#not in a historical reenactor way in a weird way. you know what i mean.

[hypokeimena]

i want to buy some tablet woven boot laces but i am sooo picky and won't buy stuff that it looks like i could make myself. or sometimes it just doesn't match the shoes / rest of my wardrobe... AND on top of that i also refuse to buy from ppl who have "too into vikings" energy but apparently that seems to be a prerequisite for being good at tablet weaving

[spotsupstuff]

i'm glad you enjoyed brandon F

little note about the uniform thing, the reason why he drags on a bit on that is cause he's a reenactor, 18th century uniforms are his insane obsession. he even jokes about it in the video i sent, saying "i'm finally back to my insufferable self!" when talking about the muskets

i don't blame him tbh, after watching his content for a while i had the realization that 18th century isn't like the romans, whose equipment we deduce through archeology, old sources and guess work.

like, the actual documents that standardized 18th century uniforms still exist and are not hard to access, i realized that after Brandon noted that his source was the fucking British Royal Library in London. ( i mean ffs there's literally photos of Napoleonic era vets heres a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npSru7xEzX8)

and i honestly think its relevant, because if a million dollar historical production didn't want to put in the effort to go to a library and get the official documents. then what else they weren't bothered to get right?

but Brandon doesn't just do historical reviews he also talks a lot about the history in general. like, why fight in lines? what were marines in the 18th century? the history of tactics. and what role did cavalry play in line warfare? for example

heavens bless people of utube that manage to get hyperfixated on one topic for basically their entire life and then proceed to make stuff about it for us to watch, right? it's a delight to listen to someone who actually enjoys the subject and their subject therefore basically guarantees the authencity of what they put out

oooh but yes, the concept itself of what we actually get to know about things in what manner is fascinating in on itself. so since i was small i had been very fascinated by chinese mythology and mythology somewhat comes along with other parts of the culture and so on. and you know how the chinese culture is one of the oldest in the world?

as a result i've somewhat grown accustomed to the numbers that are typical to the span of chinese history and now whenever i go look into the history of my own country i'm actually stumped over how recently certain things happened! then again you wouldn't believe how oppressed or manipulated slovaks had been across history. ain't that right -glares at hungary-

to what extent we know which culture's history is so wild. the ability for certain historical things to simply last is absolutely incredible (such as military uniform documents or musical pieces of 18th century). fun fact! there's still messages written in stone by the soldiers of the roman empire on slovakia's territory. right near Danube, i think, p sure i visited that

thank fuck for reliable sourcing and also thank u for that vid that's gon come in handy for clothing references at Some point, i can feel it

and you are absolutely correct, yes! it Is relevant! as mister Brandon has said, there's of course a certain leeway allowed when it comes to more kid oriented stuff, but i'll admit! i was surprised to learn that serious historical productions apparently put less effort into these kind of things than the sea beast did (i don't usually watch those kind of things, i'm very fantasy/sci-fi and cartoon focused)

this kind of muddling of history that may seem "insignificant" to money grabbing bastards really screws up the perception of the eras for people who don't really have the time or the drive to look into things themselves. it's annoying

oh while we are on this history stuff, i saw this originally in utube shorts, but Apparently they are making a netflix movie or smth about Cleopatra and they made her black?? which is weird, considering that Cleopatra was greek and all that stuff. like don't get me wrong, yes give silenced/less known cultures like black folk more space to present themselves and who they are but like don't do it in a way that heavily skews the history? why are you going out of your way to create misinformation that could heavily impact understanding of history by taking out an already famous (not poc) person instead of Actually making the space for historically important black people. like maybe why not make a movie about that one super rich king from the southwestern coast of Africa (i think) that crashed the egyptian economy twice by being just too damn generous. that would be SO much more helpful to black peeps' history than shoving a black person into the place of a white one

i swear films nowadays either lack soul, heart, spine or brain like 98% of time

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

@the-smol-machine replied to your post “the "the man in the iron mask" thing is like one of the most popular historical re-enactment communities' favorite things oh...”

i agree. the "the man in the iron mask" fandom is kind of weird. like it being not historically accurate was part of the whole narrative, it was asking you why you don't care that it wasn't historically accurate! and yet no one cared, so no one asked that question to themselves. instead they just go around shipping the man in the iron mask with the man in the yellow hat.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying here, but you're still not completely wrong.

Like, I mentioned in an earlier post that "the man in the iron mask" was popular among fandom (the "fandom" you were referring to is in fact the fandom, as far as I can tell) -- that is, among people who are fans of the "Man in the Iron Mask" podcast, a popular podcast (I haven't listened to it, so I'm only describing it from the POV of someone who has only heard about it from Tumblr).

The "fandom" is also (or, at any rate, includes) people who are fans of the Louis XIII in the movie The Prince of Egypt movie, etc.

I am not sure it is actually the case that historical accuracy is not what is most important to the fans (though it is most important to the podcast guy. Or, you know, whoever it is who runs the wiki for "The Man in the Iron Mask" podcast), but I do think that not caring about historical accuracy is part of the "fandom" culture.

The actual podcast guy I mean, and the other podcast guy who is the target of one of the tumblr posts we're discussing, are both historical reenactors. In the reenactment culture, the historical event is not really a story -- it's a setting, a game board, a thing one can do, a theme that can be explored with different things (artifacts, stories, music, etc.). The actual events don't really matter so much as the symbolism of what happened. The "theme" of the Louis XIII thing is that Louis is cool, because he is virtuous and benevolent and righteous, while the man in the iron mask is not cool, because he has a reputation for being violent and untrustworthy.

Now I don't know if Louis XIII (at least, in the movie) was historically accurate, but my point is that there is some "theme" there that can be explored with the "historical accuracy" of things like the exact circumstances of the French crowning or whatever. I could imagine someone who hates this historical setting because it's not "cool" enough, where the historical details are just there to be important on a thematic level. The "historical" story, with its real-life implications and its real-life implications of "coolness," just isn't the story here -- the theme is.

Now, this is the part where we reach the other guy (the other person who was the target of the multiheaded1793 post) and get into some much more tenuous issues, so let's drop it for now, and focus instead on the fandom.

The fan community is composed, at its most basic, of people who like a particular work. The content of the work may be important (though not necessarily in the way that people usually use the term "content"), but what matters is that you like the work (or, more specifically, that someone else likes the work).

People tend to develop an emotional attachment to the work they like, even if it's not all that deep or complex. Like, one of the biggest reasons people like a work or like a particular character is because it's a good story or a good story with a character they like. It may not seem that deep, but again, the thing people are looking for is "someone to like, the sort of person I'm attached to."

As I see it, the "historical" thing isn't really important to the fandom community except insofar as it relates to the story of someone liking/liking to a particular character. The details of the historical narrative are a by-product of the "story" -- something that follows from the story.

The fictional aspects of the story, on the other hand, are more central to a lot of people's relationships with it. They tend to be the most important part, even if people's interpretations of the fiction and the fictional characters can vary widely. The historical story is simply a side-effect of the fandom's appreciation of their favorite characters and story. The story isn't the thing -- the fan relationship to the story is.

That isn't to say it isn't an important part of the fan relationship -- I'm sure that it can contribute to it, on a level that is probably analogous to how the details of the historical narrative contribute to the fan relationship in the setting. (In fact, the thing I was trying to say in earlier is that if you're not interested in the historical narrative, or even the historical details of the setting, maybe because you like the story, then it will matter a lot to you, the same way that it does in any other fiction community that has the same basic structure.)

But then again, the historical narrative (and details thereof) doesn't really matter if the people who write it, or care about it, aren't interested in the actual history, so maybe it isn't really the same thing at all, even if it is a part of fandom culture and fandom-flavored history (it is certainly not the fan culture or fan history).

The reason I brought up the reenactment culture is that reenactors have a whole "narrative" that is a consequence of what they are doing in terms of aesthetic, and that may very well contradict parts of the historical narrative. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you don't care about historical accuracy as part of the fan/reenactment culture, you may be missing out on what's actually most important to them, which is more like the kind of thing that multiheaded1793 thinks is important, while simultaneously understanding very little of what people say to the contrary. And it's a fandom thing, too, not an "enjoyers of history" thing.

[supernaturalnovelsandmore]

Supernatural Novel: The Unholy Cause

Welcome to my review of the fifth Supernatural novel, The Unholy Cause

Author: Joe Schreiber

Timeline: Set after Episode 5.08 Changing Channels but before Episode 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon

Location: Mission's Ridge, Georgia

Synopsis: As the pressure mounts for the upcoming apocalypse, Sam and Dean head to the historic town of Mission's Ridge, GA, where the Civil War is less about the past and more about the present. With interference from Castiel, demons, and Judas Iscariot himself, how can Sam and Dean prevent a major catastrophe from befalling this small town?

Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Warning: Spoilers abound!

After the last book, I was really hoping to see an improvement in this one, and boy did I! I've finally hit the Supernatural tie-in novel I was hoping to read from the beginning! It read like an actual episode, I could hear the actors speaking through the character's words, and I really couldn't find anything that contradicted canon.

In addition, the actual storyline was compelling and the side characters interesting. With the other novels I've reviewed, it's taken me most of the day to read them because I kept getting distracted. This one, I read straight through without stopping. I love reading a book like that!

Side note: This novel does dive in to Christian theology and the story of Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus). If you are uncomfortable delving into that portion of Christianity, you may not want to read the book or this review (though my review notes about that will be minimal).

Now, since I don't have any canon vs. non-canon comparisons to make, today's review is simply going to be a list of my favorite scenes and how certain scenes relate to what's going on during this period in Season 5.

Cameo!

Sam and Dean are informed of the case by one Rufus Turner! He's only in it for a brief bit, but he's still funny as heck asking the police to pay his dry-cleaning bill.

We get a nice character introduction of enigmatic (clueless) Castiel who's trying to heal Civil War reenactors who are understandably frightened of him. He's still searching for God at this point, but we also get this nice character beat for him:

"I walked the battlefields of the South a hundred and sixty years ago," Castiel replied, a faraway look entering his eyes. "I moved among the men and brought their souls to glory. And now..." Something moved over his face for just an instant, so rare and brief that Dean almost didn't catch it; a flicker of hope. "And now," he repeated, "I'm healing again."

Of course, Dean has to explain that none of the reenactors actually need healing and he goes back to being determined to find a 'First-order witness' - someone who broke bread with Jesus Christ.

I found this part surprising within the book, but as I thought about it, it made more sense. The TV series has to tread a very careful line with Christianity so as not to offend a bunch of viewers, but the books have a much smaller audience and can take these liberties. Personally, I was fine with it. They didn't go too deep and stuck with the witness being Judas (who doesn't exactly have a great reputation to begin with).

There's a fantastic brotherly moment where Sam shares the sheriff's name (Jack Daniels) and they then go back and forth trying to guess what this Jack person is like i.e., fat vs. skinny, bald vs. hairy...

Dean: "Nam vet. Buford Pussar type. From Walking Tall." Sam: "Deliverance refugee. Civil citations all over his desk."

One of things I love about this book is the brother's relationship. This banter and other character beats really feel authentic as opposed to the prior novels. (I won't spoil what the sheriff is actually like - needless to say, they play a major role in the book.)

Just a few pages later from this great banter, we're back to the drama as Sam and Dean argue about a nightmare Sam had that he can't remember, but which could be relevant to the case.

"What's this about Dean?" Sam demanded, "Is it about you not trusting me? Because if it is, there's not a whole lot of places we can go from there." "Yeah, you're my brother," Dean said. "But you're also Lucifer's prom dress, and if he's seeding your dreams with hints about the master plan, then maybe it might be a good idea for you to look at 'em as close as possible. That's all I'm saying."

And of course, Dean gets concerned about Sam as they split up to cover more ground. It's music to my ears! There are a number of other conversations like this that really emphasize the strained relationship Sam and Dean display in Season 5.

Another surprising character beat is the influence of Lucifer on Sam because as he's doing research at the local historical society, Sam (and the historian) are surprised to find out he can read Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language. It startles Sam and once again emphasizes how different he is.

At a particularly gruesome crime scene (a mass grave), there's a brief moment with Dean that really shines as he looks down on the skeletons in the mass grave and finds a similarity to what he did in Hell:

Because that was what he did after spending years down there, doing what he'd done... Through sheer force of will, Dean shoved those notions aside...Now more than ever he didn't want that experience contaminating the way he looked at the world... not that he had a choice. Hell had been his Vietnam. It had stamped its mark on him for all eternity, and no amount of denial or self-imposed ignorance was going to change that.

There's an additional moment of traumatized Dean that I wish they could have shown in the tv series:

Sam: "Are those bloodhounds?" Dean didn't answer... When Sam finally caught a look at his brother's face, he saw that Dean's cheeks and forehead had gone absolutely white, as if every drop of blood had been sucked away... "They're not hellhounds, Dean, they're just dogs..." Dean didn't answer. He was still listening to the barking and howling noises coming closer, crashing through the undergrowth. He seemed paralyzed by the sounds.

There are more to these Dean passages, (too much to copy), but I really like that we see actual effects of past experiences.

There's also a nice scene with Sam and a young teenager that really highlights his ability to connect with kids around that age (of which we see later in the TV series):

"My brother and I grew up without a Mom, too," Sam said... "It wasn't always easy... Not everybody gets that." "I still dream about her sometimes, you know? Even though I was young when she... when it happened," Nate blinked at Sam. "Weird, huh?" "Are they good dreams?" "Yeah." "Then it's good. That's your way of remembering her."

The last third of the book is very action-oriented and has multiple instances of hurt Sam and hurt Dean, with the requisite caring from each brother.

Once again, I've gone on too long, but I'll end with a couple of favorites: Humor:

The sheriff glanced out the window, (referring to Baby) "And haul that piece of crap car to the impound lot. I don't want it cluttering up my street." "Woah!" Dean snapped, a sudden rush of anger rising in his face. "Watch your damn mouth. You can't just---"

Drama:

"This is blood money," Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the Shekel. "Bobby says the only way anybody gets their hand on this..." The rest of the sentence was getting stuck in his chest, and he made himself finish it, "is by betraying someone you love." Dean stared at him. "Dean..." "Look," Dean broke in. "Don't get too hung up on it, okay? It doesn't necessarily mean anything," he stood up and brushed off his jeans. "Whatever happens between us, we'll deal with it then..."

Thanks again for reading! I'll be back again next week with War of the Sons!

[welllpthisishappening]

An American Haunting (2/2)

Emma Swan does not believe in ghosts. She simply talks about them on tourist-filled walking tours at Colonial Williamsburg.

It’s a belief she’s certain she’ll always hold, until, one summer she starts hearing a voice, asking her for help. And, suddenly, every certainty Emma Swan has ever had starts to shake just a bit, a hint of history and a past that’s far more extensive than she could have imagined.

—-

Rating: Still teen. Still kind of unexpectedly freaky.  AN: Hey, thanks for reading this incredibly self indulgent nonsense, internet. It was and is very nice. One time we went to Colonial Williamsburg and my sister, Justin and I kept mentioning the end of the Revolution, but it was supposed to be 1779 that day. So, we were two years early and a reenactor told my sister that she should go to the mental hospital. Because she was clearly a future-telling witch. Anyway, here’s more ghost story. 

|| Part One here and the rest on Ao3 if that’s how you roll. ||

—-

They picked quarter of midnight. 

Something about giving them a cushion, which felt a little ridiculous, but then Emma was standing in front of the Wythe house with her hand wrapped up in Killian’s and her stomach in her throat and— “I can practically hear you thinking, love.” She glanced at him, lips curling up and a spark in his eye that might have been ninety-six percent of the reason Emma was sure this was going to be alright. “What do I have to think about? A ghost is begging me for help about who knows what and—” “—Tell me a lesser known Revolutionary War fact.”

“Oh, you think you’re very charming, don’t you?” “I know I am,” Killian promised, tugging her hand up to kiss the bend of her knuckles. 

“I had a crush on Lafayette when I was a kid.”

He clearly wasn’t expecting that. Emma grinned triumphantly. “Have you ever seen a portrait of the Marquis, love?” “No, no, I know,” Emma muttered. “And it’s definitely a weird thing, although not the weirdest thing about me, I guess and—I just...I don’t know. Growing up the way I did and bouncing around houses and cities, I guess it was just appealing. Fighting for an ideal. Joining a cause that wasn’t necessarily yours, but was, at least, kind of good. There’s a certain romanticism to it, isn’t there?” “Revolutions are always a little romantic for those who win them.” “That was philosophical.”

Killian chuckled, lips still on Emma’s skin and she yelped when his teeth nipped at her fingers. “You’re not going to do anything ridiculous tonight are you?” “Aside from the seance?” “I think it’s only a seance if there are candles involved.” “Ah, right, right. Then, no. I’m not.”

 “Alright, so, basically, we just have to...wait.”

Emma made a noise in the back of her throat, David’s instructions lacking any real instruction. She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to happen, couldn’t really even see anything that was happening because at some point they’d decided not to turn the lights on and that felt like a bad move, but— The clock behind Emma’s head ticked. 

Midnight. 

Killian’s hand, the same one that hadn’t ever left hers, tightened, thumb brushing over the back of her palm like a metronome. She counted swipes — one, two, three…

Clack, clack, clack. 

“Holy shit,” Emma breathed. The sound got louder, moving up the stairs opposite them, but there wasn’t any body and she seriously could not see, just bits of moonlight peeking through wooden blinds and stretching across historically accurate area rugs. 

The noise stopped. 

Only to be replaced by the tell-tale sound of a door hinge and more footsteps and Emma’s whole body convulsed as soon as she heard it, barely keeping her balance. Her head dropped back, colliding with Killian’s collarbone and he must have been muttering words in her ear because she could hear something, but it didn’t sound particularly like him and— She was moving. 

Emma took the stars two at a time, David and Killian’s matching cries echoing in the air behind her. She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow down. She raced down the narrow hall, the door to the corner room wide open and a shadowy figure staring out the only window. 

“You have to help. He’s getting stronger.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” Emma said. She wrapped her arms around her middle, fighting off the chill that crept under her skin. “Who? How is he getting stronger?” The woman turned, the same dress and disheveled hair and Emma had no idea how she knew. That was also a frustrating theme. 

“You’re repeating the same thing over and over again, aren’t you? The night you ran out of the Palace, that’s—” “—I didn’t run out of the Palace.” “The gardens, then?” 

She nodded, Emma trying to piece together a puzzle with far too many pieces. “Ok, ok, so you were here when Rochambeau got word to Washington, right? To come back to the Chesapeake? That’s—did you not want that?”

Emma had never put much stock in the idea of time travel before, but she was also talking to a ghost on the reg now, so she figured maybe she could work with that as well. And immediately use it to retract her question. 

Because the woman still didn’t look all that solid, but her eyes flared, a spark of anger that made the hair on the back of Emma’s neck stand up. She could dimly hear grunting from the bottom of the stairs. “Want that?” the woman sneered. “That’s all I wanted. That’s exactly what we’d been working towards, trying desperately to end it. But he was...he was stronger than even I realized, a demon. He thrived on the chaos, stoked the rumors and he—if he’d had his way, the war never would have ended at all.” “Who?” “Robert Gold.” Emma’s hand flew to the doorframe, trying desperately to keep her balance and her sanity. She wasn’t sure she could get both. “Robert Gold. He wasn’t...was he not human?” The entire house shook. Possibly the entire world. 

Emma’s knees rattled, what felt like her actual brain bouncing around her skull and she wasn’t sure she’d ever made that noise. The pain that bloomed behind her left eye was excruciating, as if she were being split right down the middle. She grit her teeth, trying to breathe evenly, but it failed spectacularly and the taste of blood in her own mouth made her retch. 

She dropped down, barely able to keep her eyes open as the shadow in front of her flickered, smoke on the water and breath on a window pane, a soft laugh in her ear that made every inch of Emma recoil. 

The footsteps behind her were impossibly loud. 

“Emma, Emma! God, fuck, Emma, are you ok?” Her right knee was bleeding, the pain in her head ebbing slightly as soon as Killian pulled her against his chest, and Emma wasn’t sure when she’d started crying. It felt like she was choking on her tears, panting with the effort to contain emotion that absolutely was not hers. 

“You’re ok, you’re ok,” Killian said, over and over, as if repeating it would make it true. His hands brushed over her hair and the back of her neck, tracing over the curve of her shoulders and Emma wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him that pale before. 

David was visibly shaking behind him. 

“What just happened?” “I don’t know,” Emma whispered. “But I don’t think we’re dealing with fun ghost stories anymore.”

 “You’re kidding me, right?” Regina asked archly, sitting behind a massive desk with picture frames and even more stacks of paper. She looked more tired than she had two days earlier. “A demon? Be serious, Emma.” “I am,” Emma promised. “This is—Regina, you’ve got to tell me if I’m losing it.” “Honestly?” “Ok, c’mon.” Regina waved both hands in the air, impatience in the movement and the ringtone of more than one phone. “I don’t have time for this. And don’t think my husband an I aren’t going to have a serious conversation about him letting the three of you into the Wythe house after hours. You could have done serious damage, you could have—” “—Have you ever heard the name Robert Gold before?”

It was as if all the oxygen had been forcibly removed from the room. Regina’s lips practically disappeared, a flicker of recognition that Emma was going to cling to. 

For her sanity. 

“How did you hear that name?” “Is that a yes?” “Emma,” Regina hissed. “This is important. Where did you hear that name?”

“The ghost in the Wythe house told me last night.”

Regina slumped in her chair — a move that was nearly more ridiculous than any of the incredibly ridiculous things Emma had encountered in the last seventy-two hours. “What happened last night?” Emma explained the whole thing. The voice, the dress, the shoe. She told her about the woman’s pleas to help and how much stronger he was getting and every bit of information seemed to personally offend Regina. Her tongue kept darting between her lips, breathing through her mouth with her eyes darting towards her office door like she was fully expecting the demon to arrive at any moment. 

“So,” Emma said, voice a little scratchy. “You know more about this place than any of us combined, Regina. Your family’s been here for hundreds of years and—” “—Yes.” “Wait, what?” Regina ran an exhausted hand over her face, not bothering to adjust her posture. “Yes,” she repeated. “Or, at least in theory.” “Explain that better.” “I don’t know the exact number of greats, but however many it was, my grandmother, her name was Cora. She was old money. The kind of money that could buy influence and decisions in several courts across Europe. Only she, well...rumors swirled, mutterings of virtue and eighteenth-century mindsets and that led to a rather quick betrothal to a man without much else to his name except the letters it was made of. They sailed for the colonies shortly after they were wed.” “And?” “And they lived here,” Regina said. “The man—his name was Henry. He owned the coffee shop near the Capitol, but that’s a far cry from what Cora was used to and, if my family’s legends are to be believed, she started cavorting with… a very particular crowd.” “Did you just use the word cavorting in real life?” “Witches. Magical folk. There’s plenty of documentation of that in the Tidewater region, going back even to Jamestown. So Cora starts working with magic, looking for something to better her own standing and, maybe, get back to the continent and then, wouldn’t you know, shots are fired at Lexington and Concord.”

“And I’m sure she wasn’t the rebels biggest fan?” Emma guessed. 

Regina shook her head. “Didn’t speak about it, obviously. Especially with Henry’s business and his own political leanings, but, again, this is all just hearsay, passed down through generations.”

“What are you hearing?” “That Cora wanted out. Of the colony, of her marriage, away from anything even remotely American. But her options were limited and her magic, if she even had any, was basic at best. So she had to seek out some help.” Emma’s insides froze. It was gross. It felt gross. And cold. And uncomfortable. 

She was certain she was forgetting to ask something. 

Something big. “There are letters,” Regina continued, “between Cora Mills and Robert Gold starting in October 1775, shortly after the Continental Congress instructed the construction of a naval fleet. No going back after that.”

“And Robert Gold had magic?” Regina made a noncommittal noise. “Honestly? Fuck if I know, Emma. But that was the rumor. He was said to be an immensely powerful man, although it could never be found what side he was on. He seemed to dance that line in almost perfect rhythm. No abject support for the colonists or the British, just for himself.” “That’s what she said,” Emma muttered. “The ghost. She said that he thrived on the chaos of the war. Makes sense for a demon, doesn’t it?” “You’re talking in the hypothetical now.” “No, I’m—I saw something last night Regina. Something that was...I know it sounds crazy, but it happened and it’s not going to stop.” “You know that for sure?” Emma’s lungs hurt. “Killian said we’re close to the beginning of the siege of Yorktown. That’s not...I mean, it’s not an important anniversary.” 

It took, by Emma’s admittedly shaky count, exactly four seconds and one knocked over picture frame for Regina to jump up, eyes wide and fingers fluttering at her side. “Two-hundred and thirty-eight years.” “What?” “Add up those numbers.” Emma shook her head, but her mind was already calculating and it wasn’t really hard and—”Oh shit,” she breathed. “Thirteen?” “Pretty magical number, right?” “You tell me. You’re the one with a history of witches in your family.”

Regina didn’t look impressed. “What I can’t figure out is why this woman came to you. That’s...it doesn’t make any sense.” “Well, add that to the list of questions with seemingly no answer. What do we do now?” “You want me to repeat myself?”

Emma clicked her tongue. “I guess.” “Fuck if I know.”

There were no ghosts for the next three days. No words or whispers, but a few pointed glances from Killian and neither he nor Emma had said anything about feeling her. 

That felt like a very large leap in a relationship that was still without any qualifiers. 

And she did look some things up when she felt so inclined, but demon sightings in the Hampton Roads area was kind of a broad search. 

Emma didn’t really want to find anything anyway. 

So she worked at Tarpley’s and ignored Ruby and Mary Margaret’s whispers that abruptly ended as soon as she walked into any room or how often David kept trying to force feed her ginger cookies and she didn’t notice the brick sitting outside her door until Thursday night. 

She wasn’t sure if that was important. 

“What the hell,” Emma mumbled, ducking down to pick up the thing and it was heavier than she expected. “Oh, shit, God, that—”

Eventually she would have loved to finish some of her sentences. 

As it was, the words and expletives kept getting stuck and Emma barely got her phone out of her pocket before she was dialing. 

He answered on the second ring. “Swan?” “What do the bricks look like in the garden?” Killian blinked. She couldn’t see him. She knew anyway. “Elaborate on that for me.” “Are there people buried back there?” It sounded like he dropped the phone. Emma glanced towards the sky. She couldn’t bring herself to go in her apartment. That also probably wasn’t important. “Swan, where are you?” Killian asked, an edge to his voice that she knew wasn’t directed at her. “What the hell are you talking about?” “There is a brick in my hand.” “Love, I can’t read your mind if you’re not in front of me.” “I came home and there was a brick here,” Emma explained. “That hadn’t been here, I don’t know—at least last week. And I think...it looks like the wall to the palace gardens. That’s got to be a sign, right?” “Of what, exactly?” “What are you doing right now?” “Emma.” “That’s not an answer.” “You cannot go back there,” Killian said. She could hear the crunch of seashells under his feet. He was outside the Randolph house. That felt oddly appropriate. 

“Someone left this here for me. That’s—the woman said he wouldn’t stop and I...Regina was right, there’s got to be a reason that I could do this.” Silence. 

Emma grimaced. “You talked to Regina about this?” Killian whispered, and Emma knew the wind around her was just that. She hoped so, at least. 

“You told David I was hearing voices!” “Ok, that is not the same thing and I was—” “—Worried. I know, I know, but...ok, Regina thinks Robert Gold was a bad guy who, possibly, was involved in some serious magic-type shit and the ghost told me he never wanted the war to end. Someone had to tell Rochambeau about Cornwallis’ plans, right? Yes, the answer is yes. And we thought it would be this Gold guy, but what if it..” 

Emma licked her lips, a step back from the door that was suddenly rattling in front of her. That couldn't have been good. 

“What if it was the woman?” she asked. “It’s not totally unheard of at the time. Women turning spy and moving information. If she thought her husband was the good guy he was pretending to be, it’d make sense he was there too. Only he wasn’t a good guy. He was a fucking demon, playing both sides and teaching magic to angry loyalists and—”

Emma dropped the phone that time. 

Because the noise on the other end left her gasping, tears pricking her vision and knees threatening to buckle again. It wasn’t a scream. It was...worse than that. It left Emma shivering, darkness wrapping around her like that was even possible, until she was certain she’d never be warm again, a hollowness in her chest and emptiness in her soul. 

She squeezed her eyes closed, clenching her jaw until the pain moved there as well and there was a voice coming from her phone. 

“Oh, Savior! It’s time to come out and play.”

She must have run there because there was a stitch in Emma’s side by the time she skidded to a stop under the archway leading to the palace gardens, but she genuinely could not remember a single moment of it. 

As if she’d blinked and willed herself to the spot. 

The darkness stretched in front of her there as well, impenetrable and a little intimidating, but she had no idea where Killian was or what Savior meant and she’d left the brick behind. 

“C’mon, Swan,” Emma mumbled, and talking to herself was a sure-fire sign of impending insanity. She took a step forward. 

It had been years since she’d been back there at night, but Emma didn’t remember the whole thing being quite so creepy, oversized hedges and flowers that looked colorless under a dim moon. Emma walked slowly, every move measured so as not to make too much noise or draw attention from an enemy she couldn’t see. 

And it absolutely, positively did not matter when she heard him yelling. 

Emma sprinted. Loudly. Quickly. Sticks and stones under her feet and lungs feeling as if they were actually collapsing in her chest, winding through the maze behind the palace because of course they were in the maze behind the palace. “Killian! Killian, where are you?” She jerked her head around, looking for something she did not want to find, but there wasn’t anything just that same laugh she’d heard in the Wythe house, low and maniacal, like it believed it had already won. 

Emma stopped short, a silhouette in front of her. 

He wasn’t that tall, might have been slouched slightly, leaning against a cane, and Emma knew he wasn’t right. Like, on a fundamental level. His jacket was very clearly late eighteenth-century. The collar was always the tell. 

“Are you Robert Gold?” she asked, another step forward with far more confidence than she actually had. 

He nodded. 

And moved into the bit of moonlight between them. 

Emma gasped. 

She hated that. It wasn’t particularly heroic or powerful, was nothing more than scared, but it had nothing on the whimper she let out as soon as Gold snapped his fingers, Killian landing in a lump at her feet. 

There were bruises on his face, blood caked to his cheek and she’d never been particularly worried about the prosthetic at the end of his left arm, but that was gone now, skin a nasty gray color with more than a few open gashes. 

“Killian,” Emma cried, but any attempt to lean forward proved fruitless when Gold tilted his head, as if there were an invisible barricade in front of them. 

“No, no, no, my dear, we’re not doing that quite yet,” Gold said. “We’ve got to get a few things cleared up first. I’ve heard you’ve been talking to my wife.”

Emma’s eyes flickered to her right, a shadow appearing there suddenly and she only had one shoe on. She was crying again. Or, maybe hadn’t ever stopped. 

That was understandable. 

“You see, my wife, she doesn’t understand what power is,” Gold continued, “What it’s like to be rife with it. To hold the potential of nations in the palm of your hand. She wanted me to give that up. For an ideal. For the future of a few thousand rabble-rousers.” Emma did not want to laugh. She didn’t. And yet. The sound tumbled out of her, soft and skeptical and—”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve just never heard the phrase rabble-rousers used in real life. That was unexpected. Also, just, like, FYI, you’re not a god, so...controlling countries is—” “—My right,” Gold roared. “Humans never do understand, but you always wanted to be like them didn’t you, Savior?” “I don’t know what you're talking about!” Gold hummed, mouth twisted. “I’m sure you don’t. Well, let’s fix that, shall we?” He snapped his fingers once more, the rush of something colliding with Emma’s stomach making her breath soar out of her and the memories slammed into her. Like punches. Or cannonballs. In a water-based siege. 

She remembered dresses and meetings, quiet discussions at candlelit tables, a voice in her ear and a smile that she thought about as soon as he was gone. She remembered secrets and promises, guarantees to come back and light at the ends of her fingers. 

She remembered a woman, angry and evil, looking for something to change her fate, but unwilling to accept her own faults. She remembered letters, plans that could change everything, end it and secure a future with opportunity and possibility and— “It was us,” Emma whispered, Gold’s lips twitching. It wasn’t pleasant to look at. He wasn’t entirely opaque. 

“Eh, that’s where it gets a bit confusing,” Gold argued. “Not so much you as...it was...your spirit. Past lives are common in those with power and you, Ms. Swan, have been nothing short of powerful since your very first life. That had an impact on the people you love.”

He nodded in Killian’s direction. 

The tears that landed on Emma’s cheeks were questionably warm. 

“Shall I continue?” Gold quipped. “You don’t have to answer. I was planning on it. You, Ms. Swan are very powerful. A talent that the world was waiting for from the start of it all. Only, you’ve been tasked with this pesky thing called good will and you want to bring that to everyone around you. Including those rebels. Oh, yes, a rather soft spot for them—I’d imagine, mostly because of him.” He pointed at Killian. “Indentured servitude does do wonders for inspiring a rather strong hatred of the crown. So, Captain Jones served in the Continental Army. Fought and believed until his talents took him elsewhere.” “Spying,” Emma breathed, Gold humming in agreement. “Precisely. And as much as it pains me to admit it, he was quite good at it. Executed it perfectly even under my nose and—” “—Because you were playing both sides,” Killian growled, Emma dropping down to him and he actually had the gall to try and smirk at her. “That’s what it was, love. What we were saying, all those ups and downs, both sides unable to get an edge. He did it. God, did you—was Benedict Arnold you too?”

“That’s my knowledge to have now, isn’t it, Captain. Where was I?” “She helped, didn’t she?” Emma asked, glancing at the woman and she wished she knew her name. It felt disrespectful not to. 

“Oh, yes, quite the little patriot, my Belle. And she also had some support I didn't initially know about. I think you received part of his grave marker?” “What?” “William,” Belle said. “He was...he worked with Captain Jones. Served under him and he—” “—He was the one who found out about Rochambeau, Swan,” Killian said. “I...I can remember that. God, that’s weird.” Emma let out a strangled sound. “That’s the weird part?” “You all are ruining the flow of my story,” Gold complained. “Yes, that Scarlet bastard was quite a thorn in my side and he did effectively ruin my plan at the time, that’s why…” Emma shuddered when another memory slammed into her, the scene playing out like she was watching it in front of her. 

“General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette will make their way from New York here,” Will explained, standing at a map-covered table and Emma could barely make out the hint of a smile on his face. “Rochambeau is already making preparations to blockade Cornwallis in the Chesapeake, just outside of Yorktown. If all goes to plan, we’d have nearly double the troops the Redcoats do and we’ll be able to cut them off completely. No one in, no one out.” “The end of the war,” Emma whispered. “It’d all be over.”

Will nodded. “The ink on the treaty should be dry before the leaves start falling.” “Optimistic,” Killian mused. His thumb brushed over the back of Emma’s hand. 

“Honest. I’ve already sent word to the General and I think —”

He didn’t say anything else, a swipe of a sword and flashes of red and Emma didn’t think before she reacted, a burst of light and surge of heat that moved from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. 

Robert Gold laughed. 

At her. 

And her inability to realize magic when she saw it. 

And both Killian and Will were laying at her feet. 

“No, no, no,” she whispered, more magic and none of it worked, bouncing against barricades she couldn’t see and Emma would eventually regret the next four and a half minutes. She waved her right hand, tying Will to the land, a rather pitiful attempt to keep his soul on this plane. And she couldn't hear Killian breathing, blood staining his uniform and a distinct lack of anything at the end of his left arm. 

Emma shook her head, mouth moving with unspoken words. He smiled at her. The ass. 

“It’s ok, Swan. It’s — if it ends, it will all be worth it.”

She shook her head, footsteps receding and Robert Gold must have left and she didn’t care, couldn't care, not when this was happening and — ”No,” Emma objected. “That’s...I’ll see you again, I know it.” “I hope so, love.” The white flag came on October 19, 1781. With the leaves changing. 

Emma shook her head, eyes springing open and Gold chuckling in front of her. She waved her hand, certainty and confidence and a power she’d forgotten until that very moment. He stumbled backwards. 

“That was impressive, Savior,” he muttered. “But it’s not going to make a difference.” “How are you here? You’re...you look dead.” “Not dead. Simply without a vessel. Belle is dead.” “Did you kill her?” “Oh, yes. In that house you lot were all in earlier. Only she managed to do a bit of damage to me as well, a dagger that helps me harness my power and it did sting quite a bit when she stabbed me. That left me, as I said, without a vessel for quite some time, but now—” His smile widened, too many teeth and unspoken threat. “Well, you’re here. Come back to work in this place in another life with that.” He kicked at Killian, the toe of his boot colliding with ribs and Emma hadn’t realized he’d moved closer while he was talking. 

“But I don’t—what is your game here, exactly?” Emma asked. “Because I hate to tell you this, but the Revolutionary War ended. Like years ago and—” “—And did humans suddenly decide to stop hating each other?” Gold interrupted. “That’s what brought Cora Mills to my doorstep to begin with. Someday I’ll have to thank her. She did inspire me to get involved in that little revolution. The Captain was right. I toyed with both sides, and it would have lasted forever if it hadn’t been for your meddling. Trying to save everyone, give them the opportunity to thrive. 

So, I ask you Savior? Did any of it make a difference? Did the human race evolve into something better? A horde I couldn’t persuade to follow me, no matter what I was saying? See, that’s your problem. You believe these things...that they can be better. They can’t. They will hate and they will fight and they will kill each other. And that will only make me more powerful. It’s what brought me back now. And, by extension, both you and the Captain.” “And Will?” “Oh, still here. Also dead, though. The palace gardens are haunted, aren’t they?” Emma exhaled, oxygen and more tears and the blood from Killian’s arm was starting to stain the edge of her shirt. And she was sure, maybe in her third life, she’d start thinking before she reacted, but in that moment, with a demon laughing at her and a man she’d loved even longer than she remembered bleeding out at her feet, she simply...was. 

The light around her was bright, dancing off leaves and the branches of trees, casting Robert Gold in a glow that made the shadows around him disappear. 

Killian reached up towards her, fingers cold, but determined and Emma didn’t gasp when they curled around hers. She smiled. “It’s me,” she said, not a question, but the absolute certainty that she was right. “The only thing that can stop you because you don’t exist in this world and I do. In both of them. I’ve got—oh, you know what? I am more powerful than you!”

Gold tripped over his own feet, trying to move away from her and back into the darkness. Emma nodded, a soft laugh that was really more triumph than humor. 

“I am,” she continued. “That’s why I turned down Cora Mills when she tried to find me first. And that’s why this will work. Because I wasn’t the only thing that came back to fight you.” Emma crouched down, ignoring Killian’s objection because this could not have been proper military tactics, but she had a hunch and—well, more than a hunch. 

She looked directly at him, a mix of past and present, and God, she hoped, the future and his lips parted underneath Emma’s as soon as she touched him. 

It wasn’t particularly dignified, couldn't be when they were twisted at such awkward angles, but Emma swore she could feel it in every inch of her, a softness to it that was almost tender and still, somehow, greedy, making up for lost time and could have beens and—

“I love you,” Emma whispered. 

It was like the goddamn sun and the moon and something, Emma was sure, about the rocket’s red glare, just to drive home the patriotic point, but that was a different war and none of it mattered when Gold screamed. 

The sound echoed off those same trees, Emma jerking her head up with narrow eyes and a thrum of energy under her skin. She didn’t pull her gaze away or blink, staring at Gold and focusing on that one, particular shadow behind him.    He fell backwards. 

And the shadow wrapped around him, like rope and something about a hangman’s noose. It curled around his shoulders and twisted around his elbows, pinning his hands to his side and moving towards his mouth, blocking any sound or any screams and Emma was thankful for that. 

She didn’t want to hear what the shadow did to him. 

Watching was bad enough. 

It engulfed Gold, moving slowly so that Emma saw every inch of him disappear, but Killian’s hand didn’t leave hers and the wisp that was Belle looked like it was getting more and more corporal. It felt like it lasted forever and not nearly long enough. Until. There was nothing there. 

No Gold. No shadow. Just a tree and a breeze, bits of light hanging from the tips of Emma’s fingers. 

Killian wasn’t bleeding anymore. 

Emma kissed the end of his arm. 

“Belle?” The voice at the other end of the clearing was almost bursting with hope, the emotion hanging off all five letters and they needed to stop gasping. 

Maybe after the emotional reunions. 

Will Scarlet was still wearing his army-issued uniform, but his hair wasn’t matted to his forehead anymore, a brightness to his eyes and the tilt of his lips. He took a shaky step forward, hand grips the hilt of his sword and— “Are you wearing only one shoe?” Belle let out a watery laugh, hand flying to her mouth, but then she might have been flying, arms around Will’s neck and both feet off the ground and it was all romance and feeling and alive, sort of, at least. 

They lingered in each other’s space for a moment, oblivious to anything else, but then Will jerked his head towards Emma, eyes going wide. “Did you do this? Me here, I mean?” “Did you leave a brick on my doorstep?” “I wasn’t sure it would work. I’m kind of...stuck in this area, you know.” “I’m sorry about that.” “Don’t be. I...I didn’t want to leave.” “I think I can help with that, actually.” The hope returned. In spades. 

Emma nodded once, a quick inhale and sharp exhale, focusing on a different path and the corner of the maze and the tiny pinpricks of light leading towards something that was far bigger than she could process in the moment. 

“Thank you,” Belle said. “For all of it.”

She didn’t respond. Again. Still. But Belle didn’t seem to mind, just smiled softly and laced her fingers through Will’s, his curt nod the last thing Emma saw before they both disappeared around the corner. 

They went back to Killian’s apartment. It wasn’t not so much a decision as it was the only acceptable possibility, far too much... everything to go back to at Emma’s and— “You want to move in together?” she asked, curled against his side with his shirt on and eventually they’d have to talk about past lives. If only because she wasn’t sure if that meant he’d always be able to feel her magic. 

Emma figured that’s what had happened. 

“Yeah.” “Yeah? Just like that?” “I love you too,” Killian said. “I didn’t say that before, that was ridiculous.” “You were kind of busy.” “Avoiding death, yeah.” Emma rolled her eyes. He smirked. The ass. Again. “Which you saved me from. More than once, it seems.” “And that’s not freaking you out?” “Oh, yeah, absolutely. But only in a fear for my own mortality kind of way. I’m not sure my soul is quite prepared to move on at this point.” Emma quirked an eyebrow. “That so?” “Nah, lots of things I had planned. Both times around. The schedule’s been a little hectic, though. So I’d very much like to start crossing things off the to-do-list, as it were.” He moved as he spoke, hovering over her until Emma’s shoulders pressed into the corner of the couch and she had to hook her leg around his in an attempt not to fall on the floor. Killian groaned. “That’s your own doing,” she mumbled, already working her fingers under his shirt. “Take this off.” “I think we’re very much on the same page, love.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” His mouth dropped towards hers, all want and need and she was never going to stop thinking about his tongue. No matter how many times they did this. It swiped across her lips, Emma sighing against him and she was going to brag about whatever sound he made as soon as she canted her hips up for, like, at least the next few weeks. 

She tilted her head, trying to crowd into his space more, or possibly just take up some room in his soul and she got the distinct impression it wouldn’t be that hard. Killian’s hand moved under her back, palm flat on her skin and goosebumps there and for a moment it was all heady rhythm and tongues and teeth, slightly squished noises and panted breaths. 

And then— “I would have followed you anywhere, you know that?” Emma stilled. She’d closed her eyes at some point. Idiotic. Particularly when he was staring at her like that, several jokes about the sun and North Stars and—“Let’s not make a habit of it, ok?” “Deal. I love you.” “That’s twice now.” “Consider it an attempt to reach an overdue quota.” She laughed, fingers trailing over the stubble on his jaw. “You want to sleep? I haven’t—it’s been kind of hard to do that recently. I mean I’m all for the to-do-list, but…” “The rest of our lives, right?” “I hope so.” “Deal,” Killian repeated, and his arm found its way back around Emma’s middle as soon as they dropped onto his bed. 

They didn’t stop working the extra ghost tour shifts. 

And they didn’t ever say anything about magic or past lives or anything, although Emma had a fairly strong suspicion that Regina had her own suspicions. If only because she let Emma stop wearing that one particular hoops skirt when it got especially warm. 

And Killian kept working the audience in every crowd, the groups getting a little bigger every few weeks, gasping on cue at stories and hauntings and— “Isn’t that right, Mistress Jones?” he asked, a summer later in the middle of a historic heatwave, and Emma couldn’t stop her answering smile if she tried. She didn’t really try. 

“Oh, yes, absolutely. Very haunted here in the capital city. Now, uh, if you’d all like to follow me, we’ll move on to the next location, just up the street and you may want to double check for anything in those photos you just took.”

Emma glanced Killian’s direction when the reactions came, one side of his mouth tugging up and a bit of light glinting off the ring on his right hand. 

He took a step forward, a quick kiss to her cheek that only a few tourists noticed, far too preoccupied with their photos and possibility and— “I’ll see you at home, love,” he muttered. 

“Liar.” Killian hummed, squeezing her hand and he was waiting outside the staff room when Emma finished, an upturned palm and the undeniable spark of magic in the air around them.

[whatchudrinkin]

History Nerd, Meet Beer Nerd

I am a nerd. I always have been. As a teen my method of music discovery was to read wikipedia articles. I’d start at something I liked, say the Ramones, and click on every artist mentioned on the page. I’d read all those, and then move deeper. When I started this blog the second thing I did was go to the library and find a bunch of books on beer and brewing. Because I’m a huge nerd.

(I’m such a huge nerd I’ve been poring over my beer books again for a month, to get this post just right.)

When Sarah’s parents suggested we check out Colonial Williamsburg on our recent trip, I was fully onboard. On top of the usual history, there’s beer. Last year, Colonial Williamsburg hosted an historical beer summit. They brought in lots of beer historians to talk process and ingredients and the place of beer throughout human history. 

Colonial Williamsburg is a great place to host an historical beer conference, Williamsburg is a hub of historical recreations. As part of studying colonial life, reenactors regularly brew beer. If you come at the right time, you can watch Frank Clark, head of Historic Foodways, boil wort over an open fire. I’m not sure anyone actually gets to taste Clark’s homebrew. But if you visit any of the numerous Williamsburg pubs, you can taste some commercial recreations of those historical brews.

Before anyone could try those beers, the brewers had numerous hurdles to clear.

Finding the right ingredients is problem number one. The barley grown today is a completely different species from the grains grown in 1800, and modern maltsters aim for maximum efficiency. Frank Clark tells a story on the Colonial Williamsburg Past & Present podcast about an early test brew that finished at fourteen percent alcohol, way too strong for daily drinking in the Virginia sunshine.

The second issue is modern brewing technique. In the eighteenth century America, brewing was household chore. A brewster would make small batches for family and friends using cast iron pots and pans over a wood burning stove. Scaling up an ancient homebrew recipe to a modern brewhouse all trial and error.

But the Williamsburg Historic Foodways team persisted, and with the help of Alewerks Brewing recreated these colonial beers. We sampled a few at Josiah Chowning’s Tavern on Duke of Gloucester street, where the beer is served from a conventional keg -- not my first choice for historical accuracy -- in cute earthenware mugs.

The first was a historical brown ale called Old Stitch. Brewing a brown ale can be difficult, because most modern porters and stouts are brewed with pale malt and only enough dark malt for color and roast flavor. Historically dark beer was made with all brown malt. What was that malt like? Hell if I know. It was brown and probably dried over charcoal fires.

Old Stitch started from a few offhand references in old brewing manuals. There was no recipe available. So Clark, as described in another podcast, did some detective work. It was listed as a table beer, so he was able to guess at it’s relative strength, probably around five percent alcohol. Then they tackled the question of malt, looking for something that looked like the descriptions in the old manuals, even if they couldn’t specify exact kiln temperatures.

The Old Stitch brewed at Alewerks definitely tastes like a precursor to a modern porter, toasty, balanced. I only had the six ounces, but it didn’t taste all that historical to me. It tasted pretty plain to be honest, and drawn from a keg, it lacked the historical flatness I was expecting. But historical beer nerd beggars can’t be historical beer nerd choosers.

Next they tackled the obscure, extinct style known as Mum or Mumme. Mum seems to be one of those beer styles, like milk stout, that was marketed as a health tonic. Old recipes are chockful of herbs and spices. The historical product had a ridiculously low attenuation and intense herb flavors. Mum was probably a very bitter, very sweet beer.

Dear Old Mum, the Williamsburg version, is a spiced ale brewed with coriander and grains of paradise on a base of wheat and oats. It tastes a bit like a Belgian-y wit without the yeast character. It’s spicy and sweet, like hot apple cider with ginger. Not exactly the weird beer I was promised, but interesting in its own right.

The final beer in my tasting was Wetherburn’s Tavern Bristol Ale, which is toted as a precursor to modern India Pale Ale. Of course, the menu is lacking in any actual history. The best I can get from the Alewerks website the simple fact Bristol was a major port shipping supplies to the American colonies. That’s true. But Clark and others repeat the old saw about export ales being both hoppier and stronger to survive the journey. It’s a story repeated endlessly, without much actual evidence. British brewers exported everything. If it fit in a ship, it found it’s way throughout the empire.

But Alewerks and company fail to specify what sort of beer Wetherburn’s is supposed to emulate. I’ve never come across any references to “Bristol Ale.” There are plenty of proto-IPAs out there. There’s strong October beer, which brewed with the freshest harvest of hops. There’s the famous Burton ale, brewed in Burton upon Trent and famous for its bitterness. The point is, the label “forerunner to the modern India Pale Ale” is a lot to lay on a single pint.

But why does Wetherburn’s taste like coffee? The brownish ale is toasty, with a bitterness more akin to black coffee than hops. I thought it was just a fluke. I was almost convinced I had the wrong beer. On our way home, I insisted we stop in one of the many small shoppes lining Duke of Gloucester Street so I could take another look. Still tastes like coffee, but it tastes stronger, more alcoholic.

Of course, I couldn’t grab just one bottle, or just one beer, so I grabbed a couple of Toby’s Triple Threads Porter while I was at it. This too was a difficult beer to recreate due to the burnt sugar in the recipe. What do you mean a modern brewery isn’t equipped to deal with boiling sugar set on fire?

Triple Threads is not a recreation of a classic London Porter, which legally could never include licorice, molasses, or burnt sugar. In those days taxes were paid on the malt that made the beer, not the final product. The taxmen were wary of anything that went into the brew kettle that hadn’t been properly assessed. Toby’s Triple Threads is said to be based on a colonial recipe. The colonies were the wild frontier. Anarchy in the brewhouse. 

Those little additions really give Toby’s Triple Threads it’s flavor. Of course, the roasted malt adds the most flavor, but it’s helped along by the molasses and licorice. There’s just a hint of acidity in there, too. It’s just a whisper of something fruity.

The name Triple Threads comes from an old myth that Porter evolved from the practice of drawing beer from multiple kegs into a single tankard. The most popular was a blend of sweet ale, hoppy beer, and ‘twopenny’ strong ale. Brewers tried to recreate that flavor in a single cask, or butt, and called it “entire butt” beer. The story goes that that “entire” morphed into Porter. The story though, seems too good to be true. 

But that’s is really the problem with recreating these historical beers. The stories we tell are so compelling, and the history is so muddy. Tracking down reliable information is hard. And, like all things, beer changes over time.

Porter has gone through so many different phases. At one point it was a strong ale brewed with brown malt which was heated until it cracked and popped like popcorn. At the start of the 19th century, porter was aged in huge wooden vats for up to two years, where it most definitely went through a round of secondary fermentation with wild Brettanomyces. But by the mid 19th century, Porter was served mild, or fresh. At the same time in Ireland Porter was being brewed with black patent malts and efficient pale malt, the formula that eventually led to classic Guinness and the modern Porter we are familiar with today.

If pick a single point between 1750 and 2017 you are liable to stumble across a beer called Porter, but you’ll likely never taste the same thing twice. One porter will be sour and vinous. The will be sweet and smokey. A third might be nine percent alcohol, while the others are closer to three percent. 

There are a million fascinating stories you can tell with these beers, stories of changing tastes and changing technology. But Frank Clark and his team seem less interested in telling the story than making a decent beer. Nowhere online or off did I see an explanation of Mum or the story of Porter. I was given a single sentence description of each beer and told to enjoy.

For an organization ostensibly meant to educate the masses on life in the American colonies, Historical Williamsburg seems more interested in selling a passable product than explaining what it is and how it’s made and why. The barmaid simply makes a joke about the water being unsafe and plugs your order into a concealed computer terminal. There’s a veil of authenticity -- they make reference to old brewing logs, they mention archaeological evidence -- but the details are glossed over in favor of play acting and expensive facsimiles.

I have no problem with anyone making a buck off of history, I just want to see the homework finished before you go play pirates. 

If you want to read more about the historical beers of Britain, I cannot recommend Amber, Gold, and Black by Martyn Cornell enough. It’s great, it seems to be out of print at the moment, but there’s an Amazon e-book version for a tenner. Read that book and Ron Pattinson’s blog, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, and you’ll know enough about old beer to piss off anyone.

[adambstingus]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,‘” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165238661882

[jimdsmith34]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,'” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

source http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/09/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash.html

[samanthasroberts]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,’” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

[allofbeercom]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,'” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

[anything-advice-blog]

Hello! This might seem very odd or maybe seen as weird, but I have something I’d really like to get off my chest. I’ve been friends with some people for a while (a few years) and even dated one of them (but she is now my ex girlfriend). I’m an autistic, adult, pansexual woman and since 2 years or so, I have found a lot of my joy in learning about history. WW2 fascinates me the most. The happenings, the military history, the people. In no way am i drawn to this subject by means of romanticizing or politics (or guns). And since this year I do something that’s called historical reenactment. Where we dress up in uniforms and clothes from the time and teach people on events about history and we often get invited to display or show battles at museums. I reenact a female soviet soldier and some diverse german things, but nothing affiliated with politics, because we just want to teach people about the common soldier.

Well… About those friends… I have never really felt comfortable around them. They intimidate me, were often very rude and strive to be “cool people” that have the “bad bitch” attitude. With that, my ex was pretty mentally abusive and manipulative and caused me to drown in depression when she broke up with me. But after all this, I’ve noticed a lot of things were being said about me and my interests/hobby. I didn’t like it, so i started distancing myself from those friends, but they kept coming back and I kept hearing more shady business. And now that I vented on my main blog in the tags about being happy to be free of them, they started attacking me more directly, saying “I dress in a nazi uniform for fun” which is absolutely not true, and ive tried to explain to them what i did, but they’re not having any of it.

It just seems like they are simply trying to make my life bitter just because they want to. I’ve always known deep down i had no value to them, but they put so much effort into trying to hurt me that it actually works.I just need to know what other people think about the matter because I’m afraid that my hobby as a history reenactor is giving these people fuel to take it out of context and paint me as some kind of romanticizing neonazi/communist and it really hurts, seeing how my family has suffered under both of the soviet and german brutality.

Hi there,

There's no nice way to say this and you must already know this, but those people aren't your friends.

You're doing nothing wrong. You're fascinated with history, as are many people, because it's honestly an interesting subject. Dressing up might be considered a little over-the-top, but it's entirely harmless and you've made it abundantly clear that you're not romanticizing. In fact, that seems like it's a lot of fun, and your 'friends' have no right to bully you over it, especially considering that you're not even the only one doing it.

Those are people that want to hurt you. They know you're not romanticizing, but are also aware it's a bit of a weak point for you, which is why they keep poking at it. Don't explain it to them. Trust me that they already know. Please block those people. If you have any proof, paper trail, screenshots or logs or emails of their cruelty towards you, I'd suggest you save them. If they want to start drama and turn other people against you, and ESPECIALLY if that escalates to harassment, you'll have some ammunition other than your words. Also, even if it's painful, sometimes looking over proof of their behaviour can be validating. It can help you stay in-tact with your feelings and remember that you feeling hurt and wronged is entirely justified. No normal person puts in so much effort to hurt somebody.

If there's drama over you, make it clear that you want minimum participation in it. Don't JADE: Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain. Be short and firm, and change or end the subject quickly. Offer the minimum information: what you're doing is being massively taken out of context, and you refuse to discuss it. Don't offer anything at all whatsoever to the people badmouthing you. They know they've gotten to you, but giving them the time of day is giving them ammunition to twist your words and make you feel even worse.

It appears that you're in some kind of a re-enactment group - if you still feel bad about what they said, talk to them! They are just the right people to tell you what I've told you - that what you're doing is all in good fun and education.

Best of luck, Athena