paris with no money and no proper wardrobe, and just look at how I’ve moved up. I hope the same happens to you.”

One of my favorite parts of the book was when Madame Guimet gave two pieces of advice to the rising star Mata Hari when she first arrived to Paris. Mata was still young and was still building her career by performances here and there. The first wealthy man to have sponsored and represented her first performance in Paris was Madame Guimet’s husband. Madame Guimet, being one of the wealthiest women in France back at the time, invited Mata to a stroll along the banks of Seine. Madame Guimet started “My first piece of advice is the hardest, and it has nothing to do with your performance. Never fall in love. Love is poison. Once you fall in love, you lose control over your life. Your heart and mind belongs to someone else. Your existence is threatened. You start to do everything to hold on to your loved one and lose all sense of danger. Love, that inexplicable and dangerous thing, sweeps everything you are from the face of the earth and, in its place leaves only what your beloved wants you to be.” I know what you might be thinking, exaggerated much? Well, I’m going to have to debate Madame Guiment on this one. You see, I agree with her that Love is poison. If you swallow it all in whole it will probably kill you mentally but balanced proportions of it can actually strengthen your emotional wellbeing. Frankly speaking, this doesn’t only apply to Love, this actually applies to all forms of human emotions including (care, kindness, generosity, sadness, grieve, power,..etc). I think the key were most people go wrong with is failure to balance which renders a person engulfed in their own feelings and miseries. This brings us to the second piece of advice Madame Guimet gave Mata “When a woman or a man is abandoned by the person they love, they are focused on their own pain. No one stops and wonder what is happening to the other person. Might they also be suffering, having left behind their own heart to stay with their families because of society? Every night they must lie in their beds, unable to sleep, confused and lost, wondering if they made the wrong decision. Other times, they feel certain it was their duty to protect their families and children. But time is not on their side, the more the moment of separation grows distant, the more their memories are purified of the difficult moments and turn into a longing for that paradise lost.”

Mata Hari had a fair share of coming across some of the most influential figures of history. She made me laugh when she dared call the father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud “The man that made it acceptable for people to accept their wrong doings because it was really not their fault, it was rather the fault of their childhood gone wrong.” or perhaps when she met Pablo Picasso after she accepted an invitation to his gallery opening by Madame Guimet and described him as “I was extremely embarrased by that ugly, wide-eyed, impolite man who fancied himself as the greatest of the greatest.” and actually spent that evening instead conversing with his “italian more interesting friend” the artist Amedeo Modigliani who also offered her a great piece of advice “Know what you want and try to go beyond your own expectations. Improve your work, practice a lot, and set a very high goal one that will be difficult to achieve. Because that is an artist’s mission: to go beyond one’s limits. An artist who desires very little and achieves it has failed in life.”

Another interesting encounter was when Mata Hari first confronted her feelings out loud in front of her manager Astruc who was probably her only “truthful” friend. They escaped Paris’s rushed and busy life to spend one afternoon at the coast-side of Normandy. They stood by the beach surrounded by children playing mindlessly with sand and seagulls hovering over them in cults. That was when Astruc asked her why she looked miserable he thought she was happy with all this fame and she replied in rage “It’s because I dream of being accepted and respected, though I don’t owe anything to anyone. Why do I need that? I waste my time on worries, regrets, and darkness. A darkness that only enslaves me, chaining me to a rock where I’m served up as food for birds of prey, a rock that I can no longer leave. Back when I was in Holland they taught us they cycle of life and that is: you are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married -even if he is the worst man in the world- just so that others can’t say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about your life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says “You could’ve tried something else,”” Mata Hari’s words ringed bells in my mind. Her thoughts seemed very similar to mine. She continued “As I faced my wounds and scars I began to feel stronger, My tears did not come from my eyes but from a deeper, darker place in my heart, telling me a story that I didn’t even fully understand in a voice of its own. I was on a raft sailing through total darkness, but there, far off the horizon, was the glow of a lighthouse that would eventually lead me to dry land if the rough seas allowed, and if it was not already too late.” and then finally I found someone that agrees with me when she said “I had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me. It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and for the rainwater to wash.”

Another beautiful moment was when Mata acknowledged herself uniquely different saying “In any event, I felt completely different from all the other women. I was an exotic bird traversing an earth ravaged by humanity’s poverty of spirit. I was a swan among ducks who refused to grow up, fearing the unknown. I was alone.” Additional bells rang in my mind whilst reading these words.

And I hate how some people today depict life as a portrait of perfection on their social media and their fake smiles with their false pretenses and false causes. I detest the way some people think this life is a miniature form of a designed portrait where everything either goes as planned or else the sky will fall and the world will fall apart with it. My point was undoubtedly supported by Mata Hari’s quote “I was not looking for happiness, but rather what the french called la vraie vie, a true life, with its moments of inexpressible beauty and deep depression, with its loyalties and betrayals, with its fears and moments of peace.”

I loved how Mata Hari relied so much in her writings on authentic pieces of renowned literature, like when she fell in love with that Russian Soldier in Vittel and she used to recite him a passage from Song of Solomon “The one my soul loves” and perhaps the even stronger metaphor was when she described herself as the nightingale from Oscar Wild’s The Nightingale and the Rose as she concluded her letters to her lawyer by saying “That was my life; I am the nightingale who gave everything and died while doing so.”

The final chapters of the book reveals the letters that were from Mr.Clunet to Mata Hari. He finally confessed the reason why he took her case even though everyone knew it was a definite one when he said “I do not intent to prove my incompetence with this defense, because I was not in fact the terrible lawyer that you often accused me of being in your many letters. I just want to relive my ordeal of the past few months. I was in every way trying to save a woman I once loved, though I never admitted it.” He was clearly in a great deal of emotional pain while she was locked up with little hope of her freedom when he said “We go from euphoria to despair several times a day” Although he loved her deeply he was completely honest with her when he explained why despite of the conspiracy that was taking place behind her back it was her vanity’s fault for dragging the final verdict of execution. He said “Reading your testimonies before my arrival, I saw you were much more interested in showing your importance than in defending your innocence. You spoke of powerful friends, international success, and crowded theaters, when you should have been doing just the opposite. showing you were a victim to the general management of the counterespoinage service.” I must agree with Mr.Clunet on this one, after all vanity is the devil’s worst sin.

Finally, I loved how Mr.Clunet had shed light on a very essential root of which the tree of love grew from which is trust. He beautifully summarized the greek myth of Psych and Eros and then said a few words that touched my heart deeply “Each time I recall this myth, I wonder: Are we never able to see the true face of love? And I understand what the Greeks meant by this: Love is an act of faith and its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling emotion because if we try to decipher it and understand it, the magic disappears. We follow its winding and luminous paths, we let ourselves go to the highest peak or the deepest seas, but we trust in the hand that leads us. If we do not allow ourselves to be frightened, we will always awaken in a palace; if we fear the steps that will be required by love and want it to reveal everything to us, the result is that we will be left with nothing. Love does not obey anyone and will betray those who try to decipher its mystery.” and in his final words of defense of her innocence in his letter he said “Because when we truly love, we know others and ourselves better. We do not need words, documents, minutes, statements, accusations, or defenses.”

In conclusion, that is if of course someone bared to read this never ending book review to reach to this part, I honestly think the book opens your mind to different aspects of the story itself. It definitely revealed to us parts of Mata Hari’s life in a more poetic way rather than how it’s usually put in historical books of biography. She definitely died of a sin, but her sin was not espionage or treason like they claimed, her deadly sin was vanity and vanity, like I said before; is the devil’s worst sin.

Waiting for a lovely feedback of what you think whether you read this Mata Hari book, another Mata Hari book, or simply just read through this review.

Regards to all of you dear readers.

0 notes