#the horse is dead because you guys beat it too much PLEASE fixate on a new relationship trope

[lannisterdaddyissues]

there’s nothing better than when fandom rightfully gives the dilf card to a character. conversely, there’s nothing worse than when fandom wrongfully gives the dilf card to a character

[kyloswarstars]

Come on! • Part 1 – „A Stranger“

Peaky Blinders • Mini-Series

Vendetta had brought your family back to Small Heath for a while. As a Blinder you received orders from Tommy like everyone else did as well. Your current one: Keep eyes on Bonnie Gold. When you first heard those words you wouldn’t have dared to imagine this order would take a complete turn on you.

Pairing • Bonnie Gold x Shelby!Reader

Words • 2.1k

A/N • This Mini-Series is following the events of Peaky Blinders S4 (means: SPOLERS). Lemme know if you like ittttt 🌚

Come on! • masterlist

/////

There was one rule you had set for yourself: Never. Fucking. Care. You did what you pleased. With anything, anyone, at anytime. Life was too short – perfect example: your brother John – to stick to someone else’s ideals or follow the law. Or, worst of all, society’s expectations.

Being a Shelby was innate. Being a Blinder was a choice. One your brothers may have disliked because you were together with Finn, the youngest Shelby, but… you didn’t care. The first time you stole a Peaky cap and caused havoc was thrilling. Who said only the boys could have fun? Yes, society. And what did you do about that? Exactly, you didn’t fucking care.

You should probably care a little more sometimes as it would be good for your own health, but after John passed recently, that thought was thrown in the cut before put into reality.

Being back in Small Heath, due to the vendetta, didn’t automatically mean everything was back to normal. A lot of things were different. Your temper, boiling under your skin and making you want to destroy something, was the same as ever. It was fuelled by dismay over the grief that was still lurking. Every other day it dragged you into this black cloud. The strange thing was that it felt so soft, so easy to fall into it. And once you let yourself fall and started to grieve, it seized you tighter, not wanting to let you breathe again. Once you cried, you wouldn’t be able to stop. So, whenever you felt that grief creeping up on you, you harshly removed yourself out of this black cloud before you couldn’t stop missing John anymore.

One of the disadvantages of running away from your feelings: Your temper, this always hungry beast inside of your chest, asked for an outlet. Throughout the day this outlet came in the shape of boxing. Even as a kid you had imitated Arthur throwing punches whenever something was troubling you. The physical exhaustion numbed your thoughts. But in the nights, boxing wasn’t so easy. Punching air didn’t do shit.

Standing in your old room at Watery Lane, already having pulled every piece of clothing out of the wardrobe and the pillow cut open, feathers flowing around the room, you took a look in the mirror. The way you viewed yourself was normal to you – you knew it wasn’t how most of the others viewed themselves, though. You just didn’t care at all for your appearance. The time people spent with worrying over their appearances was just wasted lifetime to you. What did it matter how you looked in the end? Everyone dies no matter what you look like.

Dead. John is dead. Tiny black clouds were reaching out for you, trying to make you sit on them and carry you into their nightmare land. Not with me.

Not being able to throw your fists into a punching bag, you closed them around the scissors you found in a drawer. In the rush of letting out air, getting free of that intense feeling of being trapped, you didn’t care at all when you took the scissors and started to chop your hair of – strand for strand.

All of the cut hair gathered at your bare feet, tickling between your toes. With every trim your breathing returned to a steadier rhythm. The mess on your head, when the scissors couldn’t cut anymore hair, didn’t allow you to fully settle yet. Opening the door and glancing into the hallway, none of your siblings seemed to be awake – every door was closed but one. You rushed to the only door being open: John’s old room. And indeed you found an old bar of shaving soap and brush in his bedside cabinet.

Picking up your knife, which had been laying on the floor with your shoes, you soaked the shaving brush in some water, swirled it over the soap and applied the rising foam on the remnants of your hair. It was the first time ever you felt a blade being pushed over your head and it was great. You could almost hear every single hair being relentlessly shaved off. The thoughts wouldn’t leave your brain faster, without hair in the way, but you were finally able to fall asleep now, once you were done shaving your head.

/////

Sun was just starting to rise outside, meaning you didn’t sleep that long, but at least a little bit. Throwing on some pants and a shirt, you grabbed your bag and cap after brushing your teeth.

The betting shop was still quiet but that would change soon. You planned on being out of the house by then.

Arthur was sitting in the kitchen, having some breakfast and sipping on his tea. When he saw you coming in, he choked on a sip. Crashing the cup down to the table, he coughed it out, looking at you in shock. „Y/N, what the fuck happened to your hair?“

„It’s gone,“ you shrugged.

„Yeah, I can see that.“

„So… then you know what happened,“ you teased and grabbed a slice of bread, making your way to the door.

„Nah, you’re ain’t going nowhere.“ Arthur got up and pointed over to the betting shop. „Tommy has an order for you.“ A small chuckle escaped him. „And I’m gonna go with you to see his reaction on your baby head. Can’t miss out on that.“

If you cared you would’ve hit him for saying you looked like a baby with the bald head but you really, really didn’t care. It was the awaiting order which you cared about. You just wanted to leave for King Maine’s, not being bothered with a job to do first.

When you entered the office, Tommy didn’t look up. Only when you reached his desk did he spend a second on diverting his eyes from papers to Arthur and you. For a moment, Tom’s eyes were fixated on your head, you knew because they were looking to high up for the goal being your eyes, but he didn’t care. Just like you.

„New order, Y/N. Keep an eye on Bonnie Gold when you’re at the boxing hall. Need to know how he’s keeping up.“

Bonnie Gold? The guy who had shot a man at John’s funeral, rode by with his father on a horse and later killed another Italian, one of Changretta’s men? „I’m not a fucking babysitter, Tom.“

„You’re not. You’re my messenger. So go do your work.“

„Even worse,“ you muttered under your breath, but that was how Blinder business worked. You did as you were told.

Leaving Watery Lane before anyone else could stop you, your excitement was slightly impaired. King Maine’s was your hiding spot where you went to when everything got too much. You punched your thoughts out, your grief and also your fucking heart because some days even feeling it beat in your chest seemed to be too much to take. All you could hope for was to have some peace before he would show up at King Maine’s. 

That wasn’t the case, though. Bonnie Gold was already there. Of course he would be.

Your immediate reluctance to ‚keep an eye on someone‘ faded as you entered the hall and stood there, watching him for a minute. It wasn’t even eight and Bonnie was already sweat-soaked, fully invented into mauling a punch bag. That was some dedication right there. 

Leaning on a pillar and still observing him, some of the other boxers greeted you silently. For a long time you were visiting King Maine’s now and never has there been any strange glances or lewd whistles. Perks of being a Shelby probably.

His fists slowed down. Bonnie placed some final punches then let go of the sandbag, went over to a bench, and grabbed a bottle. While he was drinking he looked around and eventually spotted you.

You didn’t hide you were watching him. Actually, you stared right back in his eyes from afar. Until Maine shouted from the other end of the boxing hall to not distract the Gold boy. Cautiously regaining your balance, you grabbed your bag and went to change in this super tiny lumber room. It was your own personal changing room, provided by King Maine with some reluctance. But as a Shelby one of your brothers, if not yourself, always made sure you were treated the right way.

Starting your boxing session, your thoughts that had kept you awake all night until you chopped of the hair, were slowly starting to fade. You hit them right into the punch bag where you wished they would stay forever. From time to time you felt two eyes on your back. And whenever you turned around you stared back at those two eyes, Bonnie Gold’s eyes.

The first boxers who had come to King Maine’s studio in the morning were replaced by a few other locals by now. It were always the same guys here. Fellas, pretty loyal to the Shelby’s, and most of them trying to become a Blinder one day. But except for a handful they were just pricks, all mouth and no trousers. If you gave them a cap to cut someone’s eyes they would probably shit themselves.

By noon you had tired your lungs out, your clothes were soaked in sweat, and you granted yourself a minute on a bench before you would go back to Watery Lane for lunch.

Bonnie Gold was still there. He walked over to you when you started to unwrap the bandages on your hands.

„I know you’re supposed to watch me.“ His voice didn’t sound like you had expected it. It was calm and almost a little teasing. 

Only looking up for a second, you turned your attention back to the bandages. Untangling them was a profession you still hadn’t managed after all those years. „A strange way to start a conversation with a stranger.“

„You’re not a stranger.“ He sat down next to you.

I didn’t invite you to sit with me, you thought. „I never talked to you before so I would call you a stranger.“ 

„Okay, then let me restart.“ He turned towards you and reached out his hand for you to shake it. „I’m Bonnie Gold.“

„I know.“ You didn’t shake his hand as a matter of principle. Strangers, even though he wasn’t really a stranger, didn’t get body contact from you. Maybe during a training fight in the ring but not because society expected you to shake someone’s hand even though you rather liked to keep your personal space.

„See! You know who I am. And I know who you are.“ He didn’t mind you not shaking his hand; he only grinned at himself.

„Doesn’t change the fact you’re still a stranger.“ You rolled up the bandages, which you were finally able to wrap off your hands, and shot him a smirk. 

„A stranger you’re supposed to watch.“ Bonnie winked at you. „But Tommy gave me orders too.“

The question as to why he even knew you were supposed to keep your eyes on him popped up but you really didn’t care for that. „Well, there are two things you need to know, Bonnie Gold. First thing: Tommy gives out orders to everyone, including me. I may have gotten an order but the second thing is: I don’t do things, not even following Tommy’s orders, if I don’t enjoy doing them.“

„Is that so?“ His smirk still didn’t leave his lips. He seemed to quite enjoy this conversation.

„Indeed,“ you confirmed your previous statement, kinda playing along with this vibe.

Bonnie leaned over a little and lowered his voice so only you were able to hear him. „Didn’t your brother also tell you to stay away from dangerous men?“ 

Leaning in as well, mimicking him: „You think you’re a dangerous man? To me?“ This thought made you actually laugh out loud for a second.

„I killed men,“ he stated in all seriousness.

„So did I,“ you returned, enjoying the blindsided expression on his face. „I guess that equals it out.“

Bonnie Gold slowly found his grin again, stood with his hands up in surrender. „One point for you.“ He walked off but decided to come back once more. „If you’re willing to we should get in the ring together for a training. I think this could be interesting.“

Contemplating it, you stood as well, slowly backing up. „Tomorrow at seven. I promise I’ll go easy on you.“ Hearing him laugh at your words when you turned and left for the small lumber room, you had to grin again. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad having to keep your eyes on him. He was kinda… cute.

[garden-ghoul]

Well it’s time for Aldarion and Erendis

“the mariner’s rewife song”

this story starts out with a guy I vaguely remember, named meneldur. no, wait, maybe that meneldur was the FATHER of elendil, not the son of elendil, because the other elendil was definitely like the 23rd king of numenor and this guy is the 4th king... needless to say, I’m starting this one off strong by getting pissed off at mr johnald rolkien again.

well meneldur is special, because he Hates Doing Anything and also instead of being gay for the sea like the rest of the edain he is instead gay for the sky. it also says his wife was a woman of great beauty, which I am getting really tired of. I’m not sure we’ve had really ANY women who were not of great beauty. I love women as much as you, johnald, but where are the ugly women? who are still cool and awesome? did you HAVE to make, for instance, morwen beautiful? anyway aldarion the titular is one of meneldur’s sons. he also has the tar- prefix, which I think is like... specifically to differentiate Dunedain We Like from The Bad Ones (eg ar-pharazon has lost his T by being wicked).

aldarion is a really cute kid. he has a great relationship with his grandpa, the captain of the king’s ships, and he learns to sail really early so that “before he was full grown he could captain a ship of many men.” so far he is kind of a prototypical numenorean. oh and his other name is anardil, and his grandpa calls him anardilya, that’s the cutest thing. it sounds like a russian diminutive. dilya and granpa set out for middle earth, a great sailing adventure! dilya’s dad is filled with Prophetic Foreboding, but he can’t say no to those puppydog eyes, so off they go!

in summary, the one thing dilya cannot do is stop adventuring. he MUST sail. he MUST befriend all the elves on middle earth. after his dad becomes king, he MUST start a Venturers’ Guild and build a beautiful houseboat so he can always live on the water. this really feels like a Boys Club Story from like the 40s. so dilya goes about, sailing, tending the forest so they’ll always have more timber, and when he turns 100 his dad wants to proclaim him the official heir. here we also meet erendis, who is beautiful in a totally different way than numenoreans because she’s of the house of beor. I am SO SICK of beautiful women. sigh. well, erendis gets a crush on aldarion because he is hot and presumably buff from all the sailing he does. but he’s never around the castle or whatever they have in numenor, because he’s in the forest trying really hard not to think about sailing. it doesn’t work! he starts preparing to leave on a seven year voyage, like, immediately afterward.

his dad is angry. his parents start trying to set him up with erendis, because she already likes him and he’s got to marry SOMEONE. and maybe if he falls in love he’ll stop sailing so damn much?? well, he does, kinda! after king meneldur refuses to give his blessing to dilya’s departing ship, erendis sneaks the queen’s blessing to him, and he’s like, wow she’s so nice! and he brings her back a diamond from his journey. “you shouldn’t throw around nice gifts unless you’re going to MARRY SOMEONE,” says the king. “okay fuck you I’m never giving her a gift again,” says dilya. nevertheless, the next time he illegally sets sail erendis brings him another blessing.

while he’s gone, meneldur bans sailing, basically, and especially cutting down trees for new ships. when dilya comes back he is furious!! he was really good at forest husbandry!! he was a super responsible shipwright!! I’m never coming back here, dad!! this time he gets no blessing at ALL, and he’s away for fourteen years, during which time his ships and the port he founded get beat all to hell by ill fortune. because meneldur wouldn’t bless him. erendis moves back to another part of the island because she thinks he is dead. ALSO in his absence people have been using trees super irresponsibly! I love the emphasis here on responsible forestry.

while surveying the forest, he meets erendis and suddenly realizes how much he missed her. they immediately go to ask her father if they can get married, but she is filled with foreboding. the responsible forestry fixation is revealed as a metaphor! erendis is afraid that if she marries anardil she will always be competing for his attention with the sea. it says she loves the forests way more than the sea, and now I get what the setup is: you need land with trees on it, and farms and stuff, to support going to sea. if it’s true that mariners will always return to the sea, it’s equally true that they must always return to port. presumably, if they get married, he will take really good care of her like she is a forest, but she will still be sad that she doesn’t get to see him often. I can’t help but compare these two to elwing and earendil, who had to sail together to be happy and successful. I’m just saying, erendis. maybe learn to sail. get brawny and chill on the sea with your soon-to-be husband.

no, it turns out she Hates The Sea. she goes sailing with dilya and despises it; in return she asks him to hang out in the pastures with her. she accuses him of chopping down lots of trees to make boats, which is fair, and he tells her to name any tree she really loves, and he won’t chop it down. “I love ALL of them,” she says. “every tree on numenor is my personal friend.”

he says nothing to this, and apparently that did NOT mean he promised  not to chop down any trees. after the get engaged, the venturers’ guild starts bugging aldarion to chop down more trees to build more boats, and also give them money to sail further. I love this passage where he’s riding out to visit erendis in the westlands and inadvertently gets too close to the sea--

Then suddenly the sea-longing took him as though a great hand had been laid on his throat, and his heart hammered, and his breath was stopped.

this is how I feel about the sea too... meneldur says “please, son, get married!!” but

“It has come upon me again, Atarinya. Eighteen years is a long fast. I can scarce lie still in a bed, or hold myself upon a horse, and the hard ground of stone wounds my feet.”

he’s like a selkie or something. I love this crap boy. he visits erendis and is like “hey want to go sailing with me?”

“I thought you came to talk about our wedding :( ” she says. “also if I sail out of sight of land I will Die. the sea Hates me.” it’s not really clear if she’s phobic or if she’s actually cursed (there is very little difference in my experience). but she can see he’s dying too, from seagayness (a serious sickness!) so she tells him to go and sail. this time he’s away for six years, and everything on middle earth has started to suck in the 19 years since he last visited. his port was destroyed and everyone hates numenoreans, for some reason. but he comes back, and they get married! I want to sleuth out how old she is by now... let’s see... um, she’s at least 80. they met in year 800 of the second age, and now they’re getting married in year 870. so clearly the house of beor doesn’t have ENTIRELY standard human longevity... and yet they’re still worried about erendis dying! (from the appendix: turns out she was 101 when they got married. HM.)

some eldar come to the wedding and give some Parable Presents. they give a white tree to aldarion; “it must have great wood!” he says. “we don’t know,” say the eldar reprovingly. “nobody has ever cut one of these down. they’re too beautiful.” they give a pair of magnetic birds to erendis; “how shall I keep them?” she asks. “let them fly free,” say the eldar. “they’ll always come back to you anyway, they love you.”

they have a daughter a few years later, named ancalime. I think this is the one gogol told me is an awful baby. just after she turns four, dilya goes sailing again. take your daughter with you!! be a good dad!! share your passion with your kids!! well, maybe when she’s older. the image of baby teen ancalime learning to sail with her dad is so precious. except it would make her mom really sad ::( erendis is already sad, actually. she is SO fed up with men right now. she takes ancalime to dwell in sheepland and creates a Magical Foreboding that makes men not want to come to her house. so ancalime never meets any. in most fairy tales, this kind of thing backfires and she falls in love with the first man she meets. but the first man she meets is a 6-year-old kid who offers her some bread because she’s too skinny, so maybe there’s hope.

dilya has been away for 5 years by the time he comes back, despite the fact that he promised he would only be gone for two. nobody is there to greet him at the quay. he goes to his house in the capital and finds it locked and empty. he hears from his father that she went to live in emerie, so he rides there and gets a very cold welcome. “I can see that I don’t have a wife any more,” he says. erendis replies, “well you don’t have a daughter either I GUESS.” the next day he meets ancalime, who is grumpy at having to wake up early and has no clue who he is. he addresses her very charmingly as “lady ancalime,” and then rides off for some kind of errand. erendis gnashes her teeth in vexation, because anardil is being a REAL ASSHOLE to her.

aldarion goes to a party for one of his shipmates’ homecoming; everyone there is happy and his wife and son love him. aldarion is Bitter.

an interlude: meneldur reads the letter his son brought from gil-galad. the letter reads, “your son is a great guy! if possible, please send soldiers for when sauron inevitably attacks us. yrs, gg.”

now back to aldarion! he is still Bitter. he is SO BITTER that he has his house demolished and cuts down all the trees except the white tree, which he names after his daughter. he stares at it and then casually says something that probably links their fates together forever. “I will call you also Ancalimë. May you and she stand so in long life, unbent by wind or will, and unclipped!” a little while later meneldur declares that anardil is going to be king now, so he invites his family for the coronation. scepteration, whatever. erendis declines to come because she hates him, but she lets ancalime come. 

UNFORTUNATELY the story is unfinished and fragmented, so we don’t get to hear how that went. we hear that dilya set off almost immediately after being scepterated, and had a fairly bad time in middle earth. we also hear that ancalime has much the same relationship with court that her father does with the sea; she goes there for long periods and peacocks around and has fun, and then flees back to emerie to recover from overstimulation. she thinks BOTH her parents are right to hate the other and hates the concept of marriage.

“Men would be craftsmen and loremasters and heroes all at once;” says Erendis to her daughter. “And women to them are but fires on the hearth - for others to tend, until they are tired of play in the eve­ning. All things were made for their service: hills are for quarries, river to furnish water or to turn wheels, trees for boards, women for their body's need, or if fair to adorn their table and hearth... Anger they show only when they become aware, suddenly, that there are other wills in the world beside their own.

“Thus it is, Ancalimë, and we cannot alter it. For men fashioned Númenor: men, those heroes of old that they sing of - of their women we hear less, save that they wept when their men were slain. Númenor was to be a rest after war. But if they weary of rest and the plays of peace, soon they will go back to their great play, manslaying and war. Thus it is; and we are set here among them. But we need not assent. If we love Númenor also, let us enjoy it before they ruin it. We also are daughters of the great, and we have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalimë. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves.”

ANCALIME IS MY FAVORITE TREE. She is determined to be a powerful queen and do Whatever She Wants. “She was clever, and malicious, and saw promise of sport as the prize for which her mother and her father did battle.” oh no. my dear girl. they aren’t doing this for FUN they are doing it so that NO-ONE WILL EVER HAVE FUN AGAIN.

There’s a bunch of low-resolution stuff about the shenanigans Ancalime got into as the king’s heir. she ends up marrying a rather disingenuous shepherd guy to spite her cousin so he won’t ever get to be king, but she doesn’t like being married, as she predicted. she also forbids everyone who works for her from getting married, but her husband arranges a spite party where they’ll all get married and invites her, just to be a dick. her family hates and fears her until she dies, I guess? DEMOTED from favorite tree status. favorite tree is now hirilorn again.

when erendis gets old she wants to see aldarion again, but he’s out voyaging, obviously. she “dies in the water.” probably from the Curse. there’s also a tonnnn of footnotes that I’m not going to read. there we have it! everyone was miserable, and then they died! the moral of the story is, don’t marry someone if you are constantly going to be mad at them for doing what they love.

[bastardtravel]

November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria.

There’s really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God. It’s actually emperor Leopold I delivering on his side of one of those pleading prayer bargains we’ve all done. Leo’s was “Please, let the plague stop. I swear I’ll build you a really dope art phallus right in the middle of the city, just stop killing everyone.”

The Plague Column is also called the Trinity Column due to its three sides, each one presumably representing some aspect of the tripartite God.

About a block away is the Stock im Eisen, or staff in iron. That’s misleading, it’s not a staff, it’s a tree trunk full of nails, kept in a tube that makes it totally immune to photography.

I did what I could. Now, you might be asking, “Why is there a protected chunk of tree, full of nails, on a street corner in Vienna?” Good question. I’d love to answer it, but it doesn’t seem like anyone can. Every website has a different interpretation of the Stock im Eisen‘s history, and the locals who were attempting to explain its significance to their visiting friends were telling conflicting stories.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together. In the Middle Ages, nail trees (Nagelbäume) were used by craftsmen, or anyone else with nails, for good luck. This particular nail tree had something to do with the Devil. There’s a ballet about it by Pasquale Borri, so if anyone more sophisticated than me can check that out and report back, I’d appreciate it.

There was a locksmith who wanted to marry his master’s daughter, or maybe he just wanted to be the greatest locksmith who ever lived. Dude shot for the stars. So he calls Mephistopheles out of Prague, who shows up on a FlixBus a few hours later. The locksmith sells his soul in exchange for just a really, fuckin’, top-notch padlock. It’s amazing. He puts that on the tree and issues challenges to either his master in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage, or to all the locksmiths of the world in exchange for World Locksmithing Supremacy. Since the Devil made the lock, nobody could crack it, and he lived happily ever after until he burnt in Hell. The tree remains with a lock on it to this day, and also full of nails, for some reason.

This is confirmed bullshit. They looked into the padlock and it’s empty, there’s no tumblers or anything in there. It would pop right open. Maybe that’s why the whole thing’s behind the bulletproof glass.

Well, that was most of center city, barring museums and palaces. I sidled all the way across town to the Freud Museum.

  I thought it was interesting, but Freud was what got me through college. I’d read the bulk of his debunked wackadoo theories long before I got “higher educated”, and since every class in undergrad wanted to beat both Freudian and Pavlovian dead horses as much as possible, I got to recycle the same paper, with subtle stylistic changes, something like ten times.

My favorite, bar none, was a History and Systems project where we were required to adopt the persona of our chosen theorist and have an open debate with the rest of the class. We got extra credit for accents, props, and convincing portrayal. I shaved my scruff into an approximation of his beard and showed up to class with a grape White Owl in my mouth and a baggie full of flour smeared around my nose. The only Austrian accent I’d ever heard at that point was the Terminator’s, so that was how Freud talked. I sat next to B.F. Skinner, as portrayed by a gorgeous little ghoul with dichromatic eyes, and we became a vitriolic tempest of condescending reductionism, laying waste to anyone fool enough to have chosen a humanistic or positive psychologist. The Carl Rogers surrogate got the worst flaying. I think he might still be institutionalized.

speaking of my college

hoo i heard that

Siggy’s personal necromancy cabinet. easily puts mine to shame, but the museum did keep repeating that his three great passions were “traveling, smoking, and collecting”

I laughed so hard and so inappropriately at that adorable picture of Carl Jung. Look at him go! With his little hat, and his little disapproving frown!

I love Jung, I think his work is interesting, if convoluted, arcanist rambling, but I wasn’t prepared for this. From here on out, I’m never gonna be able to think of Freud and Jung as anything but Germanic Rick and Morty.

On my way back to the hostel, I located the only grocery store in Vienna (I’d been looking) and picked up a box of juice brand named “Munter und Aktiv”. Well, I got half of that. I asked Google Translate and it said Munter means “blithely”. I recognized this as impossible. I activated my German field agent and she told me it’s a mixture between happy and awake and active. Well, we already have active. I asked the lady at the hostel desk, planning on averaging all these translations into one definitive Munter.

“It is like waking up with coffee in the morning,” she said. “Like chipper.”

“All right, thank you.”

She asked me if I still had my key card. I said I did.

“Good work,” she told me. She seemed serious, but she may have just been possessed of the Wiener Grant.

“Do people lose them a lot? Is that a big problem here?” I asked, blithely. Munterly.

“No, no problem. We don’t have problems here,” she said, then she honest to God slapped the table and shouted in the thickest, most Germanic accent I’ve ever heard, “VE HAVE ZOLUTIONS!”

She laughed after and clarified that she was just kidding, but I was deer-in-the-headlights frozen. One of those disbelieving grins, you know? When what’s going on… can’t be what’s actually going on.

I know we have a sad little Nazi party movement in America, but realistically that’s like 40 lonely dudes with bad haircuts who get way too much media coverage. In much of Europe, they seem mighty sorry for World War II. The Mahnmal in the heart of Vienna is a good indicator, but there’s more going on than monuments, culturally. The aforementioned German girl is currently crossing eastern Europe and self-inflicting a sort of guilt tour (or Schuldtour). Warsaw and Auschwitz, that I’m aware of. Die Madchen ist haunted.

(As a quick aside, I looked up the German word for ‘haunted’, and, unbelievably, it is spukt. Go ahead. Say it out loud. Spukt. This fuckin’ language, man.)

In the Athens flea market, after divulging her nationality to an antique dealer for reasons I will never understand, he rolled out a bunch of old Nazi medals.

“You want?”

She literally backpedaled, shielding her face like a tall, rigid vampire from an iron cross. But she went on to tell me that there are people back in Germany — in America, we’d call them hicks — that love that kind of thing.

The modern nationalism necessary to breed either sentiment is lost on me, but I don’t think that’s because I’m an American. I’m just not much of a joiner.

A final, weird note, and the last Hitler point I plan on making: the Indian guy told me that Hitler is sort of fondly remembered in India and China. In the course of the war, Germany did a lot of damage to Great Britain, and India is still carrying a pretty understandable grudge against their former imperial taskmasters.

I sat down and collected myself until my chronic and intractable antsiness returned, then I figured I’d go check out the craft beer bar half a mile away. I hadn’t eaten in six or seven hours, so that seemed like the ideal time. They had a Bier dem Wochen flight for the cost of a regular half-pint, so I got that. They brought me 4 beers, all from Anchor Brewing, which I learned from a hipster’s t-shirt is in San Francisco.

welp

The Steam beer must be called that because that’s what it tasted like. The stout was palatable, in a cream soda kind of way. I downed it and ordered a local imperial stout called Der Schnittenfahrt from a company called Brauwork. Hilarious though that may sound, it means “cut drive”, and washing down a flight with it on an empty stomach was perhaps ill advised.

“schnittenfahrt” tho

The bar was very excited about rugby. Ireland vs Argentina. I didn’t know who they were rooting for, but they were rooting for them with all their heart. I went to the bathroom and laughed so hard I scared a dude.

now that’s opulence

That was enough for one night. I had a bus to catch the next morning. I stumbled back to my hostel and passed out. I slept like a rock, except for at around 3 AM when I was awake just long enough to see the dude in the opposing bunk sit up like a mummy, slam his face into the wood support of the bunk over him, and release a long, low-pitched, closed-mouthed moan. It was sort of like a cow mooing, but in slow motion. Absolutely fantastic.

The next morning I threw all my stuff into my bag and wrote in the kitchen until my Brazilian DJ friend rejoined me, looking much worse for wear.

“Bunch of bastards,” he told me out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“The club I played at,” he spat. “Didn’t pay me a DIME. Bastards. Didn’t even give me free drinks. I had four beers, and they charged me.”

I shook my head. “Animals. Well, chalk it up to experience, I guess.”

He made a vague allusion to being all about peace and love. I shook his hand, wished him well, and headed for the door.

Oh, right. The bus was to Bratislava, and hoo boy, do I got some stories for tomorrow.

    heard yo mama in the movies

Love,

The Bastard

Vienna: Phallic Fixations November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria. There's really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God.