#request april 1994

[flowersofnaivete]

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Hi! A lot has already been written about Robespierre's relationship with both Camille and Saint-Just, but I would be really curious to learn more about his relationship with Pétion that you've mentioned!

Specifically if there is any evidence that we know of that indicates any strong feelings or possible romantic involvement. I'd also be interested to know how their relationship transformed over time, since they ultimately ended up on opposing sides?

Thank you in advance citoyen!

Pétion and Robespierre met for the very first time after the convening of the Estates General in May 1789 to which both had been elected members, Pétion in March, Robespierre in April. Using Oeuvres complètes de Maximilien Robespierre, I’ve tracked the first instance of the two getting mentioned together to May 20 1789, when the journal Le Point du Jour describes a debate on the publication of municipal minutes both have taken part in:

In the debates occasioned by this motion, great talents already known, such as those of MM. Target and Mirabeau fulfilled the expectations one had created. Others, like those of MM. Barnave, Chapelier, Pétion de Villeneuve and Robespierre, manifested themselves in a striking manner.

Using the same source, along with Poursuivre la Révolution : Robespierre et ses amis à la Constituante (1994), it can be observed that Pétion and Robespierre from this moment up until the closing of the National Assembly in September 1791 fought side by side in a number of big discussions — the question of war and peace (May 16-22 1790) where both supported the motion that the Assembly alone should hold the right to declare war and king should be deprived of it, the colonies (May 11-15 1791), where both were among the 27 deputies speaking in favor of free men of color, the organisation of the national guard (27-28 april 1791), a body to which they argued both active and passive citizens should belong, the abolition of lettres de cachet (13-16 March 1790) as well as that of the silver mark and land ownership (August 1791), the non-eligibility of National Assembly deputies to the next Legislature (May 16 1791) an idea Robespierre himself had come up with, and the  question of the death penalty (May 30 1791), were both were among the rare ones to ask for its complete and total abolition. Pétion and Robespierre are found agreeing on a multitude of smaller topics as well, such as the sanction of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (October 2 1789), the treatment of bishops in office (June 22 1790), the inviolability of deputies (June 25 1790), the massacres of La Glacière (16-18 November 1790), police functions (December 28 and December 30 1790), the power of the colonial committee (January 11 1791) the organisation of the justice system (February 5 1791), the organization of administrative bodies (March 3 1791), an extradition request from the court of Vienna (March 5 1791), appointment of national treasury administrators (March 9 1791), the judgment of disputes in electoral matters (March 13 1791), the right to inheritance (April 1 1791) and the right to petition (May 9 and May 10 1791).

All these shared battles of course led to the two often getting mentioned side by side in the evergrowing press. Over the first two years of the National Assembly’s existence, these mentions mostly just consist of Pétion and Robespierre both getting listed as two of several deputies of the far left, alongside people such as Mirabeau, Barnave, Lameth, Duport, Buzot, and Grégoire. The first instance of someone describing Pétion and Robespierre as a unit while also seperating them from their fellow radical deputies that I’ve found is from December 13 1790, when Desmoulins writes the following in number 55 of his Révolutions de France et de Brabant:

One cannot speak about Robespierre without thinking about Péthion [sic]. 

This tying together of the two deputies and their cause was in the following months to do nothing but grow among the journalists. Desmoulins himself would go on to declare that ”it is only Péthion and Robespierre that I have constantly praised, because every man of good faith will agree that they have always been irreproachable” (number 69, March 21 1791) and that ”we must always come back […] to the system of Robespierre and Péthion: perish the colonies, rather than the principles!” (number 77, May 16 1791). In number 472 (May 28 1791) of of l’Ami du Peuple, Marat describes the National Assembly as consisting of ”two hundred men too narrow-minded to know what they are, and one or two honest men who have never wanted anything other than the general good. Such are Péthion [sic] and especially Robespierre,” and three days later, in number 475, he reveals that ”If I were tribune of the people […] I would give Péthion [sic] and especially Robespierre a civic crown.” In number 783(October 2 1791) of Le Patriote Français, Brissot called Pétion and Robespierre ”the two Catos of the Constituent” and a few days later Louis Marie Prudhomme expressed himself in similar terms, writing ”Péthion [sic], Robespierre and the small group of their like, did not fail to embarrass their adversaries so powerful in number and means: more than once their presence reminded that of Cato to the licentious spectators of Rome” (Révolutions de Paris, number 117). 

The image of the two as inseparable was even stronger in the different Jacobin clubs scattered across the land. On April 17 1791 it was discovered that one of them had placed busts of Pétion and Robespierre next to that of the recently deceased Mirabeau, contrary to the rule that no busts of living people would be displayed in the clubs. On July 13 1791, one M. Sigaud read a letter to the parisian Jacobin club signed by 300 people wanting to ”give thanks to MM. Pétion and Robespierre, for having announced the greatest courage in the defense of the people. They will threaten you with daggers, with death: fear nothing, their daggers will only be able to penetrate you through the rampart of our bodies. Our arms, our hearts, our lives, everything is yours.” Two weeks after that, July 25 1791 Tallien exclaimed to the same club that ”Where Pétion and Robespierre are, are the true friends of the Constitution,” and three months later, October 10 1791, he held a speech where he said that ”the names of Pétion, of Robespierre, and of of those who, like them, have well served their fatherland, must be the rallying sign of all patriots; we always see them on the path of honor, and, by following in their footsteps, we are sure not to go astray.” On April 30 1792, Simond told the jacobins that ”MM Pétion and Robespierre” were the best revolutionaires, ”because there are no individuals who have figured like them in our revolutionary splendors.” In Nouveau Tableau de Paris (1797), Louis Sebastien Mercier remembered how Pétion had been the ”inseparable friend of Robespierre, their principles were then so consistent and their intimacy so marked, that they were called the two fingers of the hand. They continued to be placed under the same accolade until the end of 1792,” while Robespierre’s sister Charlotte wrote in her memoirs (1834) that her brother during the National Assembly ”was closest with Pétion, whose popularity then equaled his. They […] fought for the cause of the people, like two generous imitators who looked to surpass each other in noble sentiments.”

In spite of all this, it’s not until December 1790 I’ve been able to for the first time find Pétion and Robespierre together with a backdrop that’s not political, as they on the 25th and 27th of that month signed the wedding contract and attended the wedding ceremony of Camille and Lucile Desmoulins, Camille reporting to his father that ”I had as witnesses Péthion [sic] and Robespierre, the elite of the National Assembly, Sillery, who wanted to be there, and my two colleagues Brissot de Warwille and Mercier, the elite among the journalists. […] The dinner was at my house, only M. and Mdm Duplessis, their daughter Adèle, the witnesses and the celebrant.” Two months later, March 3 1791, Sillery writes to the same Camille that ”Madame de Sillery is coming to dine at my house with Pétion and Robespierre, I dare to ask your lovable and beautiful wife to do me this honor as well.” Yet another month later, April 3 1791, Robespierre made the motion that the recently deceased Mirabeau be buried in the Panthéon. In his memoirs (written 1793), Brissot claimed that ”Pétion reproached [Robespierre] for it the same day, he reproached him for it in my presence.” According to number 72 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Pétion was indeed the only deputy that didn’t attend Mirabeau’s funeral on April 5 1791. Finally, in 1850, Louis Philippe told John Wilson Croker that he at some point during the National Assembly had been at a dinner where the two deputies where — ”Pétion was big and fat, good-humoured and talkative, but heavy withal. He talked on, Robespierre said not a word, and I took little notice of him, he looked like a cat lapping vinegar. Pétion was rallying him on being so taciturn and farouche, and said they must find him a wife to apprivoiser him: upon which Robespierre opened his mouth for the first and last time with a kind of scream, ”I will never marry!” (The Croker Papers: the Correspondence and Diaries of the late right honourable John Wilson Croker… (1885) volume 3, page 209).

On June 10 1791, Robespierre was elected to become the future public prosecutor of the Paris criminal tribunal. Three days later, Pétion was chosen as president of the same body, after the first three elected deputies had all resigned. These new posts are the subject of the very first conserved letter exchanged between the two, dated 15 June 1791. Pétion writes the following to Robespierre using vouvoiement, the form the two are always recorded to have used with one another:

You probably know, my friend, about my appointment. I accept. I don't count having you as a colleague as something small. What scared Duport away is what attracts me. I looked for you in the hall and didn't see you. I wanted to go to your house, but I said to myself: I won't find him, he never dines at home. Buzot is a substitute and accepts. Be well, all yours.  This Wednesday evening.  Pétion.

There’s also the following letter from Pétion to Robespierre, that it too has to do with the latter’s position as public prosecutor. It is unfortunately undated, but Correspondance inédite de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre (1910) traces it to June 1791 as well:

My friend, I violate the decrees, I become solicitor. It is true that my offense is not within the competence of the assembly. I ask you in the name of my relative, my friend and my host the right to supply medicine to the poor sick prisoners. I was told that this concession was within your competence. I don’t know anything about it.  All yours.  This Friday evening. 

Just six days after Pétion had penned the first letter down, June 21, Paris woke up to the discovery that the royal family had fled the capital during the night. In number 82 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Desmoulins described how he and others the very same day had brought a woman with information to give about the escape to the Jacobin Club, in the hopes that her testimony would get Robespierre to denounce Lafayette and Bailly. At first, Robespierre seems quite willing to go through with this, but when Pétion shows up and shows his disapproval of the idea he is quickly taken aback:

The section immediately named a deputation of 12 members, and we took this woman to the National Assembly. Robespierre and Buzot, whom we consulted, were carried away by the assured countenance of the witness, and by the whole of the testimony; but they were greatly perplexed as to the measures to be taken. All the members of the assembly were against revolutionaries, some without knowing it, but many knowingly, and the others out of fear. We will be, they said, pushed back from the tribune, referred to the research committee, and our accusation will be entered in this mortuary register of denunciations. Péthion [sic] came, and increased the embarrassment, and stopped Robespierre, who, at first, was quite disposed to take away the reputation of Bailly and La Fayette by assault.

In her memoirs, Madame Roland claimed to the very same day have seen Brissot and Robespierre at Pétion’s house (on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré n. 6, today roughly a one hour walk from Robespierre’s apartment on rue de Saintonge 30) discussing the flight:

I was struck by the terror with which [Robespierre] seemed to be overcome on the day of the king's flight to Varennes; I found him in the afternoon at Pétion’s; where he said with concern that the royal family would not have taken this course without having a coalition in Paris which would order the Saint-Barthélemy of the patriots, and that he expected to be dead within twenty-four hours. Pétion and Brissot said, on the contrary, that the flight of the king was his loss, and that it was necessary to take advantage of it; that the dispositions of the people were excellent; that it would be better enlightened on the perfidy of the court by this approach than it would have been by the wisest of writings; that it was obvious to everyone, by this fact alone, that the king did not want the constitution he had sworn to; that it was time to ensure a more homogeneous one, and that it was necessary to prepare minds for the Republic. Robespierre, sneering as usual and biting his nails, asked what a Republic was!

In the night between June 21 and 22 the royal family was stopped in Varennes, and four o’clock the next morning, Pétion, alongside Barnave and Maubourg, left the capital to escort them back. They reached Paris again on June 25. The escape attempt resulted in massive discontentment and demands that the king abdicate. On July 15, a petition written by a certain Massoulard, asking the assembly to suspend “all determination on the fate of Louis XVI until the well-pronounced wish of the entire Empire has been expressed” was brought to the National Assembly. In Lettre de J. Pétion à ses Commettans sur les Circonstances Actuelles, released later the same month, Pétion described how he and Robespierre had held these petitioners off, saying that since the Assembly had voted to keep the king on the throne the very same day, a petition was out of order:

I will say, since the occasion presents itself, that only once in this affair was a relationship established between the citizens gathered on the 15th of this month at the Champ-de-Mars and myself. These citizens had drawn up a petition for the National Assembly; commissioners carried them; they were charged with speaking to those who had risen against the project of the committees, to Grégoire, Robespierre, Prieur and myself, to be their organs with the assembly, and to negotiate their entry to the bar. M. Robespierre and I left the room to listen to these commissioners; and we told them that this petition was useless, that the decree [to keep the king on the throne] had just been passed. They asked us for a word to see that they had fulfilled their mission; we wrote a letter which breathes the love of order, of peace, and which, I believe, has been able to prevent misfortunes. 

When Pétion, Robespierre and Rœderer entered the Jacobin club’s evening session the very same day they got covered in applause. Both were there again on both July 16, putting their signatures on a letter to the sister societies in the provinces about liberty of the press and the elections for the upcoming Legislative Assembly, as well as on July 17 and 18, this time dealing with the mass walkout (that left the two and a handful more as the only National Assembly deputies still members of the Jacobins) following the founding of the Feuillants club the previous day. Desmoulins, who was also present at the session on the 17th, stated that he didn’t want any writing to say the Jacobins were splitting from the National Assembly since, ”certainly, where MM. Robespierre and Pétion are, there is no split with the National Assembly.”

Pétion would later recall how afraid Robespierre had been during these days. In J. P. Brissot, député à la Convention nationale, à tous les républicains de France; sur la société des Jacobins de Paris (1792) Brissot even accused Robespierre of having ”secretly proposed fleeing to Marseille to Pétion.” If that is a charge that should be taken with a grain of salt, it was nevertheless during these same days Robespierre changed address and took cover with the Duplay family on Rue Saint-Honoré 366. In her old days, the family’s youngest daughter Élisabeth claimed Pétion would frequent the house ”in the early days.” The year after the move Robespierre himself would nevertheless write that it wasn’t until August 7 1792 Pétion for the first time set his foot in the house (see below).

On September 30 1791, the National Assembly was finally closed to be replaced by the Legislative Assembly. Several journals described the triumphant exit Pétion and Robespierre made from there the very same day, getting met by cheers, applauds and cries of joy from a huge crowd who offered them so called ”civic crowns,” before the two climbed into a carriage (a ”humble” one according to Révolutions de France et de Brabant) and rode off together to the sound of fanfares. Here is the description given by Le Thermomètre du Jour:

Pétion and Robespierre came out last, arm in arm. Citizens with oak crowns tied with tricolor ribbons in their hands embraced them and said to them: ”Receive the price of your good citizenship and your incorruptibility; we give, by crowning you, the signal to posterity”; and the applause, the bravos, the shouts of ”long live Pétion and Robespierre! Long live the spotless deputies!” mingled with the chords of military music placed on the terrace of the foliage, filled all hearts with the sweetest intoxication. In vain, the two legislators wanted to hide from these testimonies of public recognition: as they fled, a young lady whom they met on the stairs which lead to the storage room said to them: ”allow at least that my child embraces you”; and this they could not resist. To escape the chorus of applause who were pursuing them, the two deputies, who had taken refuge in a house in the rue Saint-Honoré, got into a carriage. Immediately, in the delirium of enthusiasm, the horses were unhitched, and a thousand biases hastened to drag the carriage; degrading idolatry, of which those who were the object of it were afflicted and indignant. At this moment the honorable Robespierre, seized with holy indignation, hastily alighted from the carriage. “Citizens, he said, what are you doing? What humiliating posture will you take? Is this the price of my work for you for two years? Don't you already remember that you are a free people?” And he quickly got back into the carriage where his worthy colleague was. The attitude and admiration of the citizens at this moment cannot be described: sublime spectacle! You make delicious tears flow. One let the carriage roll off to the sound of fanfares, applause, cries and the most energetic blessings. May those who could have deserved such a triumph dry up in spite, comparing this excess of gratitude to the silence of contempt, or to the curses of hatred who accompanied them. Above all, may this touching example produce Pétions and Robespierres in the new legislation. 

This celebration might very well have been the follow-up of an intervention made at the Jacobin club on September 25 by one Varnet, who asked for ”a civic feast rewarded by the grateful parties to MM. Robespierre, Péthion [sic], etc, much more fraternal than all these royal celebrations which recall the ancient idolatry of the Badauds.” These would not be the homages paid to the two in the wake of the closing of the National Assembly. On October 9, the Jacobin club of Strasbourg decided to send each of the two a civic crown, as revealed in a letter with 400 signatures published in number 231 of Mercure Universel (October 17 1791). On November 6 1791, Annales patriotiques et littéraires could reveal that the club of Saint-Laron ”has informed that of Paris of the tribute of homage which it has paid to Pétion to Robespierre, and of the annual festival which it established in their honor, to teach, it said, to children that a glance from the people is better than the caresses of kings,” on October 27 the club in l’Orient reported (in a letter published in number 123 of Révolutions de Paris) that ”the names of Robespierre and Péthion [sic] are in veneration among [its members],” and on October 18 the club of Lyon sent Pétion and Robespierre an open letter thanking the two for all their services.

Shortly after the closing of the National Assembly Pétion left for London, but not before he was able to hand a report written by him on patriotic societies to Robespierre, which the latter then read to the jacobins on October 5. When Robespierre too left the capital for Arras a few days later, Pétion’s shadow clearly accompanied him. In a letter to Maurice Duplay dated October 16 he could joyfully report the following:

At Arras itself, the people received me with demonstrations of affection which I cannot describe, and the thought of which still warms my heart. Every possible means was used to express it. A crowd of citizens had come out of town to meet me. They offered a civic crown, not only to me, but to Pétion as well, and in their cheers the name of my friend and companion in arms was often mingled with my own. 

A month later, November 17, Robespierre writes to Maurice again:

…I think with sweet satisfaction about the fact that my dear Pétion may have been appointed mayor of Paris as I write. I will feel more keenly than anyone the joy that every citizen should be given by this triumph of patriotism and frank honesty over intrigue and tyranny. 

Robespierre came back to Paris on November 28. One of the first things he did was go and dine at the house of Pétion (who he here goes so far as to call his family), as revealed by a letter to Antoine Buissart he wrote two days later:

With what joy we met again! With what delight we embraced! Pétion occupies the superb house inhabited by the Crosnes, the Lenoirs: but his soul is always simple and pure: the choice of him [as mayor] alone would suffice to prove the revolution. The burden with which he is charged is immense; but I have no doubt that the love of the people and its versus gives him the necessary means to carry it. I'm having dinner at his house tonight. These are the only times when we can see each other as a family, and talk freely. 

Following Pétion’s election to mayor, his apperances in public become much fewer compared to his time as deputy of the National Assembly. Robespierre on the other hand could not get enough of praising his friend at the Jacobin club. On February 10 1792, he held a speech in which he cried out the following, apropos of suggesting holding a ceremony at the Champ-de-Mars and making a sacrifice on the altar of liberty:

O Pétion! You are worthy of this honor, worthy of deploying as much energy as wisdom in the dangers that menace the fatherland that we have defended together. Come, let us mingle our tears and weapons on the tombs of our brothers, remind ourselves of the pleasures of celestial virtue, and die tomorrow, if need be, from the blows of our common enemies. 

Five days later, in his inaugural address as public prosecutor, Robespierre called Pétion ”the one of all my colleagues to whom I was most closely bound, by works, by principles, by common perils, as much as by the ties of the most tender of friendships,” and says it was due to Pétion’s advice that he was taken aback from proposing that National Assembly deputies not only be barred from serving on the Legislative Assembly, but also be excluded from any public offices at all following the start of said assembly. He then eulogized his friend once again: ”I swear that it is he who, up until this moment, has saved the capital and prevented the horrible plans of the enemies of our liberty; I swear that the courage and virtues of Pétion were necessary for the salvation of France.” A month after that, March 19, Pétion sent the Jacobins a letter disapproving of the recent usage of the so called ”bonnet rouge” among the club’s members. After the letter had been read out, Robespierre stood up and supported his motion, and together, the two succeded in getting the bonnet rouge depositioned from the Jacobin Club:

I respect, like the mayor of Paris, all that is the image of liberty, I will even add that I saw with a great pleasure this omen of the rebirth of liberty; however; enlightened by the reflections and by the same observations made by M. Pétion, I felt urged to present to society the reasons which have just been offered to you, but as I have only patriotism to fight with, I am charmed to be guided by M. Pétion, by a citizen whose civility and love for liberty is foolproof, by a citizen whose heart is ardent and whose head is cold and thoughtful, and who brings together all the advantages, talents and virtues necessary to serve the country, at a time when the most skillful and astute enemies can deal it disastrous blows.

And yet another month later, April 13 1792, Robespierre defended Pétion against attacks of unnamed enemies:

The mayor of Paris, they say, is ambitious; we are arsonists who slander the constituted authorities to elevate our ambition at the expense of others; well, prove it. Our goal has been to fight in the constituent assembly all the parties of tyranny, Pétion and I have done it, were it even the means Pétion would guarantee, far from foreseeing then that our principles would triumph over a cabal if strong, we believe that after the constituent assembly we would be immolated and that the principles of our ancestors would be adopted: I saw Pétion, at the time when he was brought to the position of Mayor of Paris, two months before his appointment, at a time when we can remember that the votes of the good citizens floated between him and me, I saw the mayor of Paris determined not to accept this place; he read the same feelings in my heart, and when he accepted it, I guarantee to the whole nation that he only did it because he had only considered it as a terrible pitfall for the citizen who would occupy it in such a stormy circumstance for the public good. 

Despite Pétion’s massive new workload, he and Robespierre still found the time to see each other, albeit with work still being the main topic of discussion. In Réponse de Maximilien Robespierre à Jêrome Pétion (November 1792), Robespierre recalled that ”Last January to June, when the ministers were renewed, I saw you (Pétion) in the firm belief that it was you who had chosen them. As I asked you if this action of the court was not suspicious to you, you replied, with a very remarkable air of consent: “Oh! if only you knew what I know! If only you knew who nominated them!” I guessed you, and I said to you, laughing at your good faith: “it’s you, perhaps.” And then, rubbing your hands, you responded: “Hem, hem,” No matter how much you persisted in confirming this fact to me, I didn't want to believe it. I esteemed you too much to suppose that you would have the necessary credit with Louis XVI and his courtiers to give him ministers.” Somewhere after Robespierre was sworn in as public prosecutor, the two also co-authored the pamphlet Observations sur la nécessité de la reunion des hommes de bon foi contre les intrigues par Jérome Pétion, Maire de Paris; et Maximilien Robespierre, Accusateur Public du département de Paris.

But all while this ”bromance” was playing out, so too was the debate on whether or not France ought to go to war. It’s most influential voices were Robespierre on the anti-war side, and Pétion’s childhood friend and freshly baked member of the Legislative Assembly Brissot on the pro-war side. Pétion himself would appear to have stayed neutral in the conflict, I have at least not been able to find any instance of him speaking his mind on the topic. But on April 25 1792, five days after France had declared war on Austria, he adressed the following letter to Robespierre, regretting the session at the Jacobins held the same day, during which Brissot’s ally Guadet had loudly denounced Robespierre, calling him an ”imperial speaker […] who constantly puts his pride before public affairs, the position to which he was called”, after which Robespierre had requested time to properly respond, something which he was granted. Pétion does however not attack Guadet for saying what he had said about Robespierre, instead confining himself to lamenting division in general in a time when external war has just been declared:

The session which took place yesterday [sic] at the Jacobins saddened me. Is it possible that we’re tearing ourselves apart like this with our own hands? I don't know what demon thus blows the fire of discord. What! It is when we are at war with the enemies without that we will stir up trouble within. The Society most useful to the progress of the public spirit and of liberty is on the point of being torn apart. We suspect each other, we insult each other, we slander each other, we accuse each other respectively of being traitors and corrupt. Perhaps if the men who present themselves thus were to see themselves in the open they would esteem each other. How hideous human passions are. What, we can't have the calm and energy of free men? We cannot judge objects in cold blood, we scream like children and are furious. I truly tremble when I consider who we are and always wonder if we will retain our freedom. I haven't rested all night, and have only dreamed of misfortunes. A grace, my friend, be aware of the split that is preparing itself. Caution and firmness. I see there men who seem to have the most fervent patriotism and whom I believe to be the most perverse and corrupt men. I see others who are only stunned and inconsequential but who do as much harm by levity as others by combination. Irritated self-esteem, deceived ambitions play the biggest game. When we reach port, must storms arise and the ship run the risk of crashing against the rock? Think about it seriously. Redouble your efforts to get us out of this mess. Be well.  Your friend.  Pétion. 

On April 27 1792, Robespierre could deliver a speech by the name of Réponse de M. Robespierre, aux discours de MM. Brissot & Guadet du 25 avril 1792 in response to what Guadet had said about him two days earlier. In it, he stated among other things that the things the two reproached him for ”are precisely the same charges brought against me and against Péthion [sic] last July by Dandré, Barnave, Duport, La Fayette!” Something which the authors of the journal Chronique de Paris picked up on when recounting the speech:

…Before finishing, [Robespierre] had taken care to name M. Pétion, and to establish between them a community of ideas, a relation of feelings on the objects which divide the society. He knows very well that M. Pétion is far from approving his follies, or rather his fury, but he also knows that he could not disarm him without losing a large part of his popularity, so the goal was not missed, and Robespierre's party was swelled with all the worthy friends of the worthy Pétion. 

Two days after that, April 29 1792, Pétion writes yet another letter to Robespierre:

My friend, I will go to the Jacobins tonight and ask to speak. I will not speak of people, but of things. I will set forth principles and I will come to conclusions suitable for restoring peace. The situation of this society is getting worse day by day. After having rendered such important services, when it can render still more important ones, it would be terrible if it gave the scandalous example of a split. The spirits are very irritated. One becomes the fable of all malicious people, the newspapers are tearing this Society apart, tearing its members apart, we must put an end to all writings. Your friend, Pétion. 

Pétion did indeed show up to the Jacobins the very same day, where he, according to the minutes, ”made a long motion of order tending to maintain the union in the Society, and asked that all these quarrels be moved on from.” Right after the club had ordered the speech printed, Robespierre tried to take the floor but was refused by ”girondin” president Lasource. The next day, he once again attempted to speak against Brissot and Guadet, underlining that ”I want to keep to the limits fixed by M. Pétion,” but that his approach had been turned against them by ”libelists, directed against him, against me, against this society and against the people itself.” Robespierre again insists on a closeness between him and Pétion: 

I know he is horrified of plots hatched against me: his heart has spilled over into mine; he cannot see without shuddering these horrible calumnies which assail me from all sides.

But his thoughts did not gain any approval from the jacobins this day either, and Robespierre instead opted to found a journal — Le Defenseur de la Constution — to attack his enemies from instead. When mayor Pétion and Procureur de la Commune Manuel got temporarily suspended from their duties on July 6 and arrested on July 7, for complicity in the demonstration of June 20, Robespierre used number 9 (July 14 1792) of said journal to defend them (in Réponse de Maximilien Robespierre à Jérôme Pétionhe confidently reminded him that ”no one more than me defended you in a more public and more loyal manner, against all the harassment [the court] brought upon you.”) On July 13, when the suspension of Pétion was lifted, ”M. Robespierre, while applauding [the decree], points out, however, that this should be less a cause for rejoicing as there are reasons for the true friends of liberty to grieve the fact that this decree was postponed for a fortnight.”

In Réponse de Maximilien Robespierre à Jérôme Pétion (November 30 1792), Robespierre reported about the following meeting (that Pétion also confirmed when later responding to him) the two had had, roughly a month after Pétion had been returned to duty, on the topic of popular insurrection:

On August 7, I saw the mayor of Paris enter my house; it was the first time that I received this honor, although I had been closely connected with you. I conclude that a great motive brings you; you talk to me for a whole hour about the dangers of insurrection. I had no particular influence on the events; but as I quite often frequented the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, where the members of the directory of the federates habitually went, you urged me earnestly to preach your doctrine in that society. You told me that it was necessary to defer resistance to oppression until the National Assembly had pronounced the deposition of the King; but that it was necessary at the same time to leave him the leisure to discuss this great question with all possible slowness. You could not, however, be sure that the court would adjourn the project of slitting our throats for as long as it pleased the National Assembly to adjourn the forfeiture; and everyone knew that the royalist party was then dominant in the Legislative Assembly; and your Brissot and his friends had delivered long speeches on this question, the sole object of which was to prove that it was necessary to retreat from it, and ceaselessly to postpone the decision. You even know what public disfavor their equivocal conduct had incurred; they saw in it only the project of frightening the court by the fear of an insurrection, in order to force it to take back ministers of their choice. I could have made these comparisons myself; but such was still my confidence in you, and, if it must be said, the feelings of friendship which your unexpected step aroused in my heart, that I believed you up to a certain point; but the people and the federals did not. 

Two days later, the insurrection of August 10 took place. Pétion’s behavior during this night would become a big subject of quarrel between him and Robespierre in the months to come. Two days after the insurrection, August 12, Robespierre begun to serve at the so-called Insurrectional Commune. The power struggle between this body and the Legislative Assembly would it too serve as cause for conflict between the two. Already on Robespierre’s second day at the commune, August 13, Pétion and Manuel came there, having just escorted the royal family to their new prison in the Temple. Giving an account over this mission, the two stated that the place ”did not seem suitably arranged,” and that the king should be kept somewhere else instead. Later during the session, Robespierre claims (I can’t find this recorded in the session’s actual minutes) that Pétion presented a report from the Legislative Assembly to within 24 hours dissolve the commune and replace it by the old municipality, a proposal which got rejected. He would later reproach Pétion for both of these things.

According to J.M Thompson’s Robespierre (1935), on August 17 Robespierre was commissioned by the commune to interview Pétion to get him to co-operate (I can’t find this in the commune’s minutes either). The interview did however not go that well, resulting in the following letter from Pétion to Robespierre, written on August 20:

You know, my friend, what my feelings are for you, you know that I am not your rival, you know that I have always given you proofs of devotion and friendship. It would be useless to try to divide us, you would have to stop loving liberty in order for me to stop loving you. I have always found more fault with you to your face than behind your back. When I think you too ready to take offence, or when I believe, rightly or wrongly, that you are mistaken about a line of action, I tell you so. You also reproach me for being too trustful. You may be right; but you must not assume too readily that many of my acquaintances are your enemies. People can disagree on a number of unessential points without becoming enemies; and your heart is said to be in the right place. Besides, it is childish to take offence over the things people say against one. Imagine, my friend, the number of people who utter all lands of libels against the mayor of Paris! Imagine how many of them I know to have spread damaging reports about me! Yet it doesn’t worry me, I can assure you. If I am not totally indifferent to what others think about me, at least I value my own opinion more highly. No… you and I are never likely to take opposite sides: we shall always hold the same political faith. I need not assure you that it is impossible for me to join in any movement against you: my tastes, my character and my principles all forbid it. I don’t believe that you covet my position any more than I covet that of the king. But if, when my term of office comes to an end, the people were to offer you the mayoralty, I suppose that you would accept it; whereas in all good conscience I could never accept the crown. Look after yourself, let us march forward, we are in a situation threatening enough to force us to think only of the public good. 

As can be seen, Pétion was still trying to salvage the relationship that had begun to deteriorate already in the spring, an effort that Robespierre seemed to share. If we’re to believe Buzot’s memoirs, written in 1793, Robespierre had suggested making ”a solemn declaration on the events which preceded the revolution of the 10th of August” to Pétion, who in his turn ”was willing to lend himself to it, for he had a kind of inexcusable weakness for Robespierre.” But when Robespierre came forward with the finished declaration that, according to Buzot, contained ”a lot of baseness and sweet talk [sic] for Louis XVI,”Pétion did however refuse to sign it, and Robespierre was forced to rework it. In an address from the representatives of the Paris commune to their fellow citizens dated September 1, Robespierre and his colleages also underlined that ”the principal artifice which our enemies employed to destroy us, was to oppose to the assembly of the representatives of the commune the names of Manuel and Pétion, and to claim that our existence is an attack against the authority in which these two magistrates were clothed.” But the relationship was well under way to break down, and the first days of September 1792 would be filled with conflicts between the two, in relation to the so called ”September massacres.” This time it would instead be Pétion who got appalled over Robespierre’s conduct.

Again on September 1, one day before the massacres, Robespierre held a speech to the same Paris Commune opposing the idea of opening the city’s barriers, that, in Pétion’s own words, ”saddened my soul.” […] [Robespierre] gave himself up to extremely animated declamations, to the lapses of a gloomy imagination; he perceived precipices under his feet, liberticidal plots; he pointed out pretended conspirators; he addressed himself to the people, excited the spirits, and occasioned, among those who heard him, the liveliest fermentation. I replied to this speech, to restore calm, to dissipate these black illusions, and to bring the discussion back to the only point which should occupy the assembly.”In Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la Révolution française (1797), Louis Marie Prudhomme writes that, two days later, September 3 1792, Théophile Mandar went over to Danton’s place, where he saw ”all ministers, with the exception of Roland, Lacroix, president [of the Assembly], Pétion, mayor of Paris, Robespierre, Camille-Desmoulins, Fabre d’Églantine, Manuel and several members of the so-called Commune of August 10. The presidents and commanders from each of the 48 sections had come as well.” Half past seven in the evening everyone sat down in Danton’s salon to discuss the means to save Paris. Two hours later, Mandar, Pétion and Robespierre all retired to a different room, where Mandar laid out the idea of setting up a temporary dictatorship to stop the prison massacres for the two. Robespierre did however not respond positively, instead crying out: ”Be aware! Brissot would become dictator!” ”O Robespierre,” Mandar said to him, ”it is not the dictatorship that you fear, it is not the homeland that you love: it is Brissot that you hate.”  ”I hate dictatorship and I hate Brissot!”  Pétion meanwhile didn’t say a word.

The day after that, September 4, Pétion and Robespierre found themselves discussing Brissot (who Robespierre on September 2 had denounced as an accomplice of Brunswick at the Paris commune, leading to his house getting searched on the 3rd) once more, this time at the Hôtel de Ville, as revealed through the following part from Pétion’s Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre (November 5 1792):

The surveillance Committee launched an arrest warrant against Minister Roland; it was the 4th (September), and the massacres were still going on. Danton was informed of it, he came to the town hall, he was with Robespierre. […] I had an explanation with Robespierre, it was very lively. I still made him face the reproaches that friendship tempered in his absence, I told him: ”Robespierre, you are doing a lot of harm; your denunciations, your alarms, your hatreds, your suspicions, they agitate the people; explain yourself; do you have any facts? do you have proof? I fight with you; I only love the truth; I only want liberty.” ”You allow yourself to be surrounded,” [he replied], ”you allow yourself to be warned. You are disposed against me, you see my enemies every day; you see Brissot and his party.”  ”You are mistaken, Robespierre; no one is more on guard than I against prejudices, and judges with more coolness, men and things. You’re right, I see Brissot, however rarely, but you don’t know him, and I know him since his childhood. I have seen him in those moments when the whole soul shows itself; where one abandons oneself without reservation to friendship, to trust: I know his disinterestedness; I know these principles, I assure you that they are pure; those who make him a party leader do not have the slightest idea of ​​his character; he has lights and knowledge; but he has neither the reserve, nor the dissimulation, nor these catchy forms, nor this spirit of consistency which constitutes a party leader, and what will surprise you is that, far from leading others, he is very easy to abuse.” Robespierre insisted, but confined himself to generalities.   ”Allow us to explain ourselves, I told him, tell me frankly what’s on your mind, what it is you know.”  ”Well!” he replied, ”I believe that Brissot is with Brunswick.”   ”What mistake is yours!” I exclaimed. ”It is truly madness; this is how your imagination leads you astray: wouldn't Brunswick be the first to cut his head off? Brissot is not mad enough to doubt it: which of us can seriously capitulate! which of us does not risk his life! Let us banish unjust mistrust.”  Danton became entangled in the colloquy, saying that this was not the time for arguments; that it was necessary to have all these explanations after the expulsion of the enemies; that this decisive object alone should occupy all good citizens.

In her memoirs (1834), Charlotte Robespierre talks of yet another meeting between her brother and Pétion regarding the massacres, but in her version it is instead the former who accuses the latter of doing a lot of harm. Some  historians have suggested this meeting is the same Pétion is describing above, though if that’s the case I wonder why he doesn’t mention Charlotte anywhere in his account (as well as why Robespierre would even bring his sister with him when going to discuss political matters in a city where a massacre is currently taking place…):

A few days after the events of 2 and 3 September, Pétion came to see my brother. Maximilien had disapproved of the prison massacres, and would have wanted each prisoner to be sent before judges elected by the people. Pétion and Robespierre conversed on these latest events. I was present at their interview, and I heard my brother reproach Pétion for not having interposed his authority to stop the deplorable excesses of the 2nd and 3rd. Pétion seemed piqued by this reproach, and replied dryly enough: All I can tell you is that no human power could have stopped them. He rose some moments later, left, and did not return. Any kind of relations ceased, from this day, between him and my brother. They did not see each other again until the Convention, where Pétion sat with the Girondins and my brother with the Mountain.

In the 1960 article Charlotte Robespierre et ”ses mémoires,” Gabriel Pioro and Pierre Labracherie wanted to dismiss Charlotte’s story, finding it unlikely for her to have been in Paris by early September 1792, almost a whole month before her younger brother was elected to the National Convention and the two went to the capital for that reason. Though I suppose it’s not impossible for Charlotte to have gone to visit Maximilien beforehand, or that she’s simply very generous with what she describes as ”a few days.”

If Charlotte’s friend Armand Joseph Guffroy, who him to moved from Arras to Paris after getting elected to the National Convention, is to be believed, her claim that Pétion and Robespierre stopped seeing each other following the events of September gets muddied as well. In his Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices… (1795) Guffroy writes: ”At Pétion’s house, the only time Robespierre took me there; I saw the latter eating a pot of fine jams, which were very expensive at the time.”

Regardless of any jam dinners, it’s clear the relationship was breaking down for real. On October 29 1792, Jean-Baptiste Louvet read his Accusation contre Maximilien Robespierre to the Convention, accusing him of turning himself into ”the idol of the people,” slandering ”the best patriots,” instigating the September massacres and tyrannizing the parisian electoral assembly, all with the goal of setting himself up as a dictator. A week later, November 7, Chabot told the jacobins that Pétion’s wife Suzanne had ”applauded everything Louvet said against Robespierre.”

Both Robespierre and Pétion picked up their pens to write a response speech to Louvet. Robespierre pronounced his to the Convention on November 5, which then passed onto the order of the day, preventing Pétion from holding his. The very same day, Collot d’Herbois exclaimed to the jacobins: ”I agree with Manuel on the comparison that he made in saying that Pétion and Robespierre were the twins of liberty; he meant that they were stars like Castor and Pollux; that they would appear in turn, but I ask that Robespierre be the summer star, and Pétion the winter star.” Pétion did however still wish to get his speech out, so shortly thereafter he published Discours de Jérôme Pétion, sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre as a pamphlet instead. This is what would truly mark the beginning of the end for the relationship.

Pétion begins by writing that “I had promised myself to keep the most absolute silence on the events that have happened since August 10,” but that, after having heard so many things said about him and being asked for his opinion on the matters so many times, “I will say frankly what I know about some men, what I think about things.”  After explaining to which groups he thinks the insurrection of August 10 was due and to which ones it wasn’t, and deploring of the September massacres, saying that ”I cannot bring myself to confuse glory with infamy, and to defile August 10 with the excesses of September 2” (thereby seperating himself from Robespierre, who his response to Louvet instead argued that the massacres had been the inevitable sequel to the insurrection, and that to condemn one would therefore be to condemn the other), Pétion turns to Robespierre. Having regretted the speech held by him on September 1, through which he, if unintentionally, ”led the commune into inconsiderate moves, into extreme parties,” and reported about their interview on September 4, Pétion brings up Louvet’s accusation that his friend had been aiming at dictatorship. Just like with Brissot, Pétion dismisses these accusations, but this through pointing out the flaws in the designated one’s personality:

Robespierre's character explains what he did: Robespierre is extremely touchy and defiant; everywhere he sees conspiracies, betrayals, precipices. His bilious temperament, his atrabilious imagination present all objects to him in dark colours; imperious in his opinion, listening only to himself, not supporting contrariety, never forgiving those who have hurt his self-esteem, and never recognizing his faults; denouncing lightly, and being irritated by the slightest suspicion; always believing that someone is occupying himself with him in order to persecute him; boasting of his services and speaking of himself with little reserve; not knowing the proprieties, and thereby harming the causes he defends; desiring above all the favors of the people, paying court to them unceasingly, and ringing out their applause with affectation; it is this, it is above all this last weakness, which, piercing through the acts of his public life, has been able to make people believe that Robespierre breathed high destinies, and that he wished to usurp the dictatorial power. As for me, I cannot persuade myself that this chimera seriously occupied his thoughts, that it was the object of his desires, and the goal of his anticipation. 

At the very end of the pamphlet, Pétion publishes an open letter to the jacobins, a place where he, ”since some time have been attacked more or less openly.” Pétion reminds the society of the great services he has rendered it and even that he had saved it during the big Feuillant split one year earlier. He also recalled that Robespierre, unlike him, had been very afraid following this split — ”I saw Robespierre trembling, Robespierre wanting to flee, Robespierre not daring to go up to the assembly… ask him if I trembled. I saved Robespierre himself from persecution, by attaching myself to his fate, when everyone despised him.”

Robespierre answered Pétion in Réponse de Maximilien Robespierre à Jérome Pétion, a text that made up all of number 7 of his Lettres de Maximilien Robespierre à ses commettans (November 30 1792). Robespierre started by regretting having to write what he did in the first place:

What is, my dear Pétion, the instability of human affairs, since you, once my brother in arms and at the same time the most peaceful of all men, suddenly declare yourself the most ardent of my accusers? Don't think that I want to occupy myself here either with you or with me. We are both two atoms lost in the immensity of the moral and political world. It is not your accusations that I want to answer; I am accused of having already shown too much condescension in this way; it is up to your current political doctrine. It would already be a little late, perhaps, to refute your speech: but there is always time to defend truth and principles. Our quarrels are of a day: the principles are of all times. It is only on this condition, my dear Pétion, that I can consent to pick up the gauntlet you threw at me. You will even recognize, in my way of fighting, either the friendship, or the old weakness that I showed for you. If, in this completely philanthropic kind of fencing, you were exposed to some slight injury, it only affects your self-esteem; and you reassured me in advance on that point, by protesting yourself that it was null. Moreover, the right of censorship is reciprocal; it is the safeguard of freedom; and you love principles so much that you will find more pleasure, I am sure, in being the object of them yourself, than you felt in exercising them against me.

Robespierre then goes on to accuse Pétion of in his pamphlet not having treated the Insurrection of August 10th with the respect it deserves, depriving the people and sections of Paris — ”the destroyers of tyranny” — who carried it out of the merit of their service, and to even have done everything in his power to stop the insurrection by continuously telling the sections to remain calm. Then he hadn’t showed up to the Paris Commune until three days after the siege of of the Tuileries, and then to report that the assembly wanted to close the commune and call the old municipality back (”You constantly sighed for the return of your semi-aristocratic municipality. […] The spirit that animated the defenders of liberty frightened you!”) and to ”prove that it was not necessary to lock Louis XVI in the Temple, and that if he did not stay in a magnificent hotel the whole of France would rise up against the commune.”Pétion had even on his own initiative gone to the king two weeks before the insurrection — ”no one knows if it was to convert him or to justify yourself.” Robespierre asks why Pétion seemingly shows more indulgence for the court than for the people behind the insurrection, noting that ”I always believed I saw in you less condescension for the warmth of patriotism than for the excesses of the aristocracy.”

Besides this main charge, Robespierre also reproaches Pétion of not having done enough to stop the demonstration of June 20, which, unlike the insurrection, was driven by ”the intriguers who surrounded you [who] wanted […] to regain possession of the ministry,” of being jealous of him for getting elected first deputy of Paris, which he claims is what caused him to stand for election in Eure-et-Loir instead (”you were unable to hide your sorrow at the very moment; and rather than suffer the affront of priority given to another citizen, you preferred to be chosen third in Chartres, than second in Paris”), making a big deal of having reached the conclusions presented in the pamphlet by shutting himself alone (”Is an author obliged to prove that he himself went into secrecy to compose his works? And aren’t such singular oratorical precautions suspect?”) and interpretating La Fayette favorably even after the massacre on Champ-de-Mars, having guaranteed Robespierre ”a hundred times” of his innocence since he was at the head of the armies. Robespierre claims that it was this friendly attitude that caused Pétion to be elected to escort the king back from Varennes. He fights back against Pétion’s description of his personality — ”I am as easygoing, as good-natured in private life, as you find me touchy in public affairs; although you have long experienced it, and my friendship for you has long survived the processes which most offended my principles” — giving an equally unflattering one in return: ”I guarantee that, far from being sullen, defiant, melancholic, you are the man whose blood circulates most gently, whose heart is least agitated by the spectacle of human perfidies, whose philosophy most patiently supports the misery of others.” He also takes offence over Pétion’s claim that he was afraid during the splitting of the jacobin club and that Pétion saved him from persecution. Robespierre claims that he was persecuted no more than Pétion during this period, and besides, ”why are you more attached to me than to the homeland, or at least to your own honor? And how did you imagine that you were for me a more powerful protector than the public interest, and the sanctity of the cause that I defended?”

Robespierre does however seek to exempt Pétion somewhat. He concludes his pamphlet and recent conduct is the result of him having let praise go to his head as mayor (forgetting that the true heros of history were martyrs) due to being misled by intriguers (the girondins). On August 11 or 12, Guadet and Brissot would even have come over to his place, the latter openly reprimanding him for ”the ease with which you had complied with the popular wish,” accusing him of cowardice and summoning him to stop ”the chariot of the revolution.” This, according to Robespierre, is what caused Pétion to show up to the commune the following day to announce the assembly’s plan to dismantle it and bring the old municipality back.

Pétion wrote back in Observations de Jérôme Pétion sur la lettre de Maximilien Robespierre, released somewhere in December 1792, the majority of which was spent debunking all of Robespierre’s reproaches. No, he did everything he could to stop the demonstration of June 20, and ”I defy anyone to say I brought it about or rejoiced over it.” No, he has only ever spoken about the Insurrection of August 10 ”with admiration and enthusiam,” he will however never conflate it with ”the horrible day of September 2.” No, he did not try to stop the insurrection, he only put an end to a badly organized movement on July 26 that wouldn’t have led to any good, and during the night when it happened he only wrote a circular to the sections (he was kept from going out), recommending them to maintain order and tranquility in general, a circular which the sections appreciated. No, he has indeed rendered justice to the people of Paris for their role in the insurrection, he even wrote outright: it is due to the people. No, he has given the sections the credit they deserve as well, he just said the insurrection would have taken place even without the support from the commissioners sent by some of them. The sections have in fact showered him with proofs of their confidence, and he has kept up a ”fraternal correspondence” with them. No, he didn’t appear at the commune until three days after ”the day of the Tuileries,” he was there already the day after it, speaking of their victory, and when he came there on the thirteenth it was not to put forward a report dismantling the commune. No, it is a lie that Guadet and Brissot came over on August 11 or 12 and scolded him for not having put a stop to the insurrection, they did on the other hand come over the night before and exclaim: the homeland is saved! No, he absolutely did not visit the king in order to convert him or justify himself two weeks before the insurrection (”I couldn’t believe my eyes! […] You know me, and these words come out of your mouth. You read my compte rendu to my fellow citizens, and these words come out of your mouth!”). The king had in fact requested him in several secrets meetings that he refused, he only ever went to see him on official invitations and for business. No, he is not attacking the Jacobins in his letter, he’s protecting them against fights and intrigues which could dishonor them.

Pétion is certain Robespierre knew full well non of these charges were founded, claiming he made them in order to ”indispose the public against me, and make it favorable to you by declaring yourself its avenger. If this is clever, it is neither fair nor just.” He then directs some denounciations against him in turn, starting by regretting the humorous tone used by Robespierre in his response — ”you say of me what you do not think; you say it with bitterness, with passion; you allow yourself sarcasm, irony, mind games beyond all propriety” — and especially that he refers to him by his firstname like that’s supposed to be funny. Where Robespierre accused him of being blinded by ”intriguers,” Pétion reproaches Robespierre of being the ”courtier” of the people, placing himself at the head of whatever opinion that for the moment happens to be popular, in order to remain so himself. That is why he has never gone to a public riot to try to stop ”the excesses of the malicious”, out of fear of making them his enemies, and why he today carasses the sections, even though both he and his friends spoke ill or them during the electoral assembly. It is also the reason Pétion always defended him against the charge that he had had the ambition to become mayor — ”not only would he find himself overwhelmed by often minute details, and above all without glory, but, as one must sometimes know how to resist the aberrations of public opinion, how one must know how to momentarily incur the disgrace of the people, he would never have the strength to tell them that he is in the wrong: he would believe his reputation or popularity lost.” While denying that him standing for election in Eure-et-Loir had anything to do with him being jealous of Robespierre (if the people of Paris didn’t give him the most votes, it was because they found him more useful as mayor), Pétion also critiques the electoral assembly of Paris, which he claims ”was influenced, was dominated by a small number of men,” lifting the fact Robespierre’s brother got elected as a deputy of Paris as an example. Pétion also comes back to his critique of Robespierre’s actions during the September massacres again, seemingly endorsing the idea that he on September 2 had tried to use them to rid himself of his political opponents:

I said that on this occasion you gave yourself over to the excesses of a disordered and dark imagination; that you allowed yourself odious denunciations; that you had gone so far as to denounce as traitors, men that were friends of liberty, whose talents were in your eyes the real crimes, against which you had not the slightest proof, and that this was then to indicate the victims. I now add that in the fury of your declamations, you announced that it was necessary to purge the soil of liberty of the conspirators who infected it; but with a tone, a gesture which was so well understood, that the spectators responded with trembling, and shouted: Yes... Yes, let’s do it.

Nevertheless, he reveals to Robespierre that when one of the many citizens outraged by this wanted to denounce and testify against him, Pétion had stopped him from doing so. Like how Robespierre underlined how he for a long time had defended Pétion and believed his intentions to be good, Pétion too reminds him that ”when I was told that you were my enemy, that you were eaten up with jealousy against me, that you would never forgive me the favor I enjoyed, I defended you with all my soul, I took your side against all odds.” Today, he must however announce that ”I am forced to believe in the baseness and wickedness of your heart,” and he reveals that ”what caused the blindfold to fall off my eyes” was a speech Robespierre held at the Jacobins on October 28, where he says that, the day after the massacre on Champ de Mars, ”I saw Pétion, who then also fought against the intriguers.” Pétion reacts strongly on this choice of wording:

You only uttered one word, and it was more treacherous than a whole speech. You seemed to throw it away accidentally: you said, going back to the time of the Constituent Assembly, that then I was fighting intriguers, and that I embraced the good party, as if I had never ceased to pursue both traitors and enemies of liberty. Don't worry, I won't let them rest. I was well aware of the system of calumny and persecution directed against me; but I thought, I confess, that it would be without result, and I deigned to do so. I believed above all that you were not immersed in this intrigue.

Pétion ends with yet another unflattering description:

I do not think, and I do you this justice, that you are a man to ever allow yourself to be influenced by the lure of riches; but let Pon know how to skilfully caress your vanity; let the most salutary project be presented to you like an intrigue woven by your enemies, like a conspiracy, like a betrayal, your imagination immediately catches fire, you lose yourself in an abyss of conjectures, and you give in to the first panel held out to you. I will show you twenty of your opinions which are absolutely in the same direction as that of the court and of the counter-revolutionaries. If these opinions had been held by anyone other than you, his reputation would be lost, and he would be regarded as a traitor to his country. I saw men of good faith, without any interest who were not your enemies, who said to me: is it possible that Robespierre is sold, I always told them not to worry, but that you had a bad head, and that you lead to the delirium of your imagination. I have always added at the same time that you would sacrifice everything for a quarter of an hour of popular favour. 

Robespierre responded in Deuxième lettre de Maximilien Robespierre en réponse au second discours de Jérôme Petion, that made up all of number 10 of Lettres à ses comettras… He started by telling Pétion that his complaints that he used irony, ridicule and tried to caluminate him seem unjust to him, and that he won’t change his tone for this second reply. Besides, he added, the friends of the homeland find such few occasions to laugh these days. As for calling Pétion by his firstname, he reminds him that he never did so without adding his lastname as well, and what’s so bad about the name Jérôme anyways?

Turning to countering Pétion’s arguments, Robespierre writes that, even if Pétion does view the insurrection of August 10 as something positive, his conduct during it was still way too moderate. Pétion admits to in the conversation they had on August 7 have wanted to postpone the insurrection until the moment when the legislative assembly would have pronounced on the king's forfeiture, ”that is to say, until the end of the centuries.” He confesses to in the days before August 10 have tried to keep the calm ”and all the reasons that you give to explain your conduct on one of these occasions may well prove that you were a brave man, but not that you were a determined revolutionary, nor a clever politician.” He might not have visited the king on his own initiative, but that’s nevertheless how it came across for all patriots (besides, I didn’t write you had the shame (honte) to visit the king, I wrote goodness (bonté)! Robespierre even argues that the reason Pétion stayed at home during the insurrection was because ”you felt so inclined to oppose the insurrection of the people against the tyranny armed to slaughter them, that you knew of no other way of resisting this temptation than to be kept at home.” Pétion’s debunking of the anecdote Brissot and Guadet scolding him for not having stopped the insurrection, Robespierre counters with the fact it was an ”irreproachable citizen” that gave him the story, one whose word he chooses to believe over that of Pétion’s.

As for Pétion’s debunking of the claim he was indifferent to stop the demonstration of June 20, Robespierre simply doesn’t believe it — ”nothing is easier or better proven.” He ridicules Pétion’s suggestion that he was trying to make him look bad in the eyes of the jacobins, ”as if it was me who had composed the diatribe printed at the end of your speech against me,” and when Pétion himself has barely showed up at the club in the last year — ”Jérôme Pétion is therefore a very high power, since he thus places his sole authority in opposition to the services of an immortal society of friends of freedom; since he dares to present it as a stupid herd led by intriguers, at the head of whom he places me.”Pétion’s anger over the fact Robespierre in a speech held two months earlier is recorded to have said Pétion served the revolution well during the National Assembly (implying he doesn’t anymore), he dismisses since, in the version of the speech given in number 3 of Lettres à ses comettras, no such words can be found. Robespierre likewise dismisses Pétion’s claim that he wasn’t jealous at him for getting more votes to the Convention, reminding him that ”the pain did not even allow you to fulfill the commitment you had made with a very well-known man in the republic, to meet that day, at his home, to dine, with me, for an object which essentially concerned public harmony,” as well as Pétion’s suggestion that the electoral assembly was influenced by nepotism since he could only cite his brother as an example, who, he assures, was elected only due to his own merits. The idea that Robespierre would have  spoken ill of the sections or denounced men at the commune just to have them ”exposed to the knife” during the September massacres he too dismisses as simply slander. It is this last charge that breaks the camel’s back for Robespierre: 

Pétion, this excess of atrocity exempts me from all the consideration that I persisted in maintaining with you; and from now on you will only owe my moderation to my contempt. I abandon you to that of all the citizens who have seen me, heard me like this, and who deny you. I abandon you to that of all judicious men, who, in your expressions, as vague as they are artificial, perceive at the same time the hatred, the lie, the implausibility, the contradiction, the insult made at the same time to the public, to the patriotic magistrates, as much as to myself. Pétion, yes, you are now worthy of your masters; you are worthy of cooperating with them in this vast plan of slander and persecution, directed against patriotism and against equality. But no; I am wrong to get angry with you, whatever your intentions; because you take care to ward off all the blows you want to deal yourselves; and following a stroke of wickedness, I see a hundred ridiculous things happen, which you indulge in on purpose for my small pleasures.

In the last couple of pages, Robespierre jokingly accuses Pétion during his time as mayor had gotten into his head the idea that France wanted to crown him king and he, like Caesar, would have to fight this off. ”Good god! We would then have gotten us a king by the name of Jérôme the first! […] If you felt some regrets, who knows if we might not enjoy this one day. You have good friends, who lack neither power nor resources. It is not without reason that they do not want to let us make laws or a constitution, that there has not even been a question of the declaration of rights yet; that they work, with marvelous skill, to kindle civil war, and to plunge us into anarchy; who knows if France will not be obliged to come back to your knees and ask you to dictate laws to it?” He then addresses Pétion as you would a king throughout the rest of the letter, calling him ”sire” and ”your majesty.”

This was truly the final nail in the coffin for the relationship. In number 1 of the second series of his Lettres à ses commettans (January 1 1793), Robespierre regretted the earlier constant tying together of him and Pétion, now viewing it as an attempt of his enemies to undermine him:

In the past, I still remember, Brissot and a few others had entered into I don't know what conspiracy to make my name almost synonymous with that of Jérôme Pétion; they took so much trouble to put them together. I don't know if it was for love of me or of Pétion: but they seemed to have plotted to send me to immortality, in company with the great Jérôme. I have been ungrateful; and, to punish me, they said: since you don't want to be Pétion, you will be Marat. Well, I declare to you, monsieurs, that I want to be neither. 

The trial of Louis XVI, which had been ongoing at the same time as Pétion and Robespierre’s breakup exchange, provided yet another moment for the two to oppose each other, with Pétion suggesting the Convention first discuss whether or not the king should be judged, a question deemed quite unneccessary for Robespierre, who instead wanted to see the king executed right away, without any trial. In a speech to the Convention held December 3 he lamented the direction Pétion had led them in:

Today Louis shares the mandataries of the people; we speak for and we speak against him. Who would have suspected two months ago that it would be a question here, whether he was inviolable? But since a member of the National Convention (citizen Pétion) presented the question, whether the King could be judged, as the object of serious deliberation, preliminary to any other question, the inviolability of which the conspirators of the Constituent Assembly covered up his first perjuries, was invoked, to protect his latest attacks. O crime! O shame! 

When Robespierre a few weeks later, on December 28, defended himself against the charge of having belonged to ”the cabal of Lafayette” (just your typical convention workday) he nevertheless exclaimed: ”I attest to my former colleagues, Pétion, Rabaud, and many others, if I had any connections with this faction!” When the time had arrived to finally decide the former king’s fate, Pétion voted for an appeal to the people, and for death with the so called Mailhe amendment, calling for a postponement of the execution, while Robespierre voted against an appeal to the people and for immediate execution.

On January 27, six days after the execution of the king, Pétion was struck from the Jacobin club’s list of members, on the suggestion of Monestier. Two months later, March 26, Pétion and Robespierre were both elected for the so called Commission of Public Safety, alongside 23 others. The commission, which consisted of both fervent montagnards and fervent girondins, was however off to a rocky start, and already on April 6 it was put to death and replaced by the Committee of Public Safety.

Four days after that, April 10, Robespierre spoke for long at the Convention, denouncing the girondins as ”a powerful faction conspiring with the tyrants of Europe to give us a king, with a sort of aristocratic constitution” led by Brissot. The girondins were the successors of Lafayette, accomplices of Dumouriez, Miranda and d’Orléans, and supported by William Pitt, who had dishonored the Insurrection of August 10 and wanted to flee Paris with the king, tried to cause civil war by calling for an appeal to the people during the trial of said king, as well as having ”depressed the energetic patriots, protected the hypocritical moderates, successively corrupted the defenders of the people, attached to their Cause those who had some talent, and persecuted those whom they could not seduce.” Robespierre ended with asking that the Revolutionary Tribunal be charged with setting up a trial for ”Dumouriez and his accomplices” as well as for the Orléans family, Sillery and Madame de Genlis. Pétion’s name got mentioned outright four times in the speech, Robespierre accusing him of being the friend and defender of the general Francisco de Miranda, arrested since February 1793 after a failed siege of the city Maastricht and later denounced as an accomplice of Dumouriez.

Two days later, April 12, a stormy exchange played out between the two former friends at the Convention, after Pétion had asked that François-Martin Poultier be censored for making a personal suggestion when meant to speak in the name of his committee of war. Several variants of this exchange can be found throughout the different journals. Here is the one given in the Moniteur:

Robespierre: I demand the censure of those who protect the traitors. (Pétion rushes to the tribune, some murmurs rise)  Robespierre: And their accomplices.  Pétion: Yes, their accomplices, and you yourself. It is finally time for all these infamies to end, it is time at last for all this infamy to end; it is time for traitors and slanderers to lay their heads on the scaffold; and I pledge here to pursue them to death.  Robespierre: Answer the facts.  Pétion: It’s you I will be pursuing. Yes, Robespierre will have to be branded at last, as the slanderers used to be. 

The Mercure universel:

Pétion: I ask that the rapporteur be censored; instead of the committee's opinion, he allows himself to report his own to mislead the public. We must punish the conspirators. Robespierre: That’s you. (applauds from the tribunes, cries of indignation in the assembly) Pétion (runs to the tribune; unrest): It is finally time for all these infamies to end, it is time for the convention to be respected: I will pursue the slanderers, the traitors! Robespierre: Where are they? Pétion: You!

Journal de Paris:

Pétion asks that this member be censored, for having expressed an opinion that the Committee of War had not directed to him. Here Robespierre interrupts Pétion, and the interpellation he made, which we did not hear, was undoubtedly very lively, because Pétion flew to the tribune, and in a voice more vehement than he ever used in the two Assemblies of which he was a member, he complained of this system of slander adroitly directed against the true friends of liberty, by these people who thus believe they are hiding, at the moment that they will be discovered, the plots that they themselves have formed. He thunders against these informers who, without proof, pile denunciations on top of each other, without ever proving any of them. Pétion concluded that all denunciations should be signed, under penalty of being subjected to the same contempt as their authors.

Le Logotachigraphe:

Pétion: I demand censure against the rapporteur who allowed himself to overstep the powers he had received from the committee. Marat: I ask that we pursue the traitors. (noise) Pétion (flies to the tribune): I will indeed ask that the traitors and conspirators be punished (interrupted by boos from the stands. Part of the assembly stands up and shows its indignation: the president is summoned to remind the stands of respect.) The president: I have called the tribunes to order several times, and I call them again at this moment, to the execution of the law which prohibits any sign of disapproval and approval, and I conjure them, in the name of public safety, to remember that all is lost if the National Convention does not retain its liberty. Pétion: It is impossible (murmurs) to tolerate this infamy any longer. It is impossible for an honest man to restrain his indignation when he sees that men who should keep the most profound silence; that men who are marked with the most infamy dare to insult him with this audacity. Yes, I intend to pursue the traitors; I intend to pursue the slanderers, and I tell all of France that Robespierre must either be punished or branded with hot iron on the forehead as a slanderer.

Le Thermomètre du Jour:

Pétion calls for censure against Poultier for having expressed an opinion tending to mislead the public. It is necessary to underline, said Robespierre, that one is trying to save the traitors. Immediately Pétion, going up to the podium, said: ”It is impossible for an honest man to tolerate any longer the system of slander and disorganization that I see followed with a constancy that only great interest can give. Yes, I will fight against traitors and slanderers. In the end, either I must be punished or Robespierre must be branded with the hot iron with which ancient peoples branded slanderers. Even before the existence of the convention, people had already formed the wish to slander it, to outrage it, to degrade it, and some people have continued to follow this system. I ask what more our enemies would have done? Aren't these the real enemies of the republic? I will never compromise with despots, and if the enemy were at the gates of Paris, we would see which are the brave false ones, and which ones are the courageous republicans!

Pétion then went on a long rant about the need to punish the traitors, before denouncing Marat. Robespierre responded that ”I will be permitted to respond to your calumnies,” to which Pétion, according to Le Logotachigraphe, replied the following way:

I would like a written struggle to begin here, because words are elusive; I would like the indictments to be recorded in writing and the answers that each person submitted to put their head to be heard in writing, and I would then ask that whoever is found guilty loses it. I do not claim to be constantly engaged in a struggle, neither with lungs nor with screams, nor with insults and insults; all this means nothing: this is not how free men justify themselves: free men act with perfect integrity. I am not asking here for imprecation or approval; but I ask for peace and quiet; I ask above all that we do not allow ourselves these indecent accusations, a thousand times more atrocious than facts. We have already fought in writing with Robespierre; he knows that I know him, and certainly, I am doing him a kind of justice here. At the constituent assembly, for example, Robespierre behaved well, and I admit that I have never been convinced why he changed. (Long uproar.)

Later the same session, Guadet used Robespierre’s former friendship with Pétion as a weapon against him apropos of getting accused of being an accomplice of Dumouriez: ”Can’t I say to Robespierre: You have had liaisons with Pétion, but you accuse Pétion of betraying the public sake.” […] Well! Since you have had liaisons with Pétion, I can therefore conclude you have been dans ses projets. Why then do you start by suppose me to have liaisons with Dumouriez, which is false, and conclude that since Dumouriez has turned traitor I must be considered one as well?” In the defense he wrote a few months later, the girondin Gensonné similarily stated: ”in 1791 and 1792, Robespierre had the most intimate liasons with Pétion, Buzot and Roland, how can he accuse them today without accusing himself?”

Pétion made good on his promise to start ”a written struggle,” as he soon thereafter released yet another pamphlet, this time by the name of Réponse très-succinte de Jérome Petion, au long libelle de Maximilien Robespierre (1793), a 14 page long work where he answered Robespierre’s attack from the 10th. Robespierre didn’t respond to it thank god.

On May 17, Desmoulins presented his 84 pages long Histoire des Brissotins, ou, Fragment de l'histoire secrète de la révolution, et des six premiers mois de la République to the Jacobin club, a pamphlet we know Robespierre had had a hand in through a note inserted in one of Desmoulins’ later publications. In total, Pétion’s name got mentioned a total of 22 times in the damning work that painted him and the other ”girondins” as royalists, accomplices of Dumouriez and in the pay of foreigners. They had been leading an anglo-prussian committee working for the military failure of France, which they wanted to divide into 20-30 federalist republics, or to overturn the republican government altogether, and to set up the Duke of Orléans as monarch. For Pétion’s part, Desmoulins threw suspicion on the fact that he, during his trip to London after the closing of the National Assembly, had been accompanied by Madame de Genlis (the cousin of the duke of Orléans), her niece Rose-Henriette Peronne de Sercey and daughter Pamela, ”that we can call the three graces, and who pressed his virtuous and fortunately incorruptible knee; and wasn’t it upon his return that he was appointed mayor of Paris?” Desmoulins also picked up Robespierre’s criticism of Pétion’s attitude towards the insurrection of August 10, but this time he got accused of not only not having wanted the event to take place, but also to have signed the order for the Swiss guard to fire on the people. He was also claimed to have received 30 000 francs per month from Dumouriez in order to ”throw away the foundations of the republic” during his time as mayor.

Desmoulins concluded that the establishment of a democratic republic wouldn’t happen before ”the vomiting of the Brissotins from the bosom of the Convention,” and on May 26, a week after the pamphlet’s publication, Robespierre had reached the same conclusion, telling the jacobins that ”the people must rise up. This moment has arrived.” Three days later he repeated himself — “I say that, if the people do not stand up as a whole, liberty is lost, and that only a detestable empiricist can tell them that there remains another doctor than themselves” — and two days after that, the insurrection of May 31 took place, which ended with the Convention on June 2 issuing arrest warrants against 29 of its deputies and two ministers. One of these 31 men was of course Pétion, who was placed under house arrest like the others. It was however a very loose one, and many of the proscribed managed to get away. On June 24, Jeanbon Saint-André could report to the Convention that Pétion had escaped, after which he suggested bringing those still remaining under house arrest to actual prisons, a proposal which Robespierre supported.

Having gone underground (while his wife, child and father all got arrested and his mother-in-law executed), Pétion occupied himself with writing, both his memoirs as well as Observations de Pétion, a constructive criticism of the poem Charlotte Corday, tragédie en 5 actes et en vers, that his fellow runaway Jean-Baptiste Salle had penned down. ”Barère and Robespierre,” Pétion wrote in these, ”are known for being the greatest cowards on earth. In my view, the trick is Barère's distinctive character. Robespierre is no less perfidious; but what distinguishes him is that in danger he loses his head, he discovers in spite of himself the fear which torments him, he speaks only of assassinations, only of lost liberty, he sees the entire Republic destroyed in his person, whereas Barère, more dissimulated, without being less cowardly, is always coldly atrocious and preserves until the end the hope of succeeding.” Buzot, who was hiding out alongside Pétion, did on the other hand recall the latter’s former fondness of Robespierre in the memoirs he at the same time was working on: ”there was this great difference between Pétion and me — he had a particular deference for Robespierre, and I had an invincible aversion for this man who had the face of a cat.”

Robespierre for his part had no nice things to say about Pétion. On March 21 1794 he reminded the Jacobins how Lafayette, Pétion and Dumouriez had all conceived ”the terrible project of starving and enslaving [the people]” but that luckily these ”monsters” had now fallen. A few days later, April 1 1794, he shut down a proposal that the recently arrested Danton be allowed to come and defend himself before the Convention by pointing out that this was not the first time a former ”patriot” turned out to be a traitor  — ”And I too was a friend of Pétion; as soon as he unmasked himself, I abandoned him; I also had liaisons with Roland; he betrayed, and I denounced him. Danton wants to take their place, and in my eyes he is nothing more than an enemy of the homeland.” Finally, on June 27 1794 he talked about yet another conspiracy, and regretted that it would be hard to make ”so many horrors” perceptible to the people that once ”were seduced by the Lameths, the d'Orléans, the Brissots, the Pétions, the Héberts.”

On June 17 1794, Pétion, Buzot and Barbaroux left the garret in Saint-Émilion where they since five months back had been hiding out, after the people taking care of them had gotten arrested, and set out into the countryside. When in the next day some people approached, Pétion and Buzot took flight once more while Barbaroux unsuccessfully tried to blow his brains out and was captured. Eventually his friends decided to take the same way out. It is unclear when exactly this suicide took place, tradition placing it on June 18 and Michel Biard, in the book La liberté ou la mort: mourir en député 1792-1795(2015) instead dating it to June 24, having consulted two doctors with expertise in the field. Regardless, on July 8 1794, the Moniteur published the following letter from the Popular Society of Castillon that had been read at the Convention the day right before:

Citizen Representatives, our search has not been in vain. When we annonced to you that the scroundel Barbaroux had been taken, we assured you that his accomplices Pétion and Buzot would soon be under our control. We’ve got them now, Citizen Representatives, or rather they are no more. The end which the law prescribes was too good for such traitors; divine justice reserved for them a fate more fitting to their crimes. We found their bodies, hidden and disfigured, half eaten by worms; their scattered limbs had been devoured by dogs, their bloody hearts eaten by ferocious beasts. Such was the horrible end of their still more horrible lives. People! Contemplate this awful spectacle, the terrible monument to your vengeance! Traitors! May this ignominious death, may this abhorred memory make you recoil with horror and shudder with terror! Such is the terrible fate which sooner or later will be reserved for you. Signed The Sans-Culottes of the Popular and Republican Society of Castillon.

By the time the letter reached Paris, Robespierre had already stopped showing up at both the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. But he probably still found out about what had happened, if not through the letter to the Convention, then through another one written to him on June 30 by Marc Antoine Jullien, representative on mission in Bordeaux, asking ”to raze to the ground the houses where Guadet, Salle, Pétion, Buzot and Barbaroux were [hiding], [and] transfer the military commission to Saint-Emilion, to there judge and make perish on the spot the authors or accomplices guilty of hiding the conspirators.” While we lack the sources to say anything really substantial about Robespierre’s psyche, it is nevertheless interesting to speculate if the news of his former friend’s horrible fate (as can be seen from the letter to the Convention, it isn’t even explained that Pétion and Buzot had committed suicide before getting mauled by the animals) was a contributing factor to Robespierre’s growing isolation from public life and deteriorating mental health during his last month alive…

[uyuforu]

this is a dumb question but how do you make a solar synastry chart? could you please explain it with a example?

How to make a Solar Return Synastry: Uyu's Tutorial

「 ✦ Hello! This is not a dumb question at all, as many other people didn't get that either! I'm gonna do a full tutorial so people can check with easy steps! ✦ 」

Step Zero: Introducing our example people

Person A: Mrs. Juno, born on 01/10/1994 at 1:11 am in New York, NY

Person B: Mr. Jupiter, born on 01/04/1997 at 11:11 am in Los Angeles, CA

Mrs. Juno & Mr. Jupiter are a couple, and wishes to check their synastry over the year 2024.

First, they need to see their own Solar Return Charts for the year.

Step One: Checking each person's Solar Return

ִ ࣪𖤐 Go on Astro.comִ

ִ ࣪𖤐 Go on the 3 bars

ִ ࣪𖤐 Free Horoscopes > Horoscope Drawings & Data > Extended Chart Selection

ִ ࣪𖤐 Enter your personal informations in "Horoscope for:" (Edit) (for this step, write your birth date and birth time, not the year of the solar return!)

ִ ࣪𖤐 In "Chart Type:" click and search for "Solar Return Chart*"

ִ ࣪𖤐 Then, make sure to write 2024 (or the year you want to check, the rest of the date doesn't matter from what I observed, but the year does).

ִ ࣪𖤐 You can go down and add asteroids or other additional objects before checking the SRC.

ִ ࣪𖤐 For a romantic relationship, you can add Juno, Union, Briede, Groom, Boda, Vertex for example.

ִ ࣪𖤐 Once you are done with that, you click on "Show the Chart"

ִ ࣪𖤐 Save your SRC, and then go back to repeat all those steps with the other person.

Step Two: Creating a Solar Return Synastry based on two Solar Return Charts

ִ ࣪𖤐 Let me show you our two Solar Return Charts of Mrs. Juno & Mr. Jupiter for 2024:

ִ ࣪𖤐 Now, we are going to create a synastry with these two charts. We are going to take this date (each written in red), with the timing too!

Mrs Juno: September 30, 2024 at 7:37 am in New York, NY

Mr Jupiter: April 1st, 2024 at 1:17 am in Los Angeles, CA

ִ ࣪𖤐 Now, we are going back on Astro.com > Free Horoscopes > Horoscope Drawings & Data > Extended Chart Selection

ִ ࣪𖤐 We are going to change our personal informations to that:

ִ ࣪𖤐 Now, on the "Chart Type:" we are going to select "Synastry Chart (2)

࣪𖤐 This should look like that:

࣪𖤐 Finally, you can add again some asteroids and some additional objects! And click on "Show the chart". You have your Solar Return Synastry for 2024!

Final Words

You have to save every solar return charts of you and your person of each years to make synastry about other years. Follow the tutorial once again for other dates such as 2022, 2023, or 2025, etc. Just replace the year with the one you desire to see :)

Hope it helped!

back to index ; ask ; request ; rules

[yuzurujenn]

[2024.08.05] AERA x Yuzuru Hanyu: 24.8.12-19 No. 37

person in focus

"After all, it's frustrating when I can't perform well."

A session with photographer Mika Ninagawa for the first time in a year. In a long interview exclusive to this magazine, he talks about the ideals he pursues.

Writer: Takaomi Matsubara

Professional skater Yuzuru Hanyu

Born December 7, 1994 in Sendai. 2009 Won the Junior Grand Prix Final at age 14. 2010 Became the youngest Japanese male to win the World Junior Championships. 2011 While practicing at a rink in Sendai, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, and he had to live in an evacuation shelter. The rink where he was training was temporarily closed. 2012 First participated in the World Championships, coming in third. 2013 Graduated from Tohoku High School. Enrolled in a correspondence course at the Faculty of Human Sciences at Waseda University, studying human informatics and cognitive sciences. Won his first Grand Prix Final. Won four consecutive titles thereafter. 2014 First Asian gold medal in men's figure skating at the Sochi Olympics. First World Championship win. 2017 Second World Championship win. 2018 Second gold medal in men's figure skating at the Pyeongchang Olympics. 2020 Won his first Four Continents Championship, becoming the first man to win all major international junior and senior competitions. 2022 Participated in the Beijing Olympics. In July, announced his professional career. The ice show "Prologue" was held in Yokohama in November and in Hachinohe in December. 2023 In February, the ice show "GIFT" was held at Tokyo Dome. In March, the ice show "notte stellata" was held in Miyagi Prefecture. In March and April, he appeared in the ice show "Stars on Ice" (Osaka, Iwate, Yokohama). In May and June, he appeared in the ice show "Fantasy on Ice" (Makuhari, Miyagi, Niigata, Kobe). In November, the ice show "RE_PRAY" tour began at Saitama Super Arena. The following year, it was held at SAGA Arena in Saga in January, Pia Arena MM in Yokohama in February, and Sekisui Heim Super Arena in Miyagi in April. 2024 In March, the ice show "notte stellata" was held in Miyagi Prefecture. In May and June, he appeared in the ice show "Fantasy on Ice" (Makuhari, Aichi). On September 15th, he will be performing in the "Noto Peninsula Reconstruction Support Charity Performance Challenge" in Ishikawa Prefecture.

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It has been two years since he made a new start as a professional figure skater in the summer of 2022. In 2024, he led three successful ice shows: "RE_PRAY" (Saga, Yokohama, Miyagi performances), "notte stellata" and "Fantasy on Ice".

The shoot with Mika Ninagawa for the first time in a year began with a cheerful greeting from each other, "Thank you for your continued support this year," and "Thank you." When she said to him, "You're still as young as ever!", Hanyu replied with a smile, a little embarrassed, "I'm almost 30."

"Move freely."

With those words, he made expressions and gestures as he pleased.

Various scenes were set up in the vast studio. Hanyu, who changed costumes and was photographed in each scene, moved and made expressions freely, sometimes under instructions and sometimes as if he was imagining (creating) a story himself. The people watching repeatedly let out gasps of amazement as the images were displayed one after another on the computer monitor. It was nothing short of amazing how he instantly exuded various moods - from boyish with a hint of innocence to cool and seductive.

His creativity was not limited to the way he behaved as a subject. When the BGM was played during the shoot, his body naturally responded to the music, and he also requested songs himself when he saw the costumes. There was also a moment when he saw a prop that had been set up and asked, "Do you have one more of these?" This revealed his high level of creative awareness.

The shooting has completed.

"Thank you very much," he said, and there was something light-hearted and cheerful about it. After a year, what he showed in the studio was a more mature and expressive side to him.

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

Exclusive interview with this magazine

[In pursuit of a distant ideal]

He is now in his third year as a professional figure skater. Reflecting on his days of taking on unprecedented challenges, he spoke about what he has gained from them and what the future holds.

Photo: Mika Ninagawa    Writer: Takaomi Matsubara

Yuzuru Hanyu, the journey continues

hair & make up: Noboru Tomizawa  styling: Masataka Hattori costume: NEEDLES    BED j.w. FORD    YUKI HASHIMOTO  prop styling: Ayumi Endo

Yuzuru Hanyu started out as a professional figure skater in 2022. In his first professional ice show, "Prologue," he performed the first solo ice show in history. He skated for nearly two hours, with a structure that richly conveyed his skating career. Following "Prologue," he then performed a solo show at the Tokyo Dome for the first time in history, "GIFT." The ice show filled the gigantic venue, which had never been seen before.  After "Prologue" and "GIFT," he held the performance "notte stellata" in March 2023, which was filled with thoughts and prayers for March 11. It has been a year since our interview last summer, following those three performances.

Changes in the "depth" of thinking

"When I was interviewed a year ago, it had just been a year since I turned professional. I had a desire to grow and learn more specialized things. In the year since then, I think that my technique, expression, and many other aspects have changed. Among them, I feel that I have had many more opportunities to think about expression. I have been thinking about expression even in my daily life. I think that the way I think about my show, the way I think about each program, the depth of those things has clearly changed." He talks about what triggered the change in the past year. "First of all, I had to spend more time thinking about writing a new ice story after GIFT and also about my own performance.” The new ice story was "RE_PRAY", under the title "ICE STORY 2nd".  It opened on November 4, 2023 at Saitama Super Arena. It was performed in Saitama for two days, on that day and the following day, and in the new year it was performed in Saga on January 12th and 14th, and in Yokohama on February 17th and 19th, for a total of six performances in three cities. After the premiere in Saitama on November 4th, Hanyu said the following. "First of all, I myself have learned from games, manga, novels, and various other sources, about what life is all about, how precious life is, and other similar things that everyone else roughly feels.

In games, the concept of life is really light in a sense, and you can repeat it, so you can use characters to do all sorts of things and push forward with curiosity. If you apply that to the real world, you might be a person who has the drive to grab hold of dreams, or conversely, from a different perspective, you might be a very terrifying person. But if you could do it all over again, I'm sure people would try it."

24 hours a day, always skating

In this story with a game motif, the question of "choice" is often depicted. We make choices in our lives, even if we are not aware of it. What if you choose a different option than the one you originally chose? Or would you choose the same option? This story asks the audience, which serves as an opportunity to reexamine their way of life. Of course, just like "Prologue" and "GIFT," the fact that this story was completed and received with overwhelming acclaim was due to the performance of Hanyu, who was the sole performer. And even after six performances, he did not try to stay in the same place. He continued to evolve. There were many evidences of this growth at the final performance of the Yokohama show, for example. The movements in the performance of "Chicken, Snake and Pig" where he moved forward as if resisting the shackles. The performance of "Megalovania", following a silent performance without music with only the sound of his edges resonating, was more integrated with the music than in previous performances. Not only in the production aspects, but also in the details of Hanyu's performance itself, there were traces of refinement here and there. After the Saga performance, Hanyu spent his days preparing more rigorously for the Yokohama performance.  "Of course, I trained and restricted my diet. Well, how should I say it, there are 24 hours in a day, but I spent the entire time on nothing else but skating. In other words, skating was always present, 24 hours a day.” "That's right. To put it simply, it felt like I was spending every day just working on 'RE_PRAY'." The reason he spent all his time facing skating was because he had regrets about the Saga performance. "After all, it's frustrating when I can't perform well." However, the standards of frustration have changed from when he was a competing athlete.

Still not enough

"Gradually, the focus is shifting from scores to an evaluation. If something technical that I had planned didn't go well, then my evaluation vector changes and my perspective shifts. I couldn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish in Saga, so I was simply disappointed." After spending 24 hours focused on skating, the Yokohama performance came. After the final performance, he said, "I feel a sense of accomplishment like winning the Olympics." While he felt a sense of fulfillment, he wasn't completely satisfied. He also felt that his ability had not yet caught up with what he wanted to do. "So I feel like there are still things I need to study more. Of course, I think I'm evolving. I think I'm getting better. But I still feel like it's not enough. As I keep digging deeper and deeper, my ideals become higher, and the things I want to express are becoming more and more specific. The more my ideals become more concrete, the more I feel like I'm not catching up." He is aware that he still has areas where he needs to improve, especially in the finer details. This is something he realises now, which he didn't feel this way when he was competing in the sport. "It's impossible to realise this when you're a competitive athlete. After all, if you can jump, you win. To be honest, if you couldn’t jump, there was no point in talking about it, as the outcome of the competition was pretty much decided by how many types of quadruple jumps there are and where you put them in the program. For example, what memories do you have of this song, the background of this song, what is the story you want to express, how will the story and the song fit together, or what meaning is in the choreography, to be honest, there’s not much room to think about them. You have to complete all your technical elements in one go in the four minutes of a competition (free skate), so that's all you can focus on."

A world not in first place

Win the match. In a competition, that is set as a goal. "Since I had already achieved that, there was no way I could go any higher. If you think about it in the world of competition, I won first place, so even if I tried harder, I couldn't get any higher than first place. In other words, I just tried to see how long I could maintain that first place position.

But in the world I'm in right now, even if I think I'm in first place, it may not be. It’s a place where I can think, "I'm still at the bottom". When I look at the various works of art or technically excellent things from around the world, I feel that there are still many things I can't do, so I think that I still have a long way to go." When he moved from the world of competition, which was fixed in a sense, to a new world, it was no longer a confined space. However, whether one knows its vastness or not, whether one feels that there is an endlessly wide world out there, is up to the individual. So even though the world is infinite, some people only notice a limited space. Or, there are those who limit the space themselves.

Right now, Hanyu thinks, "I still have a long way to go." He feels like he's at the bottom. This is because he knows that the world is endlessly vast. The reason he feels this way is because he has the ambition to move forward without being content with the present. So instead of seeing the place he has arrived at as the end point, he knows that there is still space to go beyond that.

Ideals evolve

"I may have surpassed the ideal I had a year ago. But the sense of distance between me and my ideal is probably the same as it was a year ago. For example, if the distance between me and my ideal a year ago was 10 meters, it may be 10 meters, no, 11 meters now. That's how I feel. I'm living and experiencing life, I see information every day, and in the midst of that, my ideal evolves. My ideal gets further and further away. But at the same time, through what I have seen and experienced, I'm sure I’m also one step closer to my ideal." Then, after a short pause, he continued with a smile. "As long as I want to, I think I can continue for the rest of my life." The skater is still on his journey, striving towards the ideals he has built with his own will. 

Source: AERA issue 24.8.12-19 No.37, pg 9-15 Info: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0D89L6LS2

[eternalfurtive]

Robert Carlyle Projects

in celebration of bobby’s birthday soon (april 14) i wanted to share my mega link to several bobby projects on here. i’ve already shared it on tiktok but i want as many people as possible to be able to see his work. i’m constantly updating it with more projects of his i can get my hands on, but if you have any requests let me know.

unfortunately they’re not all in the best quality but they’re the best i can get right now.

link to robert carlyle projects

description key is svvtlkYEn-p4q_LQD27zUA if the link won’t work on its own.

current uploaded projects under the cut.

movies;

- angela’s ashes (1999)

- black and white (2002)

- born equal (2006)

- california solo (2012)

- carla’s song (1996)

- eragon (2006)

- face (1997)

- go now (1995)

- looking after jojo (1998)

- marilyn hotchkiss ballroom and dance school (2005)

- once upon a time in the midlands (2002)

- plunkett and macleane (1999)

- ravenous (1999)

- riff-raff (1991)

- stone of destiny (2008)

- the 51st street/51 formula (2001)

- the full monty (1997)

- the legend of barney thomson (2015)

- the mighty celt (2005)

- the priest (1994)

- the tournament (2009)

- there’s only one jimmy grimble (2000)

- to end all wars (2001)

- trainspotting (1996)

- trainspotting 2 (2017)

- 24 redemption (2008)

- 28 weeks later (2007)

shows;

- cobra

- hamish macbeth

- stargate universe

[anqelsweep]

Birth Name. Judith Song

Korean Name. Song Namjoo (송남주)

Nicknames. Disaster Rookie, Jude, Dollie, Tokkjoo, Namlody, Cult Creative’s Fairy, Korea’s Angel & Korea’s Sweetheart

Date of Birth. April 10, 1991

Zodiac Signs. Aries & Goat

Place of Birth. Sacramento, California 

Residency. Sacramento, CA ( 1991 - 1992 ), Seoul, SK ( 1992 - Present )

Occupation. Singer, Songwriter, Model & Record Producer 

Ethnicity. South Korean

Languages. Korean (mother tongue), English (father tongue), Japanese (fluent)

Family. Yoon Shinae (mother), Daniel Song (father; deceased), Song Eunjoo (older sister; 1981), Lee Namil (little brother; 1995)

⏤    PHYSICAL 

Height. 160cm (5’3”)

Distinguishing Marks. Birthmarks on left cheek and next to left eyebrow, bow tattoo on inner left arm, small lily tattoo on right lower tricep & both lobes pierced 

Face Claim. Bae Joohyun 

⏤    PERSONALITY

Positive Traits. Loyalty, Passion & Giving 

Neutral Traits. Open-minded, Organization, Adaptability & Sensitive 

Negative Traits. Stubbornness, Insecurity & Impatience 

Moral Alignment. Chaotic Good 

Color Psychology. Pink & Yellow

Enneagram Scale. The Helper; Type Two

⏤    HISTORY

⏤    EARLY LIFE. 

Judith Song was born in Sacramento as the second daughter of Daniel Song and Shinae Yoon. She grew up in Dobong-gu, Seoul, South Korea, moving there a year after she was born. Daniel Song passed away at thirty-three at the hands of a work colleague in September of that same year, leaving the family alone. Shinae took up several jobs to keep the family afloat and Eunjoo took up a parental role towards her little sister. In 1994, Shinae married a man named Lee Gi-ung, the couple welcomed a baby boy in March of the next year but divorced in December of that same year. 

 Judith discovered her love for music in high school, after being pushed to by her friends, she began to audition for any company she could — often getting scammed or completely failing. In 2008 she was scouted by Cult Creative Records with her friends and became a trainee under the label that same year. After a short stint as a member of the now-defunct project HotPink, she debuted at the age of twenty-two as the company’s first and only female solo artist.

⏤    PERSONAL LIFE.

In April 2017, Judith began dating her friend and colleague, Jung Kyungmin. Their relationship would be exposed and later confirmed in September of 2017. Their engagement would be announced in early 2020 - they were set to marry in the Winter of 2024. Sadly, the couple would never be able to tie the knot, as in the early morning of Monday, November 20, 2023, Kyungmin’s life would be taken from him at the hands of an unnamed assailant. Little information has been released, at the request of his family, but it is known the assailant was a close friend of his.

[damonjuicyscock]

Playlist-Chapter 7: Always (90s Noel Gallagher X Reader)

Pairing: 90s Noel Gallagher X Reader

Warnings: mentions of PTSD (flashbacks), a bit of fluffy fluff, violence (it's just Y/N punching someone), maybe a few spelling mistakes

Words: 2445

Summary: After the Ferry incident, you are back in England. It's the Supersonic video shot, and back to the studio. Your relationship with Noel is evolving anew, and everytime it can take a step further, there's always something to interrupt you both.

A/N: Heya Y'all ! Here's chapter 7. This one had been on my mind for months, I just couldn't write it because of you know what. As I got less time now and my wrist is still kinda recovering, I'll be publishing one chapter per week until the end of the fan fic and then when I'll be done, I'll give priority to all my requests before publishing the fanfic with Ville. I know some of you have been waiting for a long time so it's normal for me to make up for lost time (time that I lost but it was not my fault, but still I'm sorry)

Anyway, Enjoy !

“Now your pictures that you left behind

Are just memories of a different life

Some that made us laugh, some that made us cry

One that made you have to say goodbye

What I'd give to run my fingers through your hair

To touch your lips, to hold you near

When you say your prayers, try to understand

I've made mistakes, I'm just a man

When he holds you close, when he pulls you near

When he says the words you've been needing to hear

I wish I was him

With these words of mine

To say to you 'til the end of time

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

That I will love you baby, always

And I'll be there forever and a day, always”.

After the ferry incident we were back in England. It was time for Oasis to film the Supersonic music video. The song would be released the same month. The band had fun filming it. They even got asked to dance and when I heard this, I burst out laughing, perfectly knowing that nor Liam nor Noel would do it and insult the guy, who asked for it. Literally like he had been begging them to do it. Supersonic was their first single, that Noel had written in practically 30 minutes. Oasis recorded it the same day. To record it we went to the Pink Museum in Liverpool. And now, it was the first time I ever came back to London since I was born.

April 11th 1994- London:

During a morning and a whole afternoon, they shot the music video. After this, not complicated to guess where we went: the pub.

We drank pint after pint before going to buy something to eat and to a nightclub. The guys were only sitting drinking, Liam being his inner Casanova, and Noel alone in the corner, talking with Bonehead. I was tipsy and silent. I was discretely admiring Noel from time to time, telling myself how good looking he was, how I loved his blue eyes, his smile, and his laugh, how confident he looked, how the girl that came towards him… WAIT WHAT?! What did this bitch wanted?

I remind you I was tipsy, and I didn’t even recognize the waitress.

That’s when the song, the perfect one blasted through the speakers. It was MY moment. I got up so fast Guigsy looked at me with worry.

Hey Y/N are ye… oh. He started

In fact, I had walked to the dancefloor, dancing a slow with myself on Always by Bon Jovi, mouthing the lyrics, eyes closed. That’s why I didn’t notice Noel’s gaze on mine. That’s also why I was surprised when I felt one hand on my hip and another one taking my hand. I jumped and almost fell.

It’s just me, don’t worry. He said

You scared the shit out of me Noely! I answered

I can see that, me. Not fun dancing by yerself.

So… mister Gallagher doesn’t dance for a music video but dances with me in a nightclub?

There’s a difference between both.

Which is?

With Oasis, I’m the rockstar. With ye, I’m Noel Gallagher. The one ye always knew. Got to work me image and reputation.

It goes without saying that I love both characters but prefer Noel Gallagher.

Love? He chuckled

Oh shut the fuck up, you know what I mean, yeah?

Yea, I know what ye mean. Now it’s yer turn to shut the fuck up and dance with me.

And just like that I was dancing with the man I loved. I laid my head on his shoulder, following his basic dance moves. And when I lift my head up again, we both looked in each other’s eyes, dancing, and me, still mouthing the lyrics. Noel was smiling at me doing so. There still was a hope for love. I was tipsy and unconsciously telling him with a song that I was still in love with him when mouthing “And I will love you, baby, always, and I'll be there forever and a day, always, I'll be there 'til the stars don't shine, ‘til the heavens burst and the words don't rhyme, and I know when I die, you'll be on my mind, and I'll love you, always.”

He smiled more and more, thinking it was cute. And he approached his face more and more from mine. And as we were about to kiss, I felt a hand pinch my bottom. I jumped, and Noel who witnessed it, saw the guy behind me laugh. He let go of me and walked towards him.

Oi, what did ye just do ye fucker?

Oh come on, it was just a joke! The man answered

Well we’ll fucking see if me fist in yer fucking face is also a joke ye asshole!

As Noel was about to punch the man, I put myself in front of him, putting my hand on his torso to stop him.

Noel, no! It’s not worth it.

He stopped, sending a dark look to the man, then looked at me.

The Y/N I know wouldn’t have stopped me and would even have smashed his face in!

He started walking away.

I just fucking want peace Noel, can’t you understand this?

I get that, but not when a man touches ye this way! He shouted

Don’t you think I saw enough violence?

Yea, maybe ye did, but I don’t accept the fact that ye don’t or don’t let me defend ye!

I’m a big girl, I can defend myself Noel!

Yea? Prove it then! Don’t let anyone touch ye this way when ye don’t want it and didn’t ask fer it! What have ye become Y/N? Where’s me warrior?

And this sentence broke me. Tears invaded my eyes, I couldn’t answer. Maybe I wasn’t cured yet. Because flashbacks came back and I fell on my knees, crying and hyperventilating.

Noel had gone to the loo, but Liam saw me and ran to me.

Y/N ? Y/N it’s okay, yer okay.

Noel wasn’t back yet, and Liam took me in his arms, directing himself outside so there would be less noise, and so I could get some calm and fresh air. He sat me on a chair before hugging me tightly.

Hey Y/N, ye’re here, no one can hurt ye, I promise.

I-I know, it’s j-just…

Flashbacks, I know. And I know this. He said as he let go of me

W-What?

I know what flashbacks are. I had some too in the past.

I-Is this about…

Me dickhead of a father beating me mam and brothers? Yea.

I’m so soz Li’…

Don’t be. It’s only nightmares now. I’m sure Noel didn’t want to trigger ye. It’s just we knew another Y/N.

I’m soz…

Stop apologizing Y/N. It’s not yer fault. Repairing yerself takes time. He said, handing me a cigarette

I just thought this was behind me… I answered, taking it

As I said, repairing yerself takes time. It has highs and lows, it’s not linear. He said, lighting his cigarette

Yeah I know, thank you doctor Gallagher. I answered, rolling my eyes while he was lighting mine

See? There she is the sarcastic little shit we love. Ye’re still ye Y/N. Just different after what happened to ye with this bastard. And that’s normal. But Noel is right, we want the warrior who kicks ass back. She’s sleeping, but she’ll be back one day, I don’t doubt it, me. Noel was just trying to encourage ye. Just in a bad way, that’s all.

I chuckled.

You give good advice for someone who’s usually the violent one Li’.

I know, I don’t control it. But I’m meself and I’ve been through this. I was just a powerless little lad.

Who grew up into a good but angry guy.

Maybe yea. But at least I’m alive. And it’s thanks to ye. And I thank ye everyday fer this Y/N.

What Liam had told me gave me a boost. I finished my cigarette and got up.

Where are ye going? He asked

To teach someone a lesson. I answered

I went back inside and looked for the guy who pinched my ass. I saw that Noel was back at the table and sat, with a glass of Gin and Tonic in his hand.

That’s when I saw the man and went towards him.

Hey smartass!

He turned around and I punched him.

Don’t you fucking touch me or another girl without her consent ever again!

I wasn’t a victim. I couldn’t let myself be in this position.

I heard people applause me. Noel had gotten up when seeing me do this and smiled. Liam was among the people who applauded and showed me his two thumbs up. The warrior would be back, and this was a big step I had taken.

*

April 1994- Sawmills studios- Cornwall

After shooting the video for Supersonic, we were back in studio in Cornwall to record and mix the last songs for Definitely Maybe. Oasis were getting popular thanks to the song and I was sure the album would work. I saw the passion they were all bringing to it, and Liam had an incredible voice. When they weren’t recording or drinking, they were playing football. I men WE were playing football.

I was in Noel’s and Guigsy’s team whereas Liam was teaming with Bonehead and Tony.

And let’s say Noel and I still had some techniques from when we were younger. So we kicked their asses. And you know how Liam is. He’s a very bad player. So on several occasions, he had fun knocking us damn, so that he could score a goal.

Oi Liam, this isn’t cool! I said, getting up for the umpteenth time

Yea that’s right our kid, normally that’s a good red card man! Noel pursued

Oh yea? Where’s the fucking referee, eh? Show me, I want to see yer goddamn nice red card. Liam said, raiding his arms to his side and looking from right to left theatrically

You’re unfair Li ‘!

No, ye are! He answered

It’s not our fault ye don’t know how to play football! Noel answered

I fucking know how to play, me!

Then be fairplay! Tony, Bonehead, do you agree with this?

Nope. They both answered

Okay, fuck off, I quit! Liam said, taking the piss

Oh come on William! I said

Nah, fuck off, I don’t want to play anymore!

Where are ye going? Noel asked

To the pub, ye cunts. He answered, walking away

Should we join him? I asked

The boys looked at the sky, it was cloudy and about to start raining.

Nah, let him take the piss, he’ll come back. We’re going inside. Who wants a brew? Tony asked

*

And it rained. A lot. There was a powercut, so we had to light ourselves by candlelight. Liam was probably still at the pub, while Noel and I locked ourselves in the studio. He was strumming his guitar and I read the book about the Beatles, the one he was reading on the ferry to Amsterdam. That’s when inspiration came to him, and he started playing a melody. The one that would later become Acquiesce. I already heard him playing it before, but nothing concrete. There wasn’t any lyrics yet.

Came with a new song? I asked

Maybe.

Already heard you playing this before.

I know. I keep it in me head. I don’t have lyrics. Might not be the time yet.

Doesn’t your head and fingers hurt? You haven’t stopped playing for 3 hours now.

No.

Could you teach me a song please? I said, putting the book aside

Now me head’s gonna hurt.

You bastard!

Noel laughed

Of course, what do ye want to play?

Could you teach me some chords from Always by Bon Jovi?

Aren’t ye a bit obsessed with this song?

No! I mean… I just love it, It’s beautiful.

Lemme find the chords.

He strummed his guitar again for a few minutes, looking for the chords. Then he gave me his guitar, making me hold it the right way.

So ye’re going to strum the E and chords first, then C#minor, B and A twice again. That’s the intro of the song.

I did, with Noel placing my fingers correctly and I struggled for the C#minor chord.

Fuck, this one’s hard!

Yea, not recommended for beginners. This is one of the chords I hate playing. I’m going to help ye.

He sat behind me, and my eyes opened wide. Oh God, that was something he didn’t do for ages. Happily, he didn’t see that. He put his hand on mine, putting my fingers at the right place.

Now strum.

I did.

Sounds better when you do it.

I didn’t do anything, I just helped ye.

I have a little hand and little fingers you know? I said, looking at him

Not so little since ye just played these chords. He answered, looking back at me

Our eyes were locked together, like in London in this nightclub. And once again, his face came dangerously close to mine. And once again, just as we were about to kiss, there was a disturbing element. And that disturbing element’s name was Liam.

F-Fucking hell, it’s a fucking torrent our there, I was lucky I made friends with someone who was n-nice enough to give me a l-lift! He stammered, bursting through the door

Oh fer fuck’s sake… Noel whispered, closing his eyes

Soz, was I interrupting a special moment? Liam asked

I sighed.

No, no you didn’t, your brother was only teaching me a few chords. Are you drunk Liam?

Nah, but I’m cocked up me!

And he’s proud…

Fer fuck’s sake our kid, yer going to lose yer voice!

Oh fuck off Noel, I can sing. Ye’ll see, tomorrow I’ll be in shape enough to blow yer fucking mind!

Ye better!

While the brothers were talking, I grabbed the book and started reading again. I fucking hated Liam at this right moment for spoiling it. I wanted my goddamn kiss. This would have to fucking wait, again.

[yellowmanula]

Perhaps this will be a challenge of a difficult or even solipsistic nature, or maybe, I don't know, it will be seen as a bidding for darkness… I know that experiencing darkness, tragedy, and absorbing the dark principle of life, the Black Sun, is, unfortunately, a rather common experience. For me, however, it’s a revelation. I’ve finally understood my grotesque, gothic, coffin-like yet oddly serene imagination.

In 1994, ironically on April 10, my mother Hanna died prematurely from hypothermia, a suicide, though not the kind that slowly ripens through depression. She died holding the body of her 1.5-year-old daughter, Hania Junior. The little one fell into a septic tank. My mother didn’t watch her closely enough. She chose to stand in that septic tank, with water 1.2 meters deep, holding the child until death enveloped her.

I was five years old when I lost them both. It’s a brutal challenge, I realize that. But it’s significant to me—it’s a kind of howl, a cry that the darkness in my poetry is authentic, that this depth is not copy & paste, not fascination. I don’t draw from any tradition. Of course, I deeply value John Keats, Philip Larkin, Jola Stefko, the Brontës, and the later post-gothic and punk-gothic movement.

I am happy now. I’ve worked through the Shadow, the Well Phase, the Animus, the Terrible Mother, etc. I’m okay, I’m moving forward. But it matters deeply to me that the poetry I write, which 'Klaster' has already begun to nibble at and which is transforming into a Phase of Depth, is seen through the lens of genuine affect, not mere fascination. I observe a time devoid of belief in affect and imagination; in poetry, the game seems to have become solely about intertextual play. Generally speaking, of course.

That’s why I feel close to 'Katawotra' by Przemek Owczarek, and I’m glad that my review of it will be published soon. This is simply a request: even if you don’t like the language in my poems, treat the darkness in them seriously.

Droga

———• ✧ •———

Przede mną długa współczesna droga, jak w Vengo, czerń mknie przed siebie, nawet jeśli chciałabym nią jechać to od jeziora napływa mgła i widok gęstnieje,

postać w bieli podnosi dłonie, strużkami płynie z nich mleko

guślarka szepce

widzę was, zjawy, lucyferze, każecie mi pamiętać o genach, o naszym powołaniu, o nieznanych dotąd imionach krów

[writers-requiem]

I have another scenario/headcanon:single dad 94 tas Eddie Brock/Venom with a baby girl who is a symbiont hybrid (this is based on the character of april Parker) Eddie does his best to take care of child even if he never had a good childhood and slowly shows his gentle side

Okay, but after this I'm turning Asks off for a while so that I don't get constant requests that may end up being a lot more for me to handle. And this will be as headcannons for simplicity.

My dad is Venom (1994 Venom x Fem! Child Reader headcannons)

Okay, first off. He is definitely rough around the edges at first.

This whole parenting thing is still new to him, and it doesn't help that the symbiote doesn't know what decent parents on earth are like.

At first he's very distant physically, but not emotionally.

Having grown up in a toxic environment most of his life, he tries his hardest to be the best dad ever while still being the Lethal Protector, Venom.

Over time he begins to slowly open up to you physically, giving you head pats and quick pecks on the cheek, the wholesome stuff.

Once or twice he noticed you were about to be caught in the crossfire when Spider-Man saved you every time.

He hated it, but was ultimately grateful for him saving you.

If you're in your teen years, he is definitely a bit more strict but still flexible enough. He may be a tad psycho, but he still has a heart of gold underneath that slimy alien exterior.

I imagine he'd be the kind of dad that will scare the shit out of anyone that tries to harass you.

He also seems like the kind of dad that would make you a sack lunch with some of your favorite foods as snacks for later.

If Spider-Man or Peter Parker are in the area, he's a little angry but doesn't hold it against him.

Once you both find out about your natural Symbiote powers, he confronts Venom about it and they agree to train you with those powers, for with great power comes great responsibility.

Once he becomes comfortable enough around you, he begins to act differently.

In front of his enemies he's all gruff and tough.

But in front of you? He becomes a sweet little cupcake.

Once he was fighting Carnage, with Spidey to back him (Venom) up and you tossed him a Molotov to burn the Carnage symbiote alive.

After that fight he would take every chance he had to brag that his little girl saved New York from the wrath of Cletus Kassidy. Proud papa bear, or spider...thing.

I could see him throwing a small tantrum if he loses to you in a game like chess.

You: "Checkmate!" :D, Eddie/Venom: "GnyAAAAA" D:<

He'd be the kind of dad to spoil you rotten if he could get away with it.

[dertaglichedan]

U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Blassie was once known as the Vietnam War “Unknown Soldier”.

U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Blassie was once known as the Vietnam War “Unknown Soldier”.

On Memorial Day in 1984, a set of unidentified remains were interred in the Tomb of the Unknowns, alongside remains of service members from WWI, WWII and the Korean War at Arlington National Cemetery. Those “unknown” remains, later identified as Michael Blassie, became representative of those who remained unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

On May 11, 1972, Blassie was flying an A-37B Dragonfly aircraft when it was hit by ground fire near An Loc, 60 miles outside of Saigon. His wingman witnessed an explosion and there was no indication that Blassie survived. Blassie was then listed as missing-in-action for more than a decade. He was 24 years old. Blassie’s remains were taken “home” to the United States in 1984 but they were not positively identified, and instead were interred at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Forensic technology was limited at the time, preventing positive identification.

Michael Blassie was born on April 4, 1948, in St. Louis, Missouri to George and Jean Blassie. He was the oldest of five children. In 1970, Blassie graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and went on to serve as a 1st Lieutenant with the 8th Special Operations Squadron in Vietnam.

Recovery of Blassie’s crash site took nearly six months after bone fragments, an ID card, and a radio were found at the crash site. While the remains found at the crash site were initially identified as Blassie’s, forensic miscalculations about the height and weight of the bones caused them to be reclassified as unknown and labeled “X-26.”

In a ceremony at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on May 17, 1984, X-26 was officially classified as the remains of the “Unknown Soldier” from Vietnam and sent to the United States aboard the U.S.S. Brewton.

The remains were then sent to Travis Air Force Base on May 24, and arrived at Andrews Air Force Base the following day. Many Vietnam veterans, President Ronald Reagan, and First Lady Nancy Reagan visited X-26 as he lay in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for three days. On Memorial Day, May 28, 1984, X-26 was escorted to Arlington National Cemetery. A funeral was held and President Ronald Reagan presented the Medal of Honor to the Vietnam Unknown. The President also accepted the interment flag at the end of the ceremony.

Ten years later in 1994, a former Army Green Beret Ted Sampley called the Blassie family and said he had written an article for the Vietnam veterans’ newsletter proving that Blassie was buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns.

...

At the request of the family, Blassie’s remains were removed from the Tomb of the Unknowns. On July 11, 1998, 1st Lt. Michael Blassie was buried with full military honors in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.

[vasyas-tie-clip]

Arestovych's involvement with the HUR and Budanov

Arestovych is frequently depicted, including by Ukrainian government speakers, as an irrelevant pro-Russian blogger hack inflating his importance. There is actually a lot of evidence that this is not true.

There's enough to talk about here that I'm going to split it into several posts, each focusing on a different area of his involvement. While I've touched on some of the topics in past posts, this will be more of a narrow-scope deep dive into one topic at a time, and incorporate the latest available information. In this case: his genuine history with the HUR and its current head Budanov. The post will be split into the pre-full scale invasion and post-full scale invasion timespans. The former will go into both Arestovych's claims, and the public evidence available to support his claims, as of April 2024. The latter runs into the issues of the far more limited information available in the middle of full-scale war, as well as the intense politicization that's occurred around Arestovych in the past two years, but there's a few interesting items worth presenting.

Pre-full scale invasion

Arestovych's account

Pieced together from various interviews:

Arestovych served 1999-2005 in Ukrainian military intel, hinting that he ultimately quit because he was given what he considered destructive orders after the Orange Revolution. Among his specialties at that time was "information counteraction", which he described as "to bring public opinion to certain indicators on a certain issue in a particular region." In other words, public info ops on behalf of the military.

During his stint in the HUR, he befriended Roman Mashovets, a fellow young officer who would go on to become a deputy head of the Office of the President. In addition, he says he's known Kyrylo Budanov for "many, many years" due to their HUR connection, since before war broke out in 2014, and calls him a "comrade in arms" whom he worked with in the Donbas in 2018, when Budanov was a HUR special ops officer and Arestovych was a Ground Forces intel officer. When Budanov became head of the HUR in the midst of the Wagnergate scandal involving his predecessor, he asked for Arestovych's help in managing the public reaction.

The available evidence

We'll start with the documentation Arestovych himself has presented, before moving on to external sources.

While you could perhaps argue that documents could be forged, I find this possibility highly unlikely, given any journalist could easily request confirmation from the Ministry of Defense (and indeed they've done so, and published the results, on other occasions, such as when they took a misheard quip from one of his livestreams to mean he was claiming he was a colonel and obtained official confirmation he wasn't.) Given no one has been able to find irregularities in his formal records and awards despite several years of such intense public scrutiny, I think it's safe to conclude they're legitimate.

This is certification from 2020, showing that he was in the military from August 1994 to April 2005, and from September 2018 to September 2019:

(It's worth noting that this timespan overlaps with his infamous appearance at a conference with Dugin, which he's said was part of his intel work.)

In his early days as a public figure, he also presented a certificate of merit from the HUR dated September 2003 (original on left, machine translation on right, though note that the machine translation inaccurately parses the handwritten date as 2002 instead of 2003), evidence that he was specifically in the HUR and that he wasn't too shabby at his job.

After war broke out in the Donbas, Arestovych fought as a volunteer and a Ground Forces intel officer (more on that in other posts), but he doesn't seem to have formally returned to the HUR. However, there's evidence that Arestovych continued to be informally involved, in the form of a HUR departmental award that he first posted a picture of in August 2014. While the award has no date on it, the one who signed the award, a Yu. A. Pavlov (the machine translation slightly fudges the hand-written initials), was director of the HUR from March 2014 to July 2015.

There's not much in the way of outside evidence of Arestovych's connection with Roman Mashovets, who keeps a relatively low public profile. But there's an interesting tidbit from Mariana Bezuhla, an MP who, though known for social media drama and a bitter grudge against Zaluzhnyi, is nonetheless Deputy Chairman of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, with considerable insider knowledge. She accused Arestovych and Mashovets of having been the ones to recommend Zaluzhnyi, at the time a dark horse candidate with numerous other generals above him in seniority, to the Office of the President for the position of Commander-in-Chief.

But the most interesting piece of evidence for Arestovych's status within the HUR, and his relationship with Budanov, is this 15-minute video (in Ukrainian, with manual English subtitles) from August 2020, the time of Wagnergate:

At this time, the young and then-relatively-obscure Budanov had just been made head of the HUR, and he gave an unprecedented first "interview" not to any journalist or news outlet, but to Arestovych, who at the time held no official position and was supposedly just a milblogger, putting forth the case that Wagnergate was a Russian false flag.

I put "interview" in quotes, because, if you watch it, it feels less like any normal interview and more like a creative collaboration between two people pretending they don't know each other as well as they actually do. Budanov gives Arestovych a surprising amount of leeway in steering the conversation:

A: Mister Kyrylo, thank you for agreeing to give us an interview regarding the scandalous situation that arose around the allegedly detained mercenaries in Belorus, and released. First, I would like to share the probable actual event that took place and the informational version, which is now being actively discussed in Ukraine and around it. I am interested in, first of all, as a person who comments on military-political events, the informational version that was given to us. In my opinion, it [version] contains a number of logical inconsistencies that are difficult to explain. I would like to ask you as a professional to go through these logical inconsistencies. The first thing I am interested in, if you will allow me, is that personally I do not have a very high opinion of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Could there be a situation when during a year and a half, a year or half a year, or even a month, some person is collecting information about professional mercenaries who have fought and are "under Mueller's cap" and allows them to go to the territory of the union and still of another state in an organised group of 33 people? To what extent is this possible from the point of view of the Russian special services, that they didn’t know anything about it, and the Belarusian too? B: (dryly) First, good afternoon. [They both chuckle.]

Budanov offhandedly confirms that Arestovych served in the HUR:

A: Tell me, you are the Chief of the DIU [short for Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, another name for the HUR], can operations be planned with so many logical errors? From my point of view, as a former DIU officer-- B: I know. A: --this is terribly unprofessional.

And at the end, as if realizing how odd it looks for the head of national military intel to be interviewing with a glorified blogger (there won't be any other similar situations until well after the full-scale invasion, and Arestovych was indeed questioned about this by a journalist in one of his later interviews), Arestovych asks Budanov his reasons for the interview. Budanov explains that, in addition to the needs of the situation, he has considerable regard for Arestovych himself:

A: In my memory, you are almost the first Chief of the Military Intelligence of Ukraine who generally gives interviews to the press, and to a blogger - a representative of unofficial media - you are the first. What allowed you to take such a step? This is an unprecedented event. B: Firstly, the event is unprecedented, and secondly, I have great respect for you, you can be said to be my colleague. This is basic.

So I think the evidence is quite strong that Arestovych indeed served in the HUR, and he was considered trustworthy enough and good enough at informational work that, more than a decade after he officially quit, despite his already quite controversial public reputation, he had the head of the HUR declaring his "great respect" and specifically choosing him for his one media appearance for cleaning up the Wagnergate scandal.

During the full-scale invasion

There's understandably not a lot publicly known in a time of full-scale war, and a time when Arestovych has become enormously famous, (at least partially deliberately) controversial, and politically inconvenient to many, but there's a few interesting items worth mentioning:

In December 2022, Budanov was asked if Arestovych really worked in the HUR in an interview, and he answered "as far as I remember, yes."

In June 2023, Arestovych was asked about rumors that Budanov had been heavily wounded in a strike on HUR headquarters, and he answered that he knows the HQ building well, the strike was nowhere near Budanov's office, and he'd spoken to Budanov after the alleged incident and he'd looked perfectly fine. Presumably this was through a video call, if we can believe the most interesting and problematic source we have:

In February 2024, the investigative outlet NGL.media published an article claiming that Arestovych was able to leave Ukraine the previous fall, despite the borders normally being closed to men of military age, because he had a letter from the HUR. The publication reached out to Arestovych, the HUR, and the State Border Services for comment before the article came out, but got no response from the first two and a refusal to comment from the last.

The timing of the article is suspicious--toward the end of Zaluzhnyi's time as commander-in-chief, while rumors were swirling that Budanov was a candidate for his replacement. Given the byzantine nature of Ukrainian internal politics and the degree to which it controls domestic media, the article may well have been an attempt to discredit Budanov at a sensitive juncture, as a pretext to bring up an earlier case of a suspected corrupt official leaving the country with a letter from the HUR, as well for tying him to Arestovych, who at the time had a roughly 80% distrust rating in surveys, and whose court cases the article gives accounts of in a misleading fashion.

Indeed, the HUR's social media channels came out with a denial only hours later. The quickness of the denial is also unusual, notably faster than the HUR's come out with denials of other seemingly more major information attacks, including rumors of their own head's injury or capture.

And instead of accepting the official HUR answer, the publication doubled down, directly publishing the list of Arestovych's borders crossings that it had obtained from its source, with what it considered sensitive information redacted, and declaring it would sue the border service to force it to release copies of the documents Arestovych had used to leave. (The State Border Service later issued a denial as well, though the comments are mostly disbelieving, given the quite low regard the organization is held in.)

When asked about the article a few days later, Arestovych responded by criticizing everyone involved: the HUR press services for responding to rumors, the media for obsessing over the personal details of a supposed irrelevant blogger instead of paying mind to the real issues they were facing. But he didn't confirm or deny anything about himself.

Given all this, it's hard to say how trustworthy the list of crossings is. The HUR and border service have issued denials, but they'd have reason to issue denials regardless if Arestovych was secretly working for the HUR. NGL.media certainly seems confident that their source is legit, but we don't know how exactly they know, and we don't know what they chose to edit out. Keeping in mind the above complications, however, the table is worth a look:

There are some irregularities in the "reason for departure" column, such as the use of Russian words instead of the Ukrainian counterpart at some points, but this might be an artifact of the publication's redactions or the work of individual Russophone border guards.

While some of Arestovych's nine trips abroad weren't known to the public, others sets of dates do match up remarkably well with appearances abroad that were previously known (though usually not publicly announced, some trackable by an outsider only through diligently keeping tabs on mentions of Arestovych online in multiple languages) with photo and video documentation. For example:

His May-June 2023 trip, during which he appeared in Europe and Israel

His March 2023 trip, during which he appeared at a conference in Lithuania

His February 2022 trip, during which he gave an interview in Italy

His December 2022 trip, where he appeared at a conference in Poland

His November 2022 trip, where he gave an interview in Lithuania

His September 2022 trip, during which he gave a talk in Lithuania

And his current extended stay goes without saying. Interestingly, the dates of the earliest trip on that list corresponds with the dates of the Istanbul negotiations, suggesting he was there in person.

It's worth noting that, in addition to his current trip, his May-June 2023 trip is attributed to a letter from the HUR as well, and he would've been on this HUR-related trip at the time he said he had recently (presumably long-distance) been in touch with Budanov.

In summary, Arestovych officially worked for the HUR in his younger days, he's definitely informally cooperated with Budanov and the HUR in the past, and the evidence around his continued involvement with them since 2022 is problematic, but intriguing. Most likely some answers will only be available after the war, if then.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Melissa Joan Hart has been cast as a Grandma at the age of 47 - But MeGain is a young mother. LOL by u/booksy200

Melissa Joan Hart has been cast as a Grandma at the age of 47 - But MeGain is a young mother. LOL That's fiction and sometimes real life. If MeGain had been associated with the BRF in the 1999's and wasn't so VOID inside she might have had a chance at some roles. Maybe MeGain (if not for the delusion) should have been looking for some granny roles when she hit town?!Melissa Joan Hart - Wikipedia Melissa Joan Hart (born April 18, 1976)[1] is an American actress, producer, and director. She had starring roles as the title characters in the sitcoms Clarissa Explains It All (1991–1994), Sabrina the Teenage Witch) (1996–2003), and Melissa & Joey (2010–2015). She appeared as Liz in No Good Nick (2019). She has also appeared in the films Drive Me Crazy (1999), Nine Dead (2009), and God's Not Dead 2 (2016). On October 17, 2021, she became the first celebrity to win the $1 million top prize for her charity, Youth Villages, on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune) and the fourth overall million dollar winner on Wheel of Fortune.2017Melissa Joan Hart Says She's 'Flattered' By Fan Frenzy Over Grandmother Role (msn.com)Hart, widely known for her roles in “Clarissa Explains It All” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” appeared this year in “Would You Kill for Me? The Mary Bailey Story,” which is based on a 1980s true-crime case. In it, she plays Ella, the grandmother of 11-year-old Mary (Presley Allard), who shoots and kills her abusive stepfather (Connor McMahon) at the request of her mother (Olivia Scriven). post link: https://ift.tt/OZoKPu6 author: booksy200 submitted: December 16, 2023 at 11:00PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[ask-the-good-creeps]

Vigilante Pasta AU Timeline

PART TWO

1988

MARCH: On the 22nd of the month, Liu Woods is born to his thrilled parents.

MAY: On the 14th of the month, Sally Williams is born and gifted a hand-sewn brown bear from her grandmother.

JULY: On the 4th of the month, Timothy Wright is born to the sound of fireworks outside while his mother laments that she was unable to hold him in for one more day to avoid him sharing his birthday with a national holiday.

1989

AUGUST: On the 26th of the month, Brian Thompson is born.

1990

JUNE: On the 14th of the month, Jeffery Hanson is born to a woman who prostitutes herself to feed her insatiable habit for illegal narcotics. She doesn't know who his father is and makes her disdain for her newborn infant fairly obvious.

1991

JANUARY: On the 7th of the month, Helen Sanderson is born to two parents who desired and expected a daughter; the doctor's announcement of his gender did not dissuade their decision to raise him as one.

MAY: On the 16th of the month, Jane Richards is born to her mother and soon-to-be stepfather, both loving parents.

JULY: On the 28th of the month, Katelynn Hillard is born and her mother dies in labor with her; her maternal aunt and uncle decide to adopt and raise her.

SEPTEMBER: Jonathan Frank's older brother, a gay man, dies from HIV/AIDS after enduring a plethora of cruel acts and abuses from their homophobic father. Jonathan is crushed by the loss, and resentful of their father for how his older brother was treated in his final days.

OCTOBER: Hobo Heart awakens in a graveyard that has been long-since reclaimed by the surrounding forest and has remained untouched by humans for decades. He knows nothing of his purpose or origin.

1992

FEBRUARY: On the 2nd of the month, Kagekao is born of two elderly but powerful spirits. His birth is cause for celebration on the sacred mountain in Japan where he has come into the world.

AUGUST: On the 12th of the month, Natalia Ostrovsky is born in Russia; her father is absent from her birth as he busies himself running weapons shipments for the Russian mafia.

OCTOBER: On the 19th of the month, Tobias Rogers is born but does not cry. He is breathing. His body appears healthy. But he does not cry.

1993

SEPTEMBER: On the 28th of the month, Nathan Simms and his twin sister Crystal are born.

NOVEMBER: On the 12th of the month, Benjamin Thomas is born.

1994

APRIL: On the 21st of the month, Dina Shephard is born with stars shining in her pitch-black eyes.

AUGUST: On the 9th of the month, Vincent “Vinny” Amaretti is born, the only son to the last true craftsman of porcelain dolls.

1995

MARCH: Toby Rogers is officially diagnosed with CIPA after extensive testing requested by the family's physician.

AUGUST: Helen begins kindergarten, and only then realizes that his clothing choices are not typical of little boys. He questions the teacher, and she is unnerved to learn that the dresses and hair ribbons Helen wears are not his attire by his choice, but the only options his parents allow him. She discusses her concerns with the Sandersons, who pull Helen out of the public school system to be homeschooled by them before the month is over.

SEPTEMBER: Ben's mother gives birth to his younger sister, Rosie.

DECEMBER: On the 23rd of the month, Lacy Morgan is born to a narcissistic woman.

1996

APRIL: Sally Williams is abused by her uncle, and when she threatens to expose him he murders her in the woods outside town and fakes her kidnapping by a stranger. Sally's spirit is bound to this area in the woods where her body's shallow grave is, and she is traumatized and terrified.

JUNE: Jane's mother and stepfather have their wedding ceremony; they waited this long so that Jane could enjoy the honor of being the flower girl.

JULY: Ben's mother dies of illness; his father gradually becomes an alcoholic in his grief, and Ben is forced to care for his baby sister the best he can.

AUGUST: Jeffery's birth mother trades him to human traffickers get her narcotics fix. He is drugged, auctioned off, and purchased by a sadist who keeps him locked in a soundproof dungeon underneath his cabin in the woods.

1997

MARCH: Katelynn is abducted and imprisoned in a basement three towns over, where she is horribly abused by her kidnapper.

NOVEMBER: Toby Rogers is diagnosed with schizophrenia due to consistent auditory hallucinations and occasional lapses from reality.

DECEMBER: Dina wants to go outside and play in the snow, but her father – a respected judge in their small town – demands that she be kept hidden inside the house so as not to shame her family with her 'demon eyes'.

1998

JANUARY: Helen tries to rebel against his parents by cutting his hair short, destroying the makeup palettes in his room, and bleaching all of the dresses and skirts in his closet beyond repair. He yells at his upset parents that he is a boy and he wants to live as one. His father beats him mercilessly for this and tells him he is forbidden to speak again until he no longer has those thoughts. His mother approaches after his father leaves the room, and he thinks perhaps she'll comfort him; instead, she cries and guilt-trips him for 'breaking her heart like this'.

MAY: Natalia's greedy father crosses the Russian mafia for his own gain, thinking he'll get away with it. He doesn't, and a hit is put out on him and his family. He hastily decides to flee the country and relocates himself, his wife, and Natalia to the USA. By working as an informant to the CIA, he secures a place in witness protection for his family. Natalia Ostrovsky becomes Natalie Oulette.

JUNE: Toby Rogers starts to experience tics, mostly gestural but some verbal. He is officially diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome by the end of the month.

SEPTEMBER: Jeffery's torturer has grown tired of him and has brought him out into the woods to kill and bury him. Jeffery doesn't have the strength to move at all, not even when the man points the rifle at his head. He's just happy it's almost over, happy to feel the cool wind on his damaged skin one last time. A shot fires, but Jeffery is still alive. His torturer is not the one who pulled a trigger, and the man runs off as voices approach. A couple of hunters find Jeffery and at first believe his emaciated, scarred body to be an odd Hallowe'en decoration. Upon realizing he's a kid and is still alive, they call for help and get him air-lifted to the nearest hospital that's equipped to handle injuries like his.

1999

APRIL: Jeffery has physically recovered as far as he can but is reclusive and afraid of everyone except one of the hospital nurses, Margaret Woods. Nurse Woods convinces her husband to adopt Jeffery and brings him home, where their son Liu Woods begins to bond with his new little brother.

NOVEMBER: Toby Rogers is officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He has been bullied in school for months, and after a particularly concerning incident of this his mother decides to pull him from school over the Thanksgiving break and start homeschooling him.

2000

JULY: Jane's family moves to a new house, and she befriends one of the kids in the house across the street: Liu Woods. Liu starts to introduce Jane to Jeff, who hardly leaves the house. Jane becomes friends with Jeff as well.

SEPTEMBER: The CIA orders Natalie's father to temporarily look after a teenage boy who is a witness in an upcoming trial. The boy is to stay with them and be considered a nephew to Mr. Oulette to whoever asks. The boy makes Natalie feel uncomfortable from the outset, and her feelings are justified when he starts to sneak into her room at night and abuse her. He threatens her to keep quiet, but after a few weeks she works up the courage to tell her parents. Her father responds by threatening her not to tell anyone else about it, as he doesn't want to stir up trouble and says the boy will be gone soon anyway. However, her mother installs a lock on her bedroom door and tells her to lock it every night.

2001

MARCH: Kagekao's parents fall ill due to tourists' disrespect of their home and subsequent trashing of it, and his father passes. He begins caring for his mother in hopes that she will recover.

APRIL: A wealthy client of Vinny's father is dissatisfied with his work, stating that the life-size child-age doll he crafted isn't realistic or lifelike enough for him. Vinny's father is unnerved by the man and offers a refund with intentions to refuse business from this client in the future. The client is offended by this, demanding that he get what he paid for. The client has his bodyguards burn the workshop with the dollmaker inside and abducts Vinny to serve as his lifelike doll.

JUNE: Jeffery has his first psychotic break in the middle of the night and stabs his adoptive parents to death. He starts to become lucid again after stabbing Liu and calls the police to help as Liu is still breathing. Jeff panics and doesn't know what to do; he runs toward Jane's home as she is the only other friend he has. He goes in through the basement window because it's the only one that's unlocked and at ground level, but being in the basement flares his PTSD and sends him back into his psychotic mind state. He kills Mr. and Mrs. Richards in their bed as well, before running downstairs and spotting a bottle of lighter fluid on the counter. He decides to 'burn this evil place', forgetting why he came, and that Jane was there. After lighting the fire, the smoke alarm wakes Jane, who sees her parents dead and attempts to get out the front door to safety. The entire downstairs of her home is in flames, and she sees Jeff leave out the front with the bloody knife as she catches on fire herself. Sirens are heard, and firefighters end up removing a badly burned but miraculously surviving Jane and sending her to the hospital while they address what remains of her once happy home.

SEPTEMBER: Jonathan, still mourning the loss of his older brother, secretly volunteers at a charity that supports LGBTQIA+ people and takes on as many tasks as he can in honor of his brother. He goes to great lengths to hide his volunteer work from his parents, especially his father, whose views have not changed.

OCTOBER: Hobo Heart has been wandering the world trying to find out why he exists and finds it easiest to do this in October while all the humans have Hallowe'en on the brain, and he doesn't catch quite as much attention. He meets a girl that he gets along well with and begins to develop an unhealthy obsession with her that culminates in him feeling she is his purpose for existing.

[black-paraphernalia]

       DR VERNON JOHNS

Born: April 22, 1892, Darlington Heights, VA 

Died: June 11, 1965, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Vernon Johns was an American minister based in the South and a pioneer in the civil rights movement. He is best known as the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Father of six children

Education: The University of Chicago, Oberlin College, Boydton Academic and Bible Institute

12 Things about Vernon Johns, a Devoted Preacher, and Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement;

The Man Who Laid the GroundWork 

for

 Martin Luther King Jr.

Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Prince Edward County, Virginia. Three of his grandparents had been enslaved. His paternal grandfather was hanged for killing his master.

In 1915, Johns graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary and College.

While at Oberlin, Johns was highly respected by both his classmates and the faculty; he was chosen to give the annual student oration. After graduating from Oberlin in 1918, he attended the University of Chicago’s graduate school of theology.

In 1926, he was the first African American to have his work published in Best Sermons of the Year.

In 1929–33 Johns served as president of Lynchburg’s Virginia Theological Seminary and College. He was unable to stabilize the school’s finances and was forced to resign. He returned to his family farm for several years.

On one occasion, he paid his fare on a bus in Montgomery, and was directed to the back in the custom of segregated seating. He refused to sit there and demanded, and got, his money back.

He persuaded black women to bring charges in court against their white rapists, and he helped the women with their cases. No one was convicted, but just getting the white men into court was an achievement.

In 1947 Johns found his way to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In spite of his eccentricities, its black-elite congregation liked his preaching and his leadership. Within two years, however, he started to speak out about racial issues and to castigate his congregation for ignoring them.

He sometimes ruffled feathers among his upper- and middle-class congregation by selling his farm produce outside the church building.

Following his departure from Dexter, Johns continued to speak at churches and colleges throughout the United States. At King’s request, he returned to Dexter as guest preacher for its 79th anniversary service.

A television film, Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story (1994), written by Leslie Lee and Kevin Arkadie, was based on an unpublished biography by Henry W. Powell of The Vernon Johns Society.

David Anderson Elementary School in Petersburg, Virginia, was renamed as Vernon Johns Middle School. In 2009 was adapted as the junior high school for the city school system

SOURCE BY: Carla D. Wilson Laskey -  Using words to inspire, motivate, and encourage us all to positively impact the world for the greater good of all! https://linktr.ee/CarlaDee

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[swamp-world]

Mokhiber's resignation letter haunts me. If anyone hasn't read it you can do so here. Nearly ten months ago, and the sentence still without exaggeration brings me to tears:

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites[sic], of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN. High Commissioner, we are failing again.

This is a man who in the first three weeks of seeing the response and failed response from the hegemonic international community could not partake in the structures which, through discursive democratic structures (and of course veto power), continued to blockade at every turn meaningful aid or support to Palestinians, or meaningful resistance and condemnation of the Israeli response.

This is meaningful, and I don't want to understate that fact. This is an advisory opinion, which means that it's non-binding, but it does offer legitimacy. Specifically following the responses to the interim ruling, where the ICJ stated that there was a plausible case for the possibility of genocide, and people latched onto that, to insist that that means it's not, and if it was as bad as Ukraine, they would have issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu et al. They have now. They have called it apartheid, which is under the UN a separate statute and convention, but which everyone has pointed out is a form of genocide nonetheless. The cases which South Africa et al brought forwards were largely resting on this question: Is apartheid only a crime when it happens in Africa? Do you not consider apartheid a crime when the rest of the world does it? Do you consider non-African nations to be immune to committing apartheid? Will you apply the Convention on [...] the Crime of Apartheid to the rest of the world?

The answer now is that non-African nations absolutely are capable of creating apartheid states. That under the genocide convention and the rome statute aiding and abetting genocide is a crime.

But I think about Craig Mokhiber, and I wonder if this is a victory. The sentence rings in my mind: High Commissioner, we are failing again.

What does it mean? What success does this bring? When the highest possible outcome for the time being is a non-binding advisory opinion, which took ten months to be reached--is that a victory? A death toll presently in the tens of thousands, estimated to reach nearly 200,000 with famine, disease, and exposure?

The Bosnian War and Ethnic Cleansing was preceded by violence through 1990 and 1991, but is pinned as having started in about April 1992. On 18th December 1992 the UN General Assembly ruled ethnic cleansing to be a crime of genocide.

The application of the Genocide Convention by the ICJ was invoked by Bosnia & Herzegovina on the 20th March 1993, and received a provisional recommendation on the 8th April.

They requested further provisional measures on 27th July 1993 and received a response on 13th September 1993.

It took until 1994 for the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia to issue any indictments or arrest warrants, and the first trial began on 23rd February 1995.

The Bosnian War didn't end until 14th December 1995.

The ICJ didn't make a final Judgement until 26th January 2007, and the ICC didn't make its final ruling until 2017, at which point the ICTY was finally dissolved.

This is what Mokhiber wrote about. This is the process of the "dust settl[ing]" to expose the UN's failure to their "duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites,[sic] of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators"--the ICJ is responsive rather than proactive; the UN as a whole is.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

This ruling is a case which was brought to the ICJ in 2022, separate from the one which South Africa is spearheading right now.

I started writing this quite pessimistically. I still don't feel great. But in writing all of this, I do feel things are changing. Not in a material way at the moment--the UN is still responsive rather than proactive, still held in a chokehold by the veto powers.

But the creation of the Rome Statute was largely in response to the specific outcomes of the criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (which I did not speak of here as I'm more familiar with Yugoslavia and for that I apologize because there's a lot of nuance and followup detail I'm missing), creating the ICC as a legitimate body. So much of what took so long with the trials with former Yugoslavia was that Yugoslavia kept filing with the ICJ about this falling out of the ICJ's jurisdiction, kept using this to hold up the cases. With the ICC in existence, that is helping to expedite the process now.

(Of course, that is a very linear view of things: it fails to address the sheer scale of mass atrocity it took to reach this point, and it treats the judicial process of Israel and Palestine as another step in the road to a Successful Justice System rather than a tragedy in itself, following in the footsteps of Bosnia and Rwanda.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

We can say that it takes failure to create success but "failure" is a terrible word for "multiple genocides".)

Importantly, this ruling establishes the right to return, which is absolutely huge. It recommends removing the West Bank Barrier.

It is a failure and the furthest success had in international court so far, which is its own indictment. And yet--the previous provisional measures demanded Israel withdraw, which they have failed to do so. The USA has explicitly said it considers the charges against Netanyahu to be illegitimate.

The NFP in France has pledged arms embargo against Israel and recognition of Palestine as a state. Will they uphold this? Will they push for sanctions against other EU and UN states who continue to support Israel? It is beyond upsetting that it apparently does not matter if the majority of the world continues to support Palestinian liberation, or at least that it does not until a developed power like France could stand alongside. Will they keep their promise? Who will sanction the USA? Who will follow that from this ruling?

Are we failing again?

[nsfwhiphop]

Part 9 - Incoming Text for Marco Perego Saldana (@pirateyadimar): “An Idea Worth 500 Million Dollars”

Question:

Could you provide a detailed overview of Miramax, covering its history, notable achievements, impact on independent cinema, relationship with Disney, and any controversies or changes in ownership over the years?

Here’s the link you requested: Miramax - Wikipedia (click on the blue link)

Jonathan Glickman has been the CEO of Miramax since April 2, 2024. For more information, you can visit his Wikipedia page: Jonathan Glickman - Wikipedia.

ChatGPT Answer:

Miramax Films is a notable American entertainment company founded in 1979 by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. It began as a small independent studio focused on distributing films not typically picked up by major Hollywood studios, especially foreign films and documentaries. Miramax quickly became known for its bold, edgy, and often controversial choices in film, propelling it to the forefront of the independent film industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

Key Milestones and Impact

Breakthrough Films: In the early 1990s, Miramax gained major attention with Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which helped establish it as a significant player in independent cinema. Throughout the 1990s, Miramax released a series of highly acclaimed films, such as Pulp Fiction (1994), The English Patient (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), and Shakespeare in Love (1998). These films brought in critical acclaim, box office success, and Academy Awards, making Miramax a powerhouse for independent films.

Acquisition by Disney: In 1993, Disney acquired Miramax for about $60 million. This provided Miramax with greater financial resources while allowing Disney to tap into the more mature and independent market, expanding its reach beyond family-friendly films. Despite Disney’s ownership, Miramax maintained its brand identity, producing films with daring themes and innovative storytelling.

Cultural Influence: Miramax played a significant role in popularizing independent cinema and elevating it to mainstream status. The studio helped launch the careers of filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Robert Rodriguez, among others. Its focus on strong scripts, character-driven stories, and pushing boundaries influenced the film industry and encouraged other studios to embrace more creative risks.

Controversies and Sale: The Weinstein brothers were known for aggressive marketing strategies and were often involved in controversies. In 2005, they left Miramax to form The Weinstein Company. In 2010, Disney sold Miramax to Filmyard Holdings, and it later changed hands several times. Since then, Miramax has focused primarily on managing its library and licensing its content, while occasionally producing new films.

Present Day

Miramax's extensive library of influential films still holds substantial value, and it remains a respected name in Hollywood. Despite its turbulent history and changes in ownership, Miramax’s legacy as a pioneer of independent cinema endures.

Miramax is currently owned by beIN Media Group, a global entertainment company based in Qatar. In 2016, beIN Media Group acquired a 100% stake in Miramax from Filmyard Holdings. This acquisition gave beIN access to Miramax's extensive film library, including hits like Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, and Kill Bill.

In 2019, beIN sold a 49% stake in Miramax to ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global), allowing Paramount to distribute Miramax's content and collaborate on new productions. However, beIN Media Group remains the majority owner, with a 51% stake in the company.