#it feels so disingenuous and mean spirited and now the entire thing just leaves the worst possible taste in my mouth

[thegreatyin]

to put a long story short: at the end of ffxiv's base game, literally Directly before the beginning of its first expansion (heavensward), there is a series of quests and story arcs that eventually snowball into an hour-long cutscene in which the entire thing comes to a head in the literal worst way possible. like, "the hero's plans all go horribly wrong and several major characters die onscreen, with others going missing (presumed dead), eventually culminating in the player character being framed for the murder of the leader of a nation-state and being Literally Forced To Flee The Country" wrong.

heavensward leads directly on from this plotline. you arrive at the major location of the expansion in the midst of seeking asylum whilst being a wanted criminal everywhere else in the world right now. it's like. A Whole Thing. the game makes such a big deal out of it all. the fandom does as well. and for good reason!! it's a really good moment!!!!!!

and then roughly 1/3rds of the way into heavensward you find out that literally none of it mattered. nobody important actually died, no changes were actually made to the status quo, and nothing comes of being literally kicked out of the country for (what is implied to be) several in-universe weeks, if not months. None Of It Mattered. None.

TLDR; the bloody banquet is a major, exciting, and very infamous twist that seems like it's going to segway into a MAJOR upheaval of the status quo and some really intriguing ramifications for the story as a whole... and then heavensward does away with literally all of that and practically writes the entire thing off as a waste of time.

you may be able to see why i'm so salty about it.

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Brief summary of the Dream SMP S2 + S3

Hey guys, I’ve been meaning to make another helpful recap! [Here’s my summary of the 1st season of the SMP]. 

Just to be clear, I consider S1 to be all the events up to the Nov 16th war. S2 are the events from Nov17th-Jan 20th. S3 is the current arc

And like before, I mostly watch Tommy’s POV so I’m only going to cover his storyline. Sorry! I won’t be touching much on the Red egg, or Fundy’s story or Quackity’s stuff. You can easily follow Tommy’s story through his vods channel, as every stream is archived there. The roleplaying is much more prominent these days so this is going to be wordy but I’ll try to be as succinct as possible and keep it up to date.

=> Tubbo, now President, commits to rebuilding New L’Manburg. It’s on stilts, leaving the crater below as a memorial of the events that went down. Wilbur’s ghost appears, a friendly ghost who can only remember the good things from Wilbur’s life. He commits himself to rebuilding L’Manburg, wanting to make others happy. 

=> Quackity wants to go after Technoblade in revenge for what he did to L’Manburg. Technoblade has retreated to distant lands but Quackity fears he will come back again if they do not stop him. Tubbo shoots his suggestion down, emphasising that he wants peace above all. Fundy, also part of L’Manburg’s Govt, sides with Quackity though they listen to Tubbo as he’s the President. 

=> Tommy, now Vice-President again, moves into his old house. He meets several of the new members of the SMP, including Philza, ConnorEatsPants and CaptainPuffy - while he’s not involved in rebuilding he does make an effort to bond with some of the new members. After so long in exile, he wants to focus on his own goals and have fun now that L’Manburg is safe. 

=>BadBoyHalo organises a funeral for JSchlatt, who is now deceased. Rather than being respectful, everyone messes around, stealing his remains and making fun of the former tyrant. 

=> Vikkstar and Lazarbeam also join the server. Tommy makes a bit of a bad first impression. Next another new member joins, Ranboo. Tommy invites him to go prank George’s house: they dress up in disguises and go rob it in the middle of the night, griefing it some for good measure. After Tommy logs off, Dream logs on.

=> Dream builds a huge obsidian wall around L’Manburg - notably with far harsher borders. Everyone is confused and appalled. Dream indicates that Tommy’s to blame. Dream’s using George’s house as an excuse to challenge L’Manburg’s authority by taking offense to Tommy’s grief. 

=> The next day, the cabinet speaks to Tommy and, feeling attacked, he denies everything. They take him and Ranboo to court with Dream threatening to build the walls even higher if Tommy is not punished. Tommy eventually confesses when they start blaming Ranboo too and Tommy insists that Ranboo had nothing to do with it. 

=> They hold a meeting. Tommy is to be punished. Tubbo tries to argue for probation where Tommy is stripped of his power and has to be on best behaviour for 3 weeks. Dream would prefer exile but listens. If Tommy were to break probation, he would double the size of the obsidian walls, trapping L’Manburg further, and have guards patrolling the walls, preventing the citizens from leaving. Tommy is outraged at this, finding Dream’s actions entirely unfair. 

=> He realises that Dream doesn’t have that much on them where Tommy still has Spirit - the remains of Dream’s dead horse which he once traded Tommy’s disc to Skeppy for. He threatens Dream - take down the walls or he destroys Spirit. Dream goes silent... then doubles the obsidian walls, stating he cares about nothing anymore except Tommy’s music discs and that he’s going to trap L’Manburg forever - it can be independent but never free.

=> They have another meeting. Tommy wants to call Technoblade and fight Dream as he’s oppressing them. Quackity and Fundy agree with this plan, not wanting to comply with Dream. Tubbo refuses, wanting to avoid a badly-thought out war and agrees to exile Tommy. Everyone’s shocked. As Tubbo is the President, it was his call. Tommy is lead away by Dream, accompanied by Ghostbur. Dream promises to take down the walls, now that L’Manburg has complied.

=> Quackity says that they need to get respect back as currently they have no power. He again suggests a ‘butcher army’ where they go after Technoblade as justice for L’Manburg and, this time, Tubbo agrees. 

=> Meanwhile, Tommy is lead to a faraway land; his exile forbids him from going to any already inhabited land in the SMP. Dream destroys all his things and he has to start fresh. Tommy feels betrayed by everyone despite Ghostbur’s attempts to cheer him up; they call the land Logstedshire. 

=> BadboyHalo visits Tommy and gives him a new music disc - chirp. (He wants to offer more, but Dream stops him.) Dream arrives to watch Tommy, making him destroy his iron armour and follows him around while Tommy tries to mine and build his new base. Tommy makes a tent as he doesn’t want this to be his permanent home. Ghostbur gives him and Tubbo compasses pointing to each other.

=> Exile takes a toll on Tommy. His humour grows darker with more references to death. Others visit but it feels disingenuous to Tommy. He feels lonely. Dream keeps visiting and destroying his armour and other things. But Tommy appreciates the company all the same. One time he has a hallucination of Tubbo visiting. (Tubbo’s too guilty to visit.)

=> Tommy decides to have a beach party so people will visit to see him but he only tells Dream and Ghostbur and Dream secretly sabotages the invites, sending Ghostbur away. When no one but Dream shows up, Tommy gets extremely depressed and angry, destroying the bridge he built through the nether. He decides Dream must be his only friend and even convinces Dream to give him a trident. 

=> Jack Manifold visits while Tommy is feeling depressed and Tommy spleefs him into lava in rage before regretting it as he realises this dark mindset is unhealthy. Jack begins to hate Tommy, secretly wanting revenge.

=> Tommy is losing hope, feeling like he will die. He makes a secret room from Dream full of stuff he never wants to lose including pictures of Tubbo and other keepsakes. Dream discovers this room and grows furious, blowing up Logsteadshire and destroys all his things, his armour, his diamonds, everything. The only thing Tommy keeps safe is the pictures of Tubbo. Tommy apologises repeatedly, begging Dream to stay his friend, that he’s so lonely as Dream forbids anyone from ever visiting, destroying the nether portal.

=> Tommy nearly decides to end his life but reconsiders as he realises that Dream was just here to watch him, not be his friend. He cannot give up hope and let him win. So he runs away, and eventually ends up at Technoblade’s house in the wilderness.

=> In L’manburg Quackity sets off his Butcher army plan and they force Philza to tell them where Techno lives, placing his under house arrest for helping a known criminal. From Philza they take a compass that leads them to Techno’s house. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo all fight Techno who is prepared with potions and gear. Thanks to Dream, he also has a totem of undying. Quackity threatens Techno’s horse, Carl, and Techno surrenders, giving them his weapons and armour, letting them lead him to L’Manburg where they immediately execute him, skipping a trial. Thanks to the totem, Techno lives. He escapes into the sewers with help from Dream and Punz. Quackity finds him but Techno kills him with a netherite pickaxe and flees home on Carl. He swears revenge, determined to absolute destroy L’Manburg for daring to attack him. 

=> L’Manburg decides instead that their true enemy is Dream and plan a festival to catch and kill him. Ranboo visits Techno and gives him back his armour. Tubbo visits Logsteadshire and thinks Tommy is dead.

=> Tommy sees Techno who takes pity on him given that Tommy was exiled and now he’s on the run from Dream. Techno shows him his vault containing 150 wither skulls with which he wants to use to destroy L’Manburg. Tommy is horrified and doesn’t want to destroy his old home in spite of his conflicted feelings. He just wants to get his music discs back. Techno suggests working with him and he’ll help get the discs back if Tommy does some minor terrorism with him. Tommy agrees. 

=> Dream turns up, looking for Tommy. Techno hides him but notes that he does owe Dream a favour for saving his life. Tommy is very confused about Dream - seeing him as both a friend and enemy, obviously emotionally vulnerable after exile. He fixates on the discs as the one goal that looks achievable. He is reliant on Techno for protection and looks to him for what to do, having no confidence of his own. Techno lets him have armour and golden apples.

=> Techno and Tommy commit acts of terrorism in L’Manburg. They kidnap Connor, torture him a bit and get Tubbo to exchange him for Techno’s crossbow. Tubbo was shocked to see Tommy was alive while Tommy calls Tubbo a monster, after hearing that he tried to kill his new friend Technoblade. He is conflicted though even as Techno shares his negative opinion on L’Manburg. Dream confronts them and Techno protects Tommy, though he offers his favour. Dream refuses, saving the favour, and leaves Tommy alone for now.

=> More terrorism, this time Techno releases a wither while Tommy threatens Fundy and Ranboo, getting back Techno’s sword and axe while accidentally scaring Fundy so much he drowns and even Techno is alarmed at his aggressiveness. Only afterwards does Tommy reflect that he’s going far too far and this might not be right. Techno says he’s beginning to respect him where originally he was useless and tells him his real plan to destroy L’Manburg. Tommy is scared. He reluctantly agrees, then backtracks and says he only wants the discs, not to hurt Tubbo but he is very uncertain. 

=> The festival occurs. Tubbo and co. host it waiting for Dream to arrive. Tommy and Techno head over, seeing a scary prison Dream commissioned on the way. When they get there Dream appears but rather than take off his armour, he starts rebuilding the obsidian walls. It’s apparently because of Tommy again.

=> The community house has been blown up. Dream blames Tommy and everyone seems to believe him. He says that he considers L’Manburg responsible for Tommy’s actions unless Tubbo gives up Mellohi, which Tommy gave to him as a sign of trust.

=> Tommy appears and says that he didn’t do it. He’s hurt that Tubbo doesn’t believe him and angry at everyone. He and Tubbo and up fighting while the rest of the server watches. They’re screaming at each other until finally Tommy says that the discs were worth more than he ever was. They both freeze, digesting what he just said.

=> Tommy regrets and says to Tubbo to give up the disc to Dream, saying he’s becoming worse than everyone he hated. Then he says he’s on Tubbo’s side, on L’Manburg’s side - because all his violent behaviour was wrong and he should not let his trauma justify anything. 

=> Technoblade says Tommy should come with him, that he’s siding with the enemy after all he’s done for him. Tommy’s mind is made up. Techno accepts this and demands his axe back, saying he’s no longer worthy of it. Tommy refuses, saying he decides that he is worthy. Techno leaves, saying either way he’s going to destroy L’Manburg and that Tommy’s made a mistake.

=> Dream calls Tubbo the worst president ever, explaining how he was pretending to be friends with Tubbo for it and now that he has the disc, he’s going to destroy L’Manburg with Techno tomorrow. He also says that Ranboo is a traitor. Dream leaves.

=> Tommy is in an awkward spot, but apologises to the surrounding crowd. He swears that he didn’t destroy the Community house and that everyone needs to put their differences aside for now because they don’t have time to argue or hold grudges. They need to band together to save L’Manburg from Dream and Technoblade. Settle their differences afterwards. Everyone has to work together to save the day. He believes in L’Manburg still.

=> Quackity talks to Tubbo, saying they should punish Ranboo, Tubbo refuses, saying he will not punish an innocent citizen and will not be pushed around by Quackity anymore. He’s going to be forgiving. Quackity says he’s going to leave L’Manburg for this though still agrees to help in the fight tomorrow. 

=> Niki, is angry and doesn’t believe Tommy. She does not want to work with him and doesn’t care about L’Manburg anymore. She’d rather watch it crumble than work with Tommy. Fundy notes that no one likes Tommy but they should band together just while they have a common goal. The next day though, he reconsiders. Why bother trying to save a nation that’s never done anything? Why bother helping others? 

=> Ranboo is frustrated saying that this whole fight is stupid and having sides caused the problems in the first place. Having a nation is the problem. He’s friends with people regardless of who they’re with. He says Dream is the enemy but is too scared to fight Dream as he’s too powerful. It’s pointless.

=> Punz says to help L’Manburg but he’s secretly a spy working with Dream to gain people’s trust.

=> Sapnap is conflicted as he doesn’t want to side against Dream. Tommy speaks to him the next day after searching the ocean for his lost fish Mars. He returns Mars to Sapnap saying he wants them to be friends and put aside all the betrayals and wars of the past. Sapnap agrees to help Tommy. Getting Sapnap to release Mars was wrong as hurting other just because you yourself was hurt is wrong, Tommy has decided. Tommy likewise forgives Tubbo for exiling him, saying it was justified and he should never have hurt Tubbo and teamed with Technoblade just because he was hurt and traumatised.

=> The war happens. Few turn up to fight. Fundy has sabotaged their supplies while Niki burns the L’Mantree. Techno starts his assault. Half a dozen Withers are released and they wreck havoc. Tommy and Tubbo fight together, helped by Sapnap, Ponk, Quackity, Punz, Jack Manifold and Eret. They are no match for Techno, Philza, Dream, a dozen withers and a huge pack of dogs. 

=> Finally Dream releases tons of TNT, obliterating the nation. Tommy screams at Techno, saying how he never really considered him a friend and this was a betrayal while Techno counters that Tommy betrayed him, seeing him as a weapon rather than a person where Techno helped him and would have fought anyone for him. Tommy calls him selfish for being unable to compromise his views even a little, that he couldn’t have just let them live in peace but had to destroy what he loved. 

=> Dream talks to Tommy too, saying that this was just fun for him, and wants to continue toying with Tommy. Tommy swears he won’t give up and Dream says he looks forward to doing this again. L’Manburg’s story is over, but theirs is not. 

=> Quackity says to trust no one; all this was too far. Tommy agrees, planning on going after Dream and the discs once more to finish things. They agree that L’Manburg is beyond repair. 

=> Ghostbur appears, he asks Phil why he did this, why he would destroy all that Ghostbur built and let his sheep, Friend, die. Phil just says he’ll understand some day. Ghostbur wants to die. Bringing back Wilbur will end his own existence he believes. 

=> Tommy and Tubbo move in together, planning to fight Dream together after all he’s done to manipulate them. 

=> Ranboo is anxious, he is hearing a voice that sounds like Dream but might just be a memory he’s trying to repress - the voice says that it was he who destroyed the community house. Ranboo goes to live with Philza and Techno, who offer him a home after destroying his house in L’Manburg, now just a crater. 

=> Jack and Niki both want to make Tommy pay. Jack plans to get close to Tubbo in order to hurt Tommy. 

=> Philza, Ranboo and Eret try to resurrect Wilbur - Tommy sees and is very conflicted as it means killing Ghostbur, who Tommy is very fond of and he’s wary of who Wilbur became. Their first attempt does not succeed but they’re going to try again.

=>Dream destroys Tommy’s house. He asks for Tommy and Tubbo to meet him. Alone. It’s about the discs.

=> Punz has been feigning loyalty to the SMP but was a spy for Dream. However, Tommy had secretly dropped off a chest of valuables in his house, realising he’s suspicious, and ask Punz to help him.

=>Tommy and Tubbo meet Dream alone on a mountain. They fight but are overwhelmed by Dream who makes Tommy choose between Tubbo and his disc. Tommy chooses Tubbo (and the disc turned out to be a fake anyway). Dream continues threatening tubbo, saying he will kill him if they don’t both comply and makes them both drop their armour and items before destroying it all.

=>Dream takes them to a secret vault he has made, containing items of attachment from everyone - it has the disc, Beckerson, Friend the sheep and spaces for more things he wants to collect, such as Sam’s dog Fran, Punz’s shulker box and Techno’s horse, Carl. He also adds the axe of Peace to the wall, which he had taken from Tommy. He then reveals he needs Tommy to be alive and get attached to things and make others get attached so he can collect those things and gain power. Dream has removed all attachments form his own life and believes taking others is the way to gain absolute control. For that he needs Tommy.

=>Dream plans to kill Tubbo and throw Tommy in an inescapable prison. There’s nothing they can do. Then Punz arrives, having heeded Tommy’s message, brining with him the cavalry as a dozen other players come with him, such as Sapnap, Eret, Jack, Niki, Sam and Quackity. They protect Tommy and Tubbo, leaving Dream in trouble.

=>Tommy goes up to Dream, makes him drop his armour as he’d done to Tommy so many times and gets Dream to reveal how he blew up the community house and his manipulative plans, even talking about his exile. Then Tommy kills Dream twice more, (taking two lives as he’d once done to Tommy) and considers killing him a final time so they’ll be free forever.

=>Dream begs him to let him go and offers the secret to bringing someone back to life - which means they could bring back Wilbur. Tommy reluctantly agrees and Sam and Sapnap take him and throw Dream in the inescapable prison.

=>Finally free, Tommy and Tubbo return home. They have the discs back ad listen to them at the bench. Wilbur talks to them - the real Wilbur from beyond the grave, apparently briefly able to communicate after their brush with death, not Ghostbur. He asks about them and they tell him how they want to bring him back. Wilbur is angry, having been content with death. They’re not quite sure what they might have done...

[This is considered the end of Season 2, the disc saga finale being the conclusion. What follows is season 3].

=> The next day, Tommy visits Dream in prison. It’s an impressive structure. Dream is rather subdued and Tommy asks him to write some novels for him. Now that he’s free from Dream, Tommy decides to start a new project for himself: building a hotel so when war breaks out and people inevitably lose their homes, they can stay at his hotel. With all the blown up buildings, the SMP needs some new central buildings, he feels.

=>Tommy asks Sam to build the hotel for him. Sam agrees but asks Tommy to pay him and also to do tasks for him. He becomes a new character, ‘Sam Nook’ like Tom Nook from animal crossing and even speaks in animalish while Tommy does various tasks for him.

=>Meanwhile, red vines have been growing throughout the SMP. They come from a mysterious red egg. They’ve actually been around for a while, but only now is Tommy, and many other characters, becoming aware of this. The egg had spread through the SMP and mind-controlled Bad and later Skeppy, but they’d managed to contain and stop it the first time. Bad got infected again, (because it had changed Skeppy and he wanted to be with him) and so he and Antfrost are now helping it spread once more. 

=>Tommy investigates the egg, and finds he seems immune to its mind-controlling effects - most people like the egg or seem to hate it but he’s so far completely neutral and isn’t too concerned with stopping it. When Tubbo goes near it, it makes him cry. When Sam becomes ensnared by the egg, Tommy and Captain Puffy work together and help save him from it. 

=> In Snowchester, Jack and Tubbo have been working on building nukes and decide to test them. Jack plans to kill Tommy by luring him to the test site, with Niki’s help. Jack and Niki’s plan nearly succeeds but they don’t get Tommy to the sit fast enough thanks to Tommy’s tendency to chatter and his distractable nature. 

=> Tommy is unaware that they tried to kill him though he does feel slightly suspicious of Niki and how close he was to dying. Niki and Jack are disappointed with their failure but try to come up with another plan to kill Tommy.

=>Jack tries to get closer to Tommy by helping him at his hotel. Tommy begins to get suspicious of Jack’s odd behaviour. Meanwhile the egg is still spreading.

=> Sam Nook orders Tommy to go and destroy it and when Tommy goes over, he can hear the egg talking. Tommy nearly starts to destroy it but changes his mind as he doesn’t want to start another big war (many love the egg) - he just wants peace. He decides to take a piece of the egg to place in his hotel, hopefully contained to try and attract egg loyalists to his hotel.

=>The hotel is finished, ready for a grand opening. Tommy decides to visit Dream in prison one last time. He wants closure as he’s healing and doesn’t want Dream in his life anymore.

=>During Tommy’s visit to the prison, TNT can be heard going off in the prison. It seems there’s a problem. It’s suspected to be an attempt to breakout Dream (though the cell is secure) and the prison is put on lockdown with Tommy still trapped inside the cell with Dream. He’s stuck! Dream is very happy about this for now he has Tommy with him.

=>Sam is unable to work out what’s wrong with the prison. Until he finds the culprit he is reluctant to let Tommy out in case it allows Dream to escape. Meanwhile, Jack hears Tommy’s trapped and is ecstatic, realising his great enemy is trapped. He claims the hotel for himself. Much of the rest of the server seems unaware that Tommy is in trouble.

=>After a week, Tommy is angry and frustrated but remains resistant to Dream’s attempts to be friendly, refusing to let himself get manipulated again. Dream beings up the revive book and how he can bring back the day, and Tommy declares it a lie. Dream punches Tommy to death, which takes his last canon life.

=>Sam is devastated. He shares the news with others. Tubbo’s in denial. Jack’s reaction is interesting - initially celebrating but then he feels angry and cheated and empty and realises he’s not sure he wanted Tommy dead. Killing Tommy was the only thing that gave him purpose and now he has nothing. He burns down Jack Manifoldland, and continues with the BigInnit Hotel, still feeling conflicted. Quackity is also shocked by the news, stunned that Tommy could die. Ranboo becomes very pessimistic, feeling like no one on the server cares even as he blames himself for not caring. He’s not sure how much Tommy cared about him but starts to realise it was more than he thought when he finds the flower he first gave to Tommy saved in a chest - Ranboo had thought he’d thrown it away and never cared. Puffy is devastated, viewing the death as a personal failure. Bad and Ant celebrate, showing how much the egg has influenced them. Eret is shocked too, he’s sad as he’d always highly respected Tommy. Even Foolish is saddened though he hadn’t known Tommy well. 

=>Tommy speaks to Wilbur in the afterlife, which seems to be a void. Time seems to flow differently there, its much slower. Wilbur still seems fond of Tommy and they keep each other company though Wilbur’s mindset remains a little worrying. He says how he and Tommy were both bad for the server and its better off without them. Tommy hates it in the afterlife, but Wilbur seems fine with it. Schlatt and Mexican Dream are also in the afterlife.

=>Dream resurrects Tommy. Tommy claims over a month has passed for him but for Dream its only been two days. H’s very disoriented. They are still both in the prison and no one else knows that Dream brought back Tommy. Tommy’s alive again but still trapped with Dream. He describes being dead as torturous and he’s sensory deprived. 

=>Dream wants to kill Tommy more to learn more about Death, to Tommy’s horror. Dream calls himself a god, cause he can control death and Tommy feels a duty to kill him for the information to resurrect someone is in Dream’s head. But Tommy can’t, for he fears he’d be trapped alone in prison and he’s unsure if Sam would let him out after he killed Dream. Tommy can’t bear to be alone even as he hates what Dream’s doing and planning.

=>Dream intends to resurrect Wilbur. Tommy begs him not to, suggesting that Wilbur would be worse for the server in some way, that bringing him back would mean doom. Dream ignores his warnings, enjoying the power he possesses.

=> Sam finally lets Tommy out of prison and he’s doing badly. He’s afraid of taking damage and feels lost, not sure how to connect with anyway as he feels like they’re treating him differently. Sam is clearly hugely regretful but Tommy no longer trusts him. In fact, he wants a new warden for the prison, not feeling like Sam is capable of it anymore. Tommy finds out about Tubbo’s marriage to Ranboo and feels jealous and left out, seeing how his friends have moved on.

=> Jack is shocked to see him alive and they get into an argument, with Jack refusing to give back the hotel. Jack tries to confront him on everything, like how he wanted to kill Tommy and Tommy does not want to have that conversation at all, hating speaking about death so they leave on bad terms, Tommy not acknowledging Jack’s anger and Jack more angry than ever. He wants Tommy gone once more. He also decides to try and become prison Warden as well

=>Tommy has made it his goal to kill Dream because he’s certain he will escape and destroy everything he loves if they do nothing. He tells Quackity about the revive book. 

=>Quackity meets Schlatt’s ghost in an underground cave, where the ghost is trapped after a cryptic message leading him there. He makes a deal with the ghost which might involve resurrection. He then goes to Sam and convinces him to let him in the prison to torture Dream. Sam agrees and every day Quackity visits the prison to torture Dream until he tells him about the secrets of revival. 

=> Tommy visits Dream’s bunker from the disc saga finale, to see if the cow he saw was actually Henry, his old pet who died, now that he know the revive book is real. He and Ranboo carefully take both and Friend out of the vault. Then as they’re leading them back Tommy pulls too hard on the leash and Henry dies for a second time. Tommy is thrown into grief once more, feeling defeated and once again clings to the idea of killing Dream. 

=> Tommy and Tubbo prepare once more. Tubbo shows Tommy how to build TNT cannons as they plan a way into prison. This is traumatic for Tommy and he is worried he’ll have a panic attack in prison, wrecking his plans so he tries out some exposure therapy, visiting some places of past trauma, including Logstedshire and a replica of Eret’s button room and an obisidian room they build to replicate the prison cell Tommy died in. Tommy find it all extremely stressful though he seems to forgive Eret after seeing his apology in the button room. The prison is hardest as he lasts no more than 30 seconds.

=>With invisibility potions prepared by Tubbo, Tommy sneaks into the prison, following Ghostbur who is visiting Dream (as part of Tommy’s plan) this goes well at first, Tommy making it all the way to Dream’s cell before he’s caught by Sam before he gets close enough to kill Dream. Sam is furious as Ghostbur is left beside Dream, in danger with Tommy helpless to do anything to save him. 

=> Dream kills Ghostbur. Wilbur is revived, appearing in the spot he died. Sam tells Tommy he will kill him if he ever goes near the prison again, accusing him of causing this. Wilbur is happy to be alive, after being trapped for 13 years in limbo. He is thankful for Dream for reviving him while Tommy is less than happy to see him alive. Wilbur goes off to plan as stories of his revival spread around the SMP. 

--------------

And that’s everything so far! This is quite Tommy-focused I realise. That’s simply the story I’m following. (Sorry about the bias though.) Other parts of the SMP are interesting and I do encourage you to check out other creators as well. Badboyhalo has quite the interesting plot arc of his own, involving a Red egg that corrupts people while Karl is doing one-shot episodes called Tales of the SMP and many other characters have been doing their own thing.

If anyone has any further questions, feel free to ask! I can probably elaborate on most things or point out the relevant streams etc.

[keyofjetwolf]

Xena and M’Lila

I genuinely and sincerely love this show, and no question it was progressive in a lot of ways for its time. But there’s been nothing made by human hands that’s perfect, and I can’t help but wince a bit as I watched this episode, featuring M’Lila, the slave from “The Land of the Pharaohs”, and keep in mind that we’ll soon meet Lao Ma from “Chin”, and how both of these women were deeply impactful in the course of Xena’s life, recognizing her potential, teaching her signature skills, and then dying so the white woman can live and use their shit better than they did.

IT DOESN’T SIT SO WELL IN THIS THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2020.

That won’t be the focus of my discussions, but it would be disingenuous to not acknowledge it. It’s an ugly mark, and if the show ever gets a reboot, as has been rumoured for a while now, I hope the new creators do better on this front.

Xena meets M’Lila on the same day she meets Caesar. IT’S A BIG FUCKING DAY. Unfortunately, M’Lila is short-changed, not just by the episode, I think, but by the series as a whole. For as HUGE as her role in Xena’s life, she’s astonishingly under-mentioned (particularly versus Lao Ma, who comes up every other second once we learn of her). “Destiny” itself doesn’t really give her much either, what with the language barrier and then her going and dying and all.

Here’s a brief list of shit M’Lila does for Xena in this episode:

Did and then undid The Pinch on Xena’s leg (this is a bad episode for Xena’s leg)

Did and then undid The Pinch on Xena’s NECK (you know, the whole “you’ll be dead in thirty seconds” thing)

Taught Xena HER PIRATE CAPTOR how to do and undo The Pinch

Cautioned Xena against trusting Caesar and being wholly ignored

Hid well enough on a boat that an entire Roman legion couldn’t find her

Solo-invaded a Roman camp to rescue Xena from death by crucifixion

Dragged Xena for who the fuck knows how many miles to a healer

Took an arrow for and died for Xena

CAME BACK AS A SPIRIT TO SAVE HER ASS AGAIN

Inspired Xena’s breastplate armour and arm cuff design, probably.

YOU DESERVED BETTER M’LILA I’M SO SORRY

I really do wish the episode had done better splitting its time between Caesar and M’Lila, or at least taken a moment for her and Xena that was about THEM. We can infer a lot, and I’m not against that, but when we have AN ENTIRE MINUTE AND CHANGE for a slow ass sad sea montage, I start throwing side eyes.

Obviously, in their time together (I’d say months, at minimum), Xena makes a huge impact on M’Lila. I mean, fuck, what she winds up doing for Xena is proof enough of that. But ... what, exactly? It seems reasonable to assume that Xena spent most of her time with Caesar BONING Caesar, and she spends her time between Caesar leaving and Caesar smashing her legs in PINING for Caesar (if our 80-something second Sad Sea Montage is anything to go by), so Xena and M’Lila became bosom mates when? And WHY, I mean Xena’s functionally an angsty sixteen year old who can kill you on a whim, if I’m M’Lila, I’m thinking about running off with those dolphins from the montage.

AND XENA TOO. M’Lila’s death basically sets off TEN FUCKING YEARS OF CARNAGE. And the show goes out of its way to make sure we know it IS M’Lila’s death that does it, too, and not just Xena being sad about not having Karl Urban for a boyfriend.

We take several pointed seconds with Xena searching herself for an answer. ANGER IS XENA’S GO-TO IF SHE WERE TRULY ANGRY SHE’D FUCKING KNOW IT. All of her aside comments, too, indicate that Xena’s definitely having a bad time, quite possibly a little depressed, almost certainly embarrassed and feeling foolish and used, but angry? Nuh-uh.

Xena does make her choice tonight, a choice she’ll make again and again over the next decade-ish, but interestingly enough, that choice has little to nothing to do with Caesar. And so I wish SO MUCH that the episode had spent more time showing us why M’Lila.

Consequently, I feel I’m not really able so much to do a great job on this topic (WHICH SADDENS ME), because we just don’t have the same tools to build with as we do Caesar. BUT LET’S SEE WHAT WE CAN DO.

A lot of M’Lila works best, I think, as a collection of ideas and possibilities. When we first meet her, she fights so much like we’ll come to see of Xena, she almost feels like a spirit. M’Lila is TOUGH and FAST, and honestly how the fuck anyone was able to keep her enslaved is beyond me, but okay. She’s bested by Xena, only just, and really becomes quite amendable after that. We don’t see it happen, but she most likely taught Xena a lot about fighting beyond just The Pinch, and those are lessons Xena still applies to this day.

Alongside Future Xena, though, M’Lila represents a different path Xena might have walked. The world they live in is pretty god awful, with the strongest routinely and violently taking from the weakest, We know Xena rallying her village to stand up to warlords didn’t go super great, but they DID win the day, and Amphipolis DID remain an independent town after Xena put her “all enemies of Amphipols get to eat my sword” plan into action. Does that mean Xena had to become the thing she was defending against to keep from possibly being enslaved and dying? Hell no, that’s the entire point of the fucking show. Xena makes her choices, XENA CONSISTENTLY MAKES HER CHOICES. But not making a choice is also a choice, and choices have consequences. These might have been Xena’s.

We also can’t overlook M’Lila’s compassion (though in the same breath I laughingly note how she left all her other shipmates strung up, OOPS). Assuming Caesar’s assessment was correct, M’Lila has been a slave since she was a child. Presuming she had only recently managed to successfully escape, her time with Xena may well have been the first in memory she’d spent it free. From what we know of Xena to that point, M’Lila is the first and possibly only person since her own family drove her away to show her kindness.

But at the end of it all, sadly, M’Lila’s purpose is to die show Xena the way she COULD be, the things she COULD do with the skills and abilities she possesses, so that Xena can go “Mm, no thanks.”

M’Lila is an excuse. A really good excuse, don’t get me wrong! However I wish the episode had done a better job with it, I truly believe Xena’s pain and grief at M’Lila’s murder. Xena has loved and trusted so few people in her life, and when the world hurts her, all she wants is to hurt the world in return. (***MAKE A MENTAL NOTE WE WILL RETURN TO THIS IDEA***)  But really, M’Lila is the excuse Xena wields, the fuel she uses to burn down EVERYTHING.

And you know, I say that, and I think I’ve talked myself into a good headcanon for why Xena doesn’t bring up M’Lila more. Oh the shit she’s done in her name. Even if she never said it, that’s what it was. Of all the things M’Lila didn’t deserve, that has got to fucking rank. Yeah, I’m not sure I”d feel worthy of evoking her again either.

Really though: SORRY M’LILA YOU DESERVED BETTER

[thewhumperinwhite]

WKW: Magic Lessons (Part 1)

Well, as I should maybe have expected, giving myself permission to go out of order allowed me to actually write the next chronological scene so I don’t have to lmao

@faewhump @procrastinatingsab …… okay I have such a bad memory anybody else who wanted to be tagged in wkw please send me a message i’m so sorry

TW for: power imbalances, child abuse, captivity.

----

“Darling,” Morden says. He is still smiling, but he is almost always smiling and Thorne has to avoid taking a step back from this particular smile. He looks only gently amused, but Morden’s amusement is often dangerous enough. “Are you questioning me?”

“No, Master,” Thorne says immediately, snapping to attention. “You know best, of course.” He tries to will himself to shut up, but he can’t quite manage it. “I only meant that—that I know I could be more useful to you, Master!”

“Mm-hmm,” Morden says. He rests his elbow on his great mahogany desk, and rests his pointed chin on his hand. He’s still smiling, looking fondly exasperated; it makes Thorne shiver, though he can’t entirely tell what kind of shiver it is. “Darling,” Morden says again, “Thorne.” Thorne feels cold sweat begin to collect under his shirt collar; Morden gave Thorne his name, but whenever his Master actually uses it means his patience is wearing thin. “Have you been practicing?”

Thorne’s face goes hot immediately. “I,” he says, “I, yes, of course, Master, of course I have.”

Morden’s smile widens, and he begins to strip off his black leather gloves. “Good. Because I believe it’s past time for a Magic Lesson.”

That makes Thorne go cold instead, but with a little effort, he succeeds in making himself nod, and hold still.

——

It was easy to keep track of time during the siege itself, when every hour wore both their supplies and his father’s patience a bit thinner. Now that it’s all over, Andry has no reliable way of knowing what day it is, or how many days the castle has been occupied. If he had to guess, he’d say less than a week, but it would be a guess.

Presumably Morden Crane is still settling in and deciding which of the occupants of the castle he wants to murder, because he hasn’t sent for Andry since parading him in front of his father’s court at the welcome ball. He also doesn’t seem to have sent for Thorne in that time, either; and while Andry is obviously grateful for the reprieve— though it does make it more difficult to avoid settling into dangerous complacency— Thorne is almost literally climbing the walls. Occasionally he wanders off to amuse himself, generally leaving Andry locked in his father’s— in Thorne’s bedroom, which is... hardly something to complain about, given that the alternative is being dragged around after Thorne by his throat, but. His father didn’t even keep books in here. So all there is to do is... stare at the walls and count the tassels on the bed curtains and, if he wants, pace.

Which is fine, except that it means he’s starting to be more and more grateful when Thorne arrives back from whatever it is he does all day, and that is not a state Andry is interested in getting into.

In the spirit of not becoming overly grateful for Thorne’s presence, therefore, Andry does not get up from where he’s sitting on the floor when the door opens, until he sees that Thorne is stumbling so hard he almost misses the bed, collapsing onto it face-first with a grown. Then Andry gets to his feet and takes a step closer almost without thinking, if only because it has been days since he’s had anything so concrete to be curious about.

He realizes what he’s doing and stops at approximately the same moment that Thorne raises his head to look at Andry, bleary-eyed, and then raises his hand and points it at Andry, squinting with apparent effort.

Andry moves back immediately, but nothing happens except a sudden bloom of heat in the metal covering his wrist-stump, startling but not painful at all. Thorne drops his hand, and then drops his face back against the coverlet, punches the bedclothes and lets out a muffled growl.

Andry, frozen with his hands up to shield his face, stares at him. He is— genuinely not sure whether this is a time to reach out in the hopes of making Thorne like him, or whether this is a time to very quietly retreat to his closet and hope Thorne forgets he is here.

Before he’s come to a decision, Thorne lifts himself half-way up onto his elbows so he can glare at Andry. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week, even though Andry has seen him do so, and knows he did not look this exhausted an hour ago.

“You,” Thorne barks, and Andry has to stop himself from wincing. “You’re magic, aren’t you?”

Andry blinks. He lowers his hands, turning that question over in his head a few times to see if it will start making sense. It doesn’t, particularly. “I’m sorry, my lord Wolf,” he says finally. “I’m not sure I—”

“You used to do magic, didn’t you?” Thorne says impatiently. He’s half-sprawled on the bed, looking up at Andry with a foot of bedding and perhaps three feet of empty space between them, and he is clearly annoyed but Andry does not know why, which is making him very uneasy. “I don’t understand your Craetan household-gods thing, but you were magic, weren’t you?”

Andry wonders what Karya would think if she ever heard herself called a “household god,” if she’d be pleased by the “god” half or insulted by the “household” one. “I— suppose you could say that, my lord,” he says slowly.

Thorne narrows his eyes, and Andry wonders with slight increase in his pulse if that was the wrong answer. “How did you learn,” Thorne says, his voice still sharp.

“I’m sorry?”

“How did you learn magic?” Thorne snaps, pushing himself up into an actual sitting position on the bed, his hands making fists on the silk bedspread. “I’ve heard only that you ‘bore the house magic,’ but I don’t know what the fuck that means.”

“I... didn’t learn,” Andry says, still feeling as though he is trying to pick his way across a dark room without a torch. “I was... chosen, and then I... had magic.” 

He’s about to add that he was never capable of... “doing” magic, as Morden apparently is, and that a month ago he was fairly confident that wasn’t how magic worked at all, but before he can go on Thorne’s face twists into a scowl and he grabs on of the overstuffed pillows from the head of the bed and lobs it at Andry’s face with a growl of, “Lucky shithead.”

And Andry sees him do it, consciously he sees the whole process of Thorne curling his lip and reaching for the pillow and throwing it, but a large part of his brain apparently registers only that Thorne has moved quickly and now something is flying at Andry’s face, and he moves so desperately to get out of the way that he slips on the edge of the carpet and falls, lands hard on his ass with an embarrassing little gasp.

Thorne blinks, and then laughs, flopping back on the bed so that Andry can only see his slippered feet. “Alright, not that lucky,” Thorne concedes.

(Once when Andry was thirteen he was leaving an argument with his father, and Auidoine picked up a ceramic lion figurine from the mantle in the formal sitting room and threw it at the back of Andry’s head so hard that Andry could not stand bright light for a week, or hear clearly for two months longer than that. His left ear still rings in quiet rooms like the one Thorne keeps leaving him in. But of course his father is dead and it will do him no good to think of any of that now.)

“Sorry,” Thorne says after a moment, and Andry is glad he is still lying back on the bed, so that he cannot see the look Andry gives him in response. “I suppose it’s no fault of yours if I’m a disappointment to everyone in all things.”

Andry— has no idea what to say to that. Thorne isn’t an idiot; surely any reassurances coming from Andry, who doesn’t know him and is also explicitly under his power, would sound insultingly disingenuous. Yet it sounds like an obvious bid for reassurance.

Or possibly he wants to vent his spleen about it and Andry is a convenient excuse, like a dog, or a particularly friendly-looking pot-plant. In service of this, Andry tries, “Disappointment, my lord?”

Thorne heaves a long sigh. Then he covers his face with his arm and waves vaguely in Andry’s direction. “I’m too tired to babysit you just now, Your Worship,” he says. “Supervise yourself and leave me to be a failure in peace, if you please.”

Andry frowns. Thorne, stretched out on Andry’s father’s bed with one arm slung dramatically over his face and his other flopped open-palmed beside him on the coverlet, looks more than tired; he looks washed out and bloodless under his dark complexion, almost gray-tinted.

“My lord,” Andry says slowly, knowing it’s a gamble, “Is there anything I can—do for you?”

“Ugh,” Thorne moans. “You can stop looking at me, for a start.”

Andry closes his eyes and sighs. Then he bows his head as respectfully as he can, and turns on his heel, because apparently Thorne would like him to sit in a closet in the dark for a few hours.

Again.

[tomyoungwrites]

Adventures in backloggery with Homefront: The Revolution

To say the first Homefront left me lukewarm after playing it would imply that I was left feeling anything after that game finished. Painfully derivative with nothing to say about it’s interesting premise, I left that game fully understanding why so many people dismissed it. 

For those unfamiliar with the premise of Homefront, here it is, fresh from the wikipedia page: “The game tells the story of a resistance movement fighting in the near-future against the military occupation of the Western United States by a Korea unified under Kim Jong-un.”

Sounds interesting right? Telling a guerrilla warfare story based on American soil gives you a chance to take a lot of war-story tropes and twist them into new, interesting forms. Turning America into the occupier instead of the occupier offers a lot to explore. Sadly the original game does nothing like that - instead opting for a very simple “We wanted to take back America and we did” story.

So when I overheard through my gaming circles that the general perception of Homefront: The Revolution was hovering around the 6/10 mark, I was under the impression that while it was an improvement over the first game, it was still not a title that was worth my time. I assumed it was a decent yet uninspiring corridor shooter just like the original game.

Imagine my surprise then when I watched one of the latest videos from Jarek the Gaming Dragon and discovered that my preconceptions about shooting dudes in corridors were entirely wrong! This was an open world shooter, in the vein of Far Cry. And not only that, but the story actually has things to say this time!

Instead of North Korea invading the USA due to them being weakened, North Korea becomes a tech powerhouse. Due to poor decisions by their government, the USA slowly goes into financial ruin while they opt to purchase military technology from North Korea.

North Korea provides aid to the US, but this is just a pretence to establish a foothold and exploit the natural resources within the continent. This is presented as the real reason behind the occupation - because we all know that only evil governments invade foreign countries in order to exploit their natural resources, right?

It’s important to note when talking about the story of this game that playing Homefront: The Revolution in the apocalyptic year that is 2020 makes it hit much different than it would have in 2016. For example, the USA neglecting it’s citizens while spending billions on military weaponry is far too close to reality to even be called satire at this point. However, the he game is very ‘gung-ho’ in it’s expression of American values and honour - which clashed with my current view of the country.

At this point in time, seeing America do things wrong is something that happens on a monthly basis - and seeing people who want to shift the blame for that onto other people is an equally common occurrence. So seeing America ruin itself definitely removes a lot of the sympathy I have for the country as a whole - I of course still sympathise for the common citizen underneath this new regime, but seeing America complain about a foreign power using military might to seize their natural resources isn’t something I can sympathise with the American government suffering through at this point.

Speaking of regimes, seeing Americans actively fighting against a regime who happily deploy lethal force against American citizens (who resist and go against their military police enforced status quo) has also sparked many comparisons to recent events in the US in my mind. I mean, how can it not at this point?

The game does make some effort to comment on the fact that you’re creating more bloodshed and destruction through your actions, but that voice is drowned out by two of the main characters - who’s attitude is “Fuck you, this is America and this is war.” Seeing these characters passionately talk about standing up against the exact evils that America is committing right now makes the whole thing smack of hypocrisy - which isn’t the games fault, but I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t admit it has coloured how I viewed the plot heavily.

Overall, I think the plot does more to explore the themes of the setting than the original Homefront did, but it’s still bogged down in presenting America as the flawless and eternal hero who channels the ‘American Spirit’ through their actions. And this absolutely smacks of hypocrisy in the nightmare-world of 2020.

Also, there is an area of the game where you have to wear a gas mask to survive, but none of the other characters do. They’re expressing their freedoms to breath deadly toxins, I guess?

When it comes to gameplay, it’s not quite true to say that Homefront: The Revolution is a open world game - rather the game is split into a number of open world areas that you unlock as you progress. Keeping different parts of the world silo’d off from each other definitely has benefits from a programming point of view (you don’t have to account for players deciding to go from one side of the map to the other without a loading screen, for one) it also has interesting design implications.

Instead of having to level-gate certain areas of the open world, the game can properly pace each area to your current skill and gear level. You’re also introduced to the different types of zones in a more natural way, and their different mechanics are able to exist separately.

There are two types of area in the game - red zones and yellow zones. These both behave differently in how they express the thematic oppression through gameplay, but I was impressed at just how effective the systems in both areas are at making you feel oppressed.

And that brings me to one of the best things about Homefront: The Revolution - the sense of oppression it expresses through gameplay. It’s important to note that I was playing the game on the hardest difficulty, so this might colour my perception slightly, but I always felt outgunned during almost all my time in the game.

The red zones play similarly to a Far Cry open world, with objectives to complete, collectables to hunt and roaming enemies to attack/get attacked by. Unlike Far Cry however, the environment being full of ruined buildings adds a degree of verticality to the encounters and exploration that makes the smaller world feel much denser than the jungle floor ever did. Here, the game expresses the oppression of the player character through the constant vigilance of patrols and ever-present seeker blimps. These patrol the sky and scan the ground (think the flying drones in Terminator) and will always call in enough reinforcements to kill you. Having to hide under the ruins of collapsed buildings to avoid their search light as they slowly flew overhead always felt tense.

The yellow zones play more like the open world sections of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, with a bigger emphasis on stealth and avoidance of security cameras etc. These areas are typically much more dense than the open red zones, with plenty of corridors and corners to help you break line of sight with enemy patrols. The sheer density of enemies and ways to get spotted in these areas makes you feel constantly on edge, especially when fighting your way out is often a risky option.

And while it doesn’t have as much of an impact, even the health system helps contribute to this sense of oppression. Gone is the regenerating health system, now replaced with a more traditional health bar that must be topped up with healing kits. When you get spotted and enemies take some of your health away, they’re actively chipping away at your resources. This makes each encounter far more threatening, because even if they can’t kill you, they can still whittle you down.

I’m not really a gun guy when it comes to games. It usually takes a game going above and beyond, like in DOOM (2016), to make me actually notice the guns in a game. And oh boy, did I notice the guns in Homefront: The Revolution. Not only do they sound amazing, but they’re extremely well animated and customisable.

The coolest gameplay mechanic in the game is by far the gun customisation mechanic. To summarise, each weapon has two drastically different alternative modes that effect how the gun performs. For example, you can change the stealth-enabling crossbow into a room clearing flamethrower should the need arise. And you can do this on-the-fly while you’re in the game.

Hoping behind cover to change my assault rifle into a sniper rifle in order to take out distant enemies never stopped feeling cool. Seeing the detailed animation of you customising the gun yourself went a massive way in that feeling of coolness. You can also add attachments to your weapons such as silencers in order to adapt to situations as they arrise.

Having you perform these actions yourself adds a lot to the feeling of being a scrappy resistance fighter, having to create your own tools for the job at hand.

Despite all this praise, I can still see why this game sits at a 6/10 rating. Numerous times during my playthrough I would get hard crashes that would require a complete exit from the game. At one point, an NPC blocked a doorway and I needed to reload from a recent checkpoint to escape my new NPC created prison.

I’ve heard that on launch the game was even worse technically, and while the game is definitely good in my eyes, I can see how technical issues could make you easily lose patience with it. It doesn’t quite reach the levels of praise where I’m willing to fully overlook the crashes I’ve experienced, and if it was worse I could see that effecting my view of the game.

Also, the stealth system leaves much to be desired. Despite coming out 4 years after Far Cry 3, the game does nothing to improve on the basic stealth system that game established of “If I see you, my triangle is going to get bigger until I really see you”. This under-baked stealth system led to me mostly abandoning stealth once I’d gained enough gear to handle encounters, despite me being a big fan of stealth options.

Overall, I’m glad that I gave Homefront: The Revolution a shot after all these years of it sitting in my Steam library. At this point, open world titles have a long list of ‘must haves’ thanks to the ubiquity of Ubisoft titles refining the genre. When looking at these titles then, it becomes a case of looking at what is done differently, and the gun system, feeling of oppression and divided world have definitely left an impact on me as a game design nerd.

If you’re looking for an open-world game and don’t mind the occasional crash, it’s definitely worth looking past those 6/10 reviews for the 7.5/10 game that is lurking underneath.

[zoidham]

F!!RE - Devoted to Black Fashion & Lifestyle

ARTicle One:

Introduction. 

On Black Masculinity in Fashion

“Masculinity is not measured by your bicep size or sexual prowess but is a quality that is characterized by being affectionate, sincere, and responsible.” - Juwanza Kunjufu 

Hey Now kinfolk, I am Zoid Hæm, and in these personal letters I will be reflecting on the Black Lifestyle as it pertains to #Fashion, #Soul, and #Art. I have chosen the name F!!RE for this experience to pay homage to the young black artists of the Harlem Renaissance who shocked the world with a scathing peek into the mind of young and free black folks with their one issue magazine simply called Fire!!.(Source): https://bit.ly/2GwIIY0

Blackness, in its constant evolution is of my greatest interest, for as Arthur Jafa (@anamibia) said in his interview for I-D magazine with Virgil Abloh “…blackness isn’t just relevant to black people. It’s an ontological formation thats seeking to understand the world. It’s about the possibility for a different way to occupy earth, to exist in it. (Source): https://bit.ly/2m3ygzn

So here I sit at this cross section of fashion and soul, asking myself what does my external experience tell me about my inner world? And since the former spews out of the latter I see a fluid evolution spiraling up, beckoning at the fringe of our reality like an avant-garde symbol, hated and misunderstood like all mysteries shrouded in blackness. Excitement billows out of me, as my existence becomes a thorough definition of the contradictions in my black consciousness; like vines, unconfined by the square bricks of this society, I sprawl out, creating branches, bridges, and underground railroads, breaking out of learned labels and ushering a new wave. A wave filled with bubbles that when they touch, combine and crash on this countries shores of Thought, making us all the more unique and free.

“Cultivate your Uniqueness.” 

Free Hugs and Painted Nails:

Today's letter focuses in on black masculinity through the lens of fashion. It must have been the summer of 2011 when I sported boastful yet crude painted nails, and a small white button that said “Free Hugs". My body type was bulky, aggressive, and shouted, “Angry black man!" I had just finished my career in football, thankfully, and found myself hustling in the streets of New York City, as green as a rose stem among the grey concrete jungle, who's edifices and faces made me feel small, innocent, and utterly naive. 

Yet in this place I began to shift my image, first my thoughts, by asking any and all types why they are who they are. Mind you as the son of two preachers who never went to a house party or drank till college, even with my years at university there was still so much I didn’t know; but what I found is that when I approached folk they were always very guarded and unsure. I always blamed racist propaganda for their hesitancy but then I began to think more about what my image was saying to them. To them and this society my look gave off certain triggers in them, and by them I mean all types from old, young, white, black, brown, men, women, LGBTQ, CEO, or homeless. Few if any paid me any mind, or quickly gave glance and turned the other way. 

Haha a hilarious anecdote that actually made me change my entire “costume” was that one day, walking out by Central Park I saw the actor Michael Cera! Yep, Mr. Superbad himself, I was such a big fan I blurted out as we came close to each other “Holy crap! It’s Michael Cera!” Haha and true to form, with a hilarious face and mannerisms he looked up, eyes widened, and immediately turned around, and scampered the opposite direction down the street. I was a little hurt and shocked, but still laughed. It was at this point I was like YO! What do they see?

I went home, a 6 floor walk up in Chinatown, and looked in the mirror and began to take some notes. Broad chest, big beard, long locs, rather run-of-the-mill black man, how boring! I knew inside me was something that defied all definition, that I was a spirit teeming with affection and love for my fellow humans and wanted to be able to sit and express with them. But what I typically was receiving was the energy of dismissal and guardedness. I had known this well from black women at university who used me as a whipping boy to take their frustrations out on all black men, while I received, in screaming opposition from white women, so much attention it felt disingenuous, for them any n!gga would do; but now this was pervasive… I realized that my presence scared people, and that they weren’t actually seeing the REAL me.

I paced in my small apartment unit, thumbing a small button in the jacket I just bought, mentally drawing up how I wanted to present myself. “Alright first we need to lose this weight, so we can fit into all these cool clothes, but also fit better in these rooms of artists and intellects, and then lets keep the beard and hair nappy, edge is important, but lets dress in chic cheap fashion, cuz we are super broke and are only going to be able to afford the thrift store…” As I was thinking I pulled out the button from my pocket and read what it said “Free Hugs” almost unconsciously I pinned it to my jacket and didn’t think much of it.

The next day was Friday and I typically made my way to the museums since they were free. I bought a bottle of FireFly ice tea vodka and headed to my friends pad down by wall street so we all could get faded and go see some art. As I was walking down the street, I saw faces smiling at me, and so I smiled back, not used to New Yorkers showing any emotion besides anger I was a little surprised but kept pushing. After hopping off the train, I turned the corner and a short portly jewish women threw  her arms up and said “Yes I need one today!” And gave me a big long hug. I just stood there shocked by this stranger squeezing me, like I was her grandson, but before the hug was over I retuned the energy. She smiled and walked on by. As she left I looked at my reflection in one of the wall street buildings and saw that I still had the “Free Hugs” button on my jacket, and smiled thinking, how bout that! A free hug trumps propaganda, age, fear, race, etc.  all they needed was the permission to show affection. 

Fast foward to half the bottle gone, and a small loft full of young, gifted and black artist, all dancing and singing to a Stevie Wonder record. I had painted a haggard green sweat shirt with the word Free Hugs in big red letters and donned it as I joined the harmonious voices that filled the room with the joy of a Friday afternoon. I went over to the kitchen to fill my glass, when I realized I had gotten some paint on my nails, and began to peel it off when my crush at that time, a stunning orange afro having queen said, "Naw leave it! In fact here!” She came over with some nail polish and painted quick little designs on my nails in green, red, and yellow. My first reaction was wait I can’t wear nail polish, but when I looked at my hands I became enamored, my how strange and unique, these dainty hands on a Rasta brute! This was just the right amount of contradiction and juxtaposition of strength and vulnerability I was looking for. Leave it to black women to bring a dream to reality.

And thats exactly what happened, when we hit the streets in that Friday sunset, New York finally saw me, and opened like the flowers in sunlight on the corner of Strawberry Fields. Over the next few months, my body slimmed, my smile grew, my nails where chipped and covered with color haphazardly, and hugs clung to my body like the tight fitting cheap fashion I found. But most importantly my thoughts began to change, because I was engaging with more people from all walks of life. I ask myself to this day, did the fashion open them up or me up? 

Fashion is metaphor touted as a mask, there to conceal or reveal our inner truth, and for me I found a unique edge to walk, one where I hold space with masculinity that only knows mixtape lyrics and football, as well as a space that spoke of Basquiat’s and Warhol’s, the fickleness of love in any gender or sexuality and the need for soul and romance. I am still the minority in most rooms I walk into, typically they don't know what to think of me, I hear little conversations in the corner, ”He must be gay, or bi, no no look he’s with ball players and gangsters, naw naw he has lots of girlfriends, yes yes hunny he can get it, but he curbed all of us and I’m fine so wats the deal, oh he’s different.”

Different… little do they know I’m just like them, expressing all that I am. Removing the labels and images and thoughts that society has forced upon me, left me blank a slate to be creative. Still I have much more to remove and redefine in this ocean of blackness that is my being. One can be masculine in a dress, one can be feminine in baggy jeans, lessen we forget #STONEWALL and what those activists fought for, the freedom of image. Culturally and generational things shift, the meaning we put behind garments and fabric is all made up, just like us; and no one need be ridiculed or shamed for making their fit…fit. So what are you wearing today? In any way, you look good on you.

Posivibes,

hæm

Credits:

Image one by @johnyu.co 

for Westword Artopia 2019  

[clarasimone]

Just before leaving my Iphone in a friggin’ taxi

I cannot believe this: my life is on that IPhone... Have alerted the taxi company (I HOPE I lost it there), am frantically awaiting news by my fiend’s phone... My Knight wants to go on a rampage but I need him by my side ;-)... It’s so bizarre to be able to see most of the pics I took this evening because they had time to make it on the cloud and then on my computer. So, from me, to you, the red carpet and screening of Terrence Malick’s testament film A Hidden Life :

Needless to say, I risked my reputation taking Jorah’s pic from inside the Grand Palais LOL I was seated front row (They show us the remaining of the red carpet on the big screen while we’re inside) What follows is from before and after but selfies are now forbidden while on the red carpet, a good thing because frankly it was becoming surreal the last few years...

Love this pink trail I was hypnotically following :-)

Here’s a pic from the film, a true masterpiece, so moving ! @myloveiainglen, it’s even better than Days of Heaven !!

I was able to capture the director’s proud reaction during the 10-minute long ovation after the film (he’s so modest, he didn’t walk the red carpet coming in, only his two leads did)

his actors, as shown on the big screen during the ovation

Coming out of the Grand Palais, I took these amazing pics of the moon with my Knight but they’re not (yet ?) appearing on my macbook/Icloud :-(

God I hope I get my phone back...

Here is the Los Angeles Times piece of the film. It just flabbergasted me and everyone there... It’s a deeply spiritual film.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-terrence-malick-hidden-life-20190519-story.html

Cannes: Terrence Malick’s ‘A Hidden Life’ is a return to form and a spiritual call to arms

In the eight years since Terrence Malick won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “The Tree of Life,” his magisterial drama about childhood’s end and the spirit’s awakening, the standard critical line is that he has become an artist lost in the wilderness, stranded in an artistic limbo of his own making.

His most recent features — “To the Wonder,” “Knight of Cups” and “Song to Song” — are wispy, fragmentary tales of romantic ennui and moral drift, full of visual beauty but absent a comparable sense of transcendence. I admired them more than many of my colleagues did, though it would be disingenuous not to admit that I, too, was left wondering if this great and singular filmmaker would ever give us another movie to love.

I wonder no more. Sunday marked Malick’s return to Cannes, and it felt like a homecoming in more than one sense. His extraordinarily beautiful and wrenching new movie is called “A Hidden Life,” a title that quotes from “Middlemarch,” though one that could easily be misinterpreted as a reference to this famously press-shy auteur himself. But it also sounds an echo of “The Tree of Life,” which may be more than mere coincidence: If that 2011 film was Malick’s most personal and autobiographical work, then this one feels like a decisive return to roots. It’s at once a linear, almost classically structured drama and an exploratory, intensely romantic work of art.

“A Hidden Life” tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, a peasant farmer from the Austrian village of St. Radegund who was imprisoned and executed in 1943 for refusing to fight for the Nazis. It’s the writer-director’s second World War II picture, after “The Thin Red Line,” except that here not a single shot is fired. The focus is entirely on Jägerstätter and his family, his growing discontent as Austria falls into Adolf Hitler’s grip and his heroic, ultimately fatal decision to become a conscientious objector.

After some brief archival footage of Hitler at the height of his powers, the movie settles down in St. Radegund, whose rolling green pastures and mist-wreathed mountains may constitute the most astonishing vision of earthly paradise Malick has given us, which is saying something.

You will recognize some familiar sights and sounds: the babbling of a brook, the rustling of wind in the leaves, the orchestral blasts of Bach, Beethoven, Handel and Dvorak on the soundtrack. And you will settle into the movie with a sigh — or perhaps a groan, depending on your persuasion — as Malick immerses us in yet another blissfully idealized evocation of family life.

Pushing plows, threshing wheat and taking care of livestock is hard work, but Franz (a haunting August Diehl), a man of joy and contentment, also loves chasing and playing with his wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner) and their three young daughters. But the family’s deep ties to the land and the surrounding community are disrupted when their fellow villagers take up the call of “Heil Hitler,” submitting freely to the grip of a murderous totalitarian regime. When a local bishop urges Franz to submit as well, he makes a decisive break with the church — though not, crucially, with God, whom he continually presses and wrestles with in prayer.

I am still wrestling with “A Hidden Life” myself, and imagine I will continue to do so long after its eventual release. The lengthy middle act, in which Franz finds himself called up for military duty and imprisoned after refusing to fight, feels lumbering and oppressive, which may of course be entirely the point; the claustrophobia here is physical and spiritual. Given the ensemble cast, which includes the late Bruno Ganz in one of his final roles, I wish that Malick had simply committed to shooting entirely in German, rather than a mix of German and English. (A particularly nagging choice: The Nazis are often heard barking in German, while Franz and Fani’s mellifluous voice-overs are in English.)

But the conviction of this movie would speak forcefully in any language. “A Hidden Life” is both an intense portrait of Christian devotion in practice and a damning study in how religious institutions, among others, can align themselves with evil. Malick sees no contradiction between these two truths; for him, sincere doubt and serious belief have always gone hand-in-hand. When a character murmurs, “To follow Him is insanity” — the first and not the last time the movie quietly broke me — you register fully what it might mean, and cost, to obey a doctrine of peace in violent times.

Malick may be making the same movie he always has: a gorgeously expansive cinematic poem that is forever carving out fresh emotional tributaries, but which always cycles back to the despoiling of Eden, the fear of violence and mortality, the calm acceptance of the unknowable. But if his camera is still given to flurries of ecstatic movement, it also seems more stationary, more grounded than usual, as if the director were pausing to gather his thoughts and clear his throat. He has an awful lot to say.

At its simplest level, “A Hidden Life” exists to disprove the snarling Nazi soldiers we hear telling Franz that his act of protest is meaningless and that no one will ever remember him. (They have admittedly already been disproved, thanks to the scholarship of Gordon Zahn and Thomas Merton, as well as a 2007 papal declaration of Jägerstätter as a martyr.) But it is also a call for moral vigilance in any era, the present one very much included: It is hard to watch this movie and not think of the rise of far-right and nationalist movements across Europe, or the Trump administration’s chokehold on evangelical Christianity.

That particular charge may be implicit, but it’s also unmistakable. Unless you are allergic to near-three-hour running times, there is nothing particularly difficult or elusive about “A Hidden Life,” nothing too cosmically elevated or metaphysically overreaching, to cite some of the dismissals frequently leveled against this director’s work. If we understand pretension as an attitude that leaves no room for humility, then is there any filmmaker working today lesspretentious than Terrence Malick, any artist more generous and unassuming in the way he exalts the beauty of the everyday?

Just as importantly, in our era of ever-expanding options and decreasing patience, is there an audience still willing to accept that challenge and see that beauty as he does? Even when tarnished, Malick’s legend looms large at a festival like Cannes, where he can be dismissed as a scourge and hailed as a god, but where he will never elicit an indifferent response. He deserves an equally impassioned reception when this imperfect, wise and entirely heroic movie comes out of hiding.

[chuckling-chemist]

Subscriber Desperation

((I make one “Youtube’s not a real job” joke on skaian-heretic’s post and suddenly I’m making Jacksfilms jokes and writing a goddamn crackfic featuring Ardata. I’ll be fair...I’m not sure exactly how IC this is for Ardata, and more importantly I’m not sure I care. This was just for some hopefully dumb humor.))

“I cannot believe Grubtube changed their algorithm! And to attempt to introduce user feedback. The nerve…” the blueblood typing furiously on her keyboard scowled deeply. “No wonder I’ve lost so many subscribers.”

Naturally, due to Ardata’s high status and sinister persona, the number of people commenting on her work in comparison to her views was low. But for sweeps, such hadn’t been a problem. She always managed to keep on top of Grubtube’s changing formulas to keep her on the top of trending tags for weeks. Obtain subscribers by occasionally making a video unrelated to your regular content, then push them to watch your other videos? Early on, of course, but she did. Get trolls to click on a video they’d hold no interest in through thumbclaws and titles promising sexual content that only appeared for seconds? Easy. Falsely inflate her video lengths through elongated intros and outros? Simple. But getting people to interact with her videos aside from a like? Impossible. Lowblood trolls wouldn’t comment on her videos to keep their olfactories safe from her, and higherbloods had better things to do with her time than leave a comment on a video involving brutal murder when they wouldn’t have to comment much in an online redblock. She had better things to do with her time.

With a frustrated groan, she clicked over to her imitators’ profiles. She needed some sort of method to make her look - Ardata shuddered at the mere thought of it - approachable. Enough so they might comment on her videos. Unfortunately for her, almost every profile she scanned did something different. Many relied on sponsorships from small, Internet companies. Some engaged in online feuds. And if those acts weren’t reprehensible on her own, others were worse. She held far too much pride to tell her subscribers to “smash the flush/pitched buttons” if they felt any strong feelings or run videos ran wholly on content produced by commenters. Her videos were art. The gutterbloods in her basement, her muse. Commenters weren’t allowed to dictate the type of art she produced, even if they drove her numbers up.

However, the longer she scrolled through her competition, she realized they all did something she hadn’t ever quite done. Many of these trolls seemed eager to talk about themselves in front of the camera with questions supplied by subscribers. Ardata did enjoy talking about herself. And, while she preferred working behind the camera as the director with complicated shots and angles to truly capture the spirit of the poor troll, an easy night of sitting at a camera and talking sounded just that: easy. She made the announcement on both Chittr and her most recent Grubtube video, informing them of an upcoming Q&A so please send your questions now.

The results were instantaneous. Her most recent video’s view count hit record highs within hours, placing it firmly in Grubtube’s top trending videos. Questions flooded her video, her Chittir, her inbox, anywhere they felt they could send them. For the first time in perigees - the first time since meeting that odd little alien - she was a big Grubtuber again. Famous. Esteemed. She set an established date for a full livestream set to be hours long (again, good for the algorithm), and pulled all the questions to be used from a random generator. So close to re-achieving the fame she once had on Grubtube she’d never have to try again if she wanted to. She set everything up the night before, from her husktop littered with questions to the camera itself.

Her preparations made the filming easy. She only had to start up the livestream on Grubtube, waiting for the red light to indicate she started filming and grimace menacingly at the camera. Of course, she made herself look equally enticing and imposing on her black couch, but that was just her regular aesthetic. To do anything else was disingenuous. “Hello. I’m sure you’re all here to watch Alternia’s best up-and-coming filmmaker on Grubtube answer your questions.” She smirked. “I’m so flattered you could make it. Unsurprised, judging by your ridiculous interest in my personal life, but flattered. So, let’s get this started before I lose interest.”

The first set of questions her husktop pulled up were straightforward. Trolls asked her about simple questions about her personal life: everything from her lusus to her quadrants, on top of numerous questions about all sorts of favorites. One even asked her about dayglow, and if she preferred it to other poisons. Ardata gave the viewers of the stream cryptic answers. After all, she didn’t really want to talk about her private life. She didn’t even want to answer questions at all. This was all just to please the Grubtube algorithm and gain her viewership back.

About halfway through the questions, after a slog of political minefields seemingly only there to upset some subjuggalator watching her videos, the questions started to get...well...weird. “‘Ardata,’” she read, “‘I’m a huge fan of your videos, but I gotta ask, I keep dabbing on my haters like other grubtubers told me to, but sometimes they dab back. I haven’t gotten an answer from them yet. Please help, I’m scared.”

Ardata’s smirk twisted into a dark frown. “If you’re scared, don’t dab at them. Shouldn’t that be simple?”

She flipped over to the next one, reading “Ardata? What’s your opinion on the film ‘The Funny Faces on Your Palm Husk Develop Personalities of Their Own Separate of the Ones They Are Supposed to Emote in a Sellout Family Comedy Featuring An Overabundance of Propaganda and Product Placement, The Plot Relying Wholly On Overused Concepts Done Better in Other Films? I heard it’s a visual masterpiece.” She scowled. “What kind of question is this? Did anyone even go see that refuse incinerator heap of a film?” She scoffed. “Please. Next question.”

She flipped down through the comments, reading many of them outloud as she skipped them. Ardata, when will you start giving us sponsorships at the end of your videos? Can’t wait to skip all of them!

Ardata, has anyone told you your lusus is half as cute as JuhannFlicks’ barkbeast?

Ardata, when will you do a collaboration with a screaming Grubtuber?

Have you considered what it feels like to be like us, an asshole talking to a camera?

Ardata, I need more challenge vids!

What’s your opinion on the Eastern Alternian flag made entirely of triangles? Do you agree it’s the absolute worst?

Over and over. The whole middle portion of Q&A seemed like...shitposts. Pure and idiotic shitposts. Her scowl deepend. “Understand, viewers, these questions are so inane I’m not even giving them a thought. Now, this one, since I ignored so many…” she flitted her gaze over to the next post, not even bothering to check to see what it said, “this one I’ll answer.”

Hey Ardata, how does it feel to know that you have no skills for the Ordeals because we all know Grubtube’s not a real job?

She paused, blinking slowly. Anger swelled in the pit of her stomach. How dare some troll insist what she did wasn’t a job! She profited, didn’t she? “I assure you, viewer, what I do is very real. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here right now,” she said tightly. “Now, let’s move on to the--”

She gasped. A whole slew of comments, none of them from the same troll, all asked the same question. Worded differently, but functionally the same. Grubtube’s not a real job.

“Q&A’s over early. I won’t be doing another one,” she snarled. With a quick snap of her wrist, the husktop clicked shut, ending the stream immediately.

It wasn’t until she sat there for several minutes, fuming silently, that she realized what she did. But it was too late now. She’d have to find another way to bring in new viewers through other means, and hope her outburst only drove minimal numbers away.

Hopefully.

***

Meanwhile, Juhann Scanan, popular oliveblooded comedic Grubtuber, watched the whole stream with anticipation. His lusus, a tiny little fluffy barkbeast he affectionately called Klondike, nipped at his arm. Normally he wasn’t interested in the drama of Grubtube, but the fall of Ardata Carmia was equal parts funny and necessary. Grubtube held enough bloodshed without yet another redblock wannabe hogging all the attention.

The video ended with a loud click, and Grubtube shoved him off the video onto her regular profile. The same question his followers asked over and over, she couldn’t even handle once.

Juhann laughed. Maybe it wasn’t the kindest idea to let his followers know he sent in one bizarre question about dabbing after making a song that happened to reference this Grubtube redblock trend.. But the bubbly satisfied feeling watching another villain of the website crumble under their own infamy felt justified, in a way. If you can’t adjust to the changing tides of a constantly evolving website, you’d fall behind. Ardata, and any other troll who mistakes ultraviolence for art and content, relying wholly on a supervillain status for popularity, would fall victim for that.

“Okay Klondike, get off me,” he said. “I gotta finish editing for tomorrow. Gotta finish that song.”

Klondike yipped happily in his face, making no attempt to move. Moving seemed out of the question. Juhann stretched, smiling sleepily at his lusus and yawning. “Fine,” he said with a light pat of the barkbeast’s head. Editing could wait for a day. “You win. I’ll sleep.”

((I’ll just say it here, yeah his matesprit’s just troll!Erin/2ToesUp and she has a similar lusus named Sundae))

[atoutlines]

The Worship of Worship (John 2:13-25)

The Worship of Ritualism (13-17)

“The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” (v13).

What do we know about John’s account?

1. Presented as the launching of Jesus’ public ministry.

2. John does not quote Jeremiah like the Synoptic writers do (Jer. 7:11).

3. Jesus drives out the animals as well as the traders (cf Mk 11:15).

4. Jesus is challenged to show a sign where the Synoptics leave this exchange out.

5. Jesus makes a statement surrounding his death and resurrection during this specific event whereas the Synoptics leave it out.

6. A clear distinction between how the disciples interpreted this event before the resurrection and how they interpreted it after Jesus found himself in Jerusalem during various feasts and festivals (this one happens to be most important - the “Passover”).

“In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.” (v14).

The temple was the center of Jewish religious life and historically was the place where God’s presence could be accessed by God’s people, most notably through the sacrificing of animals.

Since the Passover festival attracted Jews and Gentiles, there had to be a way for the out-of-towners to make sacrifices.

“And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.” (v15).

While the Synoptics point out the moral issue (“den of robbers”), John is concerned with getting to the real issue immediately:

God’s people had distorted and perverted their worship of him, for the sake of religiosity and in this case, financial gain.

The rituals had become a means to the wrong end. Jesus reveals & corrects this error.

“And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” (v16).

God’s house was to be a house of worship, not a house of commerce. Jesus’ action was on the entire system of organized religion. It was a sign pointing to the end of religion itself.

“His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (v17).

How do the disciples interpret this action? They quote Psalm 69:9.

Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is a testament to his desire for pure worship. 

The “consuming” will ultimately be manifested in his death. 

The Worship of Signs (v18-22)

“So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” (v18-22).

One element of the worship of worship has already been exposed and another is introduced in these verses.

The Jews were known for “demanding” signs, rightly so with their rich history of God giving them signs (see 1 Cor 1:22).

Jesus provides a sign, just not what they want. 

Just like we tend to worship religious rituals, we will also tend to worship signs, basing our faith on what God can show us according to his power, rather than simply on who God is.

We view signs as a substitute for what only God alone can be: all-satisfying!

The Worship of Conditional Belief (v23-25)

“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (v23-25).

Belief, in essence, becomes very conditional. It becomes something based upon or determined by things that are seen.

Faith is a gift, concocted by God, given by God, worked out by God through God the Holy Spirit, who is unseen, who moves about like the wind, and who delivers faith into the hearts of men as he pleases.

Faith isn’t a feeling; it’s not an emotion. It doesn’t turn on and off. It doesn’t come and go. It is given!

There were many who had a fake, disingenuous “belief” in Jesus, but He did not have a belief in them.

We tend to view God as a means to an end. John is making clear that Jesus is the end. 

We don’t need our faith to be rooted in a ritual, a sign, or anything else other than a God who distributes faith to us.

[allyinthekeyofx]

Fading Light -part 2- 1/6

Summary - As Scully gets sicker, Mulder’s faith begins to wane.

Part one (Chapters 1-6 here)

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

.

The nosebleed when it came, was an unwelcome shock and for the first time, I was forced to acknowledge, really acknowledge that I’ve been a fool.

That I’ve been lied to.

So desperate was I on hearing that Scully’s cancer was back that I didn’t once stop to think that he would lie to me. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. That after all these years of him wanting to own me, that his intentions would be anything but disingenuous was a scant hope at best but nonetheless it has been a hope I have clung on to.

But today that hope has been shattered into pieces and scattered like fallen leaves around me.

It’s almost three months since that morning where my partner was felled by that single bullet, a bullet that damaged far more than simple flesh and bone as it paved the way for a truth to be heard that she had desperately tried to hide from me for weeks and weeks. Even now, months later, the hurt is still there, burning inside me, corroding me even as I try to reconcile it. But knowing the reasons why she didn’t tell me doesn’t make the fact that she didn’t any easier to bear.

And I know she feels it too.

But we don’t talk about it. To keep dragging it to the fore is just too painful for both of us and, if I’m honest, wholly unfair on Scully as she tries once again to battle the demon that has taken up residence inside her. A demon that will continue to overwhelm her even as she fights against it with every ounce of spirit she has in that compact little body of hers.

She has good days and bad days. And in the beginning, the good days outweighed the bad by about two to one. Her headaches, although painful and debilitating, could be kept controlled with non opiate pills. Providing she kept up a pain management regime, for the most part, she did okay and when the pain got bad she stuck her chin out with the resolute stubbornness I know so well and despite everything, she carried on. She looked the same to me as she always had. A little thinner maybe as the pain medication suppressed her appetite for certain foods and made her stomach hurt, but for the most part she remained the same. No chemo means no sickness means no drastic weight loss. It also means of course that I am losing her. That day by day, she is slipping a little further away from me.

Her Mother has tried everything to persuade her daughter to start treatment again. And I think she still believes that it was the treatment that saved her the last time around. But Scully has resolutely refused to be swayed and on the surface at least, has remained hardened to Maggie’s frequent tearful and occasionally, accusatory outbursts. But on more than one occasion I have had to hold Scully in my arms to prevent her from sinking to the ground after her Mom has taken leave of the apartment, slamming the door behind her in impotent anger that her only daughter seemingly doesn’t care enough to even try to help herself.

It’s the only time she really allows herself to cry. Or at least it’s the only time she allows me to see it. The knowledge of what her decisions are doing to the woman she loves and respects so much continue to break her a little more every time one of the conversations takes place. And I know she despises herself for it.

She also refuses steadfastly to see her brothers.

And the most selfish part of me is relieved that I don’t have to face them again. To be held in contempt for my part in all this is something I’m not entirely sure either Scully or I could cope with right now. Our hurt is big enough without it being added to by virtual strangers who are happy to stand in judgement over decisions and events they are neither willing nor open enough to understand.

Maybe when this is all over, when Scully is gone, they might seek to understand. Understand a chain of events that started so many years ago when this extraordinary woman walked in to my office and took over my life.

Agent Mulder? Dana Scully; I’ve been assigned to work with you…

So young back then. So vibrant. So damn trusting. Not yet tainted by her association with me, with everything she has lost along the way.

But I’ve tried not to think about how things were in the beginning, tried not to wish myself back seven years ago so I could turn her around and march her straight out of that office and back to the safety of Quantico. Away from me; away from this quest of mine that, over time crept up on her insidiously to also make it hers. She didn’t deserve it. She’s never deserved it. But she took it. She chose to stay and I have to respect that it was her choice to make.

So instead, I’ve pushed it to the back of my mind and tried desperately to focus only on what we have now rather than what has been taken from us and what else will soon be taken.

I no longer believe that the chip in my neck is anything more than a cruel deception by a sick man.

And I certainly don’t believe that he ever had intention of saving Scully.

A sick fucking joke taken at our expense; a final act of betrayal from a man who trades in lies.

Today is Scully’s Birthday. A day where she had insisted no fuss be made. She’s done the final Birthday crap before and made it abundantly clear that she has no wish to repeat the experience. Because as much as I try to deny it to myself, I know that she will not be around next year. And that she knows it too.

But despite that, I couldn’t let the day pass by totally unacknowledged and even though I guess you could say we have been a couple for several months now, the giving of elaborate gifts and platitudes are not really our style. I’m also painfully reminded that I too was guilty of participating in the illusion last time around, that everything was just fine. My partner’s Birthday. Dinner and a gift. Which was all great had I bothered to acknowledge it in previous years.

And although she had playfully teased me about it at the time, I know that she knew damn well that it was my way of starting to say goodbye.

I was determined not to fall in to that same trap so this year I kept everything very low key. No sparklers, no gift, no fanfare.

Instead I took her to feed the swans in Rivergate Park. And then we walked through the frosted leaves, hands clasped tightly together, not speaking much, knowing that there was nothing really to say. No declaration of love from this woman could ever make her mean more to me that she already does and I know she feels the same. I see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, the way she clutches at me when we make love. It’s in the way she says my name; the way she presses herself against me when it rains and we only have one umbrella. It’s in the way she asks the pizza place to only sprinkle mushrooms on her half and the way she laughs at me when I get stringy cheese caught on my chin.

She loves me in ways I didn’t think were possible.

And that’s why I took her to feed the swans. Because we no longer need affirmation of what we are to each other; material gifts are meaningless now.

We walked for a long time, along the beautiful rustling path that circumnavigates the lake, pausing sometimes to rest, exchanging soft touches, feather-light kisses under the canopy of winter green foliage that makes the perfect foil for Scully’s delicate colouring. Her leg still bothers her a little although she can now walk normally and bear weight without grimacing. I was amazed how quickly she recovered given the circumstances and the irony wasn’t lost on either of us when her Orthopaedic surgeon signed her off with an assurance her leg was as good as new. That it would give her years of stellar service.

I had wanted to punch a fist-sized hole in the wall beside his head but Scully had simply bestowed him with a dazzling smile, shook his hand and thanked him for everything he had done. Until later in the car she had turned her face away from me in an attempt to hide the single tear that escaped to form a tiny rivulet down her beautiful skin. I had watched it hang, suspended for the merest moment before it fell onto the collar of her shirt. And right then, I had wanted to scream at the fucking injustice of it all.

Why her? Why her and not me?

It’s a question that haunts me. It’s the reason I did what I did. The reason I allowed that black-lunged sick bastard to finally get what he wanted. The reason I allowed myself to believe.

But that belief is waning. With each passing day as I watch my beautiful partner fade just a tiny bit more, watch her trying to hide her headache behind a troubled smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, watch as it’s becoming obvious that the bad days are starting to outweigh the good.

And today, as I heard her gasp, watched her hands fly to her face in an attempt to stem the sudden rush of blood that literally poured from her nose, drenching her in a frightening sea of crimson that dripped unchecked on to the crisp, dead leaves beneath our feet, I stopped believing altogether.

My belief was ripped away from me even as I caught her in my arms and screamed out to someone, anyone, to call 911, feeling the warmth of her blood, her life-force, soaking into my thick fleece shirt as I ran with her back to the small car park where, by the time I got there, I was unable to breathe through the fear and exertion and yet still I clung on to her as the waiting paramedics tried to prise her from my arms.

So much blood.

So much fucking blood I truly thought she was dead.

And now as I sit outside her room in the ICU, banished to the corridor while the doctors do their work I begin to cry. Wracking sobs that tear at my chest and threaten to break me in two. I am holding on to her cross that the doctors insisted was removed lest she require CPR and I twist it around my fingers in much the same way Scully twisted that piece of cotton around her finger three months ago when I sought answers from her. She should be wearing it. It’s not right that they took it from her. I will return it to her later. And I hang on to that thought because it’s all I have.

Happy Birthday Scully.

Continued chapter 2

[word-katamari]

matpat pls

I know, I know -- we’re all, to some extent, excited about For Honor, and with its release date so close, we’re all lapping up as many videos as we can and buying tickets aboard the hype train.

During my hype-routine, I stumbled across this video. As entertaining as it is, I can’t help but feel that it’s a treasure trove of misinformation, and that its central argument is inherently flawed.

Ordinarily, I’d let this go -- because, after all, it’s a video about Vikings vs Knights vs Samurai -- the premise is fucking batshit, and supposed to be merely a fun thought exercise, and hopefully, hilarious.

However, with the Game Theorist’s claim that they ‘treat old school yard debates with the seriousness of post-graduate dissertations’, one can’t help but feel that they intended to take the topic seriously, and present an informative and intellectual view to their general audience.

This does not seem to be the case.

While I’m sure Matpat and the Theorists had no ill-intentions with their poorly researched video, their points were presented confidently under scholarly pretenses; which, to me, is at best careless, and at worst, disingenuous.

Obviously, it wouldn’t be fair, nor constructive for me to simply leave it at that, so I will now correct and debunk this video.

Let it be known that while I do know a thing or two RE: this subject matter, I do not know everything, and (especially when you consider the sources available) cannot possibly know everything regarding Vikings/Knights/Samurai. Some things have been lost to history.

So, let’s get this started.

1. A FUCKIN’ SUMMARY: your argument is invalid

The Game Theorists, in an effort to come to a conclusion on the question of ‘who would win -- Vikings/Knights/Samurai?’ decided to ‘make the fight fair’ by ruling out any anachronistic armament/technology, and limiting the three factions to equipment/tactics/training that they’d have access to in the 11th century (1000-1100CE).

From this, they concluded that:

The Vikings would be eliminated immediately, due to their ‘poor equipment’

Samurai would defeat Knights due to their focus on the bow, and their ridiculous wealth (allowing them to purchase the best armaments and retainers)

I believe this conclusion to be incorrect because:

The Vikings did not have ‘poor equipment’

Wealth should be equalised in this scenario, much like armament/technology, due to the varied nature of individuals within the three competing groups

Kyuudou (mounted archery) does not confer as much an advantage as implied

Furthermore, as Matpat was unable to state the context of the battle (ie. whether we are talking about 100v100v100, or 1v1v1), it is unclear who the actual combatants are; as 100 fighters are fundamentally a different beast compared to 1.

While I understand that Matpat did explicitly use a 1v1v1 scenario to ‘play the fight out’, he also cited the Samurai’s ability to hire retainers/soldiers/bodyguards to cover his weaknesses as an advantage -- which would be irrelevant in a 1v1v1 scenario.

As such, I will be counter-arguing with a focus on 1v1v1, and only address team combat when appropriate (ie. when debunking Matpat’s claims).

Without further ado, here is why the Vikings would put up a better fight than claimed:

2. VIKINGS: badass for a damn good reason

Right off the bat, the video loses all credibility by positing that ‘vikings’ were ill-equipped, ‘defensive nudists’ with ‘garbage weapons’ and the ‘medieval equivalent of tissue paper’ for armour. They also make the meaningless claim that they would ‘easily crumble against someone who knew what they were doing’.

First, let me remind everyone that the Vikings were raiders, yes -- but they were also settlers, traders, mercenaries, and conquerors. They were an entire culture of people who had, by the 11th century, been from Thracia to the Americas; and not only that -- returned to Scandinavia with both goods and knowledge.

As such, it would be an insult to the Viking legacy to insinuate that they were nothing but nude barbarians.

Contrary to what the video states, the Vikings did have access to quality arms and armor.

For one, Viking armament was generally equivalent to that of their Western European counterparts, considering much of their armament was acquired from other European Kingdoms to begin with. It’s noteworthy that an entire classification of swords are named after the Vikings because a large portion of them were found in Viking graves!

Furthermore, there is a direct mention of armored Vikings in the Saga of Olav Haraldsson (47. OF THE BATTLE AT NESJAR). To quote it directly, it is stated that: “King Olaf had in his ship 100 men armed in coats of ring-mail, and in foreign helmets.” As the Battle of Nesjar happened in 1016CE, it’s quite clear that any determined/wealthy enough Viking would have access to a mail hauberk.

Not only that, but in the Saga of Harald Hadrade (97. SKIRMISH OF ORRE), it is stated that in the Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066 CE), Hadrade’s forces ‘threw off their coats of ringmail’, which resulted in heavy casualties. This is further evidence to 11th century Viking access to mail armour.

Additionally, ever since the 10th century, the Vikings consistently flocked to ‘Miklagard’ (aka. Constantinople, aka. the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire) to join the Varangian Guard (appropriate music); many of which returned home. Do you really think these crack shock troops of the Basileus himself would not return to Scandinavia with a few pieces of Roman gear with them; let alone their training and experience?

Matpat also seems to discount or not acknowledge the effectiveness of the shields employed in that era. Yes. Viking shields were made primarily of wood -- but that didn’t make them ‘shoddy’ or ‘poor quality’. In fact, wooden shields have been the norm across centuries -- and work just fine against most conventional medieval weaponry (like arrows).

All of this completely contradicts the basis of Matpat’s argument -- that the Vikings would be out of the running due to inferior equipment. That claim is blatantly untrue, and it’s clear that the Vikings would be on par with the Knights in terms of equipment -- if not identical.

I would also like to dismiss the claim that the Vikings ‘would easily crumble against someone who knew what they were doing’. This is a nonsensical claim that can be applied to any fighter. A Navy SEAL would easily crumble against someone who knew what they were doing. A child would easily crumble against someone who knew that they were doing. In martial arts and combat, there is always someone better.

To conclude this segment, I will now summarise and counter the duel which Matpat narrates:

The Viking charges in a display of bravery.

Why? What’s the purpose of charging into a fight without properly assessing the situation? They’re Vikings, not idiots.

And then he takes an arrow to the back.

If he were fighting smartly, he wouldn’t. He’d be behind his shield. Or loosing arrows back.

Blade to the side.

This implies that the Viking doesn’t know how to use their shield, or how to fight. Considering Matpat has the Knights use longswords (???), this seems unlikely. I’m a longsword fencer. I have difficulty fencing i.33 guys and gals with their teensy bucklers. A big, Viking round shield would provide an edge over a two-handed weapon, due to the fact that you can effectively close off entire lines of attack, while simultaneously striking.

The Viking’s desperate axe swing ‘rejected’... His rudimentary armaments no match...

A sturdy, wooden shield and a damn dinner knife can serve perfectly fine in a fight, as long as the fighter knows how to use them. I don’t thin, it’d be unreasonable to assume that the Viking in this scenario would know how to use his weapons.

3. WEALTH IS IRRELEVANT: seize the means of consumption!

Wealth is definitely important, when considering conflict -- but that’s like saying breathing is important when considering living.

Money means better equipment and training; but it’s also finite, and dependent on an individual’s factors.

Most Samurai would be able to afford expensive equipment, due to the fact that the Samurai class is a much smaller and more specific class than ‘Knights’ or ‘Viking’.

However, there were likely incredibly rich Vikings and Knights as well; just as how there were less-wealthy Samurai.

As such, I feel it would be more in the spirit of the scenario to consider that all three combatants were equipped with the best armaments they’d have access to in the 11th century.

4. WHY KYUUDOU ISN’T THAT EFFECTIVE: and why ringmail is so damn popular (even in Japan)

Let me start by saying that horse archery is effective -- against unarmored targets.

The moment you throw mail and shields into the mix (of which the Vikings and Knights had aplenty), those arrows suddenly fall off a cliff in regards to effectiveness.

Yes. Mail. Ringmail. Chainmail.

Contrary to popular belief, mail (riveted, not butted) was highly effective at preventing piercing damage. Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of a pilum being thrown full force at a properly made set of mail. Of course, Eldgrim explains that there’s still a lot of kinetic energy being transmitted through the armor, but with the gambesons (padded armor) that many wore beneath their hauberks, this would mitigate some of the impact.

Most videos you find on the internet that show mail being penetrated usually shows butted mail -- which is an absolutely useless form of armor.

The only type of damage that butted mail can effectively prevent is slicing. I don’t mean a chop or a swing of a sword -- I mean a sawing or a drawing motion, and let’s be real here -- a padded jacket can do that, and be much cheaper.

Riveted mail is a different beast entirely. While it’s not impervious to all piercing attacks, it is impervious to most -- and coupled with a gambeson, and a good helmet, the wearer will drastically reduce their vulnerability to a Samurai’s arrows.

Furthermore, in an arena setting, a Viking or a Knight could easily just turtle the fuck up behind their shield, and wait for the mounted Samurai to... Run out of arrows -- or come to them.

Matpat also brings up the mobility of ou-yoroi armor for some reason. I can only assume he brings this up to imply that the mail hauberks used in Western and Northern Europe in the 11th century were heavy and clumsy -- but considering that full sets of ou-yoroi weighed around 30kg, they aren’t particularly the lightest sets either.

Not only that, but their design and shape, compared to mail, makes their wearers less dextrous, and agile. The bulky pauldrons, arm guards... Etc.

Mail, by contrast, is flexible. It’s like wearing a shirt. Sure, it can be heavy if you let it hang from your shoulders, but if you tie a belt round your waist, all that weight gets evenly distributed along your core, and bam, it really is like wearing a shirt.

Therefore, ou-yoroi being designed to allow for the most mobility is a non sequitur. It’s made even more nonsensical when you consider that all armor (save for jousting armor) is made for mobility -- how the fuck else are you gonna fight in it, then?

Also, Matpat mentions that ou-yoroi covers more areas of a person’s body -- when in reality, 11th century ou-yoroi covered just as much as a mail hauberk. Upper body, upper legs.

5. OTHER MISCONCEPTIONS AND CONCLUSION

At around 9:30 of the video, Matpat introduces knights as having used Longswords during the 11th century. This is incorrect. Longswords became popular/in-use primarily during the 14th century. It is an anachronistic technology in this 11th century scenario.

He also tells us to look to the Warden class for some ‘really accurate knight weaponry’ but... idk man, that is probably the longest and bulkiest longsword i’ve ever seen... (distal taper, where?)

There are a few more that I’ll save for a later article -- but for now, I’ve downed way too much coffee to be healthy, and will now move to my conclusion:

If the best equipped and trained Viking, Knight, and Samurai were put into a battlefield -- there is no clear picture on who will win.

Also, do some damn research.

[fantasysuiteleague]

Week 5: Swamp Ass or Stank Face?

The main plot of this week’s episode is The Battle of the Bayou starring: Taylor, the calculating analytical elitist who knows what she’s talking about most of the time but comes off as unapproachable and rude as she constantly reminds us she has her Masters; and Corinne, the obnoxious narcissist whose every statement is so ridiculously and hilariously false you can’t tell if it’s all a strategic act or if she’s actually just a dumb, spoiled psychopath. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We once again pick up in the middle of last week’s episode where Taylor is still trying to reason with an unreasonable fame whore, and said fame whore continues to be the absolute worst. 

Interestingly enough, none of the girls actually know what they’re fighting about and no one really cares. Even Alexis, the girl who allegedly wears a sumo suit to go to CVS just for kicks, thinks the two of them need to grow up because we’re not in high school anymore. Someone aptly points out that Corinne has done nothing to Taylor, and Taylor has done nothing to Corinne, yet here we are, watching them talk in circles about nothing. After firing off a few one-liners about Taylor’s stank face, Corinne takes it a step farther and tells Nick that she’s scared of Taylor because she’s not here for the right reasons and “that hurts her...for Nick.” Once she’s finished telling Nick all about Pizzagate and Taylor’s evil ways, Corinne is convinced that Taylor is going home and that she is “hashtag winning,” because nothing is more topical than a 5 year old Charlie Sheen quote. 

And if Corinne hadn’t started this drama Taylor might have actually gone home that night because Nick has never seemed interested in her, but it’s the 2-on-1 week so Taylor lives to see another day. Great.

The Next Bachelorette

After being made to suffer through almost an entire rose ceremony before actually getting her rose, Rachel is *blessed* with this week’s 1-on-1 date which actually seems fun compared to poor Raven who was stuck hanging out at fucking Bella’s soccer game. As they pal around New Orleans eating oysters and beignets, Nick preposterously claims that of all the girls in the house he has the “most explosive chemistry” with Rachel ...

After Nick and Rachel lead a Second Line through the streets of New Orleans, Rachel tells a a story about how the last time she was in NOLA she participated in a parade but it was for a funeral, which is when she decided to live her life to the fullest and...go on the Bachelor? This story, as well as the background on her intimidating federal judge of a father and how Rachel is not used to being vulnerable despite being very emotional (or something like that), serves as the perfect set up for Rachel to be the next Bachelorette. It’s a NO BRAINER at this point, and I’m 100% confident that this is what ABC was hoping for when they “cast” Rachel to be on the show. ABC really wants a diverse star to prove they don’t have a race problem, but she has to be likable (code: not too black), smart (code: have a real job), and beautiful. Coincidentally, Rachel has all of those characteristics and Nick seems into Rachel enough for her to make it to hometowns, leaving me with the hope that, maybe, just maybe, we’re finally going to have a Blachelorette.

Do you believe in ghosts?

The group date this week presents us with a chance to identify the women who say things like “the energy in this room” by taking the girls to the Houmas House, one of the most haunted houses in America that also happens to come with a full bar and a Norman Bates caretaker who goes by the name of Boo. Boo takes the girls on a tour of the old house that is apparently haunted by a young girl name Mae who gets real pissed when you fuck with her dolls. I can’t tell if it’s the fake painting of Mae or the fervor with which Boo demands that no one touch these dolls, but I’m 99% sure that these dolls all belong to Boo, and Mae never existed. A few minutes of research reveals that the house, also known as Burnside Plantation, once housed 750 slaves and was the center of the largest slave holding in Louisiana. 

So it’s pretty safe to say that if any ghosts actually haunted this plantation they wouldn’t be of a little girl worried about her goddamn dolls, but one of the countless slaves that lived and died in captivity. Curiously, nothing about slaves or the plantation are ever mentioned as Boo continues to make a big deal the girls not touching his dolls. 

Once the girls are forced to hang out alone with Nick after Boo takes his leave to try on some of his dead mother’s clothes, they play with an Ouijia board to distract from the crushing reality that they are all wasting their time (and losing money) while looking for love on this show.  And then coincidentally, after Jasmine the vocal non-believer of ghosts touches a statue, a chandelier falls and things start getting spooky! While the girls take turns playing Ghost Hunters, Nick has empty conversations with everyone except Raven*, who accidentally lets slip that she fell in love with Nick while he was rollerskating. This is dubious for many reasons, including the fact that she’s spent maybe 6 hours in total with Nick, and also, it’s Nick. But Raven seems pretty genuine and Nick very surprised, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately for Raven, however, Nick and the producers already decided he needed to give the rose to the girl next door, neonatal nurse other video vixen, Danielle M., to reaffirm his intention to continue to string her along. I’m sure Boo was thrilled to see them leave so he could get back to his tea party.

Battle of the Bayou

And now, for the “main event” of the episode: the rumble in the jungle between Taylor and Corinne! In the blue corner, coming in hot with a Masters from Johns Hopkins and a “stank face on her face,” Taylor!! In the red corner, trying so desperately to make every in-camera interview into a gif, Corinne!! Throughout the episode both sides are given their chance to present their case to the Nation of Bachelor. According to Corinne, she is exactly what Nick needs and Taylor is a bitch who thinks shes better and smarter than everyone. According to Taylor, she has her Masters, is more qualified to be a wife, and Corinne is a lying manipulative clown. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Once they reach the depths of the bayou, Nick and the girls are met by the best voodoo priestess ABC could find, Rachel Dolezal 2.0. I was hoping for either an old black blind woman or an Angela Basset type, but beggars can’t be choosers in the swamp I guess. They are soon directed to Ms. Cleo, who reads Taylor’s fortune first and warns her that it’s best not to engage with the evil spirits but to take the high road and rid herself of all this negativity. Now since Taylor has her Masters, she knows that when trolls go low, you go high, but that’s only the right call 71.4% of the time, or when you aren’t living in this alternate reality where nothing is real and everything is upside down. Unfortunately for Taylor, we’re in that alternate reality and even Ms. Cleo can sense what’s coming because the cards don’t lie.

And sure enough, as soon as Corinne gets Nick alone, she starts twisting the truth and painting a false narrative of Taylor as the aggressor and Corinne as the victim. Taylor tries ineffectively to reverse the damage Corinne has done with her fake news and alternative facts, but in this alternate upside down reality, alternative facts are the facts, and we know how this story ends. Instead of picking the girl who is at least a qualified and rationale choice for a wife, he picks the obnoxious train wreck who’s only doing this for fame. Even though I’ve been a Taylor Hater since Day 1, this move is preposterous, and everyone involved knows it. Even Nick is blushing with embarrassment as he and Corinne awkwardly climb back into their boat leaving Taylor to reassess her life choices and the meaning of the world alone in the woods. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Did you notice . . .

** We don’t get to see this until the credits, but Nick’s conversation with Alexis on the group date, centering around her legitimate fear of Nicolas Cage, is amazing. WHY are they showing me clips of Danielle L. telling Nick she maybe is falling for him, or of Danielle M. barely talking at all, and putting these Alexis nuggets of gold at the end of the episode!?! The producers and editors really fucked this season up by not giving her more screen time because she is so much funnier and better in all respects than anything that comes out of Corinne’s mouth. #JUSTICEFORALEXIS 

“Realistically, I don’t see Nick and Corinne getting married at the end of this” is the understatement of the century. 

“If I see a ghost I’m gonna rebuke that thing in the name of Jesus.” 

Of course Danielle L. believes in and is afraid of ghosts. I actually LOLed when she said this date was going to be “a challenge” for her. 

“I had a great time. I did not squeal.” - Nick ....

The real loser in the Battle of the Bayou is Rachel, who is forced to spend an entire day alone in the house with Taylor and Corinne.

Nick is fucking terrible at being the Bachelor. I know I’ve gone on and on about how disingenuous he is, but it’s driving me nuts. Sure, every Bachelor has to say dumb shit like “From Bourbon Street to the Bayou, I can’t imagine a better place to fall in love.” but literally every single time he addresses the girls and in most of his 1-on-1 conversations it feels like he’s reciting Bachelor Canon because he couldn’t be bothered to think of anything real to say at any point along the way.

They say if you get close to the woods you can still hear Taylor whispering “but I have a Masters ...”

Minority Report: Interestingly enough, and despite the fact that they don’t appear to have any connection with Nick whatsoever, Jasmine and Jaimi are still around. I know this is cynical, but between Nick’s lazy approach and coziness with the producers, it feels like he agreed to make sure a few black girls stuck around long enough until the producers / Bachelor Nation could pick one they liked and move forward with the whole Blachelorette campaign. Now I know what you’re thinking: c’mon Jen, that’s racist. Well ... so is The Bachelor.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sinceileftyoublog]

Wussy Interview: Monsters, Inc.

Photo by John Erhardt

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“The magic of the modern world,” dryly quips Wussy’s Chuck Cleaver as I’ve successfully connected him and co-band-leader Lisa Walker over a three-way call. “We tend to be Luddites,” he adds. The sort of simultaneous weathered curmudgeonly sarcasm and conversational warmth Cleaver and Walker exude is exemplary of a duo who’ve been at it for a long time. A band born out of a dare to play together in 2001 (Cleaver was in Cincinnati cult heroes Ass Ponys), Wussy have released seven albums of folk-, shoegaze-, and country-tinged rock. Cleaver and Walker share vocal, guitar, and songwriting duties, while Mark Messerly plays bass and Joe Klug the drums. Recently, they’ve added John Erhardt on pedal steel. All five shine on the band’s latest full-length, the excellent What Heaven Is Like.

Heaven, like a lot of Wussy records, centers around society’s Midwestern outcasts--not who they consider the “other” but who society as a whole considers so. In context of today’s climate, the band seems all the more essential, avoiding the self-righteous trap of writing politically inspired music by channeling it through the ultra-personal consumption of culture. Walker’s songs, especially, are loosely based on everything from Fargo to Charles Burns’ Black Hole. And on the record, the band covers folk singer Kath Bloom, another outsider. “If key and musical ability are something you’re concerned with, you’re not gonna like Kath Bloom,” jokes Cleaver. “She is a wonderful writer.”

While Wussy don’t have any upcoming tour dates (they recently had to cancel a couple tour dates due to Cleaver experiencing spinal stenosis), they’ve been quite busy even besides Heaven, releasing a duo CD, Record Store Day CD, Cleaver solo record, and split single with The Paranoid Style on Bar/None. Still, it’s Heaven that will endure and remain both a document of socially inspired music in 2018 and a timeless record. Read my conversation with Cleaver and Walker, heavily edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: What about What Heaven Is Like is unique as compared to your past discography, and what about it is a continuation of your past albums?

Chuck Cleaver: It took a lot longer to make the other ones for various reasons--we kind of tried some other studios, and it worked out to varying degrees, but we were kind of away from our home turf a little bit. We got some good stuff out of it, but we decided we were more comfortable where we normally record. 

It took us a little bit to actually get going. Current political stuff kind of hindered us for a while because we were all to varying degrees put off by it. But that worked its way into some of the lyrics. We explored a little more. I think we do with every record. We thought, “Let’s go even farther out of whatever limb we normally do.” The quieter songs were possibly even quieter than before. 

I don’t think try is the right word, but it’s just something we naturally lean towards. We just get bored otherwise. We keep things moving and hope it’s interesting for other people.

SILY: In the opening song, “One Per Customer”, the line about the astronauts stands out: “back when astronauts had more appeal.” What did you mean by that?

CC: I was born in 1959. Throughout the 60′s, my sister and a lot of her friends wanted to marry a fuckin’ astronaut. They were new, and it was the “it” job for swingin’ guys or whatever. Now--in reality, being an astronaut is scary as hell--but it doesn’t have the appeal that it once did. Kids when they grew up wanted to be an astronaut. I don’t have any idea what they want to be now. A robot, maybe. Maybe kids just wish they were more intelligent. I don’t know. It does seem like being an astronaut used to be more of a goal.

Lisa Walker: I had an astronaut Barbie.

CC: And there was an astronaut GI Joe.

LW: But I feel like that’s not as much of a thing now.

CC: Now, everybody wants to be a fuckin’ reality star or something. Ugh. They should just be murdered in their sleep. Sorry.

LW: What?!?

CC: [laughs]

LW: Oh my god.

SILY: “Gloria” was inspired by the character in the latest season of Fargo--it’s not the first time you’ve named an album or song title after a movie or TV show. Attica! was named after Dog Day Afternoon. Why do you like naming things after other parts of culture?

LW: My theory on this is that I think classical allusions are a little played out. We’ve already used all the biblical ones.

CC: We’re big TV advocates.

LW: I prefer TV over film generally.

CC: I prefer TV over people.

LW: I’m in that camp, too. And I watch the same things over and over again. It’s like a comfort. Almost like therapy. One of the documentaries I saw over the past couple years I really enjoyed was that brony one. I can’t remember the title. [Editor’s note: It’s Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony]. It sounds odd, but it’s pretty sweet. It’s sort of like that Bob’s Burgers episode with the Equestranauts.

CC: [cackles]

LW: They talk about how a lot of people process stuff through watching television. Something made for children helps people process adults, conflicts, emotions. I kind of get that. For me, that third season of Fargo helped me process the election. It took me a while to get through it. I had to quit in the middle because it was too bleak. I was like, “This guy’s gonna win.”

CC: The thing is [in the show] he doesn’t beat her spirit.

LW: That’s my takeaway from every article. I try to come away with the long view of history. I know a spark of hope when I see it, too. And I think that TV, more than movies, is good at telling the story.

SILY: Over that many episodes and hours, over a serial thing, it allows for greater storylines and development. It’s just such a commitment, and there’s so much, it can be hard to pick.

LW: I know. Some are too intense for me, frankly, because I get too into it. I’m one episode into Season 1 of Legion, and there’s flashbacks with a puppy. I’m already like, “If they do something to that dog, I’m out.”

CC: I’m like that with animals and little kids. Unless the little kid’s an asshole--then I’m like, “Kill that son of a bitch.”

LW: [laughs]

CC: Plus, I have the attention span of a gnat. Sometimes, when we’re watching a movie, I’ll get up and leave the room, and my wife will be like, “God damnit. We’re watching a fucking movie! What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, I forgot.”

LW: I watch a lot of Bob’s Burgers and Parks and Recreation. Things I’ve already seen. And that stuff helps me with reality a little bit because there’s a kindness to it.

CC: There’s kind of a not-kindness to it too that keeps it funny. Bob’s Burgers is a very irreverent show. But in a sweet way.

SILY: What else helps you process and come to terms with the world around you?

LW: For me, I listen to a lot of Gang of Four and Wire. Their anger is soothing.

CC: Just being in a band. My wife always notices I get really grumpy when we don’t play for a while. [Lisa and I] both for varying degrees buy lots of junk--not really junk--but vintage stuff. We both collect all kinds of things. Going to antique malls and fairs and stuff like that is very therapeutic for me. I don’t even have to buy anything. Just walking around and seeing the tritest of people’s lives is interesting to me.

SILY: That’s exactly what my girlfriend does. She just organized her so-called “cabinet of curiosities” with her knick-knacks and what not.

CC: That’s it. Organizing and reorganizing things, looking at each thing and wondering whether it’s haunted or not. It’s just interesting to me. It provides great joy. I just posted a picture on Facebook--I found an old rat trap with Mickey Mouse’s picture on it. [To Lisa] You actually found it first, I think.

LW: Why would you put Mickey Mouse on a rat trap? That makes no sense.

CC: Exactly. But it’s just beautiful. Like, “Oh my god. Who thought of this?!?” That keeps me going. It made my entire week.

SILY: There’s a clip of Tom Waits on Letterman from a few years ago wherein he for no reason brought a rat trap from the 1800′s. He didn’t explain why he had it--he just had it. It makes me crack up every single time.

LW: It explains itself. 

CC: It’s just fascinating. Especially when it’s something that’s mass produced. I’ll never get over some of the stuff we found created by individuals, but the idea that a group of people got together in a board room or wherever and thought, “This rat trap with Mickey Mouse on it is going to be a good idea” is just great to me. Wow. This mass hallucination of people thinking it’s the right thing to do.

LW: It’s like the Middle Ages dance hysteria. Where people did something in hysteria until they died--like dancing. There are paeans with the Pied Piper of Hamelin where they think something happened like that. If you look in the town records of Hamelin, they say, “It’s been such and such years since our children went away.” And they don’t know what it means. There’s a stained glass that told the story.

CC: That’s some X-Files shit.

LW: You could also make correlations with acts of terror now. You read and think, “Why would somebody do that?” It’s crazy.

SILY: You can be fascinated and talk about how crazy the past is, but part of me thinks you can’t judge it at all because we do shit that in a number of years is just as crazy if not crazier.

CC: Imagine two generations from now people looking back at our political atmosphere and wondering, “Those motherfuckers were nuts. What the hell were they thinking?”

LW: I always love watching movies made before cell phones because people actually look around. You see their face. Now, if everyone’s not on their phones, it seems disingenuous somehow. You’re like, “That’s not real.”

SILY: I was waiting for the train the other day, and some guy was talking on the phone and very purposely and loudly saying, “I’m trying to engage with these people and they’re all on their phones!” Part of me was like, “Nobody wants to talk you to, it’s early.” But there was a certain extent to which he was right.

CC: And, you’re on the phone, [too].

SILY: Back to the record. It seemed like it had a much darker instrumental tone than previous records. Was that at all an intention or observation on your end?

CC: It was probably just a product of the time in which it was made, I’m guessing. We don’t ever talk about that stuff. We never say, “Let’s put in the devil’s chord,” or “the brown note” or anything.

LW: If we could, we would, though.

CC: Especially the brown note. The idea of our record making people poop their pants is just great.

LW: Musical laxative.

CC: Again, we don’t discuss much. We just do it. However it comes out is how it comes out. I know that seems strange. We’re just not that kind of a band.

LW: You know what it is, though. It’s a product of what we listen to. If we’re listening to a lot of Yo La Tengo--particularly their darker stuff, as I do--that’s gonna come out in what I play. Not like I’m trying to copy it. It’s just by osmosis.

CC: And I’ve watched a lot of black metal documentaries this year. [laughs] There’s probably that. It’s just interesting to me. I don’t listen to the music much or at all. I could watch a documentary on practically anything.

SILY: Any good ones in particular?

CC: If you go on YouTube--I’m terrible at remembering titles--there’s a couple that are really informative. They’re always kind of funny. Any time I see someone in corpse makeup, it just makes me giggle. At the same time, they seem very genuine and into it, so I can’t make fun of it too much. It’s no less relative than what we do.

SILY: Lisa, how do you like the new Yo La Tengo record?

LW: I haven’t heard it yet. I’ve only heard one song. I’m looking forward to it. My favorite Yo La Tengo record is Electr-O-Pura, if that gives you a sense of the ones I like. I like them all, but the ones that tend towards that. I think that record is kind of dark. A lot of singable noise. You could hum that record. Some of their stuff is so monotone--the I Can Hear the Heart Beating era. Like that song “Demons” of theirs from one of their covers records. I tend to like their dark stuff, so I’m hoping it goes in that direction.

SILY: It’s pretty droney.

LW: I’m in.

SILY: One song is in that great tradition of sweet, fuzzed out bliss like “Tom Courtenay”. I think it’s one of their best songs. The rest is kind of atmospheric.

LW: Sounds like Yo La Tengo. I will be happy.

SILY: The song on the new Wussy record “Tall Weeds”--

LW: We’ve played that more than any of them.

CC: We’ve been playing that for almost two years. Since the end of Forever Sounds.

SILY: The delivery in the vocal tone reminded me of Nick Cave.

LW: Sweet. That’s always a compliment.

CC: Thanks. I can think I’m skinnier and more handsome now.

SILY: The line, “Are you afraid of all the monsters in the folding metal chairs,” on the final song “Black Hole”--

CC: Best line on the record.

SILY: What’s the story behind it?

LW: Since “Tall Weeds” was kind of born out of Black Hole, that graphic novel by Charles Burns, I was having trouble knowing what to write about on this record. So I thought, “Let’s just make a whole suite about that.” Chuck had already gotten the ball rolling, and I had to write my half. If you haven’t read [Black Hole], it’s about this mysterious disease that afflicts people graduating from high school in this town. It’s like an STD, but people mutate. Not so much X-Men style--they become lizard skin or part animal. Some people grow a tale. Some guy grows a mouth on his neck that talks and tells his secrets.

CC: [laughs] It’s an amazing graphic novel.

LW: It touches on fear of aging, growing up, fear of change. I just thought about what that graduation would look like. But it rang true to me because of the climate, challenging my perceptions of people.

CC: Where it hit with me is I can remember my graduation, looking out on all those dunce faces and thinking, “What a bunch of fuckin’ assholes, I’m getting out of here.”

LW: That feeling of alienation from everything from your own body to your neighbors. Because even though those people mutate, they’re still the same people. And that’s the key. It just sort of brings out what’s already dormant in their spirit. They turn into something that makes them want to act out.

CC: You and I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Different places. But all I thought about was getting the hell out of there when I was 18.

LW: Me too. I don’t like to downplay where I’m from.

CC: I respect where I’m from and respect the people, but I didn’t belong there. I was afraid of all the monsters.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album title?

LW: [laughs]

CC: [cackles]

LW: One day, when I was walking in the studio, I was thinking about this tweet from Donald Trump. He was shit-posting all day. After all of the shit-posting and talking about hating people, there was something like, “Oh, read this new book!” I forgot what the title was, but it was something along the lines of “what heaven is like.” “Read it today! Beautiful.” Are you serious? [laughs] It was so gross, but so funny. It was like Onion level. I got the title wrong. It’s not “What heaven is like.” It’s A Place Called Heaven. [The rest of the band] laughed so hard. They were like, “That’s the title.”

CC: Then we found an old postcard and ran it through some filters and that’s how we came up with the cover.

SILY: Are you still ingrained in the Cincinnati music scene?

LW: I think so. I never really was that much. I’m really less so now but just because I don’t go out a lot. I save my going out for being on tour. I don’t go to a lot of shows. It’s not because I don’t like music. I just don’t like going out socially much.

CC: We have two band members who are a little more social than me, Lisa, and John. We never go anywhere, pretty much.

LW: We do, but with our own families. I get together with Chuck and his wife or John and his wife.

CC: Mark and Joe tend to be our butterflies. [laughs] Our rhythm section.

LW: I go out on the road, and that’s sort of how I get it out of my system.

[supporthosechi]

Our Third Visit

        Home again, whatever that means exactly.  Moving for most people is terrible because it involves putting a bunch of small things into larger boxes, carefully wrapping delicate items—heirlooms, art, instruments, televisions, anything which is not really designed to be packed into a van or truck or other vehicle and moved any distance.  It also can mean uprooting oneself, which obviously cuts both ways: no more favorite diner down the street, no more garden in the back, no window which catches the light in the morning just so, no paint on the walls which has been redone to suit moods or fancy, no immediate physical access to friends, family, and work left behind, all to be exchanged for comparable or better versions. 

        Our LeLe’s move shares variations on many of these characteristics.  She moves from maximum to medium-minimum security, from 2000 fellow inmates to 500, from a facility housing people who will live out their natural lives within to those who will be there nine years or fewer. She leaves behind an ex-partner to become “fresh meat” at a new facility.  She sacrifices friendships and a place where anything might be obtained to one where inmates are far more cautious and the state’s control is more ironclad.  She cannot bring her paints, for which her nails have (temporarily) suffered, but the kitchen has a fryer and not everything is made of soy, by dint of which her skin has immediately cleared.  She exchanges the promise of contract work to reduce her sentence, the possibility of working with animals or cosmetics for a kitchen job which pays next to nothing (from 15 to 20 to 30 dollars a month as she moves up the ranks, rapidly), and layoffs in prison labor which do not allow her sacrifice herself to menial labor to move towards swifter release.  It’s a new place and there’s not much going on.  We sometimes think of our jobs, our relationships, our apartments, the very contours of our lives as prisons, and it sometimes feels as if we move from one to the next.  Alisha Walker’s situation has in some ways actually gotten worse with this move, and I can tell, and it tears at me, which in turn makes me feel dumb, because it tearing at me does nothing for her.

          It is hard not to imagine what it was like for her arriving as we do, pulling through a proper town and into a different sort of stone and barbed wire hell.  There is a funny little hut with some tables at the entrance and I momentarily lose track of where I am, thinking: “this would be a nice spot for Alisha to sit with her family.”  The presence of the eerily immobile guard standing beneath a strangely folksy, wooden sign proclaiming “Staff Only” quickly dispels that notion.  These are places of utmost control and power over, and any person who leaves them not wanting to smash, kill, and destroy after serving their time is either an incredible model of restraint from whom we all could learn that lesson at least, or else has had their spirit so utterly broken that it must take many soul-searching hours to find themselves anew outside.  This being our first visit, we brace for different regulations and novel layers of arbitrary command to fight through to gain entry.  We are not disappointed in this expectation.  Our first time through the double glass doors finds paperwork and, interestingly, more people of color behind one desk than we saw at the entire facility at Logan.  We are informed that one of our membership’s attire will bar her from entering, despite it being identical to what she wore on our last visit, and so I run back to the car to find something else she might wear, to no avail.  After a trip to Target to buy something less revealing than thick black tights and a hooded sweatshirt (the dead cops t-shirt is fine, mind you), we make our second attempt, now being told that we need a second form of ID each, which I dutifully return to the car again and procure. The third try reveals that the hooded sweatshirt cannot be worn in, nor can my cardigan.  When we finally make it through the metal detector, we’re left to peruse the scenery outside the gendered shakedown rooms, then left again to our own devices until we realize we can walk into the visitation room on our own accord.  The distance from the visitor’s entrance to the building to the door behind which we’ll spend the day with our friend is perhaps thirty feet, entirely indoors. This is emblematic of an entirely different, arguably even more nefarious affect of the Decatur facility.

           The entry desk is opposite a giant set of plaques devoted to employees of the month and retirees, each of which is clearly hand-carved, burned, and painted as if we were in a backwoods hunting lodge such as one might find just a few miles away from town.  There is one calligraphed sign for “Warden,” one for “Guard on Duty,” and a variety of smaller ones for the time clock and a key rack. There is a hand-etched lithograph commemorating a mother and children reunification program, to help reintegrate ex-offenders, which is distastefully hung next to a prison-staff lotto game of some variety where officers can put in their names for a monthly drawing for cash prizes.  I’m uncertain which is the more disingenuous of the two.  The guards interact with us in a generally saccharine tone (“It’s always more complicated the first time, sorry.”), wholly opposite the gruff, put-upon affect of the previous set.  I detest them and their complicity in this system, and I do not want to muse on this being a better work environment than the previous facility, that they get on better with each other and perhaps even the inmates, I want them to feel the full gravity of the despicable institution in which they are cogs, and I want them in turn to be as miserable as possible as they help make this needless societal scourge for the women inside.

           But this is not the place for any more of this particular screed.  I am privileged to see and hug and laugh with and hold and update a friend who has gotten closer and closer, and I want to know she is as all right as is humanly possible in a place designed to rob her of her humanity at every turn.

           We know each other a bit better now.  Alisha knows which one of our troupe she’ll have wild parties with and learn about the tough edge of the anti-fascist struggle when she gets out, which one will take her to tiki bars and teach her about the subject position of being a queer femme and all its responsibilities and travails, and which one will laugh too hard in spite of himself at all her jokes and make sure she’s well-fed when she needs home cooking with her Chicago family (I’m the last one, if you were wondering).  LeLe is her usual combination of vivacious hilarity and genuine interest in what we are up to on the outside.  As has been the case throughout, some of our mail has gotten through (all her birthday cards) and some, infuriatingly and arbitrarily, has not (two of our members’ last letters), so there is some general updating to be done on our end.  But we are, as anyone would be, curious about our friend’s move, and it is safe to say Alisha is at least a little wistful for the, shall we say, woolier world of Logan, a place better suited to her bawdy, mischievous, and social personality. In short: our girl is bored.  But I am reminded more acutely in this visit also: our girl is easily but deeply funny.  She tells us about the first set of clothes she got at the new facility, the crotch and thighs stained (“somebody had like a toxic vagina or something!  Just burning through!”), and how she soon found that there was no fashion scene to keep up with here.  We comment on how clean the clothes she has now look, and how she has clearly lost back some weight from the—marginally—better food and find that she’s wearing her “special occasion” polo, pristine and white, and her pair of shoes from Logan that “nobody else got.”  At the old facility, she’d be altering clothes and getting the new garb whenever it came in or else risk ridicule, which would result in mouthing off, which consequently would result in something worse.  We comment this sounds like high school all over again, and Alisha’s eyebrows go up as she busts up laughing: “It’s worse than high school!  They’re criminals!  You get your ass beat!”  She tells us about the sort of pranks unique to a place where people are already on edge but used to certain routines which mark out the time.  There is the regular practice of lining up to receive prescription medication, which LeLe naturally thought was worth crying wolf at, at least once: “MEDLINE!”  The effected inmates, of which there were many, all piled out of their cells to line up for drugs, furious at the false alarm.  When one of the older inmates got especially angry, Alisha responded with the natural question of the nonplussed prankster: “You mad?  Are you big mad or little mad?” knowing full well this would be the end of the incident.  In this “minimum security” place, loaded with contradictions, the restrictions regarding fighting and sexual relationships are vastly harsher than the previous: either will get you cited and likely put in solitary confinement, in the hole.

           We ask her a few questions on behalf of a reporter friend who is doing a profile on Alisha, one of which we already have a sense of the sad answer to, but ask anyway and receive a classic LeLe answer.

           “How are you passing the time at Decatur?”

           (slight pause) “Dyking out!”

           She goes on to explain that she is “talking to” three people, but there are ten more interested.  We get into a discussion about how “everyone is gay” on the inside, because there’s nothing else to be.  As mentioned before, she has been separated from the partnership she had begun to build at Logan, which we assume would be difficult, but as it turns out, not for the reasons we guessed.  Suffice it to say, Alisha had her heart broken while she was still at the last facility, subjected to the same sort of amplified betrayals that anyone who offers up herself to another, who feels she has forged a connection through the harshest of obstacles, who takes a calculated risk knowing separation is immanent, would find themselves susceptible.  The classic coping mechanism of “needing to spend some time alone” is drawn into brutalist relief in a place like this where one is at once in a uniquely profound solitude and at the same time never more than ten feet from another person or fifty.  Alisha proclaims she is “manic depressive,” a diagnosis about which we are all concerned and interested in how it is made and treated in this environment.  It turns out that a formal diagnosis has never been made, and Alisha explains how there is no intermediate state for her, she is either hyperactive and excited, sociable to the point where she kids with the guards in the dining hall and pushes buttons just to get some kind of reaction from the subdued and tamped-down inmates, or else utterly depressed. Not just sad about her lost girlfriend, the absent opportunities which were available to her at Logan, her missing family and friends, the wrongful nature of the system which reminds her daily it would have simpler if she had just died that night, but a purer, simpler low, resultant from the basic realities of being a giant spirit and personality cordoned off and hidden away from the society she would choose and which would, I am certain, choose her. 

         The time is more real now, she says it and I can see it, because this will be the final destination before release.  She bargains with us for all the things she would give up to be able to step outside, or do anything positive for herself at all, and then we hit the crux of the matter.  Alisha tells us she is not used to—and at this point, there’s no reason to think she’ll ever get used to, which is fine—having to ask for everything, and being powerless to help those she cares about.  Among the myriad motivations for doing sex work, the at least potential command over one’s income, how often and what sort of work one wants to do, was clearly foremost for our girl.  Her mother, brother, sister, and new nephew need her, not simply financially or even emotionally but—and I do not use this term lightly—spiritually.  Anyone who meets Alisha and finds favor with her would comprehend this sort of need; she is magnanimous not because she is a saint but because it is clear that when she cares it is wholesale and not easily vacated. She will never become accustomed to be so dependent on, having to ask for things from, her mother, having to be shaken down to use the bathroom, finding nearly every step, of which there are only so many which can be taken anyway, requiring official and explicit sanction.

           It does no real good for me to soften the situation in these reflections: our dauntless survivor is hurting, each next forced renegotiation of her dignity and creative power taxing the underground wellspring of strength from which she draws.  The tiny gold cross she wears around her neck borders on satire; this is no cloister for the likes of Alisha Walker, and there’s no spiritual quest or fulfillment concealed within.  Just the full, indifferent weight of the state’s corporal fetish borne down on a young woman full to bursting with creative potency.  I, insignificant and impotent in the face of such forces, have two options, with only the first being at all viable.  Either LeLe will emerge from this place, sooner than later, intact and excited to make good on all the plans we make every next visit, or I do not want to go on existing in the world which not just allows but applauds her forced sacrifice.

           Alisha is disappointed that one of our members does not eat red meat, having raised cows in her youth and, accepting this reality, turns to me in mock-frustration:

           “Aaron, please tell me you eat steak.”

           I do, LeLe, I do, and I don’t know if it’s going to taste right again until you’re on the opposite side of the table from me for the first time.

-AH

[jaewil25-blog]

Mothers & Fathers Of Advanced Consciousness

***Warning: This post is NOT for children under 30! This post contains raw messages of the truest spirit & divine SOLutions that MUST be implemented. READ ON YOUR OWN ACCOUNT! Avoid Distractions as much as possible!***

Ight…no pussyfooting in this message about how our current socioeconomic system is depleting in viable resources OR what we should do on a individual level pertaining to solving it. Nah! It’s going to take collective effort on constructing our own economy gaining access to tools & resources WITHOUT MONETARY CURRENCIES. How??? The answer is You, I & Us.

The truth is, we’re living in a fuckin mockery - a well-thought out game of spirit cookers keeping collective consciousness from mastering themselves. It was created by heads of planets abroad who manipulated & controlled those wealthy oligarchs in upper echelon places to capture souls of the ancestors and harness energy from their vessels’ blood. (Again…if you’re not ready to take this work then leave this post NOW because your life will be dramatically change regardless if you’re aware of it or not.)

See…most people follow frivolousness and they have no desire on changing. They love living off government. They love having products created for them. They love having educational curriculums encode fraudulent information in our textbooks, social media accounts, and motion pictures. These people are called civil citizens. If you’re a civil citizen, you are being spiritually cooked to obey or perish. Your vessel is expendable. Your life is considered collateral damage. Every single military personnel from low ranking privates to special ranking privateers is considered expendable. Why??? They consented to give their life as Knights to the “royal courts” and combat in the name of “freedom”. But, whose freedom???

The question is, are you free??? Are you free to learn & apply information that will design & architect your own consciousness & skill? Are you free to acquire resources that will construct your own livelihoods so your children become raised on foundations created by you? Are you free to work when you want without oppressive legislation reprimanding you to pay for someone else’s material wealth going further into debt to this illusion of money? Man, better question���Are you free to live without debt? Debt – by itself – is a systemic stronghold on progressive freedom, PERIOD! In other words, if you have cash, paper assets, or fiat currency then YOU’RE IN DEBT Debt to who??? Debt to the ones who print it into existence. Monopoly magicians and corporate tricksters misled you to think cash was king. If that’s true, why does it take less money to create one dollar bill? It takes almost 2¢ to create a 50 dollar bill. Why is that? Do your own research and see if I’m accurate on this.

The bottom line is we’re being hoodwinked into believing in a socioeconomic system that is based on perjurious knowledge. We think we’re being informed, but we’re not! We’ve always been in the dark regarding what’s REALLY GOING ON. There are a lot of people in on it too. These people are stringently supporting oligarchs’ plan of Divide & Conquer; foolishly working against themselves and their children.

Oh!!! I haven’t even touched on what our children will endure regarding the spiritual & mental stress of dealing w/ automated cities. (Again, if you’ve read this far you know I’m not going to care about being PC about info because MF’s need to wake up to this shit.)

Ok…since day one, we’ve been RULERS OF OUR OWN DESTINY. Meaning, we were conceived by father’s space-time consciousness (thought) and then transported through our mother’s mortal portals (wombs) to manifest in flesh as Wombman/Man. When we are born, our thoughts are as ancient as the Sun, but our brains are fresh like a brand new OS in a computer. In other words, you are born pre-installed w/ programs inside your DNA that must be awoken so our hard drives (brains) can store & secure its data. Our children’s brains, eyes, ears, basically their whole entire bodies are free & clear of “worldly” information. So, if you train that child’s brain at an early age to engage & love his worldly life, which is this physical realm, then one will stray away from tapping in the totality of creation which is source code - where your children’s true self is waiting to be activated. Source code is hidden deep within your genetic algorithms and can only be awoken in ALKALINE ENVIRONMENTS OR AWOKEN PARENTS. Parents that have instilled divine principles through practicing ancient laws of the Universe. Now, are you your child’s PRIMARY producer? Are you gathering materials for food shelter and clothing on your own account? Does your child learn foundational skills (how to grow nourishing edibles, produce clothing material, architect their own skill sets) from you or your counter-part? If you answered NO on any question, your children are pawns in this chess game rigged to keep them subordinate vessels forever swimming in perpetual fear (debt). Due UR Research!

The truth is, no one cares because WE DON’T CARE as a collective. How can you say you care when millions of vessels are destroyed every month and WE DO NOTHING! We have allowed murders, assassinations, poisoned attacks, and engineered genocides control our collective responsibility to our children’s future because of fear. Our ancestors ( great grandparents, grandparents ) fought and transitioned just to keep us together spiritually & financially. Yes!!! You are able to enjoy luxuries of materializations because a vessel has sacrificed his/her physical prowess to simplify your acquisitions of wealth. To many people choose sides when every religion, spiritual system, culture, indoctrinations, etc., are derived from Source. Our ancestors believe & did things ignorantly so we can learn from them and upgrade in consciousness because no matter what… they are still apart of Us. They suffered extreme psychological damage from their time in this physical realm from oppression than we today could ever imagine. They travailed. They persevered. They transferred their prosperous synergies to Us - bio genetically. Now, we must implement what our ancestors risked their vessels to manifest, which is OPERATIONAL UNITY. All the buck dancing, buffoonery, pseudo agencies, dysfunctional relationships NEED TO STOP! We are too grown to be fighting each other, in the physical, while others from private militias plot on destroying you and your family’s prosperity in the spiritual. Remember, the more people stay asleep (calcified pineal gland), the less likely you are to activate your God particle that lies dormant within.

When opening up your pineal gland and awaken dormant genetic material in your DNA, you start seeing way beyond this physical realm called reality. When you see things, for the first time shit is confusing as hell - literally. It’s like your mind starts experiencing a conceptualized reality that doesn’t resonate with your core frequency of what you consider as “normal”. So, you vibrate higher. Everything around you becomes amplified. You start to slow time down by separating vibrational wavelengths (Megahertz) having light illuminate hidden messages within Source Code. Your relationships with others become uncomfortable and perturbed. Why? Because your vibrational frequency is no longer radiating on lower levels. Information you receive from your awoken state is now contrary to popular belief which causes you to become a solitary sol-doer - proving with every fiber of your BEing who you REALLY ARE. Why??? Because you finally SEE what your inner child has felt all your life. Your visual focus is no longer impaired and everything, everywhere you see is all apart of YOU. How? Well, when you’ve mediated you gain access to dimensions on other realms. If you give yourself to this Existence and clear your consciousness on what you think is real, answers will come to you ONLY if you’re willing to listen. When you embrace this and accept its extraordinary power over you, you then EMBODY its forces narrowing it down to 2 forces which is spirit & soul/negative & positive/minus & plus/up & down/left & right - the subatomic force in each active particle.

What we’ve been taught though is a false paradigm of this which is God Or devil/Black Or white/Bad Or Good - the choice between who you are.

We’ve been programmed to see or feel good or evil/God or Devil/heaven or hell when the truth is one can’t and will not exist without the other. Having to choose between your mother or father is a false reality forever creating divisions within self causing you to vicariously live through others’ visual focus. This is why wars, combustibilities, and acts of violence happen…because we’ve been programmed to follow one or the other. Not knowing that they BOTH ARE APART OF YOU. The best advice to give someone constantly fighting a war within self and projecting that war onto others in this physical realm is win the battle within self first then use that experience to unify the forces in you to manifest balance in this physical realm. Some of you maybe wondering why I refer to our so called reality as a physical realm…well, because it’s an Plane Of Existence that materializes your thoughts, ideas, imaginations i.e. Childbirth, skill sets, businesses, responsive relationships into fruition. This physical realm is of low vibrational frequencies that are able to crystallize themselves into elemental form of matter. That’s why it’s considered MIND OVER MATTER because of the ability to take sound & symbols and create materialized products through an alchemical prowess.

Most entities can’t access this physical realm without a living host. So, that’s why we have pharmaceutical companies manufacturing solutions to tap into your mind and use You against Yourself. These chemists are disingenuous in the grand scheme of things. They know it’s their job to formulate data based on clinical trials and process this data in a pharmaceutical drug to keep you distracted. It’s becoming to the point that our organically grown food are compromised with anti-antigens that slowly kill off vital nutrients in the produce which is why vessels grow their own food. About time their organics gets to your plate, it’s been stripped from its enriched contents making it half as potent than when it was first produced. This is why we need to grow our own SEEDS, but again private interests will label you as criminal because they’ve patented the subatomic formula and will apprehend you, concentrate you, or worst assassinate you. If we don’t realize monetary currencies of ANY SORT i.e. cash, digital, or liquidated precious metals is the ultimate problem, then gluttony will inevitably imprison us all.

[allyinthekeyofx]

Fading Light 7/24

Fading Light AllyinthekeyofX Summary: As Scully gets sicker Mulders faith begins to wane. PART TWO CHAPTER ONE . The nosebleed when it came, was an unwelcome shock and for the first time, I was forced to acknowledge, really acknowledge that I’ve been a fool. That I’ve been lied to. So desperate was I on hearing that Scully’s cancer was back that I didn’t once stop to think that he would lie to me. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. That after all these years of him wanting to own me, that his intentions would be anything but disingenuous was a scant hope at best but nonetheless it has been a hope I have clung on to. But today that hope has been shattered in to pieces and scattered like fallen leaves around me. It’s almost three months since that morning where my partner was felled by that single bullet, a bullet that damaged far more than simple flesh and bone as it paved the way for a truth to be heard that she had desperately tried to hide from me for weeks and weeks. Even now, months later, the hurt is still there, burning inside me, corroding me even as I try to reconcile it. But knowing the reasons why she didn’t tell me doesn’t make the fact that she didn’t any easier to bear. And I know she feels it to. But we don’t talk about it. To keep dragging it to the fore is just too painful for both of us and, if I’m honest, wholly unfair on Scully as she tries once again to battle the demon that has taken up residence inside her. A demon that will continue to overwhelm her even as she fights against it with every ounce of spirit she has in that compact little body of hers. She has good days and bad days. And in the beginning, the good days outweighed the bad by about two to one. Her headaches, although painful and debilitating, could be kept controlled with non opiate pills. Providing she kept up a pain management regime, for the most part, she did okay and when the pain got bad she stuck her chin out with the resolute stubbornness I know so well and despite everything, she carried on. She looked the same to me as she always had. A little thinner maybe as the pain medication suppressed her appetite for certain foods and made her stomach hurt, but for the most part she remained the same. No chemo means no sickness means no drastic weight loss. It also means of course that I am losing her. That day by day, she is slipping a little further away from me. Her Mother has tried everything to persuade her daughter to start treatment again. And I think she still believes that it was the treatment that saved her the last time around. But Scully has resolutely refused to be swayed and on the surface at least, has remained hardened to Maggie’s frequent tearful and occasionally, accusatory outbursts. But on more than one occasion I have had to hold Scully in my arms to prevent her from sinking to the ground after her Mom has taken leave of the apartment, slamming the door behind her in impotent anger that her only daughter seemingly doesn’t care enough to even try to help herself. It’s the only time she really allows herself to cry. Or at least it’s the only time she allows me to see it. The knowledge of what her decisions are doing to the woman she loves and respects so much continue to break her a little more every time one of the conversations takes place. And I know she despises herself for it. She also refuses steadfastly to see her brothers. And the most selfish part of me is relieved that I don’t have to face them again. To be held in contempt for my part in all this is something I’m not entirely sure either Scully or I could cope with right now. Our hurt is big enough without it being added to by virtual strangers who are happy to stand in judgement over decisions and events they are neither willing nor open enough to understand. Maybe when this is all over, when Scully is gone, they might seek to understand. Understand a chain of events that started so many years ago when this extraordinary woman walked in to my office and took over my life. *Agent Mulder? Dana Scully; I’ve heard a lot about you.* So young back then. So vibrant. So damn trusting. Not yet tainted by her association with me, with everything she has lost along the way. But I’ve tried not to think about how things were in the beginning, tried not to wish myself back seven years ago so I could turn her around and march her straight out of that office and back to the safety of Quantico. Away from me; away from this quest of mine that, over time crept up on her insidiously to also make it hers. She didn’t deserve it. She’s never deserved it. But she took it. She chose to stay and I have to respect that it was her choice to make. So instead, I’ve pushed it to the back of my mind and tried desperately to focus my mind on what we have now rather than what has been taken from us and what else will soon be taken. I no longer believe that the chip in my neck is anything more than a cruel deception by a sick man. And I certainly don’t believe that he ever had intention of saving Scully. A sick fucking joke taken at our expense; a final act of betrayal from a man who trades in lies. Today is Scully’s Birthday. A day where she had insisted no fuss be made. She’s done the final Birthday crap before and made it abundantly clear that she has no wish to repeat the experience. Because as much as I try to deny it to myself, I know that she will not be around next year. And that she knows it to. But despite that, I couldn’t let the day pass by totally unacknowledged and even though I guess you could say we have been a couple for several months now, the giving of elaborate gifts and platitudes are not really our style. I’m also painfully reminded that I too was guilty of participating in the illusion last time around, that everything was just fine. My partner’s Birthday. Dinner and a gift. Which was all great had I bothered to acknowledge it in previous years. And although she had playfully teased me about it at the time, I know that she knew damn well that it was my way of starting to say goodbye. I was determined not to fall in to that same trap so this year I kept everything very low key. No sparklers, no gift, no fanfare. Instead I took her to feed the swans in Rivergate Park. And then we walked through the frosted leaves, hands clasped tightly together, not speaking much, knowing that there was nothing really to say. No declaration of love from this woman could ever make her mean more to me that she already does and I know she feels the same. I see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, the way she clutches at me when we make love. It’s in the way she says my name; the way she presses herself against me when it rains and we only have one umbrella. It’s in the way she asks the pizza place to only sprinkle mushrooms on her half and the way she laughs at me when I get stringy cheese caught on my chin. She loves me in ways I didn’t think were possible. And that’s why I took her to feed the swans. Because we no longer need affirmation of what we are to each other; material gifts are meaningless now. We walked for a long time, along the beautiful rustling path that circumnavigates the lake, pausing sometimes to rest, exchanging soft touches, feather-light kisses under the canopy of winter green foliage that makes the perfect foil for Scully’s delicate colouring. Her leg still bothers her a little although she can now walk normally and bear weight without grimacing. I was amazed how quickly she recovered given the circumstances and the irony wasn’t lost on either of us when her Orthopaedic surgeon signed her off with an assurance her leg was as good as new. That it would give her years of stellar service. I had wanted to punch a fist-sized hole in the wall beside his head but Scully had simply bestowed on him a dazzling smile, shook his hand and thanked him for everything he had done. Until later in the car she had turned her face away from me in an attempt to hide the single tear that escaped to form a tiny rivulet down her beautiful skin. I had watched it hang, suspended for the merest moment before it fell on to the collar of her shirt. And right then, I had wanted to scream at the fucking injustice of it all. Why her? Why her and not me? It’s a question that haunts me. It’s the reason I did what I did. The reason I allowed that black-lunged sick bastard to finally get what he wanted. The reason I allowed myself to believe. But that belief is waning. With each passing day as I watch my beautiful partner fade just a tiny bit more, watch her trying to hide her headache behind a troubled smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, watch as it’s becoming obvious that the bad days are starting to outweigh the good. And today, as I heard her gasp, watched her hands fly to her face in an attempt to stem the sudden rush of blood that literally poured from her nose, drenching her in a frightening sea of crimson that dripped unchecked on to the crisp, dead leaves beneath our feet, I stopped believing altogether. My belief was ripped away from me even as I caught her in my arms and screamed out to someone, anyone, to call 911, feeling the warmth of her blood, her life-force, soaking in to my thick fleece shirt as I ran with her back to the small car park where, by the time I got there, I was unable to breathe through the fear and exertion and yet still I clung on to her as the waiting paramedics tried to prise her from my arms. So much blood. So much fucking blood I truly thought she was dead. And now as I sit outside her room in the ICU, banished to the corridor while the doctors do their work I begin to cry. Wracking sobs that tear at my chest and threaten to break me in two. I am holding on to her cross that the doctors insisted was removed lest she require CPR and I twist it around my fingers in much the same way Scully twisted that piece of cotton around her finger three months ago when I sought answers from her. She should be wearing it. It’s not right that they took it from her. I will return it to her later. And I hang on to that thought because at the moment, it’s all I have. Continued chapter 2 #fanfic #x files #fading light