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plutosmainhoe · 1 year ago

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Camila Reinherz - Part II

Today, we will be going through Camila's second house.

2H Sagittarius

The second house controls finances, income, material possessions and concept of value.

Mila is going to struggle HARDCORE with throwing her money at people like it's no fucking problem.

With Sagittarius ruled by Jupiter, Camila will likely be very generous with her funds. In her eyes, she only needs enough to get by, why not spend it on or give to people who need it more?

She won't be afraid to invest in something risky, willing to take chances if it means making more money. If the risk fails, this won't bother her too much, already looking at her next investment deal.

Camila will think long-term for her finances, having great control on her expenditures. Though generous with her money, she is will always have an understanding on where her finances are at.

Because the second house controls finance, and in particular, income, the sign of the house can indicate what careers could be beneficial for finances.

With Sagittarius over the second house, Mila could find herself gaining income by focusing on tourism, education (teaching), writing, public speaking or foreign affairs.

Where is Jupiter?

Jupiter is in the 9H. Why do we need to know this?

Each house has a Lord, depending the sign that is over the house. It doesn't matter if there are any planets within the house, the house Lord essentially communicates from the house they are in and brings energy across from their house.

Therefore, big boi Jupiter is the Lord of the second, as it is the ruler of Sagittarius, however, is in the 9H. So what does this mean?

The second house control finances, and Jupiter being the planet of abundance and growth sits with the ninth house of travel, higher education, philosophy and wisdom.

This is a very, very fortunate position. The natural ruler of the ninth house is Sagittarius and Jupiter. Jupiter is communicating to its sign from their natural house with ease, manifesting its energies in the area it loves most.

With this in mind, Camila will likely be tenacious in her pursuit for higher education and philosophy. She will be deeply interested in foreign culture and travel, as well as higher knowledge/spirituality.

If Mila focuses on these areas, this can be greatly beneficial for her finances and material possessions.

Placements

2H Neptune Rx

This is where things take a turn.

Having a free-spirited Sagittarius over the second house and the second house ruler in the ninth, its preferred house, sounds terrific... Right?

Neptune is the mystical planet. The land of dreams, divinity, and delusion. With it hanging out in the second house, finances can be viewed through a mist.

While finances are controlled by organised Sagittarius, Neptune will throw a spanner in the works. Camila may find herself being too generous with her money, giving money away and not expecting anything back in return.

The second house needs a practical planet to function well. Neptune is a dysfunctional planet with passive energy. Mila may believe that money is a necessary evil and could expect money to just gravitate towards her with little to no effort.

Neptune is also emotion based. Camila may find that she spends money based on emotion rather than logic. This can lead to irrational and impulsive spending, no control over her finances and in a worst case scenario - debt.

However, not all is bad. If Mila works hard and becomes self-aware regarding her finances, she can get her Neptune to work in harmony with the Sagittarius energy. She can make her ideals and illusions a reality and succeed in growing income through her creativity.

Neptune at 22°

Within astrology, there is a belief that 18° and 22° are the 'evil' degrees. To kill, or to be killed? That is the question.

Though there is so much yelling about how bad the 22° is, it is not all bad. It can be hard to learn about this degree, most of it is negative.

The twenty second degree can indicate the loss of loved ones with life-long grief, this is seen in Prince Harry's natal chart with his Virgo Sun at 22°. It is also noted that is degree is present in multiple celebrity death transit charts.

But it does not inherently mean you will be killed or that you will kill.

How I read this degree, is that Camila is likely to have a loved one pass away when she is young, which will affect her greatly throughout her life. Within the second house, she may gain inheritance through this death. With Neptune sitting at this degree, under a fire sign, I can see her dreams and visions being vicious and loud. Her imagination won't be quiet and she may struggle with depression as a result.

Neptune in Retrograde (Rx)

When a planet goes into retrograde, the energies of the planet are expressed inwardly rather than externally.

This is unfortunate. Mila may have repressed thoughts of not feeling connected to the divine or worthy of unconditional love. She may have the tendency to make someone her 'saviour' and place her belief in them, rather than herself. Aspects will heavily play a part in this.

As Neptune is sitting in Sagittarius, Camila may latch herself on to someone who is interested in travel and high-education. Someone that can direct her in discovering her self-worth and higher self.

She could struggle with addictions and insecurities, being in the second house, I'm getting shopaholic vibes. But with Neptune, she could fall into the tap of drugs and alcohol and may struggle to pull herself out with outside help.

Next post, we go through the barren third house 🌵

#astrology #astro community #astro placements #astrology tumblr #chart analysis #harry potter #draco malfoy #astro tumblr #fanfic analysis #astro fanfic

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kendrixtermina · 2 years ago

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„Attention Squishing“ and the Centers

I hadn’t put these on tumblr & it occurred to me that I probably should

So what is in common for all the types is that the dominant center is generally where the person puts most their attention, what is most identified with or most attributed with objective reality, and, on the upper and average levels at least, where you find the person’s greatest strenght, which would also tend to be noted as such by others -

- Mental dominants tend to get read as perceptive and be relied on for advice or clarification, heart types get noted as having a gift for moving other’s feelings or having a certain star quality, impulse types are sometimes noted as being special in their very presence – such as 9s being noted for their „chill aura“.

However, when we get to the low levels, this is where you’d find the greatest dysfunction also – eg. Mental types showing distorted thinking, heart types being all hysteric, impulse types especially showing disordered behavior.

As for the other two centers, that tends to work a bit different between triangle & hexad.

Hexad

Here the case seems to be that the least used center tends to be genuinely off or at least ‚lagging behind‘ or ‚out of the loop‘ in a marked way – it takes effort or, at least conscious choice to engage. You’re doing good if you can manage to, like, not completely neglect this area to the point that you incurr a debilitating blind spot or disadvantage from this – probably you won’t ever be good at this.

7 & 8 – Perception of feelings can be somewhat undifferentiated, difficulty sitting with hurt or opening up to deeper bonds, not the best most receptive listener, in the extreme could get callous or insensitive to others or numbed out to their own experience, low emotional intelligence or show puerile behavior.

However, on the upside, these types are better than the others at brushing off haters, not being too bothered if one person complains about them, and aren’t incumbered by guilt & shame or worries about ppls opinions.

4 & 5 – without the ability to rely on quick judgements it can feel like you didn’t get the manual for life. Your very existence might feel precarious and ungrounded. Having great ideas about all the stuff you’re going to do is no good if you don’t actually do it. In the extreme, contact with reality can get alltogether tenuous or one may neglect to maintain one’s physical body.

So long as its not too extreme tho there is value in wanting one’s actions & choices to be actually based on something rather than just going along with the „common wisdom“ – nothing is taken for granted as simply self-evident.

1 & 2 – At their worst, these are the types most prone to pigheaded conviction that they’re right and can’t be questioned. Feelings and/or arbitrary ideas of how things should be trump all logic.

Looking at average joes rather than villains, one wonders if the greater sensitivity to criticism and guilt/shame tactics is not grounded in a lack of „debunking“ as a defence mechanism.

On the other hand, the ability to act with conviction without being bogged down by worries or stressing about figuring out all the details as much is certainly a plus in some situations.

The Secondary Center, meanwhile, accounts for a fair bit of the individual variability between people because it can be kinda neglected in low average people but a marked strenght in high average ones.

Another variable is the degree to which it is simply the water carrier of the dominant center/ used to bolster its pursuits, or also seen as its own source of information, meaning and problem solving approaches.

1 – Some 1s can be very passionate about causes & having strong feelings behind their opinions, & be like, fiery speech givers, whereas others can be emotionally repressed & overcontrolled.

2 – Some 2s can be quite tenacious, hardy & wilful, others get caught up in self-judgement of their normal human wants or surrender their own will to codependence. Much of their actions are sparked by or in service of outwardly expressing feelings.

Their „core loop“ is to have a feeling, get an impulse to act based on this, & then have more feelings based on what happens. (eg either being happy that the other person liked their spontaneous gift or being insulted that it was spurned)

4 – You get intellectual sophisticates but also ppl who don’t think much at all & refuse to listen to reason. Imagination & reason can be used chiefly to analyze or intensify feelings.

The „core loop“ is of having feelings, then thinking or imagining based on those, & having more feelings based on that...

5 – You get ppl famous for making super evocative art but also ppl who can’t really locate their feelings. Feelings & preferences can be mostly to do with own pursuits rather than being invested in people or external things.

The „core loop“ is of thinking/investigating stuff, then respoding to it, like getting excited scared or indentified with it, & thus investigating it some more.

7 – You get ppl who accomplish & experience an amazing lot of stuff, and others that can’t stay focussed long enough to finish anything or don’t have any reality backing up their imagination, being mostly hot air. Thinking about stuff tends to stimulate desire to act.

The core loop is of imagining stuff, then feeling the impulse to do it & expecting gratification, & then planning some more to make sure you indeed get what you want, and so on.

8 – There are fairly wise, planned-out strategic individuals and impulsive hotheads. Thinking is firstly about how to do, get or get away with what one wants to do. (not, say, cwondering if thats a good idea or scouting out long-range consequences)

Core loop is, you get an impulse to do a thing. You think of a way how. You just react on instinct to whatever happens in response.

Triangle

Here the pattern works somewhat different – There typically isn’t such an extreme ‚offline-ness‘ of any component – for example, I remember an illustrative example of a 6 blogger describing how, though she primarily experienced herself & the world through a mental/conceptual lens, her intuitive impressions & gut feelings were very much present in the „background“ same as her feelings, even if she might not per se „trust“ them (she related learning to do that sometimes with the growth line to 9) – 6s may overrule their first impression with their results of „thinking it through“ but can and often do efficiently react to sudden challenges right away when theres no time to think it through.

So evidently this works different.

Its often said that in the triangle types, misalignment/ low awareness manifests as disconnection between the dominant center and the others but what does that actually mean?

Well.

Stabile puts it as information being taken in with the dominant center but interpreted with the other two, but, its not like you never see 6s making logic based decisions or 9s just going with their first impressions etc. so that cant be the complete story.

In one Hudson’s books you find it describing as there being two separate „modes“, in the dominant center or the other connected pair.

Whereas some of Palmer’s materials on attention patterns, you might spot that the triangle types have a ‚split attention’ between their dominant mode of perception and everything else.

So, who is right or, how do all their observations fit together into a whole?

Eg. what I’m deriving from this is the following: The „split“ of the split attention is not always even but rather can veer more to one side than the other, creating, in extreme, those different „modes“.

So while in the hexad types the „squishing“ of attentions happens sort of horizontally, moving from the less to the more used centers, for the triangle it takes place „vertically“, eg. The attention gets smushed into one of the two compartments.

You can’t completely quit the dominant center (evident in the person’s perception & their speech patterns) so I wouldnot agree that its really equivalent to the way hexad types can really kind of yeet the least used one, but it can get „off“ to a degree not seen in hexad types.

Another distinction here is that the attention can go into either compartment.

Let us illustrate by going into it in detail.

9s are often good at doing habitual tasks on automatic using just their sensorimotor faculties while they are at the same time engaged in drifting daydreams made of feelings & imagination.

It may seem contradictory how depending on the source, 9 are described as either overfocusing on the concrete with little introspection, or being totally absorbed in their inner world while doing little & paying no heed to their surroundings – but the answer is that they can do both. There is creature mode & daydream mode.

An individual 9 may tend toward one more than the other depending on their natural talents & inclinations, or one might do either depending on where there is a problem that needs to be escaped.

Partner yelling at you in the here & now? To lala land you go.

After the argument you are sad or having worries about the relationship? Focus on how nice this hot bath feels on your skin.

One source of problems is that if you shift your attention too much in one compartment you can only access the wisdom of the others to a limited degree. If youre stuck in daydream mode you cant acces your vitality & capability to act, but if you’re stuck in creature mode, your actions cant be informed by your thoughts or feelings, so you probably just do habitual actions or tasks & little reflection, planning & feels processing goes on.

Another factor here is that whichever qualities are „not in use“ can be substituted through alignment with the outside. In case of 9, that would be the agendas of others, which can take either the place of your own impulses & drive to action (instead of writing that novel your plotting in your imagination, you spend your time running errands for your neighbors), or your own thoughts & feelings. (you dont have an idea what to do so you rely on external motivations)

This too is sort of double edged, as it can result in a sort of „channeling“ capacity but also in conformism or losing sight of ones own priorities -

Effectively, referencing the outside agenda where you should probably consult your own priorities.

So, „restoring the connection“ for triangle types means trying to have a more even attention split.

The split attention here means that you can pay close attention to ppl’s reactions to you & be expressive while being able to combine this with goal oriented thinking.

If you shift one way or another, you get feelings mode or performance mode.

Performance mode allows you to do goal oriented actions based on impulses/quick reactions and planful thinking while putting your personal feelings aside. Feelings mode artists, actors or moderators who can completely mirror the person they’re talking with, take on a role or express a feeling in a song in a „pure“ way not touched by their own wants or thoughts.

Both useful skills, in moderation.

But get stuck in performance mode & you might act without ever considering the impact on the feelings of yourself and others – working yourself to death or cutthroat behavior. This is the most typically described scenario as our current culture alas tends to encourage this.

However, sometimes this is fueled by a sense that if they stopped, they would be stuck or paralized by the backlog of feelings coming over them, & indeed we sometimes get these posters who are kind of stuck after big life tragedies, and are just caught up feeling all insecure, ashamed, too embarassed to show their faces, worried about ppls reactions or how they compare or how they cant win etc… and feeling unable to think or act while in that state.

Which of course can contribute to the conviction that taking time for the fee fees is a liability.

Here the substitution through external alignment comes from cultural ideals and associations, which can be „consulted“ instead of your actual feelings – eg. performing a response based on what the archetypical sucessful businessman would do rather than your own feelings.

Or maybe youre coming from the feelings side like wanting daddy’s approval so you act as he expects instead of what would have resulted from your own plans or desires. Or you plan and desire what you think you should based on what is admired in your environment (& hence gets you feelings of being admired & respected)

The classic example given is often that is closely watching a person while also mentally speculating about their agenda or intentions.

Thus lizard brainy awareness of power dynamics, closely watching ones’ surroundings as well as awareness of the relational/ personal level can be combined with astute logical faculties & big-picture thinking which is flexible & agile, and not tangled up with the person’s impulsive cravings or self-image.

Hence why 6s are not nearly as prone to being tactless or full of themselves as 5s or 7s.

In the edge cases you get „thinking mode“ - endless energy to argue stuff or make really really sure you have the right answer, and what Hudson calls „Duty Mode“, though I’m not sure that this characterization is always accurate. Sometimes it is, like simply ducking when someone says duck, acting quickly when there is no time to think. But it can also mean acting impulsively going from feeling straight to action.

You hear some 6s reporting that before a challenging situation they will be filled with worries but during the challenge itself the racing thoughts recede and they just act. (this is a part of what gets some of the more cp ones seeking challenges)

Overdoing or getting stuck in thinking mode is basically analysis paralysis. You think over all the options time & time again but there is no obvious „right“ option, so you just can’t decide (just decide by intuition or based on a like/dislike preferece) whereas the dangers of not thinking at all and just reacting like a hothead should also be clear.

Alignment by substitution means plugging a concept from the outside where the deactivated component should be – like an ideology, a religion, a set of rules, a scientific theory.

So, while in Duty Mode, refering to the rules & procedures rather than thinking it through yourself (note how this is perfectly sensible & useful when there is no time & its a crisis situation, but, not so good as a permanent way or life because you dont trust your thinking) and while in Thinking Mode, having the ideas fill in for your feelings & impulses. (eg. Considering only what you should feel/want/do according to the belief)

Dynamic Attention Squishing

What I want to point out is that this doesnt only happen over the longterm in the overall trajectory of a persons life as they face trauma or healing, shocks and lessons etc. but to a lesser extent happens day to day.

Like your attention being mostly „squished“ into your dominant center (if hexad) or one of the compartments (if triangle) if you have to deal with a sudden challenge.

For example I can recall some fairly extreme situations where ppl where like actually threatening violence, where in hindsight my thoughts in that moment were fairly lucid, like considering my options and the likelihood that the threats would be followed through with, especially given how young I was – and only when the situation was over did my attention focus expand to include my terror or my anger over the humiliation.

An impulse type might instead go to „just reacting“ with their thoughts & feelings only catching up later, whereas an emotional type might first & foremost react on a feelings level – or, in the case of triangle types there is also the option of the opposite happening, getting away from experiencing the dominant center if that will get you away from the distress in that moment.

#enneagram #typology

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healthlineonline · 1 month ago

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sublimeobservationarcade · 2 months ago

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Sydney & The Black Swan Grand Final Event

I want to start this article by acknowledging the wonderful speech given by John Longmire at the Sydney Swan’s Club Championship dinner. That speech inspired me to write this piece. Sydney and the Black Swan Grand Final event. Hands up who knows what a black swan event is? “A black swan event, a phrase commonly used in the world of finance, is an extremely negative event or occurrence that is impossibly difficult to predict. In other words, black swan events are events that are unexpected and unknowable. The term was popularized by former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote about the concept in his 2001 book Fooled by Randomness.” (https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/black-swan-event/#:~:text=ofeachcourse.-,WhatisaBlackSwanEvent,thatareunexpectedandunknowable.) Obviously, this term is fitting for what happened to the Swans at the hands of Brisbane in the 2024 AFL Grand Final at the MCG. Especially, if you were viewing it from the vantage of a Sydney member or fan. The pinnacle game of the season quickly turned into an extremely negative event and one that was unpredicted by pundits.

Mourning A Black Swan Final Decider

I am reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s later book Antifragile. I confess that I did not make the semiotic connection until I sat there listening to coach John Longmire’s powerful speech at the club champ’s event. I thought that I was reading Taleb’s book because of my dysfunctional experiences at a new job. The gist of Antifragile is about how stressors in life make us stronger. You know, the old Nietzsche line about – “whatever doesn’t kill you making you stronger” or words to that effect. We live in a modern world where everything is about labour saving devices and technological conveniences.

No Blood Affair In Black Swan Capitulation

However, perhaps, I was also attempting to gain solace from the bitter pill that was the 2024 grand final experience. That vile serve of humble pie, which was uncannily reminiscent of the 2022 grand final against Geelong. Immediately, some smart cookie might interject here and say, how can it be a black swan event if it happened two years earlier? In my defence, I would counter by saying that both outcomes were wildly out of character and keeping with Sydney’s track record in season and over previous seasons. Indeed, the club were known as the Bloods due to their tenacious ‘never say die’ approach to the game. Shameful Sydney Stuff On The Footy Field I tip my hat to John Longmire again for having the courage to stand up and address the faithful following the capitulation in the decider. Personally, I found it hard to face friends and family in the aftermath of that crushing defeat. Losing any GF is tough but it is the manner of these losses that strikes deepest and longest. How do you achieve so much to finish with 19 wins and the minor premiership and save that iniquity for last? Gobsmacked and stunned. Bereft of answers and feeling without hope. These were just some of the feelings I went through. You find yourself disassociating and detaching from your love of the team, not in spite but out of self-preservation. It is only a game, I hear someone say, well, it all depends how invested you are in team and, yes, the game. Sydney and the Black Swan Grand Final event. Why Did The Black Swan Happen? Longmire shared with listeners to his speech some of his musings following the post-game review process and end of year exit meetings with the players. Why? WTF? What happened? No clear answers came forth. It was an honest reflection, however, and touched on the hollow feeling at the pit of the stomach, which many fans share I am sure. The coach and coaching staff cannot sit around bemoaning what eventuated at the final hurdle, as they and the club must learn from it and move on. It was a black swan day in my book and there are lessons to be learned from it, all the same.

Photo by Alina Chernii on Pexels.com Coach Longmire & Unforeseen Calamities The premise of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile, in my take on it, is that in so many areas of human life we are actively removing stress and that this is setting us up for black swan events. Setting us up for extremely negative and unpredictable occurrences. Everything is about convenience and staying in our comfort zones in the 2020s’. Therefore when the shit hits the fan we will likely be totally unprepared for it. Think GFC and the world economy suddenly tanking to the tune of some $29 trillion. Who predicted that? Very few and no one was listening anyway. In AFL terms, who really expected the Sydney Swans to be utterly blown away and unable to make any kind of come back or showing in the GF? Fragile Swans On September’s Biggest Stage Coach Longmire had no answers to this blackest day at the MCG by his players or none that he was willing to share in his speech. In my view, from afar and in light of reading Antifragile I wonder if some of the stuff that has filtered down to supporters is possibly to blame. The Sydney Swans AFL club has long been considered a paragon of virtue in comparison to industry norms. Paul Roos, the previous head coach had the ‘no dickheads’ policy, which served the club well for many years. Personally, I have been proud to have been a member and supporter over 30 years. Personal development and growth are regularly mentioned in despatches by players, coaches and administrators. ‘Love’ has been on the lips of some players in this most modern rendition of the team. Team building has gone to new levels and players play for each other. We have seen displays of brilliance through much of the 2024 season, as talented players distributed the ball at lightning speeds in search of goals on the score board. 19 wins speaks of success in these endeavours over other teams in the home and away season. However, and there must be a caveat here because of the manner in which they lost the grand final to the Lions. What happened in the GF to be so badly beaten??? I am older by far than the players, obviously, and most of the coaches too. It can be easy to fall back on the generational divide and sing the praises of yesteryear and its zeitgeist. Back in my day and all that old guff. The game of AFL has changed a hell of a lot since I played as a teenager. I respect that and I honour the current crop of players and their seemingly holistic attitudes to the game and their team mates. Errol Gulden is an inspiration to behold and listen to, on the few occasions I have had that privilege. Isaac Heeney is a great footballer and seems a lovely young guy as well. Chad Warner appears to take genuine joy from playing the game at the highest level and is exciting to watch. So many of the Swans are wonderful footballers and come across as good human beings too – it is a credit to them and the club. Getting to the point, however, the black swan point, does the team lack the stressors to compete in the ‘no tomorrow’ final at the MCG? Has the mentality of the club removed too many of the hardships to the detriment of the team when it matters most? Sydney and the Black Swan Grand Final event

There is no definitive answer to this and it is only a speculative question along antifragile lines. Yes, the players perform incredibly well athletically and are a credit to the conditioning experts. The black hole, however, the black swan moments are what happened in the 24 and 22 GFs. Thrashed comprehensively and uncompetitive for almost the entire match. WTF? Is this psychological or something else? How can a winning formula disappear and be outclassed so devastatingly? How can you go from chocolates to boiled lollies in one week? How can so many players lose so many contests against their opponents? A black swan dive into the depths of failure on the biggest stage there is! Talent will not be enough when the opposition out pressure you at every moment. Talent will not prevail when the opposing team run harder, faster and harry you all over the ground. You have to have something to draw upon when things are not going your way. You have to have been exposed to this kind of stress and have learned to come back from it. You have to have the grunt to overcome such pressure and beat them at their own game. AFL, despite the leavening anti-concussion measures, is still a brutal game. I am not sure if the modern day Swans have the nasty in them to prevail at the coal face of the ultimate contest on grand final day. The old version of the Swans were Bloods and they could lock teams down. The 6-6-6 rule has changed the stakes but you cannot be so easily scored against. Losing your way so comprehensively and being outplayed is unSwans like. “Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. “ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility) I recommend that John Longmire pick up a copy of Antifragile and have a flick through it. The book is not perfect by any means and may not be the gospel when it comes to the Swans in the GF but worth a look, in my opinion. The Swans come across like children via the lens of the club’s social media. It is great to see them enjoying themselves and probably much of the target audience are kids. I suspect that there are tougher conversations happening behind closed doors. The optics suggest otherwise, however. One black swan event is a nightmare but two in a couple of years tells a tragedy in which the club is complicit. Something needs to be done to address it. The joy of playing needs to be tempered by the grit born of pain in failure. Let’s see some of that in 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaU7Sxk6Yk4 Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©WordsForWeb Read the full article

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cathygeha · 2 years ago

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REVIEW

Her Deadly Game by Robert Dugoni

Interesting, intricately crafted, intriguing legal thriller filled with many threads to unravel before a clear picture emerges of what really happened to Anne Russo and who fired the shot that killed her.

What I liked:

* Kerra Duggan: intelligent, tenacious, intrepid, lawyer, daughter, chess prodigy, sister, eager to move forward with her life, has personal-family-work issues to deal with, competitive and in it to win it on her first murder case

* The Duggan family: All of them though the mother, father and sisters played the biggest part in this dysfunctional family with alcohol and alcohol related issues to contend with

* Rossi: detective, honest, diligent, rather taken with Keera in the past and perhaps still…curious about him and wonder if he and Keera might end up together in the future

* The courtroom preparations and trial scenes as they played out

* The way the Duggan family grew on me as the story progressed

* The way the whodunnit played out with clues offered, followed, and the way the puzzle pieces slotted together – and – the big surprise(s) toward the end

* Jack Worthing’s hints and where they led

* The line, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” And how it played out in this story

* The chess portion of the story was over my head but did like the idea of it and how it was handled to enhance the story

* How it all came together and was tied up in a bow at the end of the book

What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

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A defense attorney is prepared to play. But is she a pawn in a master’s deadly match? A twisting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni. Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defense law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career. Keera’s chance to play in the big leagues comes when she’s retained by Vince LaRussa, an investment adviser accused of murdering his wealthy wife. There’s little hard evidence against him, but considering the couple’s impending and potentially nasty divorce, LaRussa faces life in prison. The prosecutor is equally challenging: Miller Ambrose, Keera’s former lover, who’s eager to destroy her in court on her first homicide defense. As Keera and her team follow the evidence, they uncover a complicated and deadly game that’s more than Keera bargained for. When shocking information turns the case upside down, Keera must decide between her duty to her client, her family’s legacy, and her own future.

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brown-balding-boo · 7 months ago

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That is great to know! I did feel a little worried because googling about epilepsy is just.. scary to say the least so, really really thankful here! And oh honey, don't you worry either; I'm at the phase rn where I even doubt if I'm even a little bipolar so, yeah. I just get random mood swings at times but it isn't as severe as it was in my final year of graduation, or the next two years. It's much more contained and disciplined now lol, so I guess I'm really a lot more free of stress than I used to be. Funny how univ can do that to one, haha.

Btw, rockstars? OMG {in Chandler Bing voice} "could you be any cuter?" Thanks though! Honestly my current role is much more free in terms of responsibilities and expectations- I can just experiment with shapes, structures and geometry and my favorite aspect of design: asymmetry, for my job. The timing is flexible so all I require to put in is atleast a fixed no. of hours per day, and implied responsibility to meet deadlines when required. And the icing on the cake!- it's a remote position so the principal architect gets to do what she loves- building her concepts on site, and I get mine- peaceful experimentation. I feel more like a designer nowadays than architect really, given the fact that this firm works with sustainable materials that are more tenacious and free-form, hehe. I guess this is a grander way to say that I love my current employment, and my employers.

My family could be the poster child for dysfunctional yet 'they don't look so bad' brown families lol. It could be unnerving to realize that no matter what you do, your father will probably never really love you, but ig it also numbs you down after a while- and then sometimes I wonder what draws me to Bang Chan so much; it's the daddy issues lol- anywhoo, family's a tough thing for me, but thank God for my baby sister! I'd have probably given in to a lot of (maybe even criminal? lol) urges without her in my life, haha.

And oohh sweetheart, I love this community too much already! And you, ohh, you're such a darling!!! You just put me right at ease ❤️❤️❤️ thanks for being such an adorable sweetie, Fay!!

please someone help me feel better. did any of yall have a party gworl phase? i'm having to reminisce for a project i'm working on, and it is quite literally haunting me. pls tell me ur most embarrassing/fucked up stories i cant do this alone 😭😭

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muchmorethanmachines · 6 years ago

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@tenaciously-dysfunctional from here

There were some things that one shouldn’t hear and that just happened. Tony had a lot of problems and not even one of them was anyone’s business. And there was that woman.

He didn’t even want to know what he spoke in his dream. Moments like these made Tony religious. But he can just play it off, right?

“Well, I hope I was saying how amazing you are because that is what’s on my mind now even now.”

Frankie turns to eye him over her shoulder - she’s noticed the way he’s tensed like a rabbit in the headlights at her statement. Maybe she should’ve just gone with ‘good morning’? She flicks her gaze over him when he speaks.

“Mmhmm.” The tone of noise she makes suggests that he was most certainly not saying anything of the like, nor does she believe his attempt at misdirection. But she presses no further, turning away from him, sweeping her hair from her shoulders as she struggles slightly to do up the zip on the back of her dress.

#You Are Not A Robot || Francesca || Interactions #tenaciously dysfunctional 001.#tenaciously dysfunctional

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freckledboss · 6 years ago

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HEY LOSER

OMG LET ME LOVE YOU !!!

meme | @tenaciously-dysfunctional

#tenaciously-dysfunctional #𝙤𝙤 ⁽ 𝖈𝖊𝖔 ⁾ ➟ out of character #i am a HUGE fan #but you already know that ;)

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thebadcopisme · 6 years ago

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" So I'm sitting on the rooftop of the Stark Tower... BBQ sauce on my tiddies."

Gavin fucking chokes on his coffee. “Stark, what the fuck are you talking about?? Are you watching vine compilations to try to be a ‘cool kid’??” Because it’s working. Keep on, you fucking rebel, you.

“Only people you’re gonna fit in is with assholes like me.”

#in character #answers #GOOD PFF #idk how they would have ever met #but memes bring the world together #tenaciously-dysfunctional

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sensesdialed-a · 6 years ago

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Stark just comes......... and gives Peter a hug. No questions asked.

@tenaciously-dysfunctional // the boy deserves hugs

He’s BACK, whole again, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still trying to hold himself together piece by piece, ripping at the seams. Peter had let his emotions run free when he’d first gotten back from the soul world, but what he hates is that it LASTS, sneaking up on him at every turn. Waking up in a cold sweat after nightmares, uncontrollable panicking during any time, school or fights or when people talk about the disappearing, or when his senses unexpectedly creep up on him.

But how long can he hold on by a single thread before it snaps?

Peter is a TERRIBLE liar, and he knows people can see through him, but he keeps it up. Apparently, Mr. Stark sees through the facade as well, when he visits the Compound after a not-so-good day at school, preceded by being woken up by nightmares before. It’s unprompted, but he feels his mentor pull him into a hug, Peter’s body freezing from surprise for a moment, before the thread he’s been clinging to breaks, the bottles he’s been shoving everything into burst, and he leans into the hug, letting his eyes fall closed as he returns it, the tight feeling in his chest momentarily lifting with CATHARSIS. He doesn’t say anything for a few moments, before he speaks in a light whisper.

“Thanks.”

#tenaciously-dysfunctional #(my hand slipped on the keyboard)#{ oh i'm gonna mess this up; interactions }#{ though i am bruised // know i’ll keep moving; verse }

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dean-winchester-is-a-warrior · 2 years ago

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Big Sky S3 E3

Come chat with me about the episode below the cut:

So we learned just an inkling more about Beau this episode. He talked a bit about the differences between Montana and Texas, which I found entertaining. We still didn't get anything about his ex-wife or his divorce, which I'm dying to know about.

Can I just say how much I'm loving the empathy he shows to the suspects they deal with. Like how he was in the first episode with the Mom who just wanted to see her daughter before she was taken away. He told Hoyt to give her time to hug her daughter and say goodbye.

Then in this episode the way he was with Ivan was very sweet. In the beginning, the way he took the chance that Ivan wasn't going to shoot them, putting his gun away to show that belief and his encouraging little, "Come on Ivan." we're so sweet. Then at the end, convincing him that the swindler wasn't worth going to jail over. I love that empathetic streak in him.

I have to say I was very disappointed that Beau didn't get to punch Avery In the teeth and that he doesn't even know what happened!! I certainly hope he discovers it at some point and gets to use him like a punching bag!

I like Emily a lot and I like that she tried to reach out to her Dad with the Sat phone that she was denied. I really like how tenacious she is, and that she went after Avery for being super sketchy. I also love the little dig she gave Avery when she was saying she wanted to go back for knife because it was special to her. "My FATHER gave it to me." Loved that.

Oh, and Avery is sketchy af!! I so wish Emily could reach Beau because if she could reach him, her concerns might even end up helping Cassie and Denise reach the right conclusions.

Ooh, the scene where Cassie almost saw the backpackers body in Walt's truck?!! She was so close! That was a great tense scene!

I don't know what to make of Cormac, he kinda skeeves me out, but I can't tell whether the show wants me to feel that way, because he's a red herring, it because there really is something up with him! Aaahh!!

All the scenes with Walt and Sunny continue to be creepy af. Their dynamic is so dysfunctional and weird!! Love it!

Now to the stuff with Jenny x Beau x Cassie!

I appreciate that they're trying to do a slow burn with Jenny and Beau, and as I stated, I will take Jensen Ackles in a love scene with ANYONE!! But I really prefer him and Cassie. I like their relationship more, but I also just prefer Cassie's character to Jenny's. I just can't really like Hoyt. It's partly my issues with Kathryn Winnick, but also, I just find her character kind of abrasive and unlikeable most of the time. With Cassie, she's a badass and she gets the job done, but she's also warm and caring. Jenny always just makes me wanna slap her a little. Lol!

I did find some sympathy for the character though in this episode when she was talking with her Mom, cause you can see she really wants to trust her and a part of her wants to think her Mom came back, at least partly, to see her. So when she finds out, nope it was just a scam, I felt bad for her.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the episode, please let me know yours!

P.S. I had to "rewind" and rewatch a couple great shots of Beau's ass - multiple times in this episode. I also found it remarkably hot when Ivan was telling him to get back down, or he'd shoot him, and Beau was just like, "No." And then when Ivan is like, "wtf did you say?" again Beau is just stone faced, and like, "I said, no." It was just such a badass move!!

I reiterate, Beau Arlen is gonna kill me.

#beau arlen #big sky s3 spoilers #big sky s3 #big sky 3x03

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blackpoetry · 2 years ago

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When Black Men Drown Their Daughters

When black, men drown. They spend their whole lifetimes justifying the gall of springing the trap, the inconvenience of slouched denim, of coupling beyond romance or aim. All the while, the rising murk edges toward their chins. Hurriedly, someone crafts another scientific tome, a giddy exploration of the curious dysfunction identifying black men first as possible, then as necessary. Elegant equations succumb to a river that blurs quotient and theory, rendering them unreadable, and the overwhelm easily disappears the men, their wiry heads glistening, then gulped. All that's left is the fathers' last wisdom, soaked wreckage on silver: Girl, that water ain't nothing but wet. I'm gon' be alright.

When black men drown, their daughters turn to their mothers and ask What should I do with this misnamed shiver in my left shoulder? How should I dress in public? They are weary of standing at the shore, hands shading their eyes, trying to make out their own fathers among the thousands bobbing in the current. The mothers mumble and point to any flailing that seems familiar. Mostly, they're wrong. Buoyed by church moans and comfort food of meat and cream, the daughters try on other names that sound oddly broken when pressed against the dank syllables of the fathers'. Drained, with just forward in mind, they walk using the hip of only one parent. They scratch in their sleep. Black water wells up in the wound.

When black men drown, their daughters are fascinated with the politics of water, how gorgeously a surface breaks to receive, how it weeps so sanely shut. And the thrashing of hands, shrieking of names: I was Otis, I was Willie Earl, they called me Catfish. Obsessed by the waltzing of tides, the daughters remember their fathers-the scorch of beard electrifying the once-in-a-while kiss, the welts in thick arms, eyes wearied with so many of the same days wedged behind them. When black men drown, their daughters memorize all the steps involved in the deluge. They know how long it takes for a weakened man to dissolve. A muted light, in the shape of a little girl, used to be enough to light a daddy's way home.

When black men drown, their daughters drag the water's floor with rotting nets, pull in whatever still breathes. They insist their still-dripping daddies sit down for cups of insanely sweetened tea, sniffs of rotgut, tangled dinners based on improbable swine. The girls hope to reacquaint their drowned fathers with the concept of body, but outlines slosh in drift and retreat. The men can't get dry. Parched, they scrub flooded hollows and weep for water to give them name and measure as mere blood once did. Knocking over those spindly-legged dinette chairs, they interrupt the failed feast and mutter Baby girl, gotta go, baby gotta go, their eyes misted with their own murders. Grabbing their girls, they spit out love in reverse and stumble toward the banks of some river.

When black men drown their daughters, the rash act is the only plausible response to the brain's tenacious mouth and its dare: Yes, yes, open your ashed hands and release that wingless child. Note the arc of the sun-drenched nosedive, the first syllable of the child's name unwilling from the man's mouth, the melody of billow that begins as blessed clutch. Someone crouching inside the father waits impatiently for the shutting, the lethargic envelop, and wonders if the daughter's wide and realizing eye will ever close to loose him. It never will, and the man and his child and the daughter and her father gaze calmly into the wrecked science of each other's lives. The sun struggles to spit a perfect gold upon the quieting splash. The river pulses stylish circles of its filth around the swallow. Courtesy of; https://www.afropoets.net/patriciasmith.html

#Black poem #black poets matter #Black Poets #black poetry #black poets society #poem #poetry

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dwellordream · 2 years ago

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“But what of horror’s traditional themes of struggle and survival, of rescuing the possibilities of life and community from an encounter with monstrosity and death? The Living Dead trilogy plays with these themes in a manner that defies conventional expectations. Indeed, it is this aspect of the films that has been most thoroughly discussed by sympathetic commentators, like Robin Wood and Kim Newman. All three films have white women or black men as their chief protagonists, the only characters with whom the audience positively identifies as they struggle to remain alive and to resist and escape the zombies.

The black man in Night is the sole character in the film who is both sympathetic and capable of reasoned action. The woman protagonist in Dawn rejects the subordinate role in which the three men, wrapped up in their male bonding fantasies, initially place her; she becomes more and more active and involved as the film progresses. The woman scientist in Day is established right from the start as the strongest, most dedicated, and most perspicacious of the besieged humans. In both Dawn and Day, the women end up establishing tactical alliances with black men who are not blindly self-centered in the manner of their white counterparts.

All these characters are thoughtful, resourceful, and tenacious; they are not always right, but they continually debate possible courses of action and learn from their mistakes. They seem to be groping toward a shared, democratic kind of decision making. In contrast, white American males come off badly in all three films. The father in Night considers it his inherent right to be in control, although he clearly lacks any sense of how to proceed; his behavior is an irritating combination of hysteria and spite.

The two white men among the group in Dawn both die as a result of their adolescent need to indulge in macho games or to play the hero. The military commanding officer in Day is the most obnoxious of all: he is so sexist, authoritarian, cold-blooded, vicious, and contemptuous of others that the audience celebrates when the zombies finally disembowel and devour him. These white males’ fear of the zombies seems indistinguishable from the dread and hatred they display toward women. The self-congratulatory attitudes that they continually project are shown to be ineffective at best, and radically counterproductive at worst, in dealing with the actual perils that the zombies represent.

The macho, paternalistic traits of typical Hollywood action heroes are repeatedly exposed as stupid and dysfunctional. Romero dismantles dominant behavior patterns; he gives a subversive, left-wing twist to the usually reactionary ideology and genre of survivalism. To the extent that the films maintain traditional forms of narrative identification, they divert these forms by providing them with a new, politically more progressive content. Carol J. Clover argues that slasher and rape–revenge films of the 1970s and 1980s enact a shift in the gender identification of traditional attributes of heroism and struggle, whereby women take on these attributes instead of men.

Dawn and Day present us with a more self-conscious, radical, and thoroughgoing version of the same shift in cultural sensibilities. But the scope of Clover’s argument is limited by the fact that it too easily valorizes heroic triumph. In Romero’s trilogy, to the contrary, the success of the sympathetic characters’ survival strategy is limited; it does not, and cannot be expected to, resolve all the tensions raised in the course of the three films. Unlike in the slasher and revenge films described by Clover, here the protagonists’ survival is not the same as their triumph.

The zombies are never defeated; the best that the sympathetic living characters of Dawn and Day can hope for is the reprieve of a precarious, provisional escape. And this tenuousness leads us back to the zombies. The Living Dead trilogy does not simply or unequivocally valorize survival; perhaps for that reason, it ultimately does not rely for its effectiveness on mechanisms or spectatorial identification. The zombies exercise too strong a pull, too strange a fascination. The three films progress in the direction of ever-greater contiguities and similarities between the living and the nonliving, between seduction and horror, and between desire and dread.

In consequence, identities and identifications are increasingly dissolved, even within the framework of conventional, ostensibly sutured narrative. The first film in the series, Night of the Living Dead, is the one most susceptible to conventional psychoanalytic interpretation, for it is focused on the nuclear family. It begins with a neurotic brother and sister quarreling as they pay a visit to their father’s grave and moves on to the triangle of blustering father, cringing mother, and (implicitly) abused child hiding from the zombies in a farmhouse basement.

Familial relations are shown throughout to be suffused with an anxious negativity, a menacing aura of tension and repressed violence. In this context, the zombies seem a logical outgrowth of, or response to, patriarchal norms. They are the disavowed residues of the ego-producing mechanisms of internalization and identification. They figure the infinite emptiness of desire, insofar as it is shaped by, and made conterminous with, Oedipal repression. The film’s high point of shock comes, appropriately, when the little girl, turned into a zombie, cannibalistically consumes her parents.

But at the same time, the film’s casual ironies undercut this allegory of the return of the repressed. The protagonists not only experience the zombie menace firsthand, they also watch it on TV. Disaster is consumed as a cheesy spectacle, complete with incompetent reporting, useless information bulletins, and inane attempts at commentary. The grotesque, carnivalesque slapstick of these sequences mocks survivalist oppositions. Even as dread pulses to a climax, as plans of action and escape fail, and as characters we expect to survive are eliminated, we are denied the opportunity of imposing redemptive or compensatory meanings.

There is no mythology of doomed, heroic resistance, no exalted sense of pure, apocalyptic negativity. The zombies’ lack of charisma seems to drain all the surrounding circumstances of their nobility. And for its part, the family is subsumed within a larger network of social control, one as noteworthy for its stupidity as for its exploitativeness. Romero turns the constraints of his low budget—crudeness of presentation, minimal acting, and tacky special effects—into a powerful means of expression: he foregrounds and hyperbolizes these aspects of his production in order to depsychologize the drama and emphasize the artificiality and gruesome arbitrariness of spectacle.

Such a strategy doesn’t “alienate” us from the film so much as it insidiously displaces our attention. Our anxieties are focused upon events rather than characters, upon the violent fragmentation of cinematic process (with a deliberate clumsiness that mimes the shuffling movement of the zombies themselves) rather than the supposed integrity of any single protagonist’s subjectivity. The zombies come to exemplify, not a hidden structure of individual anxiety and guilt, but an unabashedly overt social process in which the disintegration of all communal bonds goes hand in hand with the callous manipulation of individual response.

It is entirely to the point that Night ends on a note of utter cynicism: the zombies are apparently defeated, but the one human survivor with whom we have identified throughout the film—a black man—is mistaken for a zombie and shot by an (implicitly racist) sheriff’s posse. The other films in the cycle are made with higher budgets and have a much slicker look to them, but they are even more powerfully disruptive. The second film, Dawn of the Dead, deals with consumerism rather than familial tensions. The zombies are irresistibly attracted to a suburban shopping mall, because they dimly remember that “this was an important place in their lives.”

Indeed, they seem most fully human when they are wandering the aisles and escalators of the mall like dazed but ecstatic shoppers. But the same can be said for the film’s living characters. The four protagonists hole up in the mall and try to re-create a sense of “home” there. Much of the film is taken up by what is in effect their delirious shopping spree: after turning on the background music and letting the fountains run, they race through the corridors, ransacking goods that remain sitting in perfect order on store shelves.

Once they have eliminated the zombies from the mall, they play games of makeup, acting out the roles of elegance and wealth (and the attendant stereotypes of gender, class, and race) that they dreamed of, but weren’t able actually to afford, in their previous middle-class lives. This consumers’ utopia comes to an end only when the mall is invaded by a vicious motorcycle gang: a bunch of toughs motivated by a kind of class resentment, a desire to “share the wealth” by grabbing as much of it as possible.

They enter by force and then pillage and destroy, enacting yet another mode of commodity consumption run wild. One befuddled gang member can’t quite decide whether to run off with an expensive TV set or smash it to bits in frustration over the fact that no programs are being broadcast anymore. The still alive and the already dead are alike animated by a mimetic urge that causes them to resemble Dawn’s third category of humanoid figures: department store mannequins.

The zombies are overtly presented as simulacral doubles (equivalents rather than opposites) of living humans; their destructive consumption of flesh—gleefully displayed to the audience by means of lurid special effects—immediately parallels the consumption of useless commodities by the American middle class. Commodity fetishism is a mode of desire that is not grounded in repression; rather, it is directly incited, multiplied, and affirmed by artificial means.

As Meaghan Morris remarks, “a Deleuzian account of productive desire . . . is more apt for analyzing the forms of modern greed . . . than the lack-based model assumed by psychoanalytic theories.” Want is a function of excess and extravagance, and not of deficiency: the more I consume, the more I demand to consume. In the words of the artist Barbara Kruger, “I shop, therefore I am.” The appearance of the living dead in the shopping mall thus can no longer be interpreted as a return of the repressed. The zombies are not an exception to, but a positive expression of, consumerist desire.

They emerge not from the dark, disavowed underside of suburban life but from its tacky, glittering surfaces. They embody and mimetically reproduce those very aspects of contemporary American life that are openly celebrated by the media. The one crucial difference is that the living dead—in contrast to the actually alive—are ultimately not susceptible to advertising suggestions. Their random wandering might seem to belie, but actually serves, a frightening singleness of purpose: their unquenchable craving to consume living flesh.

They cannot be controlled, for they are already animated far too directly and unconditionally by the very forces that modern advertising seeks to appropriate, channel, and exploit for its own ends. The infinite, insatiable hunger of the living dead is the complement of their openness to sympathetic participation, their compulsive, unregulated mimetic drive, and their limitless capacity for reiterated shock. The zombies mark the dead end or zero degree of capitalism’s logic of endless consumption and ever-expanding accumulation, precisely because they embody this logic so literally and to such excess.

In the third and most complex film of the series, Day of the Dead, Romero goes still further. A shot near the beginning shows dollar bills being blown about randomly in the wind: a sign that even commodity fetishism has collapsed as an animating structure of desire. The locale shifts to an isolated underground bunker, where research scientists endeavor to study the zombies under the protection of a platoon of soldiers.

All human activity is now as vacant and meaningless as is the zombies’ endless shuffling about; the soldiers’ abusive, macho posturings and empty assertions of authority clash with the scientists’ futile, misguided efforts to discover the cause of the zombie plague and to devise remedies for it. All that remains of postmodern society is the military–scientific complex, its chief mechanism for producing power and knowledge. But the technological infrastructure is now reduced to its most basic expression, locked into a subterranean compound of sterile cubicles, winding corridors, and featureless caverns.

Everything in this hellish, underground realm of the living is embattled, restricted, claustrophobically closed off. This microcosm of our culture’s dominant rationality tears itself apart as we watch: it teeters on the brink of implosion, destroying itself from within even as it is literally under siege from without. The bunker is like an emotional pressure cooker: fear, fatigue, and anxiety all mount relentlessly, for they cannot find any means of relief or discharge. As the film progresses, tensions grow between the soldiers and the scientists, between the men and the one woman, and ultimately among the irreconcilable imperatives of power, comprehension, survival, and escape.

The entire film is a maze of false exits and dead ends, with the zombies themselves providing the only prospect of an outlet. Day of the Dead is primarily concerned with the politics of insides and outsides: the social production of boundaries, limits, and compartmentalizations, and their subsequent affirmative disruption. The zombies, on the outside, paradoxically manifest a “vitality” that is lacking within the bunker. Their inarticulate moans and cries, heard in the background throughout the film, give voice to a force of desire that is at once nourished and denied, solicited and repulsed, by the military–scientific machine.

Inside the bunker, in a sequence that works as a hilarious send-up of both behaviorist disciplinary procedures and 1950s “mad scientist” movies, a researcher tries to “tame” one of the zombies. The dead, he explains, can be “tricked” into obedience, just as we were tricked as children. He eventually turns his pet zombie, Bub, into a pretty good parody of a soldier, miming actions such as reading, shaving, and answering the telephone, and actually capable of saluting and of firing a gun.

This success suggests that discipline and training, whether in child rearing or in the military, is itself only a restrictive appropriation of the zombies’ mimetic energy. Meanwhile, the zombies mill about outside in increasing numbers, waiting with menacing passivity to break in. From both inside and outside, mimetic resemblances proliferate and threaten to overturn the hierarchy of living and dead. The more rigidly boundaries are drawn between reason and desire, order and anarchy, purpose and randomness, the more irrelevant these distinctions seem, and the more they are prone to violent explosion.

The climax occurs when one of the soldiers—badly wounded (literally dismembered, metaphorically castrated), and motivated by an ambiguous combination of heroic desperation and vicious masculine resentment—opens the gates and lets the zombies into the bunker, offering his own body as the first sacrifice to their voracity. The controlling boundary is ruptured, and the outside ecstatically consumes the inside. Allegory entirely gives way before a wave of contagious expenditure and destruction.

The zombies take their revenge; but, as Kim Newman notes, “American society is cast in the role usually given to an individually hatable character.” If the zombies are a repressed byproduct of dominant American culture in Night, and that culture’s simulacral double in Dawn, then in Day, they finally emerge—ironically enough—as its animating source, its revolutionary avenger, and its sole hope of renewal. They are the long-accumulated stock of energy and desire upon which our militarized and technocratic culture vampiristically feeds, which it compulsively manipulates and exploits but cannot forever hope to control.”

- Steven Shaviro, “Contagious Allegories: George Romero.” in Zombie Theory: A Reader

#horror #zombies #george romero #steven shaviro #zombie theory

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filmpenance · 3 years ago

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Day 21, 2022 - Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) Sean Durkin 1h 42min [It’s a Cult!]

“I am a teacher and a leader.” - Martha

After two years without contact, a young woman escaping a cult calls her sister from a diner and asks to be picked up[i]. Thus starts the drama in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a thriller directed by Sean Durkin.

The group she leaves bears more than a passing resemblance to the Manson Family. It’s lead by the charismatic yet threatening Patrick (John Hawkes), who’s just as likely to write you a song as he is to assault you. He’s a vulgar patriarch, promising true freedom, if you’ll only do what he says. That’s family, right?

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has run off from the group and has reason to believe that she could be pursued. Patrick and his followers are tenacious about getting what they want and are not above using violence to get it.

Her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) retrieves Martha and brings her home to the lake house where she and her husband Ted (High Dancy) live. While there, Martha exhibits some alarming behavior.

Martha has been traumatized by her time in the cult.

Life in Patrick’s family is highly regimented and gendered. Patrick does the honour of renaming you, thus Martha becomes “Marcy May”, signalling the end of her old self. She belongs to him now, along with the other women there. They cook, clean, lure other devotees, and offer their bodies to Patrick in any way he sees fit. Sex and sexual assault are used as tools of control by Patrick and are explained away as him showing his love. Violence can be love, death can be love.

The film is a taught little thriller that cleverly manipulates its audience with parallel storylines: Martha suffering and stumbling as she tries to re-enter her sister’s world, contrasted with flashbacks to her time as “Marcy May” where we see her increasingly chilling acts of devotion. It is well cast[ii], and the low stringed music evokes a sense of dread throughout. The visuals have a slightly grainy quality, and do not shy away from showing the naïve brutality of the group[iii].

Martha Marcy May Marlene has stuck with me. While not perfectly plotted, I appreciated the way it explored family dysfunction, conformity, and escape.

One hell of a final shot too.

TRAILER: https://youtu.be/ERREgOobLOs

NOTES:

[i] Or is it? Mwah haha! IMHO you could also examine this film through the lens of organized crime.

[ii] Julia Garner (also great in The Assistant) and Maria Dizzia (also great in Christine) play other cult members. https://filmpenance.tumblr.com/post/678086543290793984/day-5-2022-the-assistant https://filmpenance.tumblr.com/post/678720025387991040/day-11-2022-christine

[iii] This is no Sound of My Voice beige fantasy. I understood this cult, the temptations it offers and the proximity to danger. Patrick’s devotees are seduced at the prospect of feeling truly alive.

#film penance #filmpenance2022 #filmpenance #martha marcy may marlene #sean durkin #movie review #film review #its a cult #its a cult friday #lent #recovering catholic

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 4 years ago

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For the ask game: 2, 3, 6

2. when do you think the climax of the show is?

i think it’s 8.23: sacrifice.

it works as a fitting climax on a number of levels: for starters, as a spectacle, it’s probably the last truly Epic finale that the show has given us. there was genuine tension, enormous stakes, and final moments that were both frightening and awe-inspiring. before s8, spn had given us a number of finales like this but alas, none since.

the scale of it is absurd, but not the farcical kind of absurd that the later seasons delve into (though it is its own kind of interesting) like personifying primordial concepts like the darkness and god and reaching into alternate universes. the first big arc in spn ended with the gates of hell being opened to let demons out. now we have an attempt to close them for good, tying in everything else we’ve discovered along the way: angels and their weird politics, castiel’s downfall being his weird devotion to the winchesters, prophets, old angelic languages, and the winchesters with the power to change the world for good, but not condemn it forever because of their failure because honestly, who’s that powerful?

i also feel like it was the last finale with genuine, palpable conflict between the brothers and the closest we get to looking at the connective threads between the winchesters’ dysfunction and the world lurching from apocalypse to apocalypse (way before chuck is introduced as god/the ultimate scribe and ends up muddying the waters).

sam has had a taste of what his life could be beyond hunting, of what it means to move on and build a future instead of building a monument to grief and guilt, and season 8 was a near endless parade of sam being told how deeply, fundamentally wrong he was. for his reality to be dismissed as gauzy fantasy while dean literally lied about what happened to castiel when he left purgatory. for him to be bent and broken and reshaped into this creature who would willingly endure unimaginable pain and sacrifice himself for this mission. and what was this mission? it was absurd from the start. locking away all demons forever? this is an objective without sense or pragmatic consideration beyond being something to Work Towards As Hunters Again. dean was willing to have the people he once helped save killed all over again if it meant this could happen, negating his own lectures about hunters having a responsibility to keep people safe. this mission created a domino effect of events that continued all the way to the series finale. and it is in season 8 that we see this connection the most closely.

the mission wins, in a spectacularly sad scene where sam self-flagellates and burns himself inside out both literally and figuratively for dean’s love. it’s depressing, but the show’s depressing. the very last scene of 15.20 is depressing. sam and dean become samndean after this in a way that’s depressing. it’s the perfect climax.

3. Describe the different ways in which limnality shifts as a central theme in Supernatural (or a specific arc/character given)

it exists as physical spaces: living out of the car and motels, heaven and hell and earth and entire universes as porous planes, living everywhere but belonging nowhere. it exists in the psychic split between your body and your essence; that you can exist as just body, or just soul, or just mind, or somewhere in between all three. it exists in the way samndean swing on the cusp of saving the world and condemning it; at the uncomfortable intersection of their violence and love. it exists as death: a place in between two breaths, two blinks, that can disappear like it never existed.

sam and dean aren’t really hunters but they aren’t really men of letters either. they aren’t quite human, not quite Other--they’ve had their body and soul split apart and other things fill the cracks, killed the devil and raised hell, but it still only takes a misplaced nail and bad timing to kill them. they are separated from any kind of permanent community, cycling through friends and lovers (some more tenacious than others) who kill and die for them. and they end their story in an eternal ellipse, having changed nothing at all despite having shaped their own god in their image--

6. Do you have any psychological headcanons (or canon interpretations) of the characters?

i’ve said this a hundred times before and i will say it a hundred times again: soullessness is a wonderful depiction of the changes that a person might undergo after great trauma, how those changes aren’t going to be something socially palatable or something their loved ones can recognise, that person’s own desire to revert to a Before state despite not understanding what that even means and the terrible mix of good intention and inhuman coercion that goes into ‘correcting’ them.

i don’t like to ascribe diagnoses to anybody outside of a professional setting--even if it’s fictional characters--and i can only look at traits that suggest a bigger picture. that said, the portrayal of the central relationship as a progressively abusive one with all of its ups and downs and the despairing black hole right at its centre? masterful.

EDIT: oh, oh, oh! how could have i forgotten s7′s hallucifer? i think sam continues to hallucinate him, especially during times of great stress. hallucifer is distinct from lucifer himself in that he is sharper, and meaner: a product entirely of sam’s brain.

castiel taking on sam’s trauma in 7.17 (analogous to acute psychiatric treatment so that sam has the strength and resources to build his own wall, so to speak) and seeing hallucifer was like the imprint of a bright light on your retina after you close your eyes. hallucifer was bright, and loud, and everywhere. and every so often, he comes back.

( ask me questions about spn! )

#supernatural #samndean #sam winchester #meta #katsidhe

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