#obligatory mention of the colonel

[fallingskywaterr]

Which side character in storm hawks do you think deserves a stand alone episode?

While I’m absolutely fascinated by the Colonel as a character, as well as what life is like for the ‘average’ Cyclonian, I’d have to say I’d most want to see a standalone episode on Repton and his Raptors.

We don’t get told anything about their culture except they eat any prey, including humanoids. Often described as cannibals, how did a seemingly primitive reptilian society manage to subdue and enslave the much more intelligent Terradons into doing their bidding? Is there another species of apex predator that preyed upon the residents of Bogaton, requiring an alliance until the creation of the Bogaton defence system? Also, what about their social dynamics? Reptiles hardly have any variations between male and females of the species save for size and occasionally some colour difference. Is the gender ratio of Raptors 50/50? Or are females rarer? Repton seems to hold his mother in high regard, enough to keep him from killing off his nest-siblings (I’m guessing they’re from the same clutch) because he promised her not to. Is this standard for Raptor society? Do the females focus on the architecture/farming/cooking while the males are sent out to scavenge or hunt? Do they hold males in high regard? Or are females considered the most respected? What traits do Raptors as a species look for in a mate?

On a different tangent, why did Repton ally Bogaton with Cyclonia when their air defense mechanism is considered so incredible, especially when this happened before the Terradons ran for it? Did he respect Cyclonia for having a powerful elder female ruling them? Or has his Raptors efforts at raiding nearby terras like Mesa been repelled so often that the Raptors could be facing a famine? Do Raptors truly commit cannibalism by eating their own species or do they hold some respect for their own kind, exclusively eating other humanoids?

There’s just so much I’d love to know more about them, it would also set a standard for just how weird other cultures or species on Atmos could be.

[tonhalszendvics]

Thanks for the tags, @sinvulkt, i was thinking about this wayyyy too much. Anyway, here you go, have the (uncomplete) list of angsty babies of my heart, listed in almost correct alphabetical order!

1. Azula

She's the absolute queen of my heart. Too young to do all the shit she has to do, but she still does it, and she delivers. And also breaks during the process, but heyy, who ever heard of stress wearing down people? Not me for sure.

She has many layers to discover, she has interesting takes and she's also a goldmine for AUs and character-centric stories.

2. Mat Cauthon

This guy, I swear. I like his book persona, pre-Sanderson era, but Sanderson had his moments with him, too. If I have to think about a reluctant hero, he comes to my mind: he will do what he was tasked with, but you bet he'll complain the whole time! Also, his parental skills are a sight to behold.

(I am still mad that those three were not friends by the end of the series.)

3. Katniss Everdeen

Older sibling feels right into the heart. I wish I were as brave as her. That would be stellar, since our social skills are already matching. My sweet awkward girl, could and will kill you. She deserved better.

4. Héderváry Erzsébet (or Hungary, if you will)

They say, she is the manliest characters out of the whole cast. I tend to agree. I am also a bit compromised, since... you know. I'm Hungarian, lol. I wish my country were irl as cool as her.

5. Astrid Hofferson

She's badass, knows how to set people straight, loves Stormfly with all her heart, what more do I need from her?

6. Erik Lensherr/Magneto

This guy is just. Having issues and having solutions that are not good but you understand why does he have them. Also, official dilf on this list.

7. Murtagh & Thorn

They are soulbounded, they count as one! Murtagh was one of the first angsty dramaqueens of my heart, and that love came back to life and hit me like a train after I've read his book last week. I love this guy and Thorn was just. Perfect. I love them, your honour. Please provide me more of his emo poetry.

8. Natasha Romanoff

If we unsee that blehh thing from Age of Ultron, she's obviously the coolest person of the whole cast. I mean she's still written off as obligatory female character who we need to get away with everything, but she has depth, and I kinda like her. I mean. I kinda like the way she's written in fanfics :|

9. Anakin Skywalker

Another fine addition to the collection of angry sad men. I kind of. Don't like his portrayal in the clone wars series, as he was just so vastly different from the films – yeah, Hayden acting like animated Anakin in the Ahsoka series maybe lessened that pain, but still. He was awkward young adult, then he was less awkward less young and less human.

10. Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning

I literally couldn't decide, so here you go, a place shared! They are so similar, yet the differences in their characters made them react so differently! Wen Ning is baby, must protecc. Jiang Cheng will experience physical damage if he has to talk about his feelings.

Honorary mentions: Toothless (HTTYD); Bucky, Loki, Nebula and Wanda Maximoff (Marvel); Jonathan Morgenstern (Mortal Instruments); Toph, Zuko, Aang, and basically every kid from AtLA, Gilbert/Prussia (Hetalia); Matthew the Raven (Sandman series, as I haven't read the comics); Leia Organa (Star Wars); Taina Tives (you'll never know her, she's a wonderful person from a Hungarian sci-fi); Azirafael & Crowley (Good Omens); Arya (Game of Thrones); beat me but I liked Newt Scamander, even if the films were a piece of shit; Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye (Fullmetal Alchemist). Uhh, there are probably more, but they came to my mind?

So, as you can see, I have a thing for bad guys with horrible past, un-redeemable sins and anger issues. Give it to me. Make them monsters, but sprinkle in just a tiny bit of humanity, so they can suffer even more. Or, ray of sunshine. The duality of taste hits again!

I'd like to tag you, if you're interested: @bonnefoysdick, @astraxh, @kiir-bee, @pruszided, @kvietka, @daigah, and whoever feels like it <3

10 Fandoms, 10 Characters, 10 Tags

Thank you so much @idle-brit for tagging me!This was lots of fun :) 💖

My tags: @delyth88, @elymusplant, @galaxythreads, @chemical-processes. No pressure to answer, of course :)

1. Loki (MCU)

As much as I love everyone on this list, there is absolutely no competition for number 1. Loki has been my favourite character of all time for nearly 6 years now (because clearly the best time to join someone's fandom is after they've just been murdered), and is showing absolutely no signs of being replaced anytime soon. I have a Loki blog, for god's sake. The brodinsons are my favourite relationship in any kind of media, ever. I love them so, so much. Loki's a million different things and feelings, all at the same time, all fighting with each other, which makes for a wonderfully complex and nuanced character. Also, he's hilarious. Look at that eye roll. This is a man who hates his life, which makes me feel better about mine. Thanks, Loki.

2. Klaus Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy)

As will become obvious throughout this list, I love me an emotionally traumatised crazy person. Klaus is that. One of the characters who makes me laugh the most, ever, show-stopping dress sense, and a bucketload of unresolved trauma which goes largely ignored by Klaus, the other characters and the narrative itself? It was love at first sight. Their banter with the other characters, especially Ghost Ben (rip) is one of my favourite aspects of the show. Here's to hoping that Klaus won't be getting the Allison treatment in season 4!

3. Pippa Fitz-Amobi (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder)

I binge-read the entire AGGTM series earlier this year, and instantly fell in love with it. Pip is one of my favourite protagonists ever. Impossibly clever, compassionate, obsessive, badass, and a teensy bit unhinged. What's not to love? I would die for her. I'd say that I'd kill for her, but I think she's got that covered. I think she's written in a very realistic way, firstly as a genius 17 year old girl who doesn't really know what she's getting into, and later as a haunted individual who wants to stop investigating but can't. The way she politely knocks on people's front doors to dig up their traumas, accuse them of murder and all-round ruin their lives is everything to me. She is my blorbo. I am so, so excited for the show to come out, and I'm sure that Emma Myers will do a wonderful job as Pip!

4. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

One of the best-written characters, in one of the best-written series ever. Reading from her perspective is such a delight- she's endlessly suspicious of everyone around her, constantly on survival mode, trusting very few people and relying on exactly no one (to begin with, at least). She's a random teenage girl, from the poorest district, and she wins the Hunger Games. She's so mentally unstable that she has to be sedated, and still she's made to be the face of a rebellion. She's rude, and kind of unlikeable. She adopts all the weakest tributes, at risk to herself, knowing that they won't win. She's doomed to fail by the narrative. She's the it girl of 2010s dystopian YA fiction. Jennifer Lawrence is an amazing actress, who does a beautiful job portraying the depth and conflict of Katniss in the films. The themes and social commentary of the Hunger Games is one of its (many) strong points, and I am so so glad that people are talking about it again, because it is my favourite book series out there.

5. Mitchell Pritchett (Modern Family)

I have no idea what to say about this man, I just love him. He just like me fr. What an icon. Impeccable music taste. I've started saying, "no my god" now, and nobody understands what I'm talking about. Even in a sitcom, my favourite is the one with issues that he refuses to talk about or fix. The episode where he's trying to hide that he dressed up as spiderman makes me cry-laugh. Claire's speech at his wedding makes me just cry. He's not a perfect man, but he's certainly better than everyone else.

6. Shin Tsukimi (Your Turn to Die)

My favourite cringefail loser! I said Katniss was doomed by the narrative in a metaphorical way. This idiot is actually doomed.

No but in all seriousness, I do really love him. Before the beginning of the game, he was just a relatively normal young man- but, when confronted with the inevitability of his own death, he made himself into a monster to survive. He has a violent vendetta against the local badass teenage girl, who is traumatised as hell already and does not need Shin chipping in as well, thank you very much. I love his relationship with Kanna, his biological sister; how he uses her, manipulates her, and still cares for her so much that he dies for her with a smile on his face in the Emotion route. Conversely, in the Logic route, his actions are a direct cause of her death, and I just love how much YTTD hates siblings. I hope that his past with Midori is explored more in either a mini-episode or the final part of the game, because I find it sooo interesting. I'm super excited to see whether he actually has no chance of survival, or whether he makes it out, against the odds, on one of the routes. He's a bit useless, so I won't get my hopes up.

7. Rue Bennett (Euphoria)

I think it goes without saying that Euphoria has its issues, lol. Sam Levinson is an idiot. While a lot of the show (especially season 2) feels shallow and like it doesn't care about its characters, Rue's storylines always have heart and depth and I am so invested in her arc. It's no wonder that Zendaya won 2 Emmys for this role, because her acting is phenomenal! Rue feels so real to me, in the way that she's trying so hard to stay sober but she falls down and relapses time and time again. Recovery isn't linear, but she's getting there, and I adore her with all my heart. Her relationships with Lexi, her mother, her sister, and her sponsor, Ali, are my favourites, and the healthiest for her, in my opinion. Her brief friendship/ romance with Jules may have kept her more solidly sober than anything else in the show, but Jules (understandably) cracks under the pressure of Rue's mental health, and can't be there for her. Rue needs to heal for herself, which she appears to be doing at the end of S2.

8. Max Mayfield (Stranger Things)

Duffer brothers, please just let her be happy.

Despite only being introduced in Season 2, Max has, in my opinion, had the best character development out of everyone on the show. Her growth from someone standoffish, rude, and uninterested in the group (maybe I'm being a bit harsh. She was, like, 12) to someone who is willing to risk her life to help her friends and Hawkins means so much to me. The scene in "Dear Billy" (S4, Ep4) where she escapes from Vecna remains my favourite in the whole show and will probably be burned into my brain forever. Her relationships with Lucas and El are very sweet, and some of my favourites in Stranger Things. Her final line in S4, after all her struggles over the season, being that she doesn't want to die literally breaks my heart. I hope she gets some degree of a happy ending in the final season. She was my first profile picture when I joined this hellsite, and I love her a lot.

9. Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables)

The shenanigans that this girl gets up to never fail to make me laugh. The bit where she accidentally dyes her hair green and then has to hack it all off makes me feel awful for her, but. it's hilarious. Sorry, Anne. Her friendship with Diana is so sweet but also so funny to me because they really are the most chaotic duo of the 1880s. The scene where Anne accidentally gives her alcohol instead of fruit juice is so mortifying but so, so funny. Amidst all of the insane situations that Anne gets into are a lot of really heartwarming moments and relationships. Matthew and Marilla adopting Anne, even though they wanted a boy, because she's so endearing and alone in the world is probably what made me who I am today. I still haven't gotten around to watching Anne with an E, but I've heard it's amazing. I look forward to watching it when I have the time :).

10. Daphne Blake (Scooby Doo)

My first ever favourite character! Another one who I don't have a tonne to say about. She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. She has done nothing wrong, ever. She knows martial arts, so watch out.

Honourable mentions: Thor (MCU), Finnick Odair (The Hunger Games), Gretchen Weiners (Mean Girls), Jake Peralta (Brooklyn 99), Maurice Moss (The IT Crowd), The Eleventh Doctor (Doctor Who), James (The End of the F***ing World), Ali Abdul (Squid Game).

If you read all of this then thanks, and have a great day!

[buzzdixonwriter]

CASTLE KEEP: An Analysis

Few movies resonate as deeply with me as Castle Keep.

It is truly sui generis.

It’s a deceptively simple story: In the waning days of WWII, eight walking wounded American soldiers occupy a castle in Belgium, a token sign of force as the war rages past them. The castle belongs to a noble family who owned it for generations and stocked it with a vast collection of priceless rare and irreplaceable classical art. The current count wants to keep his castle and his collection intact, but he also wants a son to carry on the family name and tradition. He is, unfortunately, impotent. And even more unfortunately, the castle is located in the Ardennes forest, on the road to Bastogne…

Now, those raw elements are more than enough to fuel a perfectly good run of the mill WWII movie, with plenty of bang-bang-shoot-em-up and some obligatory musings on the meaning of it all.

And I’m sure that’s the way they pitched Castle Keep.

But director Sydney Pollack and screenwriters Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel (adapting the eponymous novel by William Eastlake) delivered something far more…well…phantasmagorical is as apt a way of describing it as any.

Because despite being solid grounded in a real time and a real place and a real event, Castle Keep moves out of the realm of mere history and into a much more magical place.

Not so much fact, as fable.

And as fable, it gets closer to the Truth.

. . .

Before we analyze the movie, let’s set the contextual stage.

First off, understand the impact WWII movies still had on audiences of the 1960s and early 70s.

For those who lived through the war years, it occurred scarcely more than 20 years earlier, a period that seems like forever to teenagers and young adults but flies past in the blink of an eye when one reaches middle age and beyond.

Not only were WWII movies popular, they were relatively easy to make.  A lot of countries still used operational Allied and German equipment up through the 1960s (Spain’s air force stood in for the Luftwaffe in 1969’s The Battle Of Britain), and for low budget black and white films or pre-living color TV, ample archival and stock footage padded things out.

Most importantly, WWII was a shared experience insofar as younger audiences grew up hearing from their parents what it was like, and as a result there was some degree of relatability between the Greatest Generation and their children, the Boomers.

But the times, they were a’changin’ as Dylan sang, and the rise of the counter-culture in the 1960s and the civil rights, feminist, and ant-Vietnam War movements (and boy howdy, is that a hot of history crammed into one sentence but you’re just gonna hafta roll with me on this one, folks; we’ll examine that era in greater detail at some point in the future but not today, not today…) led to younger audiences looking at WWII with fresh eyes and to older film makers re-evaluating their own experiences.

So to focus on WWII films of the time, understand their were 3 main threads running through the era:

The epic re-enactment typified by The Longest Day (1961), The Battle Of The Bulge (1965), Patton (1970), and ending with A Bridge Too Far in 1977

The cynical revisionism of The Dirty Dozen (1967), Where Eagles Dare (1968), and Kelly’s Heroes (1970)*

The absurdity of How I Won The War (1967) and Catch-22 (1970)

Castle Keep brushes past all those sub-genres, though it comes closest to absurdity.

. . .

While released in 1969, Castle Keep started development as early as 1966 (the novel saw print in 1965).  Burt Lancaster, attached early on as the star, requested Sydney Pollack as director.

Pollack, an established TV director, started making a name for himself in the mid-1960s with films like The Slender Thread and This Property Is Condemned; he and Lancaster worked together on The Scalphunters prior to Castle Keep.

While his first three films were well received, Pollack’s career really took off with his fifth movie, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and after that it was a string of unbroken successes including Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Three Days Of The Condor, Tootsie, Out Of Africa, and many, many more.

In fact, the only apparent dud in the barrel is Castle Keep, his fourth movie.  

Castle Keep arrived at an…uh…interesting juncture in American (and worldwide) cinema history.

The old studio system that served Hollywood so well unraveled at the seams, the old way of doing business and making movies just didn’t seem to work anymore.

Conversely, the new style wasn’t winning that many fans, either.

For every big hit like Easy Rider there were dozens of films like Candy and Puzzle Of A Downfall Child and Play It As It Lays and Alex In Wonderland.

As I commented at the time, it seemed as if everybody in Hollywood had forgotten how to make movies.

It was a period rife with experimentation, but the thing about experiments is that they don’t always work.  While there were some astonishingly good films in this era, by and large it’s difficult for modern audiences to fully appreciate what the experimental films of the era were trying to do -- and in no small part because when they succeeded, the experiments became part of the cinematic language, but when they failed…

Castle Keep is not a perfect film.  As much as I love it, I need to acknowledge its flaws.

The Red Queen brothel sequences feel extraneous, not really worked into the film.  Women are often treated like eye candy in male dominated war films, but this is exceptionally so.  Brothels and prostitution certainly existed during WWII, servicing both sides and all comers, but the Red Queen’s ladies undercut points the film makes elsewhere.  

Their participation in the penultimate battle shifts the film -- however briefly -- from the absurd to the ridiculous, and apparently negative audience testing resulted in a shot being inserted showing them alive and well and cheering despite a German tank blasting their establishment just a few moments earlier.

Likewise, an action sequence in the middle of the film where a German airplane is shot down also seems like studio pressure to add a little action to the first two-thirds of the movie. 

Apparently unable to obtain a Luftwaffe fighter of the era, Pollack and the producers opted for an observation aircraft, then outfitted it with forward firing machine guns, something such aircraft never carried.

Once the airplane spotted the American soldiers at the castle, it would have flown away to avoid being shot down, not return again and again in futile strafing runs while they returned fire.

It’s action for the sake of action, and like the Red Queen scenes actually undercuts other points the film makes.

. . .

But when the film works, ah, it works gloriously…

Pollack used a style common in films of the late 1960s and early 70s:  Jump cuts from one time and place to another, with no optical transition or establishing shot to signal the jump to the audience.

Star Wars brought the old school style of film making back in a big way, and ya know what?  Old school works; it was lessons learned the hard way and by long experience.

Still, Pollack’s jump cuts add to Castle Keep’s dreamy, almost hallucinogenic ambiance, and that in turn reinforces the sense of fable that permeates the film.

For as historically accurate as Castle Keep is re the Battle of the Bulge, as noted above it is not operating in naturalism but rather the theater of myth and magic.

Pollack prefigures this early on with a dreamy slow motion sequence of cloaked riders galloping through the dead trees of the Ardennes forest, jumping a fence directly in front of the jeep carrying Major Falconer (Burt Lancaster) and his walking wounded squad.

It’s a sequence similar to one in Roger Vadim’s "Metzengerstein" segment of 1968’s Spirits Of The Dead, and while it’s unlikely Pollack found direct inspiration from Vadim, clearly both drew from the same mythic well.

The sequence serves as an introduction to the count (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and Therese his wife (?  Niece?  Sister?  Nobody in the movie seems 100% sure what their relationship is, but she’s played by Astrid Heeren) and the fabulous Castle Maldorais.

The castle is fabulous in more ways than one.  While the exterior was a free standing full scale outdoor set and some large interior sets were built, many of the most magnificent scenes were filmed in other real locations to show off genuine works of art found in other European castles.

This adds to the film’s somewhat disjointed feel, but that disjointed feel contributes to the dream-like quality of the story.  

. . .

As mentioned, Maldorais is crammed to the gills with priceless art, and the count doesn’t care who prevails so long as the art is unmolested.

The same can’t be said about Therese, however, and as the film’s narrator and aspiring author, Private Allistair Piersall Benjamin (Al Freeman Jr.), notes “We occupied the castle.  No one knows when the major occupied the countess.”

The count, as noted, is impotent.  To keep Castle Maldorais intact for future generations, he needs an heir and is not fussy about how he obtains one.  Therese’s function is to produce such an heir, and if the count isn’t particular about which side wins, neither is he particular about which side produces the next generation.

Despite being the narrator and (spoiler!) sole American survivor at the end of the film, Pvt. Benjamin is not the focal character of the film, nor -- surprise-surprise -- is Lancaster’s Maj. Falconer.

Falconer is evocative of Colonel Richard Cantwell in Ernest Hemingway’s Across The River And Into The Trees, in particular regarding his love affair with a woman many years his junior.

Falconer wears a patch over his right eye, the only visible sign of wounding among the GIs occupying the castle.

Several military movie buffs think they found a continuity error in Castle Keep insofar as Maj. Falconer first appears in standard issue officer fatigues of the era, but towards the end and particularly in the climactic battle wears an airborne officer’s combat uniform.

This isn’t an error, I think, but a clue as to Falconer’s personal history.

An airborne (i.e., paratrooper) officer who lost an eye is unfit for combat, and if well enough to serve would be assigned garrison duty, not a front line command.

Falconer figures out very early in Castle Keep the strategic importance of Castle Maldorais re the impending German attack and very consciously makes a decision to stand and fight rather than fall back to the relative safety of Bastogne.

Donning his old airborne uniform makes perfect sense under such circumstances.

If the count is impotent invisibly, Falconer is visibly impotent -- in both senses of the word -- and sees his chance to make one last heroic stand against the oncoming Nazi army as a surer way of restoring his symbolically lost manhood than in impregnating Therese.**

. . . 

Before examining our focal character, a few words on the supporting cast.

Peter Falk is Sgt. Rossi, a baker.  Sgt. Rossi’s exact wounding is never made clear, but it appears he suffers from some form of shell shock (as they called PTSD at the time).

He hears things, in particular a scream that only he hears three times during the movie.

The first time is after an opening montage of beautiful works of art being destroyed in a series of explosions.  When a bird-like gargoyle is blow apart, a screech is heard on the soundtrack, and we abruptly jump cut to Maj. Falconer and Sgt. Rossi and the rest of the squad on their way to Castle Maldorais.

For a movie as profoundly philosophical as Castle Keep (more on that in a bit), Sgt. Rossi is the only actual philosopher in the group.  His philosophy is of an earthy bent, and filtered through his own PTSD, but he’s clearly thinking. 

Rossi briefly deserts the squad to take up with the local baker’s wife (Olga Bisera, identified only as Bisera in the credits).  This is not adultery or cuckoldry; Rossi sees her bakery, knocks, and identifies himself as a baker.

“And I am a baker’s wife,” she says.

“Where’s the baker?”

“Gone.”

And with that Rossi moves in, fulfilling all the duties required of a baker (including, however briefly, standing in as a father figure for her son).

The baker’s wife is the only female character who displays any real personal agentry in the film, Therese and the Red Queen and her ladies are there simply to do the bidding of whichever male is present.

This is a problem with most male-oriented war films, and especially so for late 60s / early 70s cinema of any kind; for all the idealistic talk of equality and self-realization, female characters tended to be treated more cavalierly in films of that era than in previous generations.  Olga Bisera’s character appears noteworthy only in comparison to the other female characters in the movie.

Pvt. Benjamin, our narrator and aspiring author, is African-American.  There is virtually no reference made to his race in the film, certainly not as much as the references to a Native American character’s ethnicity.

Today this would be seen as an example of color blind casting; back in 1969 it was a pretty visually explicit point.

Again, it serves the mythic feel of the movie.  At that time, African-American enlisted personnel would not be serving in an integrated unit.

While Castle Keep never brings the topic up, the film -- and Pvt. Benjamin’s narration -- indicates these eight men are bottom of the barrel scrapings, sent where they can do the least amount of damage, and otherwise forgotten by the powers that be.

With that reading, Benjamin’s presence is easy to understand.  As the apparently third most educated member of the unit (Falconer and our focal character are the other two), he probably would not have been a smooth fit in any unit he’d been assigned to.

Whatever got him yanked out of his old company and placed under Maj. Falconer’s command probably was as much a relief to his superiors as it was to him.

Scott Wilson is Corporal Clearboy, a cowboy with a hatred of Army jeeps and an unholy love for Volkswagens.

Volkswagens actually appeared in Germany before the start of WWII but once Hitler came out swinging those factories were converted to military production.  Nonetheless, the basic Beetle was around during the war, and commandeered and used by many Allied soldiers who found one.

Clearboy’s Volkswagen provides one of the funniest bits in the movie, and one that plays on the mythical / surreal / magic realism of the film.  Clearboy’s obsession is oddly touching.

Tony Bill’s Lieutenant Amberjack tips us early on to the kind of cinematic experience we’re in for.  Under the opening credits, Amberjack is asked if he ever studied for the ministry; Amberjack says he did.

“Then why aren’t you a chaplain?” -- and Amberjack bursts out laughing.

Amberjack does not go with the others to the Red Queen -- “That’s for enlisted men” -- and while he enjoys playing the count’s organ, by that I mean he literally sits down at the keyboard and plays music.

But as we’ll see, Castle Keep is not the sort of movie to shy away from sly hints.  Amberjack’s specific “wound” is never discussed, so it’s open to speculation as to why he’s assigned to Maj. Falconer’s squad.

(Siderbar: Following a successful acting career, Bill went on to produce and direct several motion pictures, sharing a Best Picture Oscar for The Sting with Michael and Julia Phillips.)

Elk, the token Native American character in every WWII squad movie, is played by James Patterson.  Elk doesn’t get much to do in the film, though Patterson was an award winning Broadway actor.  Tragically, he died of cancer a few years after making Castle Keep.

Another character with little to do is Michael Conrad’s Sergeant DeVaca.  Most audiences today remember him for his role in Hill Street Blues.

Astrid Heeren (Therese) gets a typically thankless role for films of this type in that era.  She possessed a beautiful face that’s so symmetrical it gives off an unearthly, almost frightening vibe.  A fashion model in the 1960s, she appeared in only four movies -- this one, The Thomas Crown Affair, and two sleaze fests -- before quitting the business.

As noted above, no one is ever quite sure what her exact relationship to the count is.  Towards the end it’s speculated she’s his sister and his wife, but since the count is impotent, does that really constitute incest?

Whatever she is, it’s clear the count considers her nothing more than an oven in which to bake a new heir, and in a very real sense she possesses less freedom and personal agentry than the ladies of the Red Queen.

At least she survives at the end of the film, pregnant with Falconer’s child, led to safety by Pvt. Benjamin.

Finally, Bruce Dern as Lieutenant Billy Byron Bix, a wigged out walking wounded who is not a member of Falconer’s squad.

Bix leads his own rag tag group of GIs, equally addled soldiers who proclaim their newly found evangelical fervor renders them conscientious objectors.  They wander about, singing hymns and scrounging for survival, until the penultimate battle of the film.  

Falconer, trying to recruit more defenders from the retreating American forces, dragoons Bix and his followers into singing a hymn in the hopes of luring some of the shell shocked GIs back to the keep.

Bix agrees -- and is almost immediately killed by a shell, not only thwarting Falconer’s plan but also raising the question of whether this was divine punishment for abandoning his pacifist ways, fate decreeing Falconer and his squad must stand alone, or pure random chance.

Dern, as always, is a delight to watch, and he and Falk get a funny scene where they argue about singing hymns at night.

. . .

So who is our focal character?

Patrick O’Neil was one of those journeymen actors who never get the big breakout role that makes them a star, but worked regularly and well.

He worked on Broadway, guest starred on TV a lot, starred in a couple of minor films (including the delightful sci-fi / spy comedy Matchless), but spent most of his movie career supporting other stars.

Castle Keep is his finest performance.

He’s supposed to be supporting Lancaster in Castle Keep, but dang, he’s the heart and soul of the film.

O’Neil plays Captain Lionel Beckman, Falconer’s second in command, a professor of art and literature whose name is well known enough to be recognized by the count.  

Besides Falconer, Beckman is the only character explicitly acknowledged as having been wounded; this is revealed when Falconer mentions Beckman won the Bronze Star (the second highest award for bravery) and the Purple Heart.

Beckman is enthralled by Castle Maldorais; he and the count strike up a respectful if not friendly relationship.

He sees and appreciates the cultural significance of Castle Maldorais’ artistic treasures and futilely tries to share his love of same with the enlisted men.

He also understands how little Falconer can do at the castle to slow the German advance, and makes the entirely reasonable suggestion that perhaps it would be best for the squad and the castle to retreat and let the treasures remain intact.

Lancaster reportedly wanted to make Castle Keep a comment on the Vietnam War, but the reality is there’s no adequate comparison.

History shows the Nazis were a brutal, aggressive, racist force determined to conquer all they could and destroy the rest.

Beckman is not a fool for wanting to spare the castle and its art, and that’s why he’s vital as the film’s focal character.

He sees and feels for us the horror at what appears to be the senseless waste about to befall the men and the castle.  His voice is necessary to express there are ideals worth fighting for, and there are times when not fighting is the best strategy.

But Maj. Falconer is shown as a good officer.  While he maintains an aloof attitude of command, he’s interested in and concerned about the men under him, he’s willing to be lenient if circumstances permit, and he keeps them openly and honestly informed at all times of the situation facing them.

He figures out the meaning of the flares seen early in the film, anticipates what the German line of attack will be, but most importantly realizes more will die and more destruction will occur if the Nazis aren’t resisted.

He and Beckman’s difference of opinion is not simplistic good vs evil, brute vs beauty, but a deeper, and ultimately more ineffable one over applying value in our lives.

Falconer and Beckman represent two entirely different yet equally valid and equally human points of view of when and how we decide to act on those values.

Falconer by himself cannot tell the story of Castle Keep, he needs the sounding board of Beckman, and only Beckman can bridge the gap between those opposing values for the audience.

. . .

Before we go further, a brief compare & contrast on an earlier Burt Lancaster film, The Train (1964).

It touches on a theme similar to Castle Keep:  As Allied armies advance on Paris, the Germans plan to move a vast collection of priceless art by rail from France to Germany.  Lancaster, a member of a French resistance cell, doesn’t see the military value of stopping the train, but when other members of his cell decide to do so in order to save French culture, he reluctantly joins their efforts.

The film ends with the train stopped, the French hostages massacred, the art abandoned and strewn about by the fleeing Germans.  Lancaster confronts and shoots the German officer responsible then leaves, dismayed and disgusted by the waste of human life over an abstract love of beauty.

The French resistance fighters who died trying to stop the train did so of their own fully informed consent; they knew the risks, we willing to take them, ad faced the consequences.

The civilian hostages massacred at the end had no knowledge, much less any say in the reason why their lives were risked.  Lancaster, in successfully derailing the train to prevent it leaving France, also signs their death warrants when the vengeful Nazis turn on their victims.

The Train proved a critical success and did well at the box office, yet while it raises a lot of interesting points and issues, it ultimately isn’t as deep or as humane as Castle Keep.

The Train ends with a bitter sense of futility.

Castle Keep ends with a bittersweet sense of sacrifice.

. . .

All of which brings us to the screenplay of Castle Keep, written by Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel off the novel by William Eastlake.

I read Eastlake’s book decades ago and remember it to be a good story.  

The screenplay kept the basic plot but built wonderfully off the complexity of the novel, reinterpreting it for the screen.

It’s one of the few cinematic adaptations of a good literary work that actually improves on the original.

Taradash was a classic old school Hollywood screenwriter with a string of bona fide hits and classics to his credit including From Here To Eternity (1952), Picnic (1955), and Hawaii (1966).  He also scripted the interesting misfire Morituri (1965), about an Allied double-agent attempting to sabotage a German freighter trying to get vital supplies back to the fatherland.

I suspect Taradash was the studio’s first choice for adapting the book, and as his credits show, an eminently suitable one.  

But when Pollack came on as the director, he also brought along David Rayfiel, a frequent collaborator with him on other films.

Rayfiel’s career as a screenwriter was shorter than Tardash’s but more intense, vacillating between quality films and well crafted potboilers.  Rayfiel and Pollack doubtlessly shaped the final form of the screenplay, and despite what appears to he studio interference, turned in a truly memorable piece of work.

As I said, Castle Keep is truly sui generis, but there are other films and screenplays that carry some of the same flavor.  

The Stunt Man (1980; directed by Richard Rush, screenplay by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus off the novel by Paul Brodeur) bears certain similarities in tone and approach to Castle Keep.  It represents an evolution of the cinematic style originally found in Pollack’s film, now refined and polished to fit mainstream expectations.

True, it has the advantage of a story that hinges on sudden / swift / disorienting changes, but it still managed to pull those effects off more smoothly than the films of the late 1960s did.

As I said, some experiments work…

Castle Keep’s screenplay works more like Plato’s dialogs than a traditional film script.

Almost every line in it is a philosophical statement or question of some sort, and underlying everything in the film is each character’s quest for at least some kind of understanding if not actual meaning in life.

As noted, Sgt. Rossi is the most philosophical of these characters, though his philosophy is of a far earthier, more pragmatic variety than that of the count, Falconer, or Beckman.

All the major characters have some sort of philosophical bent, even if they’re not self-aware enough to recognize it in themselves.

The dialog is elliptical, less interested in baldly stating something that in getting the audience to tease out its own meanings.

Pollack directs the film in a way that forces the audience to fill in many blanks.

Early in the movie, Falconer and the count find themselves being stalked by a German patrol.  They take refuge in a gazebo, duck as the Germans fire the first few shots --

-- then we abruptly jump to the aftermath of the firefight, with Falconer and the count standing over the bodies of four dead Germans.

Falconer, seeing they’re all enlisted men, realizes they wouldn’t come this far behind enemy lines without an officer.

There can be only one destination for the officer, one goal he seeks…

Pollack then visually cuts away from Falconer and the count to Therese in the castle, but keeps the two men’s dialog going as a voice over.

In the voice over, we heard Falconer stalk and kill the German officer as he approaches the castle…

…and without ever explicitly stating it, the audience comes to realize the count and Therese are not allies of the Americans, that they are playing only for their own side, and that their values are alien to those of both the Allies and the Germans.

The count is using Therese -- with or without her consent -- to produce an offspring for him, and if the Germans can’t do the job, let the Americans have a go at it…

This theme provides an undercurrent for Beckman’s interactions with the count.  Beckman would like to believe the count’s desire to keep the war away from Castle Maldorais is just a desire to preserve the art and beauty in it, but the count’s motives are purely selfish.

He doesn’t desire to share his treasures with the world but keep them for his own private enjoyment.

The works of art are as good as gone once they pass through Castle Maldorais’ gate.

Later, at the start of the climactic battle for the castle, the count is seen guiding German troops into a secret tunnel that leads under the moat to the castle itself.

Falconer, having anticipated this, blows up the tunnel with the Germans in it.  Through Falconer’s binoculars, we see the Germans shoot the count in the distance, his body collapsing soundlessly into the snow.

A conventional war film would show his death in satisfying close up, but Pollack puts him distantly removed from the Americans he sought to betray, and even the Germans he inadvertently betrayed.  

It shows him going down, alone, in a cold and sterile and soundless environment, his greed for beauty scant comfort for his last breaths.

The film portrays the Germans as mostly faceless, seen only in death or at a distance, rushing and firing at the camera.

The one exception is a brief scene where Lt. Amberjack and Sgt. Rossi patrol the forest around the castle.

Amberjack, playing a flute he acquired at the castle, catches the attention of a German -- a former music student -- hiding in the nearby bushes.

The unseen German compliments Amberjack on his playing, but says if he’ll toss him the flute he’ll fix it so it plays better.

And the German is true to the word.  Unseen in the bushes, he smooths out some of the holes on the flute and tosses it back to Amberjack.

Amberjack thanks him --

-- and Sgt. Rossi shoots him.

“Why did you kill him?” Amberjack demands.

“It’s what we do for a living,” says Rossi, ever the philosopher.

. . .

Castle Keep isn’t a film for everyone.

It offers no pat answers, no firm convictions, no unassailable truths.

It’s open to a wide variety of interpretations, and the audiences that saw it first in 1969 approached it from a far different worldview than we see it today.

It isn’t for everyone, but for the ones it is for, it will be a rich meal, not a popcorn snack.

Currently available on Amazon Prime.

  © Buzz Dixon

  *  I’d include M*A*S*H (1970) in this group even thought (a) it’s set in the Korean War and (b) it’s really about Vietnam.  Except for the helicopters, however, M*A*S*H uses the same uniforms / weapons / vehicles as WWII films; for today’s audiences there’s no discernable difference from a WWII-era film.  It was a toss-up between putting this in the cynical revisionism or absurdity class, but in the end M*A*S*H is just too self-aware, too smirking to fit among the latter.

** Falconer’s relationship with Therese and (indirectly) the count and the castle also harkens back to a 1965 Charlton Heston film, The War Lord, arguably the finest medieval siege warfare movie ever made.  Like Falconer, Heston’s Norman knight must defend a strategic Flemish keep against a Viking chieftain attacking to rescue his young son held hostage by the Normans; complicating matters is Heston’s knight taking undue advantage of his droit du seigneur over a local bride which leads to the locals -- whom the Normans are supposed to be protecting from the Vikings -- helping their former raiders.  Life gets messy when you don’t keep your chain mail zipped.

[stopforamoment]

Soccer Mom of the Year (1 of 12)

Book: The Royal Romance (After Book Three)

Pairing: Bastien Lykel x OFC Rinda Parks

Word Count: 572

Rating: M for Language

Author’s Note: Obligatory disclaimer that Pixelberry Studios owns the TRR characters and my pocketbook with those darn diamond scenes. OFC with all of her quirks is all mine. My apologies if Tumblr or I do something stupid when I try to post this.

It’s before the school year starts, and chronologically it’s before “Broken” occurred/the first series wrapped up. Rinda doesn’t know about Jackson Walker’s death yet or why it is so important to Bastien that Drake and Henry meet.

In this part of the series we’re going to see more of Rinda as a mother, and the slow burn is that Bastien is the man in the shadows, doing anything he can to help Rinda and Henry. Think of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The romantic Colonel Brandon patiently biding his time for Marianne. I’m picturing the more romantic fluff Alan Rickman (mmmm) in the 1995 Ang Lee version of the movie for right now. Pacing the room when Marianne is ill, riding off to get her mother to comfort her, his shy happiness when Marianne stops to thank him when her mother arrives, and so on. However, the 2008 miniseries with David Morrissey’s Colonel Brandon (mmmm mmmm) catching Marianne when she faints or kicking butt in a duel to defend her honour may also inspire me down the road . . .

Summary: Bastien is putting the wheels in motion for Rinda to meet Drake Walker. He’s a potential candidate for the security officer position, but he would also be a great mentor for Henry considering they both lost their fathers at a young age.

. . . . Pretend Tumblr put a “keep reading” link here! . . . . .

Rinda was in the classroom starting at her laptop when Bastien stopped by.

“What are you working on? Are there tunnels that far out by the lake?”

“Hmm, oh. No. I’m trying to figure out good places to go fishing. Henry comes in a couple days and I promised him that I’d find a good spot to go fishing and play baseball. And notice how I’m finally doing that now. Mom of the year.” Rinda pursed her lips and slightly shook her head, which was a sure sign that she wasn’t happy with herself.

Bastien sat down next to her. “How’s it going?”

“Lots of places to play European football.” Rinda laughed. “Henry’s so screwed. I mean, he’s inherited my lack of athletic skills and we’re obnoxious Americans who think ‘football’ means something else. America wasn’t even in the World Cup this summer, right? So of course the majority of us Americans didn’t care.” Rinda grimaced. “I’m sorry, we suck. Anyway, Henry pretty much going to get his ass handed to him in any game. Baseball, he’s okay. Football in Cordonia? It won’t be pretty. And he has NO patience when he struggles with something. He’s inherited my worst traits, poor kid.”

Bastien grinned, and then paused. “You know, I have a friend who is the best defense in the palace. Maybe he could help Henry once you guys are settled in?”

Rinda looked shocked. “I don’t want to impose, but thank you. I really appreciate that you offered.” She quickly changed the subject. “By the way, is there anything else we need to get done this week? Once Henry’s here I won’t have much free time before the school year starts. Speaking of--how’s that short list coming along?”

Bastien sat down. “Well, I’m playing around with something. You still needed to go to the Royal Archives, right?”

Rinda rolled her chair back and gave Bastien an even stare. “Yes . . . but I’m not sure when I can get there again. This week is crazy, then Henry is here and it’s the week before school starts . . .”

“There’s a few great spots to go fishing by the palace.”

“Right. And you mentioned you have a friend who is the best defense in the palace. He hasn’t met us yet, but you’re assuming he’d be fine with doing this. He must really like kids. Where is this going, Bastien?”

Bastien grinned. “Just a hunch. Someone who’s on my short list. But I really do think you two should meet. Henry can come with and get some football practice while you research. Then maybe we can all go fishing later.”

Rinda grinned. “Actually, that sounds great, but is there anyone else we need to meet with next week? We could do that too, right? I mean, don’t we need to be worried about the timeline to find your replacement so you can get back to the palace full time? You must be swamped with all of your responsibilities.”

Bastien shook his head. “It’s fine. We knew there would be a transitional period through September, and the King and Queen are visiting the school in October and I’m taking care of that, so this actually works out quite well. Just let me worry about that stuff, okay?” Rinda gave him an even stare and didn’t answer. “Rinda, okay? I’ll talk to him and we’ll coordinate a time that works for all of our schedules.”

Rinda nodded. “Okay, you win. Just let me know what works for him. Wait, sorry. What’s his name?”

Bastien paused. “Drake Walker.”

[mwsa-member]

Interview with William Hamilton, Ph.D.

Interview date: 23 January 2022

William A. “Bill” Hamilton, Ph.D. is an American journalist, novelist, military historian, retired military officer, former college professor, and a formerly featured commentator for USA Today. An instrument-rated pilot, he is the co-holder of a world aviation speed record. Hamilton is a laureate of the Oklahoma Military Foundation Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, and the Nebraska and Colorado Aviation Halls of Fame. Bill and his wife, Penny, co-founded the award-winning Emily Warner Field Aviation Museum at the Granby, Colorado Airport (KGNB. Hamilton served 20 years on active duty as an Army officer, including two combat tours in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, he served as an infantry company commander and as an operations officer at the battalion and division levels in the famed 1st Air Cavalry Division. Between tours in Vietnam, he was attached to the 19th U.S. Air Force and to Colonel Chuck Yeager's 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying as a “guy-in-the-back” in the F-4 Phantom fighter. His military decorations include The Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, 20 Air Medals, four Bronze Stars, and the Purple Heart, among others. Bill co-authored with his wife, Penny, four espionage novels. under the pseudonym William Penn. In 2020, Bill was named a Grand County Citizen of the Year. He holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma, the U.S. Army Language School, The George Washington University, U.S. Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

MWSA: How did you find out about MWSA?

Readers of the biographies of famous military leaders often read that he or she was "mentioned in dispatches." Of course, most wannabe military heroes want to be "mentioned in dispatches." That set me to wondering who writes those dispatches. In Vietnam, I came to know the late, great Joe Galloway rather well. Now, there was a war correspondent who knew how to write "dispatches." And that led me to www.mwsadispatches.com and to the Military Writers Society of America.

MWSA: What caused you to become a career military officer?

My maternal grandfather was a lawyer and so was my favorite older cousin. I grew up thinking I would go to law school at O.U. and wind up as a small-town lawyer and probably run for the Oklahoma Legislature. In high school, I served a term as a page in the House and the next year I was chief page in the Oklahoma Senate. Just before entering O.U., I was elected Governor of Oklahoma Boys' State. My sainted Father served in the Navy out in the Pacific during WWII. His brother, my Uncle Edward, was an infantryman poised to take part in the invasion of Japan. My second cousin, Rear Admiral Tommy Hamilton served as air boss on the USS Enterprise during the Battle of Midway. At war's end, Cousin Tommy was skipper of the USS Enterprise. So, on my mother's side, were the Law and politics. On my father's side, was the Military.

At O.U., I signed up for four years of Army ROTC, discovering I really liked Military Science more than the Law. Commissioned as an infantry officer, I was halfway through law school when the Chicoms were shelling islands in the Strait of Formosa and President Eisenhower decided the nation needed more infantry lieutenants than it did nascent lawyers. While serving the obligatory two years on active duty, I discovered a passion for military service. While I could have left the Army and gone back to the Law or taken up any number of lucrative careers, I was like a good number of my colleagues who felt we could make a difference in the life of our nation by being on the front lines of the Cold War. By the end of 20 years, the Cold War and Vietnam were over and the Governor of Nebraska offered me a job as his aide and to be his interpreted during a trade mission to West Germany.

MWSA: How did you get involved in journalism?

As a teenager, I was a paperboy for The Anadarko Daily News, my hometown newspaper which, since 1984, has carried my "Central View," my weekly newspaper column. While on active duty, I wrote several articles for Infantry Magazine and other military publications. After working for Nebraska Governor Charles Thone and heading up a government reorganization task force for him, I left state government. While teaching History at Nebraska Wesleyan University, the publisher of SUN Newspapers hired me to write a weekly column on national and international affairs. Not long after that, my wife and I and some partners where able to buy The Capital Times of Lincoln from the Omaha World Herald. While my wife and I were co-editors of that newspaper, I was hired by USA Today as a featured commentator. When my favorite editor retired, I did as well, ending 19 years of writing in loyal opposition to USA Today editorials. Eventually, we sold our interest in The Capital Times and moved to Colorado where I continue to write "Central View." See: central-view.com. Eventually, I ended up in the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. From paperboy to laureate. Go figure.

My Master's thesis at The George Washington University and my doctoral dissertation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln dealt with the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War. So, after many years of sitting on a shelf, I dusted them off and wrote War During Peace: A Strategy for Defeat. After moving to Colorado in 1992, my wife and I decided to co-write a series of espionage novels that are largely autobiographical of places and events we experienced in a military career that took us all over the world. See: buckanddolly.com. They are soon to be re-released as a four-novel set.

MWSA: How did you get so involved in aviation?

3Mostly by accident. After my tour as an infantry company commander in Vietnam, the Army assigned me to be a Ground Liaison Officer to the 19th U.S. Air Force, and the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing at Seymour-Johnson AFB in North Carolina. At the time the 4th TFW was commanded by Colonel Chuck Yeager, the Air Force pilot who broke the Sound Barrier.

When I went over to present myself to the 4th TFW, I was unaware of Colonel Yeager's fame as a WWII fighter pilot, of his carrying a wounded navigator on his back over the Pyrenees to escape the Nazis, and unaware of his many high-altitudes speed records. I knew Colonel Yeager broke the Sound Barrier; however, by 1967, F-100s and F-4s routinely flew faster than sound. So, during our first meeting, I only accorded him the same respect I would display toward any Air Force bird colonel. Apparently, he liked that.

He told his deputy, "Assign a locker to this Army officer, Issue him a complete set of flight gear. Get him through the altitude chamber and Martin-Baker ejector seat training. There will be times when he will fly as my guy-in-the back." And I did on several occasions. Also, one of the staff officers at 19th Air Force taught me to fly the T-33 jet trainer (formerly the F-80 fighter) while he sat in back hovering his hands over his control stick. I found flying so interesting and so much fun I joined the Seymour-Johnson AFB Aero Club and earned a private pilot's license. And later, an instrument ticket.

I traveled with Colonel Yeager to South Korea during the USS Pueblo Crisis and went with him and squadrons of the 4th TFW to Turkey, to Greece, and to Norway for NATO exercises. Although a man of few words, Colonel Yeager (later BG) was a kind and considerate commander who really knew how to care for his troops. Of higher headquarters, not so much.

At the time, my wife and I did not realize the impact my learning to fly would have on our post-retirement lives. In 1987, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) was looking for a Regional Representative to serve its members in ND, SD, NE, and KS and I was hired. Later, the region was expanded to include CO, and WY. For 24 years, we worked for AOPA, flying hundreds of accident-free hours. Eventually, much to my surprise and delight, my wife decided to get her pilot's license. A feat that led to her current career as a writer about the history of women in air and space. See: pennyhamilton.com. But it all started with Colonel Yeager.

MWSA: So, what is next?

Some time ago, I published The Wit and Wisdom of William Hamilton: The Sage of Sheepdog Hill. It is mostly a collection of "Central View," newspaper columns; however, as I remember vignettes from my checked past in the military, in state government, in academe, in political consulting, and in the advertising and PR business, I write them down. They could end up in an expanded version of Wit and Wisdom. Or, I might write a memoir of my military career and call it: Some Funny Things Happened On My Way to the Stockade (almost). We'll see.

MWSA:Why did you write War During Peace: A Strategy for Defeat?

I wanted my fellow veterans to understand the origins of the Vietnam War.

[alexsmitposts]

Authoritarian versus ‘Democratic’ Rulers Much American ink is being spilt over the fact that Russian voters recently agreed to allow President Vladimir Putin to potentially serve for another sixteen years. This is part of a liberal campaign against authoritarian leaders that pays scant attention to reality: while ‘democratic’ rulers are constantly negotiating with their people’s representatives, evil authoritarians are implementing their decisions. If you think about it, the crucial question is not whether a ruler is ‘elected’, but whether he can be successfully challenged. Peter the Great brought the Boyars (the Russian equivalent of America’s Senators) to heel, imposing fundamental changes to every aspect of Russian life, including the ‘opening to the West’ for which he is remembered abroad, and changing the way Russians dressed. President Donald Trump is nowhere near being able to rule with a free hand, however, he is ridding the country of what he calls ‘the swamp’, rolling back necessary rules and regulations rather than preventing Congress’s pet projects from getting in the way of ‘making America great again’ (even though this would have to start with eliminating the Corona virus). The governments of European countries are not dependent on Brussels for basic necessities, while the politically independent American states depend on Washington for crucial funds, resulting in an overall inability to, as the mantra goes, ‘get things done’. While the American President tells Americans to ‘live with the Corona virus’ until it ‘magically goes away’, ordering governors not to make mask wearing obligatory, countries in both Europe and Asia are bringing the pandemic at least partially under control. This suggests not only that more centralized/authoritarian governments are better able to meet crises, but also, that ‘exceptionalism’ can refer to failure. Europe’s democratic socialist regimes have remained in power for decades, whether under center right or center-left governments. In France, where I spent thirty years during two different periods, actions are taken by the Prime Minister chosen by the President, and the cabinet he in turn creates. When taking office, as is currently happening, he presents his program to the parliament, requesting a ‘vote of confidence’. When parliament refuses to cooperate with actions being taken by the Prime Minister on something the President considers vital, he can invoke a law known as 49.3 that allows him to force passage of a bill without a vote (unless the parliament votes a motion of no confidence). While under the American system of ‘checks and balances’, it is proving nearly impossible to rid the country of a terrible president who, in Steve Bannon’s words, is ‘dismantling the state’, without slogans, Europe’s parliamentary systems keep power on a relatively short leash. This is all the more meaningful that in crises such as Covid, the President or Prime Minister can order industries to produce masks or other indispensable items, and to order social security to pay workers forced into unemployment 84% of their salaries instead of the usual 75%. European parliamentary systems also allow for the occasional authoritarian. Take France’s Charles de Gaulle, for example. An obscure Colonel at the start of World War II, his command of English enabled him to set up a provisional government based in London, prolonging his rule for another two years “in order to re-establish democracy” in formerly Vichy France. Ten years later, as France’s colonies fought for independence, he came out of retirement to create the entirely new, presidential Fifth Republic, leading it from 1958 until a year before his death in 1969, as the left gnashed its (few) teeth. While the Presidents and Prime Ministers that followed him ended in the trash bin of history, he is admired across the globe as it struggles to flatten the Covid death curve. The most threatening epidemic since the 1918 flu that killed more than 50 million worldwide, Covid starkly illustrates the superiority of centralized government. Recently, the Guardian noted that for decades, in the face of uninterrupted US sanctions, revolutionary Cuba has sent doctors and other health workers to Indonesia, Pakistan, Haiti, West Africa, and recently, to the rescue of Europe’s social democratic health systems brought up short by Covid. The British daily also points out that not all Cuban health workers are happy with the obligation to repay their government for the free training they received from nursery to medical school, however, as usual when it comes to Cuba, the condemnation of ‘democrats’ goes hand in hand with ignorance: Cuba’s communist rulers have been sending medical teams overseas for decades in a bid to save lives and influence people. Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Havana, said Fidel Castro launched the “doctor diplomacy” policy soon after his 1959 takeover as a means of using the island’s highly trained professionals to export revolutionary ideas and make new friends. While some missions are provided free of charge, other countries pay Cuba for the medical services, bringing in $6.3bn (£4.8bn) annually and making it Havana’s largest source of foreign currency. It’s true that Cuba has been exporting revolution and making friends around the world, in true socialist tradition, however the claim that when Fidel took power in 1959, Cuban doctors were eager to work in other third world countries is cringingly wrong. There were only enough of them to serve the well-off, and most would soon flee to more lucrative locations. While teaching many Cubans to read, the socialist government trained engineers, agricultural specialists and medical professionals in record time, (including thousands of doctors and nurses from developing countries and the US) tuition free. Inevitably, under the influence of ‘democratic’ ideas wafting across the Caribbean, some of those who benefit from the system resent having to reimburse it by serving abroad for a number of years, as I learned when revisiting the island in 2011. But it’s not as though they didn’t know what they were committing to, anymore than American students who take out high interest loans in order to acquire one of the most lucrative professions. The policy of all socialist countries is that free training creates an implicit IOU with the government, while the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo describes noblesse oblige in these terms: Cuban doctors and nurses are being abused and exploited in order to fill the coffers of an authoritarian regime. “The Cuban ‘medical missions’ are exploitation: a for-profit front used to fund the regime’s repression and sow political discord. Predictably, the Guardian chimed in: “Of course there are big human rights problems in Cuba – as there have been since the start of the revolution,” failing to point out that an American who enlists in the armed forces to kill innocent civilians abroad is a patriot, while a Cuban doctor who agrees to serve foreign patients is a victim. As I wrote at the beginning of this article, the never mentioned difference between authoritarianism and ‘democracy’ (‘rule by the people’, also known as popular ‘consent’), is that authoritarian rulers are able to implement history-changing policies without domestic battles. Every leader who has gone down in history, including France’s Sun King, Russia’s Peter the Great, George Washington, FDR, Indira Ghandi and Vladimir Putin, has come to power determined to bring sweeping change to his/her country. In my memoir “Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel”, in 1963 I discovered that both Fidel Castro and the Italian film maker Federico Fellini, whom I had followed for a year, ‘ate, drank and slept’ their respective passions 24/7. (I was not surprised when Cuba’s then President Osvaldo Dorticos, told me that he considered Fidel to be ‘an artist’.) Currently, for all the indignation over ‘Russian interference’, American elections play a relatively minor role, as politicians challenge national policies or delay their implementation to gain electoral points from their local voters, hindering efforts to deal with Covid 19. Meanwhile, Hong Kong covers the cleaning costs for its schools; South Korea helps them create day care centers open til evening; Germany subsidizes laptops so low-income students can participate in remote learning; Italy gives schools money for more teachers, masks and separations. And in Africa, Kenya’s Zoonotic Disease Unit brings human and animal health experts together with environmental specialists, since their interface is where pandemics occur. If the outgoing hegemon would work with Xi Jin Ping and Vladimir Putin, they could not only prevent nuclear war, but craft common policies toward pandemics, of which there are certain to be more. The fact that Covid has been found to be airborne suggests that technology could play an important role in its elimination, similar to our ability to seed clouds. Has not the Russian President been shown on video passing through a short decontamination corridor, as pharmaceutical companies around the world compete to produce the best vaccine?

[cyclonecasey]

Why did I do this?!

WHO KILLED MARKIPLIER, an analysis (+theory).

My theory is actually that the Colonel wasn’t completely wrong. I believe that it did in fact start off as bit of a prank, I think it saddened Mark that he wasn’t as close to his friends as he use to be and was afraid that they didn’t really care about him anymore. I think he lured his friends to his manor with the intentions of faking his own death to see if and how his friends would mourn him.

Warning, this is a long analysis.

Our relations It is implied that we know Mark to some extent, we wouldn’t have been invited otherwise, however we don’t seem to be as much a part of the gang as everyone else, as implied by the Colonel, the Seer, and the Detective not seeming to know us very well or at all. Damien refers to us knowing each other from at least our university years, and we assume that is how we know Mark as well.

Chapter 1 We arrive at Markiplier Manor where we meet the Colonel for the first time. We enter the manor to be greeted by the Butler (who doesn’t seem to know us), then move on to Damien the Mayor (who greets us as an old friend) and Abe the Detective (who goes silent as we approach and backs out of frame). After that we meet the Chef (some people have theorised that he knows us but I think that theory was made under the assumption that this takes place after A Date with Markiplier), then the Butler returns with our drink and Mark finally graces us with his presence. Ominous foreshadowing monologue ensues, followed by a toast, a rowdy drinking montage, and blacking out.

During the night Mark finds Damien and (somehow) takes possession of his body, trapping him in an alternate dimension, and leaving his own body (empty of life) to be found in the morning.

Morning comes and after the Butler gives us our cocaine seltzer (what?) we are greeted by Damien (who is actually Mark) who proceeds to say sinister things like “there’s our little monster” “you really knocked ‘em dead last night” “good to let the beast out every once in a while” followed by briefly wondering why now, what were we celebrating, planting questions in our mind that we’d want answered later. We head downstairs and as we enter the room with a fireplace Mark’s body falls at our feet. The Detective enters first, followed by the Butler, followed by the Chef, each one more panicked than the last but certainly no real hysterics or mourning. Thunder rumbles every time someone utters the word murder. Abe goes straight into Detective mode and questions us until the Butler points out that the body is already cold, he then decides to make us his partner. After the area has been sectioned off and the body covered, Damien (Mark) enters, feigning confusion and is told Mark is dead. Abe insists the authorities not be called and that he should be the one to handle this, the Butler wanders off to tend to the other guests, the Chef gets back to cooking, and Damien/Mark (probably shocked and a bit angry that everyone seems just go about their lives so fast) says he need to speak to the Colonel and rushes off. After determining where we where at the approximate time of the murder, the Detective sends us off to question the other guests. As we approach the Colonels room we can see and hear Damien/Mark yelling at the Colonel accusing him of hating Mark, saying he wants him to care (pretty sad in and of itself but so much sadder thinking that it’s actually Mark), as he brushes past us on the way out you can practically feel the disappointment and anger. When we approach the Colonel he’s obviously on edge, assumes we’re Damien back to have another go. He then treats the situation with a bit too much levity and mockery, telling a story of a caricature version of Mark making a fool of himself and then falling down the stairs, showing how little he thought of the man in the process. He insists we move along with our investigations and shoos us away. The Butler then hijacks us, telling us how privy he is and how well he knows all of the guests, he takes us down to the cellar where we find a broken bottle of wine that he flips out over, crying that Master would be displeased if he was still alive (I still can’t make sense of this scene, maybe it was just meant to be funny). Anyway, we back away not-so-slowly, and move on to the next person, the Chef. After some clever lines that both incriminate and absolve him, he tells us to ask his “little buddy” (security cameras) what happened. This is where we see that Mark had met with the Detective (who seemed oddly sober considering the last time we saw him he had a makeshift turban on his head and was drunkenly punching us out) 13 minutes before Marks supposed death, to discuss Marks staff (still unsure of the significance of this). We head outside and find Damien, clearly stressed and worried. He apologises for before and justifies that the Colonel must just be in shock. He monologues a bit about how long he and Mark had been friends and how lost he feels, he says he need time alone to process and we leave him alone to think. The Detective calls us back to tell us the body has disappeared.

My assumption here is that Mark, angered by his friend’s reaction to his death and the way the body was just left in a room covered in a sheet, decided to cause more suspicion and panic by making his body disappear.

Chapter 2 The Detective rants awhile about the body being moved and how it couldn’t have been him despite being the last person alone with it. The Butler comes in and asks if the body moved on its own, as does the Chef, the Detective now suspects a zombie. The Colonel appears, commenting on the lightning, when told of the ‘zombie problem’ he acts like he’s dealt with this sort of thing before and offers to put the old lad down again, claiming plenty of experience, as does the Chef, this just seems to raise more questions about them for the Detective, and the Colonel (undeterred) runs of to the ground to see if he can track him down. Once he’s gone the Detective goes on about not trusting him, or anyone, then demands the place is put on lock-down. Then he goes on a  tangent about why, why they were invited here, why now (implying that the whole setup was a ruse), confessing that he knew something was wrong with Mark, lamenting that he’d never find out what. More ranting. Noir style internal monologue. More analytical discussion. Obligatory Cluedo joke. And then it’s time to rummage through Mark’s room looking for clues. The room is trashed, but in more of a drunken party way. We make our way over to a table where there are pictures of Mark and his friends, one picture is upside down and shattered, it features the Colonel only. The Colonel suddenly appears in the room, asking to borrow us, his visage is threatening and frightening, he says he want’s us to get to know each other “far away from the prying eyes of anyone else”. He takes us outside and tells us how he and the Mayor have been friends for years, and that he use to say the same for Mark. He spontaneously jumps in the pool at the same moment Damien/Mark comes to look for him. When he’s gone the Colonel pops back up and out of the pool and continues the conversation as though there were no interruptions, he says that Mark has many enemies lately, suggesting that the employees could be responsible. He spontaneously runs down to the golf course as Damien/Mark comes to look for him again. This time he asks us to accompany him (which I think we were all very glad to do at that point) saying he wants to discuss something with us. He talks of the investigations and says that he would stake his life on the innocence or the Colonel or us but is unable to say the same for the Detective (I assume this is the same thing he wanted to say to the Colonel. I also assume that at some point he spoke to Abe saying the same basic thing about the Colonel, to create suspicion). Suddenly there’s a commotion inside, we both run in to find the Colonel and Detective aiming guns at each other. The Colonel claims the Detective assaulted him, the Detective claims the Colonel was aiming a gun at him, the Colonel claims he was just getting in some target practice, Yelling match ensues among all characters (here it’s implied that the Chef use to work for the Colonel). I also feel it’s worth mentioning that the Colonel says “I will not be called a murderer in my own home” (can’t make sense of that). Then the Seer appears through the front door yelling stop, swathed in ethereal light.

Chapter 3 (I’m practically weeping at the idea of analysing Chapter 3, but here we go…)

Celine the Seer enters, disrupting the fight. Abe has no idea who she is, the Colonel calls here by name, they tell her that Mark is dead and possibly a zombie (Celine seems shocked at Marks death but unsurprised at the idea of zombies). The Colonel says that why he’s waving a gun around, the Detective takes offence to this. When Celine asks how Mark died Damien/Mark enters and says simply that it was murdered and that the body is missing (almost as though it was nothing more than shock value). Celine insists that everyone refrain from using the word murder for reasons too long to summarise here. She says she needs to talk to the dead soul of Mark, Abe objects and Celine ignores him, she then singles us out for being quiet and the Chef, Butler, and Detective judge us with suspicion (the Colonel passes), even so, she feels like she can trust us, sensing a greater part to play, she asks us for help and we agree. Abe objects again, and the Colonel rushes to Celine’s defence, saying that he trusts her with all his heart. The Butler also has doubts about this, and even the Chef agrees for once. Celine offers to let them stand watch at the door but insists they not interrupt and heads upstairs. Damien/Mark follows, wanting to know if she’s alright, he’s shocked and surprised by Celine’s involvement in the occult and seems to be trying to stop her, but Celine keeps walking and he tells her to just be careful, and tells us the same as we pass him. We follow Celine into a room where she sets up a tarot table with a crystal ball and candles and asks us to take a seat. She tells us that with our help she’s going to get to the bottom of this, and that Mark’s death feels like just the start of something much bigger. She also says that she’s never really felt comfortable in this house. We go into a trance where we see the fight between the Colonel and the Detective, we see the Colonel taking us for a walk, the Detective telling us the body is missing (but this time the camera pans away to see the Colonel up on the balcony), Damien/Mark greeting us the morning Mark’s body was found, we see the Detective pointing a gun at a man in a hat with a shovel, the Chef standing on the other side… the trance breaks. Celine tells us to draw what we saw and we sketch a man digging with a shovel and hand it to her. Celine gets angry, saying this answers nothing, demanding we go back. Abe barges in with Damien/Mark right behind him, Celine tells them to get out, Damien/Mark says this is  quite enough, Celine is getting angrier by the second, saying it’s enough when she says so. Abe gets us out of there, he takes the drawing from us and calls for the Butler, asking him if it means anything to him, after obviously withholding the truth he says it could be George the groundskeeper,  but he only works weekday. The Chef is acting suss and the Detective picks up on it, he pleads the 5th at first but then confesses that George has been living on the grounds for years, as a hermit. Damien/Mark suggests they go down to the ground and just question him instead of standing around arguing, when asking if he was coming he said he needed to stay with Celine, but Celine says she doesn’t need help “especially from you”, this seems to hit a nerve and he yells “our friend is dead”. He apologises instantly, claiming to need answers and not wanting to loose another friend. He and Celine head back to the room while the Chef, Detective and Butler discuss the Colonel going back to his room tired before the Chef leads the Detective and us out to the grounds where we find George digging a hole with a shovel. The Detective aims his gun at him while the Chef stand opposite just like in the vision, Abe questions him and George talks only of how the grounds are his business and nothing else, that lightning is the sky’s business, and he’s digging the hole for a burst water pipe. Abe insists that we all come inside and have a nice lovely chat, George doesn’t like that, he says he hasn’t been in that house in 15 years and that he doesn’t care how many murders (no lightning this time) there have been, there’s only one thing that he’ll go inside for and we all better pray it never happens. Thunder and lightning strikes. Light pours out of the house as though the lightning is coming from inside. George runs towards the house, this was the reason he was talking about. We all run inside, up the stairs, passed the Colonel as he’s coming out of his room to see what’s going on, and back to where we the Seer and Damien/Mark had gone. The door swings open and Celine is standing in the doorway bathed in light but not looking at all angelic. George calls for help in closing the door on her. My theory is that Damien/Mark stayed with Celine to take possession of her body and send her to the same alternate dimension he’s already sent Damien and his body, thus trapping the only person powerful enough to stop what he was doing. I have not figured out what happened to Celine’s body, since it’s implied that he goes back to Damien’s body, leaving Celine’s empty but it’s also implied that neither one of them can return to their own body.

Finale George locks the door and the Colonel comes over asking where Celine is. George tells him that she and everyone else is gone, then he takes his leave, proclaiming that the place is cursed and advising that everyone else leave as well. The Colonel becomes agitated, asking where Celine and Damien are. The Chef quits and leaves. The Butler is sympathetic but ultimately leaves as well, imploring that we do the same. The Colonel refuses, saying he won’t let his friends die here and that if everyone else is too mush of a coward they should leave before he kills them himself. The Detective objects and trying to stop him from walking away, but he shakes him off yelling at him and stalks away, the Detective follows. The Butler turns to us, still sympathising, suggesting we leave. “There’s only death here now” he says, and walks away. Everything slows down and distorts. We here Celine’s voice whisper “hey” and “help” from behind the door and we look briefly before turning back around and heading downstairs. We here distorted audio, starting with unfamiliar dialogue before backtracking right back to the start when Mark greeted his guests, the sounds become more and more distorted until they can’t be understood as we walk through the house in slow motion with a filter effect that almost makes it seem like we’re on an astral plane. We come to an office room and the world shifts back to normal. We enter and look around. The room is cluttered with news papers and files, all indicating that the Detective had been keeping tabs on everyone, especially the Colonel and the Seer, on a typewriter are the words “the colonel did it” over and over and over again.

Now I’m going to take a moment to say that I find it very unlikely that the Detective was able to gather so many articles, so many pictures, so much work in the day that had passed since Marks death, and considering he didn’t even know who the seer was when she turned up, he certainly hadn’t been keeping tabs on her as is implied. I think the Mark set up this room to look like the Detective had been watching him for a long time, to push him into a paranoia fuelled rage.

The Colonel barges in angrily saying that he’d been wanting to ask us some questions, he takes in to room and assumes pretty much everything that I’ve already said he was being prompted to. He becomes agitated, ranting that the Detective was the one who orchestrated all of this, that he did this. He starts yelling for the Detective walking away to find him and we follow. He continues ranting, saying he took his friends away from him, that he took Celine, and Damien. He grows angrier and angrier, accusing us of hiding him from him, pushing us out of his way. We find the Detective coming out of a room and they instantly start pointing their guns at each other. Abe accuses the Colonel of being the murderer, the Colonel claims he didn’t kill anyone, this is madness! The next bit of dialogue is interesting. The Detective strongly implies that the Colonel stole his best friend’s wife and then squeezed him for money to fund sexual exploits with the same woman. So... who was the Colonels best friend? Mark? Damien? Was the woman Celine? There does seem to be a fair bit of history there, she is in one of the pictures with Mark, Damien, and the Colonel, and the Colonel did say not that he’d trust her with his life but that he’d trust her with all his heart. Did the Colonel love Celine? Was she Mark or Damien’s wife?  The Detectives words seem to hit a nerve with the Colonel and he yells at him to shut up. Abe accused him of plotting the death of his childhood friend because he can’t handle the truth. A gunshot rings out and the Detective slowly collapses. We try to take the gun off the Colonel and it goes off again. As we fall back over the railing the Colonel tried to catch us. “It was an accident, I swear” he says, and everything goes black. Marks empty body appears in the darkness… “It’s not fair, is it?” Damien and Celine appear, Damien flickers with a blue aura while Celine flickers red. Damien rants about how he (Mark) took everything from us, trapped us with “this broken shell” and no way out. Celine says she never though he would fall this far and Damien laments they we played right into his hands, that he’d been planning this for years and now his out there walking around in his body. Celine tries to sooth Damien’s anger and turns to us, saying our questions can’t be answered right now, but Mark took everything from us in his “twisted quest for vengeance” They explain that dying doesn’t have to be the end, that our body, though broken, is still out there (implying that Celine’s is not). Celine explains that she has the power to send us back. Damien says we can’t survive on our own, and I wonder if he means that literally, and they seem to bare no ill will against the Colonel despite the fact he killed the Detective and us, stating only that he’s a good man but dangerous now. Damien explains that he doesn’t really know what’s going on, only that he trusts Celine, and that if we trust them we can fix this together, we just have to let him in. We’re given a choice and we agree to let them in. Damien promises this will work and Celine sends us back. We wake up (I’m not sure if we’ve been moved, the sound effect sound like getting off a couch or bed but we don’t seem to have moved from where we fell), and we find the Colonel sitting beside us, He’s taken off his hat, jacket and cravat and now we can see the yellow shirt and red suspenders that had been hiding beneath. When we spot him we back away but he calmly soothes us, telling us it’s OK. He’s obviously relieved that we’re alive, he thought we were dead. He goes on a tangent about how of course we weren’t dead, how could we be? He wouldn’t have killed us, he didn’t kill us, he didn’t kill anyone, it was all a joke, Damien put us up to it, of course he did. He places Damien’s cane on the mantel and wanders off calling out to Damien to come out now, that it was a good joke and that he almost got him. We approach the mantel and pick up the cane, our image flickers and our hand changes from (in my opinion) feminine, to masculine and the camera pans up to the mirror to reveal Darkiplier has taken control of our body. He cracks his (our) neck and the mirror cracks with static. His face contorts with anger and he storms off.

After I replayed A Date with Markiplier afterwards and I refuse to believe they’re not connected and that we’re not the same person. At the start Mark says that we seem familiar and that he feels like he’s known us for a long time. When Darkiplier appears he says that he missed us very much, and that he’s been waiting for a very long time to see us again. He says he’s tired of giving people a choice (as Damien he gave us a choice at the end of Who Killed Markiplier), this implies that up ‘til that point he would only take someone over if they let him, and maybe he needs people to let him in, he’s words echo what he said as Damien “you just need to let me in…” (Either Who Killed Markiplier was inspired by A Date with Markiplier or Who Killed Markiplier has been in the works for far longer than any of us could have imagined...) So my theory is that Darkiplier stays with us long enough for our body to heal so we can survive on our own and then goes off to seek his revenge against Mark, constantly trying to take control of his body, channel, and life in an eye for an eye type justice. Years pass, Mark somehow forgets everything that happened? The thing that I can’t wrap my head around is that if even half of this theory is right then that kinda makes Mark the bad guy. Mark took over Damien’s body, made everyone believe he was dead, turned his friends against each other. It just doesn’t make sense.

[edit: I’ve been reading up and it seems some people think that this was all about Mark getting revenge on the Colonel for stealing his wife and Celine for leaving him. While this does make a hefty amount of sense it still raises a few too many questions. Why punish Damien? What did he do to deserve getting so caught up in this revenge plot? Like I said before, there does seems to be a bit of history with Celine for for the Colonel and Damien. Was she involved with all 3 at one point or another? I guess we’ll all just have to wait for the 24th to find out]

[isthatbloodonhisshirt]

Emergency

Sterek A-Z Challenge: Emergency

The sound of falling rain outside his window was soothing in a way that he had never really been able to fully explain. It was just one of those comforts that people enjoyed from inside their own home, but dreaded having to go out into.

Derek himself tended not to leave the loft unless absolutely necessary. Especially nowadays, with the weather being how it was. He was content to sit on one of the cushy couches with a book and listen to the rain fall while engrossed in some tale of mystery.

Considering his life, Laura used to make fun of him for always reading mystery books growing up. One would think he’d have had enough with the unknown for a lifetime, but there was something satisfying about reading all the hints in a piece of work and accurately determining that, it was in fact Colonel Mustard in the Dining Room with the candlestick.

Not that he’d ever read the Clue books. They weren’t his thing, he preferred the nitty gritty kind of mysteries, with murder and adventure and—okay, maybe some romance thrown in there, too.

It was just nice to read the unrealistic “guy always gets the girl” trope. Derek himself didn’t particularly want to “get the girl,” but it would be nice if he could “get the one he’d been pining after since having met him years ago.”

He wasn’t holding his breath, though. Besides, he’d rather have a friendship than nothing, at this point, and so much had happened since Derek’s return to Beacon Hills that he didn’t want to push his luck. People were still pretty sore about him having left, so he was trying to ease himself back into their lives.

Three weeks, and counting. So far, he felt like he was doing all right. Not great, but all right. Still didn’t like the shit Scott had turned, but he was tolerable. Didn’t know where Kira had gone, but it had made Scott more focussed on being a real Alpha.

He hadn’t bothered to learn any of the other people in the group’s names. He was just glad Lydia and Malia were still around for him to ask questions of. Scott had been busy with Alpha things.

Derek had been avoiding Stiles.

Outside of pack meetings and any sort of weird situation that required his assistance, Derek made sure to stay away from any one-on-ones with Stiles.

He actually made it a point to keep an ear out for when he could determine Stiles’ jeep was on its way to the loft so he could conveniently step out before he got there. Derek wasn’t ready to face Stiles. After everything he knew had happened—courtesy of Lydia—he didn’t want to hear Stiles telling him how they’d needed him, how he’d abandoned them, how Derek should’ve just stayed gone.

He could handle a lot, but not that. Not from Stiles.

Especially not from Stiles.

Scott had already implied it, he’d just ignored him. Scott’s opinion meant nothing to him when he’d spent the first few years of being an Alpha thinking with his dick instead of his head.

Yes, Derek had made mistakes, sleeping with the enemy and all that, but at least he owned up to it and at the time, he hadn’t been thinking with his dick.

If he’d been thinking with his dick, it wouldn’t have been Jennifer Blake or Braeden in his bed, but it wasn’t exactly like he was going to say these things to Scott. So he just left things as they were, continued to avoid Stiles, and slowly tried to integrate himself back into the fold.

He had missed this. Their mismatched pack. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d returned. It had been like being home. Pack was family, blood ties didn’t matter, and he’d missed his family.

Derek was getting into the obligatory sex scene of the book he was reading when his cell phone began to vibrate on the coffee table. He contemplated leaving it to ring, but then remembered that he was back with the pack and people would be calling him for a reason as opposed to just for a chat. He’d gotten way too used to ignoring his phone living away from this crazy place he called home.

Reaching out for his phone, he snagged it between his fingers and brought it up to eye level, frowning when he didn’t recognize the number. He almost let it go to voicemail before deciding that could be a bad idea. It could be someone who’d lost their cellphone being hunted by some weird Greek mythology creature.

Apparently that had happened while he’d been gone. Who knew?

Answering before it cut to voicemail, he put the phone to his ear, hearing the loud hustle and bustle of activity in the background and an intercom going off.

“Hello?”

“Derek! Finally! Someone who answers their phone!”

He frowned, feeling like he should recognize the voice, but not managing it in that moment. Before he could ask who was speaking, they continued and he figured it out on his own.

“I tried calling Scott, but he isn’t answering. I couldn’t reach Lydia, either. Do you know where Scott is? I need him, now!”

“Sorry, I don’t.” He closed his book and sat up, throwing his legs over the side of the couch and reaching forward to set it down on the coffee table. Mrs. McCall sounded a little frantic, so he figured he should give her his full attention. “What is it? Can I help with something?” Anything to get back into the pack’s good graces.

“I really need Scott right now, it’s an emergency. Stiles is in the hospital—”

If she said anything else after those words, Derek didn’t hear them. Panic, sharp and suffocating, rose to the surface and it was like he suddenly couldn’t breathe. The words kept repeating in his brain, over and over, and the longer he sat there, the more panicked he felt. Stiles was in the hospital? What had happened? What had happened?! Where the fuck was Scott?! He was the Alpha, he was supposed to stop his pack from ever being injured.

Shit, was Stiles dying?!

“I’ll be right there.” He hung up before she could say any more, lurching to his feet and rushing for the door. He was in such a hurry to leave that he forgot to grab a jacket, racing down the stairs with his phone still clutched tightly in his hand. He flew out of the building, the rain soaking through his shirt instantly and plastering his hair to his forehead.

The water hitting his skin was cold and biting, but he could barely feel it over the panic still rising in his throat. He just bolted for the Camaro and threw himself into it once he’d gotten the door unlocked and open. Starting the car took longer than he’d have liked, hands shaking so badly he could barely shove the key into the ignition. When he finally did and turned it, he was in such a hurry to leave he forgot to shift and almost plowed straight into a wall.

Forcing himself to calm down and ignore how terrifying it was to know Mrs. McCall had been desperately trying to reach Scott—and what that meant—Derek managed to shift properly and turn the car out onto the road. He did his best not to speed, feeling like he would rip someone’s throat out with his teeth if they tried to stop him to give him a ticket. He just kept a steady pace—perhaps slightly faster than was wise, but not too high over the limit—and managed to reach the hospital within seven minutes.

Parking in an empty spot as close as he could get without having to look for a spot, he raced through the rain to the front door, bursting through so fast he slammed into the still opening automatic door, clipping his shoulder. He almost tore the thing clean off, but the door somehow remained in place. Taking the stairs two at a time since the elevator would literally drive him crazy waiting for it, he slammed through the doors at the top and rushed to the closest nurse’s station.

“Stiles Stilinski,” he said to the nurse immediately, interrupting whatever she was doing and gripping the counter tightly with both hands. He was dripping water everywhere, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

She looked up at him, startled, and blinked stupidly at him. “I’m sorry?”

“Stiles!” Derek snapped, slamming one hand on the counter. “Stilinski! He was brought in here, where is he?”

The woman seemed put off by his rudeness but she didn’t comment on it, she just made an annoyed face and began typing away on her computer. For a second, he wondered if she was ignoring him for being rude, but when she spoke, he figured she probably would rather get rid of him. Which he was fine with, as long as she gave him what he needed.

“There’s no one admitted by that name.”

“Look again!” Derek shouted, ignoring the fact that he knew Stiles wasn’t his first name. He was too panicked to mention that, brain caught in a loop of “find Stiles, find Stiles, find Stiles.”

“Sir, if you continue to shout, I’ll have to call security,” the nurse said sternly, but she began typing again, frowning. “There’s a Stilinski admitted, but—”

“Where? What room?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, he just reached over the counter and twisted the screen, ignoring her squawk of indignation. The second his eyes caught sight of the words “surgery,” he turned and ran in that direction, almost taking out one of the orderlies. He didn’t stop to apologize, just side-stepped at the last second and kept running, the nurse shouting after him.

His eyes scanned the signs while he ran, his panic mounting at the thought that maybe Stiles was dying on an operating table somewhere. He was halfway across the waiting room to try the other side when he skid to a halt, eyes catching sight of a familiar red hoodie.

Stiles was sitting in the waiting room, hands buried in his hair and shoulders tense. He was completely dry, suggesting he’d been there for a while, at least long enough for the rain to dry from his clothes. The relief at seeing him washed through Derek so fast that he felt ready to collapse into one of the empty chairs. He was going to kill Mrs. McCall for making him worry like this.

He’d taken two steps towards Stiles when he caught the scent of tears. Tears and anxiety and terror.

Derek stopped in front of him, hesitating before touching him and deciding against it, clenching his hand into a fist and letting it fall back to his side.

“Stiles?”

His head rose slowly, and Derek felt panic again at the sight of red-rimmed eyes and still-falling tears. Stiles cleared his throat and sat up straighter, using the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe at his nose and crossing his arms almost defensively.

“What are you doing here?”

“Scott’s mom called,” he said slowly, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“Oh,” was what Stiles said. Just that.

Derek opened his mouth when a voice behind him snapped, “There he is!”

Turning, he saw the nurse with a security guard. The guy looked hesitant to even approach Derek, hand on the butt of the baton at his hip. He was saved having to do anything when Mrs. McCall appeared.

“I figured if there was trouble, it’d be you,” she said with a sigh. “It’s okay, Susan. He’s one of mine.”

Derek would forever deny the fact that hearing her call him “one of hers” made his chest swell a little bit, happiness at belonging somewhere filling him.

“You should teach him some manners,” the snappy nurse said, glaring at Derek before turning on her heel. The security guard, seeming relieved, hurried to follow.

“How’s my dad?” Stiles asked immediately, standing when Mrs. McCall approached.

The words made Derek feel stupid, realizing what he’d missed of the nurse’s words over the phone when she’d first called.

Yes, Stiles was at the hospital. But not because he was hurt.

Because his father was.

“Still in surgery,” she said in a low, soothing voice, reaching out to rub his back and looking sad. “I’m checking in as much as I can. Tried Scott again, too.”

Stiles sank back into his seat, absolutely reeking of misery, and buried his hands in his hair again. Mrs. McCall caught Derek’s eye and jerked her head. He didn’t want to leave Stiles, but given his greeting, he wasn’t entirely sure of his welcome.

Following the nurse towards the corridor so they weren’t quite so close to Stiles, he turned to her once the teen was out of sight. “What happened?” he demanded.

“Domestic disturbance,” she said in a low voice, crossing her arms, as if to protect herself. “It wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous situation, the sheriff’s department gets calls from that house all the time. Noah decided to go out this time, and things didn’t go as planned. He was shot.”

Hearing that made Derek feel sick. Stiles had lost his mother at a young age, and now he ran the risk of losing his father if things went badly with the surgery. His best friend was MIA, and the only person who’d shown up when he needed comfort the most was someone who’d left without a word and had decided it was time to come back.

Oh, and who’d been avoiding him. That too.

Derek was probably the last person Stiles wanted to see right then, and that killed him, because he wanted to be there for him. He wanted to sit beside him, rub his back, insist everything was going to be okay. He wanted to do those things, he wanted to be someone Stiles could lean on right now.

It was more likely he’d be asked to leave.

“Can you stay with him?” Mrs. McCall asked, hunching her shoulders as if she were cold. “I don’t want him to be alone, but I need to keep an eye on his father’s surgery. I want to try and reach Scott, too. He should be here.”

Derek just nodded once and turned on his heel without waiting for her to say anything else. The only person who could make him leave Stiles right now was Stiles himself. Anyone else, and he would rip their throats out.

Moving back into the waiting room, Derek hesitated on whether or not he should sit before realizing hovering would be weird so he settled into the seat on Stiles’ right.

He kept his gaze locked on Stiles, the other’s hands still buried in his hair and the smell of misery overpowering. He had to say something, he knew he did, but this wasn’t something he was good at. Comforting others.

So many people in his life had died, and he found more people comforting him because of it. Not that the sheriff was dying—Derek would drag him back from death if need be, for Stiles’ sake—but he still wasn’t sure how to help. He wasn’t even sure of his welcome.

Deciding that it couldn’t hurt to try, he hesitantly reached out and followed through with the action he’d been thinking about moments before, letting his hand fall onto Stiles’ back. His muscles were tense beneath his fingers, and Derek could feel him trembling. The hands in Stiles’ hair seemed to tighten, but he didn’t pull away or tell Derek to leave, so he began rubbing slow circles against his back.

They sat in silence for a long while, Derek listening to the erratic thumping of Stiles’ heart. He could tell the teen was barely keeping panic attacks at bay, his breathing beginning to quicken whenever his heart did before his fingers would tighten in his hair and he would force his breathing to slow. His heart would follow soon afterwards, but it didn’t last long. It would always pick back up within a few minutes.

Derek just kept rubbing circles, eyes locked on Stiles, making sure to watch for any signs of distress.

Well, more distress, since it was obvious Stiles was pretty freaking distressed right now.

Turning to check the time on the clock, Derek noted he’d been there for almost twenty minutes. Still no Scott. It made him wonder how long Stiles had been sitting there, alone and terrified. And miserable. How long had he been here before Mrs. McCall had remembered Derek was back and had called him?

It made him angry to think about, because he remembered that Stiles was dry when he’d found him. If he was dry, he’d been there a while. The rain had been pouring all day, and even if Stiles had parked in the closest spot available, he’d still have gotten soaked through going from his jeep to the entrance.

He’d been alone for at least an hour before Derek had shown up.

“Why did you leave us?”

Derek turned back to Stiles at those words, hand freezing on his back.

“Were we not good enough for you? I know we’re not the best pack in the world, or the most functional, but I thought we meant something to each other.”

He felt guilt coiling in his stomach, burning its way up into his lungs.

“I didn’t leave because of the pack. I needed to find Kate. I had to stop her from hurting anyone else.”

Stiles said nothing to that, and when he didn’t make any move to shrug Derek’s hand off, the werewolf returned to rubbing slow circles.

Another brief bout of silence before he spoke again.

“Did you even miss us?”

He contemplated lying, but saw no reason to lie to Stiles. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you call or something?” Stiles sat up then, sniffing and wiping his nose with his sleeve again. The new position made it hard to rub his back so Derek let his hand slide to the chairback instead, keeping it draped along its edge behind Stiles’ back.

“I didn’t think anyone would want to hear from me.”

Stiles snorted, wiping at his face in full with the opposite sleeve of his hoodie, probably to avoid getting snot all over his cheeks. “Of course. Why would anyone want to hear from you to confirm you were still alive and breathing? How stupid of me.”

Derek hadn’t thought of that.

“I didn’t think of that,” he admitted aloud.

Stiles just shrugged at that, leaning forward so his forearms rested against his thighs, hands clasped together loosely. He turned to look at Derek, giving him a brief once over.

“You’re wet.”

“It’s raining,” Derek replied.

“Where’s your jacket?”

“Forgot it.”

“Didn’t notice it was raining?”

He hesitated. “Mrs. McCall said you were at the hospital. I got worried.”

The weird thump of Stiles’ heart then was not related to worries about his father, and a small smile teased the corners of his lips. “You were worried about me?”

“I thought it was you in the hospital,” he muttered, pulling his arm back and crossing them over his chest. “I didn’t stop to grab a jacket, I just left.”

The smile widened ever so slightly. It wasn’t anywhere near being one of Stiles’ usual, cheerful smiles, but it was enough considering the circumstances.

“Thanks. For caring, I mean.”

“I do care,” Derek insisted, frowning in annoyance. “You’re pack.”

“It’s still nice to know you care.” Stiles looked at the clock, and then stared down at his fingers, playing with the skin along the edges of his nails.

When they lapsed back into silence, Derek returned to rubbing his back.

Derek’s clothes were dry by the time Mrs. McCall returned. Stiles was on his feet again, just like the last time, with Derek following suit. The werewolf felt a weight lift off him at the smile on her face and the relief in her voice at being able to give Stiles good news.

“He’s out of surgery. They’re moving him to ICU now, but he’s stable and they say he’s gonna be just fine after some rest.”

Stiles turned away from her, rubbing at his face and thanking higher powers. Raking his hands through his hair, he turned back to Scott’s mother, then moved forward, reaching out his arms to hug her. She hugged him back tightly, rubbing his back for a few seconds before they pulled apart.

“Can I see him?” Stiles asked, crossing his arms and shifting his weight, clearly eager to get moving, to see his father.

“Not yet,” she said softly, reaching out to rub his arm. “Once he’s moved to a room, I’ll come find you, okay?”

Stiles nodded, Mrs. McCall giving him another smile, squeezing his arm gently, and then turning so she could get back to work.

The teen fell heavily into his seat, rubbing at his face again. Derek could smell tears once more, but he didn’t comment on it, knowing he was relieved. Derek was relieved, too. Stiles aside, the sheriff was a good man, and his loss would’ve hit everyone hard.

Taking a seat beside Stiles once more, he watched him rub furiously at his face, then rake both hands into his hair, shifting his gaze to Derek.

“Thanks. For staying with me.”

“I can stay longer.”

He’d almost expected Stiles to say, “Nah, it’s cool.” like he would’ve in the past. Surprisingly, he didn’t. He just gave Derek a small, grateful smile, and leaned back in his seat, letting out a slow breath and rubbing his face once more.

They sat in silence, Derek watching the clock, hoping for the move to happen quickly. Not because he wanted to leave, but because seeing the sheriff would probably help alleviate a lot of the stress Stiles still felt. He wanted him to know his father truly was okay.

It was almost half an hour later when running footsteps were heard down the corridor. Derek recognized who was coming before even seeing him, Scott skidding to a halt at the entrance of the waiting room.

“Stiles!”

Stiles was out of his chair instantly, hurrying over to Scott. The other teen closed the distance just as quickly, the two of them throwing their arms around each other, hugging tightly.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve been here. I should’ve checked my phone. Is he okay? What happened?”

Scott was talking a mile a minute, and Derek could see how genuinely sorry he was. He was still hugging Stiles, even while continuing to ask him questions about how his father was and how much they knew about his condition.

When they finally pulled apart, they stayed standing, speaking quickly to one another. Scott had one hand on Stiles’ arm, as if wanting to keep touching him, to ensure he knew that he wasn’t alone.

Figuring his presence was no longer needed, despite wanting to stay, Derek stood. He watched the two continue to speak for a few seconds, then sighed softly and made sure he still had everything before heading back for the corridor.

He started to pass the other two when he felt fingers curling into the back of his shirt and yanking him back.

“Where are you going?” Stiles asked, interrupting Scott’s question to him.

When Derek turned to look at him, he saw panic in Stiles’ expression, like he thought Derek was going to leave again and never come back.

Derek’s gaze shifted to Scott, the other werewolf staring right back at him.

“I—” Stiles looked so panicked and miserable that the words caught in his throat, and instead of saying he was about to leave, he said, “was going to get coffee.”

The way Stiles relaxed made something clench in Derek’s chest. Jesus, he loved this hyperactive idiot. Knowing that Stiles wanted him to stay while he went through this, even though Scott was there, was the most amazing feeling.

“Oh. Can you get me some juice or something? I can’t handle caffeine right now.”

“Sugar’s not much better,” Scott insisted.

“Sugar is perfect for me right now, dude. Don’t try to stop me from getting juice, man. Not cool.”

Before Scott could respond, Derek cut in. “Sure, I’ll get juice. Scott?”

Conceding defeat, Scott sighed. “I’m fine. Thanks.” He slapped Derek in the arm, the action awkward, but at least he was trying.

Nodding and promising to be right back, Derek turned and headed down the corridor. Despite the circumstances, Derek felt relief at the fact that he and Stiles were okay. There wasn’t any judgement or resentment. Just confusion and hurt, but that was something Derek could fix. That was something he would work to fix.

For now, he just had to be there for Stiles. Once his father was okay, he could focus on the rest.

Derek made it all the way to the end of the corridor before realizing he had no idea where he was going. Inhaling deeply, he bit the bullet and turned to Susan at the nurse’s station, her angry glower following him the entire way.

“Hi… Where can I get juice?”

END

[latestnews2018-blog]

The Militarization Of Sports And The Redefinition Of Patriotism

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/the-militarization-of-sports-and-the-redefinition-of-patriotism/

The Militarization Of Sports And The Redefinition Of Patriotism

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a sports fan. As long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the military. Until recently, I experienced those as two separate and distinct worlds. While I was in the military ― I served for 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force ― I did, of course, play sports. As a young lieutenant, I was in a racquetball tournament at my base in Colorado. At Squadron Officer School in Alabama, I took part in volleyball and flickerball (a bizarre Air Force sport). At the Air Force Academy, I was on a softball team and when we finally won a game, all of us signed the ball. I also enjoyed being in a military bowling league. I even had my own ball with my name engraved on it.

Don’t misunderstand me. I was never particularly skilled at any sport, but I did thoroughly enjoy playing partly because it was such a welcome break from work ― a reprieve from wearing a uniform, saluting, following orders, and all the rest. Sports were sports. Military service was military service. And never the twain shall meet.

Since 9/11, however, sports and the military have become increasingly fused in this country. Professional athletes now consider it perfectly natural to don uniforms that feature camouflage patterns. (They do this, teams say, as a form of “military appreciation.”) Indeed, for only $39.99 you, too, can buy your own Major League Baseball-sanctioned camo cap at MLB’s official site. And then, of course, you can use that cap in any stadium to shade your eyes as you watch flyovers, parades, reunions of service members returning from our country’s war zones and their families, and a multitude of other increasingly militarized ceremonies that celebrate both veterans and troops in uniform at sports stadiums across what, in the post-9/11 years, has come to be known as “the homeland.”

We can afford to lose a ballgame.  We can’t afford to lose our country.

These days, you can hardly miss moments when, for instance, playing fields are covered with gigantic American flags, often unfurled and held either by scores of military personnel or civilian defense contractors. Such ceremonies are invariably touted as natural expressions of patriotism, part of a continual public expression of gratitude for America’s “warfighters” and “heroes.” These are, in other words, uncontroversial displays of pride, even though a study ordered by Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake revealed that the U.S. taxpayer, via the Pentagon, has regularly forked over tens of millions of dollars ($53 million between 2012 and 2015 alone) to corporate-owned teams to put on just such displays.

Paid patriotism should, of course, be an oxymoron. These days, however, it’s anything but and even when the American taxpayer isn’t covering displays like these, the melding of sports and the military should be seen as inappropriate, if not insidious. And I say that as both a lover of sports and a veteran.

I Went to a Military Parade and a Tennis Match Broke Out

Maybe you’ve heard the joke: I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. It was meant to poke fun at the fisticuffs in National Hockey League games, though these days there are fewer of them than in the “glory days” of the 1970s. An updated version would, however, fit today’s increasingly militarized sports events to a T: I went to a military parade and a baseball (football, hockey) game broke out.

Nowadays, it seems as if professional sports simply couldn’t occur without some notice of and celebration of the U.S. military, each game being transformed in some way into yet another Memorial Day or Veterans Day lite.

Consider the pro-military hype that surrounded this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Not so very long ago, when I watched such games I would be transported to my childhood and my fantasies of becoming the next Nolan Ryan or Carl Yastrzemski.

When I watched this year’s version of the game, however, I didn’t relive my youth; I relived my military career. As a start, the previous night featured a televised home-run derby. Before it even began, about 50 airmen paraded out in camouflage uniforms, setting the stage for everything that would follow. (As they weren’t on duty, I couldn’t help wondering why they found it appropriate to don such outfits.) Part of T-Mobile’s “HatsOff4Heroes” campaign, this mini-parade was justified in the name of raising money to support veterans, but T-Mobile could have simply given the money to charity without any of the militarized hoopla that this involved.

Highlighting the other pre-game ceremonies the next night was a celebration of Medal of Honor recipients. I have deep respect for such heroes, but what were they doing on a baseball diamond? The ceremony would have been appropriate on, say, Veterans Day in November.

Those same pre-game festivities included a militaristic montage narrated by Bradley Cooper (star of “American Sniper”), featuring war scenes and war monuments while highlighting the popular catchphrase “freedom isn’t free.” Martial music accompanied the montage along with a bevy of flag-waving images. It felt like watching a twisted version of the film Field of Dreams reshot so that soldiers, not baseball players, emerged early on from those rows of Iowa corn stalks and stepped onto the playing field.

What followed was a “surprise” reunion of an airman, Staff Sergeant Cole Condiff, and his wife and family. Such staged reunions have become a regular aspect of major sporting events ― consider this “heart-melting” example from a Milwaukee Brewers game ― and are obviously meant to tug at the heartstrings. They are, as retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich wrote at TomDispatch back in 2011, propagandistic versions of “cheap grace.”

In addition, Budweiser used this year’s game to promote “freedom” beer, again to raise money for veterans and, of course, to burnish its own rep. (Last year, the company was hyping “America” beer.)

And the All-Star game is hardly alone in its militarized celebrations and hoopla. Take the 2017 U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York City, which I happened to watch. With John McEnroe in retirement, tennis is, generally speaking, a quieter sport. Yet before the men’s final, a Marine Corps color guard joined a contingent of West Point cadets in a ceremony to remember the victims of 9/11. Naturally, a by-now-obligatory oversized American flag set the scene ― here’s a comparable ceremony from 2016 ― capped by a performance of “God Bless America” and a loud flyover by four combat jets. Admittedly, it was a dramatic way to begin anything, but why exactly an international tennis match that happened to feature finalists from Spain and South Africa?

Blending Sports With the Military Weakens Democracy

I’m hardly the first to warn about the dangers of mixing sports with the military, especially in corporate-controlled blenders. Early in 2003, prior to the kick off for the Iraq War (sports metaphor intended), the writer Norman Mailer issued this warning:

“The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in Americans’ lives… [D]emocracy is the special condition ― a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military, and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already.”

More than 14 years later, that combination ― corporations, the military, and mass spectator sports, all wrapped in a gigantic version of the stars and stripes ― has increasingly come to define what it means to be an American. Now that the country also has its own self-styled strongman president, enabled by a spineless Congress and an increasingly reactionary judiciary, Mailer’s mention of a “pre-fascistic atmosphere” seems prescient.

What started as a post-9/11 drive to get an American public to “thank” the troops endlessly for their service in distant conflicts ― stifling criticism of those wars by linking it to ingratitude ― has morphed into a new form of national reverence. And much credit goes to professional sports for that transformation. In conjunction with the military and marketed by corporations, they have reshaped the very practice of patriotism in America.

Today, thanks in part to taxpayer funding, Americans regularly salute grossly oversized flags, celebrate or otherwise “appreciate” the troops (without making the slightest meaningful sacrifice themselves), and applaud the corporate sponsors that pull it all together (and profit from it). Meanwhile, taking a stand (or a knee), being an agent of dissent, protesting against injustice, is increasingly seen as the very definition of what it means to be unpatriotic. Indeed, players with the guts to protest American life as it is are regularly castigated as SOBs by our sports- and military-loving president.

Professional sports owners certainly know that this militarized brand of patriotism sells, while the version embodied in the kinds of controversial stances taken by athletes like former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick (cashiered by his own league) angers and alienates many fans, ultimately threatening profits.

Meanwhile, the military’s bottom line is recruiting new bodies for that all-volunteer force while keeping those taxpayer dollars flowing into the Pentagon at increasingly staggering levels. For corporations, you won’t be surprised to learn, it’s all about profits and reputation.

In the end, it comes down to one thing: who controls the national narrative.

Think about it. A set of corporate-military partnerships or, if you prefer, some version of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s old military-industrial complex has enlisted sports to make militarism look good and normal and even cool. In other words, sports teams now have a powerful set of incentives to appear patriotic, which increasingly means slavishly pro-military. It’s getting hard to remember that this country ever had a citizen-soldier tradition as well as sports teams whose athletes actually went almost en masse to serve in war. Consider it paradoxical that militarism is today becoming as American as baseball and apple pie, even as, like so many other citizens, today’s athletes vote with their feet to stay out of the military. (The NFL’s Pat Tillman was a noble post-9/11 exception.) Indeed, the widespread (if shallow) support of the military by so many athletes may, in some cases, be driven by a kind of guilt.

“Collusion” is a key word in this Trumpian moment. Even though Robert Mueller isn’t investigating them, corporate-owned sports teams are now actively colluding with the military to redefine patriotism in ways that work to their mutual advantage. They are complicit in taking a select, jingoistic form of patriotism and weaponizing it to suppress dissent, including against the military-industrial complex and America’s never-ending wars.

Driven by corporate agendas and featuring exaggerated military displays, mass-spectator sports are helping to shape what Americans perceive and believe. In stadiums across the nation, on screens held in our hands or dominating our living rooms, we witness fine young men and women in uniform unfurling massive flags on football fields and baseball diamonds, even on tennis courts, as combat jets scream overhead. What we don’t see ― what is largely kept from us ― are the murderous costs of empire: the dead and maimed soldiers, the innocents slaughtered by those same combat jets.

The images we do absorb and the narrative we’re encouraged to embrace, immersed as we are in an endless round of militarized sporting events, support the idea that massive “national security” investments (to the tune of roughly a trillion dollars annually) are good and right and patriotic. Questioning the same ― indeed, questioning authority in any form ― is, of course, bad and wrong and unpatriotic.

For all the appreciation of the military at sporting events, here’s what you’re not supposed to appreciate: why we’re in our forever wars; the extent to which they’ve been mismanaged for the last 17 years; how much people, especially in distant lands, have suffered thanks to them; and who’s really profiting from them.

Sports should be about having fun; about joy, passion, and sharing; about the thrill of competition, the splendor of the human condition; and so much more. I still remember the few home runs I hit in softball. I still remember breaking 200 for the first time in bowling. I still remember the faces of my teammates in softball and the fun times I had with good people.

But let’s be clear: this is not what war is all about. War is horrific. War features the worst of the human condition. When we blur sports and the military, adding corporate agendas into the mix, we’re not just doing a disservice to our troops and our athletes; we’re doing a disservice to ourselves. We’re weakening the integrity of democracy in America.

We can afford to lose a ballgame.  We can’t afford to lose our country.

A TomDispatch regular, William Astore is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and history professor who blogs at Bracing Views.

[Note: For more on sports, the military, dissent, and patriotism, William Astore recommends Howard Bryant’s new book, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. An interview featuring Astore and Bryant on sports and patriotism can be heard by clicking here.]

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Copyright 2018 William J. Astore.

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Tom Hiddleston gets outacted by a gorilla in 'Kong' review

Kong: Skull Island Review

Let’s face it. I’m not a fan of King Kong, but I do like a good monster movie. I’ve seen the 70’s version which was good, and later King Kong Lives, which was bad and the Peter Jackson remake which was great. I only saw these on TV and cable. Like I said, not much of a fan but with Kong: Skull Island, after seeing the trailer, being a Godzilla fan and knowing what Legendary Pictures is up to, I decided to see it, and all I can say is—It’s awesome! The Film This little review won’t give away too many spoilers, but I’m still inclined to give the obligatory spoiler alert because you deserve to see and enjoy this film. One good thing about this film is that there’s hardly a dull moment. At the start of the film, set in World War II where an American and Japanese pilot crash on the island, they are greeted by the titular character in his gigantic glory. Hey, you’ve seen him in the trailers anyway, why hide the big guy? It’s unlike Godzilla 2014 where we only see his dorsal fins during the opening sequence when the world superpowers were trying to kill him with ‘nuclear tests.' One major criticism for Godzilla was that the titular monster was mostly hidden from the audience. Audiences won’t be disappointed with this one. The characters’ back stories are quickly set up at the beginning which is good. Unlike other Kong films, this one was set in the 70s during the Vietnam War as can be seen by the helicopters used in the trailer. Watching this film, you could say that it’s a mix of Apocalypse Now and Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Again, the action won’t disappoint. Less than 30 minutes into the film, old Kong gives it to them, and the whole plot is set up where we join the cast on their journey off Skull Island. Also, unlike other Kong films, the great ape stays on the island. The film again is not much of a remake but a re-imagining and more of a set-up for what’s to come. And boy, there will be much to come. The Cast Since I wasn’t a big fan of Kong, I never did any research on who the cast was. The only thing I was aware of was Tom Hiddleston, much known for playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be leading the cast. Him and John Goodman who plays the role as William Randa, leader of the expedition. It was a surprise to see the names of Samuel L. Jackson, Hiddleston’s co-alum in the MCU and lastly, future MCU member Brie Larson, who will be playing Carol Danvers or Captain Marvel, in Marvel’s own female led superhero film. Tom Hiddleston plays James Conrad, the British mercenary who will be acting as their guide in the uncharted territory. We’ve mentioned what Goodman’s role is while Samuel L. Jackson plays Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard, the leader of the expedition’s military escort and requisite human asshat who wants to capture or kill the great ape. The Vietnam War setting comes into play regarding Jackson’s role, and though most of the time he’s unreasonable, you’ll piece together where he’s coming from. Brie Larson plays Mason Weaver the mission’s photojournalist, to cover or chronicle to the mission and basically plays Kong’s girl. Her relationship with Kong in this film is one of the aspects where the film departs from its predecessors. Then there’s Chinese actress Jing Tin in the role of San Lin, the expedition’s biologist. God, is she pretty. Unfortunately, she’s as pretty as she is useless and more likely, a token Chinese character due to Legendary’s collaboration with Tencent Pictures. But boy, is she pretty, and since Kong is set in the 70s pretty much like a prequel to Godzilla, we may not see her again. Did I mention she’s pretty? Lastly, John C. Reilly plays the American pilot trapped on the island since 1944. The Japanese pilot who has since become his friend died years earlier. He’s the comic relief, the voice of reason and the voice of knowledge in the film. The Easter Eggs There are plenty of Easter eggs scattered in the film. Randa’s organization, Monarch was present in Godzilla 2014 quickly confirming the two films’ shared universe. Goodman even mentions the purpose of the nuclear testing in Bikini Atoll. The film also discusses the Hollow Earth Theory that is upheld by Monarch, where Earth’s monsters like Godzilla and the MUTOs originate. This is an homage to the theory of a large habitat within the Earth which goes way back to the original 1954 Godzilla film. It’s also kind of similar to the premise of Pacific Rim or Journey to the Center of the Earth. The best Easter egg of all within the film, if you are a Godzilla fan comes somewhere within the credits themselves and then later at the post-credit scene. The Monsters The premise where King Kong fights Godzilla is totally cheesy for this writer, but it happened way back in 1962. The thing about Godzilla is that there are many different versions, of varying heights and minor changes in appearance but one thing that’s always contested is the size ratio between the two monsters. Well, in the 1962 film, King Kong’s was upsized for battle, and that is the same thing they did here. They greatly upsized Kong to perhaps times four. But still, Godzilla 2014 still outsizes Kong. They did say in the film that Kong is still growing though it’s kind of hard to imagine given the size of the skulls of Kong’s parents. How far can Kong grow in 50 years in order to be a match for the giant lizard? Anyway, if you set those thoughts aside and see the film for what it is, you’ll be sure to enjoy yourselves. The island is home to plenty of oversized monsters such as the unfortunately unseen giant ants, harmless giant bisons, prehistoric-looking birds, a giant long-legged spider, a giant squid for an ape who likes sushi and the main antagonists aside from Jackson’s Packard, the gigantic Skullcrawlers. Kong protects the island’s human population against these exoskeletal reptilian monsters that come from underground vents which proves Randa’s theory of a hollow Earth.  Like in previous Kong films, the humans have a giant wall, but unlike previous Kong films, the wall isn’t to keep Kong out but to keep the Skullcrawlers crawling in. Expect great human vs. monster and monster vs. monster battles in this film. And lastly, about that awesome Easter egg, I read something awesome like this as the credits rolled up. “Characters Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah are property of Toho Inc.” That was a WTF moment for this author. Were they really planning to use these monsters in future films? Are we to expect an appearance of Rodan or Mothra in future films? If I’m not mistaken, the giant spider in the film is a reference to the monster Kumonga. The awesome end-credits scene will tell it all. The screen will remain dark, and the first sentence will seem to mock you for staying. Keep to your seat. If you’re a Godzilla fan, you won’t regret it. Too bad everyone else in the theater left before I did. Yes, everyone missed out but this geek trained by Marvel to stay after credits. Guess everyone knows by now that this technique is to honor everyone involved in making the film so the audience can have a fleeting glance of a name or two and their respective roles in making the film. The Verdict Though some critics liken Kong to a B monster movie, it didn’t feel like it at all. Perhaps in the future if there are further cinematic improvements it might be. The film was action-packed and entertaining. It’s a definite departure from previous Kong films considering the film is actually an entertaining elaborate setup. I might get flamed for saying that the only sour note here is probably Tom Hiddleston’s performance. He got ripped in this film, that’s for sure. Better for him once he returns as Loki in Thor Ragnarok but I found his performance a bit lacking or perhaps his character just didn’t have much to do really. But he was awesome in his hack and slash scene in the middle of the film. John C. Reilly’s performance was a standout. Jackson, as always was great but sometimes felt mechanical. Jing Tian was pretty. And Kong himself? Even though he’s pretty much CGI, Kong was awesome. Kong is King!

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