#no matter the universe he is a deranged little beast up to no good

[riocinn]

rockafire human au where earl is a crusty white dog covered in tumeric

[koqabear]

hello hello WHERE HAS THAT ALIEN SOOBIN TENTACLE PORN FIC ALL MY LIFE???????

as a fiend for all things terrestrial and lover of monster fucking i just lost my mind over how mind numbingly good that was

and i mean all of it, like the world building is on top and how i love the power dynamics when mc got into the kingdom, and am i deranged for thinking the scene w mc tied down to a chair was so hot?

oh imma get into soobin like HSJKDODJSJWI ur descriptions on his alien physique and powers was so so good like the image i have of him in my mind is killing me, if i have the skill to draw i'd fill up a whole book w him

AND THE SMUT GODDAMN!!!!!! how mc didn't moan when soobin choked her is beyond me but omfg that got me all fucked up i was starting to feel like im in heat too 😭

like im banging my head on the wall how u manage to build up all the tension from mc being level headed and leader-like to her throwing herself on tyun and hyuka and then still trying to brat out soobin to ultimately get her mind broke.

ALSO THE FACT THEY WATCHED AAAA im making myself ctfu cuz i kept imagining them in their minds w mini spongebobs panicking and burning files while trying to not make eye contact 💀

love how soobin also slowly got softer like he's this tall almighty couldn't-look-into-his-eyes intimidating being back at the palace and now he's a cuddly smug lil shit w mc just cuz they mated 🥹

which btw im also curious as to how he's able to form a bond by injecting his blood (?) into her, which is completely fine by me if u wanna leave that up for Interpretation! im just so interested in this universe, like bullets don't affect soobin? his species instilling fear after mc figured out what he is? could soobin just kill the mc and sever the bond or could he not? like how good of a pussy do u need to have to tame this beast?

u don't have to answer all that im getting obsessed w this fic and the world and i need to stop this is getting so long im sorry 🥲

anw i love ur writing and ur one of my fav writers, that was such a good good read and it's definitely my top favorites now, honestly every fic u put out has impeccable background and again i adore how u write relationships and dynamics so naturally and deep and the whole experience is just so immersive

k ending this here before i add another 10 paragraphs... 🚶‍♀️

hahaha thank you!!! this sudden resurgence of interest for what the body wants was completely unexpected but wholeheartedly welcomed! this fic was the first lengthy, detailed one that i published on here, so it’s such a compliment to hear that you enjoyed it ! <3 and omg, you’re making him wanna draw him now… pause… i think i will after this. 

i honestly was a little worried that both the mc’s and soobin’s change was too sudden 😭 i still feel like i could’ve executed it better, maybe? or maybe i’m just overthinking things, idk. but seriously, that smut was genuinely one of the most insane one i’ve ever written?? i didn’t realize that i’d forever be cementing soobin to a life of nonhuman!aus after that— sorry soobin i simply do not make the rules. 

i answer your questions under the cut!! i also go overboard with it aksbsksn

-[blood bonds? how tf does that work?]

ok. so! in the universe that WTBW is set in, Soobin’s species (that i am too lazy to go check the name of) are seen as absolute indestructible units by both other aliens/monsters and humans. Why is that? Because of their blood! it’s used as a weapon against other nonhumans because it’s toxic and deadly— thus, the reputation of the lilac blood gave the creatures the image of being insanely dangerous. 

as a matter of fact, there are operation sites that breed and harness blood from Soobin’s species because it’s such a sought after (and illegal. insanely illegal.) weapon! and that’s the reason why humans— more specifically, the mc and her crew— are so terrified of the Hexen species, (yes i did look up the name just now.) and more importantly, their blood— because it’s known to be used as a lethal weapon. 

Now, onto the main question; blood bonds, what the hell is up with that? lilac blood is lethal to every species but the one it came from— in other words, it doesn’t harm the hexen species. so, when they give each other / inject their blood into each other (i know, it sounds a little gross) it’s basically their way of bonding/mating— it represents them uniting and becoming one, and is a promise to remain together as long as they’re alive; yeah, they bond for life! 

-[do bullets affect soobin? how strong is he?]

long story short, yes— however, they don’t affect him as much as they would a normal human, or another nonhuman that isn’t as strong as his species. would they penetrate his skin? yes, but it would be a surface wound at most; his species has evolved to be extremely strong because they carry lilac blood and are able to receive it, so their body should be strong enough to handle it, and also, they have like six other limbs to attend to— it takes quite a bit of mental and physical strength to be able to develop and strengthen everything properly, if that makes sense.

could the mc’s crew have taken him down? yeah, a headshot is a headshot and soobin would’ve been a goner askdlh,, but his threats were enough to bring them to their senses bc yk.. he has tentacles that can move at the blink of an eye and he would’ve most likely taken one of them down before getting killed. he’s not invincible, but you do have to put a little extra effort in harming/killing him.

-[could soobin just kill the mc to break the bond?]

here’s the fun part hehe— so lilac blood, when used on humans, doesn’t kill them. Instead, it acts as an aphrodisiac. originally, lilac blood was only used as a weapon against non-humans; in other words, before space exploration evolved into what it is in that universe. Because of that, the hexen species didn’t evolve to combat against humans— which means the deadly aspect is taken away from the whole injection of it all. on soobin’s planet, everyone is already strictly against interacting with humans— the hatred doesn’t run as intense as other planets however, which is why soobin is so indifferent when he encounters the mc without her pin— so really, none of them knew what would happen if you injected your blood into them. 

soobin simply thought it would work as usual; what he didn’t account for, however, was the fact that humans don’t die from it— which means that they’re able to sustain it, and now… soobin’s body and mind thinks he’s just bonded with another of his kind!

as previously mentioned, the hexen species bonds for life— meaning that, if soobin tried to kill the mc, his body would go haywire and immediately think that his mate— his other half— is dead. a life without your mate can be seriously detrimental to both one’s physical and mental health, so soobin wouldn’t have lasted long without the mc; he would’ve been immediately weakened, and the crew would’ve taken that chance to take him down— if they somehow chose to keep him alive, he quickly would’ve died after anyway. (that’s dark sorry.)

ahhhh im so mad i never really included any of this in the original fic, but thank you so much for leaving me such a kind review and allowing me to ramble about this story!! i hope this answered your questions hehe, thank you again!  

[wickedsrest-rp]

Name: Christopher Gates Species: Werewolf Occupation: Nature Photographer Age: 30 Years Old Played By: Amanda Face Claim: Dacre Montgomery

"I’m not the monster... I can’t be."

TW: Parental death, sibling death, neglect, memory loss

In hindsight, Christopher realized that the universe had it out for him since day one. He had been born under the silver glow of the full moon with disastrous complications — his mother didn't make it, leaving his father to care for him and his older sister, Clara. The man blamed Chris for his mother's death, so much so that he started to neglect the boy and treated him as more of an inconvenience instead of his child. Chris didn't experience the same love and care that his sister did, which drove a wall between the siblings.

His father was an established farmer in the area and owned a plot nestled up against a thick wooded area. Between the trees was where Christopher found solace with the foliage and animals — he sketched them out in little notepads he'd get from school or captured them with his disposable camera. Soon enough, his bedroom was filled with images of deer, birds, ferns, and more; it was his own little haven within his father's house and for a while that was enough. Life was okay.

And then it got worse — so much worse.

There had been talk around town that something was killing livestock and pets. Something big. Many speculated that it was a bear that wandered too close to civilization, but no one had laid eyes on the beast — just the carnage left in its wake. Christopher wasn’t so lucky.

During one of his forest excursions, Chris came face to face with the creature. It was a massive wolf, larger than any he’d seen on prior walks; there was a good distance between them, so his intention was to snap a quick photo and get the hell out of there. He hoped that its meal would be enough of a distraction, but the universe wasn’t finished with Chris yet and laughed in his face. His first step backward earned a sickening crunch. There was a stick, small, but it was enough to make his presence known when he stepped down. The next instant was a flurry of teeth and fur; he didn’t even have time to lift his foot before he felt the wolf’s hot breath on his skin. And then there was nothing.

Nothing until he woke in his bed with his wounds bandaged. 

His sister had found him and helped to nurse him back to health despite their father's disapproval. Again, the universe laughed in Christopher's face. He survived the attack and the vicious wounds and the wretched illness that followed, but his troubles were far from over — the next full moon that came to pass, as beautiful as it was, brought the beginning of an onslaught of nightmares.

Christopher hadn't meant to kill her. He wasn't even present, at least, that's what he kept telling himself. But he couldn't explain why he woke up in the middle of the woods, blood soaked and naked. He couldn't explain the blood underneath his fingernails. Christopher was meant to take the blame again; he didn't kill his sister, he would never. They didn't have the best relationship, but she was family and now she was dead. In his father's eyes, Chris was a monster, so he took matters into his own hands and called for the local hunter, a rather deranged man. 

It was then that Christopher could swear he heard the universe cackle — it was an ugly sound, one that cemented his fate and the torture that soon followed. Whatever creature that ripped his sister to shreds, the one within, had reared its head under the pressure. It acted as an unwilling shield, one that so desperately wanted out of the cage. Time disappeared for the wolf and for Chris, who no longer in that moment  really existed. He had felt himself slip deeper and deeper away, leaving his mind open for the feral defense to take hold. The years passed, the torment was steady — but everyone winds up making a mistake.

The attack was violent, personal, and left little that was identifiable. 

And just like that, Chris came to. He found himself in his childhood home again, naked, and covered in blood again. His father's mangled body lay a few feet from him. In the silence and iron smell that surrounded him, Christopher cleaned himself and dressed before he walked out. It all felt so surreal to him, as if this were nothing more than a dream — or a nightmare. It couldn't be real, he'd told himself then, it couldn't be. Denial had a strong grip on him as he tried to shake off flashes of carnage that plagued him, but it waned with each full moon that passed. Despite finding himself in a field, naked, or in the woods, naked, Christopher refused to believe that he was the problem. He had been the problem his whole life — why should he take the blame now?

Still, he didn't believe that. No, he was terrified. To compensate, Chris tried his hardest to suppress the animal beneath his skin, which seemed to only anger it further. It started with deer and moose, then cows and sheep or whatever pet was available. People were next to disappear. Staying in a city for longer than a month or two was impossible  — and then came Wicked’s Rest. With its long list of cryptid sightings and weird, creepy happenings, Chris thought that maybe he could fly under the radar. Maybe then he would be fine.

The universe laughed again.

Character Facts:

Personality: Observant, resourceful, earnest, apprehensive, reticent, volatile

Chris is a decent guitar player, not great, but he’s still practicing and it helps calm him down.

He doesn’t remember much of the trauma his wolf endured, only fragmented memories and feelings.

Chris has heterochromia; his right eye is blue and his left is brown.

His wolf’s fur color is similar to this.

[septembriseur]

You guys know that I’m back to working on Transposition. But it is, frankly, a challenge, and I feel a lot of pressure to put something out there and prove that the story will be finished. So I’m posting what is essentially some AU tidbits, because it’s a draft of part of Chapter 52 that I threw out and totally reconceptualized. It is not particularly good, but here it is!

Telford trades the tel’tak to a junk dealer in the P3S-805 system and ends up in a ratty little cobbled-together half-Kerobottri exoship that shakes when you try to engage its makeshift FTL drive, but, hey, it comes with no questions asked. And it’s not like he has any reason to be picky; he’s just trying to get a couple of gate-trips ahead of Kiva’s people before he finds a spaceport and settles down to get drunk.

The place he ends up in is a shithole clustered around the North Pole of a medium-sized planet in the Formalhaut Debris Ring, about twenty-two light years from Earth. It’s a frozen, sandy desert with a dozen tiny speckling moons above it, and not a single building more than three stories tall. It caters to frack miners running hot crews through the debris ring, which the LA’s First and Second House periodically squabble over, and the occasional Goa’uld war criminal hoping to lay low. That makes it a good place for Telford, even if the liquor is shitty. So he hauls out some of the raw data crystals that he stripped off the Sixth House tel’tak and pays enough to dock his ship, then keeps paying until the barkeeper at the watering hole hands over the bottle.

It’s whatever the latest thing is that the Lucian kids are cooking up out of kassa. It doesn’t really taste like anything; just like ethanol and antiseptic. He hunkers down in his ship and knocks the stuff back without a chaser. And again. And then again. For a while, grimly determined, that’s all he does: limiting his world to the fumes that he breathes out, and the back of his throat, where the mucous membrane is burning.

He doesn’t have a jacket anymore, but he’s got what the bounty hunter threw in with the exoship: a couple of Himalayan-looking blankets made out of knotted-up fibers, and a hooded coat lined with some kind of animal fur. So he puts the coat on, and, after a while, the hood too, then drags one of the blankets over his shoulders and breathes into his cupped hands. He can smell the coat’s earthy leather, and whatever it is that fur smells like. The air smells like naquadah and ozone. He looks out over the bulks of the ships, great beasts sleeping in the desert on every side of the outpost-city, some as tall as the buildings and twice as big. The dim light of the sun, filtered through dust clouds, glints off the shinier of their surfaces, along with the occasional scattered fleck of a moon. They’re like shrapnel wounds, that spray of moons— not quite regular enough to be strafe-marks, but deep enough that you can see the inside of whatever it is that was punctured.

He takes another abrupt swig of the liquor.

He thinks his first step should be to take stock of what he has left. The Hemingway is gone now, and the Dostoevsky. The— assorted personal knickknacks that he hadn’t needed anyway. He took enough shit off the tel’tak to last him a little while if he barters, but when he’d made his elaborate back-up plans, he always assumed he’d be leaving from Earth. So he hasn’t got a whole hell of a lot of assets out here in deep space. He can always sell intel, but that comes with the risk of someone back-tracing the information. Or he can take the sensible option and just turn mere. It’s what a lot of guys did on Earth, anyway, after they’d left the service, if they’d gotten deep in debt or just couldn’t fit in.

He’d tried to imagine it himself, when he was younger: leaving the service. Retiring. Consulting. Security. A house, a car, a wife, a couple of kids. On some level that language didn’t reach down to, the thought had always repelled him. He’d thought that if he tried it, he would end up like one of those guys you heard about who just went missing, just up and walked away from their lives one day. They turned up twenty years later running a tackle shop off the coast of Alaska, or flying prop planes in the South Pacific, or else they didn’t turned up, and stayed question marks forever, strangers who had sealed whatever secret they carried so well inside them that they had taken it, totally unknown, to their graves.

It was possible to do that. It wasn’t a failure. Maybe it even meant that you’d won. Whatever was inside you, you’d kept it: pure and unsullied, a hard bright crystal, a fuel you could burn. It was uncontaminated and yours forever.

He can feel it inside him now: a pain in the region of his chest, close to but not exactly contiguous with the heart.

He drinks and watches cosmic dust catch the amber glow of the distant sunlight.

A cold wind shifts and rattles the sand.

***

An ice storm in the morning, with no rain: only hailstones rattling like pebbles against the walls of the exoship. He wakes from a restless sleep still wrapped in fur and heavy blankets. He feels like God has picked up the box he’s hiding in and shaken it right next to His ear to hear if anything left inside still scuttles. He thinks about Rush explaining Wittgenstein’s beetle. There is something alive in us, though it may be a very singular creature. It may not be what other people thought— hoped— it was.

Still. Something scuttles. Insect legs against the siding.

He erases his travel history in the ship’s computer and swallows down another couple fingers of kassa liquor for breakfast, tunelessly humming Mahler under his breath, then throws it up an hour later courtesy of his hangover.

When he stands, he sees starbursts against the array of evening. It’s not really evening, of course; there’s not really night or day, this close to the magnetic pole of a planet, unless you count the constant half-dim polar twilight. One long night lasting half a year, deranging the little rock’s temporalities like every other kind of measurement was deranged by the location. Get too close to the axis of something, and you lose all sense of how to chart it.

He’s familiar with the problem.

***

Ships come and go like fireflies in a summer time-lapse, their engines burning off into the dusk.

It’s fall on Earth, he guesses. So: no more fireflies, which: fuck ‘em, anyway. They only last a few months before they’re done. Like humans, when seen from an Ascended perspective. Little chips of mica; little specks of dust. You could lose a fistful and not notice, so why should they matter?

He thinks of Rush sinking his hands in the floor up to the wrists, as though he could reach down and reclaim the mineral flecks trapped there for eons. As though the whole universe were just water, none of it yet set in stone around him.

It should’ve been me, Telford thinks. It should’ve been me who—

But he hadn’t had the genes.

Always something missing.

***

He doesn’t speak English out here. He speaks the degraded Babylonian of Sixth House. Or at least that’s what Jackson had always said it was— the bastard child of Akkadian and Aramaic, mixed with the Hebrew dialects of the Asar planets, sort of like what might have happened if the Babylonian Empire still existed. He’d had to learn it from scratch when he went undercover the first time, in case the translation matrix ever encountered a glitch. It was hard work, but he was good at it, at least according to Jackson. Jackson had seemed faintly surprised; Telford had said, “You thought I’d be as dumb as a brick.” “No,” Jackson had said, but his eyes had slid guiltily away. Telford had smirked, grimly pleased by the implied admission. Jackson had said, too hurriedly, “I didn’t. II wasn’t surprised because— I mean, I wasn’t alluding to— obviously that’s not what I meant.”

What he’d meant didn’t interest Telford. At forty-two years old, he’d had every version of that conversation, the one that was all ellipses. The last thing he wanted was to rehash them again with fucking Jackson. So, instead, he’d said, “Aramaic in space. Doesn’t it ever make you wonder?”

Jackson had looked uncomfortable. He’d adjusted his glasses with both hands. “Wonder what?”

“Oh, don’t play coy with me. If Jesus was— you know.”

“Extraterrestrial, you mean? A Goa’uld? The idea’s been floated.”

“And?”

They’d been sitting in an empty conference room, waiting for some meeting to start; it had been late, Telford thinks now, or very early; there had been this hush, like sound was suppressed. Sometimes late at night there, he’d feel like he was under the ocean: the pressure deforming his eardrums, till all he could hear was the rush of his own blood. Jackson had toyed with a pencil, balancing it on the side of one finger. Unbidden, Telford had been reminded of the Egyptian scale of justice, where your heart was weighed against a feather after you were dead. The image had seemed apt; Daniel, he’d thought, what a fan-fucking-tastic Eternal Judge you’d make, sitting there with your schoolboy pout and your moralizing.

Without looking up, Jackson had said, “Oh, I don’t know. Not really the Goa’uld modus operandi, is it?”

“No? Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; forget about getting what you deserve, and God’s going to magically provide you with loaves and fishes?”

“That seems like a very thin interpretation of the Gospels.”

Telford had half-laughed incredulously. “You’re going to come over all Christian on me, Jackson?”

Jackson flattened his pout out into a thin line. “I hardly think it has to be Christian to suggest that the impulse behind one of Earth’s major religions, and a full interpretation of its sacred texts, is about more than just the redistribution of resources.”

“So— what, then?” Telford moved restlessly in his chair.

“Divine justice,” Jackson said. He had the air of someone offering a challenge. “The idea that there’s something beyond us, some truth, some ultimate harmony or knowledge. Something that we’re a part of, if we want to be— if we want to be good.”

Telford had felt incredulous. “Knowledge,” he’d repeated. “Ultimate knowledge.”

“You don’t think that’s what God is? Knowledge?” Jackson seemed genuinely curious. His forehead was furrowed.

“Well,” Telford said, “for starters, I don’t think God is good.”

“I can’t tell you how amazed I am to hear it.” Jackson’s mouth gained a sad quirk. He looked down, at where the pencil was perfectly balanced on his finger. “So: not harmonious, but maybe— maybe still knowledge.”

Telford had shaken his head— slowly at first, and then faster, like a round of sardonic applause building. “Don’t get me wrong, Jackson— I know you’ve been a floating space octopus of pure light and shit, and gotten the sublime wisdom of the Ancients, but to paraphrase a much wiser man than myself: kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe that all I need is more information, like a giant celestial textbook is going to make it all make sense.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Jackson said.

But he looked hurt; stung, somehow. His face had closed off. He curled his fist around the pencil. Telford had felt a brief surge of triumph; he liked defeating Jackson. At the same time, he had recognized Jackson’s expression. Back then, he hadn’t known why or what it meant. Now, he remembers it and senses some vague association with the dreams in which he tries to find the Chinese room. He wants to trust that there’s a place in which the answers will all be provided. He wants a dictionary that will teach him how to be a man. Unlike Jackson, though, he doesn’t think that one exists. There are no universals. There is no truth that we are trying to uncover in the only way that Jackson would’ve understood— the way an archeologist sifts through layers of dirt, patiently looking for the pieces that were once part of a coin, a corpse, a kettle, before the annihilating storm of history blew through. There’s a churning mass that has never had a meaning. It isn’t moving towards or away from something. It just is what it is.

When he was undercover, speaking Babylonian had helped; he’d felt like a different person. He’d felt like he was moving through a different world, one that wasn’t organized according to the same kind of principles he’d grown up with. There was no right or wrong to it; just a different set of facts. He took to it like a fish to water, once he’d mastered the language. The sense of alienation was familiar to him. When he went back to Earth between assignments, that was the strange part— standing in his own house, his own kitchen.

And now he never has to go back there. Never has to speak English again, if he doesn’t want to. He can move through different languages, different truths, like putting uniforms on and taking them off when you’re finished.

“Shkarum,” he says to the bartender, tapping the bar with two emphatic fingers. “Ak shkarum yahab, vakash.”

His accent is very good.

***

[hollowgroverp]

     CIARAN BRENNAN

(age.) four hundred (species.) vampire (occupation.) distillery owner (residency.) arrived february 2019 (mirror.) oliver jackson-cohen

❝  a pavement of the past

The Irish Rebellion of 1649 had been the end and the beginning for Ciarán Ó Branáin, fighting for freedom while simultaneously becoming imprisoned in his own eternity at the age of thirty.  He was born in the year of 1619 among the lower class of those born on the island of Ireland; a trying time for anyone who desired freedom from England with their iron grasp around the throats of anyone who didn’t bleed the same, but that was only the start. With tensions rising that would soon lead to a rebellion and those native to Ireland being forced off their homes on the Plantation of Ulster. It wasn’t any wonder that Ciarán’s family would soon have a similar fate, and this is how his tale really began.

His parents were nothing more than simple farmers, their only source of income being rather stereotypical but none the less important sort of crop in Ireland, potatoes. Though as things became bleak in the country concerning the rising tensions, so did the family’s ability to pay for their land and grow enough to sustain themselves. Even amongst their six children, it didn’t seem to be enough to keep their farm from becoming someone else’s property. Though how lucky they were as one afternoon when father and son were seated outback after a hard days work when a man happened to wander upon their farm. It should have come as a warning how effortlessly he offered to help pay for the land in exchange for Ciarán marrying his youngest daughter, but the desperation clouded their judgment and a promise was made.

For the first time in what felt like years, the families mind had been put at ease. However, as this story goes, nothing really goes according to plan, otherwise, that would have concluded two things: the first, that Ciarán was a man of integrity and the second that had he gone through with his promise, therefore, his fate wouldn’t have lead to his own unhappy ending in 1649. Neither of those applied one faithful night when the drunken Irish man sat around with others, drinking away their fears of the coming future while Ciarán bragged of his plan to do nothing more than take from the generous man without keeping his promise to the other was over overheard. Not by a passerby or the town gossip, but by the man himself. Cloaked and sitting in a corner with nothing but disdain and judgment for the drunk. There was a vital piece of information that had failed to reach Ciarán’s ears the day he had agreed to marry his daughter, the man was a witch from the east. One who happened to know a very powerful being who would happily pay favor to the witch. When the day came, Ciarán was given one last chance but again, Ciarán had failed the other, proving the witch right and thereby sealing his fate to become a creature of the night by the hands…or fangs of an ancient nightmare, a vampire.

He learned the ways of a vampire rather quickly, with that blood lust and need to stay out of the sun and away from houses he hadn’t been invited into. Of course, Ciarán had a few run-ins that nearly cost him his undead life but by the time his sire had disposed of him with no desire to keep him around any longer he had picked up on a few things. Namely in the way of using people, things, creatures. Whatever it was as long as they were going to somehow benefit him and that was exactly how he spent the next three hundred and seventy years of his life. In the early 1700′s, Ciarán had yet to learn the consequences of his own actions. Everything was new and exciting, a vanity that quickly wore off. In the 1800′s he learned to perfect that manipulative nature by using just about everyone he crossed for his own personal gain, making far more enemies than friends. During the Gold Rush in 1848, Ciarán had found himself in California. In 1903 he fell into the life of robbing banks and establishments that mirrored that of the infamous criminal John Dillinger. He was a popular one Ciarán would put on his list of top ten influential people in his life, a bit deranged but he was becoming bored with life. Bank robbing, bounty hunting, anything that could give him a bit of an edge and make his life a little less mundane.

In the early 2000’s Ciarán found himself frequenting the states with a pressing need to finally get down to the bottom of something he’d been after for centuries. See, with Ciarán he’d always found history to be a rather interesting topic, even earning himself a post-doctorate in history, linguistics, and engineering, though not all at once and not in that order. His interest in history had not only stemmed from the fact that he had lived through a majority of it but that fateful night he made a promise to a witch. They were only human at the end of the day and certainly a man with a daughter like that had to have passed that gift and ability down from one generation to the next. Surely by now, there were generations of witches all derived from his lineage and seeing as Ciarán had a tendency to hold onto a grudge, well it wasn’t difficult to guess his plan. There was a way of finding those dependents and by 2015 he had begun teaching at a university all the while using it as an excuse to dig deeper into the past where his undead hell had all started. His goal had been just to find the surviving family members and get revenge for what he did to Ciarán but along the way, he came across a rather interesting human with an even more peculiar area of interest.

She was far too invested in the study of the supernaturals for her own good, digging around for any evidence she could find was like waiting for someone to step on a land mine, one wrong move and it was all over. Her ambition soon got the best of her, no longer heading any warning Ciarán would give her until the truth finally came out about who he really was. After that, it was like a very pg version of Bonnie and Clyde without any of the exciting criminal robbing bit and just the traveling across the states part. Eventually, the pair ended up in Hollow Grove after nearly falling victim to the explosion in Summerdale a year prior in their attempt to enter. Now in Hollow Grove, Ciarán has made it his mission to find the lineage of the witch who made a deal with the vampire to turn him into what he is today along with bringing a few of his traditions to Hollow Grove with a distillery. It’s really only a matter of time before he grows bored once again with an insatiable need to do something reckless maybe a bit destructive.

❝  the nature of the beast

While Ciarán never has been the golden child, he always has possessed an ambitious nature, doing whatever he could to get what he wanted or what was best for his family so long as it didn’t require anything he didn’t want to do. Of course, when his humanity was stripped away, it only seemed to enhance all the elements of his personality, both good and bad. Ciarán can be reckless, rather bigheaded concerning his own accomplishments that are trivial at best and easily bored as his four hundred years have proven to be nothing than one decade repeating the last. That being said, Ciarán does possess quite a protective and caring nature when he wants to. If he applies himself he can make it seem like the person he is with is the only one that matters, but his downfall is that boredom once again. His life is too long and to him, anything lasting forever is never worth investing in, he’s already had enough of forever.

[strechanadi]

Swan Lake - no longer a fairy tale

Right, so... Nobody asked me to, but something so marginal cannot stop me, clearly, so I went and translated the longest, the trickiest, the most profound review I have ever written. (And that includes POB Giselle, Swan Lake and Onegin! OK. Maybe not Onegin. But since I’ve done this one I can almost make myself believe I could give translating Onegin a go as well.) (She said and then promptly kill herself before she could made another clearly, completely and utterly deranged decision.)

Half of the things don’t make sense, I’m sure. And I can only hope they made sense in the original. (Which they probably didn’t, let’s be real, but since when this matters to me anyway?) (God, I literally cannot stop babbling, somebody strangle me or something. Or at least take the keyboard from my grabby and apparently very high fingers, that decided to simply vomit words after words for no real reason and with no brain to mouth/fingers filter whatsoever!)

It’s in times like this I truly wish to be able to write in an actual English language. Or for my mother language to be a world language, not some beautiful, hot mess, but a mess nonetheless, from the middle of nowhere. A mess I despite of everything love dearly and even live in this illusion of me being really pretty good in using (or more like playing with) it.

What is also clear - I, for a reason not known to humans, love to write absurdly, ridiculously long sentences. Be it just up to me, I’d write a whole review in one obscure linguistic construction I call a perfectly normal sentence. I was told however, that English doesn’t really do or like such things, so I tried to shorten them. Or some of them. Was really unbelievably succesfull doing so...

No reason to prolong this now, I guess?

So just, please be patient. Or benevolent. Or try to laugh in private at least! Look, I tried and I know it’s actually rather pathetic to be so spectacularly bad in English grammar, that I supposedly learnt from the age of 5 (but then spent more than 15 years actively hating the whole language, which... doesn’t make sense, I admit, but maybe explain some things), but... I mean, it would be better than google translate, if anything else. It HAS TO be!

As always - I appologize for anything and everything I did to the poor English language. It doesn’t deserve such a poor treatment.

Were there anybody who would feel personally attacked by my sheer ignorance of the basics of language of Shakespeare, Byron or Shelley and would want to make this thing better, let me know! (Even though I am afraid there are so many mistakes, your eyes will be bleeding around the end of 2nd paragraph...)

Last one - I have no idea how in/definite articles work!

(Good thing I don’t write fiction of any sort, ANs would be longer than the actual thing.)

Swan Lake, no longer a fairy tale

 Whenever the two words – Swan Lake – were mentioned, everybody had some universally shared idea of the final picture. Nothing has drastically changed with John Neumeier (1976, Illusionen – wie Schwanensee), who mixed the original fairy story with events from prince Ludwig II of Bavaria’s life, nor with Mats Ek (1987), whose prince was torn between imaginary princess Odette and real life Odile, nor with Jean-Christophe Maillot (2011, Le Lac) and new relations between his main characters, not even with Alexander Ekman (2014, A Swan Lake), who came back in time and took a look at the first premiere of said ballet in 1877 and tried to make a rather poetic story about what from certain point was started to be called a fiasco. As if the later Petipa/Ivanov version needs any more boost…

The unshakable certitude was irretrievably broken in 1995 by Matthew Bourne. His Swan Lake was new, daring, bold, with unexpected twists and one could not left theatre feeling indifferent after seeing it. Part of the ballet world turned its back to such profanity of beloved classic. The other part fell for its captivating charm, and since in 2018 Bourne’s Swan Lake came back to his New Adventure’s repertoire for umpteenth time, after hundreds of successful shows, many tours across the globe, adorned with every possible theatre and dance awards, it seems clear who were right then, 24 years ago.

  The most common characteristic of Bourne’s Swan Lake is „the male one“. Prince is in the centre of attention, black swan Odile is changed into unknown Stranger, and most obviously – all the swans became purely men’s business. Which opens completely new perspective for male dancers and saying that this ballet has a major influence to whole generations of artists is hardly an overstatement.

  Bourne follows the original structure and basic frame of Swan Lake. There are still four acts, act one follows the Prince, his character, the environment he’s living in, relations he has, act two is for the swans, act three still represents the ball, and in act four, where traditionally the Prince is coming back to the lake, here the swans appear in prince’s room. Many times even the formal structure is intact – the prince’s solo at the end of act one, pas de quatre of both little and big swans, or Bourne’s take on character dances in act three. Even the entrée of swans in second act follows the same space structure of the Ivanov’s original /aka swans are coming one after the other and crossing the stage from left to right (dancers‘ perspective)/.

  Oedipal Complex, repressed sexuality, low self-esteem

Bourne’s Prince, his personality, is more than ever influenced by his upbringing, by the estrangement of aristocratic background, his world constantly controlled, constricted by rules and rituals, with no spaces for affection, understanding, empathy, every emotion being replaced by duty. Bond between son and mother the Queen (ice cold, distant Katrina Lyndon for whom one cannot feel an ounce of sympathy, or more emotional, but still dismissive Nicole Cabera) is minute, almost non-existent, which has such a strong impact on the introverted, socially inept, insecure Prince, who is on top of all that haunted by strange dreams about swans. The feeling of lacking something gets even worse when he clearly sees his mother is more than capable of showing emotions, particularly towards another young men.

During yet another military parade or boat christening or exhibition opening, the heir to the throne is met with a bit silly, ill-mannered and completely unsuitable girl for his royal life (incomparable Carrie Willis, whose interpretation makes her character pretty sweet with candid, open-hearted warmth), who shortly after became his girlfriend and went with the family to the opera house to watch a ballet performance. Staging theatre scenes within the actual production /we call it theatre on theatre, which probably doesn’t make sense in any other language then ours, sorry/ is always very rewarding. Bourne is on top of that master of choreographic punchline and this scene (to pas de trois from Act I music) combines all clichés from romantic sylphs, awaken Floras, forest beasts to well-built male heroes one could think of and is a joy to watch for its grotesqueness as well as for the subtle details in gestures, ballet quirky manner or choreographic pattern for those, who know where to look for them.

The prince is trying to find his freedom in a night club, but to no avail. He’s met there unexpectedly with his frolicking girlfriend, then he got himself into a fight with one of her suitors (or maybe rather clients) and at the end his soul is beaten for good, when he has to watch the royal secretary paying some money to the one girl, whose affections he believed were genuine. (And it kind of doesn’t matter they most probably truly were.)

The only logical solution for the prince is a suicide. But before he’s able to throw himself into waters of a small park lake, majestic Swan appears and everything is changed at once. Traditional swans‘ corps de ballet danced by women is often associated with delicate elegance, crystalline beauty, dreamy atmosphere and aesthetics of homogeneously moving bodies. Swan is becoming a pure ideal almost as if from ancient Greece. Bourne’s swans are first and foremost animals, he’s not denying their grace, but is showing their slight awkwardness and ridiculousness in some movements at the same time. His swans are wild, independent, fetterless. Looking sinister when lining up to attack the prince, their physical, natural power strengthened by additional slapping arms, stamping feet, hissing and dangerously sharp, audible breathing. The Swan alone is very wary of the prince, uncompromisingly harsh, defensive, with sharp edges of aggressiveness that serves as self-defence of this imposing, powerful creature from anybody who would think of causing any harm. The almost imperceptible gestures calling the prince towards him are even more meaningful then, the moment when he nuzzles prince’s chest indescribably intimate.

Next evening there’s a ball at the palace. And even though it may seem the main reason of it is prince’s engagement thanks to all the ladies present, it’s the queen in her bright crimson dress amongst all black gowns who is in the spotlight. While her son doesn’t even know, what he should be doing with all said ladies. Break from routine comes with mysterious Stranger, whose raw, animalistic charisma draws every female’s attention to him, which he welcomes with great satisfaction. At the same time it also affects, quite unintentionally, the utterly unprepared prince, because Stranger’s arrogant dominance has something from Swan’s animalistic fierce. /Dear English language, you have many words. More than my mother language. But you have exactly nothing that would or could match prchlivost. Or at least I am unable to find it./ As Odile in original libretto, the Stranger dances his way through character dances (the Neapolitan one stands out with its light-hearted fun it makes of cliché Italian relationships) and finds his dancing peak in duet with the queen (music of so called Black Swan Pas de Deux). It is when prince’s psyche breaks and he, in his imagination, is thrown in arms of unknown to be faced with intimacy, sensuality, sexual tension and even the most basic physical contact, everything so strong even person of sound mind would probably find it difficult to cope. Therefore, when the Stranger kisses the queen, prince is there with gun in his hands and complete madness in his eyes. In chaotic situation gunshot is heard (although not by prince’s pistol), prince’s girlfriend falls dead and terrified young man is drawn away.

The tragedy is inevitable. To padded cell, where the prince is held, come doctor with the queen followed by group of nurses with queen’s face, whose hairstyle and white uniform may resemble the demonic nurse Ratched from the Miloš Forman’s film Flew over the cuckoo’s nest. After certain medical procedure (just shy from lobotomy) the prince is taken to his room, where the miserable, wounded Swan emerges from his bed. Shortly after he is followed by irritated flock of other swans, that throw themselves unbridled on the young man and then even on their supposed leader, doing so with brutality growing with every Swan’s desperate attempt to save his prince. The Swan dies at the end after their fatal, almost fanatical attack. And with him die prince’s illusions, dreams, hopes and then he himself. So when the Queen comes in the morning, all she finds is her son’s dead body, the sight of the Swan embracing his prince behind the bed the only, yet bittersweet comfort for the audience.

  As many other versions of this famous ballet, this too strengthens psychological aspect of the story and deepens characters‘ personalities. Here, more than ever, the contours of main characters are pretty blurry. The prince and the Swan are blending into one, they are reflected in the other, full of opposites they are complementing each other, one would say they are like two sides of the same coin. /Ha!/ Bourne on top of that let his characters to blend with different original ones. Where in traditional Swan Lakes it’s Odette weeping at the beginning of the last scene, here it’s the Prince, who is going through mental breakdown in striking resemblance to Giselle’s mad scene. The role of Rothbart, the sorcerer, is played by the royal secretary as well as prince’s own mother, who at the same time plays a part of original Siegfried during the act 3 ball, when being seduced by Stranger, who is Odile. What may seem as confusing chaos at first sight, makes perfect sense in the end and strengthens the unquestionably dark tones of Bourne’s choreographic vision.

  Artistic approaches or One man’s meat is another man’s poison…

As it always is with story ballets, individual artistic interpretation is something that has the power to change the final image of said piece. In case of Bourne’s Swan Lake and its current stars, the outcome may be completely different with each cast.

  Where Liam Mower was bored, annoyed, slightly defiant teenage Prince, Dominic North’s hero was more tired, depressed young man with no illusions, very well aware of all his flaws and inability to fulfil all expectations of his social role, while James Lovell, who seemed most out of touch with reality, emphasized prince’s childishly pure, honest naivety. If the suicide attempt of Mower’s prince was more than anything a dramatic gesture, North was simply resigned to its inevitability, and Lovell threw himself into the waters with absolute, desperate abandon, his mind not able to see any other solution. Each and every prince is then influenced by his Swan and Stranger (and every Swan and Stranger by his prince).

Matthew Ball, the newest principal of the Royal Ballet, can rely on his first-class technique as well as on his unquestionable elegant stage presence. His pliable body felt the music to its very last molecule, every movement full of regal charm and classical beauty, which in a way brought Ball closer to traditional, delicately soft, feminine portrayal of Odette. His Swan was untouchable in his impeccable perfection, icily confident, aware of every gesture he made, of every prince’s fascinated glance. Max Westwell, former soloist of English National Ballet, concentrated more on the raw temperament, natural animal distrust, physical power and ferocity combined with enigmatic magnificence. Dynamics of his movements escalated at all times, was full of unexpected turns and transitions from strong, energetic endings, to exhalation captured in casual, seemingly ordinary movement of hanging wrist.

As the Stranger Ball looked like smug dandy enjoying himself and all the attention, all too well aware of his own youth and beauty, that make everybody fall for him. Personally though I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t as in charge as it might look at the first sight. He was mocking his prince, showing off ostentatiously. Weswell on the other hand was the embodiment of pure, uncompromising charisma. Interactions between him and Mower’s prince, who was impressed by Stranger’s unconventional, rough manners at first, was quickly becoming a tense fight for power, the prince trying to prove himself worthy of Stranger’s attention, to prove he’s his equal. With Lovell’s prince the seducing, open flirting, blatant sexuality was much more evident, which combined with this prince’s ingenuous innocence made the final picture unpleasantly sinister.

 Regardless of different casts, ending of the ballet became a real emotional roller-coaster. With Matthew Ball and Dominic North equal in their complete despair when being sure of the inevitable death of their partner. Ball’s total resignation the more palpable, the more he was stubbornly, despite his injuries trying to stay or at least look unaffected on the outside. Change of Westwell’s Swan, in act 2 so independent and powerful, was shocking. Now he was utterly, hopelessly, painfully broken. He was defending both his princes against furious swans with rabid determination, with no self-preservation whatsoever, with perfect, devoted abandon. Bond between him and James Lovell’s prince was then strengthened by certain feel of responsibility, by tenderness that felt almost motherly. He was not only trying to protect, but to sooth, to give some comfort to his prince as well with physical contact, with touches stronger, more frequent, more expressive, more meaningful. That was why prince’s positively hysterical, agonizing grief hurt almost physically then.

 Bourne managed something extraordinary. His Swan Lake with costumes by Lez Brotherson is as iconic, as legendary as the original ballet. His vision as strong as let’s say Ek’s Giselle. What’s more, Bourne’s ballet doesn’t age, it hasn’t lost any of its impact – thanks to slight costume, dramaturgic and choreographic changes, that only strengthen its drive. Prince’s hinted homosexuality won‘t shock anyone anymore as well as men swans won’t provoke such controversy, true. But thanks to these examples it is evident, that Bourne’s ballet is so much more than just a gay version of one famous story…

For everybody who actually reach the end of this madness - congratulations. And I am sorry.

[steeleholtingon]

This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

(From the User-Friendly Archives)

Attention all Evil Overlord List Aspirants: Contrary to popular belief, taking over the universe is not as easy as it would first appear. Due to the complexity of this task, Peter regrets that he is currently unable to give the list the attention it deserves. The list is therefore going on a temporary hiatus. This is a temporary condition. As soon as he is able to respond in a timely manner -- or until he becomes unquestioned lord and master of all things, whichever comes first -- the list will not be updated and no new suggestions will be considered. He would sincerely apologize for this inconvenience, were it in character for an Evil Overlord to do so.

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present...

The Top 100 Things I'd Do

If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.

My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.

Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."

After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.

I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.

I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.

The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.

I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.

I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.

I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.

I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.

All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.

All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.

I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.

I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.

If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.

If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.

If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.

I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.

Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.

When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.

I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.

If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.

I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.

If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.

My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.

The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.

My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.

If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.

I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.

Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.

I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.

If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.

When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.

If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.

If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.

I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.

When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.

I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."

If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.

If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.

I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.

I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.

After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.

I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.

I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.

If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.

When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.

My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.

If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.

Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.

Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

[usuallyleftnight]

Protesters are not filling ice cream containers with concrete. Shake Shack employees are not putting bleach in milkshakes. And buses full of anti-fascists are not about to descend on a small town near you.That’s just what police are saying.As protests over racial justice and police brutality unfold across the country, police departments are taking to social media to tell their side of the story. The trouble is, they’re frequently wrong—and sometimes so wildly so that it begs the question of why they even bother.Christopher Slobogin, director of Vanderbilt University’s criminal justice program, said cops can be mistaken, just like everyone. But sometimes police lie because they view themselves as in opposition to criminals, who also lie.“It’s possible that police concoct lies because even though they know what they’re saying isn’t true, they believe the lie is in service of a greater good,” Slobogin told The Daily Beast. “If cops are convinced that, overall, they’re in the right, what’s a little lying here and there? I think that’s human nature, not just cops. But the problem, the cops have the power, they have the weapons, and people in authority tend to believe them.”New York Cops Beat Protesters for Crime of Being ThereWhat follows is a smattering of the most impactful, egregious, or just plain weird fibs, panicky projections, falsehoods, or exaggerations about protests to come from cops, their spokespeople, and their unions in recent weeks. Dairy DisinfoThe New York City Police Benevolent Association, which represents city police officers, claimed this week that workers at Shake Shack had put a bleach-like substance in officers’ milkshakes. The PBA—which joined a similar claim made by the Detectives’ Endowment Association—cited no evidence, aside from officers’ apparent gastrointestinal distress after they purchased Shake Shack’s notoriously heavy drinks while on the job. An official NYPD investigation quickly cleared Shake Shack workers of wrongdoing. No Concrete ProofNew York City police also claimed internally this month that protesters were filling ice cream containers with concrete—presumably to throw at cops as projectile weapons—and leaving them at a construction site. Twitter users quickly noted that, not only was the concrete in coffee cups instead of ice cream containers, but that mixing concrete samples in coffee cups is standard practice for construction workers. The cups were even labeled with workers’ notes on the concrete composition. The construction site where the cups were apparently recovered even had a permit for concrete work. Phantom Brick PilesIn Brooklyn, NYPD hyped up a rumor about protesters gathering brick piles to throw during protests. “This is what our cops are up against,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea tweeted, parroting the rumor, which has also been promoted by President Donald Trump. “Organized looters, strategically placing caches of bricks & rocks at locations throughout NYC.” Reporting by The Daily Beast and other outlets cast doubt on those claims, pointing out that they were near a construction site, and nowhere near protests. Time TravelOn Monday, New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (another police union) tweeted a video of protesters running through a Brooklyn street and throwing things at a cop car. “This was tonight,” the SBA tweeted, “Flatbush Ave Brooklyn.” The tweet also implied that a program that discourages unnecessary arrests was responsible for the chaos. In fact, there was no chaos that night in Brooklyn. The video was from May, and that area of Flatbush Avenue had long been calm, reporters covering the protests noted.  Murder BusIn Columbus, Ohio, police tweeted evidence of what they said was a clear violent scheme: a bus full of rocks, clubs, and a meat cleaver. “There was a suspicion of supplying riot equipment to rioters,” Columbus Police tweeted. “Charges pending.” In fact, Columbus Alive reported, police had stumbled across a colorfully painted circus bus. The frightened circus troupe told the outlet that the “clubs” were juggling clubs, the rocks were crystals, and the meat cleaver was pulled from the troupe’s cooking utensils. “Yeah, there’s a hatchet on the bus—with a bunch of wood sitting next to a wood-burning stove,” the bus’s owner said, noting that the vehicle was literally his house. Technically Tear GasU.S. Park Police offered an oft-changing explanation for firing irritants at protesters in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park in order to clear it for a Trump photoshoot in early June. Police initially denied using ��tear gas” in a statement, then walked that back, claiming that, technically, the projectiles were “smoke canisters and pepper balls.” Nevertheless, reporters for D.C.’s WUSA9 recovered tear gas casings from the scene—and as Vox noted, “tear gas” can be a broad term, sometimes referring to the pepper projectiles Park Police admitted to using. Attorney General William Barr also falsely claimed that pepper spray “is not a chemical irritant. It’s not chemical.” The Washington Post’s fact-checking department awarded the claim “four Pinnochios,” which is the maximum number of Pinnochios. A Bad TripPolice in Buffalo, New York, became the focus of national ire after they were filmed pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground, causing him to lose consciousness and bleed from the head. But before the video went viral, Buffalo Police offered a different characterization of the incident. “During [a] skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell,” police said in a statement. The video would later reveal that the man was alone when he calmly approached officers. He has a fractured skull and is still unable to walk, his lawyer said this week. Small Biz ShakedownAfter protesters took over a six-block area in Seattle, the city’s police claimed—without evidence—that the activists were extorting businesses in the area. Police appeared to walk back that claim several days later, after the local business association and prominent businesses in the area said they’d seen no indication of the alleged protection racket. Some businesses even said they were volunteering with the protests. The Antifa ExpressMultiple police departments have promoted a hoax about anti-fascists coming to their towns by the busload to wreak havoc. In Oregon, Curry County Sheriff John Ward shared a Facebook post warning that "3 buss loads of ANTIFA protestors are making their way from Douglas County headed for Coquille then to Coos Bay." Hundreds of locals reportedly stood outside with guns overnight awaiting the menace that never came.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/37E0gNA

[melindarowens]

“Tone Policing” And The Left’s Anger Privelege

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via CanadaFreePress.com,

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn’t, follow the anger…

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can’t. If you’re angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn’t.

James Hodgkinson’s rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he’s not alone. There’s Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you’re black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you’re white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you’re on the side of the angry angels. But if you’re white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you’re an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you’re an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is “dangerous” because you aren’t allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s linguistically whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama’s victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like “Lock her up”.

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded

Why were chants of “Lock her up” immoderate, but not Bush era cries of “Jail to the chief”?

 Why were Tea Party rallies “ominous” but the latest We Hate Trump march is “courageous”?

 Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker, I’m a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you’re fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn’t.

There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed

Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from “oppressed” protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is “tone policing”. An African-American millionaire’s child at Yale is fighting for her “existence”, unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority (“When they go low, we go high”) reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump’s victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn’t go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn’t in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left’s monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can’t stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won’t stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That’s what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the “resistance”. Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

Anger has to go somewhere.

The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it’s angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn’t the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election

Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement.

Or his violence will be our future.

source http://capitalisthq.com/tone-policing-and-the-lefts-anger-privelege/ from CapitalistHQ http://capitalisthq.blogspot.com/2017/06/tone-policing-and-lefts-anger-privelege.html

[everettwilkinson]

“Tone Policing” And The Left’s Anger Privelege

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via CanadaFreePress.com,

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn’t, follow the anger…

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can’t. If you’re angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn’t.

James Hodgkinson’s rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he’s not alone. There’s Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you’re black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you’re white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you’re on the side of the angry angels. But if you’re white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you’re an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you’re an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is “dangerous” because you aren’t allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s linguistically whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama’s victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like “Lock her up”.

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded

Why were chants of “Lock her up” immoderate, but not Bush era cries of “Jail to the chief”?

  Why were Tea Party rallies “ominous” but the latest We Hate Trump march is “courageous”?

  Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker, I’m a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you’re fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn’t.

There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed

Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from “oppressed” protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is “tone policing”. An African-American millionaire’s child at Yale is fighting for her “existence”, unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority (“When they go low, we go high”) reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump’s victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn’t go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn’t in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left’s monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can’t stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won’t stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That’s what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the “resistance”. Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

Anger has to go somewhere.

The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it’s angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn’t the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election

Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement.

Or his violence will be our future.

from CapitalistHQ.com http://capitalisthq.com/tone-policing-and-the-lefts-anger-privelege/