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thescorpioracesfestival · 5 years ago

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Challenges I to IV

My debut into the festival, starring the tourist Elisabeth and the rider, Jem.

Part 1: Elisabeth Bradbury-Stuart

Chapter I

The island existed only in stories. There was a single photograph that her mother had shown Elisabeth while she was young, and even that didn’t really show it. It was of herself as a young girl, taken in the late 1890s. Elisabeth’s mother was small and slight and happy, nestled into the side of her stern-faced mother.

Elisabeth had thought of that picture often, especially as she got older. She couldn’t help thinking about the unknowingness of those young eyes. No idea that in less than a decade she would leave that island and never return.

But here Elisabeth stood, feet planted on a ferry that bobbed back the way her mother had come all those years ago. Sea spray in her eyes, she lifted one of the last Marlboros she’d brought with her, lighting it.

“Oy, missy!” called a voice, and she turned to see a man looking like two hundred years of wave had been carved into his face. “Don’t you be standing so close to the edge or you’ll find yourself in a capaill uisce’s breakfast.”

Right, it was only breakfast. Elisabeth hadn’t paid attention to the time, having spent all of early morning on the prow.

Elisabeth smiled at him, but only took another step towards the edge, her fingers curling around the railing.

She had been on ferries before while perusing the archaeology of Greece, but this was different. Back there, the air had been hot and balmy; the waves quiet and blue like the petals of bluebells. This ocean, however, was dark like the bottom of a saucepan, the crests of foam like suds of greasy liquid.

The boat made a dip over a rise, and she gripped the railing tightly, suddenly conscious of dress fabric that would hardly help her swim.

The man from before was laughing at her. “I warned ye!” Elisabeth ignored him, going inside and making her way to her cabin. She ignored the sound of her roommate whimpering into a bucket. Instead she tugged out a small bible and focusing on the small pinpricks of letters.

It was a good few hours before the roommate set down the bucket and finally spoke to Elisabeth.

“You going for the races?” she asked, her voice raspy. Elisabeth had never once felt seasick; possibly a side effect of her mother’s island upbringing. Elisabeth raised an eyebrow and the girl stammered. She was a slight blonde waif of a thing, crawled out of a Bronte novel. She looked to be about fifteen, with a tiny upturned nose. “My nan says she saw them once. She said a man died on the beach and everything- You know, I saw a dead body once. When little Marianne got the whooping cough.”

Elisabeth watched the girl, tucking the bible back into its draw. She smiled. “I suppose. My family lives on the island.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Where are your parents?”

“Oh, my mam’s back at home. I’m supposed to be staying with my mam’s old friend to learn how to be a proper lady, since I’m not so good at listening to her.” To prove her point, she sniffed and pulled out a small note. “It’s because Thomas Walley says he’s going to marry me, but nobody believes me. But he told me his own self, and I know Thomas Walley better than any of those girls.”

The talkative girl spoke quickly, forcing Elisabeth to keep up. Elisabeth smiled, in a way reminded of her own sister. This girl was about the same age as Lucy anyway. “What is your name, sorry?” she said, interrupting the girl mid-sentence. The girl’s eyes widened, apparently having forgot the subject altogether.

“My name’s Francine but everyone calls me Dorothy. It’s cause I look just like my cousin. What’s your name-” And then, stuck clumsily to the end of her tongue, “Ma’am.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dorothy. I’m Elisabeth, but everyone calls me Lisabet. Because my mother was Elisabeth, too.” She lit a cigarette, leaning back against the bed and letting smoke fill the tiny room; clinging to the shitty. She felt Dorothy watching her closely, possibly trying to will a cigarette into her own mouth. She seemed like the kind of girl with a sailor for a father.

Elisabeth didn’t know when she fell asleep, because she didn’t know she had until the ferry whistled the signal for land. She had slept through lunch and dinner, and she was suddenly terrifyingly aware of the cavern in her stomach. She reached down, grabbing her belongings and making her way to join the long queue of people leaving the boat. Different emotions spilled over everywhere, and Elisabeth tried to block them out.

But what Elisabeth felt was numbness, as she stepped out onto the only dock on the entire island. It was not the only beach, but it was supposedly the only place where the water horses didn’t breach; the railing covered with rusted iron.

It was beautiful, though. Turning her head, she could see the beach, mostly empty except for a few people still trying their hand at catching a horse to train for next year. Elisabeth paused, watching as sunlight spilled over not-quite-equine flanks. There were a few yells from the men, as well as those around her, but all she could wonder was How could her mother have left this?

“Oy, get a move on,” grunted someone behind her, and Elisabeth rushed to take her place on the land; away from the gruff men and their never-satisfied faces. Some vendors carted tourist trap souvenirs, but the only souvenir Elisabeth intended on taking were the Thisby-red locks her mother had given her.

And answers. Elisabeth was hoping for some answers. She reached into her suitcase for her wallet, and paused when she felt it missing. She remembered that teenager, Dorothy’s, wildly glinting eyes. Elisabeth felt for it one last time before letting out a wild, “Fuck!”, something quickly met by horrified gasps. But she didn’t care, for the young girl had already gone.

The evening didn’t improve. Crackling telephone exchange had told her that her uncle would be there by seven, but it was currently 10 and Elisabeth knew that this island was not that large.

It was strangely quiet in this town, especially after the day she’d had. When night time fell, it truly fell, as the people turned their lights down in order to not be noticed. The only sound that existed was her breathing, as well as the rush of waves in the distance.

No one was coming for her. Elisabeth figured this out and stood up, grabbing her briefcase and making her way through the town.

Her mother had never said a word of her life here. What little she knew came from her father, Earl Ebenezer Bradbury-Stuart. She knew that he’d met her mother at these races when she was 18, that she had jumped at the chance to leave her island home behind and never interact it again, save for bits of money that she sent back to her family for Christmas.

Elisabeth had felt no panic, because her mother had decades to tell her… or she was supposed to have decades.

Biting down on bile, she was suddenly jerked to attention by the sensation of being watched. Horses, Elisabeth thought with a panic, but found that she couldn’t move. Her knees were locked into place by the tension of attention.

She had just mustered up the self-control for a breath when a low voice spilled out over the cobblestones. “If I’d been a horse, you’d be dead already.” Elisabeth shivered, making eye contact with the silhouette of a man leaning against a number of boxes. She couldn’t say anything, because she didn’t know this island, and she certainly didn’t know these animals.

“Are they really horses?” she forced, wincing at the way her voice sounded like a squeaking gate. The man chuckled, the glow of a cigarette humming a few inches from his mouth. “Don’t step any closer; I keep a knife.” A tactic she’d had to learn while surrounded by men in Rome.

“A knife is nothing against a capaill uisce. You’re a tourist, right? It’s not safe at night, here. No place to go?”

She shook her head, crossing her arms. “Someone stole my wallet.”

The man tutted, but then started walking down the street away for her. He stopped, turning to look behind himself. “Are you daft? I know somewhere you can say.”

A million and one reasons bubbled up inside Elisabeth’s mind. Murder, rape, the list went on. But she didn’t really have any other options, and so she ran up the street to follow him.

They didn’t stop until he halted at the foot of a two-storey fixture that looked dangerously close to teetering onto the street. He knocked hard on the door, humming something to himself until the door was cracked open by a young woman looking to be around Elisabeth’s age. The island had worn her older though, her hands appearing cracked and dry below the tassels of her shawl. Still, youth spilled out of her as she pulled the man into a hug. “Jem, what on earth has you up at such an hour? And who’s this?”

The man’s demeanour had changed around the woman, allowing him to crack an awkward smile. He cast a glance at Elisabeth, and for the second time that day found herself saying the name ‘Lisabet.’ “Had a tussle with the Bolley Brothers at the pub, found her wandering the streets in what is hardly appropriate wear.” He gestured to the hem that ended mid-calf. Elisabeth had hardly noticed the weather. “Says she lost her money to a pickpocket on the ferry.”

“Oh dear!” the lady grinned, pulling Elisabeth into a surprising hug. “Don’t you worry, dear, there’ll be no kelpie feasts under my roof. I suppose I can’t be too mad at your drunken antics for once, but for God’s sake, Jem.”

‘Jem’ chuckled again, thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, Madeline, it won’t happen again.” He glanced at Elisabeth once more and cleared his throat. “Would it be a problem if I stayed the night as well? They say Stu Dorricky saw hoofprints on the sand.”

A few minutes later and Elisabeth was sitting at the table with a bowl of stew. She didn’t know what it was, but in her hungered state it felt like bliss. Madeline was holding a swaddled infant to her shoulder, patting its back as she tried to pay attention. “So, what leads you to Thisby? Just another tourist?” “My mother was from Thisby,” Elisabeth swallowed, “Left here when she was 18 to marry my father, but I never heard anything about it. Until her death, when her childhood best friend ended up talking about Thisbean rituals and whatnot at the funeral.” Elisabeth smiled unsteadily. “Bertha Parton?”

“I know of the Partons,” said Madeline. Jem was sipping stew as well. Elisabeth had filled in the gaps that they were probably brother and sister. “Not personally, but their names get tossed here and there. They’re real old Thisby folk, from right before the Christians came.”

Even this was more than Elisabeth had ever heard, and she felt a wide smile grace her cheeks. Before she could thank her hosts, Madeline was handing off the child to Jem and standing. “Dear Lord, you must be exhausted. Let me set up a bed for you. Jem, please can you handle Tilda.” Then Madeline was gone, leaving Elisabeth and Jem alone.

Elisabeth shifted uncomfortably. “Cute kid,” she mumbled at the same time he said, “Sorry about your mother.” Elisabeth nodded her thanks.

“Our mother’s still alive but barely. Well- our birth mother died having Madeline, so my aunt’s our mother now.”

“I’m sorry,” Elisabeth hummed.

“So, is your mother’s death the only reason you came here? To try and reconnect with her, or whatever?”

Elisabeth shook her head. “I’m an anthropologist by trade, graduated from Wellesley College in America. This place fascinates me. All the age of it,” she trailed her finger along a splinter of wood that clung for dear life to the kitchen table.

“Most wouldn’t,” Jem was watching her hand, “Be fascinated by it, I mean. I imagine there aren’t many who would choose to keep this place in their body. It isn’t exactly Paris.”

At that moment Madeline called Elisabeth’s name, more of a whisper than a call. She said goodnight to Jem and followed the voice to the guest bedroom; a small wallpapered place that teetered gingerly on its side. When at last she was in bed, Jem’s words nagged at her mind. It isn’t exactly Paris. Well, Elisabeth had seen Paris in all its glory, had seen the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees. And she didn’t want it.

Chapter II. Challenge 4.

Jem Martin.

Jem wasn’t going to buy a horse. He was standing on the strand, sand caked into his boots as he observed the competition with something likened to paranoia. But paranoia was the only rational response to the capaill uisce, especially with a beach that bubbled with the beasts. In the distance a bay was twisting snake-like around her master’s hand, foam telling of the man’s approaching doom.

He already had a horse, bought two years before from a dud auction. Like that interaction with Lisabet, it had been built on a rash decision. He had seen the creature, not quite full-blood but some fucked-up creature that craved the ocean more than anything. Her hocks were thick, forelegs showing hints of feathers, but her neck still held the serpentine anger of the water-horses, her nose quivering at the scent of the ocean.

The hypothesis was that the mixed blood came not from her water horse parents but from a few years back, some Frankenstein’s creature of a Percheron and his mate. As such, she now sported her fair share of brute strength and scars that dotted the length of her body. Some had been made from iron, others from teeth, and one side of her face held no eye but a gaping cavern of a socket. She made up for it with rigid awareness and scent that could mark one out a mile away.

“Hello, Jem, what’re you doing down here? Don’t you have that murder machine back home?” came the barking laugh of Tom Crawley. He was holding his own horse, a thing that appeared more calm than most but that did not deceive Jem. A water horse was still a water horse, a carnivore, a monster that was currently paying slightly too close attention to the side of Tom’s neck.

“I’m seeing who has what.” He lit his cigarette, glancing at the horse as it gave a cautious look to the flame. “What’s its name.”

“Her name is Great Jack. I thought that if I put the part Great in there it would do me good.”

“Why Jack?”

“Because it’s a beautiful fucking name, isn’t that right, Jem?” Tom smacked the mare’s chestnut neck; making her flinch and move her hindquarters away. Her left ear flicked towards the man who held her lead tight enough for his knuckles to pale.

After a few minutes, Tom moved back to the main throng. Time wore on, and Jem was about to pack in for the day when a dreadful scream filled the beach. Every person on Thisby knew that sound, whether they followed the races or not. Jem turned his head in just the right angle to see Tom’s mare, Great Jack, turning and biting a black stallion on the side of the face. The stallion seemed intent on breeding, but the mare was having none of it, and clearly had the upper hand.

Tom tried to get her attention and the chestnut kicked out, her hooves meeting Tom’s face and knocking him into the sand. She shrieked again, her lead ripped out from her ‘owner’s’ hand as she ran to fight the stallion.

Jem just turned and walked quietly away from the agon, not stopping until he reached Madeline’s house.

When he opened the door, Lisabet was with Madeline in the kitchen. She was not particularly talented, asking Madeline for as many hints as possible.

“Uncle Jimmy!” came the cry of a toddler, and he turned around to see his oldest niece, Joyce, tearing up the floor towards him. He let out a whoop of delight as he hoisted the two-year-old into his arms, resting her on his hip.

“Hey there, Joyce. You been behaving well for your mother?”

“No…” she pouted, and Madeline laughed in the background. “I didn’t be quiet when she told me to, and I didn’t go to sleep for a long time last night.”

“That’s not very nice of you, is it?” Jem smiled, pushing a blonde lock of hair behind the prominent ear she had inherited from her father; a sailor who had disappeared in the middle of the night. They’d held a funeral for the fellow, but the truth was that no one really knew if he’d died or gone to the mainland. Either way, it wasn’t much of a loss, but Jem knew when to keep quiet. He knew it too well.

“No, Uncle Jimmy. I’m sorry.”

“Say sorry to your mother and Lisabet.”

“Sorry, Mummy and Lisabet!” He let her down and she ran off again, probably to play with her younger sister.

Jem crossed the room towards the women, before resting his shoulders on the counter. He snuck a carrot off the counter. “I think Tom Crawley died today.”

Madeline stopped mid-smile. She took a deep breath before continuing chopping. Lisabet turned to swipe the carrot back out of his hand, giving him a reproachful glare.

He stole a beer instead, cracking off the lid and taking a swig. “His mare kicked him in the face but I didn’t hang around. But if he bled, then he’s fucked. Broken bones? That’s fine, but god save you if your blood carries on the wind.”

Quiet settled on the house. He knew what Madeline was thinking about- she was thinking about the grey-black mare that was currently nickering for meat in the stable down by his house. If she didn’t get it, she would hardly struggle to get past the gates capped with iron.

“I’d better get back,” he said, and left.

When he got home, he grabbed a bucket of meat. A favour from the butcher, he sloshed it onto the floor of the stall and watched as Angel bowed her head, tearing at it while using her hooves to apply tension. Her ear was flicked towards him, watching him carefully.

“How you doing, Mutt?” he hummed affectionately, reaching out a slow hand to rub her neck. She snorted, blood bubbling along her muzzle. “Nice dinner?”

She didn’t respond, barely acknowledged him until she lifted her head and let him touch her jaw. With him came the one piece of draft horse temperament that had probably ever existed in her at all.

After she was done, he grabbed her halter- a ragtag piece made to match her face of traumas and lackings- and slipped it over her ears. He led her out to the round yard and finally got to work on sliding the blanket and saddle into their proper position.

Then he was on her, easily 18 hands high, but not the biggest horse he’d ever seen. She quivered under his touch, turning her good eye towards him. Her nostrils flared to catch his scent.

Finally he urged her to move. And move she did.

It took a single touch for her to burst into a gallop, bucking as she took off along the grass path down towards the Lachlan household. “Whoaaa,” Jem called, feeling his heart buck out of his chest along with the angry mare’s movements.

But then she was soaring over the partition, and bucking right after. Jem felt his body lift from the saddle and he dropped the reins, his body slamming into the hard dirt of a wheat field. A loud ‘oof’ left his body, and he braced for death. But then he opened his eyes and his mare was looking at him; as though curious.

Movement sounded on the property, however, and she twisted her head in the direction of the Lachlan house.

“Hey!” called Mr Lachlan, one of his children pressing gingerly into his side. “Get that thing off our property before it ruins not just our bodies but our livelihood too!”

“Sorry, Mr Lachlan!” Jem called and turned around. But he needed to figure out how to get over this fence, first.

#the scorpio races festival #TSRF2019 #submission #TSRF2019: jctko #TSRF2019: Rider Challenges #TSRF2019: Tourist Challenges #TSRF2019 TC1 #TSRF2019 TC2 #TSRF2019 TC3 #TSRF2019 RC4

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sgnolivia · 5 years ago

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(low blow cause he likes to get) blown

in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.

i. in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.

olivia spends four days in the nicu because she swallowed so much blood at birth.

beatrice, a whole seven years old, isn’t allowed in to see the baby— not that she’s particularly inclined to, it’s the principal of the thing— and spends four days on her father’s mother’s couch watching the news because the tv only gets six channels and none of them are cartoons. also, grammie invested her pension into the stock market at the advisement of a scamming financial advisor so she watches the screen in the same way a born again christian stumbles to the altar for penance. beatrice watches, and learns, and starts mumbling under her breath when the numbers are red, too.

ii. when olivia turns seven and beatrice fourteen, grammie dies. she leaves behind an unpayed mortgage and a stock profile worth exactly four trips to the aquarium.

dad is grammie’s only son. mom hates this and hated grammie so the house is tense for days. olivia stays in her room mostly, playing with beatrice’s old toys and drawing little houses with four smiling people and the dog she’s always wanted.

“what would it’s name be?” beatrice asks tiredly. she doesn't really care, and olivia knows this, but the deep, resonating sound of dad yelling is starting to make the wood floors rattle.

but olivia has no fucking idea how to name things so she says, “dog!” in a loud voice, choosing to use tone over language to express the admiration and love she would bestow upon the possibility.

“yea, dumbass, but the name,” beatrice rolls her eyes to the ceiling like she’s saying a prayer, “nevermind, you’d pick something dumb.“

there’s silence for a beat while olivia squints. her mother starts shrieking in the background.

"the dog’s name is beatrice."

iii. beatrice the dog is bought by their father when olivia turns nine. she’s tiny and adorable and will only grow to be about twelve pounds. it’s an apology for the way he’s been working late nights but olivia is nine. she doesn't give a shit if her father wasn't home for the birthday dinner or missed out on her chorus concert last week or only remembered it was her birthday because she's been leaving post-it notes on his car for three days. she has a dog.

"she can’t fucking name it beatrice!” beatrice the human is shouting.

“watch it, bee,” mom growls, leaning on the couch like a retired circus tiger.

“why not? she can be beatrice the dog and you can be beatrice the bitch,” olivia sings to break her mom's gaze, and artfully ducks beatrice’s chemistry book.

iv. beatrice the bitch is seventeen when she kills beatrice the dog. “it was an accident”, she hiccups, perched over the toilet and puking up bright pink fluid. olivia cradles beatrice the dog in her arms, straight faced and quiet. there is the urge to have a full meltdown, of course, to scream and cry and wake her dad up from where he sleeps on the couch and demand he bring little beatrice back.

but she doesn’t.

she watches beatrice the bitch— the only beatrice, now— sob and groan and heave over the toilet. the bathroom smells like white wine and vodka.

"it's okay, bee," olivia whispers, and gently lays her dog on the bathroom rug so she can run her hand up and down her sister's back the way she's been doing for her mom for years, "i know you didn't mean it."

beatrice hiccups again, "she's just so tiny and i didn't see her ollie, i didn't—"

"i know."

v. "please don't leave me," olivia whispers so quietly beatrice could pretend not to hear.

and pretend she does.

vi. olivia does well in school. better than her older sister, better than even her mother, who was the first person in her family to go to school and still has the debt to prove it.

"you could go anywhere you want," her guidance counselor is telling her while olivia looks at the magnetic sculpture on his desk, "get a scholarship to any school you want."

she thinks about how the way her sister packed only two bags and left in the middle of the night. how the apartment still smelled like birthday candles.

"i want to go to america," she murmurs.

the guidance counselor smiles the same way creepy mr.choi on the first floor does whenever olivia gets home from school. it doesn’t matter. men have been smiling at her like this her entire life.

olivia graduates at the top of her class, clutching an ivy league scholarship to harvard in her grip like the ticket it absolutely is. she waves it in front of anyone who will listen. she draws up the floor plan to her room and makes amazon wishlists with the things she wants to fill it with. they can't afford any of these things, but everyone in the neighborhood is riding the high of her pride and want to help in any way they can.

three weeks before the plane takes off, a semi runs a red light and hits the passenger side of the taxi she's riding in.

vii. second and third degree road rash, olivia learns through a haze of exhausted moaning and the frantic sound of carts slamming around the room, is just a really mild way of saying fuckfuckfuck her skin is gone!!! she knows her skin is gone, though, so not saying it out loud doesn’t really make it feel better.

the pain is so severe she can’t cry, or speak, or do much but attempt astral-projecting her soul into a different dimension. it creates an out-of-body dichotomy. on one hand, someone has taken a cheese grater to the very fragile bits of body she has left, and on the other, she’s at the park, beatrice the puppy bringing her stick after stick after stick. olivia throws them all and watches as beatrice tries and fails to find the same one she threw.

someone abruptly pops her femur back under muscle and olivia loses her dog, promptly throws up an impressive amount of bile, and blacks out.

viii. getting crushed by an eighteen-wheeler is the easy part.

three months in the hospital with an injury list longer than her fucking brag sheet takes her to places she’s positive she’ll never come back from. her parents alternate days because they don’t want to be in the same room as each other and their vegetable daughter.

“you’re lucky to be alive,” the physical therapist is saying on week fifteen, when olivia relearns how to stand up, “if you were on the passenger side, you’d’ve been a goner.”

it feels like she’s got cooked pasta for bones and beef jerky for muscle. it isn’t conductive for walking the twelve feet to the bathroom. her mother isn’t here to see her cry, so she does. cries, and falls, and tries to punch the nurse who helps her up.

lucky fucking her.

harvard rescinds the scholarship. elitism waits for no one.

ix. olivia signs her soul to the first private loan company who offers to buy. seongnam will still take her, despite the scarring and memory loss, and olivia, exhausted from living as a guest in her own fucking body, agrees.

#t; background #p; blown #solo #t; unreliable narrator

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

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City of Celluloid

by Dan H

Sunday, 01 September 2013

Dan has seen the City of Bones movie.

Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~

I first reviewed Cassandra Cla(i)re's City of Bones in the halcyon days of 2008.

Today, Kyra and I went to see the movie!

Umm...

Long time readers (or people who read the review I linked to above) may recall that I found the original book of City of Bones so blisteringly incoherent that I was barely able to write about it in any kind of sensible manner.

The movie is worse.

Kyra and I saw this film in the tiny, crappy screen at the Odeon on Magdalen Street, an experience we shared with about a dozen other people, all of whom seemed to be having a similarly terrible experience.

Just as with the original book, I really don't know where to start. Because this film is awful in nearly every conceivable way.

Let's start with the good bits:

Good Bit: The Cast are Actually Pretty Cool

Jamie Campbell-Bower is actually really good as Fanon Draco. In the book, I felt that his constant wisecracking revealed less about the character's emotional turmoil than about the author's desire to show off her ability to write one-liners. Campbell-Bower's delivery, though, actually manages to create the impression that I always felt the book was aiming for but failed to achieve – that Fanon Draco is hiding behind playful or dismissive language in order to avoid confronting his feelings.

Lily Collins is a bit generic as Clary but then, really, what does she have to work with. She's … a girl? She has special powers? She's hot for Fanon Draco?

Robert Sheehan (the guy that plays Immortal Kid in Misfits) does a reasonable turn as Simon, although again there isn't a huge amount to do with the character. He wears glasses (temporarily). He has a raging case of nice-guy-syndrome. Meh. I swear he's taller in this than he is in other stuff.

Perhaps most excitingly (even more excitingly than Jamie Campbell-Bower, and I love Jamie Campbell-Bower), Jonathan Rhys Meyers does a fabulously scenery-chewing turn as Valentine. And boy does he need it, because if he stopped raging around and roaring for ten seconds, you might have to ask yourself what the holy fucking hell is actually supposed to be happening, and then you'd probably have to go and cry.

Incidentally, I think it probably says something about the way things work in Hollywood that the teenage protagonists of this film are played by actors in their mid twenties, while their father is played by an actor in his mid thirties. Clearly Valentine was extraordinarily sexually precocious (even if we ignore the fact that Collins and Campbell-Bower are the best part of a decade older than the characters they portray, Rhys-Meyers' Valentine would still have to have started breeding at nineteen to have two seventeen-year-old kids).

Good Bit: It Is Quite Visually Interesting

Part of the fun of this kind of film is that it lends itself quite well to spectacle, and in the beginning the film-makers do a really good job of establishing a visual style, whether it's the Hogwarts-esque grandeur of the institute, the hundreds of Shadowhunter runes that Clary draws in her sleep, or the grotesque, body-splitting demons.

Some of these images might come from the book. I honestly don't remember. I'm pretty sure that the device of Clary drawing Shadowhunter runes is film-only, and I seem to recall that the entire concept of Demons being able to possess people is contrary to book-canon (where Demons are fairly specifically greebly monsters that eat you).

Having said the film is quite visually interesting, I should backtrack a little and say that the film is quite visually interesting in kind of its first half. After they get to the Institute things just get very, very lazy. Big generic flappy-winged monsters. Generic black-and-red demons who look weirdly like the dudes that the Zin send after you in Saints' Row IV

Although Valentine does make a pentagram out of swords. For which plus ten points for swords, minus six points because the pentagram is such an obvious symbol.

And now the rest:

Bad Bit: What The Fuck Is Going On?

So Clary is drawing runes. Then she meets a guy who only she can see. Then later other people can see him.

Then her mum gets attacked by dudes who are looking for the Mortal Cup, so she drinks some kind of magic coma potion because that is apparently the thing you do in that situation.

Then Clary gets attacked by a demon, and the guy rescues her.

Then they do a lot of running around, and the guy who we saw with her mum earlier said he was only hanging out with her to get the cup.

Then they go to this place called the institute. Some people are vaguely rude to Clary. Others aren't.

Clary works out that Damien from Gossip Girl is both gay and in love with Fanon Draco, despite the fact that he has said one sentence and been on screen for eight seconds.

Then Clary goes to see the Silent Brothers. This is one of the bits that are vaguely visually interesting. She has a vision where she sees the name Bane (well, actually she see a series of dots, but Fanon Draco realises that the dots are really, umm, the spaces around the letters in the word BANE witten in block caps. Because her brain stored the negative image. Apparently).

Then they go to see a Warlock. It is vitally important that before they do this that (a) Clary get dressed up in sexy clothes and (b) everybody including Clary take the time to observe that she looks like a hooker, because while it is important for women to dress sexily, it is also important to remember that women who dress sexily are gigantic whores.

The warlock agrees to help them because he is gay, and therefore fancies Damien from Gossip Girl, because all gay men are instantly attracted to all other gay men. The warlock is not wearing any trousers. I am not making this up.

The Immortal Kid from Misfits is captured by vampires for no clear reason.

Something something werewolves something something.

Then there is a scene in a garden where it is all romantic and you know it is romantic because they kiss, but also because there is an extraordinarily loud and intrusive love song played over the top.

Then I think Clary works out where the Mortal Cup is, because she is drinking tea while reading a book, and suddenly the teacup goes inside the page like a picture.

Then they fight a scary black woman.

Then Clary gets the Mortal Cup. Then the man with the grey hair opens the big water portal and Valentine comes through.

Then there is a really, really long fight scene.

No, I mean, like really, really long.

I mean, like half an hour in a two hour movie.

There is a flamethrower. Why is there a flamethrower?

Clary does magic with her glowing dildo pen to freeze some demons.

Did I mention flamethrower?

Grey hair man is a good guy again?

Valentine is everybody's father.

They win?

More glowing dildo magic?

Clary and Fanon Draco drive away on a motorcycle. At a slow walking pace.

Potentially Hilarious Bit: Deviations From Canon

The thing I find most uplifting about the Mortal Instruments movie is that now not only will there be fanfiction based on a novel series based on fanfiction of a different novel series, but there will now be schisms within that fandom between book fans and movie fans.

I read City of Bones five years ago, so I don't really remember it at all well, but I'm pretty sure there were some pretty big changes from book-canon. I'm almost certain that the final confrontation in the original book doesn't take place in the Institute, and Valentine's motivations in the movie are a lot less morally ambiguous, in that he's fairly explicitly trying to take over the world with an army of demons rather than just wipe out the downworlders (I might also point out that the word “downworlder” only appears once in the entire movie).

At the risk of sounding like a horrible nerd and closeted Cla(i)re fanboy, I was strangely irritated by the fact that Valentine, in the film, is able to summon an army of demons by using sort of generic magic, since in the book of City of Ashes a major plot-point is that he needs the Mortal Sword for exactly that purpose.

Other changes form canon just made sense. For example, in the film, Valentine more or less states outright that he used the same kind of memory magic that Marcus Bane used on Clary in order to make Fanon Draco forget that he was raised by the most famous and reviled person in the history of his people. Now actually I'm pretty sure that this isn't possible under book-canon. Shadowhunter magic is runes and only runes, you'd need a warlock for a memory-block, and there's no way that Valentine would have gone to one. But here the film-makers did basically the best they could with what they had. The alternative would be to just go with what it says in the book, which is that Fanon Draco just completley failed to realise that the man who raised him looked exactly like the man whose picture is all over the Institute.

The film also strongly implied that the man Fanon Draco remembered as his father wore an enormous hood at all times.

On the subject of Fanon Draco's heritage, the film inexplicably chose to keep the nonsensical “M turned upside down” plot point from the book, and translated to a visual medium it has exactly the problem I pointed out in my original article. During the climactic scene, when Fanon Draco is staring at his hand and realising to his horror that what he thought was a W is actually an M, the camera is showing us the ring from the other side as it has more or less consistently throughout the entire movie so we are only just seeing it as a W when for us it has been an M for the rest of the film.

Also, the scene with the ring is also pretty much the first time we learn the surnames of either Valentine or Fanon Draco.

The final change from book-canon is to do with the … umm … incest.

A major plot point in The Mortal Instruments is that Clary and Fanon Draco want to be together but can't because they're brother and sister. At the end of the final book, it turns out that Valentine actually isn't Fanon Draco's father at all, he just did weird angel-blood experiments on him while he was still in the womb.

Now I could be wrong, but I think the film-makers really didn't want two and a half movies in which their male and female leads spent half their time seriously contemplating incestuous sex, so they put the “not his real father” line in before any of the other revelations. So now after Valentine shows up in the Institute, he has a conversation with Hodge, where Hodge says “hey, if you really wanted to screw with those guys you could lie and tell them they were brother and sister.” This somewhat alters the context of everything that happens next, and everything that will happen in the next two films.

So umm, yeah. That's City of Bones: the Movie. It may actually be worse than the book.Themes:

TV & Movies

Cassandra Clare

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http://ronanwills.wordpress.com/

at 14:01 on 2013-09-01Robert Sheehan is in this? I'm really hoping he's destined for better things, so this better not end up derailing his career.

Anyway, I was hoping to see a review of the movie on here so now I can satisfy my curiosity without actually watching it myself. I have to admit some of the clips they released actually looked fairly entertaining, but I guess they're not indicative of the movie itself.

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Dan H

at 15:22 on 2013-09-01I think it depends on what you mean by "indicative". There are certainly a lot of entertaining clips, it's just that there's nothing stringing them together. It's like the film is a two hour long trailer.

This is more or less exactly the same problem that I had with the book. There are quite a lot of cool scenes, but they just sort of happen one after the other with no real throughline or sense of arc.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 15:44 on 2013-09-01I'm kind of morbidly curious about what keeps the Clare train going. It looks like she's making money off her work and everything, but I have to wonder how she feels about the terrible reviews her work gets even from critics who like and praise popular writers like Whedon and Rowling. Something tells me the poor woman isn't just in this for the money.

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Arthur B

at 22:24 on 2013-09-01

Isn't this part of the usual weirdness with American media wanting to cast teenagers in sexually provocative roles but not, for obvious reasons, wanting to show actual (or even simulated) underage action on screen? I literally just started watching

Vampire Diaries

and half my viewing time so far has been spent yelling at the screen WHY ARE YOU STILL IN SCHOOL GET A JOB YOU SLACKERS

(Though to be fair, the fact that all the high schoolers are grown-ass adults makes the whole thing less creepy in some ways.)

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Cressida

at 22:55 on 2013-09-01A video review from The Nostalgia Chick; I'm curious what Ferretbrainers think...

http://blip.tv/nostalgia-chick/the-next-whatever-the-mortal-instruments-and-ya-adaptations-6635563

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Arthur B

at 23:19 on 2013-09-01My thoughts are "Woah, holy shit, a TGWTG reviewer who offers interesting insights and doesn't rely heavily on gimmicks, fake rage and wAcKy ChArAcTeRs, how rare is that?"

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Michal

at 00:56 on 2013-09-02I was actually about to post that video. Needless to say, I find her points to be very good ones.

My thoughts are "Woah, holy shit, a TGWTG reviewer who offers interesting insights and doesn't rely heavily on gimmicks, fake rage and wAcKy ChArAcTeRs, how rare is that?"

The good ones gather at Chez Apocalypse. Kyle Kallgren of

Brows Held High

is also very erudite and worth watching, especially his more recent videos. (Even better, the crossover between Nostalgia Chick and Brows Held High in which they review

Freddy Got Fingered

is truly something to behold)

I'm kind of morbidly curious about what keeps the Clare train going.

There are very few writers who are purely in it for the money, even the bad ones. I can assure you E.L. James probably enjoyed writing

Fifty Shades of Grey

very much and did not think "my

Twilight

fanfic will make millions!" But if there is a sentiment towards material gain behind Clare's work and writing, it can probably be summed up by

this enormous tour bus

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Fishing in the Mud

at 17:04 on 2013-09-02

I can assure you E.L. James probably enjoyed writing Fifty Shades of Grey very much and did not think "my Twilight fanfic will make millions!"

No doubt. But with Clare, I get the sense she doesn't want to write dreck and doesn't want people to think she writes dreck, but may not fully understand how to get better.

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http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/

at 09:10 on 2013-09-03

with Clare, I get the sense she doesn't want to write dreck and doesn't want people to think she writes dreck

Obviously there's a non-trivial number of people who don't think that she writes dreck. She was a massively successful fanfic author, after all, to the extent of getting a professional publishing contract off her fanfic (and despite her books' debt to Harry Potter, unlike E.L. James she hasn't sold her fanfic; she had to write something from scratch and sell that). And I have seen other YA authors rave about her, though it's not clear to me how much of this is liking the books and how much liking her. Either way, she's got a community (and readers) who give her validation, and if the film of her book has been panned it will be pretty easy for her and her fans to take this as the result of adaptation decay rather than a reflection on the source material.

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Dan H

at 13:11 on 2013-09-03To be fair to Cla(i)re, I do think she's improved over the years. City of Bones was a gigantic incoherent mess. City of Ashes was a slightly less incoherent mess, City of Glass and Clockwork Angel were sort of okay. I mean they still had all of the annoying stuff that I'd expected from Clare's writing, but they actually told a story that made some modicum of sense.

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Alice

at 13:52 on 2013-09-03Either way, she's got a community (and readers) who give her validation, and if the film of her book has been panned it will be pretty easy for her and her fans to take this as the result of adaptation decay rather than a reflection on the source material.

This should be taken with a massive pinch of salt and a [citation needed], but the impression I got was that during the film production process, Clare had talked a lot about how closely involved with the film she was, but once it became clear the film was a flop, she backpedalled and began downplaying her involvement.

Then again, she's not in the business of making films, she's in the business of selling books, and she's pretty good at that.

And I have seen other YA authors rave about her, though it's not clear to me how much of this is liking the books and how much liking her.

Wasn't Maureen Johnson accused of being part of a YA Mafia (including Johnson and Clare) who were somehow all in cahoots and conspiring to get each other published? Because there happened to be a bunch of (aspiring/new) YA authors living in NYC at the same time who were friends and liked to hang out and write together, and happened to all get published to varying degrees of success/popularity? It all seemed a bit storm-in-a-teacup-ish to me, because, well, they were all in the same business, in the same city, and about the same age. And once two or three people become friends they're likely to make friends with each other's friends, especially if you're all in the same boat like that. And sure, they might have been able to help each other with getting agents and that sort of thing, but that's not quite the same thing as getting your friend published & on the bestseller list...

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http://alula-auburn.livejournal.com/

at 19:51 on 2013-09-03I've found the commercials amazingly bad, even for the parameters "that type of thing." Like, it's possible I've blocked it out, but I don't recall the Twilight ads looking so badly put together, in terms of picking out lines to quote or images to use.

Of course, I don't quite see how all the people involved in making a film didn't get the difference between something like Harry Potter or Twilight, which for better or worse penetrated the wider culture (even my extremely pop-cultural illiterate dad could identify Harry Potter as something with a school of wizards, and Twilight as vampires) and this--I think if you didn't have at least some sense of what the books were about the commercials would look even more pointless. (Which was kind of how I felt about the other YA fantasy flop? Beautiful Creatures? Southern accents and witches or something? I still don't know.)

I've not read the TMI (lol) books, but I did read the somewhat-annotated Draco trilogy in an overwrought, sleep-deprived unmedicated-for-a-chronic-pain-condition haze, and I can vaguely see how her style could be sort of compelling for the right sort of pretentious youthful mindset. (I didn't know about the plagiarism stuff then--I barely had a sense of fandom; I was a total naif.) But how it's held up to much more than that I don't know. I also don't know anything about TMI fandom--if the books have much if any staying power outside either that brief, pretentious adolescent window (which can almost be endearing in its own way) or the somewhat incestuous-seeming YA reviews. But there are adults, I guess, who find the ponderous self-absorption of the Twilight books (at least, that's the tone I saw in the quoted lines I read) to be good and profound writing.

That said, I find John Green tiresome and the bit of Maureen Johnson I read didn't do much for me. I don't know if I've had bad luck lately in my YA choices (I read Thirteen Reasons Why because I got it for free), but I've seen a lot more of that faux-deep heavy tone, which to me does not indicate a "maturing" of YA. (But I have personal reasons to be snippy about "literary" YA, so.)

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Alice

at 20:44 on 2013-09-04I've found the commercials amazingly bad, even for the parameters "that type of thing."

I don't know that I thought they were that unusually terrible (within the parameters of "that type of thing", at least), but I was confused by the number of English accents on display, particularly Jace's. Is he meant to be/sound English*, or is it just that Jamie Campbell Bower can't do a US accent?

*I don't remember him being pegged as English in the book, but I read that years ago and don't remember the details.

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Cammalot

at 21:42 on 2013-09-04One odd thing -- virtually every review I've read of this film has complained that Jayce is "a thousand years old" or similar and either doesn't act it, or shouldn't be macking on Clary at his age. Is that something that the film made particularly confusing? I don't recall him or any other forefront character being anything like an immortal in the book -- I mainly remember Isabelle being 14 and acting a bit precociously vampy.

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Dan H

at 19:26 on 2013-09-05@Alice

That confused me as well. I don't think I've ever *heard* him do an American accent, but the guy is an actor, surely he can learn? Is it that Valentine has an English accent because he's the villain, and Jace has an English accent because he was raised by Valentine? Or am I giving the film too much credit.

@Cammalot

One odd thing -- virtually every review I've read of this film has complained that Jayce is "a thousand years old" or similar and either doesn't act it, or shouldn't be macking on Clary at his age. Is that something that the film made particularly confusing?

*Everything* in the film is particularly confusing. The film makes no real attempt to explain anything, and there's one line where Jace says something about his people having been doing something "for a thousand years" and the way he says it I can see why somebody who wasn't familiar with Cla(i)re's work might think he was talking from personal experience.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 00:04 on 2013-09-06Fanon Draco must retain his English accent to remain fuckworthy. This point is not negotiable.

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Dan H

at 01:14 on 2013-09-06A tiny part of me is *incredibly* sad that they didn't cast Tom Felton as Jace.

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Cheriola

at 04:31 on 2013-09-06

While I agree that the wish to sexualise teenagers is probably part of the practise of

Dawson Casting

, the reasons for it are also based in labour laws. It's much less of a hassle to work with adults who can work a full day and don't still have to get high school lessons on the side / won't suddenly leave the franchise in order to start college. And you don't run into problems like the Harry Potter movies with teen actors who age faster than their characters or suddenly look a lot different than their characters are supposed to. (e.g. the actor playing Neville became quite handsome.) Plus, even if there is the occasional prodigy, most actors really do need drama school before being anywhere close to good enough to portray actual characters, instead of just being 'cute'.

Clearly Valentine was extraordinarily sexually precocious (even if we ignore the fact that Collins and Campbell-Bower are the best part of a decade older than the characters they portray, Rhys-Meyers' Valentine would still have to have started breeding at nineteen to have two seventeen-year-old kids).

Really? It's considered "precocious" to be a horny 19-year-old egomaniac who doesn't use condoms? Seems in keeping with the power-high invincibility complex and the lack of care for other people's problems that usually characterise a stereotypical villain like that. I mean, it's not him that would have to care the baby, unless he wants to.

Also, the scene with the ring is also pretty much the first time we learn the surnames of either Valentine or Fanon Draco.

I've skim-read the book article to know what you're even talking about, and... Wait, his surname is Morgenstern?! She took a character who was a blatant Hitler metaphor and made him ethnically Jewish? That... Wow.

One can only hope that she simply wanted a German name (because all Germans are Nazis...) and thought it would be cute to use one that doubled as a Lucifer reference (it means "morning star"), and that she simply didn't do any research on German name origins. [It's one of those names that the Jewish population of the Holy Roman Empire chose when they were forced to adopt surnames in the 18th century. Usually it's pretty-sounding compound words not refering to a profession - like Goldblum(e) ("golden flower"), Bernstein ("amber") or Lilienthal ("valley of lilies").]

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Fishing in the Mud

at 11:55 on 2013-09-06I think some reviewer pointed out that the "Morgenstern" thing is one more reason the film won't work for anyone old enough to remember

Rhoda

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Alice

at 14:09 on 2013-09-06I've skim-read the book article to know what you're even talking about, and... Wait, his surname is Morgenstern?! She took a character who was a blatant Hitler metaphor and made him ethnically Jewish? That... Wow.

Well, Cassandra Clare is herself Jewish, so I imagine she was aware of what she was doing when she introduced the Morgenstern reference (along with its cultural/historical baggage). :-)

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Cheriola

at 15:37 on 2013-09-06Really? Huh. Well, it's her right then, I suppose. I just wonder what went through her mind that she thought saying "Yeah, our guys could be just as bad, given half a chance" and feeding into 'zionists want world domination' myths was a good idea.

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Arthur B

at 15:43 on 2013-09-06Is it not possible for Clare to be both Jewish

and

ignorant of the name's history, so she plucked a name which sounded German to her out of thin air without researching it?

I suspect she was going for the "Morgenstern = Morning Star = Lucifer" deal rather than the "Morgenstern = Jew" angle, after all.

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Alice

at 16:14 on 2013-09-06Is it not possible for Clare to be both Jewish and ignorant of the name's history, so she plucked a name which sounded German to her out of thin air without researching it?

I suppose it's possible, but I'd honestly be very surprised if she didn't read Morgenstern as sounding Jewish, even if she didn't know about the historical origins of the name.

I suspect she was going for the "Morgenstern = Morning Star = Lucifer" deal rather than the "Morgenstern = Jew" angle, after all.

Yeah, same. I suppose the thing with Morgenstern is that it's an obvious enough reference that her readers are fairly likely to catch it (and feel all clever and intellectual), while still being a recognisable surname. (She could have used the Greek form if she'd wanted to be more pretentious than usual, but "(h)eosphoros" doesn't really lend itself to turning into a surname that's easily pronounceable in English.)

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Dan H

at 17:53 on 2013-09-06

Really? It's considered "precocious" to be a horny 19-year-old egomaniac who doesn't use condoms?

I was thinking more of the scenario in which he'd started having kids at eleven rather than nineteen (and I'm using "precocious" here in the sense of "premature" rather than "talented"). Although even nineteen doesn't *really* make sense if we look at the way that the history is played up - it's never suggested that Valentine got Jocelyn pregnant accidentally, or that he had kids unusually young.

Valentine is clearly *supposed* to be in his early forties at least, it's just that then he wouldn't be in the narrow window during which Hollywood decrees actors the right age to be sexy.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 23:07 on 2013-09-11

oh my what a shame who could have forseen rhubarb rhubarb

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Fishing in the Mud

at 02:03 on 2013-09-12Yeah, if it hasn't managed to turn a profit in a good three weeks, I don't blame anyone for backing off. The standards for bestselling books are a whole lot lower than for movie blockbusters.

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Dan H

at 16:02 on 2013-09-12

The standards for bestselling books are a whole lot lower than for movie blockbusters.

I assume you mean "the revenues expected from bestselling books are a whole lot lower than the revenues expected from movie blockbusters". Because for most other expectations (plot, characterization, that sort of thing), bestselling books and blockbuster movies are pretty much on par.

Also: I've been poking around the forums on Rotten Tomatoes and some of the discussions are hilarious. I particularly like the people complaining about Jace having a British accent, and the other people saying "No, that makes sense. They grew up in Idris, which is in Europe, so they'd naturally have picked up British accents."

Because all European people have British accents, you guys.

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Cammalot

at 20:11 on 2013-09-12

Because all European people have British accents, you guys.

I've long enjoyed listening to the variety of accents with which Swedish people speak English. (This is a tangent, but not a joke. There was a little honest-to-goodness rivalry in one of my classes between the ones who'd learned with a North American/U.S. accent and the ones who'd learned received pronunciation [capitalize?] -- two of these were siblings on opposite sides -- and they all ganged up on the lone Norwegian.)

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Dan H

at 22:37 on 2013-09-12

This is a tangent, but not a joke.

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

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Shim

at 23:10 on 2013-09-12

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

...and say "əw!"?

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Fishing in the Mud

at 01:16 on 2013-09-13

I assume you mean "the revenues expected from bestselling books are a whole lot lower than the revenues expected from movie blockbusters".

Right, sorry about the word salad. Yesterday was a long day.

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http://elsurian.livejournal.com/

at 05:24 on 2013-09-13In the halcyon days of 2008

Jesus Christ, has this franchise really been around for 5 years?

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Cammalot

at 18:13 on 2013-09-13

Three Swedes walk into a schwa?

Hee.

I want to make some sort of vegetable-based pun now, but I got nothin'.

Jesus Christ, has this franchise really been around for 5 years?

And going on what, nine books? (Gotta admire the productivity.)

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Dan H

at 19:05 on 2013-09-13Is anybody else feeling really freaking old right about now?

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Cammalot

at 19:55 on 2013-09-13Yes!

(Although that's partly because at today's freelance gig, I just met a coworker who was born my first year of college.)

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Dan H

at 21:58 on 2013-09-13Ouch.

I'm particularly looking forward to our next couple of GCSE intakes, which will be the point at which I start working with people who were born in the 21st century.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 00:44 on 2013-09-14Yeah, I just found out half the people I report to directly at work are younger than I am.

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#Ferretbrain #Cassandra Clare #The Mortal Instruments #Axis of Awful #Dan H

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itshistoryyall · 5 years ago

Text

Part Two: Well, We’re Here Now

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Here, we have to start with what we can recognize as a proverbial snowball rolling down a hill. Essentially, we have the Catholic church establishing a precedent for getting rid of people who were problematic for them by placing some trumped up charges on them, executing them in a way that makes an example for others whilst simultaneously encapsulating the attention of the commoners, and then carrying on as if they had every justification for making a scene like your mom at a restaurant when they bring out the food and it’s cooler than expected. You can only imagine the out of control spiral into unadulterated chaos that followed, and that, my friends, is known to history as the European Witch Trials (ßthe snowball that is now much larger than when it began rolling at the top of that hill). A few quick notes before we power through this—at this time we can see a multitude of “assassination conspiracies” popping up against one king or another, against the Pope, or against high ranking church officials/the nobility. A bishop is executed for heresy and attempted assassination of Pope John XXII via sorcery, others were arrested with similar charges attached to the very public executions, and ultimately you start to see sorcery, idolatry, and heresy all becoming somewhat synonymous. A few decades later, as we near the central part of the 1300’s, we see the Black Death beginning to rear its ugly head and as fears, tensions, and misinformation mount, people start seeing conspiracies everywhere they look. In 1340 when people start getting grossly sick and some inquisitions start popping up. Spearheaded by the Church, the united heresy combat forces (henceforth known as UHCF—I just came up with that it’s not, like, a term historians use) went out and, as Jesus commanded,

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version).

You know what that means (*insert eyebrow waggle here*), of course, they set out to rid the world of anything deemed “heresy” by the Church and that, most certainly, was up for personal interpretation. The reason we hear about these inquisitions getting such a bad rap is because people were genuinely afraid that any action they took might be mistaken for heresy, and without a clear definition of what that entailed they were most certainly right to be afraid. It’s important to highlight a bit of “Inquisition Era” timeline here—in and around 1100 the Catholic Church had, by its own definitions, all but eliminated heresy (whatever that actually means, we may never know), and they did so predominately without harm to those who stood accused. This “era of peace,” we’ll call it, ended around the 12th century when we start to see a spread of some opposing Christian ideas that were not specifically Catholic, and that couldn’t be tolerated. To nip that in the bud, we had some inquisitions come around checking things out. This process usually included, but was not limited to questioning, interrogation, arrest, imprisonment, and torture.

As a general rule, torture was, at least, publicly frowned on in Europe while other countries typically had a death sentence for heretics. As previously mentioned, in the 12th century that all changed when a tiny little papal bull, similar to a public decree, was issued by the not-at-all ironically christened Pope Innocent IV (I, quite frankly, can NOT believe that there were three others prior to this pope who were also called “Innocent” it’s just so god damn pretentious that it physically makes my skin crawl…I digress). The bull allowed torture in 1252, and by 1256 inquisitors who used this form of extracting information were promised absolution by the Church. So, to recap, we have this widespread knowledge of public executions of some of the most prominent figures in the medieval world (like that one guy in charge of the Knights Templar that predicted the deaths of a king and a pope in a non-awkward way that had no bearing on whether or not people believed in the supernatural, I’m sure), the establishment of an anti-heretic police force with little to no oversight and the ability to torture folks at will, and panicked people afraid that if the plague didn’t take them the inquisitors surely would.

To make matters worse, a new papal bull (pesky, those public decrees, I’ll tell ya..) issued around 1450 verified that witchcraft, heresy and a religious group called the Cathars were one in the same which gave them license to prosecute them as heretics or witches without just cause. Without going into too much detail about this, it’s important for you to know that the Cathars called themselves, “the good Christians,” and celebrated a twin deities that represented the God portrayed in the Old Testament, and the other represented the God of Judaism who was a bit synonymous with Satan, or either fathered, seduced, or created Satan (it’s a bit confusing, but that’s what happens when intolerant Christians try and convert believers of other religions to Christianity by way of removing what they originally believed and then replacing it with a more favorable and sort of similar Christian Approved™ bible story—i.e. pagan Ireland, Scotland, or literally any pagan religion in history). You should also know, Cathars essentially saw gender as meaningless and believed in the idea of reincarnation between genders which rendered normal gender roles and other “gender exclusive ideas” as basically useless to them. You can draw your own conclusions about why a male-dominated medieval world run by a religion known for its historical mistreatment of women, wouldn’t have received this idea well.

To reign this all in a bit, we’ve only moved a few centuries away from the establishment of Thomas Aquinas’ rules when we hit a milestone in the 15th century. Occasionally, the Church holds councils to decide on, debate, or discuss church matters, and one such event took place from 1431-1437 called the Council of Basel. Some historians suggest that while a bunch of old men were sitting together talking about stuff for six years that they may have gossiped amongst themselves (as silly men are want to do), and that this may explain the correlating witch trials that coincided with these same dates. It is only about 300 miles from where the council was held and the location of the first trial so you can see how this conclusion is easily drawn. AND NOW WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, it’s time to talk about our first round of witch trials.

The Valais witch trials named so because of its location in Valais in one of the oldest ecclesiastical territories that lies in the southern part of the country separating the Pennine Alps and the Bernese Alps. This region was French and German speaking and that’s important because the German word for witch is hexen, which is where we get the idea of a witch’s hex today, and although we can see an occasional and sporadic burning of witches throughout the 15th century, this marked the first time we see a large-scale systematic persecution for peoples accused of witchcraft/sorcery. It’s also important to point out the lack of accounts that we have during this time period, in part this is due to a general hatred for inquisitors who were in charge of keeping records, and later when the accusations included less heresy and more witchcraft we often see occasions of inquisitors being attacked and records being sabotaged or altogether destroyed. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t blame them, but it makes this part of history a bit more difficult to sus out, and a lot left up to really good detective work or wherever your imagination can take you (this is basically my favorite part). So, that was a long-winded way of saying, a lot of this next part is gonna be me doing my best to make this make sense, and to draw concise and enlightening conclusions that you can read and hopefully learn from (I know I am!).

So, what do we know here? We know that the main record of these trials comes from a guy named Johannes Fründ of Lucerne who was a Swiss clerk of the court, and his account is thought to be the, I won’t say accurate, but more likely only usable document to have an account of these events, though, severely lacking as they were written in the middle of the trials and with only 17 years before they ended. The trials began in the southern French-speaking part of Valais and then spread to the northern German-speaking part where we see a following expansion into the French and Swiss Alps, Savoy, and further into the valleys of Switzerland. It took place a solid fifty years before the witch trials started in Europe, and while the total number of victims is still unknown to us, the estimated death toll is an estimated 400 total men and women. When these accusations began to take place, the duchy of Savoy was recovering from a tumultuous civil war between the noble clans, and in August of 1428, seven delegates representing the districts in Valais insisted that the authorities investigate some supposed instances of witchcraft. If three or more people accused someone of witchcraft or sorcery they were to be arrested, questioned, and made to confess. At a time when torture practices were acceptable forms of interrogation you can see how that might have inspired a few people to confess to being witches without much prompting, but those who refused to do so were tortured until they did. What we know about the victims is that they were more likely women than men, but a significant portion of men were also executed, they were all peasants that were not specifically described as well-educated, but some were. Very few of their names were recorded, and they were not likely elderly as most of them withstood immense torture before they died.

The victims were accused of quite an array of magical experiences including flying, invisibility, removing an illness from one person and issuing it to another, curses, lycanthropy, conspiracy to deprive Christianity of its power, and the most famously known, conspiring with the Devil. These pacts that the witches supposedly entered into with the Devil included trading their souls, paying him taxes, renouncing Christianity, and halting all confession or church-going in exchange for supernatural abilities or an education in the magical arts. Those accused of these crimes were tied to a ladder with a bag of gunpowder hung around their necks, and a wooden crucifix in their arms and then burned alive, others were decapitated first, and even more were tortured to death but were nonetheless burned at the stake for good measure. Now here is where we can see a bit of a conspiracy emerge. Recall from earlier, my mentioning that clergy and nobles alike used witchcraft as an excuse to get rid of people, and just ruminate on that as I tell you that the property of these deceased and accused only passed to their families if they could swear that they were unaware of the sorcery. If they could not prove that, then the land passed to the noble who paid for the execution of these accused. I don’t know about you, but sounds sus to me. This particular genocide is unique to other witch trials in that almost as many men were executed as women, and that leads me to believe a few things: first, that the men were landowners and the nobility wanted the land they were on (would love if a map was available to see this progression, but alas, it has been lost to the sands of time), and two, this wasn’t about gender, but more about the crybaby nobles who were upset that they lost some things during the recent civil war and needed a hobby. It’s not a good look, and it certainly wasn’t without its consequences.

#witches #witch trials #inquisition #medieval europe #itshistoryyall #history #valais #switzerland #valais witch trials #part two #covid-19 #coronavirus #what day is it #social distancing

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jagaimogoshujinsama · 8 years ago

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rambling about shin men and hyu/kan. its long and self indulgent but if ur curious where my brains been at recently here it is

ive been in an out of a couple fandom interests recently, im still following new shin chan episodes closely (and i’ll get back to subbing some eps probably, at some point)...

anyway the past couple weeks i got, weirdly, super into hyu and kan as a ship. even though theres not a TON of content to work off, and also theyre ostensibly a het ship which can turn me off (and did at first, when i first realized kan is a ~secret girl~, in fact i have my reaction in writing

but then i gave shin men more of a chance and rly grew to appreciate all of the characters and.. the thing as a concept, and BOY!! i love kan a lot, like a heck of a lot. and since shes a girl who deliberately takes on a lot of masculine attributes its very easy to read her as genderqueer or transmasculine or even a trans dude straight up - though as a demi...gender?? person myself i like reading her as Soft Transmasc, because projecting onto cute little cartoon ppl is my favorite thing to do

so one of my main questions when i encountered this series was: who came up with this and why? what IS shin-men? this post will be me trying to explain it to myself:

shin-men was a concurrently-running anime AND manga series created in 2010 to celebrate the 20th year anniversary of shin-chan. the anime is obviously more well known, but the manga chapters tell the stories quite a bit differently and provide some more backstory - i own the first two volumes with the third on the way. the anime is awesome because it was seemingly spearheaded by Masaaki Yuasa (the kaiba dude), and as soon as I saw the first episode i assumed Shin-Men was his brainchild from start to finish. i’m not sure EXACTLY how much was his creation, conceptually speaking, but it is true that he finalized designs and a lot of basic concepts for the characters. (parabon is straight up hyo hyo!)

(from masaaki yuasa’s super huge sketchbook, which runs in the 40-50 dollar range. let me know if you find it cheaper anywhere ill accept a used copy with heavy spaghetti stains)

yuasa boarded the first five episodes of shin-men, and a subsequent 8 episodes were released with different boarders (primarily yuji mutou, who’s been a heavy hitter on shin-chan since 1998). yuasa’s 5 episodes are beautiful - i mean look at this

yuasa always brings an otherworldly, dreamlike quality to whatever story he’s telling. on shin chan he generally seemed to prefer fun AUs and outlandish stories about buriburi zaemon that would allow him to invent colorful new settings and costumes.

that’s what’s so refreshing about shin-men - it’s the first time the show completely abandons its core cast of characters and focuses on NEW ones, in a universe with different rules. except, just kidding, because shinnosuke is still the main character, he’s just red now and called gou. so even while shin-men is TECHNICALLY breaking the fundamental rule of shin-chan - that shin is the main character who is in every single episode no matter what - it’s still abiding by it, and it still feels like shin-chan. that’s not criticism, though - i like the various alt-universe appearances of shin-chan characters in the shin-men universe. my favorite is matsuzaka, who is called “matsuzakaroni”, is STILL a kindergarten teacher even in this very alien universe (and despite the fact that she, i think, hates it?), and most uncannily of all, gets hit on by gou?? also gou is an adult i think, in this universe’s rules, he’s just really short like all of the other shin-men who are also adults?? i mean, i THINK? why does nobody in universe ever seem to mention how tiny these apparent grown-ups ar

anyway i’m not an expert on shin-men. despite my efforts i don’t really understand exactly where it came from or where gou’s ears are

i hope some day someone will create really good english subs of it, though i realize that’ll be a serious effort since yuasa’s episodes ABOUND with onscreen text - fuck, just imagine editing the moving gossip clouds on botswanawana to have english text. how would you even do that.

but i do wanna talk about kan a little and why shes cool thats the topic of this post

kan akaluislar (thats her last name..) is one of the 5 shin-men, superheroes with elemental powers who all look like a 5 year old named shinnosuke nohara from another universe, but don’t think too much about that. kan’s the only one who doesn’t actually have a superpower - she’s the Iron Man of the group, like, literally she’s tony stark, she’s the super wealthy and successful president of a major automobile company and rules the school in her home country, Detahoit. (which is maybe a pun on detroit? i’m not sure what’s up with that name)

anyway in addition to being iron man she’s also Transformers and Fullmetal Alchemist, she’s all three of those guys. she turns into a car a lot and transports her teammates everywhere. she also OWNS a car and drives it around when she’s not being a secret car superhero. is that bitterly tragic, or does kan secretly PREFER to be the car? is that her darkest fantasy? to be a full time car instead of a car-driving ceo? that is my headcanon

kan guards the fact that she’s female from the group, convinced they’d treat her differently. specifically, she’s convinced gou and nyoki would hit on her (confirmed), sui would bitch her out for not having a proper skin care regimen (that’s sui’s big thing, by the way, is that he’s a bitchy youtube beauty vlogger), and - worst of all - hyu would kick her out, since girls can’t fight.

...which seems like a pessimistic view of hyu. hyu is the wind elemental in the group - he’s buff and a little dopey but kind hearted and sweet, the noble hero type. also a bit of a spoiled prince.

each member of shin-men gets a yuasa episode dedicated to them, and hyu’s episode - his main arc, really - centers on his love for kan, which he keeps secret, despite the powerful curiosity of his country’s gossipy citizens.

what interests me is the disparate ways the anime and manga handle this plot thread. the anime treats hyu’s crush very earnestly, maintaining an undercurrent of quiet affection from him that appears in the majority of its episodes. the manga, however, emphasizes kan’s disinterest in romantic advances from both gou AND hyu, then practically drops the topic of hyu’s crush. it doesn’t exactly defy or contradict the relationship they have in the anime, however -- but it makes me sad, because hyu’s crush on kan is extremely cute and endearing. (as a sidenote, gou’s thing for kan is also pretty cute, but it only exists in the manga, and, well - it’s not really a /romantic/ crush.

the shin-men manga makes a lot of different choices to the anime, and since the two were released concurrently i have no idea which “version” of any one story was the “original” - and in some cases i’m sure there isn’t an “original” version of a story, just two different ones. sometimes i really prefer the anime’s decisions (not drawing eyelashes on kan) and other times i’m... not sure what to think (the manga chapter with pimawari does NOT focus on kan, so did the anime decide to highlight kan’s relationship with pimawari because... kan’s a girl?? did they really do that? am i over thinking this?)

the manga does a GREAT job of fleshing out kan, though, even though it does so by torturing her, endlessly. she gets trapped inside of a washing machine. then has to use up all her fuel exploding out of the washing machine. the good news is, kan can repair washing machines, we learn this in episode 5 of the anime.

but be it manga OR anime, kan and hyu frequently wind up as partners who work well together, and its understandable. kan and hyu have private lives that mirror each other, both of them being high-profile and wealthy, pressured (kan by her conniving older sisters, hyu by his palace’s grand chamberlain) to settle down when neither of them is particularly interested, both preferring the life of a superhero. their private lives seem lonely and neither of them has any friends outside of shin-men. but within shin-men they team up frequently, and (being natural leaders) the two of them tend to take charge and stand out as The Responsible Ones.

(pointing = leadership)

this is what sells me on them as a couple - that they have this core of collaboration and mutual care in their superhero lives, which could build into a supportive friendship in their personal lives.

i very much love that hyu has a crush on kan despite thinking kan is a guy. that angle never comes up in the anime, though its lightly touched in the manga - and yuasa explicitly addresses it in his earliest notes. to quote,

“kan (iron shinnosuke) is the only girl within shin-men. since only men can be shin-men, she wears an iron suit to conceal the fact that she's female from everyone. and since she doesn't have a superpower, she relies on the power of her suit. hyu (wind shinnosuke) secretly likes kan but keeps thinking things like "could it be that i actually swing that way.." (lol). eventually, he's the only one who knows about her true self, but hides it from everyone so it won't be known.”

so, kan’s expectation of how hyu would react, having a sexist freakout and banning her from battle? apparently not representative of reality. which is good news because, even if kan doesnt want a love connection, she DESPERATELY needs a friend whom she doesnt feel the need to hide her private life from.

and at th end of the day thats what makes me happy: the idea that hyu can be this friend to kan, and they just chill out together, smoke a bong, get their truant son gou to cook them some curry, consolidate oil and wind technology to make both of their countries more sustainable and energy efficient, kiss etc.

im so curious if vol3 of the manga will give me any further insight.. i doubt it but im excited anyway

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Hummingbirds Quotes

Official Website: Hummingbirds Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); • A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him. – Czeslaw Milosz • A rhododendron bud lavender-tipped. Soon a glory of blooms to clash with the cardinals and gladden the hummingbirds! – Dave Beard • Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers. – Nathalia Crane • After a few mouthfuls of moon-flavored air, even the stubbornly drowsy can find themselves wide-eyed.. All the normal noises of life were gone, leaving behind the secretive sounds, the shy sounds, the whispers and conversations of moss disputing with grass over some soft piece of earth, or the hummingbird snoring. – N.D. Wilson • And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect corner of the world-never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness. – Clive Barker • As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on. – Leslie Marmon Silko

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Hummingbird', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '68', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird? – Calvin Trillin • Charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing: like a sense of humor, if you think you’ve got it, you probably haven’t. – Laurel Lea • Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity Ive met as a result of Downton Abbey. – Lesley Nicol • Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he’ll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house. – Agnes de Mille • either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. – Henry Miller • Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain’t no bird that’s my equal. – Twilight – Kathryn Lasky • furious flutter awakened hummingbird heart hello hello love – Megan McCafferty • Gentle day’s flower – The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air. – Chogyam Trungpa • He has the attention span of a hummingbird. – Christopher Moore • He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that – his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths – but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.- Tom Robbins • He wasn’t that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird – Karen Chance • How do you view God in a desert? There’s two types of birds. There’s vultures, and there’s hummingbirds. One lives off dead carcasses, rotting meat. The other lives off the beautiful, sweet, nectar in a particular flower, on a particular desert plant, in the same desert. They both find what they’re looking for. Do you know – take it all the way back into the Old Testament – and the Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God. Allah, to a Muslim; to us, Abba Father, God. – Brian Houston • I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There’s a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song. – Leonard Cohen • I had the metabolism of a hummingbird on crack. – Ilona Andrews • I like snakes. I like hummingbirds. There’s nothing on earth I don’t like. Frogs. Salamanders. The bunnies, the giraffes, the hippopotamuses. – Ted Turner • I love devastating movies, documentaries and hummingbirds (yes, in that order). – Tig Notaro • I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs]. – Leonard Cohen • I’d like to be like a hummingbird. You see them every now and then. You don’t see them everywhere. – Shailene Woodley • I’d written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: ‘Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don’t listen to me’. – Leonard Cohen • I’m a Gibson guy. I play anything from Hummingbirds to J200s. – Corey Taylor • I’m more of a culture hummingbird. – Jai Rodriguez • In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching. – Francesca Lia Block • it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom seen or that we are too senseless to go insane. coffee. give us more of that NOTHING coffee. – Charles Bukowski • Most elegantly finished in all parts, [the hummingbird] is a miniature work of our Great Parent, who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the most beautiful of the winged species. – J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur • Much still remains to be learned about his sex life because the Hummingbird is quicker than the eye. – Will Cuppy • My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it’s operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance–this is why people tell me secrets–my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. – Dave Eggers • My mother’s eyes were large and brown, like my son’s, but unlike Sam’s, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can’t quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around. – Anne Lamott • My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. – Mary Oliver • One day a hummingbird flew in– It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella– –When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn’t believe I had it–but I could feel the intense life–so intense and so tiny– …You were like the humming bird to me… And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together– –It is not that I fear the knowing– It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me–it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive. – Georgia O’Keeffe • Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. – Derrick Jensen • Quick as a hummingbird…she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart. – James Oppenheim • Regularity chauvinists are people who insist that you have got to do the same thing every time, every day, which drives some of us nuts. Attention Deficit Disorder – we need a more positive term for that. Hummingbird mind, I should think. – Ted Nelson • Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded “Me and Bobbby McGee” on … Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes .. she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that. – Sam Andrew • Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur. – Mira Bartok • Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings – Ellen Hopkins • The first and most important thing for me is that people feel how beautiful fashion can be and that it is not just a case of well-made and expensive clothes. Fashion is so rich and it is such an amazing occupation because we can draw on so many different sources of inspiration – just as a hummingbird feeds on a multitude of flowers. – Dries van Noten • The retriever took each bit of meat from his master’s hand with a delicacy almost equal to that of a hummingbird sipping sugar water from a garden feeder, and when it was all gone, he gazed up at Dusty with an adoration that could not have been much less than the love with which the angels regard God. – Dean Koontz • There is a difference between our wisdom and nature’s simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. – Alison Hawthorne Deming • There’s as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. – Morris Sheppard • They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator. – David Attenborough • Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock ‘n’ roll things – country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin’ Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn’t even know where Alabama was. – Bob Dylan • We at Google have made tremendous advances in understanding language. Our knowledge graph has been fundamental to that. The new algorithm that we launched today called Hummingbird has been a great leap forward. – Amit Singhal • We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don’t rise to be literature, and I’m speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird. – Ben H. Winters • We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can. – Wangari Maathai • We’ve all led raucous lives, some of them inside, some of them out. But only the poem you leave behind is what’s important. Everyone knows this. The voyage into the interior is all that matters, Whatever your ride. Sometimes I can’t sit still for all the asininities I read. Give me the hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times His own weight a day just to stay alive. Now that’s a life on the edge. – Charles Wright • When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians. – Wynton Marsalis • when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. – Henry Miller • You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life-you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life. – Miguel Angel Ruiz • You are so high in the tree.If you jumpyou will live a full lifewhile falling.You will get marriedto a hummingbirdand raise beautiful part- hummingbirds. You will die of cancerin mid-air. I will not lie. It will be painful. You are a brave little boyor girl. – Zachary Schomburg

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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Hummingbirds Quotes

Official Website: Hummingbirds Quotes

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swipestream · 6 years ago

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New Release Roundup, 24 November 2018: Fantasy and Adventure

Samurai struggle with honor in civil war, dragons soar over nuclear wastelands, and Louis L’Amour, Andre Norton, and David Drake return in this roundup of the newest releases in fantasy and adventure fiction.

Blade of Retribution (Blood Samurai #3) – Lynn Francis

An emperor’s wraith from the grave that would see the fall of a dynasty and the rise of the samurai.

At great cost to his soul and sanity, Riku believes he has the demon Sutoku under control. With the aid of the witch Takiyasha hime the demon Sutoku is no longer a separate presence but a part of Riku – a part that demands the blood of those he seeks his vengeance upon.

The war that had been brewing has been in stalemate and a supernatural famine is tearing apart the land. Before it reaches it’s breaking point the Taira move against the Minamoto and the Minamoto will be ready.

For they have also made a pack for power and as betrayal after betrayal comes, the dark forces that threaten to consume the land grow stronger and stronger.

Will Riku be able to overcome his past and stop both his and his country’s descent into madness?

Cirsova: Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction #10 – edited by Cirsova Publishing

Cirsova Magazine is for readers who want exciting tales of daring heroes up against impossible odds in exotic settings. It’s also for authors of adventure SFF.

Novelette

Crying in the Salt House, by B. Morris Allen

Short Stories

Jeopardy Off Jupiter IV, by Spencer E. Hart

The Best Workout, by Frederick Gero Heimbach

A Song in Deepest Darkness, by Jason Ray Carney

Amsel the Immortal, by Lauren Goff

An Interrupted Scandal, by Misha Burnett

The Sword of the Mongoose, by Jim Breyfogle

When Gods Fall in Fire, by Brian K. Lowe

Poetry

My Name is John Carter (Part 7), by James Hutchings

Dragon Mage – Andre Norton and Jean Rabe

Shy realizes that she is lucky to be taken in by her grandparents after her father dies–but life above an antique store in Slade’s Corners, Wisconsin is not exactly the place a teenage girl wants to be.

One day while going through boxes of her father’s boyhood stuff, she comes upon a rare old set of dragon puzzles … all of which are missing pieces. Her grandmother recalls the fantastic tales Shy’s father would tell about his travels to lands of dragons and adventure. She always thought that these fantasies were inspired by the puzzles Shy has found.

Shy realizes that by mixing and matching the different sets she can complete a single dragon puzzle that combines all of the others. Upon doing so she is whisked away to ancient Babylon where she must continue the duties of her father’s legacy as a servant to the dragon and a savior of the world.

Iron Garland (Harbinger #3) – Jeff Wheeler

For three years, Sera Fitzempress has been a pawn in a gilded prison—the floating manor of Pavenham Sky. Disgraced and exiled from society, she has been isolated from the downtrodden she’s determined to liberate. But although Sera may seem subservient on the outside, the stubborn princess has only become emboldened.

Now in charge of her family’s estate, Cettie Pratt has grown into an independent young woman, although she continues to be tested by the high society of the clouds. Advancing in the magic of the Mysteries, Cettie is also a useful tool of defense during turbulent times. However, as more of Cettie’s mysterious past comes to light, her greatest challenge may be a reckless stranger with a dark secret.

The fog of war is drawing in, and with it comes a startling new enemy who may unravel secrets that both women would prefer stay hidden. But their secrets may be the only way to stop the coming darkness…

The Minstrel and the Mercenary – David Scoles

For Dafydd ap Gwilym, Welsh poet and minstrel, a life composing poems of chivalry and courtly love while enjoying the patronage of the Black Prince of Wales felt like the dream of every poor second son – until he found himself caught up in the siege of Caen and needed to be rescued by the dangerous Radu the Black, a hardened mercenary of Transylvania.

Forced into an unlikely partnership by the King of England, Gwilym and Radu must solve a murder while hunting down a band of killers led by a mercenary known only as the Nachzehrer, but there is more to this murder than Gwilym suspects…

The fate of Europe is the balance as Radu and Gwilym race to uncover a conspiracy, but can a minstrel and a mercenary find a way to trust one another even as the past comes back to haunt them both?

No Traveller Returns (Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures #2) – Louis L’Amour and Beau L’Amour

As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying eighty thousand barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous, with the entire crew aware that one careless moment could lead to disaster.

But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day existence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has his own history, dreams and jealousies, longing and rage, all are connected by a deadly web of chance and circumstance.

Some are desperately fleeing the past; others chase an unknown destiny. A few are driven by the desire for adventure, while their shipmates cling to the Lichenfield as their only true home. In their hearts, these men, as well as the women and children they have left behind, carry the seeds of salvation or destruction. And all of them—kind or cruel, strong or broken—are bound to the fate of the vessel that carries them toward an ever-darkening horizon.

Radioactive Evolution – Richard Hummel

How far would you go to change humanity’s fate?

Jared Cartwright has spent the last two years delving into the twisted, scarred wastelands of an earth ravaged by nuclear war. The rich and powerful have taken to the oceans and skies on floating utopias, escaping destruction and leaving the rest of humanity to fend off the mutated creatures that roam the earth.

To face his new reality, Jared must become an apex predator if he hopes to survive. He must evolve beyond human limitations to confront those that left mankind to die.

Jared’s quest takes a new turn when he discovers dragons are real.

Red Skies (The Valens Legacy #11) – Jan Stryvant

With the President on his side and the failure of the Vestibulum’s last-ditch attempt to stop him, it seems that Sean’s goal is almost complete. Until, that is, the First moves up Sean’s timetable to deal with Canada and Mexico. Also it seems that a group in Congress is starting to push back against the President’s executive order, but no one really seems to know why. Or even who’s behind it.

Canada proves to be full of unexpected surprises, but when events start heating up in Washington D.C., Sean is forced to switch gears and reassess his priorities. Things are not always what they seem, of course, and things that didn’t make sense before start to take on an ominous meaning as Sean begins to learn about the real enemy that he is facing.

And he’ll be facing them much sooner than anyone suspected.

The Spark (Time of Heroes #1) – David Drake

In the time of the Ancients the universe was united—but that was so far in the past that not even memory remains, only the broken artifacts that a few Makers can reshape into their original uses. What survives is shattered into enclaves—some tiny, some ruined, some wild.

Into the gaps between settlements, and onto the Road that connects all human reality and the reality that is not human and may never have been human, have crept monsters. Some creatures are men, twisted into inhuman evil; some of them are alien to Mankind—and there are things which are hostile to all life, things which will raven and kill until they are stopped.

A Leader has arisen, welding the scattered human settlements together in peace and safety and smashing the enemies of order with an iron fist. In his capital, Dun Add, the Leader provides law and justice. In the universe beyond, his Champions advance—and enforce—the return of civilization.

Pal, a youth from the sticks, has come to Dun Add to become a Champion. Pal is a bit of a Maker, and in his rural home he’s been able to think of himself as a warrior because he can wield the weapons of the Ancient civilization. Pal has no idea of what he’s really getting into in Dun Add. On the other hand, the Leader and Dun Add have no real idea of what might be inside this hayseed with high hopes.

Web of Eyes (Buried Goddess Saga #1) – Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle

The kingdom’s only hope against evil is a rotten thief.

Self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Thief”, Whitney Fierstown, has yet to find a trinket or treasure he couldn’t steal. He nearly pulls off the heist of the century by snatching the Glass Crown off the dying king’s head until rotten luck throws him into the path of Torsten Unger, a steadfast knight determined to save his vulnerable kingdom.

Torsten offers this ultimatum: rot and die in a dank cell or join him on a dangerous expedition and put his skills to good use. The Queen’s treasonous brother has cursed the Crown Prince by taking a piece of his soul and hiding it in the haunted Webbed Woods. Only a master thief can steal it back.

Rebellion building in the south. Madness seated upon the throne. Famine and death spreading throughout the land. The kingdom is in peril.

If this unlikely pair is to thwart their devious target, save the prince, and survive the horrifying monster lurking in the darkness, they must first put aside their differences…or die trying.

New Release Roundup, 24 November 2018: Fantasy and Adventure published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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